Reviving The Constitution Part 3: Federal "Property."

The drama in Nevada these past couple of weeks, as the federal Bureau of Land Management attempted to dispossess a peaceable rancher for the heinous offense of not having donated to Dingy Harry Reid, has spotlighted a curious aspect of the powers of Congress to acquire land.

Rancher Cliven Bundy's cattle made use of open land claimed by the federal government. Neither of those things is much out of the ordinary. Western ranchers have long pastured their animals on "open range." More, as the feds claim 84% of the land in the state of Nevada, there aren't many options for such a rancher. But in this case, there were covetous eyes on that pasturage: a group of Chinese investors who sought to turn it into a solar energy farm. For them to get their way, Bundy and his cattle had to go.

Since the Supreme Court's infamous Kelo v. New London decision, it's been deemed acceptable for a government to seize land from a private owner and transfer it to yet another private entity, on the rationale that such involuntary transfers can be made to serve a "public purpose." This isn't the place to rake over that decision again; suffice it to say that the popular outcry against it sufficed to persuade many states to enact "anti-Kelo" statutes forbidding the practice to their governments. But a major aspect of real property law went unaddressed: one that goes to the heart of the enumerated powers doctrine according to which the states agreed to the Constitution.

Is it Constitutionally permitted for the federal government to acquire land for any arbitrary purpose or none?

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Certain clauses in Article I, Section 8 authorize Congress to acquire land: "The Congress shall have power:"

• "To establish post offices and post roads;"
• "To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States..."
• "...and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;"

If the Constitution is to be taken seriously and literally, Congress has no authority to acquire land except for the enumerated purposes. (As for that "other needful buildings" clause, a building can only be "needful" if it's required for the exercise of one of the other enumerated powers.)

Mindful of this, Congress under Thomas Jefferson, the most freedom-minded of the Founding Fathers, originally balked when asked to consider the Louisiana Purchase:

The purchase of the territory of Louisiana took place during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. At the time, the purchase faced domestic opposition because it was thought to be unconstitutional. Although he agreed that the U.S. Constitution did not contain provisions for acquiring territory, Jefferson decided to go ahead with the purchase anyway in order to remove France's presence in the region and to protect both U.S. trade access to the port of New Orleans and free passage on the Mississippi River....

The American purchase of the Louisiana territory was not accomplished without domestic opposition. Jefferson's philosophical consistency was in question because of his strict interpretation of the Constitution. Many people believed he, and other Jeffersonians such as James Madison, were being hypocritical by doing something they surely would have argued against with Alexander Hamilton. The Federalists strongly opposed the purchase, favoring close relations with Britain over closer ties to Napoleon, and were concerned that the United States had paid a large sum of money just to declare war on Spain.

Both Federalists and Jeffersonians were concerned about whether the purchase was unconstitutional. Many members of the United States House of Representatives opposed the purchase. Majority Leader John Randolph led the opposition. The House called for a vote to deny the request for the purchase, but it failed by two votes, 59–57.

The transfer was effectuated under a treaty ratified by the Senate. More, the adjustment of a nation's borders does not compel the conclusion that its government owns the newly acquired land. Thus, Jefferson's action passed muster. Even so, the dispute about its validity has never entirely ceased.

However, the land thus added to the United States was not deemed the property of the federal government. Any portion of the Purchase not already homesteaded nor otherwise recognized as privately owned went "into the common." An interested private party could stake out a portion of it, register his claim with the nearest land office, and develop it as he saw fit, becoming its owner under the common law as we inherited it from England.

Thomas Jefferson, the strictest of the strict constructionists, would not have had it any other way.

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The Louisiana Purchase was only the first negotiated addition of territory to the United States. Others, arising from wars or treaties, would soon follow. Yet it was not until relatively late in the nation's history that the federal government adopted the posture that it could exercise the rights associated with ownership of land for a purpose not mentioned in Article I, Section 8. More, the conceit is fan-danced by an exceedingly thin rationale: that "federal land" is in reality "owned by American citizens represented by the Federal government."

Such an assertion answers to none of the usual characteristics of ownership. If We the People are the true owners of federal lands, why are we restricted in their use? Why can we not homestead portions of them, turning such portions into private property? Why does the federal government, rather than "American citizens," possess the sole privilege of exercising the all-important power to exclude undesired aliens from access to those lands? (A fair number of persons in southern Arizona would like answers to that last question.)

There are, of course, other considerations arising from the explicitly purposive property-acquisition clauses of Article I Section 8:

• Which of the enumerated powers of Congress authorizes its assertion of an owner's rights over approximately 28% of the land area of the United States?
• What "forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings," in the context of Congress's enumerated powers, make that 28% appropriately federal property?
• Where in the Constitution is any branch of the federal government awarded the power to dispossess private owners for the sake of a "national monument," or some "endangered species?"

Ultimately, the question is one of strict versus loose construction. If the Constitution permits only those exertions of authority explicitly stated in its text, then the entire federal edifice of land "management" in all its forms is unConstitutional. Alternately, if the Constitution permits the federal government to do whatever is not explicitly forbidden to it, then Congress can appropriate lands and treat them as federal property without reference to an authorized, purposeful use.

Loose constructionists seldom trouble themselves about the implications of their stance. It hallows the seizure of private property "for public use" regardless of whether the subsequent actions implied by the stated use are ever undertaken. It sanctions the internment of the West Coast Japanese during World War II. It blesses the creation of a federal penal code of indefinite length and complexity, which criminalizes actions that have been deemed legal and acceptable throughout human history.. It permits the arbitrary redefinition of who is and who is not an American citizen, and of what rights other than those explicitly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights a citizen possesses.

And it smiles upon the efforts of the Bureau of Land Management, through its armed hirelings, to dispossess a private rancher whose family business has continued uninterrupted in one place for more than a century, so that Dingy Harry Reid and his son might turn a fast buck selling that rancher's spread to the Chinese.

A Mundane Resurrection

Apologies if you’ve come here hoping for a Rumination, Gentle Reader. I know, it’s Palm Sunday and you probably expected something especially sonorous, or at least sententious. However, yesterday’s events in Clark County, Nevada were too exciting for me to allow them to pass without comment.

The Bureau of Land Management, a wholly unConstitutional federal executive branch bureaucracy, attempted to squeeze Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Clark County, out of his livelihood and, by extension, his home. The BLM brought armed and armored thugs in plenty, expecting to intimidate the elderly rancher out of his stand. The federal myrmidons’ tactics included arbitrary assaults, confiscation of private property, and the unbelievably arrogant assertion that First Amendment protections of freedom of expression only apply where they say it applies. Their fist tightened for several days, until it appeared that the Bundys would be crushed within it.

Bundy declined to be squeezed out, though it appeared that the whole might of the federal government would be brought to bear on him.

The news of this assault on a peaceable private citizen swiftly traveled nationwide. Outrage swelled in response. The esteemed Dana Loesch endeavored to discover why the BLM is so determined to have the Bundys out, and turned up some extraordinary connections:

A tortoise isn’t the reason why BLM is harassing a 67 year-old rancher. They want his land. The tortoise wasn’t of concern when Harry Reid worked BLM to literally change the boundaries of the tortoise’s habitat to accommodate the development of his top donor, Harvey Whittemore. Whittemore was convicted of illegal campaign contributions to Senator Reid. Reid’s former senior adviser is now the head of BLM. Reid is accused of using the new BLM chief as a puppet to control Nevada land (already over 84% of which is owned by the federal government) and pay back special interests. BLM has proven that they’ve a situational concern for the desert tortoise as they’ve had no problem waiving their rules concerning wind or solar power development. Clearly these developments have vastly affected a tortoise habitat more than a century-old, quasi-homesteading grazing area. If only Clive Bundy were a big Reid donor.

That news spread like a prairie fire, as well.

It appeared that a tipping point had finally been reached. Over two days, a thousand Americans, many of them armed and ready to shoot it out with the BLM, arrived to defend the Bundys. Miraculously, Clark County law enforcement also showed up in the Bundys’ support. For a brief time a violent confrontation seemed inevitable.

But the BLM backed down.

The feds didn’t have much choice. The found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion, and exposed as in collusion with a corruptocrat, and outgunned by freedom-loving American patriots willing to stake their blood on the outcome. So the BLM struck its tent, returned the Bundys’ confiscated cattle, and withdrew, leaving the rancher free to go about the business his family had pursued there for more than a century.

