Josh Billings Was Right

     What’s that you say? Who the BLEEP! was Josh Billings? Why, none other than the man who first said this:

     “It’s better not to know so much than to know so many things that aren’t so.”

     I’ve heard that statement attributed to every historical figure from Ronald Reagan to Attila the Hun. You might have done so yourself. But you probably consider yourself educated.

     Here’s another one for you:

     “Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

     I’ve heard that multiply misattributed, too. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as I’m reasonably sure Goethe would agree. The sentiment is what counts...which makes the abysmal ignorance of so many arrogant “educated people” as ironic as it is terrifying.

     Charlie Martin provides a case for us today:

     I recently had a little argument that started with someone — no, I'm not going to say who, except to say a respected scientist who may have been in Boulder too long — announced that if people really knew how meat was produced, they'd think twice about eating it.

     That struck me both arrogant and odd. I grew up on a cattle ranch; later in life, I cut meat for money. I'm pretty clear on the process from bull covering cow, to bull calf, to steer, to feedlot, to abattoir, to butcher. So my immediate reaction was "heh, city folks."

     My second reaction, almost as immediate, was to be annoyed.

     The truth is that the people who actually do know from childhood how meat is produced are the least likely to have qualms about it. It's the people who grow up thinking meat comes from the meat factory on a styrofoam tray, already wrapped in cling film, who never thought about the connection between steer on the hoof and steak on the table.

     In one sense it’s merely a manifestation of the “coastal bubble:” the deep divide that separates the coastal-urban “elites” from “heartland America.” There is some crossover, but the divide is more real than not – and it manifests itself in important socioeconomic and political attitudes more vividly than in any other venue.

     I’m a product of the coasts. I’ve lived in New York State, and close to New York City, my whole life but for two years. However, owing to fortunate developments of which I will decline to speak, I’ve also had the advantage of exposure to the heartland. I’ve made use of it now and then in fiction:

     As usual, she was up before him, but this time he found her in the kitchen, coffee made and mugs steaming at their respective places. She looked up as he entered and smiled.
     It was the radiant smile of the morning before, when she’d shown him the first visible sign of the life she’d nurtured, but it was more. It compounded discovery, triumph, love, and peace into a single visible expression of joy. He could hardly believe he was its object.
     He sat at his place and stretched out his hands. She took them in hers.
     “What now?” he murmured.
     She shrugged. “Breakfast, a quick shower, then I guess I’ll weed and water.”
     “Come on!”
     She leered. “Got something else in mind?”
     “Kate!”
     “From where I’m sitting, everything’s great, Allan. What’s got you so wound up?”
     “I might have impregnated you last night!”
     “You think I’m not aware of that? Farm girl, remember? Oh, excuse me, farm woman. I know what semen is for, Allan. I’ve inseminated cows.” She looked off briefly. “Now that’s really grotty. The bull semen comes in this turkey baster thing. You have to wear these long lubricated gloves, because one hand goes all the way up the cow’s—”
     “Kate!”
     She giggled little-girl naughtily.

     That’s from “Farm Girl,” a novella in my collection Romance A La Mode. Kate is modeled on a young woman I had the great good fortune to know and love when I was a young man: a mathematical genius who came from the “tall corn” of Kansas. She had a pronounced Kansas accent – yes, there is such a thing – that immediately marked her as not from the coasts. I sometimes think she deliberately exaggerated it to provoke a reaction – a reaction she would quickly and humorously crush. She refused to allow anyone to make derogatory assumptions about her, her home state, or its people.

     The left-liberal “#Resist” nonsense is essentially a manifestation of the “those ignorant hicks” attitude Charlie Martin has fingered. These self-nominated “elites” have decided that the only reason we aren’t allowing them uninterrupted and unbounded power over the rest of us is that we’re too stupid to know that it would be for the best. So they’re striving to reverse the results of a wholly legitimate election with false accusations – indeed, with accusations they know to be false — on the grounds that “it’s for your own good”...buttressed, of course, by their underlying assumption that “the end justifies the means.”

     No lie is quite as pernicious as a lie about moral principles. It’s infinitely more so when one is lying to oneself.

     Self-exaltation is bad enough: the famous capital sin of vanity. But the reason vanity is a capital sin is because it has a capital nature: i.e., a productive nature. It produces the sort of behavior we see from the Democrats and the NeverTrump Republicans determined to impede and ultimately destroy the Trump Administration.

     But you can’t tell any of the “elites” that. They’ll sniff you aside, dismiss you as “one of them:” an uneducated and unsophisticated hick. You probably went to a state college, if you went to college at all.

     These folks consider their origins, intellects, educations, and connections to be a skeleton key to the corridors of power. They refuse to acknowledge the appropriate limitations of power, because folks “as smart as we are” should be under no limitations whatsoever. Yet they are baffled by how and why a majority of Americans could reject them and the hegemony to which they’re so obviously entitled.

