The Gender War: An Outcropping Of Significance

     You wouldn’t expect the more arcane scholastic pursuits to be (or become) hotbeds of male-female strife, but then, you wouldn’t have expected Donald Trump to lap the Republican field, either. It happens:

     A months-old blog post written by a respected medieval scholar, Allen J. Frantzen, has gained a second life on social media — and whipped the discipline into a frenzy.

     The post, entitled [sic] "How to Fight Your Way Out of the Feminist Fog" and published on Mr. Frantzen’s personal website, attacks feminism, alluding repeatedly to "anti-male" propaganda, paints men as victims, and offers advice on how they should "clear the fog." Mr. Frantzen retired in 2014, after more than 35 years at Loyola University Chicago.

     The post borrows terminology often associated with men’s-rights activism, including encouragement for men to take the "red pill" of reality, not the "blue pill" of illusion, and to break away from the feminist fog. The fog, Mr. Frantzen explains, represents how feminism hangs over society — in a "sour mix of victimization and privilege" — and intimidates men into accepting its perspective.

     Medieval scholars have widely condemned the post online as misogynistic, under the hashtag #femfog.

     Aha! Heretic against the Politically Correct wisdom sighted! General quarters! Prime the guns! Give no quarter! The Narrative must be defended and advanced at all costs!

     But what is that sacred Narrative? What, exactly, are we all required to believe?

• That men are inherently oppressors of women;
• That women desire and deserve “equality” with men in all things;
• That legal and social measures that award privileges to women, though they infringe on men’s rights, are steps toward “gender equality.”

     Not one word of this is true:

• It has been the essential, indispensable protectiveness of men toward women that has allowed our race to flourish.
• Most women do not desire “equality” with men as feminists define it.
• You cannot equalize what is inherently unequal:
  • Men’s willingness and women’s reluctance to do the dirty, dangerous jobs;
  • The willingness of every advanced society to sacrifice its men for the protection and convenience of its women;
  • Women’s inability to compete as equals with men in the very fields from which they claim to have been most oppressively excluded.

     Professor Frantzen notes how these facts can drive a feminist activist into screaming hysterics:

     Ask the feminist what he or she thinks of the idea of “disposable men.” Does he or she know how many men died building the Panama Canal (75,000), or that by some estimates four times that many died building the Panama Railway? (See Warren Farrell's book [in Reviews, above] for similar data.) About 6700 people have died in the war on terror since 2001; 161 of them were women. That's about 2.5%. Does he or she think that's a fair distribution of the burden of protecting the country? Does he or she see a fair distribution of combat deaths (50/50) a goal for feminism? Why not?

     Remind your friend that men are expected to die for women. Men are expected to give up safe places for women in emergencies, for example. Why? The survival rate for wealthy men on the Titanic (which sank in 1912) was 34%. The survival rate for the poorest women was 46%. Lifeboats left the ship with empty seats because men would not take them. The men who died, as Baumeister says, "were the patriarchs" (p. 163). These were the same kinds of men who would vote to extend voting rights to women (or did you think that women did that for themselves?). Whose lives were worth more, and less, on that ship? For all women, the survival was 74%. For all men, the survival rate was 16%. [ 3 ]

     Your point, all along, is that men have always been expendable and disposable, always expected to give up life and happiness for women. She probably thinks of all men as patriarchs (see essay on patriarchy), but you have already shown here 1) that most men are not patriarchs but workers and 2) that women have benefited with longer lives because men live shorter lives. The chances are good that the feminist will now be ready to end the conversation because he or she can see that you are armed with data and he or she is not.

     Excellently well put. I would add another point that I find critical though rarely cited: The institution of marriage, which has always confined men more straitly than women and today actually endangers the marriage-minded man, arose specifically to protect women and their minor children. Yet it is that institution against which feminists rail most stridently as “patriarchal oppression.”

     Feminist mouthpieces are tireless in instructing women confronted by such facts to reply with vitriol: “Misogynist! Sexist! You want to make women your property!” This is as common as hydrogen and only slightly less common than stupidity. It’s common because it works rather often; it intimidates and raises the implication of unpleasant consequences. But it is a well observed bit of wisdom that no one will resort to name-calling when he has adequate facts and reasoning at his command.

     The facts are in no way hidden from view; today everyone with access to the Internet can get them. That doesn’t mean they’re universally respected, of course. But if you respect them, and stand your ground when challenged by a feminist, you have demonstrated your conversance with the Facts Recognition Act, and need have no fear of the aftermath.

     What’s that you say? “I might have to spend my night on the couch?” I’m reminded of an old joke:

     “Just suppose,” she said, “we women decided to go on strike. What would you do then?”
     A mischievous smile slowly formed on his face. “You go ahead and strike,” he said. “I’ve got a peach of a strikebreaker in mind.”

     It shouldn’t take an essay from a medieval studies scholar to remind us of the above.

Quickies: More Aliens?