There hasn’t been a more thrilling episode in America in at least a century.

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A week from today, Christians worldwide will celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: the miracle by which Christ’s divine authority to proclaim the New Covenant, displacing the old Levitical one, was confirmed beyond all dispute. The coming week commemorates the prequels to that event, which include the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist, and the Passion and Crucifixion. Even for those of us who’ve celebrated Holy Week many times, it remains a supremely enlightening experience – and the Resurrection itself the most exalting event of all time.

But in our joy this Holy Week, let us not omit to celebrate another resurrection of a more mundane character: the revival of the American spirit of defiance in the face of arbitrary authority. True, the noonday sun did not darken. There was no earthquake. The veil of the Temple was not rent asunder. No graves were opened, and no saints returned to life praising God. Neither was it the entire nation that banded together to defend the Bundys. Yet more than a thousand patriots, some from as far away as Connecticut and New York, took their muskets down from the mantel and went to Nevada to defend the rights of a beleaguered rancher and his family business. In doing so, they proved to the world that the spirit of freedom is alive at the very least...and possibly healthier than any Washington tyrant-aspirant would care to accept.

Demonstrations of defiant liberty must happen many more times, in defense of still other oppressed Americans and private American institutions, before the political elite and its enforcers get the message. If blood should be spilled, let us pray that it will reinforce, rather than weaken, the resolve of freedom’s defenders. Given the events of the past three days, the prospects are promising.

Perhaps I will live to see the nation reborn in freedom after all. Please God, let it be so.

And may He bless and keep you all!

The Death Machine

[The recent resignation of Kathleen Sebelius as HHS Secretary, and the emergence of the true consequences of the Affordable Care Act in terms not merely of premiums and deductibles, but also of physicians and hospitals willing to subject themselves to its terms, have prompted me to reprint the following, which first appeared at Eternity Road on March 6, 2012. -- FWP]

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Imagine a giant mechanism that sucks living human beings irresistibly into its maw, grinds them to bits, then burns the bits and throws the ash to the winds.
Now imagine the sort of person, or institution, that would invent such a thing.
Now imagine the sort of person, or institution, that would operate it.

Your Curmudgeon isn't trying to horrify you for no reason. He's trying to prepare you for his tirade of today. If the above has persuaded you that it’s likely to be something you'll regret having read, you're forgiven. To the rest: Read on.

***

Some years ago, your Curmudgeon penned a series of essays on the pro-death forces at work among us. Since then, he's revisited that theme when the opportunity presented itself. Such a time is upon us today.

Death is not the ultimate evil, as anyone who's watched a beloved elder relative endure unrelieved suffering from a prolonged terminal disease would know. But he who inflicts death upon innocent others is evil, indisputably so. Worse yet is the man who seduces others into paths that are likely to cost them their lives, whether by concealing the risks or by persuading them that self-extinction is their social responsibility.

Persons of that latter type are at work among us, and in significant numbers, at that.

Death is less an event than a process. The concluding event -- the irreversible departure of life from the body -- is almost always preceded by enabling conditions that create a path toward it. Death's seducers have as their aim the creation of such conditions, and of walls around them that make the ultimate descent unavoidable. The key enabling condition is the destruction of rational consciousness of the probable consequences of one's decisions and actions.

The usual technique for bringing about such destruction is distraction.

You might think that a man aware that extreme hazards pertain to a course of action would be disinclined to ignore them. And indeed, it's a difficult thing for someone entirely in his right mind to imagine. But a sufficiently powerful distractor can make the typical person turn aside from anything at all, including mortal peril.

Integral to the technique is the choice of a positive inducement to shift one's focus. A skilled seducer will tempt you into a lethal course by downplaying the risks and emphasizing the pleasures. "You needn't worry about that now," he'll say. "There'll be time to deal with that later. Anyway, think of all the fun you could have at this!"

Of course, the higher and more obvious the risks, the more powerful must be the inducement to court them. The strongest inducements are tied directly to our hard-wired drives to prosper and reproduce. Thus, it's plain that the most powerful distractors known to Mankind are sex and money.

And with that, we come to politics.

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The flap over the ObamaCare mandate that employers provide medical insurance of a particular standard has recently generated an outcropping that any intelligent American of the times before the world wars would have viewed with incredulity. That outcropping, of course, is about the requirement that such a medical insurance policy cover contraceptive and abortifacient drugs.

The spectacle of Sandra Fluke, a thirty-year-old law student at Georgetown University, lying openly and ludicrously to Congress about the cost of her contraception was only the beginning. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh leaped into the fray unwisely by focusing on Distractor #1 -- sex -- and calling Miss Fluke a slut and a prostitute for demanding that Georgetown U. provide her with contraceptives at no cost to her. The thunder of denunciation from the left-wing media was immediate, and to be expected. That Limbaugh would offer an apology for his characterization was not. Neither was it appropriate that he do so.

The common understanding of the term slut is one who is heedlessly and indiscriminately promiscuous. If we grant even a shred of credence to Miss Fluke's claim that her contraception costs her $3000 per year, she's going through enough condoms and / or contraceptive jelly to provision any NFL football team for that entire period. She's certainly not spending that much on birth-control pills, the cost of which averages about $10 per month. Thus, to accept her statement as factual, we must conclude that some such football team is spending each and every night of the year with Sandra Fluke and no one else.

If Miss Fluke is telling the incredible truth,slut would seem to fit her.

Of course, there is an alternate explanation: Miss Fluke might be a serial purchaser of abortions. Those cost a bit more than birth-control pills, condoms, or contraceptive jelly. But enough abortions to sum to $3000 in a year would render a woman sexually incapable, possibly for life. Somehow, your Curmudgeon doubts that this is the real state of Miss Fluke's affairs.

However, a third possibility exists. Thanks to American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord, we know a bit more about Miss Fluke than she might want us to know. Given all that evidence, it seems likely that Miss Fluke is a paid shill for the political forces that support ObamaCare in its most extreme demands. At the very least, it would fit the pattern of her previous political involvements. It would also explain her otherwise inexplicable choice of Catholic-affiliated Georgetown for her law school.

Through Sandra Fluke and others like her, the Left is purveying sex, a subject about which the typical American is reluctant to take a firm stand even when he has one, to distract us from the all-important fact about ObamaCare: It puts the power of life and death over innocent Americans into the hands of the federal government.

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Other distractors are clustered tightly around the sexual one: the conflation of pregnancy with disease; the specious notion that the cost of contraception equals "lack of access" to it; the observation that birth-control pills are sometimes prescribed to relieve menstrual difficulties; and the pervasive female entitlement syndrome that's blanketed American women these past few decades. In combination, the distractors have deflected a substantial part of the nation from the core of the ObamaCare controversy: Is medical insurance a right, or merely one more good to be purchased in the marketplace by those who desire it?

The promoters of "universal health care" have attempted to palm a card on us by equating medical insurance with health care of any kind. Everyone wants to be able to purchase the medical goods and services he needs, or will need in the future. If ObamaCare's promoters can convince us that that will be impossible without comprehensive medical insurance, we'll buy into their equation.

Here's where Distractor #2 -- money -- is deployed against us. We know the fragility of our lives; we know the limitations on our resources. That wild conceptual leap from financial limitation to the truncation of life or health is one of the largest reasons so many people have been seduced away from proper attention to the death machine embedded within ObamaCare.

The government cannot compel young people to become doctors or nurses.
It cannot compel companies or charitable institutions to operate hospitals.
It cannot compel companies to provide medical products or services, particularly at some arbitrary price.
It cannot guarantee that an ailing American will be able to find a provider able to help him, regardless of how sweeping his insurance coverage might be.
It cannot even guarantee that companies will willingly sell the sort of medical insurance it prefers, at the price point it dictates.

What ObamaCare attempts to do is to universalize a particular standard for medical insurance at a low fixed price to the beneficiary. It's a poorly disguised price control scheme, constructed as a mandate laid upon employers.

Price controls lead inevitably to shortages. That whose price is limited to a level below what the market dictates will swiftly vanish, as current and potential providers turn their efforts in more profitable directions.

With the cost of medical products and services rising as the American populace ages, a price control on medical insurance is a guarantee that a dwindling pool of medical resources will have to be divided among a swelling number of aged, infirm, and sick Americans.

