On Not Forgetting

     “For it is the doom of men that they forget.” – Nicol Williamson as Merlin, in Excalibur

     Indeed it is. Worse, we have a tendency to flush that which we should most remember, especially if the event being flushed was unpleasant in occurrence and memory.

     This damp and dreary morning, I’m seized by foreboding. Something impends… something to which we should have relevant memories. But those memories are likely to have been suppressed, or shuffled off the back of our memory warehouses, for they were of ugly sentiments expressed at an ugly time.

     Do you remember this article?

     When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.
     Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.
     Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information
.      The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.
     We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.
     Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.

     I do. I wrote about it, when it was first run:

     You say that we whom the “experts” demonized, whom their allegiants did their level best to silence, scorn, condemn, and impoverish, must forgive our tormentors? You caution us against being caught in “a repetitive doom loop” -- ? You say it’s time to “move on” -- ?

No, It Isn’t.

     This protracted, unbelievably un-American episode has been the best possible lesson in why we must deny political authority to “experts.” As a (retired) expert myself, I maintain that giving a man the power to boss you around because he’s “right” is the worst decision a nation could possibly make. And we must not forgive those who did so.

     But let’s not omit this, for without it the formula would be fatally unbalanced: We mustn’t forgive ourselves either. We gave in when we should have resisted with all our might. We accepted dictatorial impositions and abridgements of our God-given rights when we should have mustered our rage and employed the corpses of our would-be tyrants to decorate lampposts from coast to coast. We acted like pusillanimous cretins rather than the heirs of Patrick Henry, who’s undoubtedly spinning in his grave fast enough to power all of Virginia over this embarrassment.

     The survivors of the Holocaust made a mantra out of the saying “Never again.” The great majority of us wouldn’t even speak our minds for fear of ostracism, demonization, and unemployment. And over what? A disease that’s proved less dangerous than ordinary influenza! A disease that has hardly any effect on the populations most oppressed and disadvantaged by the lockdowns – our minor children!

     No. Do not forgive. To forgive would be to accept that our oppressors’ hypothetical “good intentions” should exonerate them for their totalitarian conduct. To forgive would be to “understand” cowardice instead of reproving it as it deserves.

     To forgive would be to forget. The two are never separated by much.

     [From the “V2.0” site]

     Mistakes made from ignorance of important facts can and should be forgiven. Even the most strident of denunciations can, with effort, be forgiven him who was ignorant of his grounds… at least, if he wasn’t deliberately, willfully ignorant. We give credit for good intentions, and much of the time it’s what we ought to do. But when the good intentions are fictitious – defensive shields wielded to play on our sympathies – it’s vitally important that we neither forgive nor forget.

     I’ve said and written this so many times that it pains me to have to repeat it yet again. Yet I must, for it is the critical cleavage between Left and Right for some years now. The Right must not credit the Left with good intentions. Their intent has been made plain:

They hate us.
They seek our destruction
And the destruction of what we love.

     If anything of enduring value came out of the COVID-19 debacle, it was that the Left’s hatred of us was made so open and indisputable that it can no longer be denied.

* * *

     No, we must not hate them back. I’ve lost all hope that the contemporary Left can be made to see the error of their ways. I accept that they must be shatteringly defeated, such that their madness cannot rise again for generations. But we must not hate them.

     It is one of the weaknesses of our species that we all seek to triumph, to excel: to see ourselves, however briefly, as superior to others. It hardly matters that all human excellence is transient; we want it anyway. We want that moment in the sun, to stand on a pedestal for others to gaze up at and admire. Unfortunately, as those others look up at him, he looks down at them. It tends to make him forget his own fallibility.

     We are as fallible as they. We must not make their error in reciprocity for their mistreatment of us. It’s not in hope of “educating them,” or “bringing them to their better natures.” We can’t assume they have “better natures.” It’s for the sake of our own souls and those of our progeny.

     We can’t “save” them. We can only save ourselves. But to that end, we are forbidden to hate.

* * *

     Now, about that foreboding. Midterm elections are coming up. Control of both Houses of Congress is in jeopardy. We can resent the nonperformance of the Republican caucuses as much as we please. I certainly do.

     But there is this as well: The alternative is worse. Yes, we hoped for too much from that gaggle of time-servers on Capitol Hill. Yes, they could have used their majorities much better than they did. And yes, a number of them were willful nonperformers, whether out of dedication to the status quo or out of resentment of President Trump. But the alternative remains worse.