     Jeez, I can’t throw a snowball into a herd of “independent minds” without hitting still more aliens:

     A star named KIC 8462852 has been doing some very strange things, with its light dimming and flaring by amounts far greater than could be explained by even a large planet orbiting it and doing so in irregular time intervals. This had scientists scratching their heads and late night comics riffing off it for weeks. None of the scientists wanted to say that it could be aliens (because that tends to end your career in the ivory tower community) but they admitted that in theory it could be some sort of Dyson Sphere type mega-structure built by a highly advanced civilization. Of course, they had to come up with something more acceptable than that, so they settled on saying the phenomenon was probably being caused by a giant swarm of comets or something.

     Well, some of the eggheads have been poring over the data and it sounds like the comet swarm theory isn’t going to hold water, at least according to Louisiana State University astronomer Bradley Schaefer. (Business Insider)

     “The comet-family idea was reasonably put forth as the best of the proposals, even while acknowledging that they all were a poor lot,” Schaefer told New Scientist. “But now we have a refutation of the idea, and indeed, of all published ideas.”

     To make his discovery, Schaefer had to dig deep down into the astronomy archives at Harvard. It turns out, astronomers have data on KIC8462852 dating back as far as 1890…

     What’s more, he explains in his paper that this “century-long dimming trend requires an estimated 648,000 giant comets (each with 200 km diameter) all orchestrated to pass in front of the star within the last century,” which he said is “completely implausible.”

     “Implausible” is right. Comets of that diameter are rare, and tend to be unstable. But that the star is highly variable at an irregular frequency is even harder to swallow; the typical variable star is highly regular. Of course Nature does have her little jokes, and this could be one of them. Alternately, it could be a matter of system engineering by a race more advanced than ours...in which case it would serve us well to get on their good side and stay there. A race capable of that sort of project would dispose of thousands, perhaps millions of times as much energy and overall resources as we Earthbound humans. We wouldn’t want to piss them off.

     At any rate, if it is an alien race, it’s 1000 light years away, and the interstellar mails are no swifter than our own. For the present.

Quickies: Where The Aliens Are / Aren’t

     Extrasolar planets seem to be pretty common; at least, something over 2000 have already been detected and mention of new ones occurs fairly frequently. The theory runs that planets are the only suitable wombs for life – i.e., that life will not develop in interplanetary or interstellar space – so as planets have been found, so has the hope that one will eventually appear that has brought forth life.

     There are several assumptions buried in there that seldom get taken out for a close look, but let that pass for the moment. Note that the warmistas can’t bear to let even this sort of speculation lie fallow:

     Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, said astrobiologists from the Australian National University (ANU).

     In research aiming to understand how life might develop, scientists realized new life would commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets.

     “The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens,” said Aditya Chopra from ANU.

     “Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive.”

     “Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable.”

     About four billion years ago, Earth, Venus, and Mars may have all been habitable. However, a billion years or so after formation, Venus turned into a hothouse and Mars froze into an icebox.

     Early microbial life on Venus and Mars, if there was any, failed to stabilize the rapidly changing environment, said Charley Lineweaver from ANU.

     “Life on Earth probably played a leading role in stabilizing the planet’s climate,” he said.

     Don’t bother trying to wrap your mind around the concept of “astrobiologists” before any actual extraterrestrial life has been detected. As if that weren’t bad enough, comes then the notion that fragile “early life,” rather than adapting to variations in planetary climate, is required to control it!

     The brilliant Joanne Nova explodes this nonsense with a single graph:

     The Brilliant Gaiian Bottleneck theory reckons that intelligent life has to get smart fast enough to control the climate and stabilize things before they get killed off by climate change.

     In studying how life might develop on other planets, the scientists realized that early critters likely had a hard time quickly evolving to their heating or cooling planets and did not survive. So essentially the reason we haven’t found any aliens yet is that quite simply while the percentage of life-sustaining environments could be high enough, they’re not around long enough for them to evolve from the pools of primordial life. — PopHerald.com

     Because humans need a stable climate to evolve in, right. Like this?

     Facts are such stubborn things. As Nova concludes, most pointedly:

     Seriously – a journal published this wild speculation based on no data and a sample size of one? And the only case study they have (us) contradicts the theory? Welcome to government funded science.

     Indeed.

Day Off (UPDATED)

     Very sick. Can’t concentrate. See you tomorrow, I hope.

     UPDATE: Better now. My thanks for all the comments and emails expressing sympathy and good wishes. It appears to have been the Gas Attack From Hell, and yes, it's the reason I posted nothing Saturday, either. At any rate, the time has come (5:15 AM) to put my shoulder to Snidely the Snowblower and clear a badly drifted-in driveway so the C.S.O. can make her escape to the lands of sanity where one gets paid for being a humorless scold consulting accountant and financial planner.

     Thanks again.

All my best,
Fran

The world's doormat.

“America should be a destination for hard-working immigrants from all over the world,” according to a press release from “top national Republican donors” issued in February 2015.^[1]

That's what I thought he said. Good to know those swine are on our side.

It's simpler than I thought. If they check the box labeled "hard working hater of infidels," we let them in.

