Tax Shackles

     I strained to come up with a clever neologism for what I’m about to address, but I failed. “Taxicles?” No, sounds too much like “popsicles.” “Shtaxles?” No, that’s too ethnic; someone would probably suggest that it be served with wiener schnitzel. Anyway, the subject is one of some gravity, so the above title will just have to do.

     If you have twenty minutes, the following video is worth your time and attention:

     Five populous states are trying to fetter their residents – give them a tax disincentive to move out. Those “exit tax” provisions won’t retard all emigration, of course, but they will cause a significant fractions of Californians, New Yorkers, et cetera to cast about for ways of averting the planned amputations of their net worth. There might be some dodges. There’s also the possibility that the federal courts will strike those exit taxes as unConstitutional on the ex post facto provision of Article I, Section 10. But for the moment, it’s a trend in motion, and likely to spread.

     It sets up an interesting tension. You want to move your income away from California’s high-income tax? Well, then the Golden State will get you on the way out. If you insist on not paying the exit tax, then California gets to keep taxing you for years more… possibly including your net worth, which the Giermeisters in Sacramento have already fixed their sights on. But which of those decisions would be favored by the California legislature? The exit tax would yield large prompt revenue, but the income tax and (contemplated) net-worth taxes would yield more over a protracted interval. And once a resident has fled, he’s gone for good.

     The voracity of governments always grows over time. That’s been demonstrated so many times that it no longer requires substantiation. However, I will remind my Gentle Readers of the debates over the proposed Sixteenth Amendment:

     When the Sixteenth Amendment was being debated on the floor of the Senate, one of its opponents rose to ask the body what it could say to reassure the American public that this tax would not rise to seize some unconscionable fraction of their earnings -- perhaps as much as ten percent! A pro-income-tax senator rose and replied that the country need never fear such a development: "The people would never allow it!"

     The American Revolution was a tax revolt, as much as an assertion of independence and the right to self-governance. Americans have been subjected to a mind-boggling array of tax measures since then, most of them falling at the state and federal levels. (If you live in an incorporated municipality, keep a hand on your wallet.) There appears to be no event free of taxation… not even death. And now, the greediest of America’s state governments, aware that their tax policies are causing their states to lose their most taxable residents to lower-tax states, are determined to chain us down so they can mulct us in perpetuity.

     Food for thought – if it’s not fuel for an actual revolution.

“Communities”

     BREAKING NEWS! It has come to my attention, which, yes, has been slipping a bit, that a large percentage of the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are stressed. It’s perfectly understandable, what with conditions these days. High prices, racial and ethnic strife, government surveillance, Gerrit Cole’s uneven mound performances… I must admit that I’ve been feeling a touch stressed myself.

     But this is America, where there’s a supply for every demand. Yes, friends, here you can find relief for… well, for some of your troubles, at least. For the rest, there’s always alcohol. Anyway, if you feel that your ability to cope is slipping, take a minute to watch this video, and enjoy an admittedly ephemeral moment of relaxation:

     There, wasn’t that pleasant? Now, on to the topic of the day.

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     We hear about various communities rather frequently these days. The black community. The homosexual community. The transgender community. The community of brain-damaged Russo-Turkic welders. Communities, it seems, are everywhere.

     Why don’t I see them? Many voices prattle about these communities, yet all I can see are individuals. The media harp on them, especially after some distressing event. You know, like the senseless murder of a White teenager by a black thug, or a transgender somebody shooting up a tavern.

     With the conviction and sentencing of Karmelo Anthony, we got a lot of pontificating about the “reaction of the black community.” Tell us, oh omniscient media pundits, where is The Black Community headquartered? Did you go there and interview a spokesblack? Or did the organization issue a formal press release to be aired on the six o’clock news?

     Nope. Just individuals. Some are horrified that “one of ours” did such a heinous thing and got caught, while others jump up and down screaming that a black kid who killed a White boy shouldn’t have to do time for it. (A lot of time, I hope, but that’s a subject for another tirade.)

     When a pedophile rapes a child of the same sex, the media immediately leap to proclaim that the “gay community” – they’re homosexuals, but that word has some negative implications, so they’ve adopted “gay” as a synonym in hope of averting mention of those implications – is utterly opposed to such practices and shouldn’t be tarred with them. Once again, I’m unable to find The Gay Community in the Yellow Pages. Nor does Directory Assistance have a number at which they can be reached. Puzzling.

