Liberty's Torch

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Financial warfare.

The video below, an interview with Mr. James Rickards, is an infomercial but still an interesting romp through some of the fundamentals of the world's monetary system and the dangers we face.

Of interest in this video is the part about (1) the existence of a financial war "war room" inside the Treasury Department (not a huge secret I suppose) and (2) a "mystery" buyer (Belgium) of U.S. Treasuries at the 16:11 mark. The MSM is more interested in maximizing the exposure of the "Black Lives Matter" garbage and Kim Kardashian's ass, so it's no wonder this interesting latter fact isn't more widely known. Not being financially sophisticated, I can only report this odd activity and the unlikely place where it is taking place. At.

It may be part of a campaign of financial warfare directed at us (although Mr. Rickards intimates that it is actually the Federal Reserve that is behind these Belgian purchases). Whether or not it is, it's worth paying attention to the issue of financial warfare, which is perhaps as exotic as the cyber warfare that appears to be being directed at us.

On that score, Rickards' words are also worth listening to given his position as "an adviser on international economics and financial threats to the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community." My Skepto-Meter is usually cranked way over to the right on the "9/11 was an inside job" stuff but there's another side of 9/11 that's interesting.

Mr. Rickards indicates in Part One of his book The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System, that in 2002 he was "responsible for modeling terrorist trading for the CIA, part of a broad inquiry into stock trading on advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks."

There was such trading according to him, and the Department of Justice believed it too.^[1]

With respect to the 2008 financial crisis, a Mr. Mark Mitchell also reported on "massive volumes of short selling that went through [a] previously obscure brokerage [firm]." This was a Texas firm that

suddenly became (by volume) the largest brokerage on the planet. Moreover, data strongly suggests that most of this new volume was short selling targeting critical American companies, including the the [sic] nation’s largest financial institutions.^[2]

This is what the Securities and Exchange Commission thought about that short selling:

Moreover, this barrage of short selling continued and intensified through September, 2008, when the Securities and Exchange Commission was moved to issue an “Emergency Order,” stating that manipulative short selling had likely contributed to the collapse of major financial institutions (e.g. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers) and was threatening to undermine the stability of the American financial system.^[3]

Some of the brokerages who cleared their trades through this Texas firm operated in a "network" of brokerages, all of which had the most alarming people operating them. Mitchell describes people associated with one unregistered Chicago brokerage thus:

Many of the other people who operated through this brokerage also had interesting biographies. One of them was a trader who had ties to Russian organized crime, and whose business partner was killed in a brutal gangland-style murder in New Jersey. Also trading through this little unregistered brokerage in Chicago was an account controlled by the top henchmen of a Russian oligarch and members of an organized crime syndicate that has been accused by U.S. officials of having ties to both Al Qaeda and the Russian government’s intelligence services.
In addition there was (to name just one more) a trader whose family members worked for the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. One of this trader’s close relatives (based outside Iran) had employed an undercover Iranian government agent who was implicated in a terrorist attack and who was caught shipping sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah, the jihadist outfit that takes its directions from the Iranian regime.^[4]

Don't thank me. I'm glad I could clear everything up for you.

This only scratches the surface, I know. Alyssa Lappen used to write on these matters, if you care to check her out.

Whether this stuff is being monitored in the Treasury Department is anyone's guess. Probably it is but I rather suspect it's a matter of indifference to Obama who appears to have an agenda separate from one that any patriotic American would have. As with all things political and economic these days, it's anybody's guess where this jasper is headed.

Notes
^[1] "Anthony Elgindy, R.I.P." By Patrick Byrne, Deep Capture, 7/26/15.
^[2] See "The Global Bust-Out Series (Chapter 1): Was the United States Attacked by 'Financial Terrorists'?" By Mark Mitchell, Deep Capture, 5/2/12
^[3] Id.
^[4] Id.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Cleansing and the Coffee Cup

As I was in church this past Sunday morning, I was contemplating just how much I was in need of cleansing. Not externally, but internally. The Bible describes us as vessels, earthen vessel and even jars of clay. Now we have a pretty good dishwasher, but sometimes if the cup is really dirty it requires soaking or even pre-cleaning in order for the dishwasher to be successful.

Paul the apostle described the typical types of vessels and their purposes to his disciple Timothy: ^“But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.” Paul also told Timothy about the relationship between the vessel’s cleanliness and its utility to the Master.

This brought to mind a story that my Dad had recounted to me about his interchange with a crusty old mess sergeant. Well over a half century ago my Dad was a young Army lieutenant with the additional duty of mess officer. His duty would normally entail looking over the ordering of rations, accounting for funds, sanitary conditions of the facilities, managing manpower, and lastly (and the very least) monitoring the quality and tastiness of the chow. It would also require regular visits to the chow hall.

As the story goes, my Dad went into the chow hall early one morning, grabbed a coffee mug from the dish rack and was preparing to fill it with good old GI mud. Right at this point my Dad said the standard-issue aforementioned crusty old mess sergeant seized said mug from the unsuspecting and green lieutenant and began screaming, “YOU SEE THIS LIEUTENANT, YOU SEE THIS?” “See what?” my Dad asked. The mess sergeant answered, “This mug is cracked lieutenant, it’s cracked!” “But it still works” protested the young lieutenant. “It doesn’t matter” barked the mess sergeant, “those cracks harbor disease that even the dishwasher can’t kill!” And with that the mess sergeant smashed the mug by hurling it into the mess hall floor.

Needless to say, that story made quite an impression on that young lieutenant. So much that it has been passed on to his son, and subsequently his grandson, both of whom have served in that same Army.

So what’s the point? It’s two fold. First, there is a point where something is no longer able to function for its intended purpose. Not that it has outlived its usefulness or that it is merely beyond economic repair, but that it is beyond being fixed. Such that not even all the king’s horses or even all the king’s men can make that mug useful again.

As I look at our modern political system I see two parties postured against the people. I am forced to ponder the distinct possibility that the system has simply reached the point that there is no dishwasher capable of removing the mess. It seems to me and millions of others we’ve reached the point that Mess Sergeant Trump looks like he’s got the answer – smash it!

Our Founders foresaw the possibility of it coming to this point. In our Declaration of Independence they reserved the right for destruction when they wrote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Are we there yet? I hope not. But I do think that Mark Twain was on to something when he said, “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” Maybe even more so when he said, “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” Either way, something’s got to give.

And the second point, there is good news for those vessels seeking to be sanctified. An old hymn holds the answer, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”

Quickies: Outrage Meter Pinned!

The esteemed Dystopic has cited this article:

To make it easier for everyone, I will lay out a brief and very simple, minimalistic instruction manual as to what men can do if they are taken by the desire to give women a hand in destroying man’s dominion. It’s not an instruction as to how to be a feminist man, because as I said earlier, it doesn’t exist and men’s presence is highly undesirable and noxious to feminism. It’s not an instruction as to how to free women from men, because only we can do that. It’s just, if men want to do something for women, this is the LEAST, the VERY LEAST they can do, and it’s easy! No need to say anything! No faux-posturing or lying needed! No invading of women’s spaces! No stealing women’s work!

