Liberty's Torch: June 2018

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Pushing Back Against Activist Judges

Justice Thomas addressed this in the recent opinion on the travel ban. It's worth a read.

Quickies: Socialists’ Habitual Defense

American socialists have been in the news recently, starting with the 2016 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Socialists have quite a lot in common, even apart from their political stances. For one thing, with only the rarest of exceptions they never, ever accept responsibility for anything. Indeed, the characteristic is so common among them that it constitutes a marker by which to detect them...and if you’re smart, to avoid them.

Every socialist state known to history has become a police state with a failing economy. Most of them have erected stiff border controls – to keep their subjects in. And nearly all of them have had dictators who got filthy rich even as their victims starved. But when asked to explain their failure to deliver on their promises, the answer is always “our enemies.”

This is socialism’s pet devil theory. It has to work, you see. It’s scientific. Marx proved it in Das Kapital. So if it’s not working, that must be because it’s being undermined by its enemies. Find them and shoot them, and all will be well!

(Do you remember Hitler’s “stab in the back” rhetoric during his rise to power? How Germany would bestride the world if not for the perfidy of its “enemies?” Me too.)

You can only hear that defense two or three times before you begin to wonder whether somebody’s trying to hide something. Maybe a desire for absolute power. The ability to command the population and resources of an entire nation, to reward one’s friends and punish one’s enemies, and to liquidate anyone who dares to notice.

The closest the U.S. has come to a socialist regime was the Obama Interregnum. Obama couldn’t get too close; he never had the necessary degree of control over Congress. But the measures he emphasized bore the socialist hallmark. The ones he succeeded in enacting hogtied the American economy. He was remorseless about rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies, too; he spoke openly about it.

The Obama years are behind us now, thank God. You’d think people would have drawn the moral, especially as President Trump’s diametrically opposed policies almost immediate restored our economic vitality. But no: a substantial number of Americans of supposedly sound mind maintain that Obama was right – that the only reason his policies seemed to fail was the concentrated efforts of his enemies, who were determined to make them fail.

It should have been an incontestable lesson about the natural limits to the power of the State. (Then again, so should North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.) But folks in Queens have just promoted an openly averred socialist as their candidate for their Congressional representative. Queens! The borough that produced Donald Trump! Were the voters who pulled the lever for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the products of “public” education? Or did they come out of the sort of “red diaper” upbringing of which Peter Collier and David Horowitz wrote?

It makes you wonder, not only about the limits to the power of the State, but about the power of socialism’s strange, well cloaked and seemingly invincible “enemies.” At least, it should.

Could it be any clearer?

Syria is stemming the terrorist tide within its territory and the SAA is fighting and dying to contain the threat. Alongside its allies, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah – Syria is sacrificing everything to prevent the spread of a cataclysmic contagion that has been created and imposed upon them by the nations whose claims of moral superiority ring hollow when confronted by the bloodshed they leave in their wake.^[1]

Who can doubt that the war fought by the Syrian Arab Army, the Syrian Arab Air Force, and its allies has been one of the defining wars of our time. Tens of thousands of foreign jihadi scum flocked to Syria where they were armed, trained, supported, and paid by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the rest of the loathsome anti-Assad coalition. In the Great War on Terror (GWOT) the U.S. came down on the side of the terrorists, which has to be a special kind of irony, hypocrisy, or both. More than that it's a sign of a special kind of political and moral sickness. Recall Obama's order that leaflets be dropped to warn ISIS oil truck convoys of imminent American attack. The last thing he wanted was to seriously interfere with ISIS. Phony war against ISIS; real war against Syria.

In the "moral superiority" department there was also the issue of supposed chemical weapons use in Syria. The U.S. came to going to war against Assad based on some 1,300 people killed in E. Ghouta in 2013 allegedly because of his use of such weapons. More people allegedly died from chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun and Dhouma. Call it 3,000 people killed all told to pick a number out of the sky. Heck, call it 6,000. Each of these three incidents caused a paroxysm of phony moral posturing intended to paint Syria’s President Assad as a “brutal dictator” who "would gas his own people."

But those who rend their garments over this never address the moral responsibility of the United States and its degenerate “allies” for the deaths of 400,000+ civilians and of many thousands of government troops. So . . . 400,000 v. 6,000. But which is the occasion for U.S. and Western phony-baloney “outrage”?

Western leaders refuse to address their own culpability for massive death and massive destruction of Syrian cities and infrastructure. They strain at a gnat but swallow a camel. But such are the moralizing giants of the West. Yes. Assad the Butcher indeed.

Notes
^[1] "Why the West Should Recognize Syria’s Many ‘Private Ryan’ Heroes." By Vanessa Beeley, 21st Century Wire, 6/16/18.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Disturbing Stuff For Your Friday

Well, maybe it won’t all be disturbing. I mean, some of it, certainly. At least, it disturbs me. But the stuff I’ve been writing has been so serious lately that it seems imperative that I take the blog a wee distance “off road” for a change...

There are pop bands that “made it” whose appeal I can’t fathom. Plenty of them, actually. Then there are the “one-hit wonders” that dazzled us with a single track before vanishing into obscurity, never to be heard from again. What becomes of them? In many cases, no one knows. However, I met a couple of refugees from two such bands a few years back. One had taken a job as the superintendent of an apartment colony. The other...well, let’s just say you wouldn’t want to share his residential accommodations. So they don’t all die of drug overdoses or vengeance by cuckolded husbands.

If you’ve been looking for an under-served area in which to exercise your charitable impulses, how about this one? I mean, a home for derelicts who once played in one-hit wonder bands might even become a tourist attraction. And you’d have no trouble booking entertainment for Friday nights.

On the other hand, there are bands that really “should” have become popular but, inexplicably, never did. My favorite – and surely you have one as well; don’t you, Gentle Reader? – is a band from Albany, NY named Blotto.

I love a band that doesn’t take itself too seriously:

There’s a Collected Works CD available at Amazon.

If you’ve acquainted yourself with the works of the late Robert Ludlum, you may have noticed a certain similarity among his titles:

The Scarlatti Inheritance
The Osterman Weekend
The Matlock Paper
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Gemini Contenders
The Holcroft Covenant
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Matarese Circle
The Bourne Identity
The Parsifal Mosaic

...and so on: always “The” followed by a proper noun – usually a character’s last name, though not always – followed by a suggestive improper noun. The pattern was so consistent for so long that when a friend passed along Trevayne, I was briefly unwilling to believe that it was written by Robert Ludlum.

This caused me to begin composing new Ludlum titles for books he hadn’t yet written...and never would:

The Moses Amputation
The Jesus Remission
The Jefferson Declaration
The Clinton Rejection
The Bozo No-No
The Terrytoon Circus

...and so on. (A friend once suggested “The Heimlich Maneuver,” but that sounded too much like the title of an actual thriller.)

Granted, most of Ludlum’s books were fairly diverting, though it was unwise to read several of them in a row. But those titles...was his editor inhibited against saying that “You know, Bob, you’ve been getting a little...repetitive lately” -- ? Or was the publisher afraid he’d produce another The Road to Gandolfo?

There isn’t much originality in contemporary fantasy and science fiction these days. Yes, yes, I’ve ranted about that plenty of times in the past. But that only makes it that much more important to note the occasions of originality I’ve recently encountered.

First up, because it’s the one I read most recently, is Craig Zerf’s Hex. It’s got a lot of the usual urban-fantasy tropes and features, but despite that it displays a freshness I haven’t often encountered in that sub-genre. Protagonist Sholto Gunn, a.k.a. Hex, is a grayish hero to be sure; You won’t approve of everything he does. But he and his quondam ally Vusi, a figure of some mystery out of darkest Africa, definitely get the job done. They also have some fun along the way. Recommended.

