Make This Go Viral

     Seen on Facebook:

“Some Christians say they can’t vote for Trump because of his past.
I say be thankful God doesn’t have that same standard for you.”

     Courtesy of Glenn Reynolds. Bravo, BlogFather! (Spread it around, Gentle Readers!)

Fringies Gonna Fringe

     There’s a lot of early-morning verbing here at the Fortress. Hey, try getting up at 4:00 AM for a few months and see what it does to your vocabulary. But I digress. Apparently, a trend I observed decades ago has reached something of a terminus:

     PORTLAND, Ore. (PORTLAND TRIBUNE) — Oregon Libertarians bared a lot more than just their arms during a rally spurred by the lack of media attention to the third party this election cycle.

     Gary Dye — the Libertarian candidate campaigning against U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley this year — helped organize the demonstration in the buff on the multi-use path of the Glenn Jackson Interstate-205 bridge connecting Oregon and Washington between 1 and 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 3.

     “(It’s) a result of Libertarian candidates for office getting zero attention from the media this year,” Dye said in a message to the Tribune. “Whether I am wearing any clothes remains to be seen.”

     This is not the sort of attention sensible people would seek, Mr. Dye. It will only serve to persuade the as-yet-unpersuaded that you and yours are kooks. Yet this sort of politically self-destructive behavior has become a regular feature in Libertarian Party circles. While the party might not be utterly dominated by its fringe elements, those fringies have become the public faces of the LP, to the great detriment of its outreach efforts.

     And people still ask me why I’m no longer a member of the party. Seriously, Bro? I won’t even wear short sleeve shirts!

A Pit Stop On The Road To Victory

     A warning to my Gentle Readers: This piece will range across several subjects. Yet if you think about it, you will discover an underlying unity. Moreover, its thrust is critical to political outreach and, quite possibly, the survival of the United States as a largely free society. Therefore I implore you to read with attention.

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     The late Henry Hazlitt, for many years the economics writer for major newspapers including the New York Times, did the world an incalculably huge service when he wrote this:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

     That is “The Lesson” that crowns Hazlitt’s best known book, Economics in One Lesson. It serves not only as a rebuff to shortsighted hawkers of policies that target only a narrow group of interests or a short-term development, but as a definition of economics itself. For what is economics, after all? It’s the study of what people do to get what they want, and the consequences of their decisions. “The consequences of their decisions” can be widespread and long-lasting; to cut off one’s attention to them before the ripples have dampened fully is to betray one’s duty as an economist.

     But Hazlitt, a man of unusual modesty despite his attainments, refrained from asking the “other question:” why people want what they want. It wasn’t in his bailiwick, so he left it for others to address. (Subsidiary questions — for example “Why is Smith willing to pay $X for Y but not $X+1?” — live in the borderlands that lie amidst economics, anthropology, and psychology.)

     Yet he who seeks to motivate people must focus on “why.” Some “whys” are individual only; others affect large numbers of persons, perhaps even unto the whole of Mankind. The most successful motivators are they who grasp the “whys” that unite us, the “whys” that divide us, and how best to appeal to each variety.

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     Let’s turn briefly to an art that’s more individually focused: the art of salesmanship. An old joke has much point:

     The manager of the superstore was almost finished training the young, newly-hired salesclerk when he remembered to mention “The Related Sale:”
     “When a customer asks for help finding a particular item,” the manager intoned, “always ask whether he might also need a related item. For example, if he comes in looking for razor blades, ask whether he has enough shaving cream and after-shave. If he buys one or both it will increase the sale, and your commission.” The young man’s eyes lit up at learning this powerful sales technique, and he set off to his work with evident enthusiasm.
     Only an hour later the young salesclerk escorted a customer up to the front of the store, loaded down with fishing rods, line, nets, boots, waders, and mirabile dictu, the brochure for a small powerboat. The total came to just under a hundred thousand dollars.
     The manager, who was standing nearby, was impressed, to say the least. He asked the young clerk what had just happened to produce such a tremendous checkout. The young man ascribed it to “The Related Sale.”
     Puzzled, the manager asked, “Related to what?”
     “He came in for a box of tampons for his wife,” the young clerk replied, “so I said, “Well, sir, it looks as if there isn’t going to be any action around your house this weekend, so why not go on a little fishing trip?”

     To sell a man something has certain preconditions:

• He must need or want it, or be induced to want it.
• He must be persuaded that it’s worth its price.
• He must not have a higher-priority use for the money.
• He must not have moral or ethical barriers to the purchase.

     Clearly, the motivations of the salesman are less important than those of the prospective customer. The effective salesman must be aware of this. His focus must be entirely upon the customer’s motivations. (Of course it must respect the customer’s means as well.) If he should lose that focus, the sale will not occur.

     But appealing to a man’s desires is seldom best done by direct assault. Most people have an intrinsic resistance to “being sold.” There’s something about the notion that’s offensive, probably the implied manipulation. When possible, it’s best for the salesman to be indirect. The importance rises with the price of the item involved.

     But what does it mean, in salesmen’s terms, to be indirect?

     Perhaps the young salesclerk in the joke above provides a pointer.

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     In the realm of politics, salesmanship becomes a matter of mass analysis:

1. What do people want?
2. What can they be induced to want?
3. What do they fear or detest?
4. How can their resistance to those things be increased or decreased?

     (For “people” in the above, it is sometimes appropriate to substitute a more concentrated demographic or cohort. That’s most of what’s meant by identity politics.)

     Whether a particular political campaign is “selling” a candidate or a policy, those questions remain paramount. But here as in individual salesmanship, there are consequences to “making the sale.” Another part of the art of political salesmanship is the treatment of undesired consequences:

1. Minimizing the anticipated ones;
2. Shifting the responsibility for bringing them about;
3. Shifting the responsibility for coping with them.

     Politicians themselves tend not to be skilled at indirection. They promote their favored policies by talking up the predicted benefits and averting discussions of undesired consequences. After a policy is enacted, they prefer to grab the credit for good developments and point fingers at their opponents — real or imagined — for bad ones, whether or not those actions are objectively defensible. Such directness is one of the reasons Americans are largely skeptical, even cynical, about the political class. But a politician can acquire allies, and some of those allies can be more skilled at indirection than the politician himself.

     We of Liberty’s Torch have written on several occasions of the importance of the major media and its all but open alignment with the Democrat Party. The term “major media” should be understood to subsume journalism (printed and broadcast), education, and entertainment. Persons in those trades advance according to their skills at promoting a particular world view: not the facts alone, but a causal structure implied to lie behind the facts. This is most evident in fictional entertainment, slightly less so in education and journalism. Yet the skill is a central asset to anyone in any of those fields.

     Here we come to the new pejorative of our era: “The Narrative.” The term is used derisively when applied to media attempts to promote a notion that runs contrary to observable fact – remember, after the 2004 attempt to slander President George W. Bush with forged papers from his Air National Guard days fell apart, the protest that “the facts were wrong but the narrative was right?” — but its importance to the power of the media to advance specific concepts and policy models cannot be overstated.