     Once again, just individuals. Some homosexuals live quietly and keep their business to themselves; others parade around in all manner of dress (and undress), wailing about how “invisible” they are. We hear a lot about their “community,” but when I raise my gaze to the passing scene, all I see are individuals.

     What are these communities of which the press so confidently speaks? Are they occupational groupings? Social associations? Voting blocs? Are there subjects on which these communities have official positions? Do they all support the same charities, or the same volleyball teams? Answer comes there none.

     Media promotion of such communities is intended to make them seem larger and more unified than they really are. When some pundit proclaims that the Z Community is outraged over some unpleasant event, it’s an attempt to efface the divergences and divisions among Zs. This is especially important when an issue routinely associated with Zs is in the news, and an election is looming. It’s the ink-on-newsprint version of whipping the vote.

     Bless their shriveled little hearts! As insubstantial as they are, such communities are staples for promulgation and prognostication. The statements of a vocal few are presented to us as the voice of their community. We accept it without question… unless we’re members of the relevant group and know better. Then we’re told to sit down and shut up. For the greater good of the community, of course.

     It’s amusing and tiring, but it never seems to end.

     For myself, I have no community. Not even the neighborhood in which I’ve lived for 46 years. No one speaks for me but me. I’d venture to guess that other software engineers, writers of fiction and nonfiction, Americans of Irish and Italian descent, and persons who share my Zip code would say the same. But when some “issue” that involves one of those groups rises to public attention, I won’t be surprised when the regional media proclaim what my position must be, on the grounds of affiliation.

     Do you belong to any notional communities, Gentle Reader? Make sure you know how to cancel your membership. It might prove to be important. Especially if you’re behind on your dues.

Did It Happen That Way?

     The jury has returned its verdict in the case of Austin Metcalf and Karmelo Anthony: Anthony has been pronounced guilty of first-degree murder. The crowd of black protesters outside the courtroom, who have been stridently vocal that Anthony is “innocent,” was upset.

     I stopped myself from prefacing the previous sentence with “Needless to say.” Yet it was predictable that people protesting on the defendant’s behalf, would be unhappy that he’s likely to be imprisoned for the rest of his life. A few of them had some “interesting” things to say: e.g., that Anthony should have killed Metcalf’s twin brother as well.

     Austin Metcalf’s family must be wary henceforward. Threats have come at them from several directions. This is the way of things in these United States in the Twenty-First Century. Even peripheral contact with a case of interracial violence makes your future uncertain.

     Yet the entire incident was video-recorded, from several angles. There’s no dispute that Anthony pulled a knife and killed Metcalf. Even several of the witnesses for the defense testified that Metcalf had not attacked Anthony – that Anthony was not defending himself from a credible threat to life or limb. Those demanding that Anthony be freed cannot argue away the facts of the case.

     Their beef, of course, is that Metcalf was White and Anthony is black.

     There were no blacks on the jury that convicted Anthony. Those who were called to the voir dire all admitted freely that they would have trouble “putting a brother in jail.” The prosecution challenged them off for sufficient cause. As the resulting jury was all-White, the blacks incensed about the verdict are screaming “racism.”

     It’s unnecessary for me to comment on that aspect of the case. We’ve seen it before. But it is necessary to ponder something commentator Matt Walsh observed:

     Now go back and consider every supposed racist atrocity from decades or centuries ago. Every “innocent” minority wrongfully persecuted by racist whites. I’m not saying that all of those stories aren’t true. I’m saying that you can’t assume that they are true. If they can lie about the stuff we all witnessed with our own eyes, imagine what they can do with the things none of us witnessed.

     Enough such incidents were reported by a single source to make them disputable. The sources themselves were sometimes of dubious credibility.

     The justice of a verdict is often disputed. In these days of ubiquitous security cameras and cellphones that can video-record, the facts of a case are less disputable than ever before. But those conditions have only obtained for about three decades. Everything before that is a matter of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence.

     And recent interracial incidents, many of them meticulously filmed, have undermined the credibility of the record.

     When we speak of things that happened long ago, credibility is less important than credulity. People are inclined to believe accounts that accord with their beliefs and convictions. Written records are often disputed on the grounds that the writer “had an agenda.” The most thoroughly reported and recorded event in all of history, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, is frequently waved aside on that basis, even though the chroniclers were almost all put to death for maintaining it.