Take a guess what institution will do the dividing, deciding whose life is disposable and whose is too precious to waste. One guess should be all you need.

***

Your Curmudgeon has skipped blithely over the Constitutional arguments about ObamaCare. Those are likely never to be placed beyond all dispute; that pernicious phrase "general welfare" is simply too seductive to those who favor the expansion of the State to cover every aspect of human life.

It's virtually certain that the Left will continue to use sex and money to distract Americans' attention from the death machine hidden within ObamaCare. Money will lead the parade. People are already somewhat disturbed about the cost of medical care. They want to assure themselves that they'll be able to afford what they need. For several decades, the route toward such confidence has been medical insurance, which has already become widespread owing to favorable tax treatment of employer-provided noncash benefits.

When attentive observers of the course of government-controlled health care and government intrusion into various markets make public note of the perils involved, the Left responds with other distractors. The use of sex, though relatively recent in this connection, is one of the most potent in their arsenal. Rest assured, they'll continue to use it. We who love freedom and respect human life must remain ready to counter it.

Let The Curmudgeon's Carbohydrate Aphorism apply:

"Keep thine eye fixed upon the doughnut, lest thou pass unaware through the hole."

And pray.

Marginalia

I've long enjoyed Thomas Sowell's occasional "random thoughts on the passing scene," and have wondered what collection of conditions spurs him to produce one. Anyway, as I'm too harried to produce a respectable essay at the moment, have a few disconnected squibs on recent news.

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If you haven't heard about the Heartbleed Bug, it's time to get acquainted with it. This one, a flaw in the OpenSSL implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer, affects many popular websites and could endanger quite a lot of Internet users. Fortunately, benevolent analysts discovered it before it could be exploited...but that doesn't mean it isn't being exploited right now.

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The degree of specialization in my field continues to astound me. I remember being able to swap shop talk with just about any other bit twiddler as recently as twenty years ago. However, just yesterday I met a fellow whose specialty was so far from my experience that I'd never even heard its name. But I'm not sure: is "chipped bit reglommenation" really a recognized subsector of software engineering, or is my hearing going at long last?

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The Dishonorable Nancy Pelosi has decided to play the race card on "immigration reform." This, though contemptible, should come as no surprise, as it's all this failed Administration has left in its hand. The Democrats will play the race card to counter every attack on every failed Democrat policy, from here to November. However, that card is no longer "wild." The Democrats will discover that to their sorrow come November...but hopefully, not before then

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It's well known that pollsters are paid by their employers, not to determine the actual state of public sentiment, but to deliver a desired and well specified result. Imagine asking a passer-by for the time, having him consult your watch to tell you...and getting an answer wholly disconnected from reality.

Though USA Today reports on the continuing unpopularity of ObamaCare, those unhappy with that result have relied on a dishonest tactic: changing the questions while insisting that the answers remain pertinent. But you have to read the raw questions and the statistics on the answers they garnered to learn what duplicity was attempted.

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The evidence is now both damning and irrefutable: The IRS most certainly did target conservative groups that applied for 501(c)(4) status, and the Dishonorable Elijah Cummings was in it up to his eyelashes. Which raises the questions:

1. Will Cummings suffer the statutory penalty? Indeed, will he even be indicted?
2. Who does the Administration have in mind for its "fall guy?"

The answers are, in all probability, 1) No, and 2) Lois Lerner. Moreover, the Republicans in the House will accept both outcomes rather than allow the scandal to reach any more highly placed person. Why? Compensation, of course. What sort? We shall see.

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On the subject of "fall guys" and compensation for "taking the fall," it can be difficult to keep one's eye on the designee for such duty. Imagine that Lerner goes to prison for feloniously disclosing confidential taxpayer information. Time passes, and Lerner is freed. Where is she likely to receive her payment for "being a stand-up guy" before Issa's Oversight Committee? Almost certainly not in public service; that would be too conspicuous. More likely she'll get that OFA office job she dreams about. That's one of the most important services such an organization can render to the Left -- and it renders it more often than we notice.

Apropos of which, where do you expect Kathleen Sebelius to pop up next?

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Conservative and libertarian-oriented fiction site Liberty Island has begun to accumulate material. Some of it is pretty good, the rest...well, tastes vary and all that. But a word of advice to conservatives and libertarians who aspire to express their convictions through fiction: Keep the preaching down. Nothing destroys the entertainment value of a story more surely than open polemics. In other words -- and I can hear a million writers cringing in anticipation of what inevitably follows:

Show, Don't Tell!

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The late, great Cyril Northcote Parkinson once wrote that "Delay is the deadliest form of denial." He had a powerful point: a "slow-rolled" offer of compliance with your request leaves you with the impression you're about to be served as you requested, yet leaves you un-served while it simultaneously discourages you from going another route. A pointed example:

If we suppose that a drowning man calls for help, evoking the reply 'in due course,' a judicious pause of five minutes may constitute, for all practical purposes, a negative response. [From The Law of Delay.]

We've seen at least two blatant examples of this in recent weeks:

1. The IRS claiming that it could take "months if not years" to produce a batch of requested emails pertinent to the targeting scandals of 2010 to the present;
2. Eric Holder declining to provide any information whatsoever to Congress, each and every demand being me with "I can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

The slow-roller's greatest asset is his opponent's reluctance to appear unduly demanding. There's a moral in that, somewhere.

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The bread quotations are accumulating nicely, and thanks to all Gentle Readers who've assisted me in this. They appear to bear out an old equivalence: one ounce of gold will purchase two hundred loaves of good bread.

Yes, a loaf of first-echelon commercially available bread -- i.e., quality comparable to fresh bakery bread or its commercial equivalent today -- really did cost about $0.10...in 1912. If that doesn't frighten you about the state of our currency, see your primary care provider without delay -- and should he slap you on the back and tell you you're "as sound as a dollar," straighten your affairs at once.

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That's all for today, Gentle Reader. I have several lingering fiction projects screaming at me from the Slough of Despond -- theirs and mine. A couple of them look as if they're ready to become unruly. Tune in again tomorrow!

Propeller, Meet Feces

If you've spent any of your time at all following the IRS targeting scandal, in which the IRS deliberately selected conservative-leaning organizations for persecution, you're undoubtedly aware of all the following:

• Lois Lerner, who appears at the heart of the scandal, has consistently refused to testify before the House Oversight committee.
• Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True The Vote, has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of harassment by a number of federal agencies since she filed for 501(c) (4) status.
• Attorney-General Eric Holder steadfastly refuses to comment on the scandal, not even deigning to confirm whether Lois Lerner has testified to the Justice Department investigation he claims is "ongoing."
• The Dishonorable Elijah Cummings (D, MD) has repeatedly tried to derail the hearings, labeling them a "partisan witch-hunt" with no objective but Republican electoral advantage.

One must expect Eric Holder, Barack Hussein Obama's favorite foil and chief protector, to stonewall an investigation into corruption within the Obamunist camp. The Obamunists are beyond all question the most amoral, utterly vicious group ever to control the executive branch of the federal government. No tactic is too low for them to employ, no ally too foul for them to defend, and no target on the Right too small to overlook.

But this revelation makes plain how far the rot has gone -- and it's farther than even hyper-cynical I would have imagined:

New IRS emails released by the House Oversight Committee show staff working for Democratic Ranking Member Elijah Cummings communicated with the IRS multiple times between 2012 and 2013 about voter fraud prevention group True the Vote. True the Vote was targeted by the IRS after applying for tax exempt status more than two years ago. Further, information shows the IRS and Cummings' staff asked for nearly identical information from True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht about her organization, indicating coordination and improper sharing of confidential taxpayer information.

Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, along with five Subcommittee Chairmen are demanding Cummings provide an explanation for the staff inquiries to the IRS about True the Vote and for his denial that his staff ever contacted the IRS about the group.

“Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials – which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff – indicates otherwise,” the letter to Cummings states. “As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

It's been clear for some time that Cummings is the "point man" in the Democrats' attempt to derail the hearings into the IRS targeting scandal. What's now coming to light is his complicity in the matter -- and that light will leave the Democrat no shadow in which to hide.

Cummings, a typical black racist, has even played the race card against Catherine Engelbrecht:

No doubt in this he's merely aping his executive branch co-partisan Eric Holder:

...but then, these days the race card is all the Democrats have left. Their domestic policies are both massively unpopular and obvious failures; their foreign policy is reducing the Middle East to a shambles; and their front man has less credibility with the electorate than any president since Harding. Any port in a storm and all that.