Stop sticking your dicks in women. This is rape. This is torture.
Stop sticking your dicks in women. NOW. For EVER!!!! Ever ever. Like, don’t ever put your dick in a woman or a girl again.
The above is the utmost, absolute MINIMUM men can do to help women. This does not even count men’s infinite every-day torture that surrounds rape and impregnation of women by men that they should stop too. A man who sticks his dick in girls and women is a rapist (and scum). He is not helping women.
Give back to women what you, and men in general, have stolen from women:
Women need Land. Give land back to women.
Women need money. Give money back to women.
Women need houses and rooms of our own. Give houses back to women.
Women need resources (food, water, equipment of all sorts…). Give resources back to women.
Women need time. Clean your own shit.
Reminder: stop using your dick against women, stay away from feminism, and refuse any credit for your what you give back to women. For a thief is not to be thanked for handing back what he stole.

This, above, is also the LEAST men can do. It’s very easy, all it takes is doing it, with no consequences to men’s personal integrity other than minor material loss.

Which demands a reply:

     "I know he still loves me," Marilyn said, "and of course I still love him. It's just that --"
     "'Of course? Of course?'" Helen's smile vanished and her face darkened. "You deny him all enjoyment of your body, you make him feel a churl even for thinking about it, you reave him of one of the essential achievements of manhood, but that's all right because you still love him?"
     Marilyn gaped. "What achievement do you mean?"
     "Do you have any idea," Helen said, "how radically different a man's experience of sex is from a woman's, dear?"
     "...no..."
     Helen sat back and folded her arms over her breasts. She looked at Marilyn as a teacher might an underachieving pupil, one who had more than adequate ability but refused to apply himself.
     "We hold the veto power. We compel them to woo us, seduce us, cater to us. When we oh-so-generously let them near, they do almost all of the work, yet their orgasms involve only a tiny portion of their bodies and last a mere second or two. Ours are incomparably fuller and longer -- and at so much smaller a cost that it doesn't bear comparison." She shook her head. "We get so much more out of it than they do, it's a wonder they bother with us at all. So why do they bother with us, Marilyn?"
     Helen's silent glare accused her of having missed something critical, something she ought to have known without needing to be told.
     "I don't know. I...never thought about it."
     The reproof in Helen's eyes remained strong, but something else entered to temper it, something wryly amused.
     "You ought to have thought about it. But you're not the only one. Harridans all across this land have been telling women like you that you're owed, that men's desire for you is barely a hair's breadth from chattel slavery, that 'a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' And you're too afraid to contradict them, or too proud to ask your mothers whether it might just possibly be some other way. So they go on to catechize the men, telling them what oppressors they are, and how awful the burdens of womanhood are, and how unfair it is that they should get to exhaust their bodies and erode their spirits with wage labor while women sit in the safety and comfort of their homes, being most oppressively provided for." Helen shook her head. "If a hundredth of that were true, the race would have died out thousands of years ago. It's we who owe them, Marilyn. Without them, we would still be cowering in caves. They have made us a world where we can be whatever we please."
     [From Priestesses]

Perhaps it is indeed time for the return of kings.

Preferred And Dispreferred Discriminations

Via InstaPundit, we have this fascinating article:

     In 2002, University of Illinois-Chicago history professor Richard J. Jensen printed “No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization.” His abstract begins:
     “Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming ‘Help Wanted—No Irish Need Apply!’ No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent.”
     In short, those famous “No Irish Need Apply” signs—ones that proved Irish Americans faced explicit job discrimination in the 19th and 20th centuries? Professor Jensen came to the blockbuster conclusion that they never existed.
     The theory picked up traction over the last decade, but seemed to reach an unexpected fever pitch in the last few months. Explainer websites this year used it to highlight popular myths of persecution complexes that are, as Vox put it, “stand-ins for an entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in America.” That’s from the lede of an article printed in March called “‘No Irish Need Apply’: the fake sign at the heart of a real movement.”
     Here, of course, is the problem: After only couple of hours Googling it, Rebecca [Fried], a 14-year-old, had found out these signs had, in fact, existed all along. Not only in newspaper listings—in which they appeared in droves—but, after further research, in shop windows, too.
     The Irish were persecuted in the American job market—and precisely in the overt, literally written-down way that was always believed.
     All of this would have been written off as a myth if it weren’t for Rebecca Fried, a rising high school freshman—who one of the preeminent scholars on the Irish diaspora in the United States now calls a “hero” and “quite extraordinary”—and who simply couldn’t believe it, either.

Please read it all before continuing on here.

The history of anti-Irish sentiment in the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries has been well documented:

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it rather inelegantly: the Irish were “deteriorated in size and shape, the nose sunk, the gum exposed...[they clearly] operated with diminished brain” (Knobel 1986, 120).They were “black vomit,” useful as “industrial guano” but nothing else (quoted by Smith 1899, 72). E. E. Hale was more analytical but no kinder: “Their inferiority as a race compels them to go to the bottom; and the consequence is that we are, all of us, the higher lifted because they are here.” (Hale 1852, 52-53) In 1848, the exquisitely patrician George Templeton Strong noted in his diary that the Irish had “prehensile paws supplied them by nature,” which made “the handling of the spade and the wielding of the pickaxe easy and natural. They had congenital hollows on the shoulder wonderfully adapted to make the carrying of the hod a luxury.” (Nevins 1953, voi.1, 318) Strong may have been half kidding, but Thomas Carlyle, whose social acuity Strong much admired, was not kidding at all when he wrote that the Irishman, in “his rags and laughing savagery...is there to undertake all the work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back.” It was a willingness to work—and nothing else—that commended the Irish.

The above is just one of many citations I could provide. But along comes Professor Richard J. Jensen, he writes an article claiming the opposite, and voila! “The theory picked up traction over the last decade, but seemed to reach an unexpected fever pitch in the last few months.” Yet a high school freshman with not credentials was able to amass a great deal of contrary evidence, using only Google – a feat that appears to have incited the professor to a fit of rage.

I have no idea how Professor Jensen was originally drawn to speculating that anti-Irish sentiment and the attendant occupational discrimination against them was historically less than so many other scholars had believed. Nevertheless, he advanced that thesis rather aggressively and got a lot of concurrence from other academics. Were those other academics also historians with an interest in the subject? Unclear. What is clear is that this particular instance of ethnic discrimination was being denied by a swelling number of voices.

Why? Academia being as strongly left-aligned as it has been for some time now, discrimination of any sort would seem to be a subject that would draw professional scholars’ intense interest and enthusiastic investigation. Nor is the historical record at all ambiguous on the subject. Yet they were ready and willing to pooh-pooh this particular instance of discrimination on the representation of a single colleague. It’s worth one’s time to ponder the possible reasons.

Among Leftists, “the narrative” determines all other things, including which facts they’re willing to concede. I’ve ranted about this on several occasions:

If there’s a clash between Leftists’ preferred narrative and the recognition of past discrimination against Irish immigrants, it would be “in character” for a Leftist to maintain that anti-Irish discrimination did not occur, or perhaps has been wildly overblown, a “myth.” My quandary is that no such clash is immediately apparent. Hasn’t the Left been notably pro-immigrant, at least in recent years? What would countervail that preference in this particular case?

Perhaps the question should be reframed: Does the Left harbor an animus against the Irish, or against Americans of Irish descent, that trumps – for them – the historical facts of this matter?

Ideology can make its holders incoherent. Every ideology, as Clarence Carson has told us, is a partial model of reality. That’s not a slam against ideology as such. All human conceptions are partial things. We’re incapable of producing a conception that models reality completely; it’s too big for us. But when facts arise that test the boundaries of an ideology and demonstrate its limits, the holder must be willing to admit that however strongly he believes in it, it nevertheless has a specific domain of application outside which it’s useless or worse. Not to do so is intellectually dishonest and arrogant.

