A Cold House

     On this, the 21st day of June in the Year of Our Lord 2026, the first day of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, I read something that chilled my heart:

     Why don’t Christians welcome new church attendees?
     I’m a baby Christian. Other Christians on here always tell me if I went to church, it would help me. But the one time I walked a very long walk to the only church close by, I had a very unpleasant experience.
     They were like a clique, looking at me as if I was a weirdo when I said hello. No one approached me or welcomed me. And when I tried to be friendly to them, I was ostracised.
     The sermon was great and the music was okay. But the people were not what I was told they would be at all. It broke my heart.
     Is this how Christians usually act towards new people in church?
     Everyone told me to call churches. The vast majority of churches don’t take calls and don’t return messages. Those that have called back asked why I think anyone would want to pick up a complete stranger to bring them to church. I guess that’s a valid point. We live in a dangerous world with a lot of scammers.
     I have been attending my best friend’s online church (in St Louis) since Christmas Eve. I always said hello and spoke in the chat but was ignored. Those in the chat all seem to know each other so it’s not at all welcoming. I love the music and the pastor so I’ve continued to attend.
     2 weeks ago, a woman in chat asked if I usually went in person and if she’d met me. I told her no and who my friend was. My friend has taught kids on Sundays for decades and her husband is involved in putting the sermons online. So my friend is *very* well known. Now, that woman in chat said hello again to me last Sunday.
     But it took 6 months. Wouldn’t it be better to make all new people feel welcome? Maybe someone else is like me, brand new.
     I don’t find most Christians to be anything like Christ at all, to be honest. I’m sure He would have welcomed me with open arms. Shouldn’t we aspire to be more like Him? What am I missing?
     I read in the Bible that Jesus commanded “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” He also said: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
     I guess He didn’t specify that Christians should welcome new people to a church but I thought it’s kind of implied in His words. Am I wrong?
     Please help me with this. I’m a bit lost.

     That broke my heart as well. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. That it happened to a new follower of Christ is especially tragic. Yet it’s become the rule in churches nationwide.

     A long time ago, I wrote:

     The physical light may stream from a bank of incandescent bulbs. The physical warmth may flow from a furnace. But these are the least part of the thing. Any Christian will tell you.
     Try it out. You don't have to wait for an invitation; you can engrave this one on card stock and sign my name to it, if you like. Visit the church down the block, some Sunday soon. Don't be shy. Shake a few hands; make the acquaintance of the pastor. Everyone there is as flawed as you, but they'll accept you anyway, if you'll grant them the favor of reciprocation. If you're the least bit open to it, I guarantee that you'll feel it as I do.
     Whether made of wood, stone, or grass and mud, a Christian church filled with its congregants is a warm, well lighted place.

     Remembering those words adds to the pain from reading Samsara’s tweet above.

* * *

     Christian brotherhood – true, unfeigned acceptance of the newcomer – is required of us. Christ said it Himself:

     And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

     [Matthew 28:18-20]

     Yet “baby Christians” such as Samsara are frequently met with indifference or suspicion. That’s especially the case when the newcomer looks a bit “alternative:”

     Why? Why not greet the newcomer as a brother, a sheep welcome in the fold, even if he’s covered with tattoos or wearing his hair in some bizarre style? A lot of long-time parishioners treat anyone unfamiliar as someone to be wary of. It makes no sense!

     While there are occasional exceptions, a visitor to a Christian church is there to learn, to worship, or both. Isn’t that cause for celebration, rejoicing? Why show the cold shoulder to such a person?

     I don’t know Samsara. I plan to engage her, if she’s willing to talk to me. I want to know more about the church she visited that treated her that way. I want to see what I can do to help. A congregation that frosty plainly needs some help.

     I could go on, but I’ve made a resolution to cease flogging dead horses. Yeah, yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts, but all the same.

     May God bless and keep you all…including the guy in the back row who’s dressed like an escapee from an insane asylum, and the woman with the spiky hairdo and the forest of tattoos, and the man, woman, or child who enters the nave of the church alone, looking lost and desperate for a hand of welcome. C’mon, fellow believers! It’s the least you could do.