Cummings now joins the Dishonorable Charles Rangel (D, NY) as an aberration in need of an explanation. How could any Congressional district not populated entirely by felons and psychotics have sent such a man to Congress as its representative -- and not once, but nine consecutive times? Is actual ignorance of such venality possible to a majority of the voters in a district of seven hundred thousand persons? If not, what does that say about the seventh Congressional district of Maryland?

Such...persons now control the Senate and the executive branch. Democrats that aren't willfully evil are cooperating, reluctantly or otherwise, with those who are. The federal government has become an instrument in the hands of villains and thieves -- and the Republicans in the House are unwilling to take more than token measures to impede them.

Thomas Paine's "intolerable evil" ("Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one") is upon us. There cannot be any further delay about bringing it to heel, purging it of as much rot as possible, and reconfining it straitly within Constitutional bounds. Yet that this must be done does not instruct us in how to do it.

The midterm elections will, at best, deprive the Democrats of their control of the Senate. Unless impeachment proceedings should thence be instituted against Obama, Holder, and whatever other Obamunist minions should seem reachable, the executive branch will remain our enemy. It will continue on relentless in its assault on Constitutional norms and the proper limits of government -- and the executive branch commands the enforcement powers of the federal government.

It's time for the hardest of hard thought.

Rubble

"Rubble doesn't cause trouble." -- John Derbyshire

The political news has been monotonous lately, and I'm disinclined to dwell on matters as tawdry as philandering Congressmen and combative Attorneys-General, so here are a few more chunks of concrete from the wreck of the recent past. Mind the asbestos!

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1. Conversations I: Torture.

CSO: Fwughmp!
FWP: I've never heard it put quite that way before.

CSO: It's just this damned post-nasal drip.
FWP: A nasty affliction. Among non-lethal nuisances, it's one of the worst.

CSO: Think someone somewhere is working on it?
FWP: You never know. There are people researching why toddlers fall off their tricycles.

CSO: Say, what about applying for a federal grant?
FWP: Well...maybe, but the research might be put to evil purposes. Which would you rather endure? Post-nasal drip or being waterboarded?
CSO: Forget I said anything about it.

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2. Conversations II: Fashion.

My diminutive (5' 0.5") Vietnamese-American sweetie Duyen, probably the smartest shoe addict in America, stunned me yesterday with a declaration I never expected to hear from her: In her opinion, women's high heels are getting too high. This led to the following exchange:

FWP: Coming from you, that's a revelation. Do you think they're too high to walk in at all?
DK: That's never been an issue with the really high ones. A woman wearing high-high heels doesn't expect to walk more than a few dozen steps in them.

FWP: So what's the issue, then?
DK: The proportions. The shoes are starting to look grotesque. They don't flatter the wearer. The proportions are all wrong.

FWP: The thick platforms?
DK: That and all the crap the designers hang on them.

FWP: The implications are disturbing.
DK: What do you mean?

FWP: You're going to need a new way to squander your vast fortune.
DK: I'd have to anyway. All my closets are full.

The laws of physics win again -- in two domains at once, this time.

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3. Matters fictional.

Just yesterday, Ol' Remus and I were exchanging thoughts about contemporary science fiction -- neither of us thinks much of most of it -- and it occurred to me that part of my loss of interest in what other SF writers have been producing arises not from craft -- most contemporary genre fiction is written better than that of fifty years ago -- but from a pandemic exhaustion of imagination.

The speculative genres' major tropes have repeated almost without variation over the decades since Gernsback. While the improvements in their craft have been considerable, few SF writers seem capable of coming up with anything genuinely new. The fantasy genre seems equally bereft of novelty. As for horror, please! Being compelled to read one more novel about vampires, werewolves, or zombies might send me into a killing spree of my own.

This struck me in part because, as old people often do, I've been returning to old favorites lately. I've recognized virtually every SF, fantasy, and horror motif of importance in books fifty years old and more. Those older novels lack much of the precision, grace, and flair I've come to expect from newer works, but the newer books very seldom innovate in matters of plot and genre-motif.

For one whose principal pleasure comes from the printed word, this is particularly disturbing. So, Gentle Reader: have you any recommendations of new writers and works for an old SF / fantasy aficionado? Books that genuinely bring something original into those genres? My reading stack is getting thin!

---

4. Shortages.

Milton Friedman said on more than one occasion that "Economists don't know much, but we do know how to create shortages and surpluses." [From Free To Choose] He went on to explain that what gives rise to a shortage is the compulsory fixing of the price of a good below what people are willing to pay to "clear the market." An old gag has some point:

Elderly Shopper to Butcher: How much is your ground beef?
Butcher: $4.99 a pound.

Elderly Shopper: That's outrageous! Why, across the street they only ask $2.99 a pound.
Butcher: Then why aren't you buying it across the street?

Elderly Shopper: They're all out of ground beef.
Butcher: Well, Madam, when I was all out of ground beef, it was $2.99 a pound here, too.

Demand, that all-important microeconomic concept, isn't just "what people want;" it's "what people want and are willing and able to pay for it." Which brings us to the subject of medicine and medical insurance.

At this time, the Affordable Care Act has decreed fixed prices, de facto, for medical insurance. Those prices are well beyond what many Americans are willing or able to pay for coverage. This has given rise to a "shortage:" a large pool of uninsured who would not be uninsured in a free market. The effect will be compounded as insurers raise their premiums in response to the skew of the insured pool further toward persons whose ages and conditions imply elevated payouts. We've already seen average increases of about 12% over the past six months; there will be more.

But a shortage of a widely desired good is never unaccompanied by another phenomenon of governmental price fixing: a black market.

I've wondered for a while now what form the American black market in medical insurance will take. Insurance is a kind of bet, and we certainly have black markets in gambling of other sorts. I predict that this one will be no exception...and I tremble to think what that will mean for the enforceability of the black-market insurer's obligation to pay for the contracted coverage.

To live outside the law, you must be honest. -- Bob Dylan.

In a black market, honesty develops from the ugliest and most violent imaginable processes, though they're no less necessary for that. That doesn't make the prospect any prettier.

---

5. Bread.

Please, Gentle Readers, keep the bread-price quotations coming. The ones I've already seen are most illustrative, but I need as comprehensive a set as possible to continue the assessment of actual (i.e., as opposed to federal-fantasy) inflation (i.e., dollar deterioration). On your next shopping trip, just jot down the price of a pound loaf of Pepperidge Farm (or whatever the first-echelon commercial bread is in your region), and attach it to the post below as a comment.

Thanks in advance.

Jackstraws

1. Rand Paul and 2016.

InstaPundit posted the following yesterday evening:

SOME THOUGHTS ON 2016 FROM AN ANONYMOUS JOURNALIST READER: “As delighted as I am professionally at the prospect of a Bush-Clinton extravaganza, I see the pending spectacle as another sign of the decline and fall of the American empire. Two tired old dynasties running two ponderous bloodless parties with advanced cases of syphilis. Bush-Clinton is the best these people can do, on the heels of this current farce? I’d be more enthusiastic about Rand Paul but I have no tolerance for any whiff of isolationism, and I’m afraid the whack apple hasn’t rolled far enough from the whack tree.”

It would appear that, whether accurately or not, Senator Paul's critics have succeeded in tarring him as an "isolationist" -- whatever that means in a world webbed by innumerable alliances and whose trade conduits run between and among all two hundred of the nations of the world. The word itself carries some unpleasant connotations, but the central questions to be explored include another of equal or greater importance:

What are Rand Paul's actual foreign-policy views?

If Senator Paul is merely more reluctant to intervene militarily in foreign conflicts than the most recent Republican presidents and presidential candidates, I'm with him. We reach for our military too easily; we tend to forget that the effects of even a clearly victorious war don't end with the signing of the armistice that ends live fire. But if he's of the true isolationist persuasion -- the one that says America should never send its military outside its borders unless American soil has been attacked -- then he's unsuitable for the White House.

Another point Senator Paul must clarify arises from his recent comments on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Does he hold that the war was morally wrong, morally acceptable but contrary to America's interests, or morally acceptable but followed up incorrectly? The United States has yet to engage in a war that's plainly immoral; we've gone to war for just causes only, even those wars that were unwise and obviously so in hindsight. Americans know it, and will not abide being told otherwise.