Leftist ideology has proved hostile to certain facts. The prevailing tendency among Leftists has been to attempt to ignore those facts – in extreme cases, to shout them down and to conduct campaigns of denunciation and intimidation against those who cite them. The diagnosis could not be simpler.

My problem lies in finding the aspect of Leftism that makes the recognition of anti-Irish discrimination unpalatable. Is this not just one more example of the xenophobia the Left has criticized? Is this not merely one more expression of our “othering” tendency, our need to see ourselves as somehow superior to others? Where’s the clash – and what makes it so important that whole reams of American history must be effaced?

Might it be that the Irish and their descendants are predominantly Catholic? Or is it that we’re a wee bit too...white?

Food for thought.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

For Those Who’ve Requested It

...and anyone else who likes a (relatively) decent short romance: This collection comprises my short romances written since 1995. Sex? Yes, a little. Love? Yes, quite a lot. And optimism about the human heart and soul.

Only $0.99 at Amazon. Enjoy!

Fighters

This column by Kurt Schlichter has gotten a lot of attention from the DextroSphere. It’s worth your time to read it in full. Schlichter’s tone is openly combative toward the Left, its spokesmen, and its iconic institutions, but buried beneath the overt message is another one of even greater importance. Here are the passages that really bring it forward:

[W]e have a GOP establishment that’s too wimpy to take its own side in a fight, much less humanity’s – or ours. No wonder a walking punchline like Donald Trump is walking all over them.

And:

And we don’t need any more decorum cops like Mitt Romney sucking up to the libs and their MSM buddies by adopting their memes and chiding the likes of Ted Cruz for telling the truth. Hey, giving $150 billion to the Iranian mullahs means Obama is giving money to terrorists. That's called “the truth;” maybe you squishes ought to try it out instead of whining when GOP voters respond to it from others.

In the above Schlichter implies that the Republican Party’s Establishment is only a component in a larger, essentially unitary Establishment. And indeed, it is so. It provides a perfect explanation for its major figures’ hostility to boat-rockers such as Ted Cruz. Had we been alert to the possibility that the kingpins of the Left and the Right might join forces sub rosa, we might have had a chance to prevent it. Were more of us awake to current political reality, the GOP’s treatment of the Tea Party caucus and conservative “troublemakers” generally would confuse no one.

However, confusion and the concealment of power-brokers’ motives is essential to the advancement of totalitarian oligarchy under a veneer of democratic self-government.

It’s been observed by commentators with a much larger readership than mine that what most Trump backers like most about him is his combativeness, and the contrast it makes with GOP luminaries’ hypercautious, civility-above-all-else, don’t-make-the-New York Times-angry approach to doing business. That also applies to many, perhaps most, of the backers of Ted Cruz. Were a few more genuine fighters to make themselves heard nationally, the pattern would be clearer. As matters stand, the Establishment and the media are able to dismiss Trump, Cruz, and their backers as marginal players in the national political dynamic. More, the facility with which their detractors can marginalize them – Trump as the “angry outsider” in a time of anti-“insider” sentiment; Cruz as the “feisty Latino” of merely regional appeal – helps to deflect attention from the substance of their campaigns.

If you’ll allow me a quick swerve of focus, let’s consider Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Few persons anticipated Sanders’s entrance into the race for the Democrats’ nomination, and fewer still expected the substantial degree of enthusiasm he’s garnered. Yet there were clouds over the Hillary Clinton campaign from the very first. We ought to have seen them in such phenomena as the speculation about a Biden candidacy and the calls to draft Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Clinton, to put it as briefly as possible, is the Establishment’s choice for Democrat nominee, and those on the Left committed to the ideology rather than to the Democrat Party have known it all along.

The speculations about a second Clinton / Bush showdown in November 2016 are ultimately about whether America’s political Establishment will succeed in euchring all the fighters – the men of conviction and courage – out of the running. That is, indeed, the Establishment’s aim: to perpetuate the state of affairs that has existed since the election of John F. Kennedy, whose elevation to the White House began the dominance of federal politics by a quiet coalition of Yankee and Rimster political baronies.

There are tensions within that coalition, as there are within every coalition, but the members are united on one overarching rule: No boat rocking. Sudden, convulsive changes are the enemy of every Establishment. What is an Establishment but that assemblage of persons and institutions that have gained dominance over The Way Things Are – the group that has contrived to take the helm of the ship of state and steer it to its members’ profit and security?

Anyone who dares to raise a sincerely angry voice about any important aspect of the status quo is a boat rocker: a threat to the Establishment that must be neutered before he can mass enough sentiment behind him to compel a major change.

Even when nominally focused on a narrow issue, a major change to existing political arrangements is always widely destabilizing. Consider all the following thinkable major alterations to federal law:

Ending the minimum wage.
Establishing a national right-to-work law.
Securing the southern border of the United States.
Abolishing the Departments of Energy and Education.
Firm dollar and duration limits upon federal welfare support.
Abolishing the income tax in favor of a national retail sales tax.
Repeal of the National Firearms Act of 1934 and all other federal firearms laws.
A Supreme Court ruling that strikes down all state and local laws that infringe upon Second Amendment rights.
A Constitutional amendment defining human life as beginning at some point earlier than emergence from the mother’s birth canal.
A Constitutional amendment that establishes, in plain English, that Congress may not delegate its powers to unelected regulatory bodies.

Any one of those ideas would shake the American Establishment to its foundations. What the destruction of the One Ring did to Barad-dur would pale in comparison. Accordingly, should a candidate other than Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton gain his party’s nomination, the Establishment will make it quietly clear to him that its support is conditional on an enforceable promise that should he win, he will not act effectively to promote any such initiative.

The Establishment doesn’t control the votes of private citizens, though it strains mightily to bias public opinion against boat-rockers. Thus, there is a possibility that someone who has demonstrated political courage and determination, such as Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, will secure the GOP’s presidential nomination. Should Governor Walker get the nod through the primary process, an effort to pre-constrain a Walker Administration would begin at once. We the People would not be permitted to see that operation. Neither would it be guaranteed to succeed immediately, such that President Walker would be neutered from his first day in office. But it would be real and ongoing.

A great deal of Establishment control of the federal government is exercised by Cabinet members and “advisors.” The “inside Washington” mystique makes it difficult for a president-elect to select as major figures of his administration persons not steeped in that culture and its premises. Thus, a fighter in the Oval Office would be encysted with Establishment figures from the start of his tenure. Those “flappers” would perpetually counsel the president against any policy or initiative that might rock the boat. They would work to exclude from the president’s consciousness any individual or proposal that might countervail Establishment policy.

It happened to Ronald Reagan; it would surely happen to Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz. If not futile ab initio, resistance would be difficult at best.

To sum up: working to change the system from within it has never faced such long odds. There are no guarantees in politics, of course; it’s still remotely possible that a fighter in the Oval Office could mobilize significant changes back toward Constitutional governance. But it’s not the way to bet.

There are more promising directions for freedom advocates than conventional political involvement. One is private action: the weakening of the Omnipotent State by seizing its supposed duties and discharging them through voluntary mechanisms. Another is the pursuit of off-the-grid status, whether complete or partial, such that one’s public profile is minimized. A third, flight, remains problematic for the present, though progress in geoformy (e.g., the construction of artificial islands) and private spaceflight hold out some hope for the future.

To those straining to put a sound conservative fighter in the Oval Office: May God smile upon your efforts. But don’t kid yourselves about the size and power of the forces aligned against you. They’ll do whatever it takes to keep the boat steady. They’ve proved remarkably good at it for half a century and more.