Notes
^[1] The Reason I’m Anti-Anti-Trump. By William Voegeli, Claremont Review of Books, 12/28/15.

Reverse neo-colonialism.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

* * * *

There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying about. What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep. . . .

* * * *

In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane. That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . .

Notes
^[1] "It's the Demography, Stupid The real reason the West is in danger of extinction." By Mark Steyn, Wall Street Journal, updated 1/4/06 (emphasis added).

Of course.

Of course the US, Saudi, UAE, Jordanian, Israeli, and British air forces have been blasting anything that moved in Syria for years, but that’s not “adventurism.” Adventurism is when Putin does it.

"The Daily Beast Keeps Printing Rabid Neocon Propaganda About Russia." By RI Staff, Russia Insider, 9/12/15.

Financial oligarchs?

Something to consider. Since the Norman Rockwell vision of America has been retired -- with a vengeance -- we must search for better explanations of who runs America now and for what purposes.

It isn't We the People.

The following is in the "grist for the mill" category for all keen-eyed and perspicacious readers of this blog to process any way they wish.

The US has surrendered its sovereignty to a clique of financial oligarchs. Having nobody at all to answer to, this American (and to some extent international) oligarchy has been ruining the financial condition of the country, running up staggering levels of debt, destroying savings and retirements, debasing the currency and so on. The inevitable end-game is that the Federal Reserve (along with the central banks of other “developed economies”) will end up buying up all the sovereign debt issuance with money they print for that purpose, and in the end this inevitably leads to hyperinflation and national bankruptcy. A very special set of conditions has prevented these two events from taking place thus far, but that doesn't mean that they won't, because that's what always happens, sooner or later.^[1]

Mr. Orlov has views on the genesis of the Boston Marathon bombing and the evil partially-private "prison complex" that leave me cold, but even The Great Bunny has been known to stumble on certain points and at certain times. TLSABWTB, thank you very much.

Read together with the post below (previous in time) for additional perspective.

Notes
^[1] "It's Starting: Financial Collapse Usually Leads to War." By Dimitry Orlov, 1/15/16 (republishing an essay from 3/15).

Sounding the depths.

We're in uncharted waters these days.

It wasn't that long ago that we were on the way to the "end of history" according to our wise men. And advancing the idea of the whole leadership class being firmly committed to (1) national extinction and (2) the reduction of the white majority to a minority in our own country would have made one an object of scorn in normal circles only a few years ago.

But, . . . maybe after a certain Indonesian saved William Jefferson Clinton's presidential campaign, the idea that foreigners with alleged ties to Chinese communist intelligence could have a say in American politics just didn't seem that strange to anyone. Patriotism itself seemed to diminish after Bill came on the scene. Bush loved the Saudis so and with Barry, well, the locus of top-level sentiment seems to have shifted to either a big black meteorite somewhere, Mombasa, Red Square, or Bill Ayers's living room.

Unimaginably foreign ideas and people have come flooding in for quite some time now. Bottom line, everything that takes place in the West, now especially, seems to be subject to some kind of malevolent, un-American, gravitational disturbance just south of Jupiter. I rather like the idea of satanic influence but that's just more of a tickle at the back of my neck than anything I can lay a finger on.

To holdouts like me, and no doubt every reader of this blog, at this late date, things just don't seem quite right. Us Trumpeteers just can sniff something in the wind. And the haruspicers just aren't coming up with what I pay them for. So, like the boat captain listening to the sailor calling out readings from the lead line in uncharted waters, I figger we need to entertain what we'll call "different" readings about what's under the national keel.

Like this:

I have said it many times and I’ll say it yet again: If you think the Fed’s motivation is to prolong or protect the U.S. economy and currency, then you will never understand why it takes the policy actions it does. If you understand and accept the fact that the Fed is a saboteur working carefully and incrementally toward the destruction of the U.S. to make way for a new globally centralized system, everything falls into place.^[1]

No warranties on this. Just something that seems to edge closer to the truth than most of what you'll find.

The competing establishment view on reality is like the "conservative" objections to Trump. (No doubt the latter a subset of the former.) Not really all that interesting or exciting. Whoopdidoo category. Maybe something else at work here category. This is good for us how exactly category. And your point is category.

We aim for more here. And we're affordable.

Notes
^[1] "The U.S. Is At The Center Of The Global Economic Meltdown." By Brandon Smith, Alt-Market.com,

H/t: Zero Hedge.

Cassandra.

It is difficult to blame Marine Le Pen for the December [electoral] failure. A large portion of the Western world has lost the ability to think. She is learning that when you are a patriot in a world trying desperately to blot out certain things from its consciousness, you are only safe if you say nothing at all. I wonder if she's wondering if it's all worth it.^[1]

Notes
^[1] "The Front National at a crossroads." By Tiberge, GalliaWatch, 1/21/16.

Western suicide.

Mark Steyn has written a seminal article on the likely extinction of the West. Western intellectual confusion and political dishonesty have simply sent the West down a ghastly dead end. While our leaders dither, Muslims and primitive Africans stream completely unopposed into Europe. And all the Europeans can do is scramble to evict their own citizens and soldiers from their apartments and barracks to accommodate their invaders.