A Fourth Kind Of Conviction

     [The following piece first appeared at the old Palace of Reason on May 4, 2004 – FWP]

---

     Some years ago, PBS imported a series of made-for-television dramas from England, which were scripted from the magnificent murder mystery novels of Phyllis Dorothea James, Baroness of Holland Park, better known to the world as P. D. James. All those dramas starred the fine British actor Roy Marsden as detective Adam Dalgleish of New Scotland Yard, who is the central character of one of Baroness James's series of novels. For your Curmudgeon's tastes, the best of those dramatizations was that of A Taste For Death, which is also one of the very best of Baroness James's novels. Your Curmudgeon has purchased it on DVD, and has been enjoying it with the C.S.O. these past few nights.

     The production values aren't the best. The series having been made for television, the picture is rendered in NTSC 4:3 aspect ratio, and is below typical DVD standards. None of that matters. The story, the pacing, the setting and the acting are all as gripping as they were first time around. Marsden is superb as always, and Penny Downie, who plays his assistant, Inspector Kate Miskin, makes her nominally supporting part glow. The pleasure of this reacquaintance is even more remarkable when one includes that your Curmudgeon had read the novel first.

     Particularly striking is a sequence involving a minor character: Sarah Berowne, estranged daughter to the murdered man, Sir Paul Berowne, a Home Office subminister in a Conservative administration. As is usual in Baroness James's mysteries, she provides a wealth of possible suspects and motives for the crime. Sarah's plausibility is provided by two factors: she stands to inherit a substantial sum, though short of independent wealth, from her father's estate; and she's a doctrinaire Marxist who reviles everything about British society, most especially its government.

     When Commander Dalgleish interviews her in the aftermath of the murder, among the things he probes is the nature of Sarah's estrangement from Sir Paul. Sarah's comment on the matter is too revealing not to share:

     My father thought our political differences were something we could discuss politely around the dinner table. What he didn't understand was that my politics are a faith.

     Imagine the above words spoken in a tone that combines the passion of total commitment with the revulsion of utter contempt for anyone who dares to differ.

     Your Curmudgeon has written before about his tripartite classification of convictions:

• Mathematics: Theses that can be proved or disproved.
• Science: Theses that can be disproved, but not proved.
• Religion: Theses that can neither be proved nor disproved.

     After pondering Sarah Berowne's statement above, and comparing it to the utterances of other Marxists he's known, your Curmudgeon has come to believe that that scheme is incomplete. A fourth category is needed: convictions retained in the face of conclusive disproof.

     A one-word label for such convictions that doesn't imply lunacy on the part of the holder is proving difficult to find. For now, let's call them ideological cults, or ideo-cults and their adherents ideo-cultists.

     Politics is rife with ideological cults, according to your Curmudgeon's standards for evidence. This is not to say that all questions of politics and public policy can be settled one way or the other for all time. However, some theories about what the State must, may, or must not do have been so thoroughly riddled with holes by the fusillades of experience that to retain them even in the most tentative and conditional form should occasion questions about one's respect for objective reality.

     What's significant in this connection is the array of defenses erected around the failed theory, or more accurately, around the minds of those determined to remain loyal to it. Eric Hoffer spoke of the "fact-proof screen" that an ideological cult tries to impose between its communicants and the evidence that would undermine their faith. While there is no doubt that these exist and are important, there yet remain ideo-cults whose members have been made aware of facts fatal to their creed, but maintain their allegiance anyway. Explaining these is harder.

     Possibly, one can get no closer than to examine the reactions of someone whose religious faith is undermined by the assertion of a contrary fact. For example, what would happen to Christian belief if it were demonstrated to a high degree of confidence that the remains of Christ had been found? Since that would undermine the traditional account of the Resurrection, it would be a heavy blow to orthodox Christian creeds. But it is not necessarily the case that all Christians would accept the immediate implications of such a discovery:

• Some would reject the assertion's accuracy, claiming that the researchers who made it couldn't possibly be right;
• Some would impugn the motives of the researchers, claiming that the assertion was known to be untrue and had been made out of malice toward Christianity;
• Some would spin alternative theories that would cover both the Resurrection and the remains.