An impressive Carly Fiorina.

The "embed" link from Breitbart isn't working so here's the bare URL for her interview on a New Hampshire station.

No mention of immigration, alas. One commenter, The Raven, wrote, "She's for amnesty and said Trump doesn't represent her when he attacked the Mexican government and criminals. She said he doesn't represent her or her party." Vdare.com and NumbersUSA will have that story in due course.

They've all got to come clean on sealing the border, amnesty, employer verification, and deportation or it's no deal for me. The Rs will barf up Jeb given half a chance and it's definitely time to break furniture (i.e., third party time) if none of the GOP candidates can see wide open, mass immigration -- and the existing mass of illegals already resident for decades -- as the existential threat that they are. A foreigner is a foreigner is a foreigner.

Yes. All illegals have to return home and take their anchor babies with them. If they want to "keep their families together" it's their responsibility to take their kid(s) with them not our responsibility to accommodate people who have the gall to wander over our border thinking that we then owe them something. We own nothing to invaders. The anchor baby concept is another constitutional joke foisted on us by the Supreme Court anyway.

H/t: Drudge Report, 8/3/15.

UPDATE (8/12/15):

Another look at Fiorina:

Carly Fiorina is No Conservative Candidate. By Kelleigh Nelson, Freedom Outpost, 8/12/15.

The Great Lie.

Every tick on this chart is a joke:

Every tick on this chart (total public debt) is a lie:

U.S. government bonds promise payment but, in the end, it will never happen. None of that debt will be paid for, unless it's by following generations, whose enthusiasm for the consumption preferences of their ancestors is not the stuff of legend.

We need to remind ourselves of the words quoted immediately below. They pertain to Greek politics but it's really a matter of Western politics in general. The Syriza communists are just more honest about their platform.

The socialist paradigm is crumbling and the soaring public debt in all Western countries is simply the graphic evidence of the tragic Great Lie that overtook Western man since the dawn of the last century. Every tick on the graph of public debt above is proof of the Lie. The maneuverings over Greek debt to stave off operation of the iron laws of arithmetic (ILA), not to mention eternal truth,^[1] should similarly be seen for what they are: utter desperation.

But there were plenty of warning signs for Krugman and the world. A big one was the self-proclaimed adherence to Marxism by the leaders of Syriza, the governing party in Greece. I am not writing as a knee-jerk conservative here. I am willing to admit that it is possible to hold many political and economic views without immediately qualifying for the Flat Earth Society, but Marxism does not fall within this range of the allowable.
There is no doctrine in the social sciences that has been more thoroughly debunked, in both theory and practice, than Marxism. It is not possible to be a true believer in Marx unless you are an imbecile or willingly self-deceptive. In either case, this does not make you an ideal negotiating partner, something to bear in mind when you are deciding where to place your sympathies in the battle between Greece and the troika.^[2]

Mr. Barris should have said "imbecile, willingly self-deceptive, a liar, or a committed enemy of liberty." Other than that quibble, he states bedrock truth.

What he says applies to all the West, however. The Greek government may be an object of scorn but like Rosie O'Grady and the colonel's lady, all the parties to the forthcoming implosion are sisters under the skin.

As the "flat earth" link in the quoted text above suggests, alas, humans are capable of focusing on single points of data and thereafter excluding all contrary evidence. The single data point in question in modern times is the cry of our victorious statists, "We are not heartless capitalists. We know how to take care of you and there is no downside whatsoever."

For that they were adored but, as we see all too clearly, the grisly toll of communists and socialists in the past century, even at the dawn^[3] of their hideous reign in parts of the world, is simply not seen. And where some residual decency survived in the countries not buried in violent revolution, the violence has been muted, but the tyranny progresses nonetheless to the ultimate degradation. The very latest effort of the Europeans to create a world-class government has resulted in the European Union, a contemptible authoritarian monstrosity, whose leaders have nothing but contempt for the wishes of the people over whom they rule and whose substance they waste.

Subsidiary fascism is all the rage too and the left knows no caution.

Notes
^[1] "For euen when wee were with you, this wee commanded you, that if any would not worke, neither should he eate." 2 Thessalonians 3:10, New Testament, KJV.
^[2] "Destroying the Village to Save It – A Brief Post Mortem on Greece." By Roger Barris, Acting Man, 7/29/15.
^[3] "The Red Terror in Russia 1918-1923." By Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, 1924 (?). An excerpt:

At Kertch the Bolshevists organised what they called "trips to Kuban," when the victims were taken out to sea, and drowned, and their terror-stricken wives and mothers flogged with [whips of horsehide] or, in a few cases, shot along with their sons or husbands. And for a long time bodies of such women, with babes still clasped to their breasts, could be seen lying outside the Jewish cemetery at Simferopol. At Yalta and Sevastopol stretcher patients were carried from the hospitals, and shot.

Pp. 78-79.

See also "The Record of the Red Terror." By S. Melgunoff, Current History, 1927.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Quickies: Today’s Mandatory Reading

Politics: n. from poli: “many;” and tics: “loathsome little bloodsuckers.” – Origin unknown.

P. J. O’Rourke nails it to the barn wall:

All politicians hate people. Politics is a way to gain power over people without justification for having that power. Nothing in the 11,000-year history of politics—going back to the governing elites of Mesopotamia—indicates that politicians are wiser, smarter, kinder, more moral, or better skilled at any craft (aside from politics) than we are.
But political rulers need the acquiescence of the ruled to slake the craving for power. Politicians hate you the way a junkie hates junk.

Read it all. No excuses.

Marginalia

Good morning, Gentle Readers. Having just passed an unusually good weekend, I’m without sufficient bile to produce one of my customary tirades. So have a few...what does Thomas Sowell call them? Passing thoughts on the random scene? Something like that, anyway.

The slow but steady downtrend in the dollar prices of the precious metals has a number of folks in a tizzy. Is this the start of the long-awaited catastrophic deflation? they ask one another and me. I suppose it might be, but as long as national governments continue to acquire gold and silver, I intend to do so as well. After all, the dollar and its competitor currencies are controlled by those governments. Their masters know better than I, or any other private individual, where value is most reliably stored.

It comes as no surprise to me that the U.S. Navy is considering levying charges against Lieutenant-Commander Timothy White for daring to fire his personal sidearm at the gunman who killed four of his fellow servicemen:

We can’t have such untrained, irresponsible types using firearms in such a dangerous manner, now can we? Some innocent Muslim terrorist might get hurt!

(Cf. Nidal Malik Hasan and “workplace violence.”)

I’ve received a couple of emails requesting pictures of the Fortress of Crankitude’s newest cats. Accordingly, here’s Chloe:

...and here’s Zoe:

After all, the whole point of the World Wide Web is the circulation of cute pictures and videos of cats, isn’t it? Why else would we value broadband access so greatly?

Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination continues to lead both the field and the political news. I can’t see why anyone would find this so surprising. Haven’t we been hearing how disgusted Americans are with “insider” politicians for years now? Isn’t it rather likely that that distaste helped to fuel the rise of Barack Hussein Obama, a nonentity from nowhere? Besides, we’re a year away from the actual selection of a nominee. That gives the press plenty of time to choose our candidate for us.

In that regard, I’d be unsurprised if the press were to assist Trump in gaining the GOP’s nod. Their function, as we all know well, is to select the Republican candidate least likely to defeat the anointed Democrat...and there’s no one more defeasible than King of the Crony Capitalists Donald “three wives, four bankruptcies, and lots of donations to Democrats” Trump.

