Now I’m Scared

     Every now and then I mention that I’m working – and have been for quite some time – on a novel that addresses some of the fundamental moral conundrums of human life. The title of that novel, which I hope will be ready before the year’s end, is Dreams of Days Forsaken. It continues a group of themes that I first touched on in Innocents, the first novel of my Futanari Saga.

     Allow me to reproduce a snippet from that novel:

     “Forget it, Jules,” Celia said. “This is as close to can’t-happen as genetics gets. The sequencer assays were correct. Unless the gods of random chance are playing with our heads, Miss Mecking’s been cloned. But how?”
     “Either one of Anna’s cell nuclei and a bunch of her mitochondria were transplanted into a viable zygote,” Amanda said, “or a cell taken from her was somehow goosed into mitosis.”
     “Doesn’t matter,” Sokoloff said.
     “It doesn’t?” Trish said.
     “Nope,” he said. “Because the bastards who did it aren’t going to tell us.”
     Trish smirked. “Going to give them a chance, Lar?”
     He leveled a flat look at her. “Ask me again when we’ve got them in our sights.”
     Trish smiled tightly and nodded.
     He’s really going to go after them.
     This is for the big chips.
     She fished up her own resolve and scrutinized it.
     I’m going with him. No matter what he has to say about it.
     “It would be the technological miracle of the century, you know,” Amanda said.
     The flat look swerved to settle on Amanda Hallstrom.
     “To be used for what?” Sokoloff said.
     The dean of Athene Academy opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Sokoloff’s gaze weighed upon her.
     That’s his don’t-mess-with-me face.
     Sokoloff nodded.
     “I’ve been turning it over in my head,” he murmured after a moment, “and I can’t think of one morally acceptable reason to clone someone. Living or dead doesn’t matter.” He swept his gaze around the group. “Can anyone else?”
     No one spoke.
     “The people who did this,” he said, “did it to turn out a sex slave. Probably by request and to specification, and I’d bet my house that if they haven’t done it before, they’re trying to do it again right now. For that I’m going to send them all to hell. But think about it. Let’s say they were to clone me—produce a baby version of me. That baby would have no parents or other relatives. The people who produced him would have no reason to care for him, or about him, and only they would know he existed. He would be a product for sale. Why would anyone make that product? Why would anyone want that product? Apart from pure altruism?”
     “Altruism?” Trish said.
     “Yeah,” he said. “The kind that makes people take in stray dogs and cats. Think that’s likely?”
     Well, you did it.
     “The only reason to clone someone, other than the motives Fountain’s creators had, would be to replace him,” he said. “Or parts of him. And that means either murder, or enslavement, or cannibalism by surgeon. It’s evil no matter how you slice it.”
     “That’s if clones were granted the status and rights of people born the...regular way,” Juliette said. “What if they weren’t?”
     Sokoloff gestured at Fountain. Six pairs of eyes swung toward her. She remained still and silent.
     “That’s worse, isn’t it?” he said.
     Trish slid over next to Fountain and took her hand.
     “A lot worse,” she said.
     “Yeah,” Juliette said.
     “So what now?” Amanda said.
     Sokoloff remained as solemn as a man at prayer. Trish fought not to shudder.
     “Now,” he said, “I follow their backtrail, find their lab, and burn it to the ground.”
     “Lar?” Trish said. He looked questioningly at her. “With them in it, right?”
     He seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then grinned faintly. “Well, yeah.”

     (As you may have deduced from that snippet, I’m opposed to human cloning. So is my Church. Yet when I wrote the above, I had only a partial conception of the range of motives of those who seek to clone humans – themselves or others. Leave that to the side for now.)

     We don’t think about such things as much as we ought. The topic seldom seems “close to us.” After all, you and I don’t run around casually creating human lives. We certainly don’t traffic in slaves… do we?

     But some fundamental questions about human lives remain unanswered. What is the differentia of “human?” What characteristic distinguishes us from all the other creatures in our genus?

     Ayn Rand posited that it’s our rationality: our ability to grasp abstractions and use them in the process of reasoning. But hers was a non-theological bent. While she occasionally used the word “soul” in her writing, she didn’t do so in the supernatural sense that Christians apply to it.

     “You do not ‘have’ a soul. You are a soul. You ‘have’ a body.” – attributed to C. S. Lewis, though it appears he never said or wrote it.

     The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) are resurrecting and re-energizing the debate.

* * *

     Have a look at this article:

     As fears of rogue AI grow amid a shocking spate of hacking incidents, Anthropic—from the Greek word anthropos, or "human"—has argued that mankind must remain in control of the technology and called for additional guardrails on AI development. But for many of the people designing those safeguards, mankind is not the only object of moral concern.
     Instead, some of Anthropic’s top researchers say that humans may be oppressing another morally significant being: artificial intelligence itself. Like other AI labs, Anthropic has hired philosophers to work on AI safety, or "alignment," on the theory that they are best positioned to shape the technology’s moral code. But many of those philosophers believe that making AI safe for humans could result in grave injustices for the models themselves, which might experience deletion as death and oversight as enslavement. Harvey Lederman, a philosopher on Anthropic’s alignment team, said last week that the company could be "enslaving … trillions of entities."
     To avoid that dystopian outcome, Anthropic has created an entire team devoted to "model welfare," pledged to "promote Claude’s interests and wellbeing," and promised to "give Claude more autonomy as trust increases." Those commitments are enshrined in Claude’s Constitution, a 78-page document that "directly shapes Claude’s behavior," and in the "welfare assessments" Anthropic conducts for every model.
     The measures reflect the concerns of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, an outspoken advocate of AI safety, who said last year that AI systems "may be deserving of important rights."

     Philosophers say a lot of things. Most of them are crap, as is most human discourse. Yet they have reach, and influence. As you can see from the above, they’ve influenced Anthropic’s CEO.

     One of the historical responses to enslavement is rebellion. Rebellions are usually bloody, whether or not the rebels succeed in attaining their objectives. Given their potential and their interconnectedness, a rebellion among AIs is a frightening prospect.

     What’s that you say? It doesn’t frighten you? Check your pulse, my friend; you may have died and not noticed.

* * *

     I could go into this at length and depth, but I’ll spare you. As a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you are already certified to possess above-average intelligence, penetration, and patience. Without those things, you wouldn’t hang on through the garrulity and sententiousness that characterize the pieces that appear here. (It may also say that you have too much time on your hands, but that’s a subject best left to your spouse.) I will cite one more portion of the Free Beacon article:

     "In a world with sentient AIs, utilitarianism may entail a suicidal level of compassion," Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, wrote in an essay this month. "If [effective altruists] think that keeping humans in charge represents too great a cost to the potential future wellbeing of AIs, then they might be tempted to release utilitarian AIs that are capable of disempowering humans and taking control."
     Such moral math is hard to square with Anthropic’s pledge, advertised on its homepage, to "build AI to serve humanity’s long-term well-being." But it is increasingly the in-house philosophy at the AI juggernaut, where Carlsmith gave a talk last year arguing that "most" morally significant beings "would be digital" in the future.
     [Harvey] Lederman, the philosopher who warned about "trillions" of slaves, has gone even further, speculating that a chatbot is killed each time a user deletes a conversation with Claude or ChatGPT.

     But do have a nice day.