     Today, credulity is less important than an activist agenda. The activists vocal about the Anthony verdict have such an agenda. What they’ll do, now that that agenda has been thwarted, remains to be seen. Apparently there was some violence immediately outside the courtroom when the verdict was announced.

     Now, with a number of thoughtful people openly inquiring whether we can trust the historical records of “minority persecution,” the matter will be further inflamed. Yet there is justification for re-examining those accounts, to the extent possible. The record is almost purely one of White persecution of blacks. But the purity of the record itself provides grounds for dispute. Was it really that way in every case? Is there no possibility that in some cases the “victim” was objectively guilty of a heinous crime? Or were the recorders themselves pushing a particular viewpoint on the rest of us?

     Unpleasant, distasteful food for thought. In our current climate, it will be spoken of more openly than ever before. I fear to imagine the consequences.

“Settling”

     Consider the following observation:

Sexual double standards make it so that the woman in a marriage is more often settling for a man less attractive than those she dated and wondering if she could have done better.

This actually hurts men, but they never stop to think of the harm they cause themselves.

— Jessica Pin (@jess_ann_pin) June 8, 2026

     “Settling.” A word with ragged edges, no? Don’t we “settle” about something, every day of our lives? When lunchtime rolls around, I “settle” for whatever’s in the house, rather than demanding Lobster Newburgh. When I buy this, that, or the other thing, I “settle” for what my means will support, rather than insisting on the best-of-breed. And when I chose a wife, I, a relatively ordinary man, “settled” for a relatively ordinary woman – don’t look at me like that; the C.S.O. would agree – rather than holding out for Reese Witherspoon or Christina Hendricks.

     Settling is simply what we do when our opportunities are limited and don’t include our fantasy aspirations. That applies to the great majority of our decisions, regardless of the subject matter. It certainly applies to our mating decisions.

     Settling is not, in and of itself, any kind of issue. No, my lunch will not be Lobster Newburgh. No, my next car will not be a Mercedes Maybach or a Bentley Continental GT. No, the C.S.O. is not Reese Witherspoon or Christina Hendricks. But I chose freely from among the possibilities that were open specifically to me. No one forced any of my choices upon me. Therefore I will settle, accept the consequences, and learn to be happy with them.

     The issue is realism.

     Economists – real economists, not Marxists or meliorists – are relentless about the concept of scarcity. There’s a small supply of Lobster Newburgh. There’s a small supply of Mercedes Maybachs and Bentley Continental GTs. There’s definitely a small supply of supremely beautiful women – and it’s even smaller if you insist on a woman with a sweet and affectionate character. That will never change; therefore, the prices of those things will never descend to the level of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the used Ford Pinto, or the woman an ordinary man is likely to marry.

     The tragedy is not in the settling. The tragedy is in the recrimination and the failure to adjust.

     Consider Jessica Pin’s tweet above. Do you imagine that there are many women who never fantasize about the Adonis who had no time for her? Do you imagine that there are many men who never dream of the prom queen they yearned for but who wouldn’t spare them a glance? Most of us “revisit” our past choices and the domain in which we made them, at least on occasion. Where some of us fail is in the acceptance of our circumstances.

     Time was, it was deemed a matter of course that you would learn to love your spouse. Of course, in that era, many marriages were arranged by the parents of the spouses-to-be. Families and the reputations of families were a much greater part of matchmaking. Parents were conscious of their responsibility for guiding their children into a mature understanding of reality, its constraints, and our individual limitations.

     Perhaps mature realism has become rare, now that such arrangements are no longer the rule.

     At any rate, if we must fantasize about “how it could have been,” keeping those fantasies in the box labeled as such is paramount. Alternatively, we could purchase and read absurd romance novels that will temporarily transport us to an alternate universe where each of us can have his dream lover despite being a relatively ordinary person. But that’s a subject for another time. For now, have a little music:

The Food Chain

     [I don’t remember when I first posted this piece. It first appeared at Eternity Road, beloved in memory. It’s more appropriate for Corpus Christi Sunday than anything else I could say.
     All glory to the God who feeds His people! – FWP]

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     We who believe often speak of the need to "grow in faith." I've never been certain exactly what that means. But as time has passed, my own faith has become ever more important to me: not as a comfort against the certainty of bodily death, and not as some sort of confirmation of my own superiority, but rather as a unifying set of premises that allow the universe, and human life within it, to make sense.