Second, I laughed my slats off at Margaret Ball’s A Pocketful of Stars. Another urban fantasy that marries suspense to a rollicking good time. I mean, how can you miss when the graduate students of the Center for Applied Topology discover that their mathematical specialty has equipped them with magical powers? Especially given their alliance with “Mr. M,” a severed turtle head (though quite alive, happy in his robot body, and very voluble in several languages, most of them no longer spoken by other living creatures) who was a mighty mage in Babylonian times and assists them in defeating deadly dark enemy Raven Crowson, Master of Ravens and general no-goodnik? Ball keeps it sprightly and humorous despite the discovery of genuine villainy in an unexpected place. Also recommended.

Third – and this one gets my strongest recommendation – comes Jonathan Maas’s Dion: A Tale of the Highway. I’ll simply repost my review from Amazon:

     It’s a rare thing for anyone to encounter a work of imagination so original, so vast in extent, and so filled with ideas that it transcends all considerations of period, genre, and social context. It’s even rarer that it should be from a relatively young and unknown creator. It’s rarer than diamonds that one should be able to obtain it for free. But here it is.
     In “Dion” Jonathan Maas has presented an extraordinary panoply of ideas in a compact package. More impressive still, he’s invoked archetypes and images from deep in human memory to which to anchor those ideas, giving them a vitality contemporary attempts at a novel of ideas seldom possess. Most impressive of all, he’s populated his story with gods – gods that have believable reasons for caring about Mankind – and demons determined to thwart our rise toward the divine estate.
     I can’t say much more about this novel without committing one or more spoilers, and that would be unforgivable. Just read it. Please. I wish I could encounter it for the first time AGAIN; that’s how good it is.

If your to-be-read stack has been getting short, add Dion to the very top. You’ll thank me.

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. The rest of the day will be given to fiction and yard work. Enjoy your Friday.

Oh, God. Please. Not that. The horror!

Around the world, very few people are capable of wrapping their heads around the European reaction to the migrant crisis.
On the side of the migrants, we have avid displays of barbarism, fanaticism and aggression;
On the side of the Europeans, we have abject fear of appearing... intolerant.

"Orlov: Barbarians Rampage Through Europe's Cemetery." By Dmitry Orlov, ZeroHedge, 6/29/18 (formatting removed).

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Please Spread the Word

I have a brother - Ron - 57 years old. He's in need of a liver. His condition is deteriorating, complicated by his diabetes. His best bet for a liver is to find a living donor. That's where this post comes in.

If you could spread the word among your friends and family, it would be appreciated. Basically, a potential donor would need to be tested for compatibility. If a match, the person could explore the possibility. Here's some links that explain the procedure:

Link 1

Link 2

Neither my sister nor I are eligible - I'm too old, and she's had cancer. My kids are being tested, as are other relatives. I'm also going to put out a call on Ancestry among the DNA matches. Close relatives have the best chance of a match, but sometimes, even total strangers will match.

Ron's is an extraordinary human being. He is highly intelligent, a longtime volunteer at his church, and a person that took care of his brother, and parents for many years. He is one of the best people I have ever known.

If you'd like more information, send me an email giving your contact information, and I'll put you in touch with someone who can give you more info.

My email: lfox368806 (yahoo account) Put LIVER in the subject line, and I'll get right back to you.

Quickies: “It’s The World We Live In”

Few musicians of my era have done as much for their art form as Mark Knopfler – and he has something to say:

I keep a weather eye on the horizon, back to the wall
I like to know who's coming through the door, that’s all
It's the old Army training, kickin' in
I'm not complaining, It's the world we live in
Blarney and Malarkey, they're a devious firm
They'll take you to the cleaners, or let you burn
The help is breaking dishes in the kitchen -- thanks a lot
We hired the worst dishwasher This place ever got
Comin’ in below the radar, they want to spoil our fun...
In the meantime, I'm cleaning my gun
Remember it got so cold ice froze up the tank
We lit a fire beneath her just so she would crank
Keep a weather eye on the horizon, tap the storm glass now and then
We got a case of Old Damnation For when you get here my friend
We can have ourselves a party before they come...
In the meantime, I'm cleaning my gun
We had women and a mirror ball, we had a DJ
We used to eat pretty much all came this way
Ever since the goons came in took apart the place
I keep a tire iron in the corner just in case
Gave you a magic bullet on a little chain
Keep you safe from the chilly winds and the howl of the rain
We're gonna might need bullets, should we get stuck
Any which way, we're gonna need a little luck
You can still get gas in heaven and drink in kingdom come...
In the meantime, I'm cleaning my gun

Take it seriously. The storm clouds have breasted the horizon and they’re moving our way fast.

Prepare. Stay away from crowds. Be alert. -- Ol’ Remus

Quickies: I Did Not Know This...

...but I’m not really that surprised:

     Imagine a woman who favours murdering babies, but then has the sheer brass-necked nerve to say that baptising babies “violates their human rights”!
     Difficult? Well, that’s the case with former Irish president Mary McAleese. In a contrast that many Christians regard as being close (at least) to Satanic, she criticised infant baptism and the Catholic Church this week, while supporting the deadly abuse of children in the womb through abortion.
     Speaking to the Irish Times, McAleese claimed infant baptism imposes “obligations on people who are only two weeks old.”

The Irish once had an ignorant idiot as their president? A rabid anti-Catholic, at that? How did this happen in the most Catholic country on Earth?

Baptism imposes no obligations whatsoever on a child! He remains free to reject the Church when he’s grown old enough to do so. One would have to be appallingly ignorant...or perhaps, evilly motivated...to say otherwise.

But the conclusion of the article is where we find the gut punch:

Now, the fear is Ireland’s abortion law will mirror Britain’s, where one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion each year. In Britain, abortion is permitted until 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Pro-abortionists are, however, agitating to extend it to full-term, with more vocal ones now moving to demand the right to end an inconvenient child’s life “up until the age of self-awareness” – around the age of three. The word ‘Satanic’ is not used lightly in dealing with these supporters of child sacrifice.

“Ethicist” Peter Singer has been trumpeting the above idea for quite a while:

     Singer holds that the right to life is essentially tied to a being's capacity to hold preferences, which in turn is essentially tied to a being's capacity to feel pain and pleasure.
     In Practical Ethics, Singer argues in favour of abortion on the grounds that fetuses are neither rational nor self-aware, and can therefore hold no preferences. As a result, he argues that the preference of a mother to have an abortion automatically takes precedence. In sum, Singer argues that a fetus lacks personhood.
     Similar to his argument for abortion, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."

I was unaware that anyone else had taken it up. Given the horrific news coming out of Holland, and what we’ve heard about the Groningen Protocol, I should have known better.

Sabo Poster Download

I heard about these posters. LA has a boatload of them around town. Here's a download link.

And, here is a sample of them:

As the zanier accomplices of the Left used to say,

If you're going to have a revolution, have some fun with it.

Solving Immigration in America

This is not a totally easy fix. However, the President and the rest of the Executive Branch have the power to make changes that will take this from 'Street Theater' to judging applications on their MERIT. It should not make receiving a green card a matter of who makes the most emotional case.

Note the composition of this group - almost ALL male and military age.

It's not just Mexicans and Central Americans. It's the cynical way that Asians use their privilege to arrange to have their births in the USA, giving their children dual citizenship. It's the PURCHASE of visas by the wealthy. And, it's the abuse of humanitarian exceptions, that can allow people to mooch off the system for years.

Conservative Review has a long piece about immigration.

