Liberty's Torch

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

It Will Not Stop Part 3: The Revisionists

Stop! Stop! Danger Will Robinson!

Just a friendly heads-up from your Curmudgeon: This piece will end with some highly impolite language. If it would bother you to read that, please stop here, before I get cranked up. If not, feel free to proceed, but be aware: my father was a Navy veteran. The proclivities have all “bred true.”

And now, onward...

The weapons remaining to the ideological Left aren’t many. As I’ve already noted, Leftists will make use of every tactic that still seems effective. They regard themselves as above all the conventional rules of behavior, to say nothing of the moral constraints written into our laws. Thus, nothing is beneath them.

There is one tactic that’s so insidious, and so effective, that we must expect it to be deployed at once. Concerning the recent election, the Boston Herald’s Jaclyn Cashman sketches it out for us:

     Parents should be prepared to take a Sharpie to their kids’ social studies books if Democrats have their way in writing the chapter on why Hillary Clinton lost the election.
     She and Bill blame James Comey for relaunching an FBI investigation so close to the election. Democrats blame Russia for hacking the DNC and the massive data dumps.
     Democrats remain in total denial that they elevated a flawed, unlikable candidate who represented the same old same old. Hillary Clinton also used her role as secretary of state to benefit her family foundation and then deleted thousands of her emails to hide her tracks.
     President-elect Donald Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus said it best Sunday: “People didn’t like the product, that’s why Hillary Clinton lost.”
     Yet that salient point will likely be lost by the liberals who write the history books for our youngsters. Will they even include what WikiLeaks reported on how the Democratic National Committee was actively working to knock out Bernie Sanders to make way for Clinton — or how the media helped Clinton in debate prep? Or will they exclude those pesky details, as much of the mainstream press did, because they were “stolen” information?

It really is that simple, Gentle Readers. They’ll simply teach the unsuspecting – and not merely the unsuspecting young – that the election was stolen from them. Just as they’ve taught that the United States is an imperialist, colonialist power bent on conquering the world for the Big Mac. Just as they’ve taught that the United States’ fabulous prosperity was a direct result of slavery. Just as they’ve taught that fascism is a “right-wing ideology” indistinguishable from Constitutional conservatism and classical liberalism.

It’s been said at various times, mostly about the aftermath of a war, that “the victors write the history books.” These days, that’s no longer a sure thing.

Perhaps the most important lesson the successful Trump for President campaign has for conservatives is to tell it like it is, without fear of offending the audience. That’s really all Trump ever did. I have no doubt that his personal inclinations were a part of that, but I have no greater doubt that in his circle of advisors there were at least some who counseled him to “moderation.” It’s to his credit that he managed to prevail over such well-meant advice.

It’s time for us to take the same advice.

An example: Parents have been bludgeoned into a terrible pattern: “Don’t undermine teacher’s authority.” How would parents do that? By contradicting what little Johnny was told in class, regardless of its provable falsity. The underlying rationale for that notion is that “teacher’s authority” is all that keeps the classroom orderly and the educational system functional. Inasmuch as the classroom is not orderly and the “educational system” is not functional – no, not even in your vaunted, indecently expensive “public” school – this is a lie from first to last. Yet we’ve been conditioned out of calling a lie a lie. It’s “impolite.”

Similarly, conservatives have practiced extraordinary – and extraordinarily counterproductive – rhetorical restraint over the century behind us. We’ve continued to attribute benevolence to persons who plainly have none, especially toward us. People who’ve bragged about our marginalization or outright elimination. People who slaver over the fantasy of “re-educating” us all into proper little liberal-socialist maxim spouters. And we’ve paid a terrible price in lost liberty, reduced prosperity, and eroded security.

It’s time to correct both the assumption and the restraint it mandates.

An exchange between a left-liberal and a conservative has typically run something like this:

Left-liberal: This country is built on slavery, sweat shops, and the exploitation of the worker.
Conservative: Well, slavery was wrong, and I’ll be the first to admit that America isn’t perfect, but...

The above is a perfect example of what conservatives must not do any longer. (Actually, we should never have done it.) The left-liberal has rewritten the history of the United States to suit his Marxist assumptions. He must be called on it, not permitted to go unchallenged.

P. J. “Bill” Plauger, one of the founders of Whitesmiths’, Inc., once wrote a short story titled “Child Of All Ages” about a prepubescent girl who possessed the secret of immortality. It opens with a confrontation between an “educator” of sorts and his protagonist. The “educator” is remonstrating with the girl over having contradicted her history teacher. The history teacher had spouted the “exploitation of the worker” bilge above about Nineteenth Century industrialization. The girl’s riposte, which is factually accurate, is that those “workers” had fled their rural roots for jobs in the industrializing cities because the conditions in the factories were better than on the farms.

But of course, for a prepubescent girl to say that to a forty-year-old “educator” is unacceptable, the sheerest lese majeste. Nor would we expect our children to do so in an open classroom. However, we must do it – and immediately upon confronting the lie:

Left-liberal: This country is built on slavery, sweat shops, and the exploitation of the worker.
Conservative: (roars) You lying sack of shit. You feculent pustule on the ass of Mankind. You’ve just deliberately slandered this country and the men who bequeathed it to us, men whose asses you aren’t even worthy to kiss, and I will not have it!

Does that seem a bit angry? Perhaps a violation of the canons of polite discourse? It’s necessary. The Left must not be permitted to revise the history of the United States, the crowning glory of Mankind responsible for whatever freedom and justice remains in this world. The only way to make it stop is to make it so painful that they won’t dare to try it again.

We must disinhibit ourselves against such behavior. There’s no other way to fight an enemy that acknowledges neither moral nor ethical constraints, an enemy that lies whenever it would be “good for the narrative” and is entirely willing to vilify and demonize us for daring to oppose it.

Moreover, we must do so immediately, upon the first indications that the left-liberal intends to embark upon a revisionist course:

Left-liberal: Well, things aren’t exactly ideal in Cuba, but—
Conservative: (roars) Stop right there! Don’t you dare spout that horseshit about “universal literacy” and “free health care.” I won’t have any of your anti-capitalist lies, you fucking socialist scumbag.

     It must be rude.
     It must inflict emotional pain.
     And it must be imposed at every relevant encounter.

This is a significant departure for me. I’ve always advocated treating your enemy as you would prefer that he treat you. That’s no longer a viable course. It’s already cost us 90% of our freedom and God alone knows how much prosperity and security. Moreover, the left-liberal, who’s really a socialist wolf underneath the sheep’s clothing, is eager to finish the job – i.e., to enslave the productive classes for his benefit and deny them all possibility of escaping his yoke. The Left knows no bounds. It wants everything for itself, via the offices of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent State, of course.

It will not stop. Remember your Lewis Carroll: What I tell you three times is true. Ponder and act accordingly.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

It Will Not Stop Part 2: Retribution As Political Outreach

Do you remember Brendan Eich? How about Sweet Cakes By Melissa? And how could anyone forget the ambushing of Memories Pizza?

These were important markers in the Left’s campaign to silence all dissent from its proclamations: it simply employed its allies in the media and on the Internet to punish several who dared to differ with it. Gavin McInnes notes some fresh deployments of the tactic this morning:

I thought the leftist obsession with getting people fired would die down after Trump won, but it’s still “alive and well.” They just got a sketch-comedy show called World Peace canceled because some of the contributors like Trump. Instead of realizing their irritating behavior has ostracized them from the rest of the country, the alt-left have decided they weren’t annoying enough and are harassing employers, getting people fired, and making death threats in a futile attempt to turn back time and force America to be #WithHer.
There was nothing racist or sexist or anything-ist about the show. Its detractors never really said there was. They called it “alt-right,” and that’s all you have to do these days. America isn’t great again—yet—and we still cower in fear when someone implies we might be racist. In fact, the accusation now includes anyone who isn’t sufficiently upset about racism.

Please read the whole thing, including as many of the linked articles as you can stand. Without a deep and broad exposure to this evil, Americans will tend to brush off individual occasions as “an isolated incident.” After all, it wasn’t until September 11, 2001 that any great number of us were willing to confront the scope of Islamic terrorism.