The Left often succeeds at telling people to ignore the evidence of its misdeeds. Indeed, on occasion a Leftist will tell you, quite baldly, that you don’t mean what you just said, and expect you to defer to his assessment of your convictions. A commenter at PJ Media tells us:

Back in 2009 then chairman of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, the late Francis Cardinal George, relayed the conversation he attempted to have with President Obama about abortion. It didn't get very far because Obama kept insisting he had no differences with Cardinal George on the issue of abortion. Cardinal George kept saying that wasn't true and Obama kept insisting they were in agreement.

The injunction against the Center for Medical Progress is part of that pattern. A thousand verbal reports on Planned Parenthood’s obscenities pale before a single video of a PP staffer dickering over the sale of fetal organs...and that pales in comparison to the videos of a fetal dissection that we’ve already seen. Therefore, the Left must prevent the circulation of any further videos, leaving only verbal attestations to these horrors, which they can simply contradict as loudly and obscenely as possible.

Say, has anyone bothered to obtain Sandra Fluke’s opinion of the Planned Parenthood videos? She is America’s foremost expert on contraception, after all. And isn’t infanticide really just a form of post hoc contraception?

“You have to be a little crazy to go into show biz,” as a character of mine once said. And when we reflect on the personal proclivities of such Hollywood luminaries as Tom Cruise and Angeline Jolie, there does seem to be adequate evidence to support her contention. Yet some of these marginal lunatics are also skilled entertainers. Cruise, whose off-the-silver-screen antics are the stuff of legend, continues to make exciting movies that draw large crowds. The most recent Mission: Impossible flick is one such...and the 53-year-old actor continues to do many of the stunts himself, which is something for us aged types to ponder over our Cheerios^® and Geritol.^®

I’m pleased that there’s been no aversion to the “Quickies” pieces I’ve been producing. Now that I have the time to stay more or less on top of developments, I’m frequently struck by some passing news item that stimulates one such. It provides a pleasant sort of punctuation to a writer’s life.

Twitter is often the source of such seeds. Yes, I’m on Twitter: @fporretto, for what it’s worth.

As for the new “thin” Oreos, I’m unimpressed. They’re only seven calories less than a standard Oreo, you can’t twist ‘em apart, and they don’t soften in milk. What’s the point?

Being a retired engineer, I can’t help but be sad about the untimely demise of the “hitchhiking robot.” The experiment was inherently interesting, and the robot struck me as more amiable than about three quarters of the people I routinely encounter. The story of its fatal battery puts me in mind of a fake news squib I read some years ago, about a gorilla that escaped from the Bronx Zoo only to be beaten to death by muggers. Having at one time lived in the Bronx, I had to double-check that piece to see if it was truly a satire. I doubt persons familiar with the City of Brotherly Violence – and you know who the “brothers” are, don’t you, Gentle Reader? – would doubt the linked story for an instant.

And with that, it’s back to agonizing over Statesman. Till soon, Gentle Reader.

Forecast: reality.

Bankrupt governments invariably resort to plundering the wealth of their citizens. Inflation. Higher taxes. Confiscation of assets. Indebting unborn generations. And defaulting on the benefits promises they made to voters.
It’s time to face reality. And to start working on a Plan B.^[1]

But, they mean well.

Notes
^[1] "The latest government trust fund to go bankrupt." By Simon Black, Soveriegn Man, 7/31/15.

H/t: Remus.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Quickies: “Pigeonholer Malfunction”

I’ve had some occasions on which my physical perceptions were humorously reinterpreted by what I think of as the “pigeonholing function” of the mind. That function takes perceived objects and attempts to categorize them as already-established kinds of things. This is a known operation of the mind, a built-in labor-saving device we all have, not something that happens only to me...but now and then, my pigeonholer makes an amusing mistake.

For example, shortly before I retired, I was driving home from work, passed an insurance broker’s offices, and about three seconds later hauled my car to the curb with a “Say what?” reaction. It seemed certain that the marquee beside his office said:

Specializing In The Homeless

But of course, it really said Specializing In The Homeowner, as I discovered when I walked back to read it at close range.

I had another one a few minutes ago: a Web ad which, when it first registered on my consciousness, seemed to say:

Is A
Reverse Marriage
Right for You?

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what it really said. After I stopped laughing, I spent several minutes trying to figure out how a “reverse marriage” would work. Would the reverse spouses have sex with everyone except one another? Would they share housekeeping expenses with all their neighbors and friends, but not with one another? And what about the children? Think of the children!

“The mind is a strange and wonderful device.” – Actor John Agar, in some cheesy science-fiction flick or other.

Just wondering.

Quickies: You Only Thought You Have Freedom Of Speech

It’s not bad enough that a “judge” revealed as an Obama appointee and a major Obama bundler should think he can trump the First Amendment with a prior-restraint injunction against the Center for Medical Progress. No, via InstaPundit, we have a new outrage to free-expression rights:

     Denver prosecutors have charged a man with seven counts of jury tampering after they say he tried to influence jurors by passing out literature on jury nullification on Monday.
     Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said "Juror Info" in front of the city's Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse courthouse, prosecutors say.
     The Denver District Attorney's Office says Iannicelli provided jury nullification flyers to jury pool members.
     Jury nullification is when jurors believe a defendant is guilty of the charges but reject the law and return a not guilty verdict.

How is this even possible without a specific charge that the accused tried to influence the vote of one or more specific jurors, or the verdict of one or more specific juries? The brief article cited here doesn’t provide any indication that Iannicelli did anything but pass out pamphlets that contain wholly correct information: i.e., that a juror cannot be punished for his vote regardless of in which direction it goes. How is this jury tampering?

The Denver D.A. who leveled those charges deserves removal from office and subsequent disbarment. Will it happen? Probably not; the rest of the legal profession will laager up around him. Moreover, judges are notoriously hostile to the concept of jury nullification. Criminal defense lawyers who mention it during a trial are often cited for contempt or worse.

Colorado recently enacted some of the worst anti-gun-rights laws in the nation. Despite punitive recalls of two of the legislators involved, those laws still stand. Perhaps the state’s political elite fears the black eye that would come from the nullification of those laws. I can’t help but wonder: Were Ayn Rand alive and writing Atlas Shrugged today. would she site Galt’s Gulch in Colorado?

One More On The Planned Parenthood Scandal

It’s gratifying to note that the scandal ignited over Planned Parenthood’s sale of fetal organs has developed “legs” to confound and frustrate PP’s supporters. Some of those supporters have given vent to highly intemperate “refutations” less indicative of conviction than of...something else. But what else?

I’m not the only one to notice. The comments on the article linked above include this one:

     Wow.
     That video reeks of panic. She's trying to cover it with anger, but you can see through that, to the panic. They're taking heavy incoming fire, they've taken a hit below the waterline, and they know it.
     I love the smell of panic in the morning.

...to which another commenter replied:

...And beneath the panic is likely profound guilt. The more loudly and belligerently pro-abortion a woman is, the more convinced I am she's trying to drown out her own haunted conscience.

Either or both the first and second commenters might be right. However, there are several possible fuels for such fury.

One that comes to mind immediately is remorse about poor life choices. Many women have come to regret decisions made early in life, for example prioritizing career and social life over marriage and children, that they cannot unmake. There is a correlation, albeit not a strong or conclusive one, between early abortion and subsequent inability to carry a child to term. Also, a woman who has passed her prime childbearing years without marrying and having kids has reduced her options for marriage, as most men are still drawn more strongly to younger and more fertile women than to their older and less fertile sisters. One common response to such recrimination against one’s younger self is to externalize it by redirecting it into anger at those who would dare to question such choices. The external enemy can be punished, whereas one’s younger self is lost forever...as are the possibilities she eschewed.