     A claim about the discovery of Christ's remains would move Christianity out of the category of religion and into the category of science. Those determined to retain the Christian creed in its traditional form would either have to react scientifically, by invalidating the evidence or its implications, or hyper-religiously, by closing their minds to the disproof offered.

     Political ideo-cultists tend toward the religious pole. In the usual case, they simply refuse to engage the implications of contrary evidence. Often, they attack the motives or character of him who presents it. Their resistance grows stiffer, not weaker, with each new bit of adverse evidence adduced.

     Outreach expert Marshall Fritz, founder of Advocates for Self-Government, has counseled freedom activists not to expend their energies trying to convert people who are "into world domination." Analogously, if Smith evinces case-hardened hostility toward evidence that his convictions might be wrong, Jones would do better to avoid the matter in Smith's presence. Offering facts and logic is one thing; deprogramming is quite another, and not terribly well paid at that.

“Duty Sex”

     I’m feeling a bit quirky this morning – yes, I have a lot of mornings like that; the evidence is copious and easily obtained – and I’ve been particularly fascinated, in a not-entirely-wholesome way, with the arguments flowing on X / Twitter about “duty sex.”

     The core of the thing is that there are a great many married men who “aren’t getting any.” This is a real problem, though most women (and a considerable number of men) would never confront it openly. Men have a greater need for sex than do women; this is empirically beyond dispute. And it’s not about the pleasures available from sex. I’ve written about this before.

     Some pro-man voices are exhorting mated women to “give it up” even if they’re personally uninterested. Some women have derided this as a kind of enslavement. I’m uninterested in the more vitriolic exchanges. My own stance is that spouses should want to accommodate each other. He’s rarin’ to go, but you’re disinclined? Indulge him! Unless you’re in serious pain or seriously fatigued, let him enjoy you. Maybe the next time you want him to take you shopping, or out to dinner, or to visit your (ulp) parents, he’ll remember it.

     But enough of that. For giggles, enjoy the following, which I’ve been assured isn’t authentic advice from the 19th Century. It’s funny all the same.

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INSTRUCTION AND ADVICE
FOR THE
YOUNG BRIDE
on the
Conduct and Procedure of the
Intimate and Personal Relationships
of the Marriage State
for the
Greater Spiritual Sanctity of this
Blessed Sacrament and the Glory of God
by
Ruth Smythers
beloved wife of
The Reverend L.D. Smythers
Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist
Church of the Eastern Regional Conference
Published in the year
of our Lord 1894
Spiritual Guidance Press
New York City

     To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life. On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

     At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

     On the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme. While sex it at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it. It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man.

     Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency.

     Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction.

     Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.

     By their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all sexual contacts with the husband. By this time she can depend upon his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in the home. Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind and degree of sexual contacts. Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include among others performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

     Nudity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted.

     A wise bride will make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body, and never allow him to display his unclothed body to her. Sex, when it cannot be prevented, should be practiced only in total darkness. Many women have found it useful to have thick cotton nightgowns for themselves and pajamas for their husbands. These should be donned in separate rooms. They need not be removed durning the sex act. Thus, a minimum of flesh is exposed.

     Once the bride has donned her gown and turned off all the lights, she should lie quietly upon the bed and await her groom. When he comes groping into the room she should make no sound to guide him in her direction, lest he take this as a sign of encouragement. She should let him grope in the dark. There is always the hope that he will stumble and incur some slight injury which she can use as an excuse to deny him sexual access.

     When he finds her, the wife should lie as still as possible. Bodily motion on her part could be interpreted as sexual excitement by the optimistic husband.

     If he attempts to kiss her on the lips she should turn her head slightly so that the kiss falls harmlessly on her cheek instead. If he attempts to kiss her hand, she should make a fist. If he lifts her gown and attempts to kiss her anyplace else she should quickly pull the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature calls her to the toilet. This will generally dampen his desire to kiss in the forbidden territory.