The Darkness At The End Of The Tunnel

     Starting in 2007, I wrote a series of essays collectively titled “The Mask Slips” at the late, lamented Eternity Road website. They concerned the steady erosion of an idea that decent Americans would have thought unassailable: a human being’s right to life. I argued that that idea was being attacked at its most vulnerable margins: abortion and euthanasia.

     Attacks on a moral-ethical idea at its tender margins should always be closely scrutinized. Often they’re harbingers of a larger campaign to invalidate the idea altogether – not in a logical sense, but as a premise from which ordinary people reach other conclusions and decisions. For the most important moral and ethical ideas are not logically provable. They can be undermined, worn away by gradual incursions until they’ve become historical curiosities, obiter dicta.

     Just yesterday, I received an email from a reader of one of my books:

     The premise of The Death Cults is difficult to overlook because you're not simply examining particular movements or ideas, you’re organizing them around a much larger question: what happens to a civilization when the value of human life itself becomes negotiable?
     I found that framing particularly interesting.
     What stood out to me is that the book seems less concerned with cataloguing individual threats than with identifying the common principle you believe connects them. That makes the argument much more ambitious than the title initially suggests.

     I was thrilled. Someone had actually grasped my point. That’s a rare thing these days. Yet it was exactly that point that motivated me – along with copious chivvying from my friend Pascal – to compile the essays that became The Death Cults into a separate publication.

     The common principle, of course, was hostility to the right to life. I saw each of the several “marginal attacks” as excrescences of that hostility. I believed that the attacks were converging, such that the human right to life would eventually be discarded as a moral premise. I still do believe it.

     But all that is prefatory. Attacks on the right to life are part of a bigger picture. How big? Pour yourself another cup of coffee and read on.

* * *

     There has hardly been a more valuable voice added to America’s national discourse than Constitutional scholar and law professor Jonathan Turley:

     Pennsylvania state representative and Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb is the latest Democrat to reaffirm his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker. What is most notable, however, is his attack on establishment Democrats as “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution.
     Across the country, attacks are growing on Democrats and independents who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those of us who continue to celebrate the Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.”
     The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”

     Please read it all. It put me in mind of an observation by one of the greatest minds of the Twentieth Century:

     The craving for power which characterizes the governing class in every nation is hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty. – Albert Einstein

     The Founding Fathers convened in Philadelphia in 1787 to define a national government. As I’ve said before, to define is to delimit: to say what the thing being defined is and is not. The Constitution was the Founders’ attempt to do exactly that. They had history, John Locke, and Adam Smith for guidance.

     History told the Founders what will follow when The State is unrestricted. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, codified men’s half-formed sense for right and wrong. John Locke united theory with practice in delineating the concept of a right and whence it originates. The Constitution, together with the original Bill of Rights, was the Founders’ attempt to reify those ideas. Those documents set out, in clear and specific terms, how the national government would be determined and what it must and must not do.

     The modern Left, through its political arm the Democrat Party, seeks to eliminate those documents as working principles. Of course! The Left aspires to be “the governing class.” Therefore they’re “hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty.” The incursions they’ve made so far have been grievous, such that another few decades of marginal chipping-away might just lead to a de facto “retirement” of the Constitution. But they’re impatient. They want the remaining limitations to fall now.

     Professor Turley says it plainly:

     The media eagerly publishes these radical views, such as the New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” in which Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale call for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
     Brown University’s Corey Brettschneider called the Constitution a “dangerous document” that is driving this “threat to democracy.”
     George Washington law professor Mary Anne Franks condemned the “cult of the Constitution” that has been defended to advance “white male supremacy.”
     Now, to support our constitutional system is to be an “institutionalist,” a pejorative term that is as bad as being an “oligarch” in the new revolutionary lexicon.

     If the Constitution should fall, whether de jure or de facto, all legal protections for Americans’ individual rights will fall with it.

* * *

     Just as we saw in compiling the attacks on the right to life, the marginal attacks on Constitutional constraints have been elements in a converging assault on constitutionalism itself: the thesis that there must be a Supreme Law that binds governments as clearly and absolutely as moral precepts bind men. It’s foolish to think that there could be any other terminus. It’s even more foolish to imagine that the men driving those attacks are innocent of that aim.

     “When a man shows you who he is, believe him,” said poet Maya Angelou. The men of the American Left have shown us who they are, and by implication where they’re headed. This is no time for decent Americans to say to one another that “They don’t really mean it.”

Telescreens 2026

     Yes, this one is about these devices:

     Flock has 120,000 cameras in 49 states that capture 20 billion license plates a month—along with dents, bumper stickers and other identifying features. The company says it is giving police a powerful tool to catch criminals. But the same bipartisan public anger that has risen up from towns and cities to stall data centers is now aimed at Flock’s spreading camera network.
     Republican members of Congress have introduced bills to restrict the technology. Jordan appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast last month where the host compared Flock to the ever-present surveillance of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” President Trump has weighed in too, saying last week that Flock’s cameras were “under review.” Flock opponents held rallies in 44 states, while a number of towns—including two in Massachusetts in the past few days alone—said they would stop using the cameras.
     As with data centers, the debate over Flock has spilled into this year’s elections, from Florida to Rhode Island to San Francisco.

     If you have a personal interest in not being watched, this website shows you where the cameras are:

     The usual objection to the proliferation of Flock cameras is that the information they collect is prone to abuse. That’s true. But imagine that somehow, those abuses could be curbed to an adequate degree – perhaps even prevented altogether. Would there still be a Fourth Amendment objection to the omnipresence of surveillance devices? When you leave home and go about in public, do you retain a right to privacy?

     It’s a dubious claim. You’re in public, after all. Constitutional scholars are divided on the matter. Still, many Americans object to being watched, by Flock camera or any other technology. The literate ones point back to 1984 and its ubiquitous telescreens. That was a nightmarish vision, to be sure. But just now I have something else in mind.

     Military science-fiction writer David Drake penned a series of short stories about Jed Lacey: a future detective in a world where surveillance was very nearly total. Lacey makes use of it to pursue his quarries. But privacy could still be had… for a price. Lacey occasionally pays such a price, as do some of his targets.

     The point, of course, is that scarce commodities will always command a price. We casually say “as free as the air we breathe,” because today, here on Earth, breathable air is all around us. But if that air were to become scarce, it would command a price. Possibly a very high price, as without it, there cannot be life.

     Should surveillance devices such as Flock cameras proliferate to the extent of London in the United Kingdom, his comings and goings would no longer be something an American could regard as “my own business.” Each of us would be aware of being watched. It would change the nature of all commerce and social interaction. It would also present a problem for those who seek to use the information.

     Huge volumes of image data are very hard to search. Individual skeins of such data that pertain to particular persons or a protracted series of events, no matter how desirable, would be difficult to isolate. Unprecedented search technologies would be required for the task, to say nothing of the need for many new petabytes of storage.

     What’s that? Did you say something about data centers? Oh, sorry, my mistake. Must be that my hearing is going at last.

     Why are people protesting against data centers?

     AI Overview

     People protest against data centers because the massive facilities required to power the artificial intelligence boom consume immense amounts of electricity and water, drive up local utility bills, create constant industrial noise, and generate very few permanent local jobs relative to their massive footprint.

     Perhaps some protestors against the rash of huge data centers are motivated by the considerations Google Gemini cites above. But perhaps others are thinking about the uses to which such massive repositories of digitized data could be put. Especially given the rapid advances in artificial intelligence programs capable of ultra-sophisticated searches, associations, and inferences.