     For a narrative must embed a causal structure: an explanation of the “whys” that lie behind some development, real, imagined, or proposed. If the hearer accepts the narrative, he does so because of its similarity to the ways he has already seen people act, react, and decide. A skillfully crafted narrative has immense persuasive power – and they who rise high in the media are those who are best at concocting and purveying such narratives.

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     It has often been said, most notably by Margaret Thatcher, that “the facts of life are conservative.” And indeed, they are – but we know from experience that facts alone are insufficient to prevail in political conflict. People seek to understand the “whys:” causal structures they can accept as valid, owing to their own experiences of the world.

     Consider for a moment why accusations of low or criminal conduct lodged against politicians are so easy to believe. We’ve seen enough such accusations substantiated to have formed a causal structure for ourselves. It runs roughly like this: The higher a man rises in politics, the more likely he is to be a deceitful, venal son of a bitch. So accusations receive a kind of conditional pre-acceptance in advance of evidentiary substantiation; they fit our internal narrative about political advancement.

     The late Marshall Fritz, founder of the Advocates for Self-Government, made it an explicit mission for freedom lovers to “Get the Blues:” i.e., to persuade the master communicators of our nation to come into the liberty movement. Fritz’s analysis indicated that the natural communicator is emotionally oriented. That is, he addresses people’s emotions, including his own, as the critical elements in our decision making, and he speaks to them intentionally and directly.

     The natural communicator naturally gravitates to occupations that employ his communication skills. That is, he is most powerfully drawn to working in journalism, education, and entertainment: the Left’s bastions, by its hegemony over which the Left has dominated political discourse in these United States for many decades.

     They who dominate the “gatekeeper” institutions have striven to prevent a counteroffensive by the Right against their hegemony. But at least one of the three Left-dominated fields has opened to other voices in recent years: entertainment. In fiction, whether books or videos, the gatekeeper institutions have lost their grip, owing to the development of the World Wide Web as a means of reaching others.

     Likely no one foresaw this development. It was an unintended consequence of the development of broadband Internet access and other digital technologies. But it offers us in the Right an opportunity that we must not squander.

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     “Politics is downstream from culture.” – Andrew Breitbart

     The key to the successful exploitation of our opportunity is the development, encouragement, and celebration of our storytellers.

     There aren’t many well-known Right-leaning storytellers. The “above-ground” or traditional gatekeepers in the world of fiction – the publishing houses of New York and London, mostly – were conquered and colonized by the Left some time ago. If anything, Hollywood and the “content providers” who feed the television industry are even more thoroughly Left-owned than the publishing houses. So an Andrew Klavan or a Clint Eastwood who manages to penetrate their defenses is a rare jewel.

     But we have the Web...and Amazon.

     Whatever the leanings of Jeff Bezos or anyone he employs, at this time Amazon is open to any kind of fiction from any source, regardless of political or ideological perspectives. There are other channels of lesser importance, but Amazon is where by far the greater part of the action is. Writers, filmmakers, and creators of other kinds of fiction can distribute through Amazon without fear of censorship, certain kinds of pornography being exceptions.

     If you’re Right-inclined, can imagine, compose, and tell a decent story, and aren’t exercising your gift to the fullest, whether through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, or any of the alternatives...why sit you there idle?

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     All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story. – Isak Dinesen

     There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. – Tyrion Lannister, in the concluding episode of Game of Thrones

     A capable storyteller must work with the foundation of all human action: emotion. He must be able to depict the emotions of believable characters under trying circumstances, and to show how those emotions direct and power their decisions. These are the building blocks of any plausible narrative: believable people compelled to confront difficult circumstances, doing what they think is best to cope, and changing according to the consequences. Whether his story is to be tragic or heroic, these are the elements every storyteller must marshal and control.

     Stories are the fuels that can bring us political victory. “The facts of life are conservative,” and when embedded in a story with a plausible causal structure, about believable people facing difficult choices, they create a convincing narrative that makes the reader / listener / viewer say “Yes, that’s how it is and must be,” even if only to himself.

     There’s help available. Many, many books on writing and storytelling are available to him who likes the idea of creating fiction but isn’t confident in his skills. This one and this one are even free of charge. And of course, reading extensively in your preferred genres will help you to acquire the necessary sense for its requirements and perimeters. But the commitment – of time, creative energy, and emotional investment — must be yours.

     Dale Carnegie wrote that what many people need to get off their asses and into motion is a challenge. Get ‘em to ask themselves if they’ve got what it takes! Well, fellow Rightist, we’re looking for a few good storytellers: the kind that can dramatize what we know about the facts of life in a memorable narrative. So, you think you’re pretty good with words, do you! But you haven’t yet employed that facility to any great effect? Then it’s time you were asked:

Have you got what it takes?

     All that’s at stake is the survival of the last kinda-sorta free society on Earth, so what are you waiting for?

Quickies: “Democrats Are More Moral”

     If you have a few minutes, please view the following video:

     First, note that the “questioner” isn’t an American citizen, as he states plainly before rambling on into his “question.” Yet he has an opinion about morality in American political alignments. If nothing else has done so, this should convince you, Gentle Reader, of the efficacy of the Democrats’ “stupid or evil” tactics, and of their cleverness in targeting those too young to have an adequate grounding in the rules of rational inquiry.

     Second, note how D’Souza ripostes the “question:” by asking why “global warming” should be considered a moral issue, and drawing an appropriate analogy to theism versus atheism. For anyone in the audience who was listening with an open mind, this should have been stimulus to a huge range of thought: What aspects of a public-policy question qualify it as “a moral issue?”

     Morality and ethics, as the West has understood them for many centuries, are founded on a conception of the individual as a moral agent and possessor of rights. These concepts are inapplicable to collectivities. A nation, no matter how defined, cannot possess rights. Neither can it posture as a moral agent; the deeds done in its name are always the deeds of individuals. Those individuals may represent themselves as acting on legitimate authority – indeed, agents of the State nearly always do – but that does not excuse them from the moral and ethical constraints on them as individuals. Consider this passage from the Gospel According to Luke:

     And the people asked him [John the Baptist], saying, What shall we do then?
     He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.
     Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do?
     And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.
     And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

     [Luke 3:10-14]

     In those years, the publicans of the Roman occupation and the soldiers that accompanied them were much given to brutally extorting the Jewish people: mulcting them for far more than the appointed tax and keeping the difference. That they represented themselves as agents of Rome did not free them of the moral-ethical burden they bore.

     But that Rome had the power – not the “right,” but the power — to lay and collect taxes, John the Baptist did not dispute. The State does that sort of thing, and the individual’s alternatives are to accept it as legitimate, to rebel in one fashion or another, or to flee. That will be the case for as long as there are States.

     Moral and ethical considerations and evaluations are like that.

Social Vectors, Part 2: Plantations

     Owing to the connection to slavery, post-Civil War attempts by plantation owners to keep their former slaves laboring right where they were, and the Democrat Party’s emphasis on identity politics, the metaphor of “keeping ‘em on the plantation” has acquired great contemporary resonance. A recent Breitbart article points at the chagrin of one set of identity-group hucksters over the defectors from their plantation:

     The Guardian called the rise of free-thinking, LGBT conservatives “troubling” in an article on Thursday.