     I could go on. Perhaps I will at another time.

Partisanry

     I was about to start writing this piece, but was diverted by a call from my wife. She’s just been rear-ended on the highway. Back later.

     EXTREMELY LONG UPDATE: Well, that was bracing. Yes, Beth is okay, though her minivan will need some work. Thank you for your concern. (Great God in heaven, Long Island drivers are completely inept on anything but a perfectly straight, perfectly dry road!) Now where was I? Ah yes: partisanry.

     A partisan is a party loyalist: one who allows “his” party to guide his electoral decisions. There are degrees of partisanry, of course. We might call one who always does as his party directs an “absolute” partisan, one who usually goes with his party’s nominees a “strong” partisan, and one to whom the party’s choices are determinative only if no other criterion emerges a “weak” partisan. All of these positions can be observed in the people around us.

     But wait: this “his party” business can be semantically misleading. A partisan doesn’t “own” his party. Who does? Who actually decides on the party’s platform, nominees, and other decisions? Surely we should ask who guides the party in those matters, and according to what criteria. Shouldn’t we?

     The answer isn’t obvious.

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     Is there any sense in seeking the “owners” of a political party? An owner, in common parlance, is conceded rights over what he owns: excludability, times and methods of employment, ultimate disposition, and so forth. Does anyone have “rights” in a party, or to it, or over it? How does one become a party strategist, planner, manager, kingmaker? Who decides?

     A lot of voting and vote-like decision making occurs within a party organization, of course, but a fair number of important decisions are made by individuals as well – and not always because the individual in question has been accorded some kind of formal authority. So it isn’t all electoral in nature.

     Also, party behavior often seems to contradict itself. There have been numerous cases in the past few years when the seemingly powerful Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill went against the GOP’s platform in quite obvious ways. Nor was it always the case that “something more important” was clearly at stake.

     Clearly, if there are strategists, planners, managers, et cetera in the Republican Party, they’re not in perfect command of the party. Whatever authority they have isn’t absolute. It might be more than advisory, but it’s not unquestionable, nor can it be enforced as a government enforces its decrees. Whether the authority of the “top brass” in the Democrat Party is similar, I can’t be certain, though the evidence suggests it.

     There might be more guidance in the processes that govern a “colony organism:” i.e., an apparently unitary creature whose body includes much smaller organisms that have quasi-independent lives and exhibit some amount of “independent” behavior.

     Because we are conscious creatures, we have a concept of ourselves as unitary entities. However, we’re closer to being colonies of smaller symbiotic and commensal organisms: our many kinds of differentiated cells, plus the several varieties of bacteria and fungi that we must have inside us for our alimentary canals to work properly.

     Note that none of these smaller entities are aware of one another’s existence. “Our” cells aren’t aware that we’ve been “colonized” by bacteria that shares none of “our” DNA. Neither do the bacteria in our guts know about the “native” cells around them. Each does what it does for its own purposes. Sometimes they come into conflict. Sometimes they’re invaded by organisms that our bodily “zoning laws” can’t tolerate, and we get sick. In sum they allow us to do what we do: at some times well, at other times poorly.

     Political parties display some similarity to that model. Some of a party’s “cells” – call then the party’s central nervous system – have more overall influence than others on party behavior. As they’re human rather than microorganisms, they also have individual desires, fears, and convictions. They don’t serve the party in the blind fashion of a muscle cell or a digestive bacterium. And sometimes, when the party appears to have been invaded by something hostile to them – i.e., something that threatens their influence and stature within the party – they treat the invaders as a threat to the party at large.

     Consider in this light the behavior of Republican Party luminaries in response to the rise of Donald Trump. They’ve told us on many occasions that he’s a threat to the party itself. Perhaps they’re correct. But perhaps he’s really only a threat to them as high-status Republicans: strategists, planners, managers, et cetera. He says and does exactly as he pleases. He pays them no heed. If I thought myself to possess some sort of authority over the GOP – a sway that comes with personal prestige and the ability to influence the use of party funds, for example – I might react just as they have. It’s natural to want to protect one’s “rice bowl.”

     But of course, the strategists, planners, managers, et cetera. aren’t the only cells in this organism. There are also lots of digestive bacteria – the donors – and muscle cells – the activists and motivated voters. And they’re all conscious individuals with their own desires, fears, and convictions. So what the central nervous system wants to expel, the other cells just might want to retain...even if it must ultimately result in the expulsion of the central nervous system.

     Is this a perfect picture? Assuredly not. But as a model for thought, it has some relevance, and more than a little appeal.

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     In all probability, you’ve heard the following joke. Nevertheless, after the above, I feel it’s mandatory to close with it.

     When God made Man, all the parts of the body argued who should be boss.

     The brain explained that since he controlled everything already, he had the position de facto and this should be recognized de jure.