     If the husband attempts to seduce her with lascivious talk, the wise wife will suddenly remember some trivial non-sexual question to ask him. Once he answers she should keep the conversation going, no matter how frivolous it may seem at the time.

     Eventually, the husband will learn that if he insists on having sexual contact, he must get on with it without amorous embellishment. The wise wife will allow him to pull the gown up no farther than the waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus make connection.

     She will be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while his huffing and puffing away. Above all, she will lie perfectly still and never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in progress. As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is over. Thus the wife must insure that there is no peace in this period for him to enjoy. Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for more.

     One heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact that the husband's home, school, church, and social environment have been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half cowed and subdued. The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate completely her husband's desire for sexual expression.

     Copyright © 1894 The Madison Institute

Men, Reading, And “Literature”

     The trends running through the world of fiction publishing are susceptible to many possible explanations. One keeps coming up in discussions on X and elsewhere: “Men have stopped reading! Have they really? Why?”

     If you’re the editor-in-chief of a publisher whose sales figures have been dropping, and your market surveys suggest that the great majority of your customers are female, those are questions that will occupy you heavily. You’d like to sell more books to men, albeit without losing your female customers. But to do so requires that you understand why men are buying your product.

     You raise the question at your quarterly editorial meeting. You do so gently, in the spirit of greater success for the company and for everyone at the table. You swing questioning eyes from associate to associate, from Sally to Jane to Marie to Hester to Rosemary to Elizabeth to Sue to Phyllis to Maureen and finally to Agatha. But none of them have the least idea.

     In sober truth, it can’t all be because publishing houses are overwhelmingly staffed by women. But the paucity of male editors doesn’t help. Women tend not to read the sort of material that men seek. Why, then, should we expect lady editors to be receptive to fiction that appeals to men?

     Yes, romance fiction is oriented toward female tastes. Publishers are sensible enough not to expect a lot of male readers for their romance offerings. But as romantic themes and motifs have seeped into other genres – most notably fantasy and science fiction – those genres have started to lose some of their traditional male readerships. That’s a part of the puzzle that deserves greater attention.

     One subject that might matter more than anyone has yet mentioned is the matter of “literary fiction.” I’m a writer and a reader. I do my best to stay aware of tastes and the patterns that run through them. And I can’t name even one recent work of “literature” that would attract a male reader.

     One further current of interest: Crime fiction and police procedurals, historically a male-favored genre, has trended toward female authorship and has lost male readers in the process. The “hard-boiled” detective story is shedding representation in the crime / mystery genre. Yet the stories are quite similar to those once told primarily by male writers.

     It’s far from simple, especially considering that the “indie” sector is gaining male readership, and has been for some time. Yet indie writers are about equally split between men and women. The distribution of genre production is about the same as in conventional publishing. What accounts for the difference?

     No, it’s not simple at all. We could discuss characters. We could discuss action. We could discuss the prevalence of male writers and male protagonists – but wait: there is no such prevalence! This chestnut will take more than a simple explanation to crack.

     My inclination is toward sensibility:

     Yes, writers have very different styles. Some are austere and distant, formalists of classical discipline who regard a dangling preposition as something up with which one should never put. Others strive for a Hemingwayesque simplicity, They write short, single-clause sentences. Those sentences contain nothing but nouns and verbs. They leave all else to the reader's imagination. Still others are Faulknerian in the luxuriance of their prose, every sentence a labyrinthine maze of baroque elaboration decorated with as many descriptive and evocative elements as one can digest before running out of breath. But this is packaging for a story and, beneath the story, supporting it with relevance and timeliness, its theme.

     A writer's sensibility is composed of the sorts of themes he likes to explore, and the angle from which he approaches them. It partakes greatly of his moral vision. Indeed, it cannot be separated from his grasp on the moral order of the universe...whether or not he believes there is one.

     Gentle Reader, have you ever encountered a writer whose command of the language is superb and precise, but whose stories proclaim ideas that you simply can't abide? Have you ever encountered a writer whose works, despite serious shortcomings of style, throb so powerfully with truth that you can't imagine ever forgoing them? If so, you're peering down the barrel of auctorial sensibility. You're staring the bullet of theme right in the face. It's the ultimate weapon in the battle for the reader's time, money, and attention.