Aside from that use of law to hamper unchecked immigration, the Border Patrol can be used more effectively. This use of immigration checks was conducted in New England. The use of this tactic has been affirmed by the Supreme Court, as long as it occurs at a reasonable distance from the border - 100 miles has been suggested as a guide.

There it is - a loophole that would justify Border Patrol activity at nearly EVERY MAJOR CITY in the USA.

MOST of the major cities (Democrat-controlled) are located within 100 miles of a border - even if that border is the adjoining ocean.

Los Angeles
San Francisco
Miami
New York City
Boston
Seattle
Portland, OR
Washington, DC

And, many more. This could lead to sweeping out the illegals from most of their hide-in-plain-sight locations.

Cities And The Evolution Of Nations

If you haven’t read Jane Jacobs’s visionary book Cities And The Wealth Of Nations, you should grab a copy before they’re all gone. Miss Jacobs, in her time one of the most astute of all analysts of social organization and development, laid out a brilliant case for the city as the critical element in human economic progress. When it was published in 1984, there was nothing else like it, certainly nothing in macroeconomic analysis that shared its daring premise.

But as with books on any other sociological or economic topic, a book on macroeconomics will be conceived and written within a conceptual framework whose bounds are set by existing conditions, especially existing political and technological conditions. Miss Jacobs’s vision did not allow for several important changes in our informational and technological milieu that followed her treatise. Indeed, it could be argued that those changes were driven in part by the centrality of cities in the structure of production of the post-World War II decades.

Consider: the world’s major cities are almost all on high-traffic waterways. The world’s major cities almost all possess extensive rail links and are near major airports. The world’s major cities almost all emphasize the production of some physical good. Those cities that have become important information hubs, such as New York City, started out as manufacturing centers and more recently transitioned to emphasize other enterprises. Those newer enterprises require a lot less in the way of transportation capacity for physical cargo.

Consider also: until recently, virtually any joint economic undertaking required those engaged in it to gather in some agreed-upon location. Today, even manufacturing has deemphasized such aggregation of persons. More of just about every physical production task is performed by automated systems – colloquially, robots – than by men. There are exceptions, of course; we don’t yet have robots that build skyscrapers, for example. But the trend is away from the prior requirement for human hands concentrated in a single location.

So today cities, previously critical to economic advancement, are transitioning away from that role. Some are becoming cultural and entertainment centers. Others are beginning to emphasize the provision of special living arrangements. Others (e.g., capital cities) are sustained solely by politics. And others are gradually fading away.

The city, like all human institutions, arose under specific social and technological conditions to serve needs and desires that could not be easily met in other ways. Changes in the underlying milieu have altered the incentives and dynamics that propelled the growth of cities. They won’t wither away in the near or intermediate term, but their importance to economic advancement has peaked and is likely to decline for the foreseeable future.

Which brings us to this article by Mark “Mad Dog” Sherman. Mark’s focus is on the cities’ slow bleed of population to the suburbs and exurbs. Please read it all, including the article it cites. The core of Mark’s piece:

The real problem cities face is that the politicians believe that the city is so attractive to business that the city can do as it pleases. This is last century thinking. We have yet to see the implementation of the new socio-economic model. It will come, for the same reasons that the industrial model replaced the agricultural model, and the model to come will follow the industrial model. The city cannot structure itself for the present and survive the coming change, just as the agricultural city of 1750 could not have doubled down on its model and survived the change to the industrial revolution.

Change is certainly afoot. However, the rise of the automobile, cited by the NewGeography article, isn’t as important to the new dynamics as it might seem. Remember that for at least the first twenty-five years after World War II, the preponderance of auto travel was for commutation into and out of the cities where their owners worked. For a while, it appeared to be a stable pattern that could be expected to continue indefinitely.

Throughout the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries there were powerful incentives to live in cities. But there were also costs to such decisions: reduced living space per person, the endurance of congestion, noise, and mandatorily centralized municipal services, and perhaps most important of all, the acceptance that one has chosen to be part of a target for politicians and other sorts of predators.

Predators of all sorts gather where the prey is fattest and least well defended. I theorized about this in a fictional setting:

“Now, we know from historical data that predators of all sorts will concentrate where the prey is fattest. The State, which is merely an organized band of predators with a veneer of legitimacy derived either from tradition or from a manufactured appearance of the consent of its subjects, took a huge fraction of its subjects' annual production from them in taxes. A typical State would increase its exactions on its subjects faster than those subjects could increase their own fortunes. That compelled wage earners to strive ever harder just to run in place, with obvious consequences for production and marketing.”

In the postwar years, no group of victims-to-be was nearly as fat or as poorly defended as the denizens of a major city. Thus, ambitious politicians, their hangers-on, and other species of scum arrowed directly toward the big cities and battened on them.

As I wrote that last, I found myself thinking that city dwellers’ awareness of their vulnerability to political predation might have been part of what drove the development of technologies that would support the decentralization of human enterprise. Whatever the case, as the requirements for joint enterprise ceased to emphasize the collection of human workers in central locales, the other disincentives and costs to city life began to loom large. Population growth in the suburbs, exurbs, and countryside was fueled by emigrants from the cities.

City emigrants are no longer as important to the growth of those alternatives as they once were. Economic opportunities and social supports are plentiful in the more dispersed regions. Additionally, the “information economy” has made it possible for many kinds of work to be done out of the home. In consequence, new adults and newly formed families don’t face the balance of economic and social incentives their progenitors faced in choosing where to live.

Still, I must disagree with Mark’s assertion that “The city was a mistake.” It was not; it was a transitional socioeconomic institution whose time of glory is now behind us. Jane Jacobs was right in her time and the years that preceded her landmark work. What’s coming will be different. Isn’t it always? And it, too, will have its time in the sun, to be delimited by changes at which one can only guess.

$1 billion a year from us to Syrian jihadis.

That’s per year.

As the author says, “possibly the largest CIA covert program in history.”

Meanwhile, mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that President Obama's legacy is that he "stayed out" of Syria, instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to so-called "moderate" rebels who were fighting both Assad and (supposedly) the Islamic State. Rhodes has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely staying "on the sidelines" in Syria.
But as we've pointed out many times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to whitewash possibly the largest CIA covert program in history, started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent of overthrowing Assad to the tune of $1 billion a year (one-fifteenth of the CIA’s publicly known budget according to leaked Edward Snowden documents revealed by the Washington Post).
It also ignores the well established fact, documented in both US intelligence reports and authenticated battlefield footage, that ISIS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) jointly fought under a single US-backed command structure during the early years of the war in Syria, even as late as throughout 2013 — something confirmed by University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, widely considered to be the world's foremost expert on Syria.^[1]

Somebody please explain to me why the U.S. thinks it has any claim to moral leadership of even a Church spaghetti supper let alone why “we” should lead a uni-polar world.

But, oh yes, it’s Assad who’s the tainted one. He has to go because he’s a “brutal dictator.” That would be the man who won election to his present office, will do so again, and has the support of Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, and Montagnards for all I know.

Notes
^[1] "Ben Rhodes Admits Obama Armed Jihadists In Syria In Bombshell Interview." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 6/24/18 (formatting and links removed).

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Tank car.

A Common Practice Among Peoples of the Middle East

A practice that has spread to other lands - many, if not most, of them populated by Muslims.

I'm referring to the use of Cousin Marriage. That is, not the happenstance of 3rd or 4th cousins falling in love, and wanting to marry, but the deliberate practice of encouraging (sometimes, to the extent of forcing) naturalized citizens of Western countries to marry some relative from the home country, and be able to extend the relatives' immigration benefit to them, as well.

