Liberty's Torch

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Good boys no longer.

This started out as a comment on Fran Porretto's "Trump And “Let It Burn:” Further Thoughts" over on Liberty's Torch but I decided to expand my comments into a separate post here and at Liberty's Torch.

The thoughtful and observant Mr. Porretto suggests that Donald Trump's candidacy has a certain "bread and circuses" aspect to it and that the elites have exploited Trump to distract the American people. This will have unpredictable results given the existence of a burgeoning "let it burn" community among our fellow Americans.

I don't see the hand of the elites in Trump's appearance and rise that Porretto does. Where the media bread and circuses are concerned, however, that hand is very visible indeed. Behold "America the Propositional Nation," even though not one person in a million can say what those propositions are for sure. But it -- and "diversity" -- are the war cries of just about every media (and academic and political) luminary. Where movies, sitcoms, commercials, and new rooms are concerned, all look like a meeting of either the United Nations General Assembly or of the annual convention of the National Organization for Wymyn. The media imperative is to portray an America that doesn't exist. Yet. It's much worse than that, as you know.

Trump's just not the kind of man to waste his time playing such games, especially as he's not shown much interest in broad public issues before, so far as I know, with the exception of his toying with the fraudulence of Obama's "birth certificate" and his earlier warnings about immigration and the national debt. It's quite a stretch to think that Trump's playing the role either of witting shill or unwitting puppet. Really?

Porretto is right on the money, however, in saying that we'll not like what follows after the unpredictable consequences of this now-unmodifiable "bread and circuses" dynamic become visible. People can only take so much flapdoodle but not many of us have thought much about what America 2.0 should look like. Pandemonium will be the best of all options in the short term and long term we're like to get FDR 2.0 with a leavening of the political insights of Minister Farrakhan and his recently conceived of black Sturm Abteilung.

In a certain late 1980s (?) book, whose author and title I can't recall now, the author suggested that the unwashed had a deal with the smart set. The latter could dabble in national affairs and play soldier all they want provided they don't fisk with how the former lived their lives.

If such was the understanding, it is no more, as the smart set now want to tell you that a pond on your Colorado property is a possible mooring site for a river barge or Coast Guard cutter and that if you lay in a few extra beans for the forecasted long, cold winter you're a fisking terrorist. One, btw, whose castle can be invaded by a squad of mechanized infantry to apprehend any scofflaws therein who have unpaid parking tickets. (Think flash bang in your daughter's crib.)

Call it The Invasion of the Dweebs. Twerps, who go full-rhapsody at some Bartokian screechfest or a punk rock guitar smash, are calling the shots in the south 40 of American life and it's not been going well. Cue the Marlboro Man. For God's sake, cue the Marlboro Man!

There is clearly a bread and circuses flavor to modern American life. In 1966, Carroll Quigley, in his Tragedy and Hope: A History of World in Our Time wrote:

All of these ideas [intuition rather than analysis, existentialism], reflecting the disjointed malaise of the century, permeated the outlook of the period and left it hungry for meaning, for identity, for some structure or purpose in human experience. Insanity, neurosis, suicide, and all kinds of irrational obsessions and reactions filled increasing roles in human life. Speed, alcohol [and drugs], sex, coffee [?], and tobacco screened man off from living, injuring his health, stultifying his capacity to think, to observe, or to enjoy life . . . . As his capacity to live or to experience life dwindled, he sought to reach it by seeking more vigorous experiences that might penetrate the barriers surrounding him. The result was mounting sensationalism. In time, nothing made much impression unless it was concerned with shocking violence, perversion, or distortion.

But the appeal of B&C is diminishing because of the former point and because a lot of "ordinary" people – the "extraordinaries" who built and maintain this country – are waking up to the fact that the political system isn't as benign as they and their parents may have thought, and that the trolls in the schools and the press really DO want to snatch their kids and turn them into authority-loving nitwits and dress-wearing sitzsprinklers.

The duplicity, pusillanimity and passivity of the Republicans after the 2014 elections really WERE that 4th of July Orange Death Blam Shower blazing in the sky for all of us that politics are a pointless exercise, leaving only the dog-in-the-manger option to the civic-minded voter.

Trump is the last chance of the non-lunatic, sellout elite to turn the ship around. The demographic, vote fraud, and corporate/billionaire political bribery realities that will take hold in earnest in this and all future times guarantee that this nation will not survive as a white, European nation. It must survive as such or all the horrors of third-world savagery and stupidity will turn America into a formless glop. An interregnum period will begin that will end only in the inevitable formation of an aggressive, killing ethnic majority that will put an end to the futility and irrationality of our moronic pursuit of "multiculturalism" and "diversity." This is night-follows-day stuff, Chachos.

Not that anyone with the unbridled, official discretion greater than a dog catcher's seems to notice, mind you. Ethnic and racial inundation, globalism, tra-la-la fiscal fiddling, and full-tilt pursuit of fisk-you socialism ARE the present flight plan . . . and ten tons of cautionary, common sense evidence suggesting a different course, delivered every day to every inbox and browser on the planet, bounces off like a tennis ball hurled at a tank.

The productive, sane segment of the populace see Trump for what he ISN'T – a slack-jawed, pudgy, sellout, fund-raising, tanned, coifed, mewling, dissembling, obfuscating place-holding sack of baloney. Some posit that Trump is some kind of a shill for Mrs. Rodham or that's he's being supported by some cabal of the Deep State. On which points (including the B&C one) I note simply that the elite mismanagers of this once-great experiment in self government ought to contemplate the wisdom in the phrase "too clever by half." As H.G. Wells observed, in The Shape of Things to Come:

The whole world system heretofore had been sustained by the general good behavior of common men, by the honesty and punctuality of clerks, workers of every sort, traders, professional men.
General security depended upon habitual decent behaviour in the street and on the countryside. But the common man behaved well because he had faith that his pay was a safe, if sometimes a scanty, assurance of a certain comfort and dignity in his life. He imagined an implicit bargain between himself and society that he should be given employment and security in exchange for his law-abiding subordination, and that society would keep faith with his savings.
He assumed that the governments would stand by the money they issued and see that it gave him the satisfactions it promised him. He was not a good boy for nothing. Nobody is.

Sooo the untouchable, irresistible political class may pull off another four years of popular passivity but that's not the way to bet. Erich Maria Remarque in one of his novels included a minor observation that a large number of German troops had disposed themselves on and about the tracks of a certain railway station. The station master, with undisputed control of the station's public address system, would periodically announce the imminent arrival of a train but the troops never moved a muscle to remove themselves from the tracks. You see, they had had a great deal of exposure to "official" announcements and knew very well that the station master could safely be ignored. Owning a $40 billion media empire can't change that perception, once it takes hold. Except if it started to broadcast the truth -- crazy talk if ever there was.

Figure there's a similar media fatigue at work today where all the give, forbearance, and benefit of the doubt vis-a-vis what the ruling class cleverly constructs for us has sometime back been wrung out of the equation. Not for nothing are or were Obamacare or the current odiferous, security-destroying, sovereignty-busting trade deals or nuclear "deals" with Iran assembled in conditions of utmost secrecy. Only the most bloody-minded and obtuse can fail to note that the Iranians know what the terms of the total deal are but the American people don't. BUT . . . FoxNews spends 30 minutes of million-dollar-a-minute air time on Deflategate. This gets noticed.

The elite have a normalcy bias of their own and that is that the "common man" will continue to be a good boy.

However . . . .

The appearance of the Tea Party out of nowhere, the surge in popularity of Trump, and the well-developed and increasing public understanding of

public debt,
unfunded liabilities top and bottom,
the crime and unbreakable dysfunction of the black "community" and its "leadership,"
open borders fanaticism,
MSM dishonesty and manipulation,
Muslim savagery and commitment to subversion and treachery,
Muslim "refugee" resettlement,
mad off-shoring and outsourcing of manufacturing and services,
monetary blindness,
strategic imbecility, and
Supreme Court betrayal

all hint that such normalcy bias is unwise.