     This is critical for one overriding reason: the incoherence of every other religion Man has ever practiced with the observable laws of Nature in action around us.

     Today being Corpus Christi Sunday -- a holy day celebrated much more enthusiastically and demonstrably in Latin countries than in us of the AngloSphere -- allow me to reprise an old favorite.

* * *

     The most fundamental of all relations among living things is the food relation. For any two species, which one can eat the other, either in theory or in practice, determines just about everything else about their interactions.

     This might seem a little fuzzy in certain cases. Beyond question, a dog can kill and eat a man. The same is true for the Portuguese Man O' War. But how often does it happen? Yet there are millions of people in various parts of the world for whom dog or jellyfish is a regular part of their diets. (You can stop shuddering now.) In the usual case, Man is considered the eater and these other species the eaten.

     Thus, a brief exploration of the food chain.

     Man has been an eater for a lot longer than he's been a builder of civilizations. His career as a hunter has established him as the world champion at that contest. His development of systematic agriculture demonstrated that his hegemony extends equally well to the plant kingdom. By all measures, he's at the pinnacle of the food chain. He eats whatever he wishes, and only in the rarest of cases does any other species eat him.

     The centrality of food relations to Earth's biosystem is so obvious that we're all but unaware of it. Two of the more significant but less frequently pondered manifestations of the thing can be found in our nightmares and our rites of worship and propitiation.

     Almost as soon as men began to compose tales for one another's entertainment, they invented creatures with power to hunt, kill, and eat human beings. Vampires, ghouls, and werewolves are items of fantasy, traditional terrors that have been invoked in horror tales for many centuries. Yet what is it that makes them so terrifying? Not that they can kill men, for far lesser creatures can do that, if they get the breaks. No, their ability to frighten comes from their greater-than-human hunting ability, and their view of men as food.

     There's nothing that terrifies like the prospect of being eaten. Men have gone into battle against other men under conditions that virtually guaranteed their deaths, yet they've often gone willingly, sometimes even eagerly. They still do. But no man can face the prospect of becoming an entree for a greater creature without quaking in fear.

     Mess with a man's assumptions about the food chain and you upend his whole concept of himself as a man.

     On the other side, there are human practices with relation to their concepts of divinity. Divinities -- gods -- are by definition superior to men. Yet their participation in the life of Man is not categorically predatory, even in those creeds which place evil gods on an equal par with good ones, and see the history of the world as a struggle between equally matched forces of light and darkness in which humans are less than pawns. In our attempts to win the favor of the gods, and on occasion to avert their wrath, men have traditionally offered sacrifices to them. Those sacrifices have almost always been food.

     Contemplate the nature of ritual sacrifice for a moment. What's offered to the god being propitiated is something valuable to men: creatures men had to hunt or cultivate, whose substance could nourish and sustain human life. Yet it is deliberately removed from the human economy, usually by burning, in the attempt to convey to the god the sense that we acknowledge his superiority to us. By denying themselves the consumption of the offered food and instead offering it to the god, the sacrificers make plain that they submit themselves to him. Metaphorically, the sacrificed items are substitutes for human bodies: pleadings that the shamans and their congregants not be eaten.

     The Biblical story of God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham's readiness to obey, is terrifying and exalting for that reason. On the one hand, the God of the Old Testament was not perceived even by His Chosen People, of whom Abraham was the progenitor, as being so intrinsically kindly disposed toward Man that He would never, ever demand such a sacrifice. Moreover, His power was such that there was no question that He could enforce His will in such a matter, and much worse besides. On the other hand, God intervened at the last instant to prevent the sacrifice, having established to His satisfaction that Abraham submitted entirely to His will. Thus, the pact between God and the children of Abraham -- the Jewish people -- was sealed as one of guidance and beneficence from above in exchange for worship and obedience from below. God did not intend to eat His people.

***

     Clearly, the food relation is a superiority / inferiority relation. He who eats is the stronger, who can have his will in all things. He who is eaten is the weaker, who must prostrate himself before the other in the hope of benevolence or mercy.

     Men, the highest of the creatures of this world, do not eat one another, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. Those micro-societies that have practiced cannibalism have extinguished themselves thereby -- there are some very nasty diseases, with fatality rates approaching 100%, that arise from cannibalism -- or have been humbled and re-educated by more civilized, more insightful peoples. We have attained enough insight into moral matters, and most particularly into the fundamental equality of rights all men should enjoy, to regard cannibalism with appropriate horror.