     The article, written by Arwa Mahdawi, criticized popular LGBT conservatives, including former OUT Magazine employee Chadwick Moore, who was fired after coming out as a conservative, and the Log Cabin Republicans, attempting to paint right-wing LGBT men and women as an “influential group of gay, white, and financially well-off men,” made up of Nazis, white nationalists, and misogynists....

     “Some people might argue that the increase in rightwing LGBTQ people represents a move away from identity politics. Ultimately, however, it’s just a move back to the oldest form of identity politics,” she continued. “One in which the protection of whiteness and wealth trumps everything. But as some gay Trump supporters might be starting to realize, the right aren’t your friends, and eventually they’ll come for you.”...

     In February, LGBT writer Skylar Baker-Jordan also attacked gay conservatives in an article for the Independent, where he claimed he would refuse to accept gay people who “come out” as supporters of President Trump, while in June, Slate likened LGBT conservatives to “villains.”

     The hysteria is real and palpable. Just as with the emergence of strong black and female conservative figures – surely you’ve heard the phrases “race traitor” and “gender traitor?” — the plantation overseers fear a steady crumbling of their identity groups. The solidity of those groups is what makes the overseers valuable to the Democrats. It gives them negotiating power they fear to lose.

     However, the use of ostracism and condemnation to arrest those “traitors” and bring them back to the planation appears to be failing the Left. It’s worth a few CPU cycles to investigate why.

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     The desire to be thought well of is universal. We all want others to see us as worthy of respect. That’s completely independent of race, sex, and sexual orientation. But what makes a person appear worthy to others can be affected by social, cultural, and political factors.

     In yesterday’s piece, I poked at some of the vectors that are helping to propel male-to-female transgenderism. Those vectors have certain motifs in common with the ones gradually drawing individuals out of the racial, sexual, and sex-orientation plantations of the Left and toward a more independent frame of mind.

     In general, Smith will desire the good opinion of those who have Smith’s good opinion. If Smith thinks well of Jones but not of Davis, he will seek Jones’s approval but be relatively indifferent to Davis’s. Among the characteristics most commonly thought praiseworthy is independence of mind: the willingness to look at some controversy with no particular concern for what others think. When that trait is made perceptible, as is the case with black, female, and LGBT conservatives, the independent-minded individual becomes an accretion nucleus, around whom others of less intellectual courage will collect.

     It might seem that such independence is not ideologically directed – e.g., that if the great majority of LGBT persons were politically conservative, a “maverick” liberal would be an accretion nucleus for his views. Perhaps, if the logical and evidentiary bases of liberalism and conservatism were equally sound, it might prove to be so. But it isn’t that way today, in large part because the Left has attempted to wall off its identity-group plantations against ideological divergence.

     When the border guards’ guns point inward, at their fellow subjects, it’s clear to those subjects that the guards’ function is not to defend them – that there are things the subjects are not allowed to learn.

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     Courage is inherently admirable. Intellectual courage married to the will to speak one’s mind is admired in direct proportion to the forces amassed against the speaker.

     The irony is staggering. The identity-group plantation overseers would have more luck at retaining their intellectual serfs’ allegiance if, rather than denouncing the escapees as villains, they were to smile winningly, concede each person’s right to his own opinions, and argue persuasively for their preferred positions. However, fear can make one do stupid things, especially when one’s money, power, and prestige are at stake.

     The stupidity reaches Brobdingnagian dimensions when the overseers hurl invective at persons of such integrity and eminence as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Christina Hoff Sommers, Suzanne Venker, Tammy Bruce, Chadwick Moore, and Blaire White.

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     Let it be frankly admitted that many in the black, female, and LGBT cohorts sincerely hold left-liberal convictions that are little or not at all affected by the convictions of others. That having been said, identity-group politics is suffering a steady loss of allegiants. That has the Left in a panic. Coalition politics is the heart of its strategy; it has no other.

     To us in the Right, it’s a strong prescription for intellectual honesty and moral courage. It mandates that we eschew all tactics founded on the divide et impera approach of the Left, for our own sake. But let’s not be too vocally triumphant about it. After all, there’s Napoleon’s exhortation to consider: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. That's bad manners!” And we in the Right are all about good manners, aren’t we?

Vectors And Churches

     Lately the days on which I feel there’s little or no point producing a piece for Liberty’s Torch have been more frequent than not. Sometimes I manage to emit something despite that “what’s the use?” feeling. Sometimes I resurrect something from my immense archives. Sometimes I simply declare a day off and absent myself to other duties and pleasures. The common factor is the sense that what I’m doing here achieves essentially nothing.

     It’s worse when the email-bag bulges with denunciations and vilifications. I’m fairly good at shrugging them off, but there’s still something disheartening about the weight of them. Are that many people that perfectly convinced that anyone who disagrees with them must be evil? And does that large a fraction of them have enough bile to spend it on so minor a figure as I? Don’t these folks have anything better to do with their time?

     I know, I know: What’s the point of asking rhetorical questions? But this is the perennial malady of the thinker: when there’s nothing substantive to ponder, he ponders crap like this.

     All the same, now and then this process will allow me to sift a nugget out of the midden. Today, it comes from our beloved Ace:

     Half of America now consists of barely-functional lunatics, and it's best to avoid them for all sorts of reasons....

     Sometimes I pass on stories the lunatics are gibbering about. This Trump Tower in Russia deal, for example. It's not actually laziness -- it would be easy enough just to link it and say "This is probably bullshit." I just did a very easy link in the previous post.

     Takes no time or effort.

     But I sort of would like to do more than that -- by which I mean doing less. Rather than even acknowledging these stories and putting up some kind of half-thought rebuttal to them, I'd like to do more.

     By doing less. By not even acknowledging them.

     The man’s got something there. Giving head space to the ravings of the mentally ill does not serve any positive interest. Inasmuch as those aforementioned lunatics shriek their gibberish over channels devoted to such things, one might logically conclude that those who want to know about them have the means. There’s no need to add any further bandwidth to the dissemination of their ravings.

     Moreover, Ace’s attitude strikes me as better than any alternative:

     As I do not wish to be infected by the viral lunacy consuming half of this country, so too do I not wish to be a vector of that lunacy, infecting other people.

     If this crap is contagious, best not to spread it around, right?

     Which brings me to the subject of churches.

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     If you’ve never read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, it should be at the very top of your to-be-read list. Hoffer’s analysis of the typical mass movement as “a compact and unified church” explains the behavior of those who enlist in such a movement with absolute accuracy. His many observations about the organization of such movements and the attitudes they inculcate and reinforce point to the essence of the contemporary mass phenomenon: it is religious in nature.

     The function of a religious congregation is to provide “a home” for those who accept the religion. Such a “home” has two functions above all others:

• The presence of others reassures the individual believers that their belief is acceptable;
• Similarly, the community of believers reinforces that belief by the weight of its numbers.

     The less well substantiated the belief, the more important to its adoption, retention, and perpetuation is the congregation. Consider any contemporary religion – yes, including mine – and ask yourself how long an individual believer, separated from all his fellows, could hold out against the adverse opinions of those around him. I’m here to tell you: it takes more strength of conviction than you’d find in 99% of Mankind.