Porretto has written lucidly about "let it burn" thinking and Trump is the present focus of such thinking. He announces to any and all the arrival of (1) a desire to break furniture on the part of the unwashed and (2) a rather serious weakening of the desire to be "good boys."

It's clear the world is in the last throes of the failed socialist utopian experiment of which our educated classes and many willing citizens are so enamored. Further economic deterioration, especially, the squeeze on the middle class and unemployed citizens displaced by cheap illegal alien labor, will act like a catalyst for the arrival of America 2.0.

Think "inflection point" in our lifetime, but without the A/C, the buttered popcorn, or the special effects.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Quickies: The State Now Dictates The Contents Of Chaplains’ Religion

Todd Starnes has the story:

     It wasn’t so much a choice as it was a demand.
     Chaplain David Wells was told he could either sign a state-mandated document promising to never tell inmates that homosexuality is “sinful” or else the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice would revoke his credentials.
     “We could not sign that paper,” Chaplain Wells told me in a telephone call from his home in Kentucky. “It broke my heart.”
     The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice revoked his volunteer credentials as an ordained minister – ending 13 years of ministry to underage inmates at the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center.
     “We sincerely appreciate your years of service and dedication to the youth served by this facility,” wrote Superintendent Gene Wade in a letter to Wells. “However, due to your decision, based on your religious convictions, that you cannot comply with the requirements outlined in DJJ Policy 912, Section IV, Paragraph H, regarding the treatment of LGBTQI youth, I must terminate your involvement as a religious volunteer.”

This effectively delegitimizes Christian clerics from serving the inmates of state prisons and juvenile correction centers. No priest or minister of a recognized Christian denomination could accept such limitations in good conscience. It would amount to giving government a veto power over one’s chaplaincy.

Wonder when the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent State will get around to declaring adultery a legally protected practice that priests and ministers cannot criticize? When will our masters get around to making abortion an off-limits subject? And how about the most common form of inmate abuse in our prisons: rape? Well, maybe only as it applies to elected officials...

Disaffiliations

The rising of the tide is slow. He who watches the ocean for only a few minutes would fail to notice it. Only he whose attention persists through several rotations of the Earth has a chance of grasping what’s at work...or of glimpsing the mechanism behind it.

History, particularly the history of ideas and their applications, is important for that reason. It’s an old saw that “you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been,” but it is nevertheless true. Old ideas have almost all been tried. Those that succeeded were tried again. Those that succeeded repeatedly, such that we became confident that we could trust them to perform as advertised, became part of the conceptual infrastructure of our society.

Infrastructure of any sort has a bifurcated character. We need it, but we resent having to tend to it. When it fails us, we repair it with many a grumble. When it’s sound, it tends to vanish from our attention. Thus it is with the ideas on which our society was founded: as we gained confidence in them, we gradually ceased to think about them.

In the above three paragraphs lies a complete explanation for the gradual disintegration of the United States of America.

This morning, the esteemed Dystopic delivers an illuminating piece on the proper response to a Leftist’s attacks on one’s character:

Treat the Leftist like what he is: a lunatic, a self-absorbed, arrogant asshole with pretensions of intellectual superiority. How do you do this? Mock him. Ridicule him. Use statements like: “Oh, sure, Socialism is great. Why, just yesterday I was thinking about how wonderful the world would be if Stalin had been immortal.” Don’t attack the Leftist’s character — he has none — attack his intelligence instead. He doesn’t have much of that, either, but he will take offense to the notion that you think he is stupid. He cares about that. That will force him on the defensive and expose him for the worthless liar he is.

Buried in the above is an implicit recognition of the evanescence of memory and the importance of history. Among the Leftist’s most important assets is the short memory of the typical hearer. Our memories are particularly susceptible to the erasure of unpleasant episodes, whether personal or historical. Who cares to remember such things? Such memories are painful. They might actually be dangerous. Doesn’t recalling atrocities and the monsters who perpetrated them open the door to the possibility of repeating them?

Of course as Santayana has told us, the exact reverse is true. But no Leftist wants his audience to meditate on that truth, nor on its relevance to our contemporary social, economic, and political maladies.

Sooner or later, we’ll see bumper stickers and lapel buttons that say:

LET IT BURN

I’m convinced that it will be quite soon. The sentiment has appeared at an increasing number of sites. It’s frequently expressed through inaction, particularly the decision of so many Americans not to participate in elections, whether local, state, or national. Here are three representative expressions thereof:

     “At this point… what difference does it make?”
     “None” we say to ourselves. The GOP apologists then proceed to go apoplectic, filling the internet with their rage and bile – spamming Hot Air, The National Review Online, The Wall Street Journal and PJ Media with unvarnished rage directed at us unclean traitors. Oh well. We’ve been the front line in the culture wars for decades. They won’t be saying anything the commentators on MSNBC haven’t already shrieked at us – our hides are thick and calloused – from years of Republican snake bites. It’s doubtful we’ll much note this latest abuse.
     Back in the real world, Obama still get’s his entire agenda – no matter who’s running congress or sitting on the Supreme Court. At least with the moonbat wreckers in charge, we have to endure less “failure theater” and insults to our intellect.
     2014 was your last chance to do as you were told Republicans – you instead took it as an opportunity to give the Chamber of Commerce a hand-job. We got the message – and brought the gasoline.
     You are now witnessing the utter collapse of your political party… and your executioner is a blustering reality-show host.
     It would seem that history has a sense of humor.
     [From Dethguild]

     [R]ight there is the rub: we’re not GOING to stop the apocalypse. Politics as usual has gotten us where we are in general; since the useless GOP has already abdicated its treaty responsibility and capitulated on Obama’s humiliating “deal” with Iran, politics as usual is going to get Iran its nuke, too.
     “There’s an apocalypse to stop”? The GOP certainly isn’t going to do it, and the Democrat Socialists seem to be actively for it. Anybody still trying to understand the outrage behind Trump’s current popularity is hereby cordially invited to consider opening his damned eyes at this point, just a little bit.
     [From Mike Hendrix]

     Mr. Trump has actually built a successful business empire by creating products and services that people wanted to buy, not by force, graft and shadowy donations. I might point out that Mr. Trump doesn't really care what the Mushroom Media thinks of him, and is actually capable of breaking wind without consulting 27 polls first. I might point out that Mr. Trump is seen as something new and different in an era of worn-out sequels like 'Clinton On K Street II' and 'Night Of The Living Bush III.' I'm certain that these things are important to some of the Trumpsters, but I feel safe in saying that many of them don't really care about any of this. We've simply recognized reality: The American political process is corrupt to the core. It's nothing but a dog-and-pony show, and we're NOT voting our way out of this. PERIOD (no debate pun intended)....
     The war for liberty in America is over. We lost. All we can do now is accelerate the collapse and prepare to come out fighting on the other side. And in the meantime, if we can enjoy the spectacle of Statist Party D, Statist Party R and the Mushroom Media all losing their tiny little minds over being told that at least one person simply doesn't give a fart in a windstorm what they think, that's pretty awesome. If we'd had more of that attitude over the past few decades, America might have survived.
     In the meantime, let it burn and pass the marshmallows.
     [From Weird And Pissed Off]

There are others.

What distinguishes the “Let It Burn” crowd from others on the Right of the political spectrum? If they have a case – and I would agree that they do – why don’t other, generally freedom-minded Americans flock to their incendiary banner?

There are a number of reasons. The most widely applicable one is wishful thinking: a stout resistance to the lessons of history, even recent history, because it would destroy all hope. Yet history speaks plainly and implacably on the dynamic that powers all governments: They grow until they are forcibly destroyed, whether by internal or external forces. Santayana stands beneath its banner proclaiming the importance of attending to it. The lesson is generally ignored.