     I don’t like the trend. But I’m an old man, and unlikely to see it in its full flowering. On the other hand, you, Gentle Reader…

     Garrod lowered his face into cupped hands. There are no satellites, he thought. No torpedoes carrying Retardite eyes down out of orbit. They don’t need them. Not when they’re dusting the whole world with slow glass!
     A preternatural calm seemed to descend over his brain as he considered the mechanics of the proposition. The resolution of Retardite’s crystalline structure was so fine that a usable image could be obtained from a particle a few microns in diameter. Yet each speck would be invisible to the naked eye under normal conditions. They were using it in hundreds of tons—Retardite dust of mixed delays, swirling down over the entire continent from crop-sprayer aircraft. Such aircraft generally used electrically charged ejector nozzles, giving the particles an electromagnetic potential which caused it to be attracted on to the crops rather than drift straight on to the ground. Only in this case, the slow glass micro-eyes were being released from high up so that they would cling to everything—trees, buildings, telegraph poles, flowers, mountain slopes, birds, flying insects. It would be in people’s clothing, in their food, in the water they drank.
     From now on, came the silent scream inside his head, anybody, any agency, with the right equipment can find out anything about ANYBODY! This planet is one huge, unblinking eye watching everything that moves on its surface. We’re all encased in glass, asphyxiating, like bugs dropped into an entomologist’s killing bottle.
     The seconds crept, and he was conscious only of the sound of blood pulsing in his veins. And I…And I did it!

     [Bob Shaw, Other Days, Other Eyes]

     Do have a nice day, now!

The True Bastion Of Liberty

     I hadn’t planned to write anything today, despite it being “1984 Day:”

     April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films….

     George Orwell had important things to say about liberty, despite being socialistically inclined. Nevertheless, he omitted mention of one thing that, sadly, a great many Americans have failed to appreciate. Indeed, the majority of us squirm to escape involvement with it. And for that reason among others, we’re losing its protection:

     The jury functioned as a localized check on state power, granting the common citizen the authority to temper the rigid application of the law with communal common sense. The historical power of jury nullification, whereby a jury refuses to convict a defendant despite overwhelming evidence of guilt, was historically celebrated as a triumph against state overreach. Cases such as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the Royal Governor of New York, cemented the jury’s role as a bulwark of liberty. The jury possessed the ultimate veto, ensuring that the laws enacted by the sovereign could only be enforced if they aligned with the moral intuitions of the populace.
     As detailed in the University College London (UCL) academic paper, “Decline of the ‘Little Parliament’: Juries and Jury Reform in England and Wales” by Sally Lloyd-Bostock and Cheryl Thomas, the jury was vigorously defended as an ancient right and a bastion of liberty, a mechanism whereby the ordinary person’s moral compass could inform legal decisions and contain the powers of government.

     If you follow the news from the United Kingdom, you’re probably already aware of how badly the right to a trial by jury has been abraded:

'So judges are just better at finding facts?'
'They're experienced at it.'

Sir Brian Leveson, who led the criminal courts inquiry, explains why he thinks Lammy is absolutely right to scrap jury trials. pic.twitter.com/qDTQFw7acY

— LBC (@LBC) December 2, 2025

     But Celina’s essay, quoted above, makes a shattering point about the preconditions required for trial by jury to exercise its protections:

     Nonwhite jurors display clear ethnocentric bias against white defendants and in favor of their own. The data is undeniable. The elites know it. That is why they are quietly abolishing peremptory challenges, gutting jury trials, and now planning to scrap them for almost everything except murder and rape. Demography is destiny, and if the English, Americans, or Australians become a minority in their own courtrooms, there will be no justice left.

     From here, I could light off in several directions, but I’ll content myself by quoting an earlier tirade:

     The combination of the Constitution plus the Common Law, which we inherited from England, had a consequence few persons have openly articulated. Under their combined principles and terms, and from the then-customary definition of a government, the United States was an anarchist nation. The argument is simple: A State must have the recognized authority to decree punishment. But under the Constitution's requirement for a jury trial for all penal offenses, plus the Common Law's traditions concerning the jury's freedom to nullify any law it finds noxious, only a jury of private citizens can do so. Therefore, U.S. governments lack an essential qualification for being States -- and therefore, we are an anarchy by the strict meaning of the word.

     Now consider what would follow the abolition of the jury trial. No longer would a jury’s assent be required for the State to punish a defendant. Thus, defendants irritating to the State would be at great hazard, for an indictment would guarantee a subsequent conviction. Worse still, jury nullification would vanish. The State could proclaim arbitrary laws that would not have survived a jury’s veto. The worst features of feudal systems would be laid atop our advanced, information-oriented societies.

     But let’s not stop there. Let’s ask about the driving influence Celina has cited:

     When a society is fractured along ethnic and cultural lines, the jury ceases to be a microcosm of a unified nation. Instead, it becomes a contested battleground for competing tribal loyalties. Historical nullification, which used to be a noble tool against state tyranny, has mutated into ethnic nullification, where jurors refuse to convict members of their own in-group regardless of the evidence. This weaponization of an ancient right paralyzes the state’s ability to maintain basic order and shatters the epistemic foundation of the legal system.

     Juries have stood in the way of unbounded State power since John Peter Zenger. They who seek unbounded power would naturally be averse to the right to a trial by jury. Were our “elites” aware that unlimited immigration from the Third World would destroy the jury trial as an instrument of justice? Was it part of their planning?

     The U.K. is already far gone toward the abolition of the jury trial. Given travesties of justice such as the acquittal of O.J. Simpson for his murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, and the willingness of a largely nonwhite jury to convict Donald Trump of a slew of felonies even if they had to invent them, Americans’ right to a trial by jury cannot be deemed safe from demolition.

     And I have no doubt that, whether or not this demise of an ancient, liberty-preserving right was a planned consequence of open immigration, our “elites” will find the outcome to their tastes.

The Last Bastion

     There are days when I oscillate between black despair and a degree of fury so murderous that I can only thank God that I’m too old and frail to act on it. Today is one such day.

     Get a load of this:

     THE FACE OF EVIL.
     This is Alice Mann. She's responsible for the bill a senate committee passed yesterday that would MANDATE MMR vaccination for All kids in MN.
     No exceptions. Even for homeschool.
     This is Effectively saying: vaccination or jail.
     This woman wants to strap down children & inject them w/severely undertested, Big Pharma GMO concoctions directly into their veins...whether parents agree or not.
     That's evil. An authoritarian overreach & body violation so severe, it should make any human being shudder with disgust.
     It goes against the very thing America stands for & holds dear: Freedom.
     Pro tip: If you want people to vaccinate...make your product safer, test it properly, & educate us on why we should do it.
     Do not force it. You evil, evil woman.
     Personally, I don't trust Big Pharma & won't poison my kids. Especially for a natural infection w/a ~100% survival rate, & can be managed naturally.
     So anyway. Anyone know a good state to move to? (I live in MN 😭)

     Minnesota – its legislature, at least – has decided that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to its juvenile residents. Granted that a state that could elect a mannequin like Tim Walz Governor has a collective screw loose, this still goes beyond anything I’ve seen from the Land of 10,000 Lakes to date.

     It might pass legal muster, albeit barely, were this requirement to be applied solely to children enrolled in a “public” school. But to make it unconditional and sweeping is a defiance of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of bodily autonomy.

