Tea Leaves By Twilight Part 2: Wars And Rumors Of Wars

We met on the beach amid rumours of war,
Your head in your hand, what you saw you won't say,
As the newspapers blew in the wind.
I can see you're one of that kind
Who carry around a time bomb in the mind -- no one knows
When you'll slip the pin.
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...

I see that your dress is torn at the edge,
You are lost, intense, like a man on a ledge, waiting to jump,
As the waves break over the shore.
You say there's a storm that can't be delayed,
And lately it seems to be coming this way -- you can hear it break
Like the slam of a door.
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...

You tell me, just look all around
At the past and the present, the cross and the crescent,
The signs and the planets are lining up like before.
There are souls on fire in the day and the night,
On the left and the right, in the black and the white,
You can see it burn in the eyes of the rich and the poor!
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...

[Al Stewart, "Rumours Of War"]

War, as I noted in the previous essay, is in its most abstract form a struggle over who shall rule over a contested item. The "cold race war" already in progress is exactly that sort of struggle. The most recent front was made visible by the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin affair: a substantial fraction of American Negroes is claiming, in effect, that when a white man kills a black man, the white man is guilty of murder regardless of any other considerations or contextual factors. The demand for such a departure from the ancient law of self-defense, specifically to favor Negroes, is a demand for a separate sovereignty demarcated by race.

But let it not be thought that only Negroes are demanding such a sovereignty. Muslims are at it, too. Indeed, Muslims' demand for special exemptions from the law is rooted in their most fundamental scripture:

For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. [Qur'an, Sura 5:32]

Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. [Qur'an, Sura 4:76]

"I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them." [Qur'an, Sura 8:12]

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. [Qur'an, Sura 9:5]

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued." [Qur'an, Sura 9:29]

"O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them." [Qur'an, Sura 9:73]

American Indians, of course, already enjoy certain exemptions from several aspects of state and federal law. So also do elected federal officials and federal employees. And thanks to federal antidiscrimination statutes, women, the handicapped, and homosexuals have gained privileges that persons outside those groups do not enjoy.

We have been divided from one another by the very mechanisms that promised us e pluribus unum. To be divided from one another by the law itself is to be set against one another, albeit indirectly.

Indirectly...at first. What follows is more direct and often far more horrible.

---

Thomas Sowell and others have repeatedly noted the consequences of raising one group over another through the law. Egregious cases involve Malaysia and Sri Lanka, where laws that distinguish among the various ethnic and linguistic groups have provoked enduring inter-group hostility that has often risen to violence. More recently, the de facto exclusion of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority from the protection of the law has given rise to continuing pogroms against the Coptics by the Muslim majority.

These are natural consequences of discrimination embedded in the law. They are unavoidable, for a simple reason:

Privilege confers advantage.

Over time ever more of the members of a legally privileged group will exploit its privileges, to the detriment of the unprivileged groups. The swelling envy and resentment that result are guaranteed to tear any nation apart...including ours.

When a nation embarks upon "the downward course" (Winston Churchill), one of the group-independent sociological consequences is a general shortening of time horizons. People's "time preference ratios" -- their preference for immediate satisfactions over long-term gains -- tilt ever more toward the present and away from the future. Indeed, it becomes noticeable that there's a general accord that "we have no future." What conclusion could a reasonable man reach, other than to live for the present? And what result could be more certain than the "eating of the seed corn" -- the profligate consumption of the nation's assets in total disregard for the needs of posterity?

The best summation of this mindset ever written comes from a great science-fiction novel:

"The fall of Trantor," said Seldon, "cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within three centuries but within fifty years and you, yourself, within a single year." [Isaac Asimov, Foundation, emphasis added.]

Dr. Asimov grasped that the fates of great polities lie in their own hands: specifically, in the resolve of their rulers to maintain absolute -- and absolutely evenhanded -- justice. When that resolve fails, "the downward course" begins. It soon becomes irreversible.

---

As in the Al Stewart lyric above, no one knows when we'll "slip the pin." Of only one thing am I sure: Our current rulers are at the heart of the problem. There has never been a group as openly hostile to equal justice under law as the one that currently prevails in Washington. Should that group continue to ride roughshod over the rule of law and equal justice thereunder, the United States of America will not survive.

Look all around you, "at the past and the present, the cross and the crescent," and all the rest of the legal, judicial, and social divisions we've endured these past fifty years. Note how many persons are already dead certain that the nation is doomed, and are making what preparations they can for the collapse of what order still remains. Note the rise of the preparationist industries, that cater directly and unabashedly to that conviction. Note the growing disaffiliation of ordinary Americans from American public institutions, in preference for whatever private alternatives exist. And note especially how many Americans already hold that the law has become an instrument of oppression, and is therefore to be skirted or disregarded whenever it's practical to do so.

And pray.