“Cato’s Letter” #115, among the seminal documents of the American Founding, contains this passage:

We know, by infinite examples and experience, that men possessed of power, rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it; and scarce ever any man upon earth went out of it as long as he could carry every thing his own way in it; and when he could not, he resigned. I doubt that there is not one exception in the world to this rule; and that Dioclesian, Charles V, and even Sulla, laid down their power out of pique and discontent, and from opposition and disappointment. This seems certain, that the good of the world, or of their people, was not one of their motives either for continuing in power, or for quitting it.
It is the nature of power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary power, granted at particular times, and upon particular occasions, into an ordinary power, to be used at all times, and when there is no occasion; nor does it ever part willingly with any advantage. From this spirit it is, that occasional commissions have grown sometimes perpetual; that three years have been improved into seven, and one into twenty; and that when the people have done with their magistrates, their magistrates will not have done with the people.

“Cato’s Letter” #73 adds to this observation:

Alas! Power encroaches daily upon liberty, with a success too evident; and the balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole earth, and striking at mankind root and branch, makes the world a slaughter-house; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.

We are in the terminal stages of such an encroachment. As Ayn Rand once wrote, “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” Meanwhile, we witness the fattening of every sort of fat cat who has the wit to ally himself with the powerful of his time. He who manages to prosper beyond the officially approved norm without paying obeisance and protection money to power does so only by accident: being fortunate enough to be overlooked.

If you dispute this, consider Michael Milken.

When I wrote Which Art In Hope, I still harbored some hope that the Republic That Was might be restored – that if a sufficient number of Americans simply came to their senses, rose up on their hind legs, and demanded the strict observance of Constitutional and moral constraints on government at all levels, it could be done. Therein I depicted a seemingly successful anarcho-capitalist society. It had absented itself from Earthly tyranny and prospered thereby. Yet it had come face to face, albeit unknowingly, with a lethal threat that pure freedom is insufficient to defeat. The solution required one very special man to sacrifice his life, his love, his home, and everything else that mattered to him. Being a hero of the old style, he did so.

A completely free society whose members believe unanimously that the coercion of the innocent is morally unacceptable could never impose such a fate on anyone. Being so incapable, it would die to the last man...unless that one gifted individual were to freely give himself as the ransom for the rest.

I felt the novel to be a sound depiction of an unpleasant but unavoidable truth: that like the State, anarchy is unstable, that it will eventually give way to hegemony, just as hegemony must eventually give way to anarchy. Part of the reason I wrote Freedom’s Scion and Freedom’s Fury, which were no part of my original design, was to bring that truth into even better focus.

It’s not a proclamation of doom. It’s the recognition that freedom is always temporary, just as is tyranny.

Once you’ve accepted the core thesis of the “Let It Burn” community, there are only two overall strategies that make sense: passive self-protection and active revolution. Most Americans who’ve adopted the “Let It Burn” mindset choose the former approach. I’ve moved in that direction myself. A commenter to yesterday’s post gives us an example of the considerations that militate toward it:

In actuarial terms, I have some 20+ years left. I don't know how many stones will be loosed in that time, or how much of that actuarial time I will really have. I thought maybe the idiocy of Ferguson and then the execution of the NY city cops might kick a few more pebbles in the mix. Add the Tennessee jihadist (a word the MSM will not utter) and one would think the avalanche has started.

Perhaps it has. We probably won’t recognize an actual “start” to the collapse before it’s well under way. But it’s coming as surely as the rising of the Sun.

Remember your Santayana.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Caution: Falling Rock Zone

Though the notion that a single falling rock can and will cause an avalanche is at least somewhat exaggerated, it can happen on a slope that’s sufficiently “loose.” The probability that it will happen increases with the number of falling rocks.

What we call an avalanche in the world of surface geophysics, we call in social theory a preference cascade. Here too, a single “falling rock” – any disturbing phenomenon that diverges sharply from general social and political norms – has a low probability of triggering a convulsive change, but as the number of such increases, the likelihood of a social or political upheaval increases as well.

America’s social “slope” has grown ever “looser” since the Reagan Interregnum. The general degree of binding to a common set of American norms is at a low point for the past century. The numbers of separatist and particularist groups increase, the general regard for the traditional forces of order decreases, and suspicion and enmity grows between them. In the midst of this, the state governments strain to disarm us, while the federal government decrees massively unpopular laws and regulations that guarantee further decreases in Americans’ prosperity and security. You’d almost swear that dark forces were trying to bring about widespread civil disorder and disaffiliation from what’s charmingly called the “rule of law.”

With that, let’s have a look at some recent events that might qualify as “falling rocks.”

First and most conspicuous on the national radar is the circus that surrounds the presidential nominations of the two major parties. Seldom have so many clowns packed themselves into so small a car. Not that the candidates are utterly devoid of merit, of course; Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal all have something to say for themselves and records that lend substantial support to their contentions. But what are we to make of the public antics we’ve already seen, and the plain promise that there’s more and worse to come? What are we to make of the primacy of Donald Trump, whose claim to public attention rests entirely on a large fortune and an unbridled mouth?

The vaudeville act on the Democrat side is equally disturbing despite being superficially more restrained. There we have a social-fascist front-runner, an openly socialist second-placer, and a couple of nonentities who really ought to know better. The media are too terrified of the front-runner even to demand an accounting of her positions, let alone her more flagrant misdeeds. The socialist has been harassed by racial activists. The nonentities get little to no air time, despite their objectively more substantial records of achievement. Yet virtually no one with a national voice dares to comment on any of it.

Second we have the insanities – considerably more than one – swirling about the “deal with Iran.” While Iran’s political masters crow about having gotten everything they wanted while they whip ever larger crowds into chanting “Death to America,” Barack Hussein Obama, never happy about being opposed, can’t resist claiming that Congressional Republicans, Israel’s political leadership, and members of his own party are making “common cause” with the Iranian hard-liners. Why he omitted to castigate the potentates of Saudi Arabia, who are also harshly critical of the “deal,” should be obvious.

As for the “deal” itself, how could anyone respect an agreement with a terror sponsoring state that demands 24 days’ notice of any inspection of any Iranian nuclear facility, and which claims that its military facilities will be forever barred to the inspectors? Yet Obama and Kerry expect Israel to stake its national survival on this supposed guarantee of Iran’s good behavior. Indeed, Obama is enraged at his co-partisans’ reluctance to sign on the dotted line, to the point of implying consequences for those who won’t comply.

Meanwhile, we have several verified reports of Middle Eastern men harassing and threatening the families of American military men. The tendency of Muslim immigrants to form tight enclaves, resistant to outside observation, has been well known for decades. With the exception of the Murragh building bombing, every terrorist act committed against Americans or American property for the past twenty years was perpetrated by Muslims. Yet immigrants from Africa and the Muslim Middle East continue to pour into the U.S—indeed, in many cases facilitated by the federal government under the guise of “refugee assistance.”

It doesn’t matter that it’s been forensically proved that Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in self-defense. There are persons and organizations determined to keep the notion of a racist execution alive...and they don’t care what it might cost anyone else.

Racial agitation is rampant in America as it hasn’t been since the Communists of the 1930s invaded Harlem. As it was with Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and any other Negro who dies at a white man’s hands, Michael Brown has been elevated as a martyr to their cause. Just as with Trayvon Martin’s attempt to kill George Zimmerman, facts that run counter to the black racialists’ cause are effaced, and those who dare to bring them up are intimidated into silence.

On a smaller scale, instances of individual and community resistance to overweening “authority” are increasing in number and frequency. Not all of them are as dramatic as these neighbors protecting a veteran’s right to his firearms, nor as violent as this Vermont mother’s execution of a “child welfare” myrmidon, but like the Cliven Bundy affair of recent memory, they’re out there and visible to those who care to notice.

Word gets around. The Obama Administration’s happy rhetoric about a “recovery” collides with the realities of steadily increasing unemployment and under-employment, declines in Americans’ family incomes, climbing dollar prices for all the necessities except fossil fuels, and a torrent of anti-business regulations that might have been explicitly devised to throttle our economy. The Federal Reserve maintains an effective interest rate of zero, yet the dollar slowly loses its status as the world’s preferred “reserve currency.” While the prices of the precious metals hover at seemingly low levels compared to a few years before, the delivery delays for physical gold and silver stretch toward the horizon. Survivalists and “preppers” multiply. Ever more communities create “watch committees” to do “jobs Americans won’t do” – American police, that is. Urban and suburban crime, including the scandalous “knockout game” variety, rises sharply, yet authorities won’t speak of it publicly. Laws passed in a frenzy to limit private citizens’ gun rights are widely ignored.