2016 is nearer than you think, Senator.

---

2. Rationality and Religion.

At PJ Media today, this old chestnut has been resuscitated:

Which is More Rational: Belief in God or Atheism?

And of course, the fur is already flying in the comments. So I just had to add my two cents:

"Which is more rational?" is a question that's inapplicable to the existence (or not) of God. The matter resides in the domain of faith -- i.e., the domain of non-verifiable, non-falsifiable propositions. One must accept or reject the existence of God without being able to prove one's conclusion by evidentiary or logical means.

It would be rational to believe in God if there were a way to prove His existence. It would be rational to disbelieve in God if there were a way to disprove His existence. However, the postulated nature of God excludes both those possibilities. Which is why there's no point in arguing about it with an atheist (if you're a believer) or with a theist (if you're a disbeliever).

There've been no rejoinders yet, whether for or against. We shall see.

---

3. Minorities that harbor really bad minorities.

Yesterday's piece about "favorite fruits" has, just as you might expect, drawn the usual river of venom. It rolls off my back, of course; after a certain amount of denunciation as a thoroughly evil person, you sort of get used to it, have buttons and T-shirts made up, and join the Cthulhu for President campaign ("Because You're Tired Of Choosing The Lesser Of Two Evils"). But it also got me thinking about activist minorities within "larger" minorities whose not-so-strident members wish the activists would pipe down, stop terrorizing cathedrals, stop blowing people up, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam.

A minority that remains to some degree excluded from general participation in American society needs to be on its best behavior. Angry "inner" minorities tend to spoil that for the rest. The implication is obvious: the larger group must find a way to discipline the smaller, more vocal one, in recognition of the media's incentives to give the angry group all the column-inches, thus ruining the larger group's image in outsiders' eyes.

This is particularly difficult in the case of Islam. Indeed, it might not be possible, because of the incentives and dynamics within that group. But American homosexuals might have a shot. Once again, we shall see.

---

4. A Request For My Readers.

I've begun a project that has a data-collection need I'm finding difficult to meet. Those Gentle Readers in locales other than New York are requested to help. It's not hard:

Please email me the price of a pound loaf of high-quality bread in your area.

Yes, this is about inflation and the value of the precious metals. Thanks in advance.

Activity At www.franciswporretto.com

I've added an essay on "Promotional Patterns" to my fiction website. Indie writers, take note!

Quickies: For Brendan Eich

The Gay Soviet and the more-righteous-than-thou prigs of the Left, in keeping with the old Leftist mantra that "the personal is the political," have succeeded in committing a grotesque injustice against a good and highly talented man -- for holding the very same view of marriage that Barack Hussein Obama had to express to get elected President in 2008.

As it happens, I've been reading Mark Steyn's book Lights Out this past weekend, in which he reminded me of this old Frank Sinatra / Dean Martin gag:

Q: How do you make a fruit cordial?
A: Be nice to him.

Which, in recognition that things have changed and not for the better, Steyn expanded from two lines to three:

Q: How do you make a fruit cordial?
A: Be nice to him.
Or else.

...and I reflected that the very best weapon against political correctness remains derision, particularly the humorous sort. In recognition of which, and for the honor of the fallen Brendan Eich, I pose this question:

Who Are Your Favorite Fruits?

My selections:

• Currently Fruiting: Elton John
• Deceased Contemporary: Liberace
• Deceased Historical: Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford and the true author of "Shakespeare's" works.

What are yours, Gentle Reader? List them in the Comments.

Before I ring off for the morning, allow me to remind you that the PC Enforcers can't hurt you if you stand your ground fearlessly. We in the Right outnumber them. We have every imaginable asset, including all the relevant facts and their implications. We come to one another's aid. Indeed, the one thing they fear is that we'll discover our true numbers and our true power.

You need not be a silenced, cowering victim.
Becoming an oppressor is not your sole alternative.
If you have the courage of your convictions, it's still possible to be a free man.

Just Because I Feel Like It...

...and because there's been so much talk from the Left about "the 1%" and "upper class" lately, I thought this taste of a real class structure -- the genuinely rigid, State-maintained type that allows no escape -- might evoke some thoughts.

I don't want you to be high
I don't want you to be down
Don't want to tell you no lie
Just want you to be around
Please come right up to my ears
You will be able to hear what I say

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't be part of my life
Please keep yourself to yourself
Please don't you bother my wife
That way you won't get no help
Don't try to ride on my horse
You're rather common and coarse anyway

Don't want you out in my world
Just you be my backstreet girl

Please don't you call me at home
Please don't come knocking at night
Please never ring on the phone
Your manners are never quite right
Please take the favors I grant
Curtsy and look nonchalant, just for me

Don't want you part of my world
Just you be my backstreet girl
Just you be my backstreet girl

[Jagger / Richards, of course.]

With thoughts of Shae, Tyrion's doomed love from A Game Of Thrones.

Lazarus: A Sunday Rumination

We interrupt this series of tirades about gun rights and the enemies thereof to reflect on one of the most famous deaths in the entire New Testament: that of Lazarus of Bethany, he who died and was returned to life by the intercession of Jesus:

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

[The Gospel According To John, 11:1-45]

If you haven't yet had that read to you today, please ponder it for a moment now, before we proceed.

---

Despite its length, the story of the revivification of Lazarus should be read in its entirety, as above. We must take careful note of the sequence of events:

• Lazarus falls seriously ill, word of which is conveyed to Jesus.
• Despite the news, Jesus deliberately remains away from Bethany until Lazarus has died.
• Jesus announces his intention to return to Bethany, incidentally telling his disciples that "I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe."
• Upon arrival at Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus, “greatly disturbed,” weeps;
• Jesus openly invokes his Father -- "I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me" -- and summons Lazarus forth from the tomb.

This story has disturbed me ever since I returned to faith. Sickness unto death is seldom pleasant, yet Jesus allowed it to happen to a dear friend. Indeed, the story strongly implies that had Jesus not tarried, he could have prevented Lazarus from dying at all. What's even more troubling is that he did so to establish incontrovertibly, through a miracle beyond all dispute by anyone present, that he was the Christ, the Son of God, with full authority to replace the Levitical Covenant with the New Covenant.

If there's any balm to be had, it's that he wept over it.

---

The revivification of a man four days dead is beyond the power of any man or men. In Judea at the time of Jesus's ministry, it constituted absolute proof that he was who he had been proclaimed to be. Despite two thousand years' advances in medicine and the understanding of the human body, it would still suffice today.

Yet he wept over it. I can imagine at least two sound reasons:

1. The suffering Lazarus undoubtedly endured to become Jesus's demonstrator of his divinity;
2. The necessity of the revivification to establish, among some at least, Jesus's nature as the Son of God.

The more I think about it, the higher the second point rises above the first. The revivification of Lazarus seemingly took from those who witnessed it any requirement for faith. Faith is belief that requires no proof, only an absence of incontrovertible disproof. Anyone who witnessed Lazarus's emergence from his tomb of four days had no need for faith on that day; he had seen incontestable proof that the Christ was among us.

But then, anyone who witnessed Jesus's crucifixion, culminating with his impalement upon the spear of Longinus, and later encountered the Redeemer walking about as if his execution had never occurred, would have been in the same evidentiary condition.

---

There are other, less unsettling quandaries inherent in the story: how a man dead four days could have his life restored as if it had never fled his body; in what state the soul of Lazarus reposed while the Redeemer made his way back to Bethany; and why the New Testament never says another word about Lazarus, Martha, or Mary, despite their obvious importance to Jesus. About these things, it is enough to say that with God, all things are possible, but about the two matters enunciated above the break, far more thought is required.

He who has been granted sufficient intelligence should reflect upon the Gospel stories critically and analytically. Indeed, the possession of that gift raises it near to a sacred obligation. There is no merit to be had from suppressing one's intellect to keep one's faith undisturbed. We are meant to be disturbed, by this and much else.

Scoffers routinely deride Christian theology from a temporal vantage point, as if God were a temporal being like ourselves. They challenge Christians with "the problem of pain:" why an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God would permit frail human beings to suffer through no fault of their own. The acceptance of the scoffer's premise is the fatal step. Some of them know it and hope you won't notice; others merely lack the imagination required to spot their own deficiency.