No, the Left is unlikely to succeed in changing anyone’s convictions through these tactics. The smarter ones among them are aware of that. What they seek is a return to those days when we who oppose them were unable to find one another, share thoughts, and organize resistance to their plans.

Atomization of all potential resistance is the practical goal of a smart totalitarian. He knows better than to think he can coerce others into accepting his way as right and good. That being the case, the best he can do is to make potential opponents feel naked and alone: vulnerable to instantaneous punishment and without allies to rally to his defense. Totalitarian regimes have employed a number of approaches toward this end. Have a look at the “ten-house cell” regime imposed on Tanzania by Communist dictator Julius Nyerere:

     The principles of our policy of self-reliance go hand in hand with our policy of socialism. In order to prevent exploitation it is necessary for everybody to work and to live on his own labour. And in order to distribute the national wealth fairly, it is necessary for everybody to work to the maximum of his ability. Nobody should go and stay for a long time with his relative, doing no work, because in doing so he will be exploiting his relative. Likewise, nobody should be allowed to loiter in towns or villages without doing work which would enable him to be self-reliant without exploiting his relatives.
     TANU believes that everybody who loves his nation has a duty to serve it by co-operating with his fellows in building the country for the benefit of all the people of Tanzania. In order to maintain our independence and our people’s freedom we ought to be self-reliant in every possible way and avoid depending upon other countries for assistance. If every individual is self-reliant ten-house cell will be self-reliant; if all the cells are self-reliant the whole ward will be self-reliant; and if the wards are self-reliant the District will be self-reliant. If the Districts arc self-reliant, then the Region is self-reliant, and if the Regions are self-reliant, then the whole nation is self-reliant and this is our aim.
     TANU recognizes the urgency and importance of good leadership. But we have not yet produced systematic training for our leaders; it is necessary that TANU Headquarters should now prepare a programme of training for all leaders – from the national level to the ten-house cell level – so that every one of them understands our political and economic policies. Leaders must set a good example to the rest of the people in their lives and in all their activities. [source]

Those cells, the Communist regime’s lowest level of organization, existed almost entirely to impose punishments upon those who dared to differ with the regime’s dictates by word or deed. They were extraordinarily successful. It usually took only one experience of chorused denunciation by one’s neighbors – who would be led by the cell leader, a trained Communist “political officer” – to squelch any inclination to deviate from the TANU Way.

What Nyerere’s ten-house cells did for Communist rule over Tanzania, the Left use social media, boycotts, and Human Resources departments to achieve. The tactic is all too frequently successful.

There are countermeasures to Leftist punishment tactics. The Internet, the great communications development of our time, has made that possible. Facilities such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter provide means by which we can come to the aid of a beleaguered party. Both Sweet Cakes by Melissa and Memories Pizza benefited from such alms in their times of need.

However, such tactics depend upon two preconditions:

We must remain aware of one another and concerned with one another’s well-being;
We must provide material support to those the Left attacks.

Those obligations must be keenly felt by good men everywhere. Call it Christian charity: the acknowledgement by Smith that Jones’s troubles are not his fault, and the resolve to help him in the knowledge that “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Once again, the smarter leftists will know this too. They’ll also know that the willingness to support one another in times of darkness is a signal characteristic among conservatives. Therefore, they’re likely to attack the preconditions stated above: by attempting to suppress communications among us, especially through social media; and by attempting to intimidate the operators of facilities such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter out of allowing us to use them.

Given the recent election and the current tenor and tempo of events, I don’t expect it to be much longer before such attacks multiply and become brassily open. Stay tuned.

Monday, December 19, 2016

It Will Not Stop

Therefore, we mustn’t expect it to.

(Yes, yes, I know I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but it’s Monday. Shouldn’t everyone get a break on Monday, insufferably longwinded Web pundits included?)

The Democrats, the Media That Once Were, and the whole corpus of left-wing activist organizations are determined that America not regard Donald Trump as fairly and legitimately the president of these United States. The same forces tried the same tactics on George W. Bush after h is narrow victory in 2000. They didn’t work then, but the current iteration shows enough contrasts to that one to give them hope this time around.

In 2000, the popular vote margin for Al Gore was about half a million votes: 0.5% of the total. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin over Donald Trump is over 2.8 million votes, or 2.1% of the total. To those who believe the Electoral College to be unfair – “anti-democratic” is the usual attack – this strengthens the case against Trump.

In 2000, the loser was Al Gore, who had been credibly accused of venality while serving as Vice President, and who attempted to deflect the odium merely by claiming that there was “no controlling legal authority” for his offense. In 2016, loser Hillary Clinton managed to deflect criticism of her behavior as Secretary of State through adroit use of her allies in the media.

In 2000, Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. Its electoral college votes were essential to George W. Bush’s victory. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried her home state of New York – and for lagniappe, her opponent is also from New York.

Finally, in 2000 there were no intimations of foreign involvement in the campaign or the election. In 2016, accusations of foreign involvement – specifically, by the government of Russia – have been many, though none have yet been substantiated. Here's one of the more recent flowerings.

Will all that be enough? Doubtful, but the matter will remain unknown until the EC votes are actually counted. What’s clear is that whether or not the Democrats’ attempt to persuade a few electors to cast their ballots for someone other than Trump succeeds, their drive to characterize Trump’s victory as illegitimate will continue.

It’s their one and only hope for preserving the Obama Administration’s gains for the totalitarianization of these United States, most important among them the imposition of ObamaCare.

The Left is impatient with setbacks. It regards no defeat as final, even after the results are indisputable. Nor does it view any institution, however venerable or well regarded, as immune to attack should that institution stand in its way.

We saw this in 2000. We saw more of it in 2008, when the Sturm und Drang over Barack Hussein Obama’s dubious “natural born citizenship” erupted. And of course we’re seeing it now. There’s no question that its efforts will continue. The sole question is how extreme its tactics will become.

The “street protests” of the first weeks after Election Day appear to have run their course. While they persisted, there were many reports of violence -- against persons and organizations that had supported Trump or were believed to have done so. Apparently the net effect was negligible.

The campaign by various entertainment celebrities is ongoing. However, Americans have apparently learned that one’s political acumen is not determined by how much air time or how many column-inches one gets in the popular press. Here too, the net effect appears to be negligible.

The weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Media That Once Were will persist until those media are no more. The news business is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party. When its masters issue their orders, its troops advance in lockstep. Yet the disaffection of ordinary Americans from those media has proceeded smartly these past few decades. A sense of impending collapse hangs about them...a sense that their time is almost up. If the recent frantic retrenchments at the New York Times and the Washington Post are any indication, the end is very near.

Perhaps the Left’s baton is being passed. Organizations such as Common Cause, which was once a largely nonpartisan force, might soon become the Left’s vanguard forces. Such “grass roots” activism, if specifically directed toward the abolition of the Electoral College, might yet have results the Left would approve. The pressure on Capitol Hill might make Congress give the proposition its attention, though should the matter be submitted to the state legislatures as the Constitution directs, the retention of the Electoral College is virtually certain.

Only one thing is certain: The Left will not relent. Its focus on eliminating the remaining barriers to its ascendancy is absolute. The Left must always retain the option of suborning an election, whether by procedural trickery, the importation of illegitimate votes, or the delegitimization of an opposition candidate. Mere Americans cannot be allowed any say in how we’re governed.

When power is the one and only goal – when one contestant recognizes neither moral nor practical constraints – the war is total. In an ancient phrase it’s “war to the knife,” where the alternatives aren’t win or lose, but win or die.

An underappreciated movie, The Fourth War, concludes with a voiceover comment from Harry Dean Stanton:

“They fought with everything they had....When Albert Einstein was asked with what weapons the Third World War would be fought, he replied ‘I don’t know,’ but the fourth war, he said, would be fought with stones.”