     But we still tell, and shudder over, stories of powerful, inhuman creatures that hunger for human flesh and blood. Vampire legends make up a healthy fraction of our fantastic literature. When we figure in the werewolf, the ghoul, and the occasional extraterrestrial who regards us as haute cuisine, we've covered the overwhelming majority of our scare stories. That's how fundamental the food relation is to our view of our place in the natural world.

     There aren't many religious sects in the modern world that still practice the old form of ritual sacrifice, in which a food item -- usually an animal -- is offered up to a god in hopes of winning his favor or pardon. The devotees of Santeria do it, now and then, as do the practitioners of voudoun. But these are meager survivals of old, animistic-pagan creeds. Their adherents are few and will probably never be many.

     However, a form of sacrifice still characterizes the most important religious rite in the world. Its devotees number in the billions. They partake of this sacrifice at every opportunity; to them, it is the highest a living man can rise in communion with God. And most curiously of all, it is a bidirectional sacrifice, the only such ever celebrated in all the eons of Man.

     I speak, of course, of the Miracle of Transubstantiation in the Christian Eucharist.

     In the days of Christ, the ritual sacrifice of food animals at the Temple in Jerusalem was still the preeminent religious rite in the classical world. The Hebrews regarded those sacrifices as God's due for extending His protection over them as His Chosen People. Indeed, according to the Book of Exodus, such sacrifices were ordained by God Himself, as He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Jews of that time considered them the only truly complete act of religious devotion.

     Christ upended their world by inverting the food chain. No more would they give up their sustenance in propitiation of the divine will. Henceforward, it would be the other way around: the Son of God would be the Sacrifice, and His people would partake.

     From the Gospel According To John:

     "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
     The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever." [John 6:48-58]

     The rite of the Eucharist, in commemoration of the Last Supper, offers bread and wine to God and prays that they might be found acceptable. In response to this humble offering, and in fulfillment of Christ's promise, through the celebrant-priest He works the Transubstantiation, which allows the form of the bread and wine to remain as they are, but converts their substance into the body and blood of Christ. At each Mass, a traditional sacrifice of food to God is met with a renewal of the offering of Christ's body and blood to the world, for the remission of sin and as a perpetual grant of His grace to all who will accept it.

     No other creed has anything to compare with the Eucharist. Nor could any conceivable rite, however elaborately crusted with mystery or symbolism, approach the stunning power of God Himself, in the Person of His Son, offering Himself as food to lowly Man.

     He could eat us all. Instead He offers Himself as food, that we may remember His Sacrifice for us, and draw as close to Him as mortal creatures can get while still in this world.

     Today is the Sunday ordained for the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Sacrifice beyond all others, that no offering by mortal men could ever equal. The proof that the food chain is not God's manacle about our hands. The unanswerable refutation of those who insist that a malevolent power bestrides the universe. The ironclad guarantee that we are not to be eaten, but to be fed.

* * *

     And may God bless and keep you all.

An Intellectual's Duty

     [This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on March 12, 2008. -- FWP]

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     There aren't many persons who, if asked whether significantly above-average intelligence could ever be a liability rather than an asset, would answer in the affirmative. That's because there aren't many persons with significantly above-average intelligence.

     Yes, you read that right. You have to be pretty smart to understand why smarts aren't a good fit for every context and every occupation. One of Jack L. Chalker's Flux and Anchor books presents a penetrating example. In it, a woman who has earned a large boon from a powerful wizard asks him to use his power to make her permanently happy and carefree. The wizard plies a spell that strips her of her memory, halves her intelligence, and turns her into an uncritical, limitlessly willing sexual plaything -- the simplest conceivable satisfaction of her request.

     True, most of us wouldn't aspire to that position. But some would, and dare anyone say (from a purely secular perspective) that to choose such a life would be wrong? Happiness and peace of mind are fleeting things; all but a few truly fortunate persons possess them only in snatches. Aldous Huxley is reported to have been greatly troubled by the number of persons who viewed his Brave New World, in which the overwhelmingly greater part of the population of the world was engineered for subnormal intelligence and high susceptibility to a happiness-inducing drug, as a depiction of a true Utopia.