It’s hard not to see dire portents in the tea leaves.

There is no Last Graf. If there are general solutions, even to particular aspects of our accelerating maladies, I have no idea what they are. I don’t claim predictive powers, but I fear what I see, albeit through a glass darkly, when I peer into the future.

I’m preparing for worse to come, with only my immediate neighbors to depend on for mutual defense. I’ve put in a generator. I continue to acquire physical gold and silver. I keep the pantry full and the ammo stocks fresh. And of course I quarrel regularly with the C.S.O. about the desirability of moving to some much less populated area, perhaps a mountaintop or an unexploited cave system.

Do you hear a rumble in the distance, Gentle Reader? For the moment it’s just a few falling rocks. Just a few...but their number has been increasing. As with the outbreak of a serious disease, where the central question is whether it will die out before it reaches the threshold that causes an epidemic, the central question is whether the rocks in motion will come to rest before they can nudge enough others into motion to bring about an avalanche. Like the classical “three-body problem” in mechanics, the course of this one cannot be analytically determined. All we can do is watch and wait.

And prepare.

The Age of Deceit.

This but a pale shadow of what the great George Orwell described in his essay, "Politics and the English Language." But consider this modest attempt to illustrate how thoroughly dishonest our politics are now. The Bible warns that nothing is new under the sun but I am of the firm opinion that the sheer volume of debased political terms in use today represents a level of dishonesty that even Orwell did not see in his time.

Here are a number of concocted, stitched-up, Wassermanized, Carvillized, SPLCized, DHSified, NYTicized, Wapoed stink bombs that are in common use today that I recorded merely from my casual recollection and two or three blog articles. In perusing this list, bear in mind that these are perilous times in which the ruling classes of the West demonstrate financial madness, strategic imbecility, and cowardice and hatred for their own that would have been inconceivable to our ancestors:

"Neo-Nazis," "war on women," "global warming," "climate change," "women's health," "hate speech," "gender," "racism," "domestic terrorist," "living Constitution," "patriarchy," "neo-colonialism," "undocumented immigrant," "border security," "border control," "comprehensive immigration reform," "broken immigration system," "path to citizenship," "living in the shadows," "structural racism," "carbon emissions," "alternative energy," "wetlands," "reproductive justice," "responsibility to protect," "nation building," "vote suppression," "community organizer," "emanations," "penumbras," "gay," "civil rights," "black lives matter," "welfare rights," "anti-Semitism," "inner city," "gay marriage," "multiculturalism," "diversity," "jobs Americans won't do," "refugee," "migrant," "asylum seeker," "border patrol," "deportation procedures," "Hispanic," "under-privileged," "progressive," "Dreamer," "white privilege," "extremist," "hater," "judgmental," "anti-racist," "religion of peace," "discrimination," "quantitative easing," "bipartisan," "Federal Reserve," "states' rights," "nation of immigrants," "United Nations," "denier," "trans-sexual," "homophobia," "disparate impact," "judicial review," "public-private partnership," "tax," "public use," "affirmative action," "free trade," "government shutdown," "single payer," "carbon credits," "kinetic military action," "McCarthyism," "right-wing," "far-right," "women in combat," "body man," "termination," "anchor baby," "gun violence," "gun control," "private email," "recovery," "unemployment rate," "good schools," "safe neighborhood," "bigot," "net neutrality," "Common Core," "gay rights," "propositional nation," "Judeo-Christian," "winter holiday," "rules of engagement," "medical advisory panel," "affordable housing," "red lining," "Tea Bagger," "wreckers," "stimulus," "sexist," "equal opportunity," "interstate commerce," "incorporation doctrine," "separation of church and state," "naming names (a/k/a exposing commie traitors)," "xenophobe," "nativist," "rape culture," "offensive," "microaggression," "white heteropatriarchial supremacy," "cis-gendered," "tumor," "healing," "globalism," "food desert," "birther," "youths," "teens," "men," "wrong place at the wrong time," "random attack," "anti-immigrant," "gun culture," "stray bullet," "urban renewal (a/k/a Negro removal)," "CO2 forcing," "equal outcomes," "free gift," "white Hispanic," "accidental attack," "international law," "holy Koran," "Islamic science," "moderate Muslim," "cultural enrichment," "net positive contribution," "shrinking Arctic ice cap," "consensus," "scarce skills," "debate is over," "critical theory," "capitalism," "natural born citizen," "anti-fascist," "too big to fail," "infrastructure," "investment," "misogynist," "college athlete," "criminal justice reform," "sentencing disparity," "police brutality," "theocracy," "war on terror," "radical Islam," "treaty," and "oath of office."

Those are 163 terms in common use in our political life that conceal, embody, sustain, or facilitate a lie or conceal, twist, or distort the truth. In short, in our political life we are awash in gibberish, lies, euphemisms, and pure smoke.

I am open to any dispute on whether any of these terms represent an honest attempt to describe the realities of our national life so that appropriate policies can be honestly discussed and implemented. Not a one is an honest term. Ours is an age of spin and evasion.

Nineteenth-century American political rhetoric was as rough as it gets though it surely can't have been as dishonest and manipulative as it is today. Whatever it was really like, it didn't have billion-dollar technical marvels of communication to disseminate it, and I doubt it was passed off with a straight face as constructive, intelligent, and honest commentary as the practitioners of the Big Lie would have it now. Every term above is the product of some kind of personal malignancy. A lust for political power and a disdain for traditional morality, intellectual integrity, representative government and white, European civilization.

Today, the development of and instant world-wide dissemination of political lies is big business and indicative of sick, dying nation. An honest, public debate is a virtual impossibility today except in the interstices of talk radio, Hulu, YouTube, the occasional cable TV channel, and the internet. Thank you Glenn Beck and Newsmax.

Rather than countenance this dishonesty we should take to heart the profound observation by Henry Miller in Tropic of Capricorn (1939):

For the first time I was talking to a man [Roy Hamilton] who got behind the meaning of words and went to the very essence of things. For the first time I felt I was talking to a philosopher, not a philosopher such as I had encountered through books, but a man who philosophized constantly—and who lived this philosophy which he expounded. That is to say, he had no theory at all, except to penetrate to the very essence of things and, in the light of each fresh revelation to so live his life so that there would be a minimum of discord between the truths which were revealed to him and the exemplification of these truths in action.

Measured by this standard, the political and intellectual leaders of today are seen to care nothing for the truth.

They disgrace the ground on which they walk.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

The Secret To Happiness: A Sunday Rumination

The following story comes in many variations, so you might have heard it somewhat differently on another occasion.

They were a race of great power, numerous and capable. They built high, delved deeply, and ranged far. Their history encompassed many centuries of proliferation and advancement. Their future appeared as unbounded as the universe. Yet they were not happy.

They quarreled ceaselessly, both among themselves and with those of other lands. Every household knew stress and strife; every polity teetered forever on the brink of collapse. Nothing they achieved, singly or in groups, brought the smallest balm to their souls.

Which is why the discovery of the scroll captured the attention of all their world.

It was aged and brittle. Their archeologists unrolled it with great delicacy, lest the message it bore across the centuries be fragmented and destroyed. When it was open at last, they found that it was written in a tongue that had not been used since the earliest era of their existence. When their paleolinguists succeeded in translating it, they were astonished, for its very first line it promised them that the secret to happiness lay within it. Yet the translation revealed nothing such.

The last line appeared to be meaningless, merely a string of scribbles. A myriad of scholars argued fiercely over the translation, each one certain that his interpretation was correct and that all his colleagues were wrong. But none of them could say that he had divined the secret to happiness that the scroll promised on its very first line.

No one could make out the significance of the scribbles on the last line.

One of the paleolinguists had a young daughter, a girl of surpassing sweetness and grace. All who knew her spoke glowingly of her. All who met her, no matter how brief the encounter, thought frequently of her afterward, always with pleasure. Though her family was not materially wealthy, she asked for nothing and begrudged nothing to others. In all their world she seemed the only truly happy person.