     The congregation isn’t an important vector for its creed; that would require nonbelievers to immerse themselves in the congregation, which doesn’t happen often. However, the existence of the congregation provides doctrinal reassurance to the individual believer: if he’s at all evangelically inclined, it will assist him in his efforts to make converts.

     The American Left is such a congregation. Its social aspect is critical to its endurance; leftists associate almost exclusively with other leftists. Not only does that “keep the faithful in the pews;” it also precludes “contamination” by propositions antithetical to the Left’s doctrines. Note how neatly this meshes with the Left’s strategy of colonizing large organizations and rendering them hostile to any opinions other than those it approves.

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     When the contemporary Right started to coalesce, largely through the agencies of talk radio and the Internet, the Left’s church felt threatened for the first time since the New Deal. That’s the natural behavior of churches with mutually contradictory doctrines. Political churches, unlike the sort associated with more conventional faiths, will see one another as enemies to be fought. The prevailing ethical levels among the respective congregations will determine which side chooses what tactics, and what responses they’ll evoke.

     It is noteworthy that today’s Leftists and Rightists are largely unsuccessful at spreading their faith. The uninvolved have come to regard both as too noisome to bother with, despite the enduring differences in civility of their congregants. So the battle is between two “compact and unified” faiths, neither of which has a Chinaman’s chance of making converts from the other side and precious little more of adding to its numbers from the uninvolved.

     In this we see an echo of the 2016 presidential election. Though he ran as a Republican, Donald Trump was openly unaffiliated with either church. He proposed policies and undertakings that both rejected. The uninvolved, with modest assistance from the church of the Right, elevated him to the White House, while “church ballots” gave Congressional majorities to more conventional Republicans. That gave us the current situation in Washington, where the Republicans on Capitol Hill exhibit a distinct disinclination to collaborate with “their” president. The frustration of those who supported Trump and his prescriptions is considerable.

     Party politics, including the doctrines promulgated via party platforms, has been largely neutralized by ideological schisms. The clearest doctrinal battles are now at lower levels: the state governments, which are largely Republican-dominated. (A brief look at Texas and California tells us all we need to know about them.) It is from the state level that the doctrinal vectors of the next couple of decades will emerge, as state governors and legislators who’ve achieved some success attempt to bring their policies to the federal level. Meanwhile, the “established churches” of Left and Right will likely remain locked in a standstill until new forces arise to render them irrelevant. Perhaps that’s as it should be. For those of us who merely want to live quietly, the path of prudence just might be to stand off from all of it...preferably well armed.

Political Infidelities And Their Consequences

     Just now, quite a lot of Americans are experiencing “voter’s remorse:” the political analogue to the “buyer’s remorse” one feels upon discovering that he could have gotten better and / or cheaper at the place across town. The Republican caucuses in the Senate and House of Representatives are giving them ample reason, though for many the knowledge that the Republicans are the sole practical alternative to the Democrats will likely “keep them in the fold” in the 2018 elections.

     The Democrats, you see, have been reminding “their” voters how little reason there is to trust them with power:

     The loss in last week’s special congressional election in Georgia produced predictable hand-wringing and finger-pointing inside the Democratic Party. It also raised anew a question that has troubled the party through a period in which it has lost political ground. Simply put: Do Democrats have a message?

     Right now, the one discernible message is opposition to President Trump. That might be enough to get through next year’s midterm elections, though some savvy Democratic elected officials doubt it. What’s needed is a message that attracts voters beyond the blue-state base of the party.

     Ye gods! Candor from a Main Stream Media outlet about the failings of its favored ones! Surely the Apocalypse is at hand. But every now and then a little truth will leak through the barriers. Of course, whether it will penetrate the “fact-proof screen” (Eric Hoffer) around the minds of Democrat allegiants is quite a different story.

     On this subject, our favorite Bookworm deposeth and sayeth:

     For those looking to make a sale to Trump voters and undecided voters, though, a Democrat party emphasis on the economy is going to be a hard sell. It’s only the base that’s honest enough to admit that, from the top down, the only economic goal the modern Democrat party has is full frontal socialism:

     For progressives, the answer to this problem is clear: a boldly liberal message that attacks big corporations and Wall Street and calls for a significant increase in government’s role in reducing income and wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been aggressive in promoting exactly that, as he did during the 2016 campaign, with calls for a big investment in infrastructure and free college tuition at public colleges and universities. He has said he intends to introduce legislation he calls “Medicare for All.”

     The other article, which comes from The Hill, notes that some Dems, seemingly those not on the hard Left, are pushing their congresscritters to stop talking about Russia all of the time.

     Taking these two articles in conjunction, there is little doubt that, subject to a small (and easily ignored) subset of semi-sane Democrats, Progressives (aka the Democrat Party) see talking about Russia as far more edifying than the economy. One can’t help but be fascinated by what the Democrat Party power brokers mean to do if they “turn towards the economy.” How does one push socialist ideas while denying their socialism, even as the base is screaming “We love you, Karl Marx”?

     So both major parties are currently disappointing the electoral cohort they need to achieve their aims: the one whose members are desperate for substance plus commitment. You know, statements of intentions that those whose support they hope to win could trust? You’d think the strategists and kingmakers who steer those parties would have done the obvious by now....except that “obvious” really means “overlooked.”

     In this regard, the GOP is actually worse off than the Democrats. GOP campaigners do promise particular outcomes...and then fail to produce them. That leaves those who supported GOP legislative candidates with a foul taste in their mouths. With the Democrats, voters other than masochists, State worshippers, and Marxist ideologues tend to assume betrayal from the outset.

     Clearly, lying to those whose support you need is not a viable long-term strategy. You’d have to be brain dead to think otherwise. But there is this to ponder: political aspirants don’t think long-term. Their horizons are bounded by the upcoming election season, which will determine whether they get to keep the power and perquisites they’ve acquired.

     Here we can see a difference between the major-party candidates:

• Democrats who gain legislative offices strive to cement themselves into power irremovably.
• Republicans who gain legislative offices subsequently become fearful of “rocking the boat.”

     The Democrats of the Obama years embarked on a fevered campaign to socialize as much of the American economy as they could. They did so in the belief that their enhanced ability to hand out favors and freebies would keep them in hegemony. The Republicans surprised them by winning back control of the House of Representatives in 2010, and the Senate in 2014. However, they did so by promising a sharp rollback of those Democrat initiatives...a rollback they’re now terrified would cost them their hegemony.

     Which is why the Right side of the electorate, given an incredibly strong and varied field of Republican presidential candidates from which to choose, selected “outsider” Donald Trump...and why the American people installed him in the White House.

     At this point, only President Trump can justly be said to have kept his campaign promises. Granted that he seems to have backed away from a couple of them; granted that there’s some reason to be disappointed on those scores. However, Trump’s executive actions to reverse the tide of economy-smothering regulation, unshackle the domestic energy industries, liberate the construction of critical oil pipelines, and advance a plan to dam the tide of illegal (and threatening) immigration are genuine fulfillments, for which we who supported him – in my case, with trepidation – should be grateful.

