Liberty's Torch

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

The Five Stages

It occurred to me a little earlier that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s template for how we deal with grief and loss, which she first applied to the recognition of impending death, can be applied to just about any impending calamity. Here’s an example:

Denial: No, no! It’s not Monday morning yet. It’s still Sunday night!
Anger: Damn it all, I’m not finished with my weekend – neither the fun nor the chores.
Bargaining: Hey, God? If you’ll excuse me from Monday just this once...
Depression: (pulls covers over head, waits for Monday to go away...)
Acceptance: (gets out of bed and heads to shower.)

No, it doesn’t do any good. Why else would I have retired so young?

I’m becoming a major fan of Bre Faucheux. As you can see, her website is in the blogroll. I exhort my Gentle Readers to visit and sample her lively op-ed writing. If it pleases you, try her YouTube channel as well. An observation in one of her recent emissions struck a particular chord:

I’ve been accused of “spreading hate” or “inciting hate” countless times since I became red pilled.

To paraphrase George Carlin, It's a big club, and we're both in it. Maybe you are, too.

The Left -- in this specific case, its globalist / egalitarian segment -- has lost the battle of ideas. Therefore, to hold what it has gained (to say nothing of making further gains), it must somehow invalidate its opposition. The only available tactic, given that it cannot use reason or evidence, is slander: the delegitimization of the opponent.

The terrible thing about this tactic is its effectiveness, even when it’s used on persons who know it for what it is. The members of the Left’s “compact and unified church” may not know much, but they can recognize a successful political tactic.

While we’re on the subject of “spreading hate,” Doug Ross has a citation for us:

     An Art Institute of Washington professor recently declared that House Republicans “should be lined up and shot” for their passage of an Obamacare-replacement bill.
     “They should be lined up and shot,” Professor John Griffin posted to his Facebook, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by Campus Reform, even clarifying that he wasn’t being hyperbolic, saying “that’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.” In another post made just two minutes after his initial comments, Griffin blasted Republican lawmakers as “a f***ing joke,” then turning his attention to their voters, whom he insulted as running “the gamut from monstrous to ignorant...”
     Campus Reform reached out to the Art Institute of Washington for comment on Griffin’s claims, though multiple inquiries went unanswered.

Actually, “spreading hate” is too weak a characterization: this Griffin villain is encouraging lethal violence in the name of a difference of political opinion. As Doug’s headline asks us, “Who are the fascists again?”

We need the reminder desperately, for a reason that’s all too often overlooked: the Left’s “two-step.” On the one hand, we have vicious, evil men such as John Griffin making vicious, evil statements from the pinnacle of the “intellectual structure of production.” On the other, we have Democrat legislators in a Congressional minority, unwilling to give on anything, who excoriate Republicans and conservatives for “not negotiating.” Compare this to the behavior of the Palestinian irredentists vis a vis Israel. Draw the appropriate conclusions. Show your work and sign at the bottom.

Dystopic is on fire once again, this time about “universal health care:”

     Some folks are old enough to remember when healthcare was much more reasonably priced, when most common injuries and illnesses were relatively inexpensive to treat. Oh sure, things like cancer were still very expensive to deal with, but if you broke a leg or got bronchitis, it was cheap enough that even the poor could generally find a way to pay for it, perhaps with some assistance from charities and pro bono work.
     These days, even a broken leg will typically cost around $2,500 at a minimum. Much more, if you use the emergency room. Strange, that it costs so much, or that healthcare cost increases have outpaced inflation for as long as I’ve been alive.
     You see this in another industry, these days. Post-secondary education. Yes. College tuition and fees have exploded in cost over the last few decades. In fact, it is one of the few industries where the cost increases have outpaced healthcare.
     Note, too, the drive to make college free for everybody. Universal Education. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Lay particular emphasis on the last sentence above. It’s immensely and ironically important, and not just for the Gramscian aspect. The irony here is that a great mind, libertarian sociologist Charles Murray, stumbled into this quagmire in the first of his important books: Losing Ground.

Some errors are so seductive that even geniuses make them -- often without even noticing how the sadder-but-wiser ordinary men around them, their wounds still fresh from their follies, are shrieking "Come back! Don't go any farther!" as they march into madness.

It doesn’t take long before a government intrusion into some activity – the initial stage is regulation, more often than not – is followed by subsidies or price controls. Shortly thereafter, the government makes the use of whatever it’s just ruined compulsory. But hey! It’s universal. That’s good, isn’t it?

But the men back at the squadron never even saw any of the bananas, for it was a seller’s market for bananas in Istanbul, and a buyer’s market in Beirut for the caraway seeds Milo rushed with to Bengasi after selling the bananas, and when they raced back into Pianosa breathlessly six days later at the conclusion of Orr’s rest leave, it was with a load of best white eggs from Sicily that Milo said were from Egypt and sold to his mess halls for only four cents apiece so that all the commanding officers in his syndicate would implore him to speed right back to Cairo for more bunches of green red bananas to sell in Turkey for the caraway seeds in demand in Bengasi. And everybody had a share. [Joseph Heller, Catch-22.]