The ideological war between freedom and bondage will be of that sort.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

When Good People Do Bad Things

Yes, it’s a play of sorts on the title of this book. It was a very popular “inspirational” when it was first published. However, as the great Robert A. Heinlein has told us (and as I fancifully exploited in this tome) the universe consists of dualities: pairs of opposed forces, tendencies, values, what-have-you. And so on this fourth Sunday of Advent in the Year of Our Lord 2016, I propose to meet Harold Kushner’s “inspirational” with its polar opposite (feel free to call it a “perspirational”).

As a rule, humans tend not to like being ordered around. For some, that approaches an absolute value: one offense is enough to bring us to blows. I’m one such: an anarchist from my genes to my few remaining hair follicles. My greatest sorrow was the discovery that government is inevitable. (See these books for a fictional exegesis. And before you ask: Yes, there will be at least one more volume in that series.)

Yet there are many perfectly good-hearted people who cannot restrain their need to “fix” others’ lives. And in one of life’s more painful ironies, they have a habit of attaching themselves to nasty old bastards like me, who’d as soon shoot them as say hello.

I’m not talking about politicians or other government functionaries. They have a disease that operates at a higher plane of abstraction. The folks I have in mind don’t seek official positions; they merely seek individual victims upon whom to establish their personal benevolent dictatorships. And they just about always succeed in finding and fastening on one of us who’d run to the ends of the Earth to avoid them.

Good people doing bad things...out of a desire to “help.”

Quite a number of folks, however, do operate at that “higher plane of abstraction” without feeling any desire to attain a public office. These “There oughta be a law” types can become very well known. Some become regionally notorious and strive to capitalize on their notoriety. Others merely annoy the living daylights out of their live-and-let-live neighbors, repeatedly, over one “issue” after another.

The creation of “issues” by such persons often remains unseen right up to the point where it evokes a town council or county legislature meeting aimed at invading someone’s rights. Moreover, all too often that meeting of officious “public servants” takes place sub rosa, such that the affected parties remain ignorant of it until it’s produced a fait accompli.

I have in mind one such person who inflicted the Army Corps of Engineers on a neighbor who dared to dig out, line, equip, and stock a koi pond in his backyard. Apparently there are laws and associated regulations that mandate such intrusions on anyone who dares to imagine that putting such a thing on his own property is his own BLEEP!ing business and no one else’s. You can’t imagine the tumult that inflicted upon the neighborhood involved. The initiator was unmoved. “The law is the law,” he liked to say...and he sincerely believed he was helping his neighbor to stay out of trouble with the law.

Good people doing bad things...in the name of “justice.”

Finally for today, let’s consider the thoughtlessly “compassionate.” In its most common form of ill thought out “generosity,” it’s produced larger social maladies than anything but warfare. Yet we are regularly bombarded with exhortations to “compassion” as if there were no imaginable way that seemingly positive attribute might go wrong.

Most of the “charity” urged upon us today is destructive. Yet most of those who exhort us to ever greater “compassion” toward “the needy” have no stain on their souls. The defect is in their understanding.

A brilliant essay written by a dear friend puts it beautifully:

     Help can cripple or kill you.
     There aren't many people who get that. It's so easy to allow someone else to carry your burden for you. It's so easy to allow yourself to become dependent on other people's kindness and generosity. If you're cursed with an accepting nature, you can become a charity addict as easily as breathing. It forecloses your future; everything you might have achieved slips away, forgotten in the relief of not having to work for your own security or prosperity.
     It's very important -- critical -- not to help when help is not needed, or not appreciated, or not wanted, or wanted much too much. I know, my Church says otherwise, but I have to disagree. Charity to good people in sudden, unexpected need that's not their fault, who are uncomfortable at being the objects of charity, is usually all right. Charity to people who've never shown any initiative or prudence is always wrong. Good-hearted people have done more harm through generosity than all the murderers that have ever lived. Maybe even including the government murderers.

In 2014, the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services, supposedly chartered to alleviate poor health and material want among the less fortunate, spent $450 billion on health care for its clients and an additional $175 billion on assorted “public assistance” disbursements. In addition, private charitable organizations – firms whose nominal reason for being is to provide help to the “needy” –take in billions of dollars each year. In most cases, most of the money goes to salaries and “operating expenses,” but even what remains usually does more harm than good. Thomas Mackay put it best more than a century ago:

...the cause of pauperism is relief. We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief...On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for. [Thomas Mackay, “Methods of Social Reform”]

In consequence of all this “compassion,” more persons depend on “charity” for part or all of their sustenance than ever before in American history. The “compassionate” among us claim that the trend proves that more money is urgently required. I have no doubt that most of them are sincerely well-intentioned – those not employed by a government agency, at least – but the harm they’ve done and continue to do is staggering.

Good people doing an enormously bad thing – destroying the initiative and self-reliance of others – out of unthinking “compassion.”

Primum non nocere, runs the physicians’ maxim: First, do no harm. Good, sincerely well-intentioned people are not exempt from this constraint. He who does harm is responsible for that consequence even if he thought he was doing good. Yet our social devolution has gone so far that we keep silent rather than point that out to those whose good intentions come a-cropper. Indeed, it’s considered the height of rudeness to hurt such persons’ feelings.

The New Year approaches, and with it the usual exhortations to make resolutions to improve this or that about oneself. For many of us, a resolution to mind one’s own business and trust others to mind theirs is the best one could make – a priceless if belated Christmas gift to those around them.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Broken Pincers

There’s some absolutely brilliant analysis and commentary going on just now, stemming from the Trump election victory and the reactions to it. Two articles in particular, one from Dystopic and one from novelist Nitay Arbel, offer a sociopolitical structure in explanation – and it’s not one Americans are likely to approve.

Please read them both. They provide a valuable structural model for what follows...as well as for what might follow the inauguration of Donald Trump, particularly the Senate’s consideration of his Cabinet nominees.

Nearly three years ago, I wrote the following:

     The criterion for determining an organism's membership in a species is whether that organism can interbreed with a suitable partner conceded to be a member of that species. What matters, in other words, is whether there will be viable progeny -- and more important still, progeny of the same species that can go on to reproduce that species.
     There are some species that can interbreed with one another. The case that comes to mind at once is that of the donkey and the horse, who, when interbred, produce the mule. However, the mule is sterile, which excludes the mule from species classification and constitutes a disproof that donkeys and horses constitute a single species.
     A concept more closely analogous to species would be that of caste. The term has its strongest association with traditional Indian society, with its recognized castes. From highest to lowest, those are:

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

     Caste classifications limit social and economic mobility. One's caste binds one's marital possibilities absolutely; one is forbidden, sometimes de jure but more commonly de facto, to take a spouse from a different caste. (The technical term for this is endogamy.) A cross-caste couple will be excluded from the caste of the "higher" spouse, but oftentimes from the castes of both spouses. Worse yet, their progeny will be excluded from all castes, including the very lowest.
     Class distinctions, such as they are in Twenty-First Century America, bear some comparison to racial distinctions after the Civil War, but also to caste restrictions in caste-ridden societies.

The classical Indian caste system is a good fit to the contemporary American political scene. Dystopic and Arbel demonstrate this with elan. The unease of American Brahmins – our deeply entrenched, almost entirely endogamous political elite – with the rise of a Vaishya to the highest executive post in the land reveals much about sociopolitical divisions, attitudes, and America’s de facto distribution of power, place, and status. But that’s just the beginning.

One intruder at the Great Table, our Brahmins could perhaps endure...and hope to outlast. But that intrusive Vaishya insists that a coterie of Vaishyas and Kshatriyas join him there. As Arbel puts it:

In the last several Presidential elections, Brahmandarin D candidates (Obama, Hillary) were pitted against Kshatriyas (McCain) or Vaishyas (Romney, Trump). Unsurprisingly, Brahmandarin presidents tend to appoint cabinet and senior aides from among the Brahmandarin caste, while Trump’s appointments came almost exclusively from the Vaishyas (Exxon CEO Tillerson for State, various other execs), and Kshatriyas (Mattis, Flynn, Kelly). It doesn’t matter that most of these people have real-world achievements to their names than a Robbie Mook type can only dream of: they are “ignorant” (read: insufficiently subservient to New Class shibboleths), “hate-filled”, etc. — All short-hand for “not one of us”.
For those same people who keep on prating about how open they are to foreign cultures (the more foreign, the better to “virtue-signal”) are completely unable to fathom the mindset of their compatriots of a different caste: they might as well come from a different planet as from a different country.