     Among my reasons to be grateful is that Trump’s successes and fulfillments have put the “gray heads” of the major parties on notice. The strategists know that the people are watching. Those impressed with a president who actually keeps (some of) his promises are more likely to give other “mavericks” a better shot at the brass ring. While in politics nothing is certain, the prospects for renewal, in the GOP at least, are better than they’ve been since Warren Harding.

     President Trump could still foul his own nest. However, it looks as if he really did mean what he said while campaigning. Perhaps all the promises he made in 2015 and 2016 will be fulfilled eventually. He’s got at least three years left in which to see to it – and those shadowy ones who’ve made “Republican Party” a synonym for “terrified pensioners’ club” have a reason to fear for their coffee and cakes.

     We shall see.

Whom Are You Addressing?

     In any politically oriented statement, whether oral or written, the issuer must have a clear conception of his audience:

1. Who are they?
2. What convictions do they already hold, and why?
3. To what sort of arguments are they most likely to be receptive?

     It’s a bit like marketing fiction. If Smith dislikes vampire stories, you can’t reach him (or his wallet) with a vampire story. To get into his billfold, you must offer him something he likes to read, at least generically. That having been said, the reverse is also true. If you detest vampire stories but that’s all Smith is willing to read, you might as well forget trying to hook him.

     I couldn’t help but address this subject after reading this piece:

     Rant: Stop with the False Equivalencies

     No, "everyone" does not need to simmer down.

     No, the right does not "do it too." Not as extensively and not with the same viciousness.

     And so on, and so on, and so on...

     Now, I like Stephanie. I read her blog fairly often. (It helps that we’re both SF readers. Inasmuch as I’m an SF writer, reading it is a professional requirement. Got to stay aware of what “the competition” is doing, don’t y’know.) But if she had a clear conception of her audience, her piece would have been quite different. Indeed, she might not have written it at all.

     Stephanie’s audience, like mine, is populated just about 100% by conservatives and libertarians. Those folks don’t need to be told that the Left’s many attempts to play the tu quoque game with us are utter, scrofulous deceits. They know it already – and it chafes them quite as badly as it does Stephanie.

     But the matter is more involved than that. Let’s have a quick gedankenexperiment. Let’s imagine that Stephanie’s audience had been replaced, for the duration of the cited article, with one that’s predominantly left-liberal. What then? Would her piece have persuaded any of those imagined lefties to change their ways?

     I think not, for some very simple reasons:

1. Left-liberals in our time are not concerned with evidence;
2. The tu quoque tactic is too useful to the Left for them to surrender it;
3. A left-liberal receptive to Stephanie’s piece would swiftly be “read out of the church,” friendless.

     The only imaginable audience to which Stephanie’s article might be both interesting and effective is an audience of the uncommitted but open-minded, and such persons don’t read political blogs. They prefer not to court the attention of ideologues and partisans, whom they regard with a moderate distaste, about like door-to-door religious proselytizers. They talk about politics only among themselves...if at all.

     I could go on about this. I could embellish it with clever arguments and illuminating examples. However, I know my audience would prefer to read about just about anything else, so I’ll close here.

     Back later, I hope.

On Trusting Democrats: Three New Outcroppings

     The Democrat Party has had its way for so long, whether from a majority or a minority position, that its luminaries believe that they can have it indefinitely. Their principal method when in the minority is to threaten to make the GOP “look bad.” Consider these three recent developments:

• Cory Booker Turns Against Betsy DeVos
• Obama Wants Approval Rights Over The Repeal Of ObamaCare
• The NAACP’s Attack On Jeff Sessions

     Objectively, as matters stand, the Democrats cannot prevent the approval of DeVos or Sessions, nor can Obama prevent the absolute and total repeal of ObamaCare. Their maneuverings are intended to taint those nominations and that legislative initiative: to make them look “extreme,” “partisan,” or “cruel:”

• Booker’s attacks on DeVos are those of a supposed friend and fellow supporter of school choice;
• Obama can use his ongoing influence and popularity to defame any attempt to repeal the PPACA;
• The NAACP’s supposed importance in protecting the rights of minorities is a lever against Sessions.

     In the face of threats such as the above, Republican majorities have exhibited a habit of making concesssions to Democrat minorities “for appearances’ sake.” Worst of all, even after Republican concessions, the Democrats have gone on the attack against such nominations and legislation despite having assented to them.

     The moral should be obvious. (Gahh! Two words I’ve resolved not to use, and in a five-word sentence!) But Republican legislators and presidents have harbored such a great fear of the alliance between the Democrats and the media that they’ve steadfastly refused to draw it.

     The swelling importance of the alternative media, especially the World Wide Web and its “social media,” might counter the influence of that fear. After all, Donald Trump used them effectively in his campaign for the presidency. However, fear is as often a matter of habit as it is irrational.

     This is a compelling reason to write your Republican legislators and demand that they ignore such gambits from the Left. It’s time to make them more afraid of us than they are of them.

Prosecuting Hillary

     Michael Goodwin has penned a fiery piece about this:

     At first blush, Donald Trump’s decision to swear off criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton didn’t look like a good idea.

     At second blush, it looks like a terrible idea.

     The decision, dribbled out in a TV report and then confirmed by aide Kellyanne Conway, is too momentous to come in bits and pieces and from anyone other than Trump directly. He made the pledge at a debate to appoint a special prosecutor, and it smacks of Washington-as-usual for the reversal to slither out the back door.

     Yet instead of the president-elect personally explaining his big decision, the public got snippets of comments he made during an interview with The New York Times.

     “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” the paper quoted him as saying. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”

     Asked whether he had ruled out a prosecution, he reportedly said, “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.”

     I think I agree with Goodwin to this extent: for Trump to “dribble out” his decision, whether for or against a prosecution, is a bad idea, for it will be a decision with far-reaching effects. The indictment and trial of his recent adversary in the presidential contest would inevitably be characterized by numerous commentators as political, a bayoneting of the fallen enemy rather than an exercise of justice. To decline to indict would be characterized similarly: as the granting of a special, supra-legal status to a high member of the political elite. Either way, the tumult that will reverberate through our discourse will be great.

     As for the justice of it, there can be no question: what Hillary Clinton did while Secretary of State, entrusted with mountains of highly classified information of supreme sensitivity, would land any ordinary American in prison. Moreover, she compounded the felony by lying about it, both publicly and during her FBI interviews. If she gets away with it, then it will forever be unjust for anyone else to be penalized for it. That would include anyone currently serving a sentence for the violation of the security laws.

     But as Charles Krauthammer noted yesterday evening on Bret Baier’s Special Report, the president’s pardon power is an implicit recognition that sometimes, there are considerations of national well-being that in particular cases can transcend justice. A pardon granted to a convicted felon always contradicts a duly determined verdict of the justice system. Yet presidents pardon such felons frequently. They seldom do it out of a conviction that justice requires it.

     For Trump to decide against prosecuting Hillary – a de facto preemptive pardon for what was plainly an illegal arrangement – would be a decision in favor of considerations he places above justice: presumably, the healing of the many wounds inflicted upon national unity by an unprecedentedly hard fought, vitriolic campaign. The deviation a preemptive pardon represents from standard procedure is what troubles me most. The Justice Department has a rigorous procedure for screening pardon applications. One of the requirements for endorsing and forwarding an application to the White House is that the applicant has been indicted, tried, and convicted, and has served his full sentence.