     The eyes countered that without them, the man would be helpless, so they should be boss.

     The hands said that without them, the man could do nothing, so they should be boss.

     The legs pointed out that as they carried the man wherever he wanted to go, they should be boss.

     The stomach countered with the explained criticism that as he digested all the food, he should be boss.

     Then the asshole applied for the job.

     All the other body parts laughed so hard that the asshole got mad and closed up.

     After a while, the legs got wobbly, the hands shook, the brain went foggy, the stomach threw up and the eyes became crossed and unable to see. They all conceded and made the asshole boss.

     Which all goes to show you: you needn't be a brain to be boss.

     Just an asshole.

     Have a nice day.

Privileges And Immunities

     Relax, Gentle Reader. This won’t be a seminar on the Fourteenth Amendment and why it embeds a phrase found nowhere else in the Constitution. No, today I’m thinking about privileged groups, the immunities they’ve acquired that others don’t share, and the general numbness to their privileged status.

     There are several such groups in Western society today. In these United States, the most important ones to know about in your daily struggles to cope are:

• Homosexuals,
• Negroes,
• Muslims,
• Women.

     The privileges these groups own confer considerable ability on their members to acquire benefits they don’t deserve. Their immunities allow them to avert punishment and general opprobrium they do deserve. Clearly, these are precious properties whose owners would hate to lose them. A great deal of time, money, and effort goes into retaining and increasing them.

     It’s unnecessary for me to go into great gouting detail about the specifics of each group’s privileges and immunities. Any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will already be familiar with them from reading the news if not from personal contact. No, the action for today is in the mechanisms that were used to acquire those properties, and continue to work to strengthen and enlarge them.

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     Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.... Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything." – Peter Drucker

     Drucker, a writer on business and commerce, had those subjects in mind when he wrote the above. However, the principle of concentration applies to every area of human endeavor. He who cannot or will not concentrate on a goal is unlikely to achieve it. This principle powers the inclination to specialize in some field, giving it the greater part of our time and energy. Note how few “Renaissance men” there are with seven-digit incomes.

     The acquisition of privileges and immunities is subject to the principle of concentration. If a group, however defined, is to acquire such, there must be a mechanism that focuses specifically on that goal, eschewing other considerations. Each privileged / immunized group named in the above possesses one or more such mechanisms. I call such a mechanism a mouthpiece group.

     A mouthpiece group serves to concentrate the time, money, and effort that goes toward securing and enlarging the privilege or immunity it addresses. In that effort, it:

• Solicits funding,
• Hires specialists,
• Builds social and political relationships with useful persons and organizations.

     The funding is normally put to the salaries of the specialists, though in some cases it’s used to purchase influence or alliances. The specialists concentrate on relationships:

• With the mouthpiece group’s supporters, to keep them loyally contributing;
• With other organizations that can lend effort to the mouthpiece group’s goal;
• With governmental institutions that can grant official recognition to the privilege or immunity.

     A mouthpiece group formed around an identity won’t necessarily be effective in promoting its goals. If its members lack passion, have several goals, or diverge about priorities, it will fail to benefit from the concentration principle, a statement that verges on tautology. However, several identity-based groups have succeeded in specializing sufficiently to become effective; the four enumerated in the opening segment are the most prominent ones.

     This is Public Choice economics in operation: a coherent, highly motivated group with a short agenda has far more effective social power than a looser coalition with distributed priorities and a broad agenda. That’s why the special interest groups have consistently outplayed those of us who merely prize freedom. Note that there are few successful broadly pro-freedom organizations. The most successful of them have been groups that address a single facet of the pro-freedom agenda, such as the National Rifle Association.

     An important digression: Note how little success in the struggle to retain our freedom has arisen from efforts by the Republican Party. The GOP’s platform gives a lot of lip service to freedom and limited government, but nearly always fails to deliver. This demonstrates the results we can expect from ignoring the concentration principle. Indeed, the problem is compounded by the existence of groups unfriendly to freedom and limited government within the GOP. Their concentration on creating, retaining, and enlarging specific privileges and immunities for particular constituencies gives them more effective power than the party itself.

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     The salient point about mouthpiece groups is that they’re the point of the spear. They determine the success or failure of the effort. Others who want to defeat their efforts must focus as tightly on defeating the sought-after privilege or immunity as they do on acquiring and perpetuating it:

• “Gay rights” mouthpiece groups must be opposed by specifically anti-gay-rights groups.
• Mouthpiece groups dedicated to promoting “affirmative action” or exemptions from criminal justice for black lawbreakers must be opposed by groups specifically focused on defeating those goals.
• CAIR, ISNA, and similar mouthpiece groups for Muslims must be opposed by groups specifically focused on denying special privileges to Muslims.
• NOW, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and similar mouthpiece groups for “women’s rights” must be opposed by groups specifically focused on denying special privileges to women.