We have, notes Steyn, developed a fascination with the trivial and have an astonishing inability to recognize the immediate threat of enemies flooding into our countries. Our preoccupations are suicidal, whether they are, focusing on America now, Donald Trump's conservatism, homosexual weddings, welfare benefits, "free" health care, the latest stupidities to boil out of the endlessly-aggrieved black soul, or the delicate sensibilities of our resident Muslim enemies.

We are focused on the vapid, the stupid, the ignorant, the obscene, the transient, and the cheap. The word "gun" causes highly educated people in their distant suburban or gated and guarded communities to experience moistness. Illiterates vote and subversives control our schools. We fawn over the foreigner. Certain of our citizens give their children names not even found in a Tarzan novel and smirk at their creativity. The same citizens turn great cities into slums, two-way shooting galleries, and new habitats for wild turkeys. Citizens who object are persecuted. Public officials at all levels cannot master simple arithmetic and their powers of foresight drop off exponentially three days in the future or at quitting time on Friday, whichever comes first.

Westerners are failing to get a grip and that failure will destroy the West:

If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. . . .

This isn't a deep-rooted cultural difference between the Old World and the New. It dates back all the way to, oh, the 1970s. If one wanted to allocate blame, one could argue that it's a product of the U.S. military presence, the American security guarantee that liberated European budgets: instead of having to spend money on guns, they could concentrate on butter, and buttering up the voters. If Washington's problem with Europe is that these are not serious allies, well, whose fault is that? Who, in the years after the Second World War, created NATO as a postmodern military alliance? The "free world," as the Americans called it, was a free ride for everyone else. And having been absolved from the primal responsibilities of nationhood, it's hardly surprising that European nations have little wish to reshoulder them. In essence, the lavish levels of public health care on the Continent are subsidized by the American taxpayer. And this long-term softening of large sections of the West makes them ill-suited to resisting a primal force like Islam.^[1]

Mr. Steyn's article about the grim demographics of the Western world – and the feeble Western thinking that has imperiled the West – is now 10 years old. This is a veritable lifetime considering the pace at which Western leaders are eagerly importing their enemies. Westerners are not only fascinated by the trivial but simply have no concept that there are tectonic forces at work and that time is running out on them at a frightful rate.

Now think about what it means when Angela Merkel, in the face of the invasion of over a million Muslim and African primitives, can only bring herself to say, "We can handle this." A more ineffectual, irrelevant, and cowardly response is difficult to imagine.

Notes
^[1] "It's the Demography, Stupid The real reason the West is in danger of extinction." By Mark Steyn, Wall Street Journal, 1/4/06.

Leavenings Dept.

     I had a serious subject in mind for this morning. Really serious. My word, what a subject! The sort of subject that gives you a sharp pain right in that weird formation between the occipital and temporal lobes that the neurophysiologists think might be the key to understanding how anyone can accept the Standard Model of quantum physics without going completely bonkers. But I forced myself to sit very still in a dark room for a long time and the impulse finally went away.

     So instead, here are a few bad jokes.

---

     Not long ago, a Scottish pharmacist saw a Highlands regimental sergeant-major in full regalia march up to his counter. The sergeant-major dropped a bit of filthy, multiply-perforated latex -- a used condom -- onto the counter and said, "How much for a new one?"

     The pharmacist inspected the thing and replied, "Two pence."

     The sergeant-major cocked an eyebrow and asked, "How much to repair?"

     The pharmacist appraised the thing a second time and said, "One penny."

     Upon which the sergeant-major gathered up the item, said, "I'll be back," and departed.

     At about the same time the next day, the sergeant-major returned, dropped the used condom on the pharmacist's counter once again, and assumed full military bearing.

     "The regiment votes 'repair,'" he said.

---

     Smith and Jones were exploring the Lunar surface, expecting to see only rocks and dust, when they came upon a curious little creature: short, shaped much like a Teddy bear, and thickly furred in a white and black checkerboard pattern. The thing was apparently suited to the Moon's airless surface for it wore no clothing of any kind... except for a propeller beanie. The little creature noticed their interest, waved a hand in greeting, and bounded toward a nearby cave. The two astronauts followed in haste.

     What they found in the cave astounded them. The little creature who had waved to them was lost in a throng of identical short, Teddy bear-shaped figures, each thickly furred in a white and black checkerboard pattern, and each wearing a propeller beanie. The clustered around a large chair, a throne, really, on which sat yet another of their number, indistinguishable from the rest except for his seat. It was this one that beckoned the humans to approach.

     "Welcome! Welcome to the Moon!"

     The astronauts came near and offered polite thanks for the warm welcome. After a few initial pleasantries had been exchanged, including the expected congratulations for having crossed interplanetary space, the Teddy on the throne said, "Now, what would you like to learn about our little society, that you might take home to astonish your Earthly brethren?"

     Smith and Jones looked briefly at one another, and Smith said, "Well, sir, we can't help but notice that all of you are exactly alike."