     There have been deviations from this procedure. Perhaps the best known is Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for any crimes he may have committed related to the Watergate scandal. More recently, Bill Clinton issued a preemptive pardon to fugitive financier Marc Rich. Not only had Rich not served any sentence; he had fled American jurisdiction upon being indicted. It’s been speculated that Clinton’s decision, like many others, was “influenced” by Rich’s buxom former wife Denise.

     Presidents must bear the burden of such decisions alone. No one else in the federal government has any say in the matter. Neither does anyone outside the federal government. That’s part of why it’s imperative that presidents be men of sound, sober judgment and unimpeachable moral character. Let’s hope our president-elect, whose flamboyance and occasional vulgarity are notable elements of his public persona, possesses those traits.

Healings: A Sunday Rumination

     Jesus’s attraction to the folk of Judea was twofold. The first of His offerings was His simplification of the traditional Mosaic / Levitical demands upon the Jewish people. As I’ve posted Matthew 19:16-19 many times already, I’ll refrain from doing so today. Nevertheless, it is at the heart of Christ’s assertion that “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Many have failed to grasp the import of that passage of the Gospels, and more’s the pity.

     The second of His attractions was, of course, the multitude of miracles He performed. Many of those involved the healing of chronically sick or crippled persons. Even more strikingly, in at least two instances He returned a dead person to life. When Christians speak of “the imitation of Christ,” they don’t mean that we should attempt similar phenomena. Ordinary mortals possess the ordinary powers of mortals; we don’t command Divine authority over all things, as Christ did.

     Yet both of these threads remain for Christians of our time to follow, as ineptly as we might.

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     The Gospel According To John, which is not one of the “Synoptic triad,” contains this passage of great importance:

     A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. [John 13:34-35]

     Now, strictly speaking that commandment is not “new.” Neither was it the first and only time He pronounced it. Remember that He included as the Second Great Commandment that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. There’s no real difference between those two prescriptions.

     However, it was the first time He commanded it directly to His Apostles. Though the subject is only lightly treated in any of the four Gospels, there was some degree of contention among the Apostles: jockeying for pride of place. It’s possible that His betrayal by Judas Iscariot was in part animated by Judas’s envy of those Apostles who received more of His attention, and by resentment of the Redeemer Himself. That Jesus was aware of that jostling for place, I have no doubt. It strikes me as plausible that He proclaimed the Second Great Commandment directly to them, as John’s Gospel tells us, specifically to emphasize that they were not exempt from any of His teachings.

     After all, “Do as I say, not as I do” was as serious a problem in classical Judea as it is today. Ask Caiaphas and his brethren on the Sanhedrin.

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     The Sturm und Drang over the election might have a while yet to run. I don’t expect the Left’s anger or disappointment over it to subside any time soon. Neither do I expect any major figures on the Left to counsel their fellows to calm and conciliation of the victorious Right. That’s not in the Left’s political DNA. It would be a millennial event for them to “break type” after their recent, resounding repudiation by the electorate.

     Similarly, one of the hazards of a smashing victory is for the victors to lord it over the vanquished in an arrogant, obnoxious fashion. The luminaries of the Right haven’t generally behaved that way after our triumphs, but for us to react nastily after the ocean of vitriol the Left has poured on us would be all too easy. If we want those who have supported conservative and Republican candidates to remain our supporters, we must be better than that. We must resist the temptation to strut, to denigrate the intelligence or sincerity of our opponents, and to grind their defeat into their faces.

     The nation must begin to heal at once.

     At the most recent census, 74% of respondents self-identified as Christians. There’s never been a more important time to be Christians in action as well as in name. We must be our best selves: the most gracious and magnanimous we can possibly be. That does not mean concessions about policy. Neither does it mean permitting our detractors to go unanswered and unrefuted. It means conducting ourselves as courteous citizens, with dispassion and unfailing civility as we undertake the necessities of the day.

     May God the Father create in each of us a magnanimous spirit.
     May God the Son lead us into becoming our best selves.
     May God the Holy Spirit animate all our dealings, whether with our allies or our opponents, with brotherly love, for there is a speck of the Divine in every man that lives.

     And may God, in all His Three Persons, bless and keep you all.

Who Is Listening?

     Since yesterday’s Special Report, which led with an interview by Bret Baier of “presumptive Republican presidential nominee” Donald Trump, the question above has been continuously on my mind.

     Has anyone been listening to Trump? Now and then, as Steve Hayes did in the panel segment, someone will note explicitly that Trump’s positions are infinitely fluid – that he’ll change his answer to a question immediately, according to the response it gets. This, of course, is consistent with Trump’s “Everything’s negotiable” maxim. Though it doesn’t qualify as a principle, it might be the only hard and fast rule Trump observes.

     In light of that, it just might be the case that Trump is the perfect representative of the GOP in our time. Since the Truman Administration at least, Republicans in high office have been willing to negotiate away every one of our rights, and the integrity of every one of our institutions. They’ve reeled out innumerable justifications – my favorite is “If we don’t give the Democrats this, they’ll propose something even worse” – but the bottom line is always the same: the political class wins, and the citizenry loses.

     In 1996, when the GOP nominated Senator Robert Dole of Kansas for its presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich issued a description for Dole that remains unsurpassed: he called Dole “the tax collector for the welfare state.” It perfectly captured Dole’s complete lack of fidelity to any notion of limited government; his sole concern was to make certain that the Democrats’ endless “social programs” were proactively funded. On no other point, except perhaps subsidies for Kansas farmers, had he ever stood firm. Some wag whose name I’ve forgotten quipped that were Senate Democrats to submit a bill mandating the beheading of all white males, Dole would insist that it be phased in over a five year period...which, after negotiation, he’d reduce to three.

     By their actions in 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012, the GOP’s kingmakers told us something of inestimable importance. We should have been listening harder.

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     Just this past Wednesday, Herschel at Captain's Journal emitted this plaint:

     [T]he people have chosen Donald Trump. A man who mocks the handicapped, who considers free speech a disgrace, who triangulated a position so nonsensical on North Carolina’s bathroom law that no one knows what he means, who is a proven hypocrite on foreign workers and immigration, who wants to increase the lands owned by federal government rather than decreasing federal power and turning over the lands to the states, who has never asked anyone for forgiveness, most especially God, who only recently triangulated his position on gun rights when previously supporting an “assault weapons” ban, who supports abortion, who believes that Maryanne Trump Barry (who supports infanticide) would make a fine supreme court justice, who criticizes women for their appearance, who calls people disgusting because of pictures taken of them while they eat. and who believes in a single payer health care system....