     There are special problems to be solved in each case. Among the most important of them is linguistic hijacking. Each identity group has harnessed a powerful word -- rights -- to its service, and has flogged that word until most Americans can’t even begin to frame an argument for why the proposed “right” isn’t any such thing, but rather a privilege or an immunity. This is a critical factor in the public struggle.

     A second, equally important problem is that of the “iron triangle.” A privilege or immunity once gained will thereafter collect defenders:

• Bureaucrats: Those who operate The System;
• Vendors: Those who sell to The System;
• Beneficiaries: Those who receive direct transfers of wealth and privileges from The System.

     They are usually about as well motivated as the mouthpiece groups themselves. They will support the mouthpiece groups with monetary contributions, volunteer effort, and (when possible) their votes. The triangles that assist in the defense of the privileges and immunities of the four identity groups enumerated in the opening segment are particularly firm. They include many Civil Service employees.

     It will take more than a thousand-word essay to delineate the strategic and tactical problems involved. But perhaps the above will serve to launch the discussion.

The (No Longer So) “New Class”

Many years ago, Irving Kristol wrote of the emergence of a “New Class” that had come to dominate the corridors of power:

Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs. [From The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1949 - 2009]

Those who made up the “New Class” tended to dismiss Kristol’s warnings about them, often by pointing out that he was one of their kind: he possessed the same academic credentials they did, and he, too, sought influence over the nation’s political direction by the exercise of his intellect and eloquence. But they could not dispute his assessment of their aggregate power.

The most significant aspect of the “New Class” is its hostility toward those they deem “outsiders” who challenge their hegemony. Anyone who recalls the treatment Sarah Palin received from the political elite and their boughten allies in the media will know at once how savage they can be toward such an interloper.

The 2015-2016 Presidential campaign season is already providing us with another example of “New Class” ferocity in defense of its bastion:

The left-leaning mainstream media senses that [Scott Walker is] a potential danger. After all, he has won three straight elections in a swing state, while challenging the public employees’ unions head-on and significantly reducing their government privileges. (This is precisely what makes him interesting to those of us on the right.) The mainstream media feel that they need to disqualify him now, so they’re looking for anything they can use against him....

There are no real class divisions in America except one: the college-educated versus the non-college educated. It helps to think of this in terms borrowed from the world of a Jane Austen novel: graduating from college is what makes you a “gentleman.” (A degree from an Ivy League school makes you part of the aristocracy.) It qualifies you to marry the right people and hold the right kind of positions. It makes you respectable....

If you don’t have a college degree, by contrast, you are looked down upon as a vulgar commoner who is presumptuously attempting to rise above his station. Which is pretty much what they’re saying about Scott Walker. This prejudice is particularly strong when applied to anyone from the right, whose retrograde views are easily attributed to his lack of attendance at the gentleman’s finishing school that is the university.

That brings us to the heart of the matter. I have observed before that left-leaning politics has become “part of the cultural class identity of college-educated people,” a prejudice that lingers long after they have graduated. You can see how this goes the other way, too. If to be college-educated is to have left-leaning views—then to have the “correct” political values, one must be college-educated.

You can see now what is fueling the reaction on the left. If Scott Walker can run for president, he is challenging the basic cultural class identity of the mainstream left. He is more than a threat to the Democrats’ hold on political power. He is a threat to the existing social order.

Note what Kristol said about the “New Class:” “They are the media. They are the educational system.” Note what Robert Tracinski says above about the indispensability of a college education to “[having] the ‘correct’ political values.” The dots almost connect themselves.

What hones the above observations to microtome sharpness is the media’s immediate compliance with the Left’s defensive needs: the “gotcha” questions reporters have posed to Walker about evolution and Obama’s supposed Christianity. Perhaps it’s for the best that Walker isn’t a Catholic; they’d bombard him with questions about birth control and abortion. Note that John Kerry, a left-liberal who claims to be a Catholic, never had to face such questions.

A brief tangent: To conservative candidates everywhere, I repeat my exhortation:

Always answer a hostile question with an even sharper and more hostile question.

If they ask about your views on abortion, reply: “Does human life begin at birth, or in the womb?” If they ask for your views on birth control, reply: “Do you have any minor children? Were you married to their mother when they were born? Are you still married to her?” If they ask about whether you think Obama is a Christian, reply: “Would you say man who constantly defends the barbarities of Islamic societies has more sympathy for a bloodthirsty warlord like Muhammad, or for the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ?” There’s no better way to reveal the hypocrisy and venality of the Left.

To return to the main topic: A great part of the Left’s high dudgeon about Rudy Giuliani’s recent, highly publicized remarks about Obama’s self-evident lack of affection for America is that just as with Scott Walker, they regard Giuliani as a “rube” who dared to “rise above his proper place.” Worse, he succeeded in taming New York’s crime problem, where a series of Democrat mayors had failed. Worst of all, in defeating David Dinkins, the first Negro mayor of New York City, he committed an unpardonable sin against their favorite mascot-group.