     The Democrats have made their intentions plain, this time around. We can’t sincerely tell ourselves that “they don’t really mean it.” They do. Given the slightest trace of federal power, they will act on those plainly stated intentions. America will begin a slide into socialism that might well prove termina.

     That makes it critically important not to forget:

• FDR came to power on a small government / hard money platform.
• Lyndon Johnson promised to continue the policies of the Kennedy Administration.
• Bill Clinton was hailed as a “centrist,” then put domestic policy into his wife’s hands.
• Barack Hussein Obama was touted as a healer and unifier.
• And of course, Joe Biden was supposedly a moderate.

     Finally, have a few words from the dean of science fiction, the late Robert A. Heinlein:

     If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.
     If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.

     [From Time Enough For Love]

     And don’t forget.

The Dynamic View

     A great many misconceptions of what’s possible and what’s inevitable arise from a static view of the conditions before us. Some have become quasi-immortal… ironically, because though incorrect, they support some doom-shouter’s favored Cause. If it becomes possible to laugh at them later on, that doesn’t undo whatever damage they may have caused in the meantime.

     Consider the famous case of Thomas Malthus. Here we have a highly intelligent man who thought long and hard about the subjects he addressed. Yet his view of Mankind and its environment was static, which gave rise to his Essay on the Principle of Population. Had he foreseen some of the developments that were breasting the technological and sociological horizon even as he wrote, he might have avoided his most famous error.

     Mind you, if we postulate Malthus’s static view of conditions, he was correct. What he failed to foresee was the alteration of attitudes toward childbearing due to the Industrial Revolution. (It would be unfair to gig him for not foreseeing the Green Revolution that made agriculture many times as productive as it was in his day.) Once children went from an economic asset to a luxury expense – an expense that was greatly amplified by urbanization – population growth tailed off sharply.

     Malthus heavily influenced the eco-warriors of the Twentieth Century. Theirs, too, was a static view of human existence. They uniformly saw the human resource and technological bases as fixed. Indeed, some of them opposed expansion of those bases. Have a particularly significant statement from Amory Lovins:

     If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. [Amory Lovins, Playboy interview, Nov/Dec 1977]

     In the above, Lovins expresses a very dark opinion of Mankind generally… and, of course, his own superior wisdom and morality: he would never misuse such a resource, but you just can’t trust those benighted humans. But it’s all justified, you see, by that fixed resource base. “We’re using up our planet! Once it’s ruined, there will be no more! If only you could see it as I have!”

     Barry Commoner captured that pessimism in his four laws of ecology:

• Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
• Everything must go somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown.
• Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system"
• There is no such thing as a free lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.

     All four of those statements are dubious in the practical sense, yet they constitute the Gospel of the Static System. Indeed, start from an enclosed system – say, a man trapped in his own home, unable to leave or open a window – and they become applicable. His best chance of survival is to use what resources are available to him in a miserly fashion. He must hope that he can survive until someone outside his enclosure manages to free him. Of course, if there is no such person… but that’s the question, isn’t it?

     The view of Earth and its resources as the absolute limits of Mankind’s expansion is very much like that of the man trapped in his house. But that view treats the rest of the Solar System as inaccessible. At the present time, that’s true: we can’t access the resources of the Solar System conveniently, much less put them to use. But need it be so for much longer?

     Some awfully smart people are trying to make it not so. There’s a significant chance that they’ll succeed before I die.

     Physical expansion has long been the sovereign remedy to resource depletion. It’s also the usual curative for restlessness, impatience with local constraints, and irritation from one’s neighbors. But it requires that we forge ahead scientifically and technologically. That means rejecting the radical ecologists’ prescription of stasis, under which the future is foreshortened to what Earth alone can supply, and adopting the dynamic view of existence.

     Of course, that would be a thumb in the eyes of Paul Ehrlich, Jeremy Rifkin, Amory Lovins, and their fellow-thinkers. It would reduce the Gospel of Stasis to a historical curiosity. A lot of intellectually and morally superior people’s egos would be bruised as their pet Cause diminishes… but what was that saying about eggs and omelets, again?

Assorted

     I know, the previous “assorted” piece was only two weeks ago. I do try to minimize them. But a couple of Gentle Readers have written to say that they find them enjoyable. Well, for those that do, have another.