     The Teddy nodded. "Just so. We discovered long ago that to allow differences among us caused dissension and envy, so we embarked on a eugenics program to eliminate them. Today we are as you see: identical copies of an ideal plan."

     "But I sense that you are in a leadership role," said Smith. "If you are all the same, how are your leaders chosen?"

     "By rote," responded the Teddy. "In an egalitarian society like ours, nothing else would make sense. But I see that the two of you are quite different: one short and one tall, one fat and one thin, one white and one black. How do you manage with all these conspicuous differences?"

     "Well," said Smith, "we manage. On Earth you would quickly meet many individuals different from either of us in uncountable ways. Are you really all exactly alike?"

     "Exactly," replied the Teddy.

     "All of you just so high?"

     "Just so."

     "And all of you with white and black checkered fur?"

     "All of us."

     "And you all wear propeller beanies?"

     "All of us," replied the Teddy. "Except, of course, for the goyim."

---

     She: Do you drink beer?
     He: Yes.

     She: How many beers a day?
     He: Usually about 3.

     She: How much do you pay per beer?
     He: $5.00 which includes a tip.

     She: And how long have you been drinking?
     He: About 20 years, I suppose.

     She: So a beer costs $5 and you have 3 beers a day which puts your spending each month at $450. In one year, it would be approximately $5400 …correct?
     He: Correct.

     She: If in 1 year you spend $5400, not accounting for inflation, the past 20 years puts your spending at $108,000, correct?
     He: Correct.

     She: Do you realize that if you didn’t drink so much beer, that money could have been put in a step-up interest savings account and after accounting for compound interest for the past 20 years, you could have now bought a Ferrari?

     He: Do you drink beer?
     She: No.
     He: Where’s your Ferrari?

Eternal Truths Dept.

The electoral political system is a subsidiary of those who rule the economy.

"Bernie Sanders and the Failure of Propaganda." By Ted Rall, The Unz Review, 1/20/16.

Where's the outrage?

The "conservatives" over at National Review are in a tizzy over Donald Trump's not being a conservative. Like them.

Well, maybe not. But ask me if I care.

Diana West wrote two days ago:

Rush Limbaugh said today that nationalism and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal.

I would add that until Donald Trump's candidacy, neither nationalism nor populism were political choices. Both had been demonized into oblivion.^[1]

Well, sign me up for that populism and nationalism. As we all know, nationalism is a known precursor to National Socialism, so whatever we do, we got to steer clear of that! No! I mean the good kind of nationalism.

That said, if it really is all about "Conservatism" – a big if – then I want to know where these red hot conservatives were when John Boehner was sucking his thumb after the last election. Wasn't there something conservative he could have been doing with this time? And where were they when Paul Ryan was cutting a deal with the Democrats to drive spending past Jupiter and funding amnesty and whatever "refugee" resettlement schemes Obama has in mind for Streator, Illinois, and Marin County, California? (Just kidding about Marin.)

Where is that sustained conservative full-court press against "hate speech" laws, open borders, the unconstitutional wars against Syria and in Iraq, our support for ISIS, and, oh, the treason of the Supreme Court in deliberately engineering a complete transformation of the constitutional scheme by lying about what the Commerce Clause means? Did that go away?

Where are the "conservatives" when it comes to legal discrimination against whites in the form of affirmative action laws? Where are they when the Attorney General of the United States throws a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party? When voter rolls are populated with the dead? When the concept of "anchor baby" is used to dilute the value of our precious American citizenship?

When, in short, have the conservatives shown the least interest in fiscal control, national sovereignty, citizenship, equal protection of the law, concern for the rights of the majority white population, or the scourge of black criminality and urban destruction?

Let me rephrase that. When have they shown any sustained outrage over anything and done anything but cave in while the left ran out the clock on some new outrage?

Hi!

With the multitude of insanities and betrayals that plague us, who are these conservatives to call out one man when they have failed miserably to oppose the leftist agenda, let alone the agenda of the GOP establishment? No doubt individual conservatives can point to this or that article or well-researched monograph opposing any of the items I've listed above, but with a record of decades of being able unable to reverse any leftist program and just serving as a punching bag for the Pelosis and Reids of this world, who are these conservatives to sound the tocsin against someone insufficiently like them? Have they shown fury and dismay over the advances of the left that comes close to what they shown with respect to The Great Interloper?

How dare this man draw breath!

Notes
^[1] "Cruz v. Trump I." By Diana West, 1/20/16.

Philip Giraldi on the State of the Union address.

A light unto the nations.

The perpetuation of myths that the U.S. must lead and should take steps to correct the policies of other nations, to include engineering regime change, must be once and for all explicitly discarded. Obama could have called for something like that but he didn’t.

"Missing from the 'State of the Union.' Why are we 'over there?'" By Philip Giraldi, The Unz Review, 1/19/16.

Principles Versus Power

     Perhaps you’ve already seen the following:

     The statement supposedly comes from one of the Dune novels. Wherever it may have originated, it perfectly expresses the overarching methodology of Islam, the American Left, and any number of groups throughout history that began their rise from a minority position but had no real interest in freedom.