Frankly, there’s nothing they approve of about conservatives, including those who’ve gone to Ivy League schools:

• A large family would compromise one’s social standing.
• Guns and shooting sports are noisy and dirty: low-class pursuits.
• Patriotism expressed in deeds – e.g., military service – is déclassé.
• Commercial enterprise is too grubby for the political class; they might get their nails dirty.
• Religion, except for the purely cosmetic sort required to reassure the hoi polloi, is for rubes.
• As conservative sentiments are strongest away from the Atlantic and Pacific Seaboards, anyone not from those Seaboards – preferably from one of the megalopolises that dominate them – is automatically extremely suspect.

The savagery the Left showed to Governor Palin has been resurrected to be showered upon Scott Walker. Should another of the other potential GOP presidential candidates pass Walker in popular standing, that same treatment will be visited upon him. The reason hardly needs to be stated outright: A successful conservative is a threat to their rice bowls.

Big Government has many flaws, both moral and practical. But it has a great virtue to the “New Class” that trumps all its shortcomings: It provides them with their incomes. Beyond that, it reinforces their “assumption of differential rectitude” (Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed), albeit by an exercise in circular reasoning. Their standard of living and their self-conferred privilege of dismissing those who disagree with them as stupid or evil both depend upon the embrace of the State. They will permit no conservative barbarian within its gates while they have the means to bar them.

The “New Class” does have a “candidates group:” its allies in the media and academic worlds. Persons from those environments are permitted to aspire to admission to the halls of power, though not many are accepted. As with any graduate student who seeks a doctorate, they must first prove themselves by serving the desires of the “New Class.” Quoth Lawrence Sellin:

In the Obama years, disseminating either disinformation or no information, a devoted media helped create the intellectual darkness and vacant servitude required to carry out the strategy of their leftist Messiah; a country without any sense of its own history and traditions, where the low-information voter would slouch towards Obama’s imaginary utopia through a combination of governmental coercion and the hedonist nihilism of a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free America managed by a nanny-state.

Though Colonel Sellin specifically references the Obamunist Interregnum, the media / educratic complex has served the agenda he delineates for at least four decades. It’s the precondition its foot soldiers must meet to be considered for eventual acceptance into the “New Class” elite: the nation’s political command staff. America’s education barons have participated as well: consider this eruption among the warmistas and the savagery of the assaults upon Michael Behe as cases in point.

A year and a half ago, I wrote:

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, in their masterpiece The Bell Curve, noted that the ongoing striation of the American populace into classes separated from one another by differences in intellect presaged the emergence of a "Latin American kind of conservatism." Their symbol for this was the hacienda on the hill, surrounded by parapets manned by armed guards. Those walls and guards exist to protect a class order in which the aristocrats enjoy an elevated lifestyle and access to power, from disturbances from los peones below.

As I wrote some time ago:

A class is defined by its legal and social privileges. The aristocrats of medieval times were not distinguished by their lineages or their deeds, but by the things they were allowed to do, without penalty, that commoners were not. There is reason to believe that the majority of medieval aristocrats were fairly responsible stewards of their lands and of public order within them. That does not justify the creation of a class of men who could wield high, middle, and low justice over others, but who would normally escape all consequences for deeds for which a commoner would be severely punished.

My only amendment to the above would be to note that whereas Herrnstein and Murray focused on intelligence, the “New Class” has demoted demonstrable intelligence in favor of the right academic credentials and the right “values.” Other than that, the game remains the same. We will see many more throws as the Presidential campaign season moves ahead.

Guilding The Polity

Just a few days ago, Radley Balko wrote as follows:

The American Civil Liberties Union has released the results of its year-long study of police militarization. The study looked at 800 deployments of SWAT teams among 20 local, state and federal police agencies in 2011-2012. Among the notable findings:

• 62 percent of the SWAT raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs.
• Just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant, meaning eight in 10 SWAT raids were not initiated to apprehend a school shooter, hostage taker, or escaped felon (the common justification for these tactics), but to investigate someone still only suspected of committing a crime.
• In fact, just 7 percent of SWAT raids were “for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios.”
• In at least 36 percent of the SWAT raids studies, no contraband of any kind was found. The report notes that due to incomplete police reports on these raids this figure could be as high as 65 percent.
• SWAT tactics are disproportionately used on people of color.
• 65 percent of SWAT deployments resulted in some sort of forced entry into a private home, by way of a battering ram, boot, or some sort of explosive device. In over half those raids, the police failed to find any sort of weapon, the presence of which was cited as the reason for the violent tactics.
• Ironically (or perhaps not), searches to serve warrants on people suspected of drug crimes were more likely to result in forced entry than raids conducted for other purposes.
• Though often justified for rare incidents like school shootings or terrorist situations, the armored personnel vehicles police departments are getting from the Pentagon and through grants from the Department of Homeland Security are commonly used on drug raids.