A day came when the girl’s father was puzzling over his copy of the scroll, on which he’d included the mysterious scribbles at the end. He’d left the door to his study open, and his daughter ventured hesitantly through it.

“What are you working on, Father?” she said.

He smiled and stroked her hair. “A copy of an ancient text. It claims to hold the secret to happiness, but neither I nor any of my colleagues can discern what that might be.” He sighed. “We could surely benefit from such a great wisdom.”

The girl peered at the copy, squinted briefly, and said. “But it’s right there, on the last line.”

“What?” her father exclaimed. He was immediately consumed with fury and suspicion, made all the more piercing by his fear that she might indeed have penetrated the mystery. “How is it,” he said angrily, “that you believe you can find what I and so many others of great erudition have missed over years of study?”

The girl was unaffected by his tone or the storminess of his countenance. She took a pencil and a sheet of paper from his desk, smiled up at him, and said only “Watch.”

First she copied the scribbled last line exactly as it appeared on the text in her father’s hands. When she was certain she had made an exact copy, she did something both old and new...something no scholar had thought to do before her: She assembled the individual fragments of the last line, superimposing them with care, until they resolved into a single picture.

It was an ideogram.

When she had completed her task, she set down the pencil, handed the sheet of paper to her father, and smiled. With a single glance he knew at once that she had glimpsed what he and innumerable others had failed to see. The ideogram expressed a single word in that ancient tongue, a word almost never used among them.

Gratitude

“You see?” she said. “It was right there all along.”

As her father surrendered to tears of inexpressible joy, she curtsied and went from the room.

     Learn the secret.
     Clasp it ever to your breast.
     Clutch it the more fiercely in times of sorrow.
     Share it with others, for it is not diminished by being shared.

May God bless and keep you all.

Conversations

     CSO: Maybe Trump could make the government turn a profit.
     FWP: Not likely. Look how often someone proposes to make this or that agency self-funding. It never actually happens.
     CSO: Why not?
     FWP: Well, how would you go about making the Department of State self-funding?
     CSO: Oh, that’s easy: Tell other countries “Send us a billion dollars and we won’t send John Kerry to visit you.”
     FWP: You know, that could work.
     CSO: It gets better: Tell the TV networks and cable systems “Send us a million dollars and you won’t have to listen to Marie Harf this month."
     FWP: You’re on a roll. I’m writing this down.

Quickies: Trump: Why And Why Not

There’s already been enough ink spilled on the Trump candidacy to fill Lake Superior, so I’ll confine myself to the high points. (Regular Gentle Readers: In the following, note your host’s extraordinary degree of concision, restraint, and civility. There’ll be a test afterward.)

First, the case for Donald Trump:

He’s a complete “outsider,” and thus is more palatable to a nation battered by politics and its fruits than anyone with a record in high office.
Like a hereditary monarch, he owes no one any favors.
He understands rewards and punishments, and when to apply them.

Second, the case against Donald Trump:

His self-absorption is appalling. We didn’t like it from Obama and we won’t like it from Trump.
Politics is not like business; you’re not spending your own money, and profits are illegal.
The payoffs required to get acquiescence purchase less, and are a lot larger than he’s used to.
Diplomacy is most definitely not in his arsenal, and you can’t “fire” the rulers of other countries.
White House residence is temporary: the lease can only be “renewed” once, and there is no “option to buy.”
The public expects a single First Lady per president.

Does anything else come to mind, Gentle Readers?

Stopping and reversing Hispanic immigration.

This is the second of two posts that develop a startling policy option never before considered by the Western ruling classes. Consider this Denninger post:

One of two men charged in connection with last month's home invasion,******and fatal bludgeoning of a 64-year-old California woman was in the U.S. illegally and on probation, the News-Press has learned.
Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, 29, who is charged along with Jose Fernando Villagomez, 20, in the July 24 attack in Santa Maria, Calif., was on probation for committing battery against an unidentified woman on May 22, 2014, while in possession of methamphetamine.
I already know what the retort will be: What percentage of the illegals do these things compared against citizens?
My riposte: How many of these crimes won't happen if we deport all the illegals and seal the border? Answer: ALL OF THEM.^[1]

I have to say there's a lot to be said for the idea of "pathological altruism." Apparently the idea is that once someone invites himself in and walks over our border common decency

prevents us from inviting him back OUT and
requires a statute of limitations for his crimes of 30 days.

How about a statute of limitations of 50 years? If you manage to stay 50 years without getting deported, you can stay?

That's a compassionate policy. Compassionate, that is, for the white majority of this country and our various citizen minority populations.

It's a compassion that does not have as a component a fanatical passion to

give foreigners of demonstrated hostility to us a superior position over citizens,
hand over huge sums of money to foreigners,
grant legal privileges to foreigners,
enable them to vote in our elections, and
grease the rails for them so they can obtain the precious status of citizen by first breaking our laws by crossing our borders illegally and continuing to violate those laws after they are here.

Fisk amnesty, birthright citizenship, in-state tuition, driver's licenses, welfare benefits, free ER services, path to citizenship. Exclude. Exclude. Exclude. Deny. Deny. Deny. Deport. Deport. Deport.

Notes
^[1] "Deport Them All." By Karl Denninger, The Market Ticker, 8/7/15.

Quickies: Showing Rather Than Telling The Baleful Influence Of Welfare

Tyler Durden has produced an extremely instructive article that depicts, with the aid of some simple graphics, the work-punishing effect of American welfarism. The article is so good that it defies excerpting. Please read it all.

Only one approach to welfare has managed to avoid the “welfare cliff” dramatized in the article: what social scientists call “indoor relief” and was exemplified by the Victorian Era “workhouse.” In such system, the beneficiary receives no cash; rather, his physical sustenance is maintained and he is put to monotonous work of little value. He’s protected from starvation or death by exposure, but he’s also given a powerful incentive to find other work. If he has children, they too reside in the workhouse. They’re compelled to attend school or work at equally monotonous, unfulfilling chores eight to ten hours per day, such that they cannot run riot through the community.

While it is true that such a system can be abused, just as our prisons can be, it is the only way to sustain a dependent that averts the “welfare cliff.” Its superiority to “outdoor relief” – the cash-handout variety of welfare system currently in force in the U.S. and all other Western countries – has been well documented. But our “bleeding hearts” want none of it...mainly because it doesn’t provide government jobs for them and their children.

Storytellers learn early to “Show, Don’t Tell!” It’s the key to a really involving piece of fiction. Durden has applied the maxim to welfare, and in doing so has dramatized its fatal fault better than any muckraker or yellow journalist.

Stopping and reversing Muslim immigration.

Uhm…how about we just implement a little common sense instead of a lot of political correctness Ms. Fiorina. Like banning and reversing mass Muslim immigration with all of its excess baggage ASAP. You wanna know why Ms. Fiorina? It’s because they are invaders and colonizers.
Muslims are not here to assimilate and integrate Ms. Fiorina. They are here to assimilate and integrate us and to also eventually colonize us.
Hence, let’s apply a little common sense for a change shall we and expel the invaders. Because no invaders in America equals no jihad in America. Indeed, it may not be the political correct solution, but nonetheless it’s common sense.
Are you Ms. Fiorina willing to become the first politician to call for banning and reversing mass Muslim immigration with all of its excess baggage ASAP as a first step in reforming our immigration system? If not, why not?

Comment by Space Balls on "Fiorina Shines On National Security At ‘Happy Hour’ Fox News Debate." By Jordan Schachtel, Breitbart, 8/6/15.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Quickies: A Lesson In Freedom Of Association

I know that this isn’t news any longer:

     I have tried to give a great deal of latitude to Donald Trump in his run for the Presidency.
     He is not a professional politician and is known for being a blunt talker. He connects with so much of the anger in the Republican base and is not afraid to be outspoken on a lot of issues. But there are even lines blunt talkers and unprofessional politicians should not cross.
     Decency is one of those lines.
     As much as I do personally like Donald Trump, his comment about Megyn Kelly on CNN is a bridge too far for me.
     In a CNN interview, Mr. Trump said of Megyn Kelly, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
     It was not the “blood coming out of her eyes” part that was the problem.