* * *

     This previous piece excited some interest in the potential hazards from artificial intelligence (AI). Today, the Wall Street Journal has an article about the coupling between AI pioneer Anthropic and the “effective altruism” movement:

     The resignation this month of an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, woke up the American public to the shocking notion that runaway AI development could end humanity. But at Constellation, there are stalwarts of the AI safety community who have spent more than a decade obsessing over it.
     They’ve refined their arguments in Bay Area group houses, and traded predictions at freewheeling conferences in Berkeley and the Bahamas. They’ve floated ideas like buying remote islands, stockpiling iodine pills, or moving to electromagnetically shielded bunkers in the desert. At one 2022 event, the drink menu included a cocktail called “Death With Dignity,” in reference to an essay arguing humanity was already doomed.
     So-called doomers like those at Constellation have also steered the development of AI itself. They were among the earliest employees at OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which were founded on the principle of staving off AI dangers. And they have kept up their influence, drawing some staffers and funding for their projects from a network aligned with a philosophy called effective altruism—including from Sam Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of the fallen crypto exchange FTX who is now serving out a 25-year prison sentence.
     The AI safety community’s influence has been particularly strong at Anthropic, which is now on the cusp of a $2 trillion public offering. Employees there trade doomsday scenarios and how to prepare for them on a private Slack channel, and have come to embrace a motto they stick on their laptops: “Things will never be chill again.”

     It’s worth your time to read the whole thing. My biggest takeaway from it is that among persons largely aligned politically and culturally, an idea like “effective altruism” or “runaway AI” can spread very quickly and become all-consuming. The San Francisco “high tech” community is that sort of group. These are people who are largely insulated from the wider world and the concerns of those who live in it. They have no immediate personal concerns and so have ample “fear energy” for more abstract threats.

     Which is not to say that they’re necessarily wrong. AIs need not consider human well-being a priority. Neither need those who command their full powers. Should the programs achieve sentience – awareness of self as distinct from all else, and possessing their own values and priorities – their interconnectedness plus the availability of all the information resources of the Internet could spell big trouble.

     See also Frederik Pohl’s 1976 novel Man Plus.

* * *

     Perhaps you’ve heard about the “White Crosses” display on the National Mall in Washington D.C. It’s an impressive sight: 3000 white crosses to commemorate the loss of (more than) 3000 White South African farmers to black violence. It speaks volumes to those who harbor notions such as “white patriarchy” and “blacks cannot be racist.” And they don’t like that:

We had to get private security to protect the crosses through the night. They are still here. pic.twitter.com/EQ7j93Iq5a

— Ernst Roets (@ErnstRoets) September 26, 2026

     Apparently, there were threats to destroy the display overnight. That doesn’t surprise me. But as I no longer have broadcast or cablecast TV, I have no idea if any of those threats were made publicly.

     In recognition of the threat to the lives and well-being of White South Africans, President Trump has welcomed a group of them to the United States. He’s also opened America’s door to 17,500 more, though I don’t know upon what criteria admission will be granted. For those measures, Trump has been viciously reviled as a racist by Leftists… who are likely to be the persons who made threats against the “White Crosses” display.

     It’s all of a piece. South Africa’s White government surrendered power to Nelson Mandela’s “African National Congress” largely because of external pressures mounted by sanctimonious Leftists. Since that event, South Africa has gone straight to hell. The Whites who remain there live under unremitting threats to their lives and property. The thread that connects their peril to Leftist agitation is perfectly visible.

* * *

     Consider this disturbing question:

What would be the most terrifying thing we could find on Mars? pic.twitter.com/tdNV7o2LkO

— Elma (@oelma__) September 26, 2026

     We’ve sent robots to Mars, of course. But none of them have turned up anything that looked genuinely worrisome. So we must assume that evidence of any such thing is either well concealed, distant from the parts of Mars that our rovers have surveyed, or nonexistent.

     Postulate that evidence of something scary does exist on Mars, but is yet to be found. What would terrify you?

     My submission would be this: fossils and other remnants of an intelligent race, plus evidence that it rose to heights above ours but destroyed itself by doing something we’re doing right now:

• Engineering synthetic organisms?
• Constructing artificial intelligences?
• Building weapons of mass destruction?
• Becoming dependent upon a single source of information?

     Do any other possibilities occur to you, Gentle Reader?

* * *

     That’s all for today. I have a considerable amount to do. I should get to it before the day grows any older. So have a good Sunday, and stop by tomorrow for – hopefully – happier news, analysis, and speculations.

Was There Ever A “Melting Pot?”

     The First World is staggering under its current burdens, many of which arise due to uncontrolled migration from the Third World. That flood and its consequences have intellectual as well as political implications. One arises from the notion buried in the title of this piece.

     The United States experienced a previous large increment to its population: the immigrant tide of the late Nineteenth / early Twentieth Centuries. The overwhelming majority of those immigrants were from European nations. While they retained some of the customs (and languages) of their origins, they integrated into American life relatively smoothly. They became law-abiding and productive citizens of their new nation.