This move by Trump, should it succeed in surmounting the Senatorial hurdle before it, could at last shatter the decades-long pincer movement, first vaguely glimpsed by William Jennings Bryan’s Progressives and first effectuated by FDR, by which the proto-elite of the early Twentieth Century hoped to achieve complete and permanent political power over these United States.

Ponder the following long snippet from a great work of analysis by a writer of the early Twentieth Century:

     Problem 4: To Reconcile and Attach to the Revolution the Two Great Classes Whose Adherence Is Indispensable, Namely, the Industrial Wage Earner and the Farmer, Called in Europe Workers and Peasants
     This is the problem for which revolutionary theory has yet to find the right solution, if there is one. The difficulty is that the economic interests of the two classes are antagonistic. If you raise agricultural prices to increase the farmer's income the wage earner has to pay more for food. If you raise wages to increase the wage earner's income the farmer has to pay more for everything he buys. And if you raise farm prices and wages both it is again as it was before. Nevertheless, to win the adherence which is indispensable you have to promise to increase the income of the farmer without hurting the wage earner and to increase the wage earner's income without hurting the farmer. The only solution so far has been one of acrobatics. The revolutionary party must somehow ride the seesaw....
     The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice. That was the avowed intention. And once it had got control of money, banking, and credit it could in fact redistribute the national income almost as by a slide rule. The trouble was that if it gave the farmer a large share and left the wage earner's share as it was it would lose the support of labor. And if it used its power to raise all prices in a horizontal manner, according to the thesis of reflation, the economic injustice complained of by the farmer would not be cured.
     The solution was a resort to subsidies. If the prices the farmer received were not enough to give him that share of the national income which he enjoyed before the worldwide depression of agriculture, the difference would be made up to him in the form of cash subsidy payments out of the public treasury. The farmer on his part obliged himself to curtail production under the government's direction; it would tell him what to plant and how much. The penalty for not conforming was to be cut off from the stream of beautiful checks issuing from the United States Treasury. The procedure was said to be democratic. It is true that a majority of farmers did vote for it when polled by the federal county agents. The subsidies were irresistible. More income for less work and no responsibility other than to plant and reap as the government said. Nevertheless, it led at once to compulsion, as in cotton, and it led everywhere to coercion of minorities.
     The total subsidy payments to farmers ran very high, amounting in one year to more than eight hundred million dollars. And beside these direct subsidy payments, the government conferred upon the farmer the benefit of access to public credit at very low rates of interest with which to refund its mortgages.
     Actually, the farmer's income was increased. That was statistically apparent. Whether his relative share of the national income was increased, beyond what it would have been, is another matter. On the whole, probably not. For when the New Deal had done this for the farmer it had to do the equivalent or more for labor, and anything it did to increase labor's share would tend to raise the cost of everything the farmer bought. There was the seesaw again.
     What the New Deal did for labor was to pass a series of laws the purpose of which was to give organized labor the advantage in its bargaining with the employer. As these laws were construed and enforced they did principally three things. They delivered to organized labor a legal monopoly of the labor supply; they caused unionism to become in fact compulsory, and they made it possible for unions to practice intimidation, coercion, and violence with complete immunity, provided only it was all in the way of anything that might be called a labor dispute. The underlying idea was that with this power added to it, together with a minimum wage and hour act that made overtime a way of fattening the pay envelope, organized labor could very well by its own exertions increase its share of the national income enough to equal or to overcome the farmer's new advantage. And this organized labor proceeded forthwith to do.
     But there was at the same time an indirect subsidy to organized labor much greater than the direct subsidy paid to the farmer. Federal expenditures for work relief, amounting in the average to more than two billions a year, must be regarded as a subsidy to organized labor. The effect was to keep eight or ten million men off the labor market, where their competition for jobs would have been bound to break the wage structure. Thus union labor's monopoly of the labor supply was protected.
     Both the subsidies to agriculture and those to labor came out of the United States Treasury, and since the money had to be borrowed by the government and added to the public debt, you would hardly say the solution was either perfect or permanent. But from the point of view of revolutionary technique, that did not matter, provided certain other and more important ends were gained. What would those other ends be? One would be the precedent of making the federal government divider of the national income; another would be to make both the farmer and the union wage earner dependent upon the government — the farmer for his income and union labor for its power. Neither the farmer who takes income from the government nor the union wage earner who accepts from the government a grant of power is thereafter free.

To my knowledge, only Garet Garrett has glimpsed the political significance of that set of strokes. By purchasing the allegiance of the Shudras – i.e., farmers and industrial laborers, America’s “workers and peasants,” – FDR’s Brahmins created a pincer that enclosed the Kshatriyas and the Vaishyas with political “management” of the economy from above and well nigh unbeatable popular support from below. The Lyndon Johnson Administration further buttressed the pincer with Great Society welfare state programs, adding the Dalits to its underpinnings.

The pincer’s jaws protected a Big Government run almost entirely by American Brahmins for some eighty years. It seemed invulnerable, but it wasn’t immune to subornation by arrogance: specifically, the assumption of the Brahmins that the lower jaw of the pincer would never depart from the alliance.

The electoral triumph of Donald Trump proved it.

There’s no such thing as a one-sided pincer. The Brahmins whose grip on power was shattered by the events of November 8 will surely strive to re-establish the previous alliance with the Shudras. They might succeed if the incoming Trump Administration fails to deliver on the implied promises Trump has made to America’s working classes. But Trump, whose entire business career is built upon delivering on his promises, is probably smarter than that.

The principal loci of opposition to Trump and his Kshatriya and Vaishya lieutenants will be the establishmentarian segments on Capitol Hill and the “Brahmins by adoption” who populate the alphabet agencies of the federal bureaucracies. Trump’s Cabinet selections strike me as indications that he’s fully aware of this and ready to do battle over it. Should those secretary-designates prove effective at neutering the remnants of Brahmin control embedded in the federal system, we could experience the most profound upheaval American politics has known since the days of Woodrow Wilson.

Friday, December 16, 2016

A Little Morning Music

It being the Christmas season, and my morning being a bit busier than usual, in place of my usual morning tirade, please enjoy the following, which occurred at the Wanamaker Building on October 30, 2010. It involved 650 choristers from 28 different choral organizations, accompanied by the world’s largest organ.

I’ve seen that chorus reduce hardened atheists to helpless tears. A friend once said “It’s the most dramatic demonstration of the power of music to call forth awareness of one soul that I know of.”

To which I say “Amen:”

May God bless and keep you all.

Conversations

FWP: Did you ever wish you hadn’t noticed something?
CSO: Like what?
FWP: Well, just yesterday I noticed that “O Holy Night” goes perfectly well to a martial beat.
CSO: Huh? You’re not serious, are you?
FWP: It does! Listen: (demonstrates, with conductor’s arm motions)
CSO: No! Stop! (claps hands over ears)
FWP: You think that’s bad? I can’t flush it out of my head. In fact, it’s started me wondering what Christmas carols could be sung to the tune from “Green Acres.” Or maybe “Gilligan’s Island.”
CSO: You are living proof that there are things Man was not meant to know.
FWP: (sweetly) I thought you were Jewish?
CSO: Don’t make me hurt you, Fran.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Learning The Limits

Despite my own libertarian inclinations, I frequently find myself at odds with persons who regard libertarianism as the be-all and end-all of sociopolitical thought. You see, I’ve been there. From my own experiences, I can tell you why the philosophy has gained so little traction among other Americans.

Here’s a typical case of the sort that elicits my disdain:

     “Conservatism” is Limp Dicked and Useless
     What is “conservatism,” exactly?
     I was one once – and I can’t tell you. Not coherently, anyhow. Which got to bothering me when I was a “conservative.” Which is probably why I no longer am a “conservative.” I like a philosophy that has defined, defensible principles.
     Like Libertarianism.
     Conservatism, on the other hand, is intellectually transgendered – a confused mishmash of conflicting urges.