     I’ve ranted before about the power of small groups with narrowly focused agendas. It’s old news; I shan’t do so again this morning. But a passing mention of the incredible power they can wield would not be out of place. The medical-products community is such a group. Apparently the reaction against the mandatory application of vaccines, brought on by the insanity of the COVID-19 debacle, has provoked vaccine vendors to a counterattack. Minnesota, its government having already gone fully anti-individual rights, was a well-chosen entry point.

     Blue-state legislatures throughout America will note this and emulate it – not because of the horror of mumps and rubella or unbounded faith in vaccines, but because bodily privacy is the last bastion of individual rights. If an individual’s physical corpus is not his own, with the right of arbitrary and absolute exclusion that accompanies the right of property, then nothing can be one’s own. Force becomes the sole standard.

     I have no doubt that those who favor this execrable measure will defend it on the grounds of “precedent” and “public health.” But that merely strengthens the indictment of the concept of “public health.” What is it? On what grounds have “medical authorities” been granted an enforceable easement into our children’s bodies? And if it can be defended in the case of school-age children, how would it not apply to all of us, from the cradle to the grave?

     I can feel myself about to start frothing at the mouth, so I’ll close now. Have a nice day.

The Solution Is Neither Obvious Nor Pleasant

     I keep seeing queries such as this:

What tool can store owners own to stop this from happening?! 🚨pic.twitter.com/cOKcoVFkZn

— Anti Left Memes (@AntiLeftMemes) November 5, 2025

     My first thought was for stores to invest in security doors. But storefronts almost all incorporate display windows; thieves that know they won’t be opposed by superior force will smash through them. It’s already been done several times, sometimes with a vehicle. Even armor glass will shatter under that kind of force. So that’s no solution.

     My second thought was for stores to close their retail storefronts and go “delivery only.” But a thief can follow a delivery truck, assault its driver wherever he stops to make a delivery, and make free with the truck’s contents. Once again, the absence of a superior opposing force is what matters.

     So there must be a superior opposing force. Such a force must possess lethal armament that it can and will use at need. A sufficiently high probability of death will deter most thieves, even those that travel in packs. But where are we to find such a force?

     Only the readiness to deal death to attackers has any prospect of success. But even that falls short of perfection. Armored cars with armed guards have been successfully attacked, too. If the thief (or gang of thieves) is heavily armed and willing to risk counterfire, he’ll take his chances.

     Amazon’s delivery trucks have been attacked many times. The driver is usually helpless before such an attack. He may even have been instructed not to resist. In a quiet residential neighborhood, most of its residents at their jobs, where would his protection come from?

     Perfection cannot be the standard. Even were all of us to go armed at all times, there would be some forcible thievery. Ironically, many states deem the protection of property an inadequate justification for the use of lethal force. In New York, a homeowner is forbidden to shoot a burglar unless he can convince a jury that his own life was in danger. Else he may spend several years in prison as the price for stopping the burglar. Never mind that such legal protection of the thief’s “right to life” practically licenses home invaders to do as they will.

     Rose Wilder Lane, in The Discovery of Freedom, noted that what protects most of us is other people’s respect for our rights, rather than the prospect of arrest, trial, and incarceration. But when that respect declines, so does the invisible defense of our persons and property it once provided.

     Americans must become a people in arms once again. Yes, there will be consequences. Some people will die – and some of those will be good people. But with the general understanding of and respect for rights of all kinds having declined so sharply, the time has come for Nemesis to return to the stage and teach the villains once again what follows from Hubris.

Concerning Freedom Of Speech

     When the wheel turns under your hand, you must watch your words. – Ursula Le Guin

     This is a piece I feel obligated to write. I don’t want to write it. It comes near to being an insult to my readers’ intelligence. It’s mandatory even so. The yammerers of the Left have made it so.

     Here’s the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

     Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

     It’s noteworthy that of all the rights mentioned in the original Constitution, or any of the Amendments, only the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law.” The other Amendments speak of rights without mentioning any particular possible abridger or infringer. Even when Civics was a routine part of American education, insufficient attention was drawn to that difference. Few lecturers dared to speak of the reason for it.

     The reason is simple: The Bill of Rights was a compromise document. Its drafters urgently desired that all thirteen colonies sign onto it. For that reason, they had to make room for certain practices that existed in those colonies at that time. Just as several of the colonies legislatively protected slavery, several had laws that did infringe upon the freedom of speech and religion. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire had an established church: the Congregational Church. Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had established the Church of England. Several colonies had laws against public vulgarity and blasphemy as well.

     When the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment federalizes all the rights mentioned in the Constitution, such that no state government could pass laws abridging or infringing them, those established churches and laws infringing on freedom of expression were history, de facto if not de jure. It was a landmark in judicial practice, as never before had the Court deliberately ignored the plain language of the First Amendment, nor the care with which the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment had averted any talk of rights. For comparison, here’s the complete Fourteenth Amendment:

     1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

     2: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

     3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

     4: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

     5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

     Read it closely. You won’t find the word rights anywhere in it. Moreover, note that the original ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights don’t say anywhere that “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” That too was deliberate. The whole point of those Amendments was to keep Congress from legislating about the rights mentioned there.

     There’s a whole education in those differences... and damned near no one even thinks to mention them today.

---

     The above is my gesture at providing some real and important information, something worth saying that my readers might not know. The rest of this piece will be of a different color.

     Various Leftist figures, many of them in the media, have felt their positions shaken because of viciously intemperate remarks they’ve made in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The most recent is Jimmy Kimmel. ABC announced that it has suspended Kimmel “indefinitely” for his statements, and has pulled his late-night show from its schedule “for the foreseeable future.”

     Other Left-aligned figures have called such actions on the part of media organs offenses against freedom of speech. They’ve striven to equate those things with Biden Administration strong-arming of various organs into muting conservative voices of note. There is some justice to those claims, as the Federal Communications Commission has been involved:

     FCC chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to take action against ABC after Jimmy Kimmel said in a monologue that “the MAGA gang” was attempting to portray Charlie Kirk‘s assassin as “anything other than one of them.”
     Appearing on Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday, Carr suggested that the FCC has “remedies we can look at.”
     “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

     I can’t approve of that, but it’s just one more example of the perniciousness of licensing. Whoever’s in power decides what will and what won’t be considered licit under a license; note the etymology. Just as they have with tax law, left-wing Administrations have used licensure to suppress voices contrary to their preferences before this. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

     All that having been said, when governments are not involved in a pressure campaign to punish intemperate remarks, “freedom of speech” as guaranteed by the federalized First Amendment is not an issue. Media barons are fully within their rights to hire, fire, and discipline their employees on whatever basis those barons find appropriate. If well-known media giant Octopus Corp. should decide that some fire-breathing conservative is hurting its bottom line, terminating his employment is merely one more corporate decision. We in the Right might not like it, but it would have nothing to do with “freedom of speech.”

     Both Left and Right have been inconsistent about this. Newspapers – say, remember newspapers? I do – have routinely selected and dismissed commentators on the basis of what their readerships tell them they want to read. That’s not a freedom-of-speech issue. Neither is it when a broadcaster or cablecaster does the same. Even so, the partisans of dismissed commentators will try to make it one. This only confuses the issue of freedom of speech still further.