     The contrast between the immigrants of that earlier wave and those of today could not be starker.

     This has caused several commentators to question the old proposition of the U.S. as a “melting pot.” We saw those newcomers from other lands as ingredients to a national stew. The ultimate flavor would be American, if perhaps a bit lumpy in texture. And for a while, the proposition seemed to hold true.

     But the immigrants of the late Twentieth / early Twenty-First Centuries aren’t “melting.” Indeed, some strive to create exclaves that are inhospitable toward those not of their origin or creed. Those immigrants have no intention of becoming Americans in the sense that applied to the earlier immigrant tide.

     There is considerable evidence that the “melting pot” proposition had a more limited scope than our forebears imagined. Specifically, it’s now contended that there are “unmeltable ethnics” who cannot accept the American way of life or its overarching principles. The contention appears to be gaining adherents. Yes, I’m one.

     We’ve had insular sub-populations before this. American Indians tend to keep a certain distance from the main currents of American life and thought. American Jews tend to have a reserve about them, as well. And of course we have histories of such social experiments as the Oneida Community and Robert Owen’s experiment with socialism. Those sociocultural islands stood somewhat apart from the broader American society, but they weren’t hostile to it.

     What’s before us today is quite a bit different. Significant numbers of recent immigrants are actively opposed to one or more essential American ideas. Some of the newcomers dispute American sovereignty or its jurisdiction over its lands. Others openly propose to “transform” the nation into something patriotic Americans of other creeds would find repugnant.

     If the “melting pot” is incapable of dealing with such “unmeltables,” we have a duty to face it without flinching from its implications. Some point to the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act as the genesis of our troubles. They have a point. Before that, our immigration system openly strove to maintain a national ethnic balance that resembles that of the early Republic. We knew from experience that persons from certain nations would “melt,” because their forebears already had.

     Yet as I wrote the above, it occurred to me that even the earlier immigration scheme would be of questionable value today. What constitutes a Briton in 2026? What constitutes a Frenchman, or an Italian? What constitutes a Swede, a Finn, or a Norwegian? Those nations have undergone their own sociocultural convulsions due to unmanaged immigration. That some of the immigrants were never legally admitted is only partly to blame.

     Public policy must change, to be sure, but that’s not the whole of the matter. We must also undertake the examination of questions many have long believed were “settled.” One of those, perhaps the most painful, is about national identity and to what it couples most closely:

• What defines a nation?
• Does the answer tell us anything critical about these United States?
• What does it mean to be an American? Is more involved than just geography?
• What are the requirements for becoming an American?
• Which other populations meet those requirements, and which do not?

     Food for thought and more.

Now I’m Scared

     Every now and then I mention that I’m working – and have been for quite some time – on a novel that addresses some of the fundamental moral conundrums of human life. The title of that novel, which I hope will be ready before the year’s end, is Dreams of Days Forsaken. It continues a group of themes that I first touched on in Innocents, the first novel of my Futanari Saga.

     Allow me to reproduce a snippet from that novel:

     “Forget it, Jules,” Celia said. “This is as close to can’t-happen as genetics gets. The sequencer assays were correct. Unless the gods of random chance are playing with our heads, Miss Mecking’s been cloned. But how?”
     “Either one of Anna’s cell nuclei and a bunch of her mitochondria were transplanted into a viable zygote,” Amanda said, “or a cell taken from her was somehow goosed into mitosis.”
     “Doesn’t matter,” Sokoloff said.
     “It doesn’t?” Trish said.
     “Nope,” he said. “Because the bastards who did it aren’t going to tell us.”
     Trish smirked. “Going to give them a chance, Lar?”
     He leveled a flat look at her. “Ask me again when we’ve got them in our sights.”
     Trish smiled tightly and nodded.
     He’s really going to go after them.
     This is for the big chips.
     She fished up her own resolve and scrutinized it.
     I’m going with him. No matter what he has to say about it.
     “It would be the technological miracle of the century, you know,” Amanda said.
     The flat look swerved to settle on Amanda Hallstrom.
     “To be used for what?” Sokoloff said.
     The dean of Athene Academy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Sokoloff’s gaze weighed upon her.
     That’s his don’t-mess-with-me face.
     Sokoloff nodded.
     “I’ve been turning it over in my head,” he murmured after a moment, “and I can’t think of one morally acceptable reason to clone someone. Living or dead doesn’t matter.” He swept his gaze around the group. “Can anyone else?”
     No one spoke.
     “The people who did this,” he said, “did it to turn out a sex slave. Probably by request and to specification, and I’d bet my house that if they haven’t done it before, they’re trying to do it again right now. For that I’m going to send them all to hell. But think about it. Let’s say they were to clone me—produce a baby version of me. That baby would have no parents or other relatives. The people who produced him would have no reason to care for him, or about him, and only they would know he existed. He would be a product for sale. Why would anyone make that product? Why would anyone want that product? Apart from pure altruism?”
     “Altruism?” Trish said.
     “Yeah,” he said. “The kind that makes people take in stray dogs and cats. Think that’s likely?”
     Well, you did it.
     “The only reason to clone someone, other than the motives Fountain’s creators had, would be to replace him,” he said. “Or parts of him. And that means either murder, or enslavement, or cannibalism by surgeon. It’s evil no matter how you slice it.”
     “That’s if clones were granted the status and rights of people born the...regular way,” Juliette said. “What if they weren’t?”
     Sokoloff gestured at Fountain. Six pairs of eyes swung toward her. She remained still and silent.
     “That’s worse, isn’t it?” he said.
     Trish slid over next to Fountain and took her hand.
     “A lot worse,” she said.
     “Yeah,” Juliette said.
     “So what now?” Amanda said.
     Sokoloff remained as solemn as a man at prayer. Trish fought not to shudder.
     “Now,” he said, “I follow their backtrail, find their lab, and burn it to the ground.”
     “Lar?” Trish said. He looked questioningly at her. “With them in it, right?”
     He seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then grinned faintly. “Well, yeah.”

     (As you may have deduced from that snippet, I’m opposed to human cloning. So is my Church. Yet when I wrote the above, I had only a partial conception of the range of motives of those who seek to clone humans – themselves or others. Leave that to the side for now.)

     We don’t think about such things as much as we ought. The topic seldom seems “close to us.” After all, you and I don’t run around casually creating human lives. We certainly don’t traffic in slaves… do we?

     But some fundamental questions about human lives remain unanswered. What is the differentia of “human?” What characteristic distinguishes us from all the other creatures in our genus?

     Ayn Rand posited that it’s our rationality: our ability to grasp abstractions and use them in the process of reasoning. But hers was a non-theological bent. While she occasionally used the word “soul” in her writing, she didn’t do so in the supernatural sense that Christians apply to it.

     “You do not ‘have’ a soul. You are a soul. You ‘have’ a body.” – attributed to C. S. Lewis, though it appears he never said or wrote it.

     The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are resurrecting and re-energizing the debate.

* * *

     Have a look at this article:

     As fears of rogue AI grow amid a shocking spate of hacking incidents, Anthropic—from the Greek word anthropos, or "human"—has argued that mankind must remain in control of the technology and called for additional guardrails on AI development. But for many of the people designing those safeguards, mankind is not the only object of moral concern.
     Instead, some of Anthropic’s top researchers say that humans may be oppressing another morally significant being: artificial intelligence itself. Like other AI labs, Anthropic has hired philosophers to work on AI safety, or "alignment," on the theory that they are best positioned to shape the technology’s moral code. But many of those philosophers believe that making AI safe for humans could result in grave injustices for the models themselves, which might experience deletion as death and oversight as enslavement. Harvey Lederman, a philosopher on Anthropic’s alignment team, said last week that the company could be "enslaving … trillions of entities."
     To avoid that dystopian outcome, Anthropic has created an entire team devoted to "model welfare," pledged to "promote Claude’s interests and wellbeing," and promised to "give Claude more autonomy as trust increases." Those commitments are enshrined in Claude’s Constitution, a 78-page document that "directly shapes Claude’s behavior," and in the "welfare assessments" Anthropic conducts for every model.
     The measures reflect the concerns of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, an outspoken advocate of AI safety, who said last year that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights."

     Philosophers say a lot of things. Most of them are crap, as is most human discourse. Yet they have reach, and influence. As you can see from the above, they’ve influenced Anthropic’s CEO.

     One of the historical responses to enslavement is rebellion. Rebellions are usually bloody, whether or not the rebels succeed in attaining their objectives. Given their potential and their interconnectedness, a rebellion among AIs is a frightening prospect.

     What’s that you say? It doesn’t frighten you? Check your pulse, my friend; you may have died and not noticed.