But explaining why Jesus would deliberately allow his friend to suffer and die, specifically to use Lazarus's return to life as an indisputable proof of Jesus's divine stature, is a lot harder.

---

As I wrote above, faith requires a personal commitment to believe, as long as no definitive disproof of the proposition at issue can be produced. A proposition appropriate for the commitment of one's faith must therefore be one that's immune to disproof. Sometimes that merely requires the adoption of suitable postulates.

The crux of the matter, in my view, is the ubiquity of faith and operations founded on faith. They're far more common than some would believe...or than others would like us to believe.

In permitting Lazarus to die and then restoring his life, Jesus deliberately performed a miracle so dramatic that those who witnessed it were shorn of the need for faith. For them, Jesus's divine stature was as indisputable as a rigorously proven theorem of mathematics -- while they remembered the actual occurrence, the context, and retained the conviction that they had not been deceived somehow. But men's memories are perishable things. Our ability to doubt ourselves, including the remembered evidence of our senses, appears to have no limit. They who beheld Lazarus stumbling forth from his tomb didn't die on the spot and win immediate admission to heaven; they had longer to live -- years over which it was demanded of them that they have faith in their memories of the miracle.

The same could be said of those who witnessed the Crucifixion but encountered Christ Resurrected three days or more after his entombment. It could also be said of the Apostles whom Jesus permitted to witness his Ascension, and of the group upon whom the Holy Spirit bestowed the gift of tongues, that they might "teach all nations." Faith was still required of all of them, though it was faith of a different sort.

Another key to the Lazarus puzzle -- wow, "The Lazarus Puzzle!" What a title for a story! -- is Martha's declaration at the outskirts of the village of Bethany:

"Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

Martha's faith preceded her act of witness. She didn't need to see her brother raised from the dead. Perhaps neither did the others who attended the miracle. But the demonstration became a story to be told to others not present -- persons who might never encounter the Redeemer in person, nor witness any of his deeds of love and mercy. Persons who would forever retain the freedom to doubt, as did Martha's sister Mary, though in her two previously recorded encounters with Jesus she had shown a greater devotion to him than her sister.

May God bless and keep you all.

80,000,000 slaughtered by Jesuits and Presbyterians.

Rampaging patriarchal Christian zealots lay waste to Indian subcontinent in pursuit of profit, exploitation and privilege:


By India Hidden News. Date unknown.

Concerto For Cold Dead Hands, Second Movement: Sociological Factors

Not enough firearms enthusiasts have thought broadly enough about the genesis of our political problem. In particular, few commentators have addressed why so many self-nominated conservatives are opposed to full, Constitutional respect for the right to keep and bear arms.

There are more such "conservatives" than you might be aware, Gentle Reader. Folks who'll stand with us on Constitutionally limited government, taxes, immigration, life issues, foreign affairs, and a whole lot more...but let the commoners have unfettered access to guns? Unthinkable!

In part, the existence of such persons, hostile to firearms rights though good on nearly everything else, follows from the cultural influences I delineated in the previous essay. But that's not the whole of the explanation, especially in the case of intelligent persons generally well aligned with conservative or libertarian thinking on nearly every other subject.

---

Allow me to quote from an essay I posted last summer:

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

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

That essay concerned itself with the emergence of a "New Class" (Irving Kristol) whose members regard themselves as superior -- in intellect, morality, and legal stature -- to the rest of us. According to their presumption of superiority, not only are they entitled to rule us; they also possess rights that the rest of us do not enjoy. One of those rights pertains to firearms.

What I under-emphasized in that essay is that the "New Class" is not made up solely of political liberals. It contains a hefty dollop of self-described conservatives as well: persons who, though the bulk of their politics is compatible with Constitutional / pro-freedom conservatism, disdain to consider us groundlings as their equals before the law, especially as regards the right to keep and bear arms. Though out of prudence I must refrain from naming names, a number of commentators at Establishment organs nominally affiliated with conservative thought are among them.

It would be a mistake to assume, when you spot an obvious "VIP" accompanied by visibly armed bodyguards, that the "VIP" is a left-liberal...or that he would accord you all the rights he arrogates unto himself.

---

Social striations in these United States don't always spring from differences in wealth, though that frequently enters into it. Often it's a matter of affiliational circles: occupational, avocational, artistic, religious, charitable, and other social associations that gather persons like-minded about some common involvement into cohesive groups. Such groups exclude, de facto at least, those of us who don't share their common attachment. In consequence, whatever notions the most powerful personalities in such a group assert will come to dominate the group overall. (Anyone who's ever been a member of a "writer's group" will know exactly what I mean. I pray the great majority of my Gentle Readers have never known that particular agony and never will.)

No, not all people are sheep, but not all people are leaders, or independent-minded, either. The great preponderance of Mankind prefers to be led...and usually is.

There appears to be a powerful link between membership in a quasi-exclusive group and an attitude of general superiority to (and separation from) non-members. This is sometimes called "othering:" an evolution, sometimes subconscious, which gradually demotes non-members to a lesser status -- an alien status. Once an individual is seen as "other," regarding him as a potential threat to one's own status and perquisites seems to follow.

Aspiring group leaders often use "othering" to raise themselves to leadership of the group. Emphasizing a distinction between "us" and "them" that casts "us" in a favorable light is a time-tested tactic for acquiring acolytes and followers.

When whole masses of persons are "othered," the sense of threat can become a major component of one's mindset. Consider, as a very relevant case, the "othering" of wholly private citizens by government officials and employees. Many of those persons are objectively inferior: stupid, ignorant, amoral, arrogant, unmannerly, and generally unfit for human society. However, they get to work in the "halls of power," and we don't. Their contemptuous attitude toward us follows naturally.

The sense of threat logically implies a need to defuse the threat. Denying the threatening ones the tools with which they might move against their superiors is a matter of course.

---

"Establishment Republicans" have deservedly acquired a poor reputation in recent years. Many of those so labeled claim to be conservatives. Yet a high percentage of them, possibly a majority, are hostile to any expansion of the private ownership of firearms. They might never say so where "others" can hear, but to expect them to league with gun-rights activists is unwise. The odds are heavily against ever seeing any of them at a Second Amendment rally. Gun rights, they tell themselves, are a "fringe issue," publicly embracing which could cost them votes. Mustn't scare the "independents," don't y'know.

The sociological divide cuts across nominal political and ideological borders as well as those of wealth and power.

The simple chain of inference:

1. Every individual has an unalienable right to his life and his honestly acquired property;
2. Therefore, he has a right to defend those rights against infringement;
3. Therefore, he has a right to acquire the tools with which to defend them;
4. Therefore, no diminution of his right to weaponry suitable to those purposes can possibly be legitimate.

...cuts no ice with one on the far side of the sociological divide. He's not concerned with anyone's rights but his own -- and those rights, as he sees them, include an absolute right to be "safe" from you, no matter who you might be or what that might imply for legal differences between you and him.

More anon.

Concerto For Cold Dead Hands, First Movement: Cultural Influences

The response to yesterday's piece -- one of my older essays, which first appeared at the Palace Of Reason of loving memory -- was quite overwhelming. Apparently the wholly unConstitutional anti-firearms initiatives in Connecticut and New York have finally galvanized active resistance to further encroachments, a truly heart-gladdening development. However, a number of readers, though they approve of the piece's general theme, have written to ask for a wider treatment of the subject; in effect, a how-we-got-here that might help in the formulation of a counter-strategy.

I'm not certain I'm the right writer for that job, but I won't have it said that I backed away from the challenge.

---

I've written before about the double-edged nature of urbanization; indeed, I've done so several times. It's a natural consequence of a commercial culture, especially one going through the transition from Agricultural to Industrial. However, the economic incentives that drive urbanization are not the only ones in the picture. As Professor Arne Stromberg, holder of the Edmond Genet Chair in Sociology at Gallatin University (the finest institution of higher learning on Hope) has told us:

"We know from historical data that predators of all sorts will concentrate where the prey is fattest."

"Fattest" in the above should be interpreted widely:

• Are they rich?
• Slow moving enough to be easily caught?
• Unable (or disinclined) to defend themselves when confronted?
• Herded together in a fashion that constrains their actions in their own defense?

All of these considerations make a population attractive prey to one or another category of predators. And there is more than one category of predator to take into account. For, to quote Professor Stromberg again:

"The State...is merely an organized band of predators with a veneer of legitimacy derived either from tradition or from a manufactured appearance of the consent of its subjects."