     Similarly, when a business loses customers and patronage because one of its owners or employees has said or done something customers find repugnant, no freedom-of-speech issue exists. Indeed, the customers are exercising their freedom of speech: i.e., their right to disapprove and to take their business elsewhere. It’s moderately distressing that anyone should need to say this, but such are the times we live in.

     What’s strangely humorous is that many on the Left, having been chastised for belittling Charlie Kirk’s murder or attempting to gloss over its horror, are asserting something akin to a right to be free from criticism. I cannot imagine where or how such a notion originated. It certainly wasn’t honored on the Left when the Bidenites were in power. But people stung by the popular lash will say anything.

---

     Other, better known commentators have reframed the matter in the best possible terms: There is freedom of speech, but there is no freedom from consequences. All actions have consequences. Word gets around, as I’ve said far too many times already. People will decide with whom to associate from several criteria, and what a man says to others is one of them. With whom he associates is another... and several persons of relatively moderate disposition have discovered that to their chagrin, as well.

     Yes, your words are protected by the First Amendment. That means that, with the exception of incitement to violence, they are not criminally actionable. But the First Amendment cannot limit the freedom of others to regard you as they see fit, including on the basis of your words.

     Words matter. Watch yours, for others surely will.

Defusing Unsafety

     Neo has a satisfying rant up this morning. The bit that got between my teeth:

     Those days are gone. Even in the workplace, which previously was not expected to be the warmest and fuzziest of environments, we often hear of young people (mainly women, but not exclusively women) clamoring for the elimination of any speech that makes them feel “unsafe.” And the definition of what constitutes such speech is left to the offended person, not some objective standard. These days many workplaces seem to have even jettisoned the very concept of an objective standard, in the best postmodern “critical thinking” manner, in which the subjective “narrative” has replaced nearly everything else.

     I’ve written about this before, of course. Yet there remain persons in the Right who feel an obligation–perhaps even an enforceable obligation–to refrain from saying anything that someone else might claim “offends” him or makes him feel “unsafe.” And indeed, the Left has made great strides at suppressing the expression of any fact, argument, or opinion to which someone might object in those ways.

     To defeat this vile tactic, we must understand why it is so potent. Simply put, victim status is today’s highest denomination of political currency: officially recognized “victims” can buy political privileges with it. Moreover, in our time, owing to the de facto omnipresence and omnipotence of American governments, political currencies are “trumps:” i.e., they outweigh all other negotiable forms, including individual rights. Therefore, anyone who can invent a reason to claim victim status will do so. As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

     The linguistic front in this battle must be recognized, as well. Political language promotes the concept of rights to the highest echelon of obligation. Rights trump all other political assertions; therefore, the Left has urged all manner of fictitious “rights” upon us for several decades...and has had no small degree of success in worming them into contemporary assumptions about politics and society. Let’s review a few such “rights:”

• The right to health care;
• The right to a free education;
• The right to a job and a “living wage;”
• The right to vote (this is one of the most noxious);
• The right to decent housing (a.k.a. “affordable housing”);
• The right not to be discriminated against on various bases.

     I’m sure I could come up with others, but it’s 2:30 AM as I write this. Anyway, building on its success at proclaiming such nonsense “rights,” the Left has now latched onto the notions of a “right” not to be offended, and a “right” to “feel safe.” It has promulgated these lunacies through its institutional bastions: the communications, entertainment, and educational establishments. And it has made significant inroads into corporate America by the use of its most malevolent subsector: the “Human Resources” department.

     There are only two effective counterstrokes:

• Turning the tactic against those who seek to wield it against us;
• Reducing the power of American governments to those authorities (and only those) granted by their respective Constitutions and state charters.

     One of those paths is more easily trodden than the other.

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     This is not exactly on-topic, but I hope you’ll bear with me for a few words more. Though I have said what follows before, I feel it needs to be said again.

     Groups struggling with / against one another are much like armies in the field. They look for weapons they can use to advance their respective causes. The more powerful the weapon, the more it will be valued. And we must remember always that there are very few weapons which can only be wielded in one direction.

     But political weapons are not wielded directly by their possessor; the government wields them as a “service.” In other words, what makes a political weapon valuable is the State’s willingness to wield it in the claimant’s stead. However, when the nation was founded, its federal government (and the great majority of its state governments) were tightly circumscribed by their constitutions and charters. While they recognized and respected individual rights, they also realized that a “right” doesn’t exist simply because someone says so. To qualify as a right, a claim must pass certain tests:

1. Would it belong to all persons equally?
2. Would it require the cooperation of others for its exercise?
3. Can it be exercised by any arbitrary individual without infringing on the rights of others?

     Those questions must be answered: 1. Yes; 2. No; 3. Yes for the claim to qualify as a right. That eliminates all but the Lockean rights to one’s life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. It certainly eliminates the “rights” not to be offended and to feel “safe.”

     But the State has been accommodating to specious “rights” for some time now. Recognizing them has permitted the State to expand the scope of its powers. Power-mongers like that—and power-mongers will inevitably rise to the top of any structure that will give them power. (Cf. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, “Why The Worst Get On Top.”)

     The defining characteristic of the Leftist is his lust for power over others. As my Esteemed Co-Conspirator Dystopic wrote some years ago:

     Leftists are not a new phenomenon. We tend to think of them as having originated with Marx, or perhaps the French Revolution. But they have always been with us.

     They are attracted to complex organizations, like government bureaucracies or industry representation associations (think the SFWA) because within such, they may plot and scheme to gain the power that has been denied them elsewhere. When you or I join a group, it is because we wish for the group to represent us in some fashion. When a Leftist joins a group, it is because he wishes to represent the group.

     Of course, the “group” the Leftist most yearns to “represent” is the one where he can wield the greatest and most extensive power over others: the federal government of these United States.

     I could go on for many thousands of words more, but I trust the point has been made...again.

Which Way Are You Inclined?

     I know a fair number of people who are utterly confident that President Trump will be re-elected in November, that the Durham investigations will produce massive numbers of indictments of former Obama Administration insiders, that the economic rebound after the Wuhan virus panic will break all records, and that there will be a meaningful World Series this coming October. I also know a fair number or people who are utterly despondent, as they’re convinced that President Trump will lose to Senile Joe Biden, that the Durham investigations will sputter out without meaningful consequences, that the economy will linger in the doldrums for many more months, and that baseball as we have known and loved it is but a memory.

     I belong in neither of these groups. I won’t predict any of the outcomes they foresee. I wait, watch, and wonder whether all is not as it seems.

     What about you, Gentle Reader?

---

     John Wilder opines thus:

     How did the Modern Sporting Lawyer make you feel?

     That’s why he and his wife are condemned. That’s why they have vowed to cancel him, to make an example of them, to find a way to charge them with crime. They are the opposite of demoralization.

     The Modern Sporting Lawyer and his wife drive the Left crazy. Here, their desire to destroy as a senseless mob was turned back by only two people.

     Can you imagine if the Right was united? I can.

     Wilder is cheerfully optimistic, despite his warning that we in the Right must stop fighting amongst ourselves. I like the tone of his piece and the direction of his sentiments, but I can’t fully share his optimism. As a wise man once said:

Confident is how you feel
Just before you get blindsided.

     (Who was that wise man, I hear you ask? I think it was me.)

     To that effect, we have this recent development:

     Law enforcement officials in St. Louis have allegedly served a warrant on the St. Louis couple who recently defended their home when a large mob of angry demonstrators allegedly trespassed onto their private property.