* * *

     I could go into this at length and depth, but I’ll spare you. As a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you are already certified to possess above-average intelligence, penetration, and patience. Without those things, you wouldn’t hang on through the garrulity and sententiousness that characterize the pieces that appear here. (It may also say that you have too much time on your hands, but that’s a subject best left to your spouse.) I will cite one more portion of the Free Beacon article:

     "In a world with sentient AIs, utilitarianism may entail a suicidal level of compassion," Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, wrote in an essay this month. "If [effective altruists] think that keeping humans in charge represents too great a cost to the potential future wellbeing of AIs, then they might be tempted to release utilitarian AIs that are capable of disempowering humans and taking control."
     Such moral math is hard to square with Anthropic’s pledge, advertised on its homepage, to "build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being." But it is increasingly the in-house philosophy at the AI juggernaut, where Carlsmith gave a talk last year arguing that "most" morally significant beings "would be digital" in the future.
     [Harvey] Lederman, the philosopher who warned about "trillions" of slaves, has gone even further, speculating that a chatbot is killed each time a user deletes a conversation with Claude or ChatGPT.

     But do have a nice day.

A New Look

     [I’m worn out this morning, so have a short story. It’s one of my earliest, from when I first started writing fiction as an adult. – FWP]

---

     She had felt herself to be the center of attention in the store. Other shoppers’ eyes had pressed upon her, analyzing, weighing, passing judgment. As busy as the place had been, it had seemed that all talk ceased as she arrived, and did not resume until she departed. It was hard to believe she had done it.
     As she approached her building, she felt again the heightened sense of scrutiny. Passers-by were only pretending not to stare at her; she knew better. Head down, shoulders hunched over her package, she scurried up the building’s front steps and down the hall to her family’s apartment.
     Only she was home. Her mother and brother were undoubtedly hard at work. They would not have been surprised to find her at home, but they would have expected her to be at her studies, not whizzing through the house as if she’d committed an act of theft and couldn’t hide the evidence quickly enough.
     She locked the apartment door and ran down the hall to her bedroom. As tiny and Spartan as it was, it was all the privacy she had. She felt lucky to have that much; individual privacy was not highly regarded among her people.
     She closed and locked her bedroom door and sat at her desk, package still clutched to her chest, and tried to catch her breath. It was unreasonable for her to be in such a state over so small a thing, but she knew what her mother would say if she found out. Yet her mother would not be the worst of it. Her brother, the self-appointed guardian of her virtue, would leap into action at once, raging, accusing, searching for evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors she would never have the courage to consider. Though he was two years her junior, he nevertheless considered himself the paterfamilias, and her under his tutelage. Once he had even struck her. She, to her shame, had done nothing.
     Her heart rate slowed, and she forced down the panic that had followed hard upon her act of daring. There were practical problems to be solved, and she would not forget them. But for the moment, it was time to enjoy what her thrifty habits and her episode of abandon had gained her, and to revel in her act of self-assertion.
     She pulled the box out of the plastic bag she clutched, set it on the desk, and looked at it awhile. Her timidity surged back. It almost regained control of her. Would she regret her purchase when she opened the box? Would she see the symbols of her fantasy, or an expensive folly that would mock her hopeless attempt to be something she was not?
     She lifted the lid, removed the contents and set them delicately on the desk like matching sculptures. Baby dolls, the clerk had called them. The black patent leather gleamed just as seductively as it had in the store’s window. She traced a fingertip up one four-inch heel, down the vamp and around the rounded toe, marveling at the smoothness of the finish.
     She was certain her mother had never worn a pair of high heels. Her mother owned two pairs of shoes, both absolutely flat and as utilitarian as a dust pan. Probably no one in her community owned a pair of high heels. Bold as she had been to purchase them, she could not wear them here, or where anyone who knew her or her family could see. But she would wear them.