(In this, the good professor is merely following the line of thought first articulated by early Twentieth Century sociologist Franz Oppenheimer in his masterwork The State.)

To return to the main thread, an urbanized culture has concentrated its population in a fashion that will make urban zones much more attractive to predators. The "private" criminal will see a "target rich environment," particularly for crimes against property. The "public" criminal -- I'm following Professor Stromberg's analysis above -- is likely to view the urban populace as a unitary target: "a herd of sheep ready for shearing." And in one of the great ironies of history, the activities of the former greatly assist the ambitions of the latter.

Cities in these United States have a far greater probability of being hostile to private ownership of firearms than non-urban regions. Urban populations incline toward a lower degree of mutuality, including mutual trust, than those of suburban and rural regions. The specific reasons for this need not concern us now; the effects on attitudes toward gun ownership are what matter most.

"Public" criminals -- I do like that phrasing! -- capitalize on these conditions to encourage general distrust, among city dwellers, in firearms and in those who want to own them. Urban politicians' moves to ban the private ownership of guns are seldom resisted with even a fraction of the fury that suburbanites and country dwellers routinely muster. The secondary consequences include an increasing dependency upon "public" protectors and a deepening gulf between city and non-city populations, especially on subjects related to individual self-reliance. Here we see a second-stage irony equal in size to the first: Should a city erupt in general chaos, the city-dweller's safety would depend upon flight from his city -- and he would expect to be accepted and protected by those among whom he would shelter.

Urban populations are far easier to tyrannize than non-urban ones -- and both sorts of predators know it.

---

At this time, the population of these United States is about 65% urbanized, by the standards in common use. The consequence is a preponderance of anti-firearms sentiment among a vast number of Americans. It's not 65%; just as not all country dwellers are gun-friendly, not all city dwellers are gun-hostile. Besides, some of those formally "urban zones" are sufficiently dispersed to have more of the character of the suburbs; consider Indianapolis and Milwaukee as examples of the "non-urban city." However, the fraction is large enough that infringements on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment are generally tolerated, even welcomed, by an unpleasantly large fraction of the electorate.

Consider these correlations, as well:

• Our news media corporations are all city-based;
• So are our entertainment companies (e.g., movie and TV studios and publishers);
• Contemporary cultural productions tend to demonize private ownership of firearms, whether overtly or subtly;
• Most stories told by contemporary "literature" and video entertainment occur in cities;
• So does most consumption of such entertainment;
• The great majority of our cities are tyrannized by left-liberal Democrat administrations.

The pattern could hardly be clearer.

---

Andrew Breitbart was emphatic that "Culture is upstream from politics." Cultural influences are nowhere more important than in the fight to preserve our right to keep and bear arms. The anti-firearms influences arising from our urbanized culture, and the responses of predators and propagandists to it, must somehow be countered.

We in the Second Amendment community have lamented the efficacy with which politicians can turn evens like the slaughter at Sandy Hook, Connecticut into fuel for the anti-firearms forces. Yet once again, it's all too likely that the core problem is cultural; in the case of Sandy Hook and comparable atrocities against the helpless, a media culture that portrays the slaughter as being a direct consequence of private firearms ownership, speaking principally to an urban culture that's already inclined toward citizen disarmament. That media culture excels at "framing" a set of events to force conformance to "a narrative" preferred by the media's masters. The preferred narrative of the anti-gun forces will naturally seek to exclude, even suppress, all discussion of the private predators' custom-designed hunting ground: the "gun-free zone," where decent persons are forbidden to go armed so that predators can do as they please.

More anon.

From My Cold Dead Hand

[April 3, 2014: In light of developments in Connecticut and New York, I've reposted the piece below. Those who are ready, willing, and able should consider joining the forces that will assemble this coming Saturday before the Connecticut state capitol. There is no issue more urgent than this one. -- FWP]

[February 2, 2013: The following piece first appeared at the Palace of Reason on April 1, 2001, shortly after the now all-but-forgotten EP-3 incident in the Far East. -- FWP]

---

It's been awhile since I really reflected on the nature of a free people -- a people determined to remain free, and possessed of the means to do so.

Armament is critical, of course. If your adversary is armed and you aren't, you're in the position of a grasshopper trying to face down a lawn mower. We might make admiring note of your courage in our elegies, but we surely won't be attending your victory parade.

Also, one must be careful not to hand any levers to a potential tyrant. There are a number of things Man requires to survive and flourish: air, food, water, the ability to move about, the ability to communicate with others, heat, fuel, many kinds of knowledge, the cooperation of others with different kinds of knowledge, and so on. Whenever any entity moves to monopolize access to any of these or the other necessities of survival, it's nominated itself Tyrant-In-Embryo. Abort!

But both the above are resultants of a far more critical, indeed, a fundamental requirement of the free man. No one can remain free, no one can ensure the freedom of his descendants, unless he nurtures and transmits to those around him the essential defiance that animates all the other freedom-conserving behaviors.

We see a lot of bumper stickers that run roughly as follows:

They Can Have My Gun
When They Pry It
From My Cold Dead Hand!

I can only applaud the sentiment... if it's genuine. How often is it genuine?

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

Well? The deputy sheriff is waiting.

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

Why do I say this? Because it's happened. It's here.

After the race troubles of the summers of 1964 and 1965, several major cities, New York prominent among them, imposed unConstitutional new restrictions and requirements on weapons ownership. The residents of those cities went along without significant opposition. To the best of my knowledge, none of the restrictions were ever rolled back, though the supposed dangers they were put in place to forestall (e.g., here in New York, we heard a lot about "urban snipers") failed to materialize.

California, more recently, passed a law forbidding the ownership of an "assault weapon," a category so broadly defined that virtually any semiautomatic rifle would qualify under a liberal interpretation of the standard. The law became effective on January 1, 2000. I have heard no report of any opposition to this patently, blatantly unConstitutional law in the Golden State.

Now, about those bumper stickers...

I'm not saying that it would be easy to refuse that deputy sheriff. I'm not saying there wouldn't be risks. I am saying that unless the will and determination to refuse him are present in a large percentage of the citizenry, the country will lose the liberties that the right of private firearms ownership was intended to safeguard.

Without that ineradicable defiance, that willingness to spit into the face of "authority," firearms are mere trinkets.

Every major gun confiscation known to history has been followed by the erection of a totalitarian regime. It's not as if we didn't have a little history on the matter. When they come for our guns, we'll know what they're about.

Over the past century, liberty has been flensed away from Americans, slice after thin slice. That's the way to subordinate a free people. Get them used to bending the knee and tugging the forelock in little things first, things that don't appear to be relevant to them personally. Get them thinking that only antisocial curmudgeons would raise a fuss over matters as trivial as zoning restrictions, or licensing requirements for hairdressers. Better yet, get them thinking that anyone who would resist these "obviously desirable" new requirements of the law must want to do them harm.

With each slice of lost liberty has gone a little of the defiance that animates a free people. We're closing in on the point of no return, the threshold that, once crossed, will become an impenetrable wall that forbids us a backward step.

In parallel with the loss of personal defiance has gone a slackening of the national will toward foreign enemies. The recent contretemps with the Chinese is an important harbinger of things to come. Few have dared to suggest that, when America puts young men and women into uniforms and weapons into their hands, it's preparing them to risk their lives for some purpose beyond a trade agreement. Few have dared to suggest that a country whose government dares to take Americans hostage, to stake their lives and freedom as counters in a game, has committed an act of war, an act to which a country with dignity could respond in only one way.

We have become comfortable with subordination at home and humiliation abroad.

The red and white stripes wobble and weave. The starry blue field softens and begins to run. The borders dissolve, the colors blend, and soon there is only a uniform dull brown. The color of mud. The color of failure, The color of the loss of hope. And the hand that holds liberty's banner aloft slackens, and fails, and becomes cold.

The "United States Problem."

The central committee [of the Chinese Communist Party] believes, as long as we resolve the United States problem at one blow, our domestic problems will all be readily solved. Therefore, our military battle preparations appear to aim at Taiwan, but in fact [are] aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites.

~ August 2005 speech by former Chinese Defense Minister CHI Haotian.^[1]

So China is itching for a fight that will solve the "United States problem." In one blow, no less.