     He who asks you to conform to a principle that:

• You hold;
• He doesn’t;
• Which serves him at the moment;
• But which he would not honor were your positions reversed;

     ...is a villain. He deserves no consideration and should get none. Worse, if you concede to him, it won’t be long before your positions are reversed. That’s why Saul Alinsky emphasized that Leftists should “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” He knew that “the enemy” – i.e., freedom loving Americans – would feel pressured to abide by a rule of conscience that could only be used against them.

     Far be it from me to decry rules of conscience. Ultimately, they’re all we have. But if we know, with empirical certainty, that the petulant minority demanding that we give them a privilege – i.e., that a rule that applies only to us shall not bind them – we cannot accommodate them without consigning ourselves to rightlessness.

     This underscores the immense strategic importance of knowing your enemy’s motives. I’ve written about this recently enough that it should not be repeated...yet in dealing with our enemies of today, we forget it all too quickly.

---

     Some months ago, Ben Domenech of The Federalist wrote about the fusillades over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act:

     It’s instructive to observe George Stephanopoulos’s behavior on this topic, given his role as a very public shill for the Democratic Party. He’s not interested in having a debate on the subject or in acknowledging the importance of RFRAs – something he obviously did two decades ago while working for President Clinton. He’s interested in spouting aggressive talking points to frame Republicans as bigots for giving people the ability to defend their religious freedom in the courts. That’s the entire goal here: turn religious liberty into something that lives within the bounds of scare quotes.

     And this goal is motivated not just by the political aims of the left, but by a broad rejection of tolerance as a virtue. It was all well and good when tolerance was about conservatives and religious types swallowing their objections and going along with things – but now that the left is being asked to do the same thing? Forget about it.

     It was (and is) a textbook case, as was made clear by the assaults on Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a bakery owned by a Christian couple; by the underhanded attack on Memories Pizza, a Christian-owned pizzeria that had refused service to no one; and of course by the vicious assault on Brendan Eich, formerly the CEO of Mozilla – who, incidentally, is now spearheading the development of a new and quite exciting Web browser.

     Never forget that the original argument by advocates of same-sex marriage was couched in terms of freedom: a “right to marry.” Never forget that even before the notorious Supreme Court decision, homosexuals could marry one another quite easily – i.e., by presenting themselves to a sect that agreed with them for a religious wedding. What they demanded was government recognition of their marriages, so that they could force those of us who for reasons of conscience refuse to facilitate their behavior to do so against our consciences.

     The kerfuffle had nothing to do with a supposed pent-up desire among homosexuals to marry. It was about overcoming the conscience-based resistances of those whose faiths condemn homosexuality, compelling them to accept, and to service, something they find noxious. That is, it was a drive for power over us – and its principal weapons were verbal: the words rights and “fair.”

     So much for the Left’s tolerance of differences of conscience.

---

     The same-sex marriage foofaurauw is useful because it so vividly illustrates the utter consciencelessness of the Left. It will use anyone’s principles against him with no intention of honoring them reciprocally. But the Left isn’t the only community of interest that wields our principles against us like a weapon. Consider Islam, whose devotees demand absolute hands-off latitude from American authorities but would never allow the erection of a Christian church in the nations it dominates. Consider the many cases of asymmetry in international trade, where country X lays heavy restrictions on exported American goods but screams in outrage at any tariff or regulation we apply to its exports. Consider the mess along our southern border: Mexico, which polices its southern border ruthlessly, displays indignant astonishment when we make a gesture toward policing ours. The list could be extended, but I believe the point has been established.

     In all such cases, what’s wielded against us is our conscience, plus one other wholly irrational thing: our desire that others think well of us. Why we should want the good opinion of others who seek to defraud, exploit, or destroy us, I have no idea. But the tactic works. Our enemies may hate us for our virtues, but that troubles them not at all when they wield them against us.

     Among political problems with a moral dimension, this is one of the most painful. Yet it does admit of a solution. I’ll return to it presently.

100 years of fairy tales and subversion.

For a long time it's been clear the Constitution was abandoned. Thinkers speak of "post-constitutional America" and they are right. The Constitution was killed off by the Supreme Court, chiefly, but we mostly pretend that it roars along full force. On a day without clouds, you can get a good suntan just from the emanations from the penumbra of the Due Process clause and stave off death with a dose of whatever makes the Constitution a "living" Constitution.

The New Deal Supreme Court's betrayal in distorting the Commerce Clause destroyed federalism (and hence the basic constitutional scheme) and ushered in the total state. Instead of state governments reasonably with reach of the voter, we got the federal leviathan where the voter, in dealing with the most accessible of his political masters, was but one of hundreds of thousands of each congressman's constituents. The bland, non-committal, evasive, gooey letters all of us "concerned citizens" has received from our congressional representatives tell us all we need to know about how indifferent they are to accountability to the voters and how they love half truths.

The passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913 (or was it the 13th Amendment in 1916?) authorizing a national income tax was perhaps even more destructive as it provided the wherewithal for the federal government to buy off voters with the tax money provided by them and, more likely, others, thereby reducing the voter to the status of the family dog. The grateful recipient of the occasional milk bone while their betters enriched themselves at the public trough.

All of which "conservatives" considered it frightfully impolite to discuss.

In an excellent article today, Brett Stevens discusses modern political failure in part the responsibility of cowardly conservatives. Wonder no more about why the West "has been unable to respond to reality and chases dreams and illusions":

In particular, few will speak up — Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan being the most visible exceptions — to mention the logical fact that diversity cannot work, and that Leftist delight in it exists only because a Third World population is being imported to permanently skew the vote to the left. That the native population of the United States and Europe is being replaced is beyond what conservatives will discuss because they are unwilling to challenge the liberal Establishment.

The alternative right also speaks hard truths about democracy, namely that most people vote for short-term self-interest instead of what will maintain civilization, and that in groups people compromise on the lowest common denominator. Democracy does not work; the American Constitution was an attempt to limit it so that it would, but that quickly became overthrown. Now we live in a Leftist time and we are seeing the consequences of Leftism as our economies, environment and societies plunge downward into chaos, but mainstream conservatives have failed to do more than a token effort against it, collecting votes and money as The Opposition Party without opposing the core idea of liberalism — that all people are equal — at all.^[1]

This brief excerpt doesn't do Mr. Steven's article justice. He really does provide an explanation for the conservatives' failure to think through our problems clearly and get any kind of traction in the battle with the totalitarian and nation-busting left. It's not all that complicated.

If the Trump phenomenon is a mystery to anyone still, this article will dispel the mists. The passage quoted above alone should do that.

American politics are just surreal, if you can consider the word "politics" to be a term signifying any kind of a contest between incompatible viewpoints battling for the favor of voters in the realm of ideas.

The politics of the entire West are surreal in point of fact. Police commanders escort hordes of invading Muslims along the country roads of Europe with no shame. It's just the most normal thing in the world for foreigners to stream unopposed into your country. Similarly quite normal is European navies acting as taxi services for invaders instead of an instrument to repel them.

Once admitted to a Western country, it's just taken as entirely normal, a given, something no reasonable person would question, that such persons can acquire the right to vote and bring in their extended family. The notion that if the foreigner wants to be with his family he should return home is just never even considered. An idea not even worthy of being called absurd.

Notes
^[1] "The alternative Right rises." By Brett Stevens, Amerika, 1/21/16 (emphasis added).

Once we took the high road.

During those decades the Saudis used their oil wealth to seed human societies with the most virulent totalitarian doctrine of governance -- a doctrine that serves as basis for a nihilistic terrorist philosophy and rationalization of conquest and genocide.

And with every step, the Saudis have paved their demonic path with generous donations to any peoples the United Nations designated needy. They did this while walking hand in hand with the United Kingdom and United States, which loudly wept for the world's downtrodden and thundered support for human rights.

And we call Iran, North Korea, and China evil. At least governments in those countries don't pretend to be what they aren't. At least they don't use human rights as a bludgeon. At least they don't insult reason by perverting every concept of decency. At least they don't mock God.^[1]

Once we took the high road in the Cold War. We contained the Soviet Union – one of history's most malevolent and murderous regimes— although today I'd be hard pressed to find many who could tell me why we bothered. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died fighting communists but now we have an avowed socialist as a presidential candidate who took his honeymoon in the Soviet Union and who would now like to try that nightmarish experiment again to the dismay of few Americans.

What harm is there in a little government coercion if it's for a good cause?

Back to our point. Now our diplomats and politicians bomb a tiny country that was our ally in WWII, finance al Qaida and ISIS, run guns to these terrorists while lying about our "War on Terror," grovel before the Saudis, grovel before the Israelis, pretend that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, depose foreign leaders who pose no threat to us, dabble in "regime change" regardless of the cost in death and chaos, do their utmost to enrich a communist dictatorship in Asia, wage secret war on sovereign Syria and propagate lies about Assad's use of poison gas, abandon our men under fire, mouth nonsense about "responsibility to protect," meddle in the affairs of Ukraine, assist in the looting of Russia, strenuously defend borders thousands of miles from our own undefended borders, and negotiate trade deals that benefit all nations except the American one.

Commander in Chief.

They also can't identify the most elementary facts about plain-vanilla Islam that makes it and all Muslims a mortal threat to the West, push nation-destroying immigration on Americans, engineer welfare programs to attract parasitic immigrants to come to America from all over the world, and push the fatuous ideas that Russia is bent on military adventurism and otherwise a threat to the peace of the world.

Has any national elite ever been so reckless and dishonest? Is it any wonder that foreigners think America has become a joke?
Notes
^[1] "UK, KSA, USA: the most frightening axis of evil." By Pundita, 1/15/16.