Second, we have a wound to one’s moral self-esteem. This is extremely important on the Left, whose allegiants have been taught to regard themselves as morally superior to us on the Right. (Cf. Thomas Sowell’s “assumption of differential rectitude.”) When one is contradicted on a topic where one’s moral self-assessment is bound up with one’s position, righteous anger is a natural response...which, of course, is not to say that the furious one is somehow vindicated by her fury.

Third, as the first commenter suggested might be true of Rebecca Watson, is strategic political posturing. Many who react with fury toward opponents of abortion are doing so not out of sincere emotion but from a strategic vision. They know how central abortion on demand is to the overall worldview and agenda of the Left. Should that tenet of their ethos be invalidated, much of the rest will crumble with it.

Fourth, as the second commenter noted, is the possibility of moral self-doubt. Many women (and not a few men) harbor considerable guilt over having indulged in abortion. They’ve never been completely convinced of the acceptability of the act. They work hard to suppress such guilt, and cannot stand to have it surface. Once again, externalizing the guilt as rage against those who dare to disagree helps to keep it from consuming oneself.

All of these motivations come into play in any public airing of the atrocities attendant upon a regime of abortion on demand at any stage of gestation.

It being a Sunday morning, and my mood therefore being more contemplative than at most other times, it’s incumbent upon me to suggest that some of our raging opponents, while their fury doesn’t validate the positions they espouse, are nevertheless fitting subjects for a dollop of compassion.

I speak from a Catholic perspective, of course, but beyond and beneath that, I speak as a veteran of several poor life choices and the attendant regrets. To repent of one’s erroneous ways and sincerely resolve to reform is far more likely, and far easier, when one is not drenched with external condemnation or derision. The hyper-polarization of contemporary political discourse, of which the fusillades over abortion are a major component, has surely retarded many souls from admitting to their faults, repenting of them, and leaving them behind for better attitudes and practices.

Among the reasons this would be wise is the old saying that a drop of honey will attract more flies than a gallon of gall. But more than that, it is not given to us to judge the souls of others. We may condemn behaviors; we are forbidden to condemn men. There’s only one Judge competent for that.

It can be hard, especially when practiced toward those who snarl and snap at us: yet another deplorable aspect of the flying-lead political wars of our time. But it can also be both constructive and supremely gratifying. Verbum sat sapienti.

May God bless and keep you all. (Betcha didn’t see that coming, eh?)

Loathsome, devious, despicable, treasonous, contemptible, sellout Republicans.

Britbart reports that the Republican congressional leadership would not lower themselves to respond to inquiries on whether they would

be willing to support any reduction at all in the record annual dispensation of new green cards and new foreign worker visas.
* * * *
Not one Republican leadership office was willing to even reply to the question. Every GOP leader’s office refused to answer, to express any support for reduced future immigration, or to offer any thought at all on the subject. It appears that not one of these public servants was even willing to engage on the issue of historic immigration transforming the electorate, school systems, and labor markets.^[1]

The offices referred to are those of:

Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Senate Majority Whip, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
Senate Conference Chairman, Sen. John Thune (R-SD).
Senate Policy Committee Chairman, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).
Senate Conference Vice Chairman, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO).
House Speaker, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH).
House Majority Leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
House Majority Whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).
House Conference Chairwoman, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).
House Policy Committee Chairman. Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN).

Britbart continues:

As described by Congressional aides who spoke with Breitbart News, while Republicans had an aggressive nationwide push to pass Obamatrade, they have never had a similar media nationwide campaign to protect their constituents from unpopular, uncontrolled immigration: not on sanctuary cities, not on H-1B abuses, not on executive amnesty, etc.
One GOP aide said: “Republican leaders will not, I repeat, will not ever message on how immigration is hurting American workers because they support and want their business buddies to get more foreign workers.” ^[2]

Immigration is killing this country, transforming it into something nightmarish and unrecognizable where politicians at the highest level care more about jobs for foreigners and taking care of employers eager to pay cut rate wages to compliant foreigners when millions of Americans are out of work and hurting.

I understand differences of opinion on life's issues. No one has a lock on reality or perfect understanding of complex issues. Debate and careful study are always a prerequisite. That said, however, it simply beggars the imagination to witness the degree to which the wholesale importation of foreigners from third-world countries who have no exposure to or understanding of the legal and cultural traditions of this country is seen as an unarguable good, something a priori of immense benefit.

Yet, we are dealing here with the really suspect "f" word that has historically meant trouble for any country. That word is, of course, "foreigner." In any country you want to name large numbers of foreigners introduced into any country anywhere on the planet always, invariably, and without fail have meant disaster, something preceded by a catastrophic failure of arms at the nation's border. The ignorance and recklessness are even worse in Europe where the default position is, IKYN, that invading aliens are to be "rescued" and brought to the homeland itself.

The concept that they should be denied entry and discouraged from further entry by military means appears to be entertained only by idiots, neo-Nazis, heartless monsters, and all manner of disreputable persons.

We in the West are afflicted with a virulent disease that numbs the brain, saps all courage, and causes us to pursue the death of the white race and the civilization it created. Never would the founders of this country have envisioned that the United States would come to be ruled by cowards and fools with nothing but contempt for their fellow citizens and the Constitution and an unchallenged determination to rule by intimidation, force, and lies.

The hope of Philadelphia has devolved into an addled plutocracy wholly indifferent to the wishes and interests of the citizens.

Some small number of us is waking up to the contempt expressed by the ruling class. The fate of Mr. Trump will be interesting. as he resembles slightly some of the occasional outsiders in China who sprang out of nowhere to lead vast armies against the emperor. (I do not equate the views of the Tai Ping leader to those of Mr. Trump. The point is what can happen when nations decay.) He appears to be waffling on amnesty so he may yet prove a disappointment. Gov. Walker shows some stiffening of views on immigration but he has uttered the absurd phrase "our broken immigration system" in the past – which I would not do at sword point – so he's suspect, one must conclude.

Not much mention of the military is made on the issue of immigration per se. Word is that patriotic officers have been purged and one hopes that they have thought about what must be done in the event that the Wesley Clarks of this world start moving units around for "field exercises." Fulgencio Batista was once a sergeant in the Cuban army and the butcher Fidel was once a mere lawyer in need of a shave. The gods have still to weigh in on all of this, though some would laugh at such a thought. I reckon that the concept of an apolitical military does have its limits.

The fulcrum upon which future events will move is, however, not the candidacy of one courageous man or two. Our is a grossly over leveraged economy that can have little resilience left in it given the fiscal and monetary insanity that has been in vogue for 50 years. Nor can we have been strengthened by off-shoring of huge amounts of our manufacturing capacity and the importation of huge, and I do mean, huge numbers of hostile, unassimilable, and parasitic foreigners. Economic collapse seems baked into the cake to my untutored eyes and grocery store shelves can clear in a matter of day.

And that will drive events.

A good friend of mine often likes to remind me that "ultimately, politics and economics must bow down before Mars." Only a few leaders seem to be suggesting anything vaguely resembling even the simplest of solutions to any problem we face here. So, alas, in the next five to ten years Trump, Walker, Fiorina, Sanders, and the scumbag Republicans will be irrelevant and we'll get down to the serious business of settling accounts. During the War for Southern Independence, one Union soldier before the Battle of Saint Mary's Church spoke to a Confederate soldier beforehand to ask him why his uniform was so ragged. The man replied that it wasn't a good idea to wear one's best clothes before butchering a hog.