In other words, where violent, volatile SWAT tactics were once used only in limited situations where someone was in the process of or about to commit a violent crime — where the police were using violence only to defuse an already violent situation — SWAT teams today are overwhelmingly used to investigate people who are still only suspected of committing nonviolent consensual crimes. And because these raids often involve forced entry into homes, often at night, they’re actually creating violence and confrontation where there was none before.

Slightly more recently, Balko wrote as follows:

As part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s recent report on police militarization, the Massachusetts chapter of the organization sent open records requests to SWAT teams across that state. It received an interesting response.

As it turns out, a number of SWAT teams in the Bay State are operated by what are called law enforcement councils, or LECs. These LECs are funded by several police agencies in a given geographic area and overseen by an executive board, which is usually made up of police chiefs from member police departments. In 2012, for example, the Tewksbury Police Department paid about $4,600 in annual membership dues to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC. (See page 36 of linked PDF.) That LEC has about 50 member agencies. In addition to operating a regional SWAT team, the LECs also facilitate technology and information sharing and oversee other specialized units, such as crime scene investigators and computer crime specialists.

Some of these LECs have also apparently incorporated as 501(c)(3) organizations. And it’s here that we run into problems. According to the ACLU, the LECs are claiming that the 501(c)(3) status means that they’re private corporations, not government agencies. And therefore, they say they’re immune from open records requests. Let’s be clear. These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.

Isn't that interesting? A principal source of armed violence, acting under color of law, denies all its essential information to the public that funds and endures its predations.

Those SWAT "corporations" are a modern guild.

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Meanwhile, David French notes a parallel development among the political elite:

Andrew’s and Molly’s post reflecting the hysterical reaction on the Left to the Hobby Lobby decision makes for both entertaining and instructive reading. It’s entertaining because — regarding the issue they claim to care most about, access to contraceptives — the decision blocks exactly no one from obtaining the drugs they choose to purchase. There’s just slightly less free stuff on the market. This is hardly Handmaid’s Tale territory.

It’s instructive because it demonstrates the extent to which the Left is emotionally and ideologically committed to the power of the regulatory state. For some time, the Left has been selling the public and the courts on the notion that somehow the act of forming a corporation and opening for business operates as an effective waiver of your most basic liberties, including free speech, free exercise of religion, and virtually the entire panoply of property rights. In effect, your business is not “your” business at all, but instead all aspects of its operations exist at the whim of the state, and if the state wants to draft you into its child-killing abortion crusade — or wants to muzzle you during political campaigns – then you best salute and fall in line.

...concerning which the esteemed Ace of Spades comments thus:

The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.

Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business as your conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.

And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

This seems to me to be very congruent with the Left's conception of a cadre of people who will Do all the thinking for the rest of the country -- the revolutionary vanguard -- and the rest of the people who will actually generate the economic surpluses that the vanguard will then divvy up.

The Left continues to conceive of their idea of a Utopia in which some -- they themselves -- are the thinkers, the plotters, the dreamers and the schemers -- and everyone else is merely a doer, a revenue-generating economic unit which is expected to follow the orders issued to them by the Thinking Class.

Dead on target...and a cogent argument that the Left's aim is a guild system.

If your memory of European medieval history is a bit vague after all these years, this Wikipedia article is a compact presentation of their nature and how they functioned. The central reason for a guild was to confine the practice of a certain trade to the guild's members. Non-members were forbidden to trespass on the guild's privileges, enforcement thereof provided by the monarch. If you find the whole idea to be a bit too similar to modern trade licensure, you're not alone.

Guilds are entirely antithetical to freedom. Beyond their pernicious economic effects, they were a baleful influence on family cohesion, through their imposition of onerous, excessively prolonged apprenticeships. Moreover, guilds imposed a version of omerta on their members, who were forbidden to discuss the "secrets" of the guild or their trade with outsiders. They had to be protected, and their rules enforced, by the political power of their day...just as the contemporary licensure regime is enforced by political power today.

The guild idea is well advanced in the realm of law enforcement. Yet it's a point of law that the policeman has no greater authority to perform an arrest than a private citizen. Indeed, the policeman is more constrained than the citizen, for a citizen making a criminal complaint against another individual must be heeded. The cop is forbidden -- again, a point of law -- to refuse to perform the indicated arrest, on pain of being arrested himself for nonfeasance.

One could make a plausible case that unionization, especially when it covers an entire industry, is an attempt to create a guild. The auto industry and "public" schooling are excellent examples. Note also that the federal government and the majority of states require all their employees to join some union as a condition of employment.