Read the rest if you like, but having done so myself, I can assure you that the insulting tone of the above is a reliable indication of what you would find.

Eric Peters is apparently unconcerned with persuasion. If the recent election season has reminded us of anything, it would be that insulting your opponent’s allegiants won’t earn you their favor. But there’s more to the problem of the contemptuous libertarian purist than that. In particular, there’s this: the “pure” libertarian lacks a sense for the bounds around libertarianism’s application.

Where they apply, libertarian principles are wholesome and constructive; outside those bounds, they’re utterly destructive.

In a long essay on this subject, I wrote:

     Many conservatives find themselves at odds with the official positions of the Republican Party on one or more important points. Yet most of those persons would not be comfortable with "pure" libertarianism, and for good reasons. It's too wholesale. It attempts to answer every question, to be all things to all men. And it fails to recognize where it ceases to provide palatable answers.
     Please don't mistake me. I think the libertarian political philosophy, where applicable, is a very good one. It's more accurate in its assessment of human nature and its controlling influences, and leads to better societies and better economic results, than any other political concept ever advanced. But the "where applicable" part is very important; in fact, it's the most important part of this paragraph, as it explains in near-totality the "conservative-libertarian schism."
     Where would the libertarian postulates of individual rights and individual responsibilities fail to apply? Three generic places:

Where the atoms that interact are not individuals, but collectivities;
Where the "individual" under discussion is incapable, either from innate incapacity or from injury, of understanding rights and responsibilities;
Where rights clash in an absolute and irreconcilable way.

     Important specific topics that fall within these categories are:

National defense and foreign dealings;
The protection and restraint of the immature and the mentally diseased;
Abortion.

Ponder the above for a moment while I fetch more coffee.

The position of Mankind de novo would appear Stateless, and indeed it was so. The State is an invention of men, not something created by God that awaited Man’s emergence. In his tome The State, Franz Oppenheimer describes the proto-States that became the embryo of what we endure today. Those proto-States were marauding raiders that ceased to maraud, and settled in place to mulct communities they had already conquered. A great movie well known to Americans, The Magnificent Seven, illustrates an early stage of this process.

A community so conquered became the de facto property of its conquerors. That imbued the conquering band with a sense of what we would call responsibility for its property: the need to maintain it, which of course includes an obligation to defend it when it’s attacked. Thus, a sense of allegiance could be fostered between conquered and conquerors: “Yes, it’s irritating that we must tithe to them, but all the same, they do protect us from the robbers over the hill.”

The salient point here is that the State arises naturally from human evil and rapacity. It persists – when it persists – because the rulers learn a sense of obligation to the ruled, and the ruled come to appreciate “what we get for our money.” Unless and until the distribution of human characteristics should be abolished – and in that regard, I refer you to C. S. Lewis’s the Abolition of Man, – particularly Chapter 3 – there will be no doing-away with the dynamic that produces the State.

(For those interested in fictional depictions of the emergence of States, I can do no better than to refer you to these works. You might find them unpersuasive, but I can do no better.)

From the moment States are formed, men are compelled to interact, at least some of the time, as collectives. Quod erat demonstrandum.

“Freedom is a tenable objective for responsible individuals only. We do not believe in freedom for children or madmen." – Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

I trust that no one will dispute that there have been, are, and will always be persons who cannot look after themselves or protect their own interests. Some are cognitively or intellectually deficient. Some are insane. And some are infants, whether inside or outside the womb. The survival of such individuals depends in great measure on restraining them from harming themselves, which is inconsistent with a full measure of individual freedom. This is a point that cannot be debated; one must accept it or dismiss it. The “pure” libertarian tends to dismiss it...but as with the existence of the evil and rapacious, the generative phenomenon is not something whose elimination our species can confidently anticipate.

Granted that there are difficult problems here, especially the questions of “who shall decide” and on what grounds. That doesn’t make them vanish as we might hope of such inconveniences.

Finally for this morning, there are clashes between seemingly unchallengeable possessors of rights. The most vivid one occurs between an unborn baby and the mother who contemplates abortion. Either both individuals possess a right to life – i.e., a right not to be killed – or neither does. There is no deontological difference between the two. That argues powerfully in favor of the prohibition of abortion and some variety of official enforcement of laws against it, at least in those cases where no invasion of privacy is required to garner the evidence that an unborn child has been aborted.

There may be other clashes that must be resolved in favor of one side over the other – ethical theorists call these “lifeboat cases” – but one is all we need to drive the point home.

To sum up: There is a good case that governments – States – will always exist, and that in some situations at least they perform useful services of which their subjects approve. There is no case whatsoever that the characteristics and circumstances that produce States can somehow be obviated.

It follows that for “pure” libertarians to vend insults at those of us who see things a bit differently – and for context, I was once the Chairman of the Libertarian Party of New York – is unjustified, wholly apart from the inutility of such behavior. Perhaps Eric Peters and those who think like him should ponder that awhile.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

A Little Morning Music

Once again, from Ralph McTell’s early album “You Well Meaning Brought Me Here:”

Sketches From The Collapse

The days come and go, as do my moods. Some mornings the news is bad enough to make me scream “Get it over with, already!” This is one such morning.

1. Gendered Injustice.

It’s becoming all too clear that America’s “institutions of higher education” are no place for a young man:

A male student from Williams College in Massachusetts accused his ex-girlfriend of sexual assault. A month later, she made a counterclaim against him. Guess whose accusation was taken seriously.

The article, produced by the estimable Ashe Schow, deserves to be read in its entirety. It’s a microcosm of the war women are conducting against men, in many cases through college and university administrations. These particular Special Snowflakes, having been told repeatedly that:

“You can have it all;”
“You deserve it all;”
“The patriarchy will do its best to stop you;”
“All men are your enemy;
“Regret equals rape;”

...feel virtuous about victimizing young men who don’t give them exactly what they want – and right BLEEP!ing now.

This is Exhibit Googolplex in the parade of indications that, as Robert Stacy McCain has argued for some time, feminism is evil, wholly destructive, and responsible for driving women insane. It’s also a good argument that a young man “in want of a wife” might be best advised to consider a woman well past her college years. Such a woman is more likely not to have been infected with the virus of gender-war feminism, or to have successfully fought it off.

2. Friendly Fire?

I’m fast becoming a major fan of Bre Faucheux: This morning she cites a case of auto-da-fe in the gender wars:

     I found one guy on Reddit that said something I found rather unsettling. When a woman was asking if guys liked women who wanted to be stay-at-home moms, the guy responded quite coldly with, “I want a partner. Not a dependent.”
     I could only wonder why someone would say something like this. Reasoning would tell me that this guy didn’t have children. He didn’t have a wife. He didn’t have any traditional values. And he had obviously been indoctrinated like I once was.
     I knew that stay-at-home moms had taken a knocking as of late. Thank you, feminism. But I was surprised to see that some of the anti-mother concepts had reached inside the minds of men as well.

Once again, please read it all. Ponder whether the unnamed fellow Miss Faucheux quotes in the above is likely to find a “partner” who will accord him the respect he thinks he deserves. Reflect also on the implications for the ongoing demographic collapse of the First World, including these United States of America.

Thomas Paine once wrote:

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”

Miss Faucheux demonstrates the invulnerability of a mind once opened to reality.

3. Why No Single Politician Can Save Us.

Reagan was well-intentioned. His values were certainly sound. Yet he was thwarted in his aim of shrinking the federal government. Much the same is likely to be done to Donald Trump. Pseudonymous Breitbart.Com contributor Virgil shows us why:

     Do the Democrats want Donald Trump to become the 45th president? Of course not. And how about the Democrats’ handmaiden, the Main Stream Media? Do they want Trump in the White House? Of course not. And how ‘bout all the other affluent residents of the Washington “swamp,” which Trump has pledged to drain—do you think any of them want Trump? Of course not. Together, these anti-Trump constituencies help form what has been called the Deep State, which is a real and serious thing, and which we will explore further in a moment.
     Yet first, we can take a look at the latest news, because let’s not kid ourselves: These anti-Trump constituencies might have lost the 2016 presidential election at the ballot box, but they don’t intend to lose their power. And to that end, they have real clout, and they are using it.
     In particular, wily in the ways of Washington, the anti-Trumpers are operating behind the scenes, using their well-greased legal and political machinery to block the President-elect, or at least to discredit and de-legitimize him, such that his presidency is crippled. And as a part of that backroom effort, the MSM is always ready with a supportive, momentum-building headline or two—or two thousand.