     And for me, that means that I’ve cast my last vote. I am bidding farewell to voting. I am now a disenfranchised conservative Christian, and if a third party opens up for me, I might decide to rejoin in the struggle, but I’ve won’t vote GOP again for the rest of my life. The GOP has left me – establishment and voters. It’s no longer my party. I have no party. But if I ever vote for an upstart party that is true to my conservative, constitutional ideals, I won’t cast my vote because I think politics will save us. I don’t. As John Adams has observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

     Herschel was listening. What about those who cast their nomination ballots for Trump? Were they listening? If so, what’s the import of their choice, which is now all but inevitable? Were they dismissing the other candidates, three of whom are governors with solid records of conservative accomplishment and two of whom are genuinely conservative senators who’ve dared to buck the go-along-to-get-along majority of their colleagues? Or was it their intention to mock all Republican officeholders for the spinelessness, pettiness, hunger for media praise, and earmark-funded venality of the leadership?

     Unfortunately, ballots don’t include a “Reason I’m Voting This Way” line.

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     Christ’s precursor John the Baptist was a lone “voice crying in the wilderness” calling out “Prepare ye the way of the Lord:”

     As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

     Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

     And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

     [Luke 3:4-14]

     There are many such voices today. They scream aloud, in print, and in pixels that we’re careening toward the lip of the abyss, that only an immediate, radical renunciation of welfarism, of victimism, of the gimme mentality, of laws that intrude upon privacy, dignity, and the institutions that give true stability to our society, of endless, infinitely detailed regulation of every aspect of life and commerce, and of the Omnipotent State that presides over it all can possibly save us.

     They speak with a passion and eloquence John the Baptist would surely recognize. Their message is as concise and consistent as his. Their observations are accurate and their arguments are well reasoned. They ask nothing for themselves. Who has listened to them?

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     Just last Sunday I wrote about the either-or proposition that constitutes religious faith. I noted that though prayer is always answered:

     Not only aren’t we guaranteed to recognize the answer; we’re not guaranteed to like it, either. As God says above, “This is how it works. This is life.”

     I pray more these days than ever before in my life. Despite my prayers – and no doubt the prayers of millions of others – that our nation be saved from its suicidal follies, things continue to worsen almost daily. If some of us have earned the doom that’s come to seem inevitable, surely some of us have not. According to Genesis, if Abraham could find only ten righteous men in Sodom, God would not destroy the city. Are there not at least ten righteous men in America today? Has the “Sodom exclusion clause” expired since the Resurrection? Or have America’s righteous, by failing to resist adequately in the years behind us, forfeited that qualification?

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     I’m thinking of abstaining from political blather for a spell to concentrate on other matters. Perhaps that will conduce to an improvement, if only in my own frame of mind. The evidence no longer supports the notion that the political crap is worthwhile. However, I can still write an entertaining story.

     We shall see.

Skills Versus Wisdom

     Many a man, once he has demonstrated some skill we value, will thereafter assume a pose of superior knowledge, insight, and wisdom over those who have purchased his wares. This is particularly the case with those whom we can’t seem to eject from our living rooms no matter how forcefully we change the channel: entertainers.

     Celebritarianism has intensified the assault on our senses and sensibilities to an alarming amplitude. I've argued for quite some time that the skill of an entertainer should not cause the entertained to impute knowledge, insight, or wisdom to him, but to little or no avail. Does a day ever go by when we’re not slathered with the social, economic, or political opinions of some celebrity, who, whatever his demonstrated skill, has shown us no reason to care about his opinions on such things? I’m sure I’m not the only American who’s getting tired of it all – but I’m equally sure that the barrage will continue. Celebrities gotta celebritate, don’t y’know.

     Dystopic has presented us with another data point on the graph: fantasy novelist Tad Williams. Please read the article for the only sample you’ll ever need. This is the mark of the “social justice warrior,” armed and on the march. Sheathed in the armor of his assumption of differential rectitude, he sallies forth to tell us about all the ways that “Republicans are like Nazis.” Of course he provides the usual insincere disclaimer:

     Of course it’s an oversimplification, and it’s in no way meant to suggest Republicans are actually Nazis. (Although there is a curious area of Venn diagram overlap, especially when it comes to racist beliefs and unthinking nationalism.)

     That’s merely a sample of the contempt Williams displays for those of us on the Right. He goes on to employ every vile rhetorical tactic “social justice warriors” have deployed since the Left first arose. The sole pity of his remarks is that though he is a skilled entertainer, his remarks and the attitude they convey will prejudice readers, both current and potential, against his works.

     SJWs are like that. They insist on imposing their political and social opinions on everyone and everything. And of course, they know they're right, which is why they so often burst into tears or erupt into violence when contradicted by a person of other views. Thus they destroy whatever else of value they might have to offer.

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     Some years ago, I had the misfortune to be introduced to Abe, an SJW – we didn’t yet use that term for them – by some friends who thought it would be amusing to see us strike sparks from one another. I was informed beforehand that Abe was older than I, well to do, and intelligent, but nothing more.

     Abe latched onto me from the moment we were introduced...and from the moment we were introduced I was desperate for an escape hatch. For Abe, a social occasion meant yet another opportunity to impart his political views to some poor benighted soul who had yet to receive the blessing of his wisdom. That evening I was the poor benighted soul.

     I did my best to restrain myself despite Abe’s many provocations – I was in someone else’s home, after all – but there came a point where I could no longer do so. It arrived when Abe contemptuously dismissed George W. Bush, then the president, as a person of no competence who deserves no respect, because to Abe, Bush’s Christianity meant that “he needs the comfort of an imposed structure.”

     That did it. “Are you aware,” I said, “that you’re speaking to a devout Catholic?” I turned on my heel and stalked away. I must have sounded pretty fearsome, for Abe cringed and backed sharply away. He made a point of staying well away from me during the short interval before Beth and I took our leave.

     Here’s the sad part: Abe was reasonably intelligent and engaged with the world. We differed sharply, but if you allowed him his premises, most of his positions were logically defensible. We might have had a nice exchange on matters of mutual interest, if only he could have kept his politics from displacing whatever else he had to offer. But as I said above, SJWs are like that.

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     Ace once pointed out that, though we on the Right are the ones seeking to depoliticize American life and culture, nevertheless we talk politics almost constantly. The contradiction is more apparent than real, but it still disturbs many persons who’d rather have less political jabber in their lives. In this regard, the failings of the SJWs should be a warning to us. We’re as capable as they of driving people away, particularly if we initiate hostilities by comparing Democrats or their party to Nazis, Communists, Scientologists, Hare Krishnas, or fans of Sinead O’Connor.

     I must admit to having fallen short of that standard more than once. I have strong opinions – surprise, surprise – and there are times when they “get away from me.” Anyone who believes himself to be correct about matters where many others are incorrect can succumb to the temptation. However, there’s a worse pitfall, which I wrote about here.

     At the core of true wisdom is the virtue of humility. Dystopic reminds us of it with a quote from Socrates:

     I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

     Keeping always in mind that anyone, including you, can be wrong about anything is the sovereign remedy for the offenses discussed here. It causes us to focus, when interacting with others, on what our demonstrable skills equip us to offer those others that they might value. It also elicits important information, according to whether the others respond in kind.

Quickies: A Taste Of One’s Own Posterior

     One of the reasons many persons choose one political allegiance over others is an affinity for the persons therein. In other words: If Smith, who is acquainted with both liberals and conservatives, likes and admires the conservatives substantially more than the liberals, it increases the probability that Smith will self-identify as a conservative.