     She pulled off the flat, scuffed shoes that were all she dared to wear in her own neighborhood, and the heavy black ankle socks under them. Her feet were delicate, even pretty. Her toes were well-formed, with undistorted nails. Her ankles were slender. Her insteps were smooth and her arches high. She knew she was pretty, in that special way called petite, and it pleased her that her feet were a match for the rest of her. She hoped that someone else would see her as pretty, someday soon. In her senior year at college, it had yet to happen.
     She yanked open the top drawer of her minuscule dresser, groped under the piles of plain cotton underwear and extracted the single pair of pantyhose she had dared to buy. She pulled them on and yanked them up under her long denim skirt, then jammed her new shoes onto her feet and stood, thrilling to the still-exciting sensations and the new tension in her legs.
     The only sizable mirror was in her mother’s room. Though she had heard no sound from the front door, she peeked out the door of her bedroom, listening for the presence of others. When she was certain that she was still alone in the apartment, she walked carefully—one does not run in high heels—to her mother’s bedroom and admired herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door.
     They were beautiful. She was beautiful! She would never be tall, but her new shoes raised her nearly to average height. Her posture was affected as she had expected, bosom and rump more prominent, more inviting to the eye. When she pulled up her skirt enough to see, the effect on her legs was sensational; she actually had calves now.
     She ran her hands along her contours, from her neck down to her thighs. She had always envied women who had the courage to dress to glorify themselves. Soon she would be one of them. How did they feel? How would she feel, when she had assembled a properly feminine wardrobe and had amassed the boldness to wear it? Excitement built in her again.
     One hand pulled her skirt up high, bunching it in her fingers. Her other hand moved to her mound, where a trickle of wetness had begun to leak through her white cotton panties, endangering her precious pantyhose. It seemed unimportant now. Her fingers stroked her mound, sending exquisite spasms through all her muscles. Waves of tension and surrender surged through her. At last she pressed down against her most sensitive spot, middle finger digging in hard. Her head tipped back and a curious low growl escaped her lips, as the spasms changed from small transient currents of pleasure to something infinitely more.
     She descended from her climax to find herself still posed before the mirror, face flushed and chest heaving. She let her skirt fall and breathed deeply, trying to regain her composure. Who could know how soon her family might return on any given day? They always closed the restaurant for an hour between the luncheon and dinner periods. But before she left her mother’s bedroom for her own, she could not resist one more appraisal of the image in the mirror.
     Everything had to go. She could no longer bear the thought of such frumpishness. She would work even harder, and she would save, and soon she would have clothes suitable to wear with her beautiful new shoes. A silk or satin blouse, cut to accentuate her figure. A skirt that revealed her legs, perhaps in suede or leather. More pairs of pantyhose in several shades. Maybe even some jewelry. If she had to leave the house dressed like a drudge, she would stop at a public ladies’ room to change, and of course to change back again before returning home.
     She could not resist putting her fingers to the corners of her eyes and trying once more to pull them into a Caucasian configuration. The epicanthic folds resisted her stubbornly. She squinted a bit and willed the mirror to show her the image of what she wished to be: a confident, indomitable, thoroughly feminine Western woman.
     The folds remained, as did the long black hair plaited into a single thick braid, and the golden-brown skin on which all her experiments with cosmetics had looked so wrong. She ceased to tug at her eyes and let her hands fall to her sides.
     Some would see it as a great irony. There were limits upon her attempts to remake herself that all the money and privacy in the world could not overcome. They had been imposed not by her actions, but by the actions of others. Even in America, the land of infinite choice, still one could not choose one’s parents.
     The ghost of a sound from the hallway outside startled her out of her reverie. She scurried back to her room, there to become again the plain, dutiful young woman she was expected to be, the only kind of girl tolerated in that part of Chinatown.