     Everything matters, yet theme is frequently overlooked. The writer’s sense for what ultimately matters – what Tom Kratman calls “eternal verities” – is seldom discussed in this matter of female-skewed readership.

     Courage.
     Justice.
     Duty.
     Loyalty.
     Freedom!

     I sense that stories that revolve around these things are what attract the male reader most powerfully. They’ve been somewhat muted in conventionally published fiction. But they remain strong in the “indie” world.

     Food for thought.

The Great Men Of Our Time Have Their Own Fears

     Consider this one:

Something Actually Newsworthy

     Perhaps you remember this story:

     A couple of days ago, something unusual happened Across the Water: A Briton dared to defend another Briton against the threat of rape by an immigrant.
     If you aren’t familiar with the details of the event, the defender was a 14-year-old Scottish girl named Mayah Sommers. The intended victim was her 12-year-old sister. The would-be rapist was from... somewhere else, probably the Middle East or Africa. Mayah protected her sister by brandishing a large knife and a hatchet at the immigrant. Apparently that was enough to daunt him, and thank God for that.

     The U.K. being the totalitarian state it is, Mayah Sommers was immediately arrested for her courage. Britons aren’t allowed armament, regardless of the circumstances. (You can’t have a Second Amendment to the Constitution when there’s no Constitution to amend.) There was an outcry, but it proved insufficient to liberate young Mayah.

     But time marches on. (No, it’s not relevant; it’s just beautiful.) And just a couple of days ago, Mayah Sommers was vindicated:

     A man has been found guilty of making sexual remarks to a group of girls aged between 12 and 14 in Dundee before grabbing and pushing one of them to the ground.
     Ilia Belov, 22, claimed he confronted the girls after receiving abusive remarks and said he saw one of the girls with a knife in her waistband before the assault.
     His sister Nadjedzha Belova, 20, previously admitted assaulting a 13-year-old girl by seizing and pulling her hair, dragging her to the ground, and striking her on the head to her injury during the incident.
     The pair will be sentenced at Dundee Sheriff Court on 5 August.

     Very nearly a full year passed before this emerged. While it would be Pollyannaish to expect Britain’s powers that be to apologize to Mayah, or to imagine that Britons’ rights to protect themselves will receive greater respect henceforward, nevertheless this “should” clear Mayah’s name and expunge the arrest from her record.

     Yes, those are sneer quotes around “should.” Regular Gentle Readers of this dive will already know how I feel about “should.” The police who arrested Mayah Sommers are as unlikely to acknowledge their fault as Keir Starmer. To admit to an error, however slight, would undermine the Authority of the Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent State and is therefore “right out.”

     I could go on in this vein, but there’s little point to it. (Yes, I know that hasn’t stopped me in the past.) Britain has been conquered; its people have been subjugated; the flood of migrants lord it over them as a triumphant army, with the open connivance of the government. Native Britons, once among the proudest peoples of the world, are less than serfs: they’re mere sources of revenue for the State.

     What Americans and other freedom lovers can do is to publicize this development:

• To make clear that those two immigrants did pose a threat to those Scottish girls;
• To proclaim that a courageous young woman has been vindicated;
• To make plain the British State’s attitude toward its people.

     Will it overturn that criminal State? I doubt it. But one must start somewhere.

Education Or Jobs?

     The never-ending contentions over American education have several parts. One of them, “higher education,” is particularly significant for this reason:

Conservatives often criticize universities for failing to prepare students for jobs.

But that's like criticizing a library for failing to function as a gym.

The purpose of a university was never vocational training. It was always the pursuit and transmission of knowledge.

— Liza Libes (@pensandpoison) June 13, 2026

     That dichotomy is the secret shame of the American educational system. But it’s also a consequence, rather than a primary that can be addressed in isolation.