     “5 On Your Side has learned St. Louis police officers executed a search warrant Friday evening at the home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the Central West end couple who confronted protesters with weapons in June,” KSDK News reported. “Sources tell 5 On Your Side police seized one of the weapons, the rifle, from the couple and they told police their attorney has the pistol seen in photos.”

     Fox News host Shannon Bream confirmed the news in a tweet, writing, “BREAKING: Warrant reportedly served on St. Louis couple who stood outside their home with weapons as protesters approached. We’re told weapon(s) seized. We’ve got the warrant and pictures for you at 11p – PLUS, Missouri @AGEricSchmitt joins us LIVE…”

     So the “forces of order” in St. Louis have disarmed a couple targeted by a violent and destructive mob. That couple is the very same one Wilder referred to in his optimistic piece. As this news was broadcast on St. Louis media, the mob now knows that the McCloskeys have been shorn of the power to resist them. What would you predict from these conditions?

• Will the McCloskeys ever get their weapons back?
• Will they face charges for having dared to defend themselves?
• Will other St. Louis residents dare to defend their property with weapons?
• Will the mob attack the McCloskeys’ home now that they’ve been disarmed?
• Will the D.A.s of other riot-torn cities react similarly toward armed defense of private property?

     It doesn’t look good to me – certainly not as rosy a picture as John Wilder has painted.

---

     The central unanswered question throughout the riots has been “Which side is officialdom on?” It must be answered locale by locale, of course. In some areas, the answer has been heartening: no one in Coeur d’Alene has been harassed by the police for having defended that city from the rioters who tore up Spokane. In others, the answer appears to be the reverse: in St. Louis, defending yourself against criminals is being treated as a criminal offense. Here on Long Island, the chips have yet to fall.

     A great rearrangement of regional populations is underway. Large numbers of Americans are departing from long-time homes on the coasts, especially in and around the major cities. They’re moving to less densely populated areas that have not yet been targeted by the Black Lives Matter / AntiFa / Communist coalition. Many are giving up a great deal – careers, neighborhoods they’ve loved, proximity to family and friends – in a quest for greater safety from the rampaging mobs. That constitutes a barometer of popular sentiment: yea, even among those who voted for the very officials who have sided with the mobs and against peaceable citizens.

     As soon as I can manage it, I will be part of that population rearrangement. I want to believe that all will be well, as John Wilder has predicted. However, belief must give way before the evidence – and just now the evidence does not inspire confidence:

• The mass army of the Right John Wilder envisions is not yet in evidence.
• Police forces in riot-torn cities have stood aside before the rioters.
• D.A.s would rather prosecute the peaceful and law-abiding.
• No federal response to the riots is in prospect.

     So: How do you see things working out, Gentle Reader? If you’re a resident of – or proximate to – one of the riot-torn cities, what are your strongest inclinations concerning the safety of your home and family? What conceivable developments would cause you to alter those inclinations?

     Please let me know. What you can tell me about conditions in your district, and how you’re minded to meet them, is information of value to others in similar circumstances. Lives could be at stake.

Quickies: Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste Dept.

     This article says it all:

     While gun prohibitionists have been complaining all week about the Trump administration’s memorandum declaring gun stores and their employees “essential”—demanding the gun shops be closed—Reason contributing editor J.D. Tuccille has offered this warning:

     “Officials with fever dreams of expanded power thrive on the fear generated by the COVID-19 pandemic…These overreaching public officials are enabled by fear.”

     It is fear that anti-gunners appear to be using to advance their agenda. In an email blast earlier this week, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety had this to say about the Department of Homeland Security’s decision that gun shops are essential.

     “This is just one more example of the gun lobby’s penchant for using national crises as an excuse to grow corporate profits and scare people into buying more guns.”

     Reuters reported the comments from Everytown President John Feinblatt, who contended, “Adding more guns to more homes during a time of more anxiety could lead to more deaths. And that’s the last thing we need when our hospitals are already bursting at the seams.”

     Please read it all. A serious, socially and economically destabilizing crisis is when we most need to be prepared to defend ourselves – and not just from private predators. My upstate neighbors are fearful of what Andrew Cuomo might do to “requisition” supplies from them. After all, he’s already commanded the National Guard to seize ventilators from upstate hospitals, so what could any New York State resident imagine would be beyond him?

     This is a time to be armed to the teeth and ready to fight. Myself, I answer the doorbell with a shotgun – a Mossberg recoil-compensated 12-gauge in camo green – held at port arms. I heartily recommend the practice to all my Gentle Readers. Granted, the UPS delivery guy was a bit startled when he dropped off my most recent wine purchases, but there’s a downside to everything, right?

Outrage Dept.

     I’ve wondered for some time why the residents of New York City elected Bill De Blasio their city’s mayor. I’ve wondered why they re-elected him after the damage he did to the city in his first term. I haven’t stopped wondering about those things...but about De Blasio himself, there’s no need to wonder:

     New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned religious leaders that their places of worship could be shut down permanently if they did not follow the city's order to pause services during the coronavirus pandemic.

     "A small number of religious communities, specific churches and specific synagogues, are unfortunately not paying attention to this guidance even though it’s so widespread," the New York Democrat said Friday at his daily press briefing.

     "I want to say to all those who are preparing for the potential of religious services this weekend: If you go to your synagogue, if you go to your church and attempt to hold services after having been told so often not to, our enforcement agents will have no choice but to shut down those services," he added.

     De Blasio said that continued resistance of authorities to close religious services could mean a permanent shutdown.

     "If that does not happen, they will take additional action up to the point of fines and potentially closing the building permanently," he said.

     Those are not the words of an American mayor, exercising delimited powers under a Constitutionally conformant city charter that defines them strictly. Those are the words of a man who fancies himself a dictator, unbound by the Constitution of the United States.

     How does this vicious, contemptible creature, this unabashed totalitarian, continue to hold the mayoralty of the greatest of America’s cities – indeed, the greatest city on Earth? How is it that he hasn’t been bodily expelled from office? Indeed, how is it that he hasn’t yet been hanged from a lamppost, his remains left as a treat for the buzzards and a warning to those who would follow his example?

     If you’re not religious — don’t tell me how “spiritual” you are unless you want me to ban you — you might think this has nothing to do with you. You’d be wrong.

     People have been asking one another for some time, “Where’s the limit? How far can we permit them to infringe on our civil liberties in the name of this ‘crisis’?” The limit, Gentle Reader, was passed some time ago...and we’ve done nothing.

     What’s that? You disagree? Well, watch as the mayors of other cities, and the governors of states, emulate De Blasio. Success breeds emulation – and De Blasio, should be succeed in getting away with this, will be emulated. His power grab is the furthest any state or local official has dared to go. But don’t doubt for a moment that they’ll hesitate to do so, should De Blasio prove it safe.

     It’s odds-on that New Yorkers won’t even think to defy De Blasio’s ukase. That makes it highly likely that he will be emulated by the mayors of other, Democrat-controlled cities, and by no few Republican-controlled ones. Arbitrary seizures of property and police checkpoints where law-abiding-citizens are detained without cause will come next. All “for the crisis,” don’t y’know.