Perhaps these are sentiments before their time that will amuse the deep thinkers who believe they've got it all under control. But I'm betting good money that what the sellouts have engineered for our country will soon enough give them a taste of what Mars does best.

A sad and alarming thought, it's true, but then who would have thought that what the Framers and Ratifiers set in motion would drown in the perfect storm of ruling class hubris, stupidity, and connivance at total power.

And monstrous betrayal.

Notes
^[1] "No Congressional GOP Leaders Will Support Reducing Immigration." By Julia Hahn, Breitbart.com, 7/31/15.
^[2] Id.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

The Convergence Is Complete

[The recent explosion of the Planned Parenthood scandal has moved me to post the following piece, which first appeared at Eternity Road on March 18, 2005 -- FWP]

Here are the facts, as your Curmudgeon has them:

In 1990, Teresa Schindler-Schiavo's heart ceased to beat for several minutes. The resulting hypoxia caused severe brain damage, which left her helpless, unable to care for or feed herself. Doctors recently appointed by Florida courts have called her condition a "persistent vegetative state."

However, according to several witnesses, Terri still responds to various stimuli. She can't speak, and may not recognize specific persons or elements in her surroundings, but her sensorium is not yet wholly disconnected from her brain. Nor does her brain appear to have lost all its non-autonomic functions.

Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, has petitioned to have Terri's feeding tube removed -- in effect, to starve his wife to death -- on the representation that she would have wanted it that way. He contends that she clearly expressed that desire to him, though no written records of such a desire exist. That is, there is no "living will" for Terri Schindler-Schiavo.

After protracted hearings and appellate decisions, the Florida courts have granted Michael Schiavo's request that Terri's feeding tube be removed. Unless federal authorities step in to prevent it, this will bring about Terri's death by starvation, a process that could take up to two weeks.

Several Congressmen are attempting to use Congress's subpoena power to delay the inception of this process of execution. Whether the Florida principals and the courts that have backed them will yield to superior federal authority remains to be seen.

For some years, Michael Schiavo has been living with another woman, who has borne him two children. He and Terri are spouses only in the eyes of the State. Yet he has refused to allow divorce proceedings that would transfer guardianship of Terri to her parents.

Michael Schiavo also stands to benefit monetarily from Terri's death. The amount is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A philanthropist, sensing that this might be the true reason Michael wants Terri to die, has offered to buy her life for $1 million -- that is, to pay Michael Schiavo $1 million if he will only relinquish guardianship of his helpless wife. The offer was refused.

The Florida courts that granted Michael Schiavo's petition to starve his wife to death made a finding of fact, based solely on Michael's representations that Terri would have asked to die in these circumstances. Several persons who knew Terri testified that this was not the case, but to no avail.

Never before in the history of the United States has a man been sentenced to be slowly tortured to death.

Let's be perfectly candid about what Michael Schiavo intends for his helpless wife: he wants her dead. His claim that she would want the same is hopelessly tainted by his pecuniary interest in her demise. He insists on killing her even though the sole legal way to get her into her coffin is to subject her to two weeks of excruciating torment.

Were a condemned serial killer to be sentenced to the same ordeal, every civil-rights and humanist group in the country would be up in arms. Nay, it would arouse every such group in the world. Such groups cannot abide the death penalty even for men convicted of the most heinous crimes. The United States would be castigated in every organ known to Man for its callousness, its brutality, and its lack of respect for human life.

Strangely, those groups have been quite silent about the plight of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. A few have even trumpeted the "right to die" mantra, as if they possessed telepathic time-travel powers that allow them to read Terri's desires retroactively from this point in time.

Your Curmudgeon will note in passing that the overwhelming majority of those groups also proclaim a "woman's right to choose" -- to choose to kill a helpless, fully developed infant whose head has already entered the birth canal and who is on his way to beginning the adventure of life. Some also condemned Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, preferring to let dictators who had murdered uncounted thousands of helpless persons remain in power rather than allow American soldiers to liberate their subjects by force of arms.

As the years roll past, your Curmudgeon becomes ever more powerfully struck by the prescient insight of the great Clive Staples Lewis.

In his novel That Hideous Strength, Lewis paints a nightmare landscape of a fictional Britain that's fallen wholly to the mercies of the worst men in the world. Men who desire to torture and destroy as ends in themselves, but who have become skilled at representing their atrocities as "experimentation" or "remedial treatment." Men who lust for power over others as no other men have ever lusted, and who would raise a dead sorcerer from the grave to get it, but who would never admit that their "scientific outlook" could be conjoined with belief in a demon-conjuring wizard. Men whose loyalties have been so completely perverted that they've relocated entirely away from the human race, and away from life itself.

As the novel's villains struggle to bring the reanimated Merlin into their fold, we are shown that a process centuries long is nearing completion. The process began with the displacement of reverence for innocent life by an ethic that deemed all things, and all lives, to be clay in the hands of human potters, to be shaped according to their untrammeled desires. It took time to evolve, because even those who most strongly advocated it had to shake off the restraints of tradition and upbringing; as Lewis puts it, their inherited morality stood firm against their intellectual rationalizations for the evil they'd sought to legitimize. But once their successors had cast off the fetters of tradition and lingering social disapproval, nothing stood in their way.

The moment had come for Hell's final advance against Man. The convergence of two mighty engines of death -- the reduction of a life to a mere bag of chemicals judged entirely by instrumental criteria, and the worship of power without regard for its source, its aims, or its uses -- could begin.

Over the millennia, men have killed one another in uncounted millions. It's not new, or particularly noteworthy, that one man should want to kill another -- not even that a husband should want to kill his wife, whom he's sworn before God and man to protect. What is new is the accelerating approval and support for such a desire among the "intellectual elite," including judges appointed to do justice, defend the innocent, and protect the helpless.

Europe is deeply mired in this trend. The Netherlands is the standard-bearer for "assisted suicide," and for the deliberate execution, with medical concurrence, of inconvenient babies and oldsters. The horror stories are legion -- so many, in fact, that the horror of them has begun to create calluses over our emotions. One can only hear about so many such villainies before stopping one's ears.

Europe is also the rallying point for the condemnation of the death penalty. The lives of men who've maliciously and unjustifiably destroyed the lives of others are therefore valued more highly than the lives of the helpless and utterly innocent.

America has been a bastion against this sort of viciousness...until now. European thinking -- utilitarian valuation of the "quality of life" of helpless persons by third parties -- has reached these shores and formed a beachhead. The abortion wars, as serious as they've been, were only a preliminary, a shelling of our moral defenses to soften them for a decisive breakthrough.

The Terri Schindler-Schiavo case will be that breakthrough, if Michael Schiavo gets his way.

Some have protested that Michael Schiavo must be sincere, since he was willing to turn down a million dollars for his wife's life. This does not follow. Once he'd made his representation that Terri would have wanted to die, Michael could not possibly back away from it in the face of a monetary inducement; that would have constituted an admission that he wants her dead specifically so that he could grab her money, and that he was ready to yield in the face of a better offer. Similarly, he has to resist all attempts to divorce him from Terri, and the Schindlers' impassioned pleas for a transfer of guardianship. To concede guardianship to anyone determined to keep Terri alive would implicitly admit that it was no wish of Terri's that mattered, but rather that he wants her dead for his own convenience. Either admission would indict and convict him of conspiracy to commit murder through a judicial process.