...but I’ll rave about it all the same.

Were I in charge of the invitations list to a “debate,” Trump’s behavior, both during and after the occasion, would have moved me to disqualify him as well. But a number of persons have argued against Erick Erickson’s decision. Some have castigated him for being “PC.” Others have said that as Trump commands the lead in the polls, he should be included despite his boorishness. Still others merely comment about how excluding a “significant” figure is “unprofessional.”

But no one’s opinion of Trump, his rhetoric, or his “significance” is at the root of the issue. RedState has the same freedom of association as you and I. It’s up to RedState’s organizers, among whom Erickson is paramount, to set the criteria – the behavioral criteria – under which a declared candidate will be welcomed onto the stage. They are, after all, paying for the stage.

Consider for a moment this matter of behavioral standards. Let’s imagine that a candidate for the GOP nomination were in total command of the polls: 80% to 90% dominance. Should that guarantee him access to any “debate” or unreasonable facsimile thereof, no matter what he might say or how he might act? Is there nothing imaginable he might say or do –before the public’s eyes and ears, at least – that would serve to disqualify him from a “debate” you would host?

My criterion for whether to consider a candidate for any office is simple: If I wouldn’t be willing to have him at my dinner table, I won’t consider him. I might not vote for his opponent, but I certainly won’t vote for him – and if I would never vote for him, why should I bother to invite him to the Fortress of Crankitude’s Debate Among Presidential Contenders?

We already have a vicious-mouthed buffoon in the White House. Who among us wants another?

The “Debate,” The “Donald,” And Other Detritus

Yes, yes, I know alliteration is considered passé. I like it anyway.

Success, as I’ve said more than once, is its own best justification. (Political version: “The victors write the history books.”) That makes it hard to emit a complete and justifiable condemnation of Donald Trump, one of the most successful men in the United States in his proper field. But it’s quite easy to see and enumerate his flaws as a politician...which is why I’ll close that subject right here.

Debates of the conventional sort have disappeared from politics. The question-and-answer format favored by television has displaced them completely. That was for the mental and emotional health of the candidates: in the new format, rather than straining their brains to answer a competitor’s arguments, they can relax and spend their camera minutes reciting memorized talking points.

“Do we really have to endure fifteen months more of this?” – The C.S.O.

In his blockbuster The B.S. Factor, Arthur Herzog covered (among other things) the many ways in which the American political dialogue had become a torturous experience. One of those ways came to mind during the “prime-time” debate Thursday evening as I marveled at the candidates’ fixed determination not to respond to the questions being asked of them, in favor of whatever talking point they feel would be most constructive to their support.

This is actually a step down from the sort of gaseous rhetoric Herzog cited in his concluding segment:

     The only solution to the Attica tragedy...[is a] genuine commitment of our vast resources to the American people. – Senator Edmund Muskie
     Organized religion—regardless of denomination—is an institution possessing a moral-ethical mandate – Vice-President Spiro Agnew.
     But let me say one other thing. I think it is important that out of this mission we realize that it was not a failure...the three astronauts did not reach the moon, but they did reach the hearts of millions of people in America and in the world. They reminded us in these days when we have this magnificent technocracy that men do count, the individual does count. – President Richard Nixon
     We have learned from the students—from you and your contemporaries—that we must come up with better answers to larger questions – Transportation Secretary John Volpe

Mind you, those were samples of PolSpeak from the late Sixties and early Seventies. See how fast the lingo can deteriorate?

The Permanent Campaign appears to be well and truly fixed upon us. While “journalists” celebrate – it relieves them of the need to go looking for actual news – the rest of us should review the consequences more soberly.

Consider how little has actually been done, at least in domestic American politics. Ponder how posturings, promises, and denunciations have risen to replace substantial developments. Now, in one way at least, this is a good thing (“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session.” – Gideon J. Tucker, 1866), as the politician at work – at anything other than campaigning – is a destructive force of incomparable power. In another, it reflects poorly on Us the People: we have accepted the posturings, promises, and denunciations in lieu of actual performance.

Panem et circenses was the formula the Roman Caesars applied to the placation of the masses. Well, the Omnibenevolent Welfare State was already supplying the panem. That compels me to consider an ugly possibility: Is it possible that the GOP solicited a Trump candidacy for its entertainment value?

In the midst of all this, Barack Hussein Obama, peeved that yet again he wasn’t commanding 100% of the world’s attention, simply had to toss a turd into the punchbowl by suggesting that the Republican Congressional caucuses were in some way collaborating with the “Iranian hard-liners.” He did so not once but twice. Rest assured that it wasn’t because he thought he hadn’t been sufficiently clear the first time, but rather that it struck him as the best way to keep the cameras focused on him. Chuck Schumer’s brief intrusion into their field of view, temporarily demoting Obama to nineteenth place, must have pissed him off big time.

There isn’t much that Obama hasn’t done to pollute the political environment. He’s usurped powers belonging to the legislative and judicial branches, or to the states and people. He’s forced millions of Americans into dependency or the underground economy. He’s divided the country along ideological, racial, sexual, and ethnic lines. He’s used various agencies of the federal government to harass and impede his opponents. He’s alienated America’s allies – in one case, allowing his “legacy” to trump the national survival of a longtime friend – while giving aid and comfort to powers that hate us and want to see us vanish. What’s left, apart from nuking a Super Bowl on the grounds of “national security?”

I can think of only one man likely to take any pleasure from the Obama presidency – and Jimmy Carter will be off to that Great House-Raising In The Sky soon enough.

All that having been said, and by many other commentators as well (though hardly with such dazzling eloquence), we must turn to the truly central question of the day: the one which we must face before so much time has passed that a critical situation has become unsalvageable:

Will the New York Rangers be able to contend for the Stanley Cup again this year, without Carl Hagelin and Martin St. Louis?

Apathy.

You don't give a **** that those who are not citizens can and do vote and the Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot put a stop to it. The single most-important asset a citizen of a nation has is to determine the political path of the nation; we express that through ballots and our representatives. If those who are not citizens can cast ballots, given that many elections are narrowly-decided, we have ceded the right of political decision-making to non-citizens. Since the citizens of this nation have sat [still] for this crap up until now and continue to do so we have collectively decided that we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic. Why in the hell would you expect anyone else give a **** about anything if you won't do whatever is necessary to prevent non-citizens from determining the political path this nation takes?^[1]

It's hard to see how the mass of men loosely termed "citizens" of this country have (beyond feeding themselves three times a day) any instinct whatsoever for their survival or resistance to theft of their country by internal traitors aiding and abetting foreign invasion.

I have met a great many admirable Americans but in the aggregate we, like the Europeans, are pretty much contemptible for our weakness, stupidity, and indifference. Yesterday the Washington Times reported that "conservative women" were angered over Donald Trump's comments on women. This, friends, shows a lack of an ability to focus on the big picture. "Denigrating comments about women’s appearances" is one of the big issues of our time? Really?

One of the passages in the Bible seems to have particular relevance these days:

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel

~ Matthew 23:24, KJV.

In addition to the points made by Denninger, Obama's waging an undeclared, congressionally-unauthorized war against Syria as we speak but these fools are worried about comments about womens' appearance.

Material for comedians is never in short supply in 21st-c. America.

Well, in Europe too. They must be killing them over there with jokes about the navies of Europe welcoming foreign invaders.

Notes
^[1] "Why I Find It Hard To Give A F**k*." By Karl Denninger, The Market Ticker, 7/19/15 (much formatting removed).

Friday, August 7, 2015

But Was It Right?

Some questions never die, not because they haven’t been answered fully and definitively, but because those who ask them:

Appreciate their nuisance value;
Have an agenda to which they lead;
Reject the answer for personal reasons.

One such question, which is posed to me every year at about this time, is this one:

Was the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki morally acceptable?