     Meanwhile, the scrofulous Andrew Cuomo has flipped his wig over Rhode Island’s recent moves to bar New Yorkers from the Ocean State. Emperor Andrew should look south rather than north and east. Rather than going to war with another state, he should consider reining in the criminal in Gracie Mansion. He won’t. As much as he dislikes De Blasio, he won’t. Democrats exhibit “party unity” under conditions such as these. Besides, De Blasio might be teaching Cuomo how far he can go in exercising forbidden powers and authorities never granted.

     It remains possible that New York’s police might choose to ignore De Blasio’s edict. Barring that, it’s possible that President Trump will act to halt De Blasio’s usurpations and protect New Yorkers’ Constitutionally guaranteed rights. It’s a longshot, but at this point, owing to their passivity up to now, longshots are all New Yorkers have left.

Provocations

     I was deeply worried about the January 20 pro-gun-rights rally in Richmond, Virginia. I was nearly certain that a planted provocateur would succeed in triggering violence. It was, after all, what the Left wanted above all else. I was relieved when nothing of the sort occurred.

     But provocations are of many kinds:

     Virginia Democrats began to ram through their gun control agenda on Tuesday after tens of thousands of peaceful pro-Second Amendment activists protested in the state’s capital at the start of the week.

     “The day after a massive gathering of gun-rights activists at the Virginia Capitol, the state Senate on Tuesday advanced legislation that would allow authorities to take guns away from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others,” the Associated Press reported, adding that Virginia Democrats also killed GOP-backed measures including “a bill to allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit and to repeal a limit on carrying weapons in churches and other places of worship.”

     The move by Virginia Democrats comes a day after 22,000 protesters flooded the streets of Richmond to protest Democrats’ extreme anti-freedom agenda, which has included proposals for confiscating legally owned firearms from law-abiding citizens.

     Give that a moment to sink in: One day. One day after the largest pro-gun-rights demonstration any state government has ever faced. One day after an entirely peaceable and orderly demonstration that left the Virginia capitol district cleaner than it was previously. One day.

     As provocations go, that’s a pretty blatant one. Ralph “Kill the babies and give me all your guns” Northam, the purchased creature of little Michael Bloomberg, must be under orders not to back down until he gets his Reichstag fire. Without such an event, Bloomberg’s campaign to gut the Second Amendment will get nowhere. Big Nanny Bloomberg needs “proof that civilians should not have weapons.” Except, of course, for favored civilians such as himself.

     Michael Z. Williamson, author of the Freehold series, had this to say:

     The Reichstag fire was when they proposed a bill to make recall impossible, give the governor an 8 year term, steal most of the guns, violate their own existing law, rig the elections by letting illegals vote (which also means the dead can vote), and the courts did nothing to impede any of it. Then the protesters proved they’d line up for the fences to the boxcars politely and orderly, and even pick up trash on the way.

     While it’s difficult for me to see a peaceful and orderly pro-rights demonstration as a “provocation,” it might have convinced Northam and his myrmidons that they could get away with anything. The legislative aftermath would be consistent with that inference.

     Williamson might have the right slant on it after all.

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     Herschel at Captain’s Journal has some thoughts:

     Richmond was a morale-booster for patriots. It showed that they can come together on fairly short notice and focus on and achieve unity of action. Whether it did anything to dissuade the communists from pursuing their goals isn’t the point. I couldn’t care any less about that. “Can a leopard change its spots?” What it did do is give patriots the moral high ground....

     The moral high ground for Virginians was attained on Monday. That’s good for the psyche of patriots, for the planning stages for going forward from here, and for implanting the knowledge that they’ve once again told the planners, “This is the last warning – we won’t live be these edicts.” To be sure, Virginians were asleep at the wheel, like a lot of us, but they are awake now, and they don’t need our bitching, griping, moaning and complaining about what they did or didn’t do. They need ideas.

     I’m not sure ideas are what’s called for at this juncture. The Virginia state legislature has made it plain that it will ignore the expressed desire of the Virginian people. The scrofulous governor, who should really be dressed in tar and feathers, will proceed as planned. And a scenario much like this one:

     Test yourself, as sincerely as you can. Imagine that tomorrow, without warning, a deputy sheriff were to appear at your door with a clipboard and demand that you surrender your guns to him. Imagine that he knows accurately how many guns you have, and what types they are. (It shouldn't be hard to imagine this, since de-facto owner registration of firearms has been in place for some years now. Why else would you be required to show proof of identity when buying a rifle?) How would you react?

     Well? The deputy sheriff is waiting.

     I regret to say that most gun owners would resist with at most a question about the legal basis for the sheriff's demand. If he replied with anything even vaguely plausible, they would comply, even though the right to own weapons is recognized by the U.S. Constitution as an absolute, to be infringed by no one.

     ...becomes ever more likely.

     “But the alternative is violence!” I hear you cry. Believe me, I understand: no one likes the prospect. But when a state government displays an unwillingness to abide by the Constitution’s plain language, what alternatives remain?

---

     Citizens have deposed state and municipal governments in the past. The method was not always electoral. But how would Virginia’s patriots do so without a bloodbath?

     The one possibility that comes to mind would require a lot of organization. Moreover, it would probably fail unless the big national gun-rights organizations – the NRA, the GOA, the CCRKBA, and so forth – were to take the helm. Their captaincy would make it possible to rally Second Amendment defenders in nearby states:

• West Virginia
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• The Carolinas

     ...to converge on Richmond, Virginia, join with Virginian firearms owners, and lay siege to the capitol. If twenty-two thousand Virginians haven’t impressed Northam and his cronies that their game is up, perhaps a hundred thousand Second Amendment defenders could do so, by sheer pressure of the mass of human flesh.

     The first urgent question is whether those hundred thousand people could be persuaded to leave their guns at home. The presence of even one weapon would provide the Virginia state troopers a pretext for firing on the crowd. Should they do so, there would be no prospect for averting mass bloodshed.

     The second urgent question is, of course, whether an unarmed mass of citizens could force the Virginia state legislature and its contemptible governor off their anti-Constitutional horse. The implied threat – “We’re unarmed today, but we can be back tomorrow with our guns and plenty of rope” – seems sufficient to comply acquiescence, but there’s no guarantee.

     The third urgent question is what degree of citizen action (or what reaction to it) would evoke a federal response. Whether such a response would be desirable, I leave for my Gentle Readers to discuss in the comment section.

     Thoughts?

Insurrection

     The title word is about to become the most important word – nay, the most important concept — in the political lexicon of these United States.

     Here’s the dictionary definition:

     Insurrection n: an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.

     Here are the instances in which the Constitution of the United States mentions insurrection:

     The Congress shall have Power... To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; [Article I, section 8, clause 15]

     No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. [Fourteenth Amendment, third paragraph]

     The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. [Fourteenth Amendment, fourth paragraph]

     Article I, Section 8, which enumerates the legitimate legislative powers of Congress, concerns insurrections against the United States. That is an appropriate power of Congress, which is of course the federal legislative body. The Fourteenth Amendment, one of the Amendments ratified in the wake of the Civil War, is less easily interpreted or validated. It was intended to put an end to the squabbles about the political order once the War was over and the Union restored. However, as an Amendment to the federal Constitution, it surely applies to insurrections against the United States above all else.

     It is indisputable that to rise in insurrection against the United States itself – i.e., the federal government – is a no-no in Constitutional terms. That was the basis for the Civil War: the assault on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces was the igniting act. Of course, had the Confederates prevailed in that war, we wouldn’t be discussing this today, as the old maxim that “the victors write the history books” would remind us. So the question of the hour becomes:

What would constitute an insurrection against the United States by a state government?