And, in the U.S., over eight years later, the putative president obsesses over the abdominal snow job of ObamaCare, radical defense cuts, harassment of Tea Party political organizations, homosexuals in the military, queer marriage, sexual harassment in the military, debasing the currency, hampering of oil and gas production, bogus catastrophic AGW, and expedited importation of hostile foreigners by the boatload to solve our critical Vibrancy Problem.

Keeps me up at night, anyway. Lack of vibrancy.

The possibility of a sudden Chinese military invasion still seems fanciful even to this writer with his now finely-honed and medication-attenuated alarmism. However, that (invasion) is not the only option of the ambitious, unelected, pissed-off Communist kleptocrats who appear not to have domestic problems of any kind. Any time is a good time to ramp up the saber rattling, I suppose, and wars always work out just they way they are planned.

Known fact.

So, yes, let's exhort the commie faithful on how easy it will be to deliver a knockout blow to the Paper Tiger.

A la Pearl Harbor.

Fortunately, "mutual destruction" is still the operative term vis-a-vis Chinese nuclear war calculations, and, one hopes, calculations involving non- or small scale-nuclear exotica whose development has been facilitated by aggressive Chinese theft of technology (3,000 front companies in the U.S.).

In an earlier time in the U.S. citizens might have been assured of competent preparation and execution of strategic defense plans, but no longer.

Considering who's minding the store these days, that won't change, and your generic concerned citizen has cause for despair. Despair not just because of the absurd cast of characters who are our current political "leaders" but a yet deeper despair at the realization of fundamental flaws baked in to the cake of bourgeois Western society:

The liberal-bourgeois order was flawed at its inception by the relentless logic of democracy, by the anarchy of political parties, by the demagogy of politicians, by a belief in progress, and by the leveling power of equality. Society has become soft, feminine – incoherent to the point of disintegration. This is not merely the work of recent decades, but of recent centuries.^[2]

Notes
^[1] Quoted in "Further War Preparations?" By J.R. Nyquist, JRNyquist.com, 4/1/14 (my underlining, Mr. Nyquist's brackets).
^[2] Id.

UPDATE (4/3/14):

I decided to read the whole speech of this man Chi. Parts of it seem right out of The Onion and the parts that aren't show Chi to be one stellar psychotic monster.

I note that the publisher of this alleged speech says its authorship can't be verified. Nonetheless, I'll leave this post up for the value there is in the opening quotation and the entire speech linked to immediately above.

That value is in getting Westerners to consider that the Chinese might be using their enormous new wealth to prepare for more than just using some muscle in their immediate vicinity to grab possible new energy sources.

And perhaps in getting Westerners to reflect on the actual ineffectual leadership we have, in particular with respect to how it might deal with the problem of China if even a small part of the thinking evident in this speech is representative of Chinese thinking. It's bad enough that we see that leadership fumbling and dissembling in areas that are relatively low-stakes areas, Ukraine excepted. If the "actual" in these areas is as bad as it is, we should consider that the "probable" with respect to a serious challenger like China is likely to be catastrophic.

Not that we shouldn't reduce our armed forces to pre-WWII levels. I'm certainly not saying THAT.

If the speech is questionable, so be it. However, that would not establish that China is to be trusted or that it is our pal, or anyone's pal. Even this kind of possible fiction should be reflected in our military contingency planning.

The Nature Of Money And Currency Part 4: The Emergence Of Banks And Banking

I know, I know: Too many concurrent essay series, Fran! Consciousness of the backlog might have been responsible for yesterday's attack of the Twitching Awfuls. All the same, one must soldier on.

The "Money and Currency" series has attracted a lot of email. To date, we have:

• This discussion of the properties of money and currency;
• This discourse on Gresham's Law and bimetallism;
• This narration of the transition to a fiat dollar.

I was tempted to continue on into the sociopolitical pressures that have propelled the massive inflation of the post-Federal Reserve Act century, but it occurred to me that a discussion of the quintessential financial institution, the bank, really ought to precede further discussion of the commodity with which we transact and (attempt to) save.

---

Before people began to think about borrowing or saving in organized terms, they worried about protecting their accumulated precious metals. It was unwise to keep significant quantities of gold or silver in "casual" storage, especially in locales where there was a possibility of incursion by a raider band. Thus there arose interest in the safekeeping of one's store of value.

The local jeweler provided a solution. His trade required that he keep such stocks, and of course that he keep them safe from predation. If he had excess storage capacity, he might be persuaded to rent it to you, for a modest fee. You and he would agree on the fee, on how much metal he would store for you, on how long he would store it, and on how the deal was to be recorded; you would hand over your gold and silver; he would lock it away; and off you'd both go to your proper concerns. Thus were born two of the ubiquitous features of commercial societies: banking and bookkeeping.

But a jeweler who made banking into a significant side business would eventually contemplate the possibilities of having so much of other people's money in his hands. Why should it just sit there, taking up space and doing nothing? Especially as others were aware of it, an uncomfortable situation that increased the probability of an attack on the jeweler's vault. Better to "put it to work," simultaneously reducing the vault's attractiveness as a target and earning something from otherwise inert assets.

If the jeweler could be certain of holding X ounces of gold for Y days, he could lend it out, at interest, for Y-1 days -- assuming it would be paid back, of course. The creditworthiness of the prospective borrower had to be assured to a high degree of confidence, for a loan not repaid by the borrower must perforce be repaid to the depositors out of the jeweler's own funds. However, the usage fee for the borrowed funds, or usury, could help to protect the jeweler/banker: enough borrowers at a sufficiently high usury would return a sufficient profit margin to prevent a small number of bad loans from bankrupting the jeweler/banker.

Note in particular all the following:

• The jeweler/banker could not lend for a longer term than the term agreed upon with his depositors;
• He had to accept that his judgment of borrowers would occasionally be wrong, resulting in a "bad loan" that would not be repaid;
• The usury had to be set high enough to compensate for that inevitability;
• However, it could not be set too high, because:
  • That would discourage borrowing by creditworthy clients;
  • Competitive forces -- i.e., other jeweler/bankers -- would reduce his lending volume and thus his profits.

As jeweler/bankers mastered the intricacies of their new trade and gradually abandoned their jewelry businesses, thus was born the financial industry of today, albeit in a very early and simplified form.

---

Profit is a seductive thing; profit accrued from others' assets is perhaps the most powerful of all. Bankers soon began to look for ways to increase the volume of their lending businesses beyond what the above prototype made possible. One constraint upon a bank's actions was the volume of its deposits. Should those increase, so also could the bank's lending, and therefore its profits.

The Law of Supply and Demand suggested that lowering the fees charged to depositors would stimulate a greater volume of deposits. Eventually, the cleverer bankers realized that rather than charge depositors a fee, they could pay usury to depositors, as long as the rate was sufficiently below the rate they could charge borrowers, and still increase their profits. By implication, this transformed the bank from a paid sentry into a borrower, a point that's reflected in bankers' accounting practice of treating cash on hand as a debit.

Many other changes arose with time. Some of them were ordinary and harmless; others have been unbelievably pernicious. Possibly the worst of all is the trend to "borrow short" but "lend long:" in modern practice, to allow on-demand withdrawals by depositors while committing to loans of many years' duration, while keeping only a small fraction of depositors' funds on hand in the practice called fractional-reserve banking. That practice, and depositors' uneasy awareness of it, are what make possible the greatly feared bank run.

At the core of modern banking practices is reliance upon interbanking: the aggregation of financial institutions into a league of mutual protection, originally against runs but, as the practice of fractional-reserve banking proliferated, against panics as well. Ultimately, bankers realized that no matter how many of them banded together to protect one another from such things, it was always possible in a fractional-reserve system for a few undisciplined banks -- sometimes known as wildcat banks, to create the preconditions for a panic that would bring the lot of them tumbling down.

One sensible response to the possibility of a run was to demand security for a loan: either real estate of demonstrated value or a chattel: a valuable item of movable property. Such security could be demanded in satisfaction of a loan the borrower could not repay. However, the intent was more to "keep the borrower honest" than to provide for genuine protection for the bank, as no bank wants to be in the business of selling tangibles. Over time, secured loans became a progressively smaller part of a bank's lending volume -- this was one of the unintended consequences of interbanking -- and threats to the system proliferated once more.

More anon.

Extremely Ill

1,001 pardons. Can't post. Can barely type. Back tomorrow. Anyway, seek the Grail in Castle AGGHHHH....