The attempt to enact guild-like rules about political expression began with the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, which gave "established media organizations" (e.g., newspapers and broadcasters) privileges to orate on candidacies that the rest of us were denied. It was struck down some time ago. But it's clear, given Democrats' fury over the Citizens United decision and their current attempt to repeal the First Amendment, that the political class hasn't given up. Their incandescent rage over the Hobby Lobby decision will cause them to redouble their efforts.

We shall see.

Class And Caste In Twenty-First Century America

I chose this, out of the innumerable things currently peppering the national discourse, for two reasons above all others:

• It's inherently non-political;
• It's inherently political.

Besides which, some of the spadework has already been done for me. So buckle up!

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Let's start with this excellent Ace of Spades column. It's loaded with impact from beginning to end, but for me the standout observation is this one:

[A] Bank of England clerk would be a member of the middle/professional class, despite the fact that what he did all day was hand-write numbers into ledgers and do simple arithmetic and some filing work and the like, whereas, say, a carpenter actually did real thinking, real planning, at his job, with elements of real creativity.

And yet it was the Bank of England clerk who was considered a "mind" worker and the carpenter merely a hand-laborer....

Yet, despite there being no genuine distinction between them to demonstrate that one class was "higher" than the other, the distinction nevertheless took root, and middle class girls would marry middle class boys and working class girls working class boys. Which is the real test of a true, defined class -- do they mix enough to intermarry? If not, they're pretty well defined classes. Which is sort of one of the criteria used to determine whether one animal is merely a different variety than another or a whole different species. Can they mate?

This fascinating use of the biological / taxonomical concept of species to analogize with class is only moderately off-track. The criterion for determining an organism's membership in a species is whether that organism can interbreed with a suitable partner conceded to be a member of that species. What matters, in other words, is whether there will be viable progeny -- and more important still, progeny of the same species that can go on to reproduce that species.

There are some species that can interbreed with one another. The case that comes to mind at once is that of the donkey and the horse, who, when interbred, produce the mule. However, the mule is sterile, which excludes the mule from species classification and constitutes a disproof that donkeys and horses constitute a single species.

A concept more closely analogous to species would be that of caste. The term has its strongest association with traditional Indian society, with its recognized castes. From highest to lowest, those are:

• Brahmin (priests, scholars and teachers)
• Kshatriyas (warriors, administrators and law enforcers)
• Vaishyas (agriculturists, cattle raisers and traders)
• Shudras (service providers and artisans)
• Dalits (untouchables)

Caste classifications limit social and economic mobility. One's caste binds one's marital possibilities absolutely; one is forbidden, sometimes de jure but more commonly de facto, to take a spouse from a different caste. (The technical term for this is endogamy.) A cross-caste couple will be excluded from the caste of the "higher" spouse, but oftentimes from the castes of both spouses. Worse yet, their progeny will be excluded from all castes, including the very lowest.

Class distinctions, such as they are in Twenty-First Century America, bear some comparison to racial distinctions after the Civil War, but also to caste restrictions in caste-ridden societies.

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Irving Kristol wrote in the early Seventies of the formation of a "New Class" characterized by political affiliations. In Two Cheers For Capitalism he described their orientation with a unique pungency:

Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs.

Admittedly, some of the above is obiter dicta -- few such persons disdain wealth, as long as it's their wealth -- but in the main it remains accurate. More to the point, the New Class has developed rather firm barriers against incursions by persons it deems "unsuitable:"

• It concentrates geographically in a handful of large cities dominated by elites from politics, journalism, or entertainment.
• It emphasizes the possession of specific educational credentials.
• It practices endogamy, albeit with a counter-intuitive twist: one need not share the party alignment of one's spouse, as we can see from the matings of James Carville with Mary Matalin, and of Arnold Schwarzenegger with Maria Shriver.
• Above all, what matters is membership in that quasi-intellectual stratum concentrated around politics and public policy.

Sarah Palin is not welcome in the New Class. Her parents were outsiders to that caste. She is geographically situated in an unsuitable locale. Her educational credentials don't match those demanded for admission. Her spouse is a professional fisherman. Despite her personal and political accomplishments, she will forever be denied admission to those circles. Her children, no matter how impressive they might prove to be, have no chance of admission, specifically because of their parentage.

Without acceptance by the New Class, one has little hope of rising to national political prominence. Regional elevation, such as that achieved by Sarah Palin, Ron and Rand Paul, and some others, is possible, but above that level the barriers become very firm indeed.

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Assortative mating is nothing new. Neither is the formation of distinctions founded on education or occupation. The traditional classes of English society also recognized a distinction between "old money" founded on land and lineage, and "new money" derived from trade. All of these were in some sense natural groupings, and all served to limit the prospects of the persons bound within them. To some extent, such barriers, whether potentially surmountable or utterly impenetrable, are inevitable.