     This has significant implications for trends in “political migration.” At any given time, sociological distributions will influence the net flow of persons from one political alignment to another, often rather strongly. That’s part of the reason the Left tries so hard to characterize persons on the Right as being closed-minded, puritanical, and bigoted: the truth is the exact reverse, and “liberals” who learn it first-hand are more likely to migrate from liberalism to conservatism.

     With that as a backdrop, have a gander at this brief piece:

     Via TV Newser we are learning that Fox News Channel has terminated its relationship with Bob Beckel the left-leaning, suspender-wearing, mumbling, grumbling, drug-addled co-host of The Five....

     A month after Beckel left the show the cable channel announced to viewers that Beckel had undergone major back surgery. On April 30, 2015 TV Newser reached out to Fox after learning that Beckel was being treated for addiction to prescription pain medication before and after his surgery....

     The embedded tweet below almost makes one sad. Almost.

    

     It’s not sad, not really. It’s illustrative. There are simply more nice people on the Right than on the Left – many more. It’s why you almost never hear of a conservative public figure migrating to the Left; the personalities on the Right are far more congenial. As a rule, we extend good will and behave courteously even toward persons who’ve drenched us in venom...something that can be fairly and accurately said about Bob Beckel.

     A quick morning snack for thought.

Problems In The Liberty Movement Part 1: Religious Cranks

Hans of NC Renegade today cites a thought-provoking essay, which I exhort all persons interested in restoring freedom and Constitutionally limited government to read. It's aimed at refuting the contentions of an enemy of freedom, who probably thinks himself a "compassionate" sort despite the carnage his particular beliefs have inflicted upon suffering Mankind over the centuries. But that's normal for persons who cannot bear to have their convictions examined for their actual consequences in action.

It caused me to remember an incident of some years back, when I first became interested in the liberty movement and found it, tentatively at least, to my taste. It was a talk given by former Libertarian Party presidential candidate David Bergland, focused mainly on outreach: libertarians' halting, mostly unsuccessful attempts to interest other Americans in the nature and possibilities of a free society. Bergland was a gifted speaker, capable of holding an audience's interest while establishing his points in a strikingly casual, low-key style. Yet at one point in the course of his talk, he said something that drew an uneasy, faintly hostile reaction I doubt he expected.

What did Bergland say that set his audience on edge?

"Utopia is not one of the options."

That's all -- and to an audience that consisted almost entirely of self-described libertarians. Yet the looks of disbelief and discomfort on their faces were impossible to ignore.

In remembering and reflecting on that dissonance between a highly regarded libertarian speaker and his supposed co-allegiants to freedom, I resolved upon a new essay series. Hopefully it will be a constructive effort, conducive to better outreach for freedom and the principles enshrined in our Constitution.

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When Saint Thomas More wrote the original Utopia, it was his firm intention to make it clear that his conception did not and could not exist -- past, present, or future. The late, great R. A. Lafferty rang a brilliant change on More's thesis in his first novel, Past Master, by having the masters of a future society resurrect the saint as the answer to the problems in their society, which they saw as Utopia-in-waiting. Lafferty's genius, up to then displayed only in short stories, reached blinding intensity when, as President of Astrobe, More is confronted with a bill to abolish...wait for it...all remnants of religious belief.

More's refusal to do so, despite his own lapse from belief, brings about his (second) beheading.

Tyrannies uniformly despise and act against religious creeds that stand in opposition to their aims. Some seize upon one particular creed -- the contemporary example of note is Islam -- elevate it to the state religion and enforce it on penalty of death. Others synthesize a statist creed -- e.g., Nazism or Communism -- that promotes the State to the position of God. Still others refuse any explicit interaction with religion...as so labeled.

But religious convictions, viewed through the lens of history, constitute the most powerful non-material forces known to Man. Outright attempts to kill faith, as Quentin Reynolds put it, are like "trying to punch a hole in a pillow," which is why the more successful tyrannies have attempted to promote statism of some sort as religion's replacement.

Religious convictions are inherently personal. An old friend, Christian Western writer Terry Burns, made an important point about this in an apparently casual conversation. I mentioned that the daughter of a friend, though nominally a Catholic, found herself at odds with her mother over a bit of doctrine, and in consequence the two were often at loggerheads. Terry replied that Daughter's personal divergence is normal and natural. Were he to advise Mom, he said, he would tell her that for Daughter to subscribe 100% to Mom's religion would be an act of borrowing rather than an act of faith -- that religion is far too personal for that to be an enduring guidelight and solace.

Terry, one of the most devout and unswerving Baptist Christians of my acquaintance, understood the nature of religion far better than 99.99% of the clerics who've "done a corner" in it throughout history.

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A man's religious convictions are among his most closely guarded personal possessions. He invariably views them as integral with his identity and character. To attack them is to attack him. This is as true for the odd religion that calls itself atheism as for any other variety.

Which makes it a terrible tragedy that so many liberty-minded persons are also intolerable militant atheists.

Sadly, it's consistent with the ideological orientation of many freedom-minded people that they should reject other institutional authorities quite as vehemently as they reject the Omnipotent State. Their shortcoming is a failure to distinguish between that which is inherently predatory and that which is morally indifferent or better. In consequence, they routinely alienate persons of a religious bent by deriding them as "irrational," "would-be tyrants," or other Randian-flavored nonsense.

Yes, I've suffered the attentions of such persons. I haven't always reacted as a Christian should.

One who relentlessly promotes his personal, non-verifiable, non-falsifiable convictions about anything has traditionally been labeled a crank. Religious cranks include both theist cranks -- those who are relentless in promoting their recognizably religious creeds -- and atheist cranks -- those who are obnoxiously militant about their contempt for all other religious faiths. The liberty movement is home to very few of the former, but a truly deplorable number of the latter.

Though the majority of freedom-minded Americans, like Americans generally, are self-nominated Christians, these are not as prominent a "face" for the liberty movement as are the militant atheists. By their obnoxious behavior and their unwillingness to let a statement of faith go unchallenged, militant atheists do great harm to our prospects for restored freedom. In brief, they persuade those with whom they come in contact that these are not the associates they want. Most of us choose our political associates for such reasons, and therefore the political positions we will support and defend. It's far more about how one wants to be viewed by others than about ideology.

Please don't misunderstand me: I have no problem with the Amiable Agnostic, in which category I include non-militant atheists. The rule of freedom is "live and let live," and on no subject is that rule more imperative than on religious belief. By contrast, the militants -- those inclined toward crossing rhetorical swords with everyone they encounter who doesn't hew to their religion -- mirror the most conspicuous behavior of tyrants of all kinds, by insisting that others' most personal convictions must be "corrected" until they match those of the militant atheist. Before that "correction" has been achieved, the militant will show the religious man nothing but contempt. Indeed, the former will treat the latter as a tyrant-in-waiting, perhaps the greatest irony possible for one who claims to love freedom.

If liberty is to gain ground, it will need far more allegiants than it has. For that to occur, the hostility and contempt expressed by altogether too many "libertarians" toward those who cleave to religious faith must be refuted forcefully, perhaps with ostracism. Such persons must not be permitted to represent themselves as the One True Faith of Freedom.

More anon.