* * *

     The history of compulsory education in America is worthy of more attention than it gets from the typical adult. Time was – and I’m not talking about the Pleistocene Era here, but the mid-19th Century – a “grammar school” education was all that was required by law. Moreover, a student didn’t need to traverse eight grades to escape the school’s clutches. What he needed was his teacher’s endorsement of his ability to function as an adult. As the greater part of the population was engaged in agriculture or other manual labor, that didn’t demand much.

     But as John Gall told us in his classic Systemantics, every system embeds a growth dynamic. Grow or stagnate and die is the rule. “Education” proved to be no exception. Once teaching became a recognized occupation, schools ceased to be regarded as a local convenience for imparting literacy and numeracy. They fell into the hands of careerists eager to see their domain enlarge.

     That process was contemporaneous with the rise of industrial America: the transformation of our previous, family-centered agriculture-heavy economy into an urban one heavy with employers and employees. Over time, parents surrendered their part in the education of their children to the schools, while the schools came ever more completely under political authority. “High schools” were born, as were teachers’ colleges. Teaching specialties took a bit longer to emerge, but shortly after the turn of the 20th Century we no longer spoke of “teachers” as an undifferentiated mass.

     But as the system expanded, it also moved away from its previous mandate: i.e., to teach the basic skills required of an adult citizen and leave all else to the home environment. Systems do that sort of thing. Among other diversions of educational effort, we began to see “practical” courses and the “vocational” school: things previously neither required nor requested by the parents of minor children. Prior to the Civil War, the idea of classes in “Home Economics” or “Shop” never occurred to an American parent. That was what Mom and Dad were for.

     With the rise of large enterprises and the need for management came a need for “white collar” employees: persons removed from manual labor who commanded informational skills. (The occupational designation “white collar” apparently originated with writer Upton Sinclair in 1911.) By then, the fundamental skills taught by the “grammar school” had been expanded by the “high school” to include more extensive education in literature, mathematics beyond arithmetic, history and geography, and rudimentary knowledge of the sciences.

     For a while, those two segments of schooling maintained themselves and their putative duties stably and successfully. But change was coming. World wars, conscription, industrialism, unionism, state encroachments on previously local prerogatives and, eventually, federal encroachments on state prerogatives were soon to come upon the United States. All of those trends promoted giantism, the disease that anonymizes decision makers and insulates them against the choices and opinions of the common man. In unionism, teachers found a route toward increased respect and prosperity. State governments were slowly compelled to mandate union membership for teachers employed in government-run schools.

     The “educational system” expanded enormously. Property taxes intended to pay for the government-run schools swelled to such an extent that only a small minority of families could afford a private or religious school for their children. Alternatives to the government-run school system dwindled. With the dwindling of competition and the overweening authority of “departments of education” came the consequence one must always expect from a government monopoly: sharp declines in educational quality and in responsiveness to the parents of school-age children.

     There was one path left to follow.

* * *

     For parents and children who wanted a better and fuller education than was available from the government-run schools, the sole recourse was to “higher education.” That, until relatively recently, remained outside government control. And indeed, a student admitted to a college or university did still have opportunities to learn much to which he hadn’t yet been exposed. But after World War II, the returning GIs were mainly concerned with making a living. Most had had their twelve years of government schooling. They looked upon the American economy, now dominated by corporations, and sought the kind of education that would ready them for corporate employment.

     Government loan and grant programs offered the GI the possibility of free college education. They took it in large numbers. Colleges and universities sprang up like toadstools in response. And to an increasing degree, the education they provided leaned toward readiness for employment. The older goal of a college education, acquainting the student with “the best that has been thought and said,” slowly receded from the priorities of everyone involved.

     Now that governments provide by far the greater portion of funding for “higher education,” those institutions prioritize what governments want. There are still “liberal and humane arts” colleges, but in comparison to the larger number, they’re fewer than ever before. Above all, governments want money. Therefore, they want the “educational system” to produce workers, ready to earn taxable incomes. With the quality of “primary” and “secondary” education having fallen so far that even Ivy League colleges offer remedial reading and high-school mathematics courses, preparation for employment, especially in “white collar” positions, has become the province of “higher education.”