That’s not the usual wording, of course. Nor is the questioner neutral on the subject. He’s already decided on the answer – i.e., that it wasn’t – and is determined to press the question upon anyone who disagrees. It’s much like the behavior of Helen Thomas, who pestered the spokesmen of President Bush II with questions about the Middle East that embedded the assumption that the “Palestinian” irredentists are the good guys.

Nevertheless, as the question resurfaces at least once per year, it’s well to know how to cope with it...and many conservatives, especially young ones, don’t.

First, a brief quote from one of my novels:

     Christine and Malcolm cleared away the Sunday breakfast dishes and reseated themselves at the kitchen table. Malcolm stared at his coffee mug as if studying it.
     "We have talked," he said, "about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we've had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don't overpay for what you seek."
     She kept silent and listened.
     "What if you can't, Christine? What if your objective can't be bought at an acceptable price?"
     She pressed her lips together, then said, "You abandon it."
     He smirked. "It's hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general's desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own."
     He straightened up. "Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn't control all those conditions. If he did, he'd never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he's compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not."
     "What conditions can do that to you?"
     His mouth quirked. "Yes, what conditions indeed?"
     Oops. Here we go again. "Weather could do it."
     "How?"
     "By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion."
     "Good. Another."
     "Economics. Once the economy of your country's been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you're running out of resources."
     "Excellent. One more."
     She thought hard. "Superior generalship on the other side?"
     He clucked in disapproval. "Does the opponent ever want you to fight?"
     "No, sorry. Let me think."
     He waited.
     Conditions. Conditions you can't control. Conditions that...control you.
     "Politics. The political leadership won't accept retreat or surrender until you've been so badly mangled that it's obvious even to an idiot."
     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.
     "It's the general's worst nightmare," he whispered. "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
     "It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."

Since Waterloo there have been no examples of the political leadership of a belligerent nation being part of its forces in the field. Those who order armies into the field stay home. Seldom does a ruling-class politician even have a child in his nation’s army. The severance between decision and consequence, between authority and responsibility, could hardly be more complete – and it’s a great part of the reason so many nations are so willing to go to war over any and every issue, no matter how trivial.

The United States, despite its large military and its ubiquity, has displayed more restraint about warfare than other historically dominant nations. There are many reasons for this, but the “citizen soldier” aspect of American military power should not be overlooked. Even a politician who has no blood stake in a contemplated war will have constituents to face, some of whom will have family members in the fight, come election time. He’ll have to persuade them that his decision to go to war was right and necessary. That’s not the case with the satraps of many other nations.

The only way to give an autocrat a blood stake in the war he contemplates is to make it thinkable that he could be one of its casualties. Nuclear weapons, particularly the sort that can be delivered ballistically, do exactly that. Thus, nuclear weapons “democratize” the battlefield for the first time since the Age of the Warrior-King.

Concerning World War II, Japan, and America’s use of A-bombs there, the morality of those actions cannot be predicated on a simple consideration such as the killing of innocents. Innocents are killed in every war. Indeed, a nation that conscripts its young men has guaranteed it, even if it negotiates “scheduled” battles with its enemy and arranges specific, limited venues for them in the style of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe. Yet the most moral of nations will go to war under some circumstances, for there are considerations that can make peace the worse choice morally.

We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets. – Douglas Jerrold

When contemplating the bombing of Japan, President Truman took dramatic steps to preserve the lives of Japanese subjects, including any soldiers or munitions makers in the target zones. He commanded saturation leaflet-bombings, informing the residents of the target cities of what was to come and exhorting them to evacuate, several days before the actual strikes. Here’s what one such leaflet said, translated from the Japanese:

Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or a friend. In the next few days, four or more of the cities named on the reverse side of this leaflet will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories, which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique that they are using to prolong this useless war. Unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America’s well-known humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives.
America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique, which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace, which America will bring, will free the people from the oppression of the Japanese military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and better leaders who will end the War. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked, but at least four will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.

The reverse side of the leaflet named several cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The last such leafleting occurred on July 27, 1945: eleven days after the “Trinity test” and ten days before the A-bombing of Hiroshima. That was surely ample time for the residents of that city to get out of the target zone. Perhaps some did. Yet note that many did not. Nor did the destruction of Hiroshima persuade all the residents of Nagasaki to evacuate. On whose hands does their blood belong?

The estimates the Joint Chiefs prepared for President Truman on the cost of a ground invasion of Japan’s Home Islands were horrifying. The smallest casualty estimate was 300,000 American lives; the largest were on the order of 1,000,000. Ground invasions on a strategic scale are guaranteed to kill innocents, whereas the residents of the target cities had the option of saving themselves through evacuation. Assuming the JCS estimates to have been honestly arrived at, the A-bombings, which took about 200,000 lives in total, were the less bloody alternative, at least in retrospect.

Moreover, a Commander-In-Chief is supposed to hold his own nation’s interests above others, in particular above those of an enemy combatant. Were Truman to have made the opposite choice, American casualty totals for World War II would have doubled for that reason alone. Given that the elimination of Japanese militarism, which had committed gigantic atrocities wherever it ranged, could not be brought about by any other means than Japan’s unconditional surrender, Truman’s decision was morally more defensible than the alternative presented to him.

Add this as well: Even as Emperor Hirohito broadcast the surrender of Japan to the United States, troops loyal to Tojo and the militarists were storming the radio station in an attempt to prevent the broadcast. Tojo’s support was non-trivial even after the A-bombings. Kamikaze pilots were still targeting American warships. A Japanese submarine had succeeded in sinking the USS Indianapolis only days earlier. A substantial fraction of the Japanese people were prepared to fight to the death rather than surrender, at what ultimate cost in blood no one can say.

Viewed from that perspective, the A-bombings were the most moral, most humanitarian strokes possible at the time.

It became clear in the aftermath that the A-bomb, as terrifying as it was and is, remained a finite, even survivable weapon. Paul Nitze, in his analysis of the destruction involved, came to the conclusion that a saturation bombing by several thousand B-29 sorties would have had an equally devastating effect:

Nitze found the bomb’s physical effects surprisingly easy to gauge. Unlike [John] Hersey, he even discovered some cause for hope in the seemingly boundless wreckage and debris of the aftermath....The Survey’s unstated conclusion seemed to be that the destruction wrought by the atomic bomb, terrible as it might be, was still finite—and survivable. Nitze believed that he was able to measure the devastation exactly, in the process making the specter of the bomb comprehensible. Exclusive of radiation effects, the damage done to Hiroshima, he calculated, had been equivalent to that of conventional bombs carried by 150 B-29s. For Nagasaki his calculation was 210 bombers.
[Gregg Herken, Counsels of War]

But of even more striking significance was what Nitze discovered about the effect on Japanese attitudes:

To Nitze the greatest surprises in the Survey came with the measurement of the atomic bomb’s psychological effects. He discovered, for example, that civilian morale had not suffered an immediate collapse in the two cities after the bombs fell, despite the suddenness and near-totality of the destruction. The Survey noted how Nagasaki’s prefectural government the day after the bombing had called for “a rehabilitation of the stricken city and an aroused fighting spirit to exterminate the devilish Americans.” [Ibid.]

Apparently the effect on the government in Tokyo, a city that had suffered several saturation-bombing raids by B-29s and was essentially defenseless against them, was somewhat more pronounced.

The question will continue to be asked for the reasons given in the opening segment. They who are determined to invalidate the bombings morally will not rest, for their objection is essentially amoral. What they desire is to invalidate war itself, at least as practiced by the United States in pursuit of American goals. The specific weapons involved are ultimately of no consequence, except as they can be used to further the object of horrifying Americans into an unshakable pacifism.

But that the bombings were moral acts, performed under a sincere conviction that they were the best hope of compelling a Japanese surrender, there can no longer be any doubt.