I've PERSONALLY known of people who used this method of bypassing VISA lines to get into the USA. They include:

A friend of mine who had to wait until her boyfriend's 'wife' managed to get her permanent resident paperwork approved, before he could divorce her, and marry the woman he actually loved. His family had pressured him to marry the related stranger, so the woman could enter the country. He was told he 'owed' them this favor - and, as the family later bankrolled several businesses for him, he probably did. (although the family was Maronite Catholic, the marriage was a civil ceremony, so did not affect his ability to marry in the Catholic church after his divorce).
Another friend was told to marry her husband - sight unseen - and keep up the pretense for a few years. Again, this was straightforwardly explained to the prospective bride as a benefit for the family. Sometimes, it's a matter of mutual obligations to an extended family branch. Sometimes, there is a cash payment involved.
I can think of another 3-4 other pretend couples, off the top of my head. That I know of so many is easily explained by my address in Cleveland, on the West Side, where so many Middle Eastern families have located. Many, if not most, of the businesses on Lorain Avenue between Rocky River Drive and around West Blvd. display their signs in Arabic, and SOMETIMES English. Or both.

The Imperative Of Punishment

Just now most of the DextroSphere’s attention is on the Maxine Waters and Lexington Red Hen events and the larger sociopolitical phenomenon those developments highlight. The trend line is admittedly bleak. The lunatic Left is emboldened by the Right’s milquetoast response to this point. Blood hasn’t been spilled yet, but the probability is rising sharply. Few have drawn the moral.

Mike Hendrix reminds us that Ann Coulter drew it seven years ago:

Liberals are not like most Americans. They are the biggest pussies on Earth, unless they know their victim can’t respond. They’re city-bred weaklings who didn't play a sport and have never been in a fight in their entire lives. Their mothers made excuses for them when they threw tantrums and spent way too much time praising them during toilet training.

Say what you will about Miss Coulter, she understands cause, effect, and reinforcement. Bad behavior that goes unpunished will increase.

In the early Seventies, an old sensei of mine, who was about the most peaceable person you’d ever meet, commented in similar fashion on the rising tide of public chaos. When I asked him how he could square his sentiments with his routine emphasis on nonviolent conflict resolution, he merely said “Many clenched fists have been raised. A clenched fist raised high must fall on someone. The rest is as God wills.”

As you can see, it stuck with me. A complementary nugget appears early in the Illuminatus! trilogy, from the mouth of Hagbard Celine: “If there were more bloody noses, there’d be fewer wars.”

The later the stick of punishment is applied to bad behavior, the more harshly it must be wielded to achieve the desired effect.

Bad behavior must be punished. The Left’s decision to use harassment and intimidation against conservatives and Republicans is about as bad as behavior gets without becoming legally actionable. Up to now, it’s met no significant degree of punishment. Therefore, as it’s getting its practitioners some of what they want (including a shameful degree of satisfaction), it will increase.

If it increases past a certain level, it will trigger lethal violence. People will die:

There’s really nowhere else for the liberals to go but towards embracing widespread violence. The logic of their twisted mindset is such that Normals are not merely wrong and not merely evil, but that normal Americans and those who represent them are the evilest evildoers in evil history.
This does not leave much room for reasoned debate. In fact, it makes reasoned debate impossible. So, since they’ve taken reasoned debate off the table, there are not a lot of options left for resolving political and cultural differences. There are lies, intimidation, and violence. That’s about it. And the first two have stopped working.

Colonel Schlichter knows whereof he speaks. If we don’t want that point to arrive – and I certainly don’t – I submit that the time to administer punishment is upon us.

The key to the thing, once again, is in the Left’s characterization of normal Americans as either stupid or evil. As time has passed, their preference has been revealed: to gain the ends they seek, they need to see us as evil. They mean well; we don’t. That’s where their “analysis” ends.

There’s no reasoning with one who considers you evil. There’s certainly no compromising with him. He’s out to destroy you. He’ll take whatever opportunity you offer to slip the dirk between your fourth and fifth ribs and twist it. Nor is there any way for you to convince him that you’re not evil. He assumes a priori that everything you say is ultimately aimed at his destruction.

At that point it becomes war to the knife.

We haven’t yet seen violence with actual casualties. But we will.

I know these are somber thoughts. I dislike them as much as any of my Gentle Readers. But the evidence leads in this direction and no other. The decisions that remain are purely tactical.

Our objective should be clear: We want it to stop. We should waste absolutely no effort on convincing our foes that we’re not evil. We should not imagine even for a moment that any gesture of conciliation or compromise would get them to calm down and return to normal discourse. They’ve abandoned discourse and have chosen destruction.

The current preponderance of political sentiment in our favor is essentially irrelevant. Mobilized, violent minorities have captured polities in the past. Indeed, the Twentieth Century speaks of several such. We face such a minority today.

All we can do is punish them. Therefore, punish them we must. All else – times, places, methods, and limits – will be determined by circumstances.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Quickies: An Abhorrence Cascade

Have a few links to set the tone:

Combine those with the increasing number of commentators opining that we’re already in “a soft civil war.” Very few civil wars stay “soft.” It’s all too likely that a violent incident will turn this one “hard.”

We’ve all heard about preference cascades. What’s occurring in the U.S. at this time is a preference cascade of an ugly sort. Increasing numbers of left-inclined Americans have discovered the pleasures of harassing unresisting political adversaries. To this point, their targets have not fought back. That will encourage others of left-liberal inclinations to take up this new pastime...which will make it ever more likely that someone they’ve targeted will pull a weapon and mete out some rough justice.

The real, in-the-flesh world is not Twitter. Actions can have consequences here. And those consequences can be dire, especially among peaceably inclined Americans who’ve decided that they’ve reached their limits. But the brainless Left, which glories in violence, will not draw the moral until blood has been spilled.

Up to this point, the major media have acted as enablers of the Left’s harassment tactics. How will they treat the arrival of the lit match at the powder keg? Will any of their luminaries accept even a scintilla of responsibility? Your guess is as good as mine.

I’d thought that once AntiFa had been compelled to pull in its horns, we might return to our usual state of nervousness. I was wrong. The eruption of lethal violence is essentially foreordained at this point. The only question that remains to be answered is which side will strike the first blows. Whatever the case, I’m done writing about it.

Take Ol’ Remus’s advice to heart:

Prepare. Stay away from crowds. Be alert.

To which I will add my favorite bit of wisdom from the great Niccolo de Macchiavelli:

Before all else, be armed.

Monday, June 25, 2018

Ultra-Quickies: An Important Bit Of Opinion

Concerning the recent harassment aimed at Sarah Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, and other conservatives and Republicans when in public places:

     [I]f this is the new normal then there sadly isn’t much recourse available beyond fighting fire with fire. In the past, when political speech has gone beyond acceptable, legal boundaries, it’s almost never been met in kind. When the Tea Party held rallies where they obtained permits and stayed within designated marching routes or gathering areas, the Black Lives Matter movement closed down highways and airports or organized “black brunch” where businesses were closed down. When the right gathers petitions to not have a statue of Lenin in the public square, the left simply goes and tears down symbols they don’t like. And now we’re at the point where government officials must be hounded out of public spaces when they are off the clock?
     This isn’t going to end unless there is an actual incentive for it to end. And the media isn’t going to supply that incentive since most of those folks either openly support social warfare or convey signals that they privately do. In the months which have passed since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the accepted rules of engagement have been thrown out the window and if you want that to stop you’re going to have to answer in kind. As I was saying on Twitter this weekend, the day is coming when the Democrats are going to take back the White House and one or both chambers of Congress. It may not be immediately, but it absolutely will happen sooner or later.
     Nobody is going to get the message until Democrats and liberals find out that they don’t get a free pass to behave in this fashion and go unanswered. The next Democratic president should have impeachment discussions awaiting them when they get back from their inaugural balls. And while the media won’t do the work, the same number of Freedom of Information acts should be flooding every department in the executive branch and the offices of every Democratic congressman and Senator, just as they have since Trump took office.
     [Jazz Shaw, If “Social Warfare” Is The New Norm, Conservatives Will Be Forced To Play The Game]

This is unfortunately beyond any possibility of refutation. Gandhi could use nonviolent resistance because the British colonial authorities would not go to the extreme required to deter it. The American Left has tasted blood. It will not be deterred by anything short of a massive counterstrike: both on the Left’s harassers and on its own public figures.