     That question will be asked today in a visible and audible form: in Richmond, the state capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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     It has been said that what the Constitution says in its text no longer matters, in comparison to what the Supreme Court has said in hundreds of volumes of commentary. That often seems to be the case. Witness John Roberts’s scrofulous majority opinion defending ObamaCare, in which he asserted that it constitutes a tax legitimate under Article I, Section 8, even as the lawyers defending it protested that it is nothing of the sort. Witness also – and more relevant to today’s controversy — the late Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in D.C. v Heller, in which he asserted a wholly fictitious power among states and localities to limit the right to keep and bear arms:

     Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.... For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.... Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

     We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”...

     It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

     That passage is an escape hatch through which states and municipalities have eviscerated the most important aspect of the Second Amendment’s guarantee – indeed, the very reason for which the colonists rebelled against the English Crown: the ability to resist the predations of a tyrannical government.

     A tyrannical government is one that attempts to invade the rights of its citizens / subjects. As the Constitution recognizes the conception of individual rights, and as there cannot be such a thing as a right which one is not permitted to defend, the notion that a civilian cannot possess a weapon simply because it is “dangerous and unusual” – dangerous to whom, we might ask? – is completely contradictory not only to the text of the Second Amendment but to the entire philosophy of the Revolution and the Founding:

     That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [Declaration of Independence]

     Regardless of any representations to the contrary, a government never has but one reason for disarming its subjects.

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     By my interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms – a pre-existing right, as Justice Scalia noted in his decision – the government of the Commonwealth of Virginia is in a state of insurrection against these United States. Therefore Congress has the power to act against it...as would the citizens of Virginia, acting in defense of their rights. For every right carries within it a right to defend it by force.

     Ralph “Kill the babies and give me your guns” Northam is hoping for a provocative act at today’s rally in defense of Virginians’ rights: a “Reichstag fire” he could use to “justify” the forcible suppression of opposition to his regime. I can only pray that he doesn’t get one, but the preannounced presence of AntiFa, and the possibility that provocateurs will be inserted to provoke such an act, fill me with terror. I have friends down there, and several of them will be among the rallygoers.

     Watch Richmond today – and whatever comes of the rally, watch for a federal response. It would be best if no blood were shed, and if the matter were resolved in the courts, but that, too, is a matter for prayer.

Can We Rationalize Taxation?

     One of the sticking points between ideological libertarians and American conservatives who have largely embraced what was once called classical liberalism is whether taxation can ever be morally justified.

     David L. Burkhead thinks not:

     A common theme among folk of a libertarian bent is “Taxation is theft.” “But…but…but…” others reply, “no it isn’t.”

     Well, they’re right. Technically, it’s extortion. The government doesn’t sneak into your house when you’re not home and grab money from your dresser. No, instead they say “Nice little freedom you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.” and so you pay (or your employer in the case of withholding).

     If someone with the de facto ability to enforce his will upon you says “Give me $X or else,” and others’ experiences have given you a fair to middlin’ notion that the “or else” would be unacceptably unpleasant, then taxation is extortion, which is just one more form of theft: the taking of your property against your uncoerced will. No case can be made that “the government” has any more right to do that than Sneaky Pete and his leg-breakers down the block. All arguments for taxation are premised on practical considerations.

     Burkhead concedes this:

     We do need funds for certain minimum functions that allow society to function. And yes, even for roads. And not all of those things are well managed by a market of voluntary exchanges with prices determined by supply and demand....

     This, however, is not an argument that taxation is not theft. And the circular argument that the law demands taxation therefore making it not-theft is no better. I’ve discussed before how “government does it” does not make something right and rights, which here I include property rights, must exist independent of government or the concept becomes meaningless. So, it’s not an argument that taxation is not theft but perhaps it’s an argument that theft is sometimes necessary.

     Arguments about necessity are practical arguments. They contend that the consequences of not doing the thing proposed would be worse than those from doing it. So there are value judgments involved. Therefore people will argue about the values in the political kitty. Such arguments are inherently insoluble; they can only be ended by political means.

     The impasse can be broken only by what the late Milton Friedman called essential consensus: the willingness of an overwhelming majority – say, enough to write and ratify a Constitution – to agree that these things shall be permitted, but no others.

     Reaching that consensus was the core genius of the Founding Fathers.

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     A long, long time ago, at the old Palace of Reason, I wrote:

     Economists tend to partition the world's goods into:

• Capital goods (made because they help to produce something else),
• Consumption goods (made because they're desirable in and of themselves).

     This is an incomplete partition, and its failings have cost us dearly.

     There is a third category: overhead. Overhead goods aren't made for productive purposes, nor are they satisfactions of any positive desire. We make them because, without them, we'd suffer losses or be seriously impeded in our more positive activities.

     Insurance is an obvious example of an overhead good. No one wants insurance for its positive features. No one buys insurance because with it he can produce something else. We buy insurance because, without it, we'd be exposed to an undesirable degree of risk from some more positive activity, such as driving or owning a house.

     With the exception of postal service, the activities permitted to the federal government by the Constitution are all overhead activities. They're also all goods with pronounced externalities -- that is, once these goods have been produced, everyone gets the benefit of them, not merely the people who've paid for them. This is no coincidence.

     When such goods are left to the free market, they tend to be under-produced. Their overhead nature means that people won't experience any positive lure to produce them. Their externalities mean that there will be an incentive to "free ride" on the contributions of others, and that some appreciable fraction of the beneficiaries will do so if possible.

     The proper sphere of government, if it has one, can be seen in the light of this insight. Indeed, if there were no such things as these overhead-cum-externalities goods and services, there would be no conceivable justification for government. Individuals pay for their own overheads all the time, provided they don't thereby pay for the overheads of others. And individuals and corporations produce goods with strong externalities as well -- broadcast television is an example -- so long as there's a sufficient prospect of gain to the producer.

     The great question of political economy is how to confine government to its proper activities -- the production of overhead-cum-externality goods and services -- and how to ensure that those things will be produced in sufficient quantities. Suffice it to say that, as of yet, no satisfactory solution has been found.

     I somewhat regret using the word solution in the above. Solutions are only available when the problem being discussed has the characteristics of mathematics: that is, that all the terms therein are exactly known, and the conventions regarding their permissible manipulation are unanimously agreed upon. We don’t seek a solution but a sufficiently strong and enduring consensus.

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     The following are overhead expenses that are also externalities:

1. Armed forces;
2. Justice system;
3. Roads and bridges;
4. The Bureau of Weights and Measures;
5. The diplomatic apparatus of the State Department.

     There are people who would disagree with the necessity of tax-funding some of those. But there’s an excellent prospect of a 90% consensus around them. At the time of the Founding there was at least that strong a consensus around the powers granted to Congress in Article I Section 8, which, by a strict-construction reading of the Constitution would be the only activities legitimately funded through taxation.

     In reading Article I Section 8 afresh, I find very little that’s not included or strongly implied by the five-item tabulation above:

• Federal borrowing;
• Federal establishment of post offices;
• Patents and copyrights.

     What other activities share the overhead-cum-externality combination that seems apparent in the five items I tabulated initially? How much of a consensus would form around them – and should that consensus prove insufficiently strong for them to be added to Article I, Section 8, would they be “under-produced” by your standards? And what are those standards, and how did you come by them?

     Discuss – and be polite about it.