UPDATE: Tom Kratman advises me that Napoleon III led the French forces at Sedan in 1870. (Apparently he was captured there.) That would make him the most recent case of a head of state leading his nation's forces onto the field of battle. However, I know of no others since 1814.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Quickies: A Multicausal Malady

This article has drawn considerable interest from the uncritical fans of ~~armed, uniformed bureaucrats~~ police:

     A sharp spike in the murder rates of Democrat-controlled cities across America is one of the consequences of the increased tension between police and black Americans; tension that has been stirred up by both the liberal media and by Democrat-aligned radical political activist group Black Lives Matter.
     As Baltimore announced it is embedding federal agents with its homicide unit after one of the highest murder rates in years, the Washington Post took note of the sharp increases in other cities like New Orleans and Atlanta:
     Some blame the increase in violence on the “Ferguson Effect” — officers pulling back on tough enforcement because of the intense focus on police-involved shootings like the one that killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last August.
     In neighborhoods where police have long been viewed with suspicion, people use their cellphones like all-seeing periscopes every time police officers get out of their cars. Officers and the unions that represent them describe a combination of surveillance and skepticism, with body cameras, ACLU recording apps and jeering wherever they go.

But while the correlation between anti-police activism and increasing murder rates is strong, note that all those Democrat-run cities also have:

Large black and Hispanic populations;
Large numbers of welfare dependents;
Extremely restrictive gun-control ordinances.

...which leads me to wonder whether a city that experienced significant anti-police activism but which is overwhelmingly white, or which knows little or no welfarism, or had simultaneously reduced restrictions on the public bearing of arms, would suffer a similar rash of homicides.

I know, I know: Where there are Democrats in power, there will be large “minority” communities, significant welfare dependence, and rigid anti-gun laws. All the same, it makes you think: Are the Democrats secretly in favor of high murder rates?

Try it out on your left-leaning friends.

The Most Awful Day

[This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on August 6, 2005. Today being the 101st -- yes, the 101st -- anniversary of the day I deem “most awful” in post-Industrial Revolution history, and a number of geopolitical trends having bent in the direction of large-scale replays thereof, I felt it appropriate to repost it. -- FWP]

On August 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it's your Curmudgeon's habit to reflect on the terrible decisions that led to that event, and to ponder whether any of them might have been made differently if their makers had had foreknowledge of the things that we of this time have experienced. He's done so before, and will probably do so again.

But not today.

Quite a number of commentators have characterized August 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay killed Hiroshima and 130,000 of its mostly civilian residents, as the most awful day in the history of the world: the day humanity exhibited both its ability and its willingness to annihilate itself in toto. It was an awful day, to be sure, but not for that reason. As of that day, we did not have the power to destroy ourselves that completely. Nor do we have it yet today, the dire mutterings of darker souls notwithstanding.

It was an awful day because, in the opinion of President Truman and his key advisors, the atomic bombing of a Japanese city was the least bad of the available tactical choices. Every other means by which they might force the Japanese to surrender had a higher total casualty figure attached. One, the amphibious invasion of the Japanese Home Islands by American troops, had been estimated to produce a million American deaths, to say nothing of how many Japanese would have died in the fighting.

There's no way to revisit that crucial moment in history and supply those decision makers with the foreknowledge of the next sixty years. Even if one could, there's no way to know whether it would have made a difference: in the decision they reached, or in the relative quality of the six decades since then. All one can say with certainty is that it was an awful day indeed, one we would certainly have averted if a less awful alternative had presented itself.

But what, then, was the most awful day? If Hiroshima doesn't take the trophy, what human atrocity could?

Opinions will vary, of course. Some will go by casualty figures; others by broader and more inclusive metrics. Some will argue that calamities other than wars ought to be included in our considerations; others will reply that Nature is indifferent to human concerns, and that only Man's inhumanities to Man should qualify for condemnation.

Your Curmudgeon's angle on the matter is, as you might expect, an unusual one.

The Biblical story of Genesis, which your Curmudgeon considers allegorical rather than a literal narration of Creation and the Fall of Man, speaks plainly yet powerfully of the deed of Cain: the archetypal murder propelled by that deadliest of sins, envy. Note that, by the Biblical account, the Fall was an accomplished fact. Man had already been exiled from Eden. Many an analyst would say that Cain's deed was therefore inevitable; once separated from Divine guidance, someone had to be the first to spill human blood. The use of Cain, the allegorical first child of a woman's loins, as the protagonist in the story merely emphasizes the immediacy of the peril in which Man had placed himself by the Fall.

That approach to the event has considerable substance. Once Man had been removed from the realm of the eternal and unchanging, all possible changes, both for good and for evil, impinged upon him. Murder was only the most dramatic.

Shall we look forward in time, then? He who considers the number of deaths to be the most important measure would look to the genocides of the century past, or to the deaths of millions in our mass wars. These were genuinely horrible, doubt it not. But to your Curmudgeon, comparing the heights of mounds of flesh tends to miss the point.

The history of Man's political and moral development records many fits and starts. Some of these are shrouded behind thick veils of time, such that we of 2005 cannot be certain how many persons, or which nations, were affected by them. But we can be reasonably certain about the Enlightenment and the moral revolution it ignited, for it remains with us today. Indeed, as our contest with the savageries of Islam should illustrate, Enlightenment concepts of rights and justice remain the most powerful and critical moral propositions known to our race.

The wars of pre-Enlightenment Europe were as savage as anything of any other time, our own included. Armed men regularly targeted and slew the unarmed when it suited them to do so. What differed was the technology available. To deal death, one had to employ personal skill and exert muscle power, which limited the amount of carnage a single man or a single army could wreak. But there can be little doubt that, had the weapons of now been available to the warriors of then, they would have used them without scruple. The moral level of the time was too low to expect otherwise.

With Enlightenment moral philosophy and the associated political concepts came a great change in warfare: the conviction that the destruction of war ought to be limited solely to those who elected to participate. As those concepts permeated the nations of the West, many of the ancient practices of war -- enslavement, rapine, looting, the slaughter of non-combatants, the use of non-conbatants as cover or "human shields" -- were put under the cloak of the forbidden, to be scorned by decent warriors and punished by them as they were discovered.

The West saw two centuries of steady improvement in the moral constraints on warfare. Battles came to be ever more regular, ever better confined to a designated, delimited field of conflict. Many battles were actually scheduled; meeting places and times were agreed upon beforehand between the contending forces. Statesmen and thinkers looked forward to a time when death itself might be banished from the battlefield, as an obsolete practice irrelevant to true contests of strength and virtue between the governments of civilized lands.

Until one terrible day in August.

A government with evil intentions had sent two million men marching on a mission of conquest. Its liege lord and top military planners were angry at the stubbornness of a minor power, neutral by treaty, that refused those armies free passage through its lands. The conquest-minded state decided on a strategy of intimidation. An aircraft long kept in reserve was sent aloft on a mission of terror, the first since Hume, Smith, and Locke put their stamp on the moral renaissance of the world.

The aircraft was a Zeppelin, designated the "L-Z" by the commanders of the armies of the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Its weapons were gravity bombs, thirteen in number. Its target was the Belgian city of Liege, where the Kaiser's troops had met unexpected resistance to their Schlieffen Plan thrust against France. Its harvest was nine civilian lives: the first civilians deliberately killed by authorized military action in the Twentieth Century.

The date was August 6, 1914.

That, to your Curmudgeon's way of thinking, was the most awful day. The day a major Western power, nominally committed to individual rights, the rule of law, and the norms of civilized warfare, threw all of that aside in hope of imposing its will on the government of another land. The day the line between combatants and civilians was erased.

That line has not yet been redrawn. Perhaps it never will be.

No material advantage can compensate for the sacrifice of a principle. An inflexible, inviolable principle is a safeguard against villainy, a shield behind which ordinary man untouched by the irrationalities and passions of others can conduct peaceable lives in whatever degree of comfort they can contrive. But once a principle has been violated, it protects no one. Often the first violator is ultimately saddest of all over its loss.

We stand ninety-one years down the river of time from that most awful day. America, braced by its unmatched military power and technology, has regained its grasp on the principles of civilized warfare, but the forces we face have no interest in the notion. It would be a high irony if, having clambered so painfully from the pit of Hell Mankind excavated with the mass slaughters of the century past, we should once again unlearn all virtue under the tutelage of our Islamic foes. It would be an irony to defeat all others if the lesson should eventuate in their complete effacement from the Earth.