Once again, I beseech you to read it all. Do we really expect to pit one man, however determined, against all that, and bet on his victory? He’d have to be a hero for all ages. And the odds are that if he were such a titan, he’d disdain public notice, preferring to be left completely alone.

That’s not a reason to throw in the towel, of course. Dum spiro, spero, and all that. But we should be cognizant of the breadth and magnitude forces guaranteed to oppose the incoming Trump Administration. I hope Trump himself is aware of them.

4. Envy And The State.

Today, Dystopic augments the sentiments expressed here. A particularly piercing bit:

Appeals are often made to our Christian faith. Jesus was a pretty swell guy, they will say, and he helped the poor and the less fortunate. So we must do so also, or we are not good Christians. It’s an overly simplistic narrative, of course, but even so it is easy to dismiss. At no point did Christ tell us that charity ought to properly come from a distant government. Quite the contrary, Christ extolled us to give freely, which implies a choice… not a gun held to our head that says “give us 50% of your crap or else you’re not a nice person.”

Also, take special note of this:

I remember when I was young that used toys your children didn’t want anymore would often go to the poor. Again, better that an old fire truck toy go to a child who would otherwise have a bleak Christmas than for it to find its way into the garbage. Now, toy drives specifically explain that everything must be new, in its packaging, and accompanied by its receipt. I have no doubts there is some government regulation, or de facto legal precedent (somebody suing because the toy was not new) for why this is true.

The ruling principle is that all charity must be funneled through the government, or failing that, must at least be tightly regulated. It is impermissible that the benefactor be allowed to interact directly with the recipient; that might induce some doubt in the benevolence of the Omnipotent State.

Yet innumerable commentators puzzle over the rise of anomie, alienation, and our ever increasing distance from our fellow man. It does keep the self-help gurus in business. Full employment, don’t y’know.

Conversations

FWP: (glances at mirror) GAAAAHHHH! That face!
CSO: What face?
FWP: (points at own reflection) That one!
CSO: What’s so bad about it?
FWP: You’ve been looking at for all these years and you have to ask?
CSO: So don’t look at it.
FWP: I have to, so I’ll recognize it next time.
CSO: Just put a sticky note on it. Write it backward, so you can read it in the mirror.
FWP: That would work.

(Yes, Gentle Reader, these exchanges really do occur as transcribed.)

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

The Power Of Story

I’ve just received yet another inquiry – yes, I get a lot of them – from a reader of the op-eds that have appeared here and elsewhere, the thrust of which is: “Why do you bother writing fiction when you can say your piece in op-eds more plainly, more concisely, and with less effort?” It’s a reasonable question. Indeed, I’ve occasionally asked it of myself. There’s no answer that will satisfy everyone. For me, the answer is simple: I’ve come to appreciate the power of story, which is far greater than the power of exposition or argument. Story – narrative that embeds real or plausible characters doing things that make sense according to their premises, convictions, and influences – has changed more lives than dispassionate argument ever will.

The most influential books of all time don’t merely argue for their theses; they demonstrate them in action, whether positively – by example – or negatively – by counterexample. The first and foremost of all such life-changing books is, of course, the Bible. Its most powerful segments speak of persons in action. The central figure of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth, is depicted in third person: an itinerant preacher who travels the length and breadth of Judea teaching, healing, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God to be at hand. Moreover, the bulk of His preachments is in parables: fictional vignettes that express His theme for the day. The story of Jesus and the stories He told have had more power to open minds and move souls than any argument ever written. Other greatly influential books do much the same, though to other effects.

If I may be allowed to remain with Christianity for a while, consider the far smaller impact expositions upon the Christian faith have had. Even its greatest apologists, its C. S. Lewises and John Henry Newmans, have been less persuasive than the Gospel stories. That’s not because the Bible is older or “more authoritative;” it’s because the story of Jesus’s ministry, Passion, and Resurrection is more compelling.

Whenever you’ve heard or read about someone’s triumphs or travails – whenever you’ve reacted to such a tale by thinking “Yes, that’s how it works,” or “Boy, I’ll bet he won’t do that again,” you’ve sensed the power of story.

In all the Sturm und Drang going around about “the narrative” ^® and the insistence of the Media That Once Were upon formulating and controlling it, little reflection goes to why Narrative should be superior to Facts. Haven’t we all heard how “Facts are stubborn things?” Don’t we all know that a single adverse fact can kill any theory, however beautiful? Isn’t it incontrovertibly the case that narratives are nearly always built around inventions – less politely, lies?

Well, yes, we have heard all that. Yet the power of story, which is embedded in any coherent narrative, is so great that it can carry the reader willing to suspend his disbelief past implausibilities and adverse facts almost without his knowledge. Remember “truthiness,” the canard the Left wanted to establish as prior and superior to actual Truth? It’s just another, less worthy expression of appreciation of the power of story.

He who is determined to persuade you of a proposition for which the evidence is (at best) inconclusive will nearly always embed it in a narrative: a plot line whose causal connections he’ll refrain from explicitly stating but will invite you to infer. In other words, he’ll tell you a story. The political Left has known the efficacy of this technique since Dickens at the latest.

I have very few themes: Freedom, Christ’s New Covenant, and the limitless power of love pretty much cover them. Yet they’re almost inexhaustible. The power of those themes comes through in fiction no matter how frequently they’re used. I’ve already gotten eleven novels and a host of shorter stories out of them, and I have several more planned. (Never fear; I don’t plan to discontinue the op-eds.)

Non-fiction can edify, but unless you’re Mark Steyn, it’s unlikely to entertain. Fiction can both entertain and edify. Both are goals of mine. (Making great gushing torrents of money? Well, it would be nice, but...well, anyway.) In every tale I write, I strain to give the reader that sense that he’s glimpsed the acting-out of an eternal verity by plausible figures whose motivations and decisions he can comprehend. It’s occasioned a lot of email: some complimentary, some critical; some from folks so close they could well be my neighbors; some from halfway around the world. I regard all of it as positive feedback: the indication that someone somewhere was moved by what I wrote.

And then, there’s always the chance that some random Amazon customer will be seized by an unaccountable impulse to buy one of my novels, will read it, and will say, “Not bad, not bad at all. I wonder if the other stuff he writes is worthwhile. Let’s have a look at that website of his...”

What We Want

Number Six: Where am I?
Number Two: In the Village.
Number Six: What do you want?
Number Two: Information.
Number Six: Whose side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information… information… information.
Number Six: You won't get it.
Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.
[Introduction to every episode of The Prisoner]

I’d never thought that would be the opening theme to an essay...before today. Even more fantastic, I find myself – for the purposes of this diatribe, at least – in the position of Number Two.

Perhaps you do, too.

We want information. We want it rather badly – badly enough to listen to just about anyone who claims to have it. However, it must satisfy certain criteria:

It must be timely.
It must be complete.
It must be unadorned.
It must be referenced.
It must be unbiased.

Those are the characteristics of high-quality information. It would constitute “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” It would be very valuable. Yet it’s not that easy to come by. The demand for it is what’s given rise to the “independent journalists” of the World Wide Web.

You’d think, given the venerability of our journalistic institutions – the ones I’ve taken to referring to as the Media That Once Were – their owners, operators, and legworkers would have grasped the requirements long ago. The obvious desirability of high-quality information “should” have given rise to an enduring supply of it. Yet that seems not to be the case.

Actually, it’s worse than that. The Media That Once Were are currently embarked upon a campaign to discourage Americans from seeking high-quality information. The “fake news” gambit is about nothing else. But what’s truly stunning is how open media panjandrums have become about it all. Tucker Carlson gave the matter some consideration, and came away with the following assessment:

Voters knew more info about a candidate because of the Russia hack. Are people really arguing that we should've been less informed?