It's an Old Crime, But...

...the thugs have not yet been indicted. A new look at some old garbage.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. I'd like to see Trump's people in Justice target these guys with some indictments. If they do, they might shake loose some very interesting revelations. The twists, double-fakeouts, and meandering, undercover plotting make Watergate look like a 3rd grader's scheme.

And, like Watergate, it's all too unbelievable to make a good story.

A different slant on the IG report, one that twists the Justice Dept. - and Mueller - into knots from which they cannot escape.

And, finally, a framework (so to speak) that puts the entire caper in perspective.

This activity might be behind Strzok's removal under guard.

Is this the root of the Deep State, or it there more? (I'm betting a LOT more). Remember that name - Henry J. Kerner. I have a feeling it will crop up again - and again.

This is gonna be a LONG HAUL - a lengthy, dirty, nasty push to eliminate these inbred, rat-f***ing weasels from their cushy underground lairs. It's going to take grit, stamina, and the willingness to endure having a lot of cr@p thrown at the guys who take on the task.

I say guys, because, let's be honest, that's who will do most of the work. In the video below, look at the aftermath of the explosion that happens early in the video - that's MEN who respond, instinctively, heading INTO danger, rather than away (as any sensible person would do).

That's what MEN do. It's why I love the Die Hard films - because they are an homage to raw manliness. Bruce Willis isn't that big (neither unusually tall nor exceptionally muscular). He isn't unusually smart, although he has a quick intelligence and is street smart. But, he takes on whatever comes his way, and never, ever, gives up.

That's a man.

Be that man.

An Infectious Malady Of The Mind

As he so often does, Thales / Dystopic / “Our mystery guest is salaried and deals in a service” has diagnosed an important aspect of our sociocultural milieu:

     Deep down, many people in the West feel guilty. We live comfortable lives, we have plentiful wealth. Few in the history of man have possessed such plenty. I cannot speak for everyone, but at least for myself, there are times I look at what I have and think that I do not deserve it. Greater minds than I have done things for civilization that I could only dream of doing, and possessed far less.
     Our problems are often laughable. Listen to any conversation where people are complaining about this and that. The complaints are small-minded. Perhaps someone is having trouble with love or sex, another complains that his car has broken down, or perhaps his toilet will not work. Another complains of crushing debt from his state-of-the-art smartphone, sitting in his brand-new vehicle. The Internet is slow today, or the air-conditioning unit has broken down again.
     With the exception of love and sex, perpetual problems for the race of man, these are not problems in any historical sense of the word, not even for many of the poorest among us. Such things are small, and deep down most of us know that. Problems we face are preferable to the problems of our ancestors, for whom food was difficult to obtain, work was brutal, and life short and filled with pain.

When compared either to their ancestors or to those in the ~~shitholes~~ developing countries, Americans do have it easy. Even those of us who work at physically demanding jobs get to go home and rest at the end of their shift. We live well. We eat and drink well. We have comfortable homes. We partake of innumerable forms of entertainment and diversion. Our medicine has relieved by far the greater part of the ills flesh is heir to. Except for the skim of America that was once called “bums” and now enjoys the sobriquet of “homeless,” we know a very pleasant existence.

At some deep level in our minds, we’re aware that the overwhelming majority of Mankind, past and present, has had it a lot rougher. It makes the conviction that we’ve earned what we have more difficult to sustain than it would otherwise be. That provides a nice inroad for the merchants of politicized guilt.

There’s a passage from Atlas Shrugged that bears on this:

“The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics’ Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort.. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden? Would you dare to claim that the size of your paycheck was created solely by your physical labor, and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden.”

Our society’s accumulated knowledge and capital plant make our standard of living possible. The knowledge exists because inquirers before us developed, systematized, and recorded it. The capital plant exists because innovators before us developed productivity-enhancing machines and visionaries invested in their conceptions. A properly modest man, aware of the critical importance of the insight, vision, and enterprise of those who’ve gone before him, would concede the point John Galt makes above.

Yet he would still be entitled by right to 100% of what he had earned. He would have no just cause to feel guilt about it.

Comparisons to the lot of others, leavened with the old maxim that “There but for the grace of God go I,” fuels the charitable impulse. This is good, worthy, and up to a point to be encouraged. (See this recent emission.) One who has been born in the United States, or in any other First World nation, has been blessed by chance. He obviously didn’t choose his place of birth. Neither can he claim credit for its accumulations of intellectual and physical capital. But he cannot be blamed for them either...nor, be it said in boldface, for the rapacity and cruelty that have characterized the poorer nations and kept them from advancing to our state.

There’s no way a society can advance if its political class seizes and squanders the greater part of its produce. That, and that alone, has caused more than 90% of the poverty and squalor to which Mankind is subject. As well ask a farmer to grow a crop on a glacier.

Americans did not fasten the political parasites of the poor nations upon them. A modest amount of blame attaches to the colonial European nations, but not for colonialism itself. The colonial governments of today’s “Third World” nations were, with a few exceptions, evenhanded and just. However, those governments unwisely – ironically, in the usual case because of unearned guilt – abdicated their guardianship of their colonies, which were then taken over by thugs and thieves. Africa provides a multitude of demonstrations.

There’s no good argument for feeling guilt over something that lies beyond one’s control. As there’s no way to bestow the blessings of an advanced society on one hagridden by political oppression, thuggery, and systematized theft, we of the First World have no reason to feel guilt over what we have and they don’t.

Ignore the prattling about “white privilege,” the nonsense claims about “fairness” and “accidents of birth,” and the pseudo-gospels about the “obligation” to share our wealth. What you have earned by your honest efforts is yours by right. Anyone who presumes to tell you otherwise is trying to stick his hand into your pocket.

Ultra-Quickies: Bringing A Match To The Powder Keg

The Dishonorable Maxine Waters just might have done that very thing:

     “Already, you have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants,” she continued as the crowd erupted, “who have protesters taking up at their house, who say, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep,'” she continued.
     “And guess what,” she predicted, “we’re going to win this battle because while you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don’t know the Bible.
     “God is on OUR side!” she declared, as the crowd went wild. “On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable.”
     “And so, let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she yelled.

There’s your documentary evidence. I’ve downloaded a copy of the video to ensure that it won’t mysteriously vanish.

It’s time to give them better than they’re serving up, Gentle Readers.

Defensive NATO?

Ha.

During his meeting with NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, in Rome, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte pointed out the “centrality of the Enlarged Mediterranean for European security”, now threatened by the “arc of instability stretching from the Mediterranean to the Middle East”. Which is why it is important for NATO, an alliance under US command, which Conte describes as the “pillar of interior and international security”. This is a complete inversion of reality.
It is the foundation of USA / NATO strategy which in fact provoked the “arc of instability” with its two wars against Iraq, the two other wars which demolished the states of Yugoslavia and Libya, and the war aimed at demolishing the state of Syria.^[1]

I’m no fan of Islamic or African culture but the insufferable U.S. and European urge to remake every damn thing under the sun drives me up the wall. A simple alternative to this arrogance would be to let other nations handle their affairs without interference and Western preaching. Those nations then keep their populations at home, whether voluntarily or because of vigorous efforts sealing off Western nations. We do business with them but do not import foreigners to destroy our homelands.