Leavenings

     Serial liar Hillary Clinton had Special Access Program information in her unsecured email server. Rabidly left-wing Website Salon has denounced Senator Marco Rubio for his Catholic faith. Widely beloved Sarah Palin has endorsed Donald Trump for president. Every major stock-market index is tumbling from “correction” toward “contraction,” with “depression” on the lips of many. While the “unemployment rate” has been reported as 5%, 94 million working-age Americans remain out of the “official” work force. Our northern border is being enforced against a company that wants to ship us oil while our southern border isn’t being enforced at all. The Obama Administration has accepted and defended the humiliation of ten members of the U.S. Navy so as not to jeopardize a “deal” the government of Iran has already violated. And the New York Rangers are playing barely .500 hockey.

     Those are just the “big ticket” items. I could go on for five thousand words, but it’s all stuff any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch already knows about.

     A few days ago I got an email that made reference to the “Conversations” pieces that occur here now and then. My correspondent suggested that I post them to indicate that despite all the social, economic, and political Sturm und Drang, something approximating normal life persists for the great majority of Americans. Actually, that’s not the reason. I post them because they made me laugh, and I assume that my readers like to laugh as well. God knows we can all use it. When the news is as relentlessly dark and foreboding as it’s been lately, a few laughs are a good tonic for the soul.

     Back during the first of George W. Bush’s two presidential terms, there was good news interleaved with the bad news. Sometimes the good news – or what we took to be good news, anyway – actually predominated. It was possible to read the papers, or the news Websites, or watch the evening TV news, and say to oneself that while there are terrible things in progress, still, things aren’t entirely terrible. Indeed, they might even be getting better. At that time as during the Reagan years, Americans largely supplied their own laughs. They certainly didn’t need the leavening provided by the little bursts of whimsy and wordplay my wife and I exchange semi-regularly.

     Ever forced yourself to eat a cake that didn’t rise?

---

     I’ve recently been suffering attacks of what I sometimes call Silo Syndrome: a powerful desire to find a remote retreat somewhere, fortify it to the hilt, and huddle there with my wife and my animals until I succumb to the end of the world or terminal crankiness, whichever comes first. (Supplies are limited. Personal checks not accepted. Sorry, no C.O.D. Void where prohibited by law. Employees of this website not eligible. We are an Equal Opportunity Offender.) Unfortunately, that’s not a realistic prospect for an aging retiree with several serious health problems, and anyway, my wife would never agree to it if we couldn’t bring her entire collection of shoes. But the impulse is real, and now and then has come near to overwhelming me. From what I read on other websites, I’m not the only sufferer in the DextroSphere.

     Silo Syndrome is one of the natural consequences of the sense that things are sliding down the slippery slope to Shitville, and there’s nothing one can do about it. The sense might be illusory, of course, but the consequences of it are nevertheless compelling.

     The countermeasure is laughter, however administered or evoked. Jokes. Puns. Harmless pranks. General horseplay. Frivolity. Cat videos. The zany impulse indulged in an unguarded moment. Laughter might not be able to cure cancer, but it can make the chemotherapy a bit easier to endure.

     In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein had Jubal Harshaw note that the greater part of human neurosis can be traced to our unhealthful habit of wallowing in the troubles of billions of strangers: i.e., immersing ourselves in the news. He had a point. There’s precious little in the news to laugh at or about. But until we break that nasty habit, finding and enjoying what there is to laugh at is one of the most important things we can do, both for ourselves and our society.

---

     I exhort you to laugh. I exhort you not merely to seek out and find the risible and the ludicrous, but to create as much of it as you can. Even if it sometimes makes you feel like an idiot. As anyone over the emotional age of five will know, every last one of us behaves like an idiot from time to time. Yet if properly appreciated, those can be the most heart-lifting moments of all.

     Laugh.
     Make others laugh.
     Good people love to laugh.
     They congregate around occasions for laughter.
     They will often reciprocate by making you laugh.

     Yes, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Yes, the bottom of the handbasket is being gnawed away by giant rats. Yes, flesh-devouring zombies await us below. And unless you’re Christ come again, there’s precious little you can do about it.

     Americans were once globally known for their smiles and their robust sense of humor. I once wrote that an American will usually judge any new thing according to whether he can eat it, wrap a game around it, or laugh at it. Given the breadth of my acquaintances, I hold that that’s still the case...or that it could be.

     I have no idea who wrote this old verse:

     Laugh! And the world laughs with you.
     Weep, and you weep alone.
     For this sad old Earth
     Must borrow its mirth
     But has troubles enough of its own.

     ...but whoever he was, he gave us a gospel truth.

     With that, I’m off to Mass. Later, Gentle Reader.

More Pearls of expression.

I have several reasons for keeping a half-century-old “Goldwater for President” poster on a wall of my university office. It serves as a reminder of youthful political passion (I turned thirteen the day before Lyndon Johnson crushed the Arizona senator at the polls), and it pays tribute to the plainspoken candidate’s libertarian anti-Communism. It also, I suppose, offers my own bit of micro-aggression toward those colleagues—which would be all of them—who find Goldwater’s world view, if they know it, even more abhorrent than antique.

"A View from the Fringe. The John Birch Society and the rise of the radical right." By Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker, 1/11/16.

H/t: Gary North, LewRockwell.com.