What's neither inevitable nor acceptable is the enclosure of the sphere of politics and public policy by such an elite. It's a violation of American principles. It's the sort of thing the Titles of Nobility clauses of the Constitution (Article I, Sections 9 and 10) were written to forbid.

Ace's column concerns itself with "social" inequality arising from such caste-like divisions. However, the resulting political inequalities, with their foreseeable consequences for an ever more particularist approach to public policy, loom larger in my view.

I might return to this.

The Hacienda On The Hill: Timbers In Place.

The New Royalty has become unabashed about its pretensions:

A petition on the formal White House petitions website called for "gun free" zones to be extended to politicians, saying if it's good enough for children in schools and other places where otherwise legal firearm carry by private citizens is prohibited, then it should be good enough for our country's leaders, right?

Wrong.

Here is the original petition language:

Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them

Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.

Here is the response of the White House:

Working to Keep Everyone Safe

Thanks for your petition.

We live in a world where our elected leaders and representatives are subject to serious, persistent, and credible threats on a daily basis. Even those who are mere candidates in a national election become symbols of our country, which makes them potential targets for those seeking to do harm to the United States and its interests. In 1901, after the third assassination of a sitting President, Congress mandated that the President receive full-time protection, and that law is still in effect today. Because of it, those who are the subject of ongoing threats must receive the necessary and appropriate protection.

You can’t make this stuff up, Gentle Readers. Take it from one who spends his minuscule leisure time and energy writing fiction.

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If there's a genuinely funny aspect to the White House's response, it's the citation of a law that mandates full-time armed protection for politicians.

A law! The Regime has invoked the Majesty of The Law! But isn't the current president well known for his many refusals to enforce the laws? Hasn't he made it plain, by implication at the very least, that he'll only enforce those laws with which he agrees?

You don't need to read yet another tirade about that, Gentle Reader. I merely wanted to note it, as a foundation for what follows.

Isn't a law that discriminates among Americans an inherent violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? If we defer that consideration, what about the implication that "our elected leaders and representatives are subject to serious, persistent, and credible threats on a daily basis," but that common American citizens are not? Finally, what about the intrusion into education represented by federally mandated "gun-free zones" around government-run schools. despite the complete absence of the words education, school, teacher, student, and the like from the Constitution of the United States? What does such a mandate say about the self-defense rights of school teachers, administrators, and other school employees?

Give that a spin on your mental merry-go-round while I fetch more coffee.

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Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, in their masterpiece The Bell Curve, noted that the ongoing striation of the American populace into classes separated from one another by differences in intellect presaged the emergence of a "Latin American kind of conservatism." Their symbol for this was the hacienda on the hill, surrounded by parapets manned by armed guards. Those walls and guards exist to protect a class order in which the aristocrats enjoy an elevated lifestyle and access to power, from disturbances from los peones below.

As I wrote some time ago:

A class is defined by its legal and social privileges. The aristocrats of medieval times were not distinguished by their lineages or their deeds, but by the things they were allowed to do, without penalty, that commoners were not. There is reason to believe that the majority of medieval aristocrats were fairly responsible stewards of their lands and of public order within them. That does not justify the creation of a class of men who could wield high, middle, and low justice over others, but who would normally escape all consequences for deeds for which a commoner would be severely punished.

Among the privileges medieval aristocrats enjoyed were that of bearing arms, and of employing others to bear arms at their command and on their behalf. Commoners were forbidden to possess a weapon, or to wield a common tool as a weapon, except when pressed into the service of the nobility. That the aspiring aristocrats of our time should seek to re-establish that privilege is entirely consistent with the sociodynamics of our increasingly fractious and violent age.

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Education in America is in a terrible state. The steady elevation of school taxes to stratospheric levels has corrupted the entire trade, and has made it next to impossible to operate a private alternative to the government-run juvenile-warehousing system. Very few families are well enough off to be able to afford both to support the government schools and to pay for a private education for their youngsters. Only the wealthy and politically privileged have the power to escape the system. It's a power they use without the least hesitation or embarrassment.

Most parents of minor children are resigned to this, and struggle along as best they can. What they have a harder time swallowing is the notion that their children should be involuntary targets for a lunatic who's decided to get his name into the papers. After Columbine it became a cleavage issue. If we can judge from the prevalent response to the Newtown massacre, it's about to become a very hot button indeed.

That's all to be expected from a people accustomed to the concept that their well-being, and the well-being of those they love, lie principally in their own hands. What I'm waiting for beyond that is a general recognition of what truly lies behind their children's mortal danger: an ever more arrogant political aristocracy determined to maintain its class privileges -- the security and serenity of its haciendas -- no matter what risks it might impose on los peones.

The political elite's presumptions haven't offended enough of us yet. No density of scandals, usurpations of powers not granted, infringements on individuals' rights, nor ostentatiously expensive taxpayer-funded vacations seems adequate. What more will it take?