Plan A, of course, is this arrogant remaking of tribal and Islamic societies with absolutely no clue as to likely consequences after which, when chaos and terror take root, we transform our own nations with millions of unassimilable and hostile foreigners whose nations we have trashed. Jeebus. This makes sense to the brilliant minds at the Council of Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, NATO, National Security Council, and the New York Times. This is the phenomenon of obtuseness. Two alternatives present themselves. One obviously sensible. The other obviously lunatic. Which one do Western leaders choose every bleeping time without fail 24/7 and twice on leap year? Correct! They choose the lunatic option.

Notes
^[1] "The Circuit of Death in the “Enlarged Mediterranean” (Video)." By Manlio Dinucci, South Front, 6/22/18 (author’s emphasis removed; my emphasis added).

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Bats And Balls

Humorist P. J. O’Rourke has called liberalism “the philosophy of sniveling brats.” No doubt he had in mind the gimme mentality that’s prevalent among them, married to their tendency to whine, stamp their feet, and shout “It’s not fair!” when they don’t get whatever they’re currently demanding: “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to take my bat and ball and go home.” And indeed, that was an adequate characterization for the Eighties and Nineties: arguably as accurate as any precis of a “philosophy of governance” that has no intellectual underpinnings could be.

Today, the “sniveling brats” have graduated to a new stance: “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to take your bat and ball and go home:”

This is a phenomenon we have seen repeatedly over the last year and a half. Liberals try to rule any support for President Trump out of bounds. Anyone who expresses even the mildest support for Trump is read out of polite society. He is shunned; he should be fired from his job; if he writes anything, it shouldn’t be printed; he is publicly denounced and inundated with hate; his home, in some instances, is besieged and his children terrorized. If he ventures out into public, he is harassed by bullies. This is the essence of 21st century liberalism.
And it is evil. It is incompatible with democracy or any kind of civil society. And, above all, it is completely crazy. After all, Donald Trump won the election. Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Liberals are trying to dictate, through mob rule and control over the press, that any support for the President of the United States is unacceptable and, if at all possible, career ending.

John Hinderaker calls this “crazy and evil.” I concur on the “evil” portion, but I can’t see the Left’s behavior as “crazy.” It’s steadily getting them at least some of the things they want: concurrence from a good part of their “base,” obeisance from the major media, and a scattering of conciliatory gestures from the GOP, especially the “NeverTrump” portion thereof. As the old Army saying goes, “If it’s crazy and it works, it ain’t crazy.”

Note how solidly the Left-inclined have cheered for Red Hen’s expulsion of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family. Note how broadly they’ve approved of the ongoing harassment of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Note how unabashed TIME has been about its fraudulent magazine cover. There was one miscreant on Twitter who opined that “fascists” – and you know who he had in mind, don’t you, Gentle Reader? – should be afraid to step outdoors:

A few folks with significant influence are finally catching up with me:

“I think we’re at the beginning of a soft civil war,” political scientist Thomas Schaller told Bloomberg’s Francis Wilkinson. “I don’t know if the country gets out of it whole.”

I wonder what it took to get his attention? Some of us in the Right have been on this story for quite a while:

     It’s becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.
     Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.
     Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.
     That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind.

Kurt Schlichter wrote the above in April of 2015. He foresaw a swifter and more dramatic response from the Right than has emerged to this point. I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer.

Leftists believe that they can get away with these “one rule for me, another for you” tactics indefinitely. They believe it because up to now they’ve garnered the results they’ve sought, at least in part, with a perceptible shortage of consequences unfavorable to them. That’s about to change. Gatherings of conservatives, free-speech rallies, and talks by Rightist and nationalist luminaries are being equipped with security -- armed security. Police forces in left-wing-governed cities are being put on notice that if they don’t maintain public order under those circumstances, it will be done for them, and be damned to the consequences.

I didn’t want to live long enough to see the blood of Americans running in the gutters. It appears I’ll have no choice.

Union Pacific (2016)

Un-progressivism.

Progressives, leftists, reformers, communists, and socialists proceed on the assumption that they have unique insight, insight that is magisterially informed by their boundless humanity and insight into the human condition. They have savoir faire. They know how to make human life better in a way that earlier ignorant schlubs, greedy capitalists, and aristocratic parasites didn’t. Ergo, they make plans for humans, whether they want them or not. Progressives are enlightened, therefore everyone else needs to toe the line and submit to wonderfulness.

Contrary to this nice fairy tale is this rather stark assessment of what it is that humans can know and predict about the world:

My 2 cents on the subject; Humans are nothing more than manifestations of the universe, just like squirrels, rocks, trees and a billion other thing that "exist". We will act out our nature and then we will disappear. The idea that we can change our nature or direct or control our course is a joke. We have no idea what we are doing, no idea what the consequences of our actions are and no ability to judge whether what we are doing is "good" or "bad". It is arrogant to take the tiny strip of knowledge that we have and extrapolate that into presumptions like "we need to do that or stop doing this".
A human looking out over the world and concluding what "should be" is like a chimpanzee trying to comprehend and diagnose a Ferrari. Whether or not YOU worry about the world it's going to do what it does as it has for billions of years longer than man has existed and probably will for billions more after we are gone.^[1]

Socialists and statists who think they know how they can tear everything down and put it back together again with the flick of a wrist have always failed. Each new zealot attempting to try it again just this one more time ought to keep that image firmly in mind, that of the chimpanzee contemplating a Ferrari.

Notes
^[1] Comment by brushhog on "The End Of Growth.” By Chris Martenson, ZeroHedge, 6/23/18.

Saturday, June 23, 2018

The Report on the IRS Abuses

Ho-boy.

This is a MAJOR whitewash of the charges against the IRS. For example:

...the Subcommittee investigation found no evidence of IRS political bias in selecting 501(c)(4) applications for heightened review, as distinguished from using poor judgment in crafting the selection criteria.

I believe that the only acceptable response to that is:

AYFKM?

For the record, this is the comparison of Conservative vs. Liberal groups (NPR report):

In all, 282 conservative groups were on the IRS list, about two-thirds of the total number of groups that got additional scrutiny.

The list also has 67 progressive organizations (16 percent of the total) and 21 nonpartisan civic groups, including three League of Women Voters chapters.

USA Today agrees.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months.

Did the process of approval slow down for Progressive/Leftist groups - sure, a few had increased scrutiny. But not most. And none for as long.

Flores complained to the IRS last year after the Waco Tea Party's tax-exempt application was mired in red tape. The IRS asked the group for information that was "overreaching and impossible to comply with," Flores said: Transcripts of radio interviews, copies of social media posts and details on "close relationships" with political candidates.

The report of this was difficult, and - in part - flawed. The IRS withheld information from the investigators.

the Subcommittee was not permitted to review the actual 501(c)(4) applications selected by the IRS for heightened scrutiny and was also, at times, unable to determine how certain applications were finally resolved.

Kinda hard to get to the bottom of this abuse of power when the head of the section refuses to cooperate.

When the Subcommittee later requested an interview to examine her role in the 501(c)(4) review process, Ms. Lerner asserted her rights under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution not to answer questions. The requested interview did not take place. For that reason, the Subcommittee’s investigation was unable to obtain Ms. Lerner’s testimony about key events, and its investigative results do not reflect any information she might have provided through interviews.

There's more - a lot more, but it's late and I'm tired.

This $h!t is Getting REAL!

The Left is getting more unhinged every day.

I'm used to celebrities screaming obscenities at Non-Leftist politicians. I'm used to them threatening to kill them - heck, a few of them even attempt it.