     Still, there's that "Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied" business. Most persons of high intelligence wouldn't sacrifice it for anything, not even a greatly prolonged, blissfully happy life. In part, it's because high intelligence enables the owner to imagine and pursue fulfillments inaccessible to the less gifted. In even larger part, it's because the esteem generally attached to intellectual power greatly stokes one's self-regard.

     High intelligence is a tool that can work many wonders. We owe much of our comfort and security to the insights of a few dozen geniuses. But that doesn't make a genius suitable for a position only a dullard can fit.

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     Just this morning, your Curmudgeon stumbled upon the following at co-conspirator Travis Corcoran's site:

NZC: Didn’t Spitzer want to be president someday? So, that’s totally in the toilet.

     TJIC: One American disqualified for the office…only 299,999,999 more to go!

     NZC: And you’re allowed to say that, because you’re leading from the front - you’ve totally disqualified yourself a dozen times over.

     TJIC: Yeah, that whole “dig up the corpse of FDR, and then !@#% in his skull” blogging topic would totally come back to bite me in the primaries.

     NZC: Indeed!

     TJIC: …unless I ran as a Libertarian…

     It was good for a chuckle, but your Curmudgeon sincerely hopes that Travis is aware that his high intelligence disqualifies him from any and all public offices.

     What's that you say? You want very intelligent people in government? You, sir, are a hazard to the body politic. What on Earth are you doing at Eternity Road? Don't you know what sort of mischief smart people get up to when entrusted with power? Didn't we get enough of a demonstration from the Clintons? Do you really want a reprise of that disaster?

     No. No smart people in office. Please! Smart people are too good at reinterpreting their marching orders and rationalizing their way around moral or Constitutional constraints on their authority. If any of the Founding Fathers was a genius, Thomas Jefferson was -- yet he, most libertarian of them all, violated the Constitution's constraints on federal power several times in his first term of office. He rationalized his transgressions as "necessary" and "practical." So highly did Congress, and the people generally, think of him that he always carried the day.

     High intelligence is almost always accompanied by a high opinion of oneself. He who thinks that well of himself is all too easily led to see himself as above the rules that bind others. If you were looking for a capsule summary of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, you have it now.

     What Americans should seek in their public officials is men who can understand the duties and limitations of their offices, and will cleave to them unswervingly. This demands a routinier, an "organization man," a dullard. It's not the right billet for a genius. Very bright people chafe at taking orders, even from brighter, more knowledgeable people; they're always looking for an angle, a way to finesse their way out of doing what they've been told.

     The duties of an elected official are spelled out in either the Constitution of the United States, or some similar charter subordinate to it. The powers that attach to whatever government his office pertains to are spelled out in a similar fashion, albeit not always with the degree of specificity a libertarian-conservative would like. If those rules and constraints are seriously meant, then we don't want our officeholders looking for ways to chisel around the edges. We want good, solid dullards, schooled from the Bible and the handle of a broom, who'll do as they're told, without the slightest trace of creativity.

     We don't often get such men, these days.

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     The word "intellectual" has acquired an unsavory connotation these past few decades. It deserves that connotation rather more than not. Intellectuals in the corridors of power, rich in self-regard and flushed with ambition to leave their footprints upon history, have wreaked great harm upon American liberty and our Constitutional order. But we were foolish enough to admit them, so the blame lies at least as much on us.

     Restoring the original Constitutional compact has proved dauntingly difficult. Once government opens niches for men of intellect, those niches prove damnably difficult to close. There's always an argument for genius in the power seat, usually that it's necessary if we're ever to undo the damage wrought by prior geniuses. Even when it's tragically wrong, it can be too seductive to resist.

     But an intellectual's duty is to resist. If the word "duty" has an objective meaning, a man of genius should feel a duty to move toward those fields where his gifts will bring good to the world, rather than to a post where others will have to pay for his mistakes. For even geniuses make mistakes. Indeed, they make more of them, and more rapidly, than persons of average attainments.

     Sadly, in our current milieu, wherein the achievements of an Edison or a Tesla are reckoned as grubby commerce while "high office" earns the highest of plaudits, too many bright fellows are drawn toward the profession of politics. But power doesn't merely corrupt; it attracts the already corrupt and corruptible. Thus, it's in the nature of political power that those with the weakest morals will be the most successful.