Yes, Tucker, they really are saying exactly that, which is something more Americans should know.

The sole thrust of every complaint about the election that’s originated on the Left since November 9 is this: We wuz robbed. The Democrats want Americans to believe that the election was somehow stolen from their candidate. If they can’t contrive to reverse the result, they’ll settle for delegitimizing the candidate who won. Accordingly, we’ve been treated to all the following:

“Comey threw the election to Trump.”
“It was the white racist vote that did it.”
“Voting machines were tampered with.”
“The Constitution is wrong; the president should be chosen by national popular vote.”
“It was Russian hacking.”
“It was fake news from right-wing sources.”

Were any of the above, or any combination, to take hold in enough minds, the incoming Administration would be badly hobbled by adverse public opinion. That, of course, would suit the Democrats and their ideological affiliates just fine. But note that the losing candidate:

Can claim no accomplishments of her own;
Is personally unlikeable and verifiably corrupt;
Is probably too seriously ill to function as president;
Referred to the victor’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables;”
Bragged about herself and asked “Why am I not fifty points ahead;”
Ran a badly targeted campaign that utterly ignored the heartland states;
Ran on her gender and demonized her opponent rather than address policy.

All of that was a matter of public record. No exertion of the Media That Once Were could have suppressed it. Moreover, The aggregate seems more than enough to defeat her, even were this not an “anti-Establishment” campaign season. And down to defeat she went.

But Hillary Clinton’s worst inadequacies were well known to the electorate well before she threw her hat in the presidential ring. Her promoters and supporters were aware of all of them. Given that she had so many negatives as a presidential candidate – and let’s not forget that she behaved throughout as if the honor of becoming the first woman to serve as president was hers by right – why did the Democrats select her to be their standard-bearer?

Could it be that a serious political disease afflicts the entire Democrat Party? Is that something else we’re not supposed to learn?

In an infamous 1965 essay, Marxist theorist Herbert Marcuse wrote:

The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and “philosophies” can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds; the “marketplace of ideas” is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed “the end of ideology,” the false consciousness has become the general consciousness – from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities....
Withdrawal of tolerance from regressive movements before they can become active; intolerance even toward thought, opinion, and word; and finally, intolerance in the opposite direction, that is, toward the self-styled conservatives, to the political right – these anti-democratic notions respond to the actual development of the democratic society which has destroyed the basis for universal tolerance....When tolerance mainly serves the protection and preservation of a repressive society, when it serves to neutralize opposition and to render men immune against other and better forms of life, then tolerance has been perverted.

That essay, fifty-one years old today, is the basis for every claim emanating from the Left about “fake news” and any notion associated with it.

They really do want us to know less; to be exposed to less diversity of thought and opinion; to be compelled to feed at their teats. That we want exactly the opposite is the deepest of all the thorns in their flesh.

Food for thought.

Great headlines.

"Second Russo-Japanese War Inevitable After Putin Refuses Free Puppy."

Great headlines.

"New CNN Policy: All Non-English Words Spoken in Aleppo Translate to 'Assad Barrel Bombs Babies.'"

Monday, December 12, 2016

Where’s The Evidence?

At this point, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several lesser organs of the Media Titans That Were are fluttering their panties over allegations that the Russian government may have somehow influenced the presidential election. It’s been a topic of discussion on nearly all the talking-head shows. Chuck Todd seems particularly determined to push the notion. Yet there’s an element missing from this foofaurauw – so big and so conspicuously missing that I can’t imagine why no one has yet inquired about it.

There’s no evidence that any such thing occurred.

There are only two ways any entity, however constituted, could influence the outcome of an American election:

By influencing the opinions of voters before they cast their ballots;
By altering the vote tallies after the votes had been cast.

Case 1: Were the Russians straining to influence American popular opinion? If so, how? What news organs were induced to carry Russian propaganda to any such effect? Is there a “backtrail” we can trace from any particular story to a Russian source? And if so, in which direction did the story exert influence?

Case 2: Is there hard evidence of hacking that affected the vote tallies? Not some media organ, however prestigious, alleging that it may have happened, but actual digital footprints that indicate that someone meddled with the works? If so, where is it? Why hasn’t it been confirmed by a reliable assessor of such things? And once again: in which direction did the hackers exert influence?

We have incontrovertible proof of voting irregularities: non-citizens voting; absentee ballots filled out and mailed in by persons other than those entitled to them; undercover testimony by Democrat partisans about voters being bused from place to place to vote several times each. We have powerful influence being levered against the electors themselves, straining to get Trump’s electors to change or withhold their votes. What we don’t have is any hard evidence of interference in the election by non-American actors.

So what’s all the shouting about?

Could it be merely the accumulated chagrin of the Establishment, whether it wears a D or an R after its name, that interloper Donald Trump will really, truly interrupt their Reign of Error over these United States? Remember how many Republican mandarins and conservative luminaries said they’d prefer Clinton to Trump – and remember how confident they were that Trump would be defeated by a landslide.

I had my reservations about Trump, too. But I held my nose and voted for him. I was persuaded that his character defects, whether real or imagined – and I make no pretense to the contrary; I believed them to be real and serious – could be curbed by his advisors once he takes office.

Yet many pillars of the Establishment, both within the political orbit and among the major media, are straining to persuade us that what really mattered wasn’t how Americans voted, but how some extra-national villain contrived to influence things. Do they have a case?

If they do, I’m very anxious to see it.

Double Standards Dept.

Remember how the press reacted to any mention of Chelsea Clinton, or of Malia or Sasha Obama, from the Right? That didn’t happen often – persons on the Right generally regard the children of political figures as uninvolved with politics and properly left out of its maneuverings – but when it did, the backblast from left-liberal commentators was ferocious, wasn’t it?

     Now remember the Left’s treatment of Dubya’s two daughters.
     And Sarah Palin’s kids, especially Trig.
     And now we have the offspring of Donald Trump:

     Protesters in the city may chant, “Love trumps hate,” but that’s not stopping some from piling on Donald Trump’s family.
     “You can’t be a Trump supporter in the city,” an old Buckley School classmate of Donald Jr. admitted to The Post.
     “I wanted to throw a fund-raiser for [the elder Trump last spring], and my fiancée was like, ‘Don’t you dare! You’ll never get one ounce of business again in this town,’ ” said the classmate, who has his own hedge fund.
     Ever since the president-elect’s win in November, his family’s life in the Big Apple has been turned upside down. With 78.5 percent of city voters casting their ballot for Hillary Clinton, liberal New Yorkers are still waging an anti-Trump campaign — often aimed at his three oldest children, Donald Jr., 38, Ivanka, 35, and Eric, 32, all born and raised in Manhattan.

Illuminating, isn’t it? Really sets the seal on that “Love Trumps Hate” slogan we’ve seen so much of lately. But then, it’s been said often enough that if it weren’t for double standards, the Left wouldn’t have any standards at all.

The toxicity of the Left’s mantra that “the personal is political” is nowhere more evident than in leftists’ treatment of the relatives of political figures. When they take aim at the incontestably innocent, such as the Palin children, it’s clear that they have no evidence or arguments with which to advance their positions. Their hope of prevailing lies in personal destruction: assaults on those who are connected by blood or marriage to their opponents, in the hope that the related political figure will be daunted by the damage to those he loves.

Now and then it works. However, I don’t expect it to work on Trump’s children. With one exception they’re all adults, personally accomplished and capable of looking after their own interests. The exception has Donald and Melania Trump to protect him.

The venom is likely to seek a more vulnerable target, probably the Trump grandchildren. And the press is likely to ignore the venom spewers...when it isn't openly collaborating with them.

There isn’t a lot more to say about this, except that it should all be recorded. Every incident should be documented: participants, surroundings, date and time. The accumulation of evidence that leftists are not good people and should not be taken for such has already proved valuable and will become critically so as the mound grows.

Nothing about a man is more important than his character. How he treats children is among the best of all pointers to it.