Some of them seriously.

But, this?

And this? That wimpy-ass 'apology'? NOT good enough. Not nearly.

Threatening minors, because of who they are related to?

The Secret Service needs to get on this, putting a few of them in jail for a few days, until they get their little attitude straightened out.

AND, their employers need to come down on them as hard as Roseanne's boss's did.

Or, harder. This isn't just an insult that a MATURE person would have answered with:

Consider the source.

No - they are threatening DEATH, RAPE, and ASSAULT. Against minors and women.

Cowards.

Ultra-Quickies: When Only One Side Is Fighting, The Outcome Is Preordained

I have a trademarked Fortress of Crankitude Day From Hell^® before me, so for the moment I’m going to leave you with a few links and a very brief summation:

Forces foreign and domestic have allied openly in a campaign to subvert, invade, and destroy the United States. They no longer conceal their premise: The U.S. and its laws, including its Constitution, and anyone who defends it, must be destroyed by any means necessary. Yet many in the Right persist in maintaining that “courtesy” and “propriety” are more important than fighting back in an effective fashion.

Courtesy and propriety are of no use to the dead.

Verbum sat sapienti.

Disconnect.

People are right to be deeply disturbed by the ways in which the main narrative of their culture no longer maps to reality.

Main narrative = rationality, truth, constitutional government, majority rights, consent of the governed, civilization, family, innovation, productivity, self-preservation.

Reality = leftist delusion; lies; worship of totalitarian, arbitrary government; worship of minorities and foreigners; a revival of feudal rule; third-world transformation; enshrined deviancy; government manipulation; fiscal and monetary debasement; meek, unexplained surrender to savagery.

The president has the power to put troops on the border tomorrow but does not. Instead – deer in the headlights like – he gets caught up in a manufactured “crisis” of children being separated through no fault of the federal government but rather through the fault of the parents (or “parents”) of the children. Building a wall was his signature theme in the his campaign, yet he signed an appropriation act that essentially had nothing in it to fund that wall. This he did to ensure that our military obtain more money. Money to provide security for (or take it away from) foreigners thousands and thousands of miles from any border of ours that needs military protection.

It’s all song and dance about vaporous [nonsense] and the citizen still sees, day after day, tax money and funny money sluicing out to the dregs of society and foreign wars that secure or advance no observable interests of the people.

The seditious foreigner and the parasitic, rejectionist minority (and AntiFa auxiliaries) are the new aristocracy (or, perhaps more accurately, the new favored Janissaries) and Washington politicians get and hold power by licking the boots of the wealthy.

Billion-dollar MSM channels are nothing but a source of leftist glorification of the inundation of white people, race mixing, and the homosexual agenda. Anarcho-tyranny is the standing order of the day for all government officials with the exception of various Sheriff Arpaios and Judge Moores.

If the normal, white citizen isn’t deeply depressed or choking with barely-suppressed rage, he or she just isn’t paying attention. Those who do pay attention will not forever accept this wholesale attack on everything they value. Until that time, we live in a time of profound decay, cowardice, and treason.

"The End Of Growth.” By Chris Martenson, ZeroHedge, 6/23/18.

The “new” threat.

“New,” that is, if you’ve been in a coma for 60 years. It got started a long time before the end of the Soviet Union.

Since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has grown apparent that the existential threat to the West comes not from Czar Vladimir’s Russian divisions returning to the Elbe.
The existential threat came from the south.
Half a century ago, Houari Boumedienne, the leader of a poor but militant Algeria, allegedly proclaimed at the United Nations:
“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.”^[1]

The same idea has been attributed to the late Moamar Gaddafi. Timeless and horribly accurate in either event. Amazing to think that Westerners just sit there sucking their thumbs while their replacement races and cultures breed profligately right here in River City, some with multiple wives and families financed by host nation taxpayers. Self abasement just doesn’t begin to cover the waterfront here.

If some human being has a brown or black skin then, when some kind of decision needs to be made about what to do about such a person, white people's brains just effing fly out the window.

Or does the preservation of Western nations and peoples require measures from which liberal societies today reflexively recoil?^[2]

As someone else said but I repeat endlessly, the solution to problems caused by liberalism are illiberal solutions. And here we sit at this very hour, scared of our shadow and terrified to lay responsibility for anything pertaining to foreign children on their foreign parents (or bogus parents). Adults who dragged their children along on a 1,200-mile journey through Mexico to tell us lies and suck up our charity get a complete pass and we flagellate ourselves over children humanely separated from their “parents” and cared for in a responsible manner while the illegality of the parents’ behavior is sorted out.

Gigantic light bulb here: if the parents and children are upset over, surprise, separation, the parents can stay at home or seek “asylum” in Mexico. No separation at home or in Mexico. So can we say to ourselves that the "separation" is entirely on the parents?

Not in the mewling, pussified America of today.

Notes
^[1] "Pat Buchanan Asks 'Has The West The Will To Survive?'" By Pat Buchanan, ZeroHedge, 6/22/18 (formatting removed).
^[2] "Id.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Immigration Follies

The Z Man makes a lot of sense here.

The start of the 'child' detention problems. Amazingly, Ed Asner seems to figure in it, as his housekeeper had a child named as part of the suit.

So, now that Trump has reversed the policy that separated children from the adult(s) accompanying them, are the Progressives FINALLY happy?

Don't be ridiculous!

Because now the kids have to stay in the detention facilities with the parents. in other words, this is NOT going be a reboot of Catch & Release.

Expect an immediate reaction from the Democrat-supporting lower Federal Court judges. Can't have those nasty non-Leftists thinking they can defy the Permanent Leftist Government!

Fatigue Plus

If you’re my age or not far from it, you might remember a phrase prominent in the political rhetoric of the Eighties and Nineties: compassion fatigue. It was advanced by various commentators – overwhelmingly on the Left, of course – to “explain” why Americans appeared to be turning away from the welfarism of the Democrats and back to an embrace of capitalism without guilt. We were simply worn out from “caring.” We needed a break from the troubles of largely faceless others, supposedly so we could concentrate on things nearer and dearer to us personally. But we’d be back to “caring” soon enough: after the Reagan Aberration and the Republican Revolt were sufficiently far behind us.

I found the argument curious then. I find it ludicrous today.

About twenty years ago, I donned my Adam Smith hat and set forth my own thinking about “compassion,” real and imaginary:

The Circle Of Care
     I came of age in the Sixties, a time when America was gradually being turned upside down. And that having been said, I'll spare you any soliloquy about the Sixties. It's the upside-down part that matters.
     I don't recall exactly when I learned about the duty of charity toward the less fortunate, but it was probably in my Catholic grammar school. The nuns were quite insistent about the obligation to help one's fellow man, when he was in genuine need. Every classroom had a "poor box," filled by contributions from the students. Its contents were periodically totaled and used for some charitable undertaking -- and I don't mean buying a color television for a family that didn't yet have one, or dragging a "homeless" man into a government-run shelter; I mean providing food or clothing for a struggling family that hadn't quite managed to make ends meet that month. Blauvelt parish, a blue-collar sector of Rockland County, New York, always had a few such.
     A lot of things come to mind about that poor box and its uses, but none so strongly as this: no one ever suggested that the money be sent far away, to people none of us knew personally. It was to be employed right there, in Blauvelt parish, among the people we knew. This was so obvious, so fundamental to the concept of charity, that the contrary idea was never considered.
     "Charity" derives from the Latin word "caritas," the concern for others that springs from personal connection. A related word of Greek derivation is "sympathy," the ability to "feel with" another person. These are not relations one can truly have with faceless and nameless strangers at a distance.
     True charity requires proximity, for at least two reasons. First, the necessary personal connection, the sense that one is helping one's own, fails at any great remove. Second, human fallibility and weakness guarantee that, just as some will fail to prosper on their own, others will fail to employ charity properly; indeed, to receive money from others sometimes makes one's troubles worse. When this occurs, the giver must give no further, for other measures -- criticism, instruction, discipline -- are clearly indicated. With any separation between the benefactor and his beneficiary, it becomes impossible to know whether help helps in fact, or only in theory and intention.
     Compare this ancient, common-sense approach to charity, preserved and perpetuated by all the great religious institutions of Man, to the modern concept. Today, our media would have us believe that charity is about voting for tax-funded, government-administered programs to redistribute our income to others we don't know. Some of the supposed beneficiaries are in far places where America and Americans are routinely vilified for their prosperity and derided for their generosity. Whatever rules modern charity observes are determined and enforced by salaried bureaucrats who pay no costs for any mistake. Volunteers and private institutions that attempt to take a role are tolerated, but distrusted. The apostles of modern charity would prefer that all of it be under the watchful eye of government monitors, to insure that no misleading messages about the importance of sobriety, continence, or self-reliance are packaged with the gifts.
     Obviously, there's been some change to the concept. I'd like to leave aside the political implications of this change for a moment and concentrate on the inversion of the circle of care.
     If proximity was regarded as the most important of the requirements of the old concept, it is considered no better than optional under the new one, and quite possibly a detriment. If personal concern, for both the bodies and the souls of others of one's direct acquaintance, was the fuel for the charity of old, the motive power of the new charity is rules: rules that direct the bureaucrat to shower largesse without regard for its actual effects, and rules that punish the citizen brutally if he attempts to avoid "contributing."
     The new concept of charity first rose over the old one in the late Sixties, when the American welfare state began its explosive growth. In the years since then, we've seen many other things explode as well: crime, vice, filth in the streets, and social pathologies such as fatherlessness and illegitimacy whose effects have eclipsed even the darkest predictions.
     Meanwhile, law-abiding, self-supporting Americans of the cities, they who are mulcted for the funds that support the new charity, have been drawing in upon themselves, isolating themselves as best they can from the madness that surges around them. Their circles of care have contracted to hold only themselves and their immediate families.
     Count Leo Tolstoy once spent a night wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, giving to the poor whom he encountered until his pockets were empty and his energy was spent. At the end of his sojourn, those to whom he'd given were a little better off for a short time, but he knew and admitted that he'd made no lasting difference in their lives, that as soon as they'd exhausted the night's benison, the darkness would return. He concluded that one should act with love toward those whom God has placed in his path, rather than to ride forth and scatter his substance widely and without regard for efficacy.
     Who are the needy whom God has placed in our path? Are they not our family members, neighbors and friends? Is it not these whom our circle of care should encompass?

I still feel that way. Indeed, I’m ever more convinced that the politicization of “compassion” has transformed what was once a virtue into a vice: a way to feel virtuous without actually doing the work, and a way to feel superior to others who hold dissenting opinions.

Yes, there was a lot of fatigue over it...but not because Americans had ceased to “care,” however that might be interpreted.

I see my function – no, it wasn’t assigned to me by some authority – as noting the patterns and parallels others don’t deign to mention. One of the patterns most notable in contemporary American life is how the gulf between Left and Right manifests in the distribution of our attention. This isn’t a new topic, even here at Liberty’s Torch. However, an uber-pattern of importance has gone largely undiscussed. I’ve come to see it as critically important: certainly important enough to break out the large font:

Every one of the Left’s tactics induces fatigue in those at whom it’s aimed: we in the Right.

It might not have been planned that way by a gathering of Leftist strategists huddled over a guttering candle. (Actually, I’d prefer to think that it was.) Yet the pattern is strong: the use of endless, mindless repetition and the vilification, not only of prominent public figures but of those of us who dare to have opinions that diverge from the Left, induces a terrible weariness in everyone on the receiving end. The principal response to deep weariness is to absent oneself, to find a retreat in which one will be free of the wearying influence.

In the matter of political engagement, that means a retreat from politics.

One of the open secrets about the American electorate is how fundamentally conservative it is. The great majority of us aren’t political activists in any sense. We merely want to be left alone to labor over our own vines and fig trees, where “none shall make me afraid.” But that majority went largely unnoticed in the years between the Reagan Administration and the election of Donald Trump.

A fundamental virtue of a regime of limited government is that it makes it possible for the average Joe to ignore the State most of the time. When governments burst their bonds and begin to intrude into every area of human life and enterprise, this is no longer possible. The private citizen is compelled, for the sake of his life, liberty, and bank balance, to be aware of the State, in whichever form it’s relevant, regardless of what he’s doing or contemplating. And that is supremely wearying.

It’s natural for the citizen so State-ridden to “pull in his horns:” to shrink his circles of activity and sociality to the point where the State is unlikely to notice him. In a sense it’s a survival response, as allowing one’s energies to be sapped by engagement with a parasitical force one cannot negotiate with, much less control, reduces the resources available to cope with more immediate needs.

I suspect that the commonplace “they’re all thieves so why bother?” representations of the politically disengaged are largely cosmetic, donned to conceal a deep weariness that it would embarrass them to express. I further suspect that that weariness is one of the goals of the political Establishment, predominantly on the Left but with a growing component among prominent supposed conservatives as well.

Time was, I believed that the attitude toward popular engagement with the political system went as follows:

The Democrats seek a high degree of engagement, from the belief that their positions are the more popular.
The Republicans seek a low degree of engagement, from the belief that their positions are the less popular.
However, if the Democrats expect the turnout to be low, they’ll work to lower it still further, because the cohorts that most reliably vote are its mascots: e.g., government workers, union members, and welfare state clients.

The developments of recent decades have caused me to revise those opinions:

Non-Establishment Republicans, knowing that the country is fundamentally conservative, want a high turnout, especially in the “heartland” states typically disdained by the Democrats and their media allies.
The Democrats would prefer to depress “heartland” turnout, which would raise the profile and the power of the coastal regions where its mascots are numerous and its media allies are influential.
The political Establishment, regardless of party, would prefer that only its allegiants and hangers-on be politically alert and engaged. That way lies the indefinite perpetuation of its power, prestige, and perquisites.

For group 1 in the revised enumeration, an energized citizenry that welcomes political engagement is critical. For groups 2 and 3, inducing political fatigue in the electorate would appear to be a potent strategy.

I could go on from here in several directions. I could note the sameness of the nightly news broadcasts, which repeat the same stories night after night and routinely privilege the positions and statements of the Left. I could note the world-weary attitudes and soporific styles of the most prominent “conservative” commentators, nearly all of whom remain NeverTrump diehards who’d rather drink hemlock than allow that the president is amassing a formidable list of achievements. (I could also note the old “joke” definition of “conservative:” “One who never wants anything to be done for the first time.”) But I trust my Gentle Readers’ intelligence will make that unnecessary.

I don’t have a detailed prescription for how best to resist induced political fatigue. An important component of the strategy might be to pay less attention to the news – not zero, but sufficiently less that its mind-numbing effects fall to a level one can easily resist. Another component might be to allocate a greater share of one’s attention to local affairs, for it’s the government nearest to you that has the greatest likelihood of (and propensity for) doing you harm. We who prattle about the need for term limits on federal offices – highly desirable, to be sure, but impossible without a Constitutional amendment – seldom take note of the lifelong careers local politicians spend in town, county, and state offices, whether elective or appointive.

In any event, let’s contrive to remain energized. If it means turning off the television and spending less time at the computer, so be it. Don’t let “them” weary us out of our freedom.