Terri Schindler-Schiavo's life matters to her husband-in-name in precisely one way: it's a barrier to something he wants. His willingness to sacrifice her is a declaration that in service to his ends, even the murder of the helpless woman whose well-being lies in his care is an acceptable means. It's a pledge of allegiance to the death cults.

This sickening story has a few scenes yet to run. Whether Terri Schindler-Schiavo will survive it is known only to God. But anyone willing to open his eyes can easily see that elements of opinion and organs of government here in the United States are aligning with the death cults.

Florida courts have ratified Michael Schiavo's desire to kill his helpless, innocent wife.

Groups that claim to hold life as sacred, that protest in droves at every execution, and that condemn the use of American military power regardless of the justifications or the delicacy of its application, are standing aside, content to watch as Terri is tortured to death.

Low creatures such as Peter Singer, so-called "ethical philosopher," have argued that creatures such as Terri have no right to life that others are bound to respect.

And as in Lewis's That Hideous Strength, the legions of Hell look on in delicious anticipation.

Pray.

New Content

...at my fiction-promotion site.

Quickies: They’re BAAACK!

Never underestimate the tenacity of the would-be tyrant:

     After backing down amid concerns she wanted to regulate political speech, and even new sites like the Drudge Report, the chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission has renewed talk about targeting campaign and political activities on the internet.
     Ann M. Ravel, discussing election regulation during a speech in New York, suggested it was time to produce "thoughtful policy" targeting internet political activity. She also expressed frustration that her last bid was met with "threatening misogynist responses to me."
     She was speaking at a day-long conference hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and the Committee for Economic Development when she was asked about regulating the internet, Google and Facebook....
     When the Democrats on the FEC first raised the possibility of regulations, opponents feared they were going to target conservative groups, activities and news sites. A proposal to delve into the issue died in a 3-3 vote....
     But in answering the question this week, Ravel indicated she wants to pursue regulations. "It would be under the purview of the FEC to look at some of the issues that arise in new media and the impact of new media, in particular with respect to disclosure and ensuring that there is no corporate contributions, for example excessive contributions or contributions to a particular candidates for example," she said.

The FEC is not a non-political body. It conforms to the agenda of whoever is in power – typically, whichever party controls the White House. And as we can see, they never kill an idea for suppressing dissent all the way: head chopped off and a stake through its heart.

What do you think, Gentle Reader? Time to lock and load? Got a lamppost picked out for this aspiring dictatress? If you’re not feeling your inner Patrick Henry struggle and surge yet, how much more will it take?

The Foundered Fathers -- A Short Story By F. J. Dagg

[F. J. Dagg has returned with another piercing short story. James, we can’t get enough of you. Keep ‘em coming! -- FWP]

She was plump, and though not yet thirty appeared middle-aged, and her lips moved slightly as she read “Ministry of Child Development” in great, bold letters above the immense building’s entrance--she had been here only hours earlier, yet needed to reassure herself she was at the correct location. As directed, she had dropped her twelve-year-old son here at 8 AM--a sore trial for one accustomed to lying abed late--and was now returning at 5 PM, again as directed. Upon reaching twelve years, all children were comprehensively tested in order for the State to set them on the correct path.

“So how’d he do?” the woman asked the Ninth Assistant Deputy Coordinator to the Regional Sub-Under-Secretary to the Fifth Minister of Child Development, Northeastern Sector.

The bureaucrat’s lips parted, but she did not immediately speak. Then she smiled and said, “Your son’s results presented us with a...a special case.”

The woman grunted and stared dully.

“Yes, well...the fact is his verbal scores were extraordinary.”

The woman frowned.

“...by which I mean perfect.” The bureaucrat glanced at the monitor on her desk. “Our records show no other child having achieved a perfect verbal score. Can you tell me who the father is?”

The woman’s face twisted in a sly grin. “Now, I ain’t one o’ them prissy kind o’ gals what keeps track o’ every...”

“Oh, I’m sure, but we would like to know...if you can remember.”

The woman’s face became a caricature of concentration. “Well, that woulda been...” Her eyes narrowed as she counted on her fingers. At last she looked up. “It was prob’ly the white one.” The bureaucrat made an expression the woman couldn’t read and tapped her keyboard.

“...but I’d say the boy’s like that ‘cuz of them books, prob’ly.”

“Books?”

“From that old liberry buildin’ other side o’ town. Place is fallin’ down, so’s I told him to stay clear of it, but would he listen?”

“I see...,” said the bureaucrat.

The woman went on. “Always goin’ on about things what happened a long time ago. All them different countries, and wars, and music, and fancy pitchers...and books. Ha ha. Readin’ books ‘bout books...how wack is that?

The bureaucrat began to speak, but the woman, with a sudden, vaguely guilty look, cut her off.

“All the other kids is good, though! ‘Tween gov’m’nt school and TV, they turned out OK.”

The Ninth Assistant Deputy Coordinator, etc., etc. nodded approvingly.

The woman’s eyes glazed and she shook her head slowly.

“Nobody can say I didn’t try. His teachers give me them pills...said they’d straighten him out...calm him down, ‘n’ all, but they didn’t do no good. Now I think back on it, maybe he hid ‘em an’ didn’t take ‘em at all. He’s smart, all right...too smart, maybe.” She shook her head again.

“Anyways, it’s got so you can’t make him even look at the TV no more, and all I ever hear nowadays is a lotta wack ‘bout what he calls ‘floss-fee.’ Crap like ‘Sock-tease,’ and ‘Play-dough,’ and ‘Shake-speare...,’” She emitted a braying cackle. “Howzat for a dumbass name, ‘Shake-speare?’” She rolled her eyes and the plastic chair beneath her creaked as she shifted her bulk. “But mostly he gets all excited ‘bout them foundered fathers...”

“’Foundered...?’ Oh, you mean the ‘Founding Fathers.’ Yes, I was coming to that.”

The woman droned on. “...boy can’t shut up about it...old times when people be fightin’ over ideas...instead o’ real stuff...‘n’ talkin’ smack ‘bout the gov’m’nt...” She glanced up nervously, then plunged on, “...and...and...had to do things for theirselves...” Her lip curled and she shook her head. “Lotta crazy talk.”

The bureaucrat folded her hands on the desk and her expression became grave.

“Of course. But...I’m afraid there’s also, well, some not so good news.” When the woman said nothing the bureaucrat continued. “Your son’s math scores were low...quite low.”

“No s’prise there. He hates them number shows the worst...the ones with them puppets, y’know?”

“Yes. Well, low math ability is very serious. Scores such as his would prevent one from becoming a Programmer, or a Facilitator...even at the lowest level.” Her expression became graver still, and she repeated, “Very serious.”

The woman stared blankly.

“But the most troubling thing was that he insisted on talking to the Examiners about the Founding Fathers. You mentioned them, do you remember?”

The woman shrugged and her eyes narrowed. “So how bad is it?”

The bureaucrat drew a breath. “I’m afraid we had no choice but to euthanize him.”

“Huh? Whassat?”

“Um, ‘put down.’ The law required that he be, ah, put down.”

The woman squinted. “You mean, like...dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

The Ninth Assistant Deputy, etc., etc. essayed a sympathetic expression, while the woman’s face reflected surprise, puzzlement, and the shadow of something like sadness.

“Well...” the woman’s eyes went far away. Then all at once she brightened. “Well, anyways, I guess I won’t have to listen to no more wack about them foundered fathers!”