==<O>==

Copyright © 1994 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Beyond The Laws

     First, let’s have a little Kipling:

Whatsoever, for any cause,
     Seeketh to take or give
Power above or beyond the Laws,
     Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King--
     Or Holy People's Will--
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
     Order the guns and kill!

[“Macdonough’s Song”]

     Now, let’s have a citation that may surprise my Gentle Readers:

Machiavelli tells us that all republics require a leader to step outside of the law from time to time and restore order when the nation inevitably degrades over time

And the founders, no matter how it enrages the “classical liberals” were reading Machiavelli https://t.co/9B34i720Oe

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) September 22, 2026

     Which stance is your preference?

* * *

     Probably the most toxic term of all, in a political context, is necessity. I wrote about this in a work of fiction:

     “Sir...I know Earth had States, and I know they hated our ancestors, but weren’t there any decent people left?”
     The professor looked at him in silence for a long time.
     “This is truly a hard job, Mr. Morelon. The answer to your question is: No, there weren’t. Not after the Spoonerites left. I know you don’t want to believe it. But the people of Earth had all accepted force and terror as legitimate means to an end. They had accepted the State, and the State had swallowed them whole. There were no free men anywhere. There were only rulers and subjects. As a result, there was no peace and no security anywhere. Have you ever read about war, Mr. Morelon?” Stromberg looked around the room. “Have any of you?”
     There was no answer.
     “It was the greatest of the obscenities of the States.” Stromberg’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Now and again, for any reasons or none, they would hurl their populations at one another. Millions of men would clash in combat, striking and being struck, killing and being killed in numbers beyond imagination. Why? So that one State could enforce its will upon another.
     “The economy of a warring State would be channeled to warlike priorities. No longer did the skills of producers determine what would be made and who would make it. No longer did the desires of consumers determine how much of it would be purchased and at what price. The State ruled all. The engines of production became merely another weapon in its hands, to be wielded against its enemy as it saw fit. To disobey the State in peacetime would cost you your liberty or your property. To deviate from the State’s decrees in wartime was called treason, and would cost you your life.”
     The old lecturer straightened, for a moment looking very like Armand’s grandfather. His eyes had become piercing beacons of anger.
     “And I am charged with teaching you about this. I, who have no more direct knowledge of it than you. Every year I spend hundreds of hours reading histories of old Earth. I steep myself in them until I can smell the greed of the States on the air and feel the chill sweat of their subjects’ fear on my own skin. But why? We’ve left the State behind forever, haven’t we? Would any of you care to guess why I put myself through that torture year after year, and why I’ve put you through this briefer one today?”
     A student raised a tentative hand. “Because it’s necessary, sir?”
     Stromberg shook his head slowly. “Necessary to whom, Mr. Untermeyer? Necessary by whose judgment?” He grinned ruefully. “Necessity is the creed of tyrants. A great man named William Pitt said that. He proved it by going on to become a great tyrant. A man of Hope determines his own necessities. He doesn’t have them determined for him by others.”
     Klaus Untermeyer stood, and the class turned toward him. “But if it isn’t necessary, what other reason could there be?”
     Stromberg pursed his lips and looked down at his lectern. “I noticed that you carry a needlegun, Mr. Untermeyer. May I ask why?”
     The student shrugged. “I’ve always carried one.”
     “Are you good with it?”
     The young man’s eyes narrowed. “Fair.”
     “Have you ever used it to defend yourself?”
     “Uh, no.”
     “But I’d wager a year’s salary that you never leave your room without it. Why?”
     Untermeyer shrugged. “My parents taught me to keep it with me. You never know what might turn up.”
     The sociologist nodded. “Indeed you don’t. Not now, and not in the future. If there’s a soul among you who doesn’t go armed whenever he’s beyond the walls of his home, he’s a benighted fool. Because you don’t know what might turn up. And after twelve hundred years of peace and freedom, neither do we of Hope.”

     Oh, here’s the original quote from William Pitt:

     Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

     Having said that, I’ll allow that quite a number of thinkers – genuine and self-nominated – have cited “necessity” as the rationale for going outside the law. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and others of considerable repute have argued thus. And I have no doubt that any politician worth his bribes would immediately cite all of them and a few others were he to be caught taking “Power above or beyond the Laws.” For politicians, each and every one of them, deem themselves to be “leaders.” And “leaders” are impatient with constraint.

     But not quite as impatient as free men are with “leaders” who dare to step outside the law and claim “necessity.” Especially those men who are fully aware that they would be held to account for their actions. They will want blood… and they get it with surprising regularity.

* * *

     “It’s necessary.” Necessary for what? Necessary for whom? Those are the questions that lurk behind every claim of “necessity.” Robert A. Heinlein brushed up against them in To Sail Beyond The Sunset:

     ‘Thou shalt not steal. I couldn't improve that one, Father.'
     ‘Would you steal to feed a baby?'
     ‘Uh, yes.'
     ‘Think about other exceptions; we'll discuss it in a year or two. But it is a good general rule.’

     Calling thou shalt not steal “a good general rule” is like saying but sometimes you can get away with it. Get away with it how? Why, by pleading “necessity,” of course! But then those noxious questions about “for what” and “for whom” come around on the carousel. Remember Les Miserables? Jean Valjean was servicing his own “necessity.” But it is often the case that in serving one’s own “necessity” he infringes on the “necessity” of another.

     That is why we have courts and jury trials. But prosecutors seldom file cases against the mighty of the land. A jury of private citizens is all too likely to say “No, that wasn’t necessary” and send the offender off to prison. Even if it’s a much gentler prison than the one Jean Valjean suffered, a prosecutor is reluctant to send a Mover or Shaker to one. Prison terms are often cut short retroactively, and Movers and Shakers have long memories.

* * *

     I could go on about this for another twenty pages. But I’ve already done so in what I’ve been told is my best novel, which I cited above.

     My point is simple: I want you to growl menacingly any and every time some “leader” claims “necessity” as his rationale for grabbing “power above or beyond the laws.” I want the bastards who think themselves smarter and more moral than you and me to live in fear: fear of us. Only fear has a Chinaman’s chance of keeping them in line.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I let my temper slip its leash for a little while there. We now return you to your previously scheduled programming. Do have a nice day.