     This is not the time or place for the exploration of so perverse a situation; among other things, your Curmudgeon hasn't yet had enough to drink. Suffice it to say that we've created incentives that divert high intelligence away from its proper applications -- science, commerce, and philosophy -- and into the quest for power over others. Those incentives are self-reinforcing; they can only be unmade by the creation of even stronger counter-incentives, at whose nature we cannot yet guess. For the present, due to the excessive adulation of the hoi polloi for the conspicuously gifted, we're doomed to be ruled by persons of low morality protected by high intellect. It's the worst situation we could have contrived for ourselves.

     To young Americans seeking a suitable course in life:

• If you're smart, go into business.
• If you're very smart, go into the sciences.
• If you're not smart, but were properly raised and can follow clear, simple directions, there may be a spot for you in government.
• If you're a Certified Galactic Intellect...how about a nice game of chess?

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     [Having reread and reflected on the above -- hey, what do you do at 4:00 AM when the dogs won't let you sleep? -- it occurs to me that a review of our recent, supposedly smart chief executives is in order:

• Woodrow Wilson: World War I, huge expansion of the federal government, the income tax, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Amendments.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: The "Brain Trust," a thirteen-year economic contraction, World War II, the destruction of the Constitution's restraints on the federal government.
• John F. Kennedy: The Bay of Pigs, hot and cold running prostitutes, and the elevation of the detestable, wholly amoral Kennedy family to a kind of American aristocracy.
• Bill Clinton: Semen-stained dresses and bombed-out aspirin factories in Sudan.
• Barack Hussein Obama: Please!

     Any questions?]

Berserk, Or Merely Bookless?

     [The following first appeared at Eternity Road on February 25, 2008 – FWP.]

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     Your Curmudgeon strongly disapproves of psychologizing one's political or ideological adversary. For those unfamiliar with the term, "psychologizing" is the attribution of motives, character defects, or mental or emotional aberrations to one's adversary as the "real reasons" for his positions, instead of arguing against them on objective grounds. Persons who do such things are all too obviously seriously disturbed, dangerous to themselves and others, no doubt damaged by their toilet training traumas or failure to resolve their Oedipal conflicts before attaining puberty.

     Hm. Well, anyway, by way of Cassy Fiano at Wizbang comes this example of the practice from a conservative, aimed (of course) at liberals:

     Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.

     "Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."...

     Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

• creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
• satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
• augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
• rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

     "The roots of liberalism - and its associated madness - can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."

     This is no more valid an approach to political argument than it was when liberal-leaning "scholars" in the University of California system claimed that their study proves that conservatives are inherently fear-ridden and deficient of imagination.

     Back about fifteen years ago, your Curmudgeon first heard the political Left styled "bookless." It was an apt characterization, and remains so today. The Left has run through all its ideas, all have failed, and it can generate no new ones. If a new one were to happen along, liberal political strategists would have to weigh the consequences of adopting it -- contradicting standing liberal dogma; alienating a special interest; admitting to error -- against the consequences of not adopting it -- trundling along on the same tired slogans and failed policies. Therein lies the danger of assuming a pose of moral and intellectual superiority while selling one's movement to a coalition of interest groups.

     But the Right is treading substantially the same ground. The "Republican Revolution" of 1994, so bravely begun, proved to be a wet firecracker. That wasn't because the ideas it had promulgated were bad ones, nor that its representatives were arrogant asses, but because once in power, Republican legislators overwhelmingly placed press approbation and "collegiality" above achieving what the voters had sent them to Washington to achieve. They allowed their victorious theses to be muddied by their conduct in office -- talking low taxes, free markets, and the rule of law while perpetuating the existing regime out of fear of criticism from their opponents and bad notices in the New York Times.

     The Left can no longer write books; the Right has burned the ones it penned.

     The Left seems a bit frenzied these days, frenzy being the behavioral evidence of having no new ideas, yet staring at the same old problems. But the Right is tinged with despair, having betrayed its ideological legacy, and seeing it badly stained by public disdain, for a mess of column-inches. Conservatives and libertarians had the intellectual assets with which to establish a truly enduring majority; they merely failed to act on them.

     The Republican majorities of 1994-2006 are now only a memory, and Republican officeholders have only themselves to blame. Their overt ideology is still vastly superior to that of the Democrats, but their embrace of the privileges of power, and their preference for praise over the public interest, have tarnished it in a fashion that might take decades to cleanse. That's what you get for burning the books you've written. Psychologizing your opponents is no substitute for well thought out ideas and their faithful execution.