I seldom comment on foreign policy, not because I lack an interest, but because most of my knowledge about such things is about the strategies and tactics of warfare. Then again, (bad) foreign policy is the usual reason for warfare, so perhaps I should spend some time on it. For those who have an interest in the Middle Eastern mess currently in its umpteenth act, ponder well these observations from Great Satan’s Girlfriend:

One of the most problematic aspects of the war against the Islamic State has been the role of Turkey. On the one hand, diplomats see Turkey as a cornerstone of any diplomatic strategy to counter the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
On the other hand, Turkey—or, at least, elements within the state—appear to back the Islamic State. Indeed, one of the prevailing theories with regard to Turkey’s recent ban on Wikipedia has been because entries informed by Wikileaks explore financial links between Turkey’s leadership and the Islamic State.

Turkey, you may recall, is a member of NATO, and therefore a nominal ally of the United States. Yet Turkey has conducted major operations against the very forces most important in fighting ISIS: the Kurds. Their rationale? “The Kurds are terrorists.”

In point of fact, the Kurds are an oppressed minority within Turkey, just as they were in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Turkish regime would like to see them exterminated. As Turkey has a history of conducting genocides against inconvenient minorities, and is unapologetic about it, the parallel is unavoidable.

Where is the American response to this flagrant brutality by a supposed “ally” against our embattled coalition partner? Does our State Department fear to injure Turkish feelings? Or is the “harmony” of the Atlantic Alliance – as useful as the tits on a bull since 1949 – a more important consideration than preserving the lives and fighting power of the most important element of the coalition against ISIS?

Given that Turkey is about to go full Islamist, the portents, barring swift and decisive American action, are bleak indeed.

I have little admiration for Nick Gillespie, whom I regard as an important reason Reason has gone so far downhill, but now and then he makes an important connection, even if ineptly stated. In a recent tweet, he said:

France is becoming a Third World country because of economic policies instituted by the graduates of its finest schools, not Arabs.

In reply to which an anonymous self-absorbed moron whom I will not name or link wrote thus:

Now, does Nick Gillespie really think altering tax policy will magically transform low-IQ, inbred Muslims from the Maghreb into patriotic French republicans who work at Parisian software shops? It’s tempting to say it is just another pose, but the evidence is piling up in favor of the argument that Nick Gillespie is a stupid person. Anyone who truly believes altering tax policy will reverse a thousand generations of evolution is an idiot.

There’s just one problem with this, moron: You’re the stupid one. Or at least the shortsighted one, which is a symptom of a pervasive stupidity.

Yes, France is being transformed into a Third World country. The most visible component of its decline is its imported Arab Muslim population: unassimilable, querulous, and violent. But why did the masters of France decide to admit those millions of Muslims? Because economic policies they could not renounce without losing face (and possibly provoking a revolt) had caused native Frenchmen to work less and to stop reproducing. Those Muslim imports are substitutes for French workers who don’t work and for children the French are not having.

No, it hasn’t worked. But note that the French have stubbornly clung to their cradle-to-grave welfare state with its abbreviated work week, its laws that protect labor from penalty for anything short of murdering the boss, its retirement at 60, its generous public pensions, and the consequent lack of interest among the French, who continue to suffer double-digit employment that’s worst among young adults, in producing more Frenchmen. And politicians who see their subjects waning in number will naturally look for replacements.

No, “altering tax policy” won’t turn those millions of Muslims into patriotic, assimilated Frenchmen. But the economic lunacies of ultra-welfarist France are why they were allowed into France in the first place. Gillespie, though his statement was badly constructed and is easily misinterpreted, has touched the core of it. The contemptuous moron who derides him also wants to “kill all the libertarians,” in case you were wondering.

That’s all for today. Fiction, laundry, and lawn maintenance beckon. (Long Island has had so much rain lately that I’ve been mowing every three or four hours.) But one final announcement, for those who’ve been wondering: No, I didn’t buy it.

Have a nice day.

Great headlines.

Citing Lack of Evidence, Experts Only 95 Percent Sure Putin Hacked France's Election

Russia Insider. 5/9/17.

Do satirists never sleep?

Chicago police issued a bulletin Monday warning its officers about gangs armed with high-powered weapons, after three people were shot to death over the weekend - including two attending a memorial for the earlier victim.

"Chicago Gangs Turn To "Armor-Piercing Rifles" In Police Ambush." By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, 5/9/17.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Debts

How does a man incur a debt? Don’t answer quickly; think about it. Try to adopt a broad view: one that addresses debts of many kinds. Give the question some time to interact with common notions about responsibility and justice. Try to formulate your answer in a fashion that pre-answers the next question:

How does a man discharge a debt, once he’s incurred it?

Yes, yes, your Curmudgeon’s marble is rollin’ down that ol’ metaphysical-deontological groove again. Hopefully you’ll regard the journey as worthwhile.

Herschel Smith at Captain’s Journal has something to say about it, in the context for which