Domesticana

Mondays are not suited to heavy sociopolitical commentary. Oh, I’m sure I’ll manage a little, somewhat later in the day, but right now I’m feeling too good. Herewith, a couple of humorous bits from the Fortress of Crankitude’s hearth.

1. Adventures in Northeastern Cuisine, Part One

Recently, the C.S.O. and I decided to visit a nearby restaurant that had opened to positive reviews. It was a homey sort of place that included an on-site microbrewery, a feature guaranteed to warm the C.S.O.’s heart. When I opened the menu, I found that among the soups offered was Newfoundland Lobster Bisque. I was immediately impressed.

When the waitress came over to ask for our selections, I said “I’ll have the Newf soup.” She, of course, was puzzled, so I smiled and indicated the menu entry. She jotted it down and strode away at a curiously high speed.

The soup was excellent. More, the restaurant manager came over to ask my opinion of it. The following exchange ensued:

FWP: Excellent. Better than I’ve ever had it before. The Newf really comes through.
Restaurant Manager: Very good, sir. I’m glad you enjoyed it. We use only the very highest-quality Newfs, you know.
FWP: I do have a question, though. Do you use the whole Newf, or only selected parts?
RM: Oh, the whole Newf, most assuredly. It wouldn’t be authentic, otherwise.
FWP: I’m doubly impressed. That must make it a trial for the kitchen staff.
RM: We train them very well. I haven’t had to execute one yet this week.

As you can see, I confronted a wit as bizarre as my own. But it was the concluding stanza that really impressed me:

FWP: The combination of flavors is striking. How do you balance the Newf against the lobster?
RM: We strive to maintain an exact fifty-fifty ratio: One lobster, one Newf.

I was profoundly grateful that I didn’t have a mouthful of something at that point.

(PS: Rufus was not amused.)

2. Adventures In Northeastern Cuisine, Part Two

Urgent Warning! If you value your waistline at all, do not follow two large bowls of fresh chili with a generous hunk of rum-soaked Assumption Abbey fruitcake! And never, ever wash it all down with a bottle of Chateau Lafayette Reneau’s semi-dry Johannesburg Riesling!

(I think the C.S.O. is trying to make herself look thinner by feeding me up. Just now, she’s contemplating a cheesecake recipe that includes, among other things, a pound of ground up hazelnuts. I asked where it came from, and her first reply was “An old friend.” When I pressed for details, she allowed that the old friend was Craig Claiborne. I think I’m doomed.)

3. Christmas And Cats.

Normally, the C.S.O. likes to “go to town” with the Christmas decorations. (And she’s an irreligious Jew. Go figure.) This year is no exception. At least, it started out that way.

We’d bought a new tree, and the C.S.O. had me haul three large Rubbermaid Totelockers^® filled with decorations up from the basement. When she’d finished, the tree had been festooned with everything but the head of a dead terrorist. I, being esthetically challenged, merely watched.

Then Zoe got to work on it:

First she stripped the lower branches of the tree of all their decorations. I found them scattered randomly over the living room. The C.S.O. decided not to redeploy them, and returned them to storage. Then Zoe started climbing the tree from inside, and knocked off all the higher decorations. We tried putting them even higher, but Zoe persisted in climbing the inside of the tree and knocking them off. Once again, they went back into storage.

The tree now bears only strings of lights, which are woven into the branches too tightly for Zoe to displace. So she’s taken to chewing on our centerpieces.

I think we have an atheist cat. Or she might be a Druid. Hard to tell them apart from this evidence alone. If I surprise her at conducting some bizarre rite around the tree, we’ll know for sure.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Wealth And Envy

Some years ago there was a movie titled The Gods Must Be Crazy. It concerned a tribe in the Kalahari desert that has essentially nothing but the food it can gather from its surroundings, which comes unexpectedly upon a gift of sorts: an empty Coke bottle. Before long, the members of the tribe come to blows over that bottle, from which the discoverer concludes that they are not meant to have it. He resolves to return it to the gods by taking it to the edge of the world and casting it off. Only thus, he believes, can the envy of his tribemates be neutered and the conflicts among them ended.

Sounds a bit odd, I’m sure. Yet it serves as an allegory of the effects of the internationalization of First World commerce. The spread of our products across the globe has elicited paroxysms of envy we of the prosperous West could hardly imagine.

Please don’t mistake me: the envious behavior of others is not our fault. What I have in mind is how a tribal society, not yet intellectually advanced enough to comprehend the value of property rights or the destructiveness of envy, will usually react to contact with a more advanced society. The pattern is near to uniform, wherever such contact has occurred. Indeed, I’m unable to come up with a counterexample.

Ponder this tale of a Ghanaian tribal chief:

This man had worked for thirty years in the offices of a number of European export firms. He knew that the only way to political influence lay in the accumulation of savings with which to finance a political organization. For him, this was enormously difficult. Whenever his relatives supposed him to have saved anything, they applied the thumbscrews of family obligations....The chief in question had to transfer his account from bank to bank because his relatives succeeded in eliciting information from the bank clerks about his savings. He began to build a house that he purposely left unfinished so that he could tell his relatives, “You see, I have no more money, I am a poor man.” At last they believed him and he was able to prosper without interference.
[Helmut Schoeck, Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour]

Helmut Schoeck’s mighty treatise brilliantly analyzes how pervasive, uncontrolled envy retards the societies where it persists. Very early on in the book he gives us a thought we should all bear in mind:

Most of the achievements which distinguish members of modern, highly developed and diversified societies from members of primitive societies – the development of civilization, in short – are the results of innumerable defeats inflicted on envy: i.e., on man as an envious being. And what Marxists have called the opiate of religion, the ability to provide hope and happiness for believers in widely different material circumstances, is nothing more than the provision of ideas which liberate the envious person from envy, the person envied from his sense of guilt and his fear of the envious.

In a society in which some will prosper more than others, uncontrolled envy is the stimulus for unending conflict. A society that accepts rampant envy as somehow justifiable (or at least, ineradicable) will be lucky indeed if those conflicts remain non-violent.

Yet in contemplating the social order of the West, which routinely grants respect to the demands of the querulous, such that those who ask nothing of the State except to be left alone are mulcted without limit to satisfy them, what conclusion can we reach but that envy, in the First World, has become one of the ruling principles of society?

Australia’s Reverend John Williams notes in his lectures that the only emotion mentioned in the Ten Commandments is envy: Thou shalt not covet. It should follow that among Christians, any indications of envy should be squashed at the instant they manifest. This in no way contravenes the desirability of charity toward those whose circumstances don’t permit them to support themselves. Rather it’s a matter of responsibility toward one’s fellows and their right to be left alone. To appease the envious is to feed their envy and increase its power. The envious are never satisfied with a single propitiation or a single target.

This is on my mind this morning because of a practice that’s become commonplace among American Christians: the doubly anonymous giving of Christmas gifts, purchased by the well off, to the children of presumptively needy families. At my parish a “giving tree” is used to solicit specific items as gifts, which makes it still worse. The implications of this practice appall me. I can’t imagine how anyone conscious of the dynamics of demand for the unearned – how attempts to satisfy such demands stoke the furnace of envy – could fail to grasp this.

I’m considered a modern-day Scrooge for thinking such a thing. To my shame, that’s often caused me to withhold or qualify my opinion, even when it’s been requested.

I know, I know: bleak thoughts for Gaudete Sunday, which is supposed to be an occasion of joy. Yet I can’t help but wish for the disappearance of the Christmas gift-giving tradition, and not merely for the crowds it engenders on the roads and in the stores in the month of December. It often seems to me that one whose fondest desire is to destroy constructive charity, neighborly affection, and genuine good will among men could hardly have come up with a better stratagem.

Bob Cratchit’s family demanded nothing. They were profoundly grateful for what they had, and delighted beyond measure with what they eventually received. Perhaps in framing their story that way, Charles Dickens was wiser than he knew. He was certainly wiser than our contemporary apostles of an unreflective, indiscriminate “charity” for which gratitude is seldom felt and thanks is never offered.