     Most of the above has come upon us so gradually as to be invisible. That’s how social and institutional transformations occur. And this one has conquered education in the United States so completely that any possibility of undoing it – returning early schooling to its original mission and “higher education” to the mission of enrichment it once pursued – is beyond my power of imagination.

Money Fights

     If you’re around my age, and have had a lifelong addiction to the printed word, you might remember the halcyon days of the “advice columnists.” Mostly, if memory serves, they advised individuals with individual concerns. The quality of the advice was irregular, but in the Fifties and Sixties the subjects on which people sought their counsel were a concentrated few. (No: they didn’t advise their correspondents on which toothpaste would renew their love lives. They left that to the Madison Avenue crowd.)

     One of the most popular subjects was how married couples should manage their money. Occasionally, amid the scattered practical recommendations, some helpful columnist would recommend a regularly scheduled “money fight.” It was intended to be a good-humored, largely facetious exchange between him and her over their respective spending habits. Perhaps it worked, for some. But it had risks that could emerge unexpectedly, with consequent destruction. One of the worst was a segue from spending to earning.

     Remember, Gentle Reader: those were the days of the single-income household. In such a household, only one member earned; therefore only one member could be attacked for not earning enough. Need I detail just how much marital carnage could result?

     Well, for better or worse (and for richer or poorer), those days are behind us. Most families are two-income households today. But fighting over who earns how much and what he could do to increase it is still massively destructive. I’ve seen the consequences up close. It should be avoided for the sake of… well, a lot of things.

     And from that we turn to money fights in the news!

     The big one, of course, which could touch every White American alive today, is the fight over “reparations.” Let me be absolutely candid here:

Not one Negro in these United States,
No matter the identities of his forebears,
Deserves one cent from anyone
Because of “slavery” or on any other grounds.

     The black grifters screeching for “reparations” are morally no better than pickpockets. They deserve to be ridiculed, then ignored. The same treatment should be awarded to any White man who claims they have a case.

     I could go into detail here, but it’s not necessary. What is necessary is some thought about what those black grifters hope to accomplish. I’m fairly sure it isn’t a huge cash windfall from the federal treasury.

     They’re getting a lot of publicity from the legacy media. Publicity can be converted into cash, in specific cases. But that cash is far more likely to come from a distributed set of private pockets. Beyond immediate bundles of cash, there are opportunities, with the help of compliant media, to become very well known, and thus to obtain entry to circles that might otherwise not have them. Such circles are themselves entry points to gainful things. And of course, political prospects often flow from notoriety. The machinations deserve to be watched.

     Of less immediate but greater ultimate impact is the outpouring of resentment and disparagement aimed at Elon Musk. Yes, in purely paper terms, Musk has attained trillionaire status. Those who think he can open a checkbook or a bank’s website and gaze upon a cash balance of $1,000,000,000,000 are of course deluded. Given the way the equities markets work, it wouldn’t be possible for him to convert his stock and other paper possessions into that amount of cash no matter how hard he might try.

     That having been said, Elon Musk controls a lot of capital. He can put that capital to many uses, just as he’s done to date. What will matter to the rest of us non-trillionaires is what uses he chooses to address. And the Left, which hates private wealth, is determined to take Musk’s choices, and his capital, away from him. Recent emissions from the detestable Elizabeth Warren and the odious Bernie Sanders are clear indicators.

     Don’t think it can’t happen. There’s a huge wave of envy-powered politics in motion. The “blue” states’ governments, ever hungry for more revenue, are hatching schemes that would catch Musk in their jaws. I wrote about one such scheme just yesterday. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that some future federal administration with a solid backing in Congress won’t take aim at Musk’s fortune, on the grounds of “equity” and “fairness.”

     Remain alert to the patterns. Government always grows until it’s destroyed by a revolution or an internal collapse. As it grows, it consumes ever more of our substance. Leftist “intellectuals” will provide the rationales for advancing taxation and confiscation. Here’s one that should not be forgotten. It got respectable attention from a significant number of Congressvermin.

     Envy is among the strongest political motivators. Expect the screws on private accumulations of wealth to be tightened as the years pass. The defenders of property rights have been lax for quite a while. It’s time to awaken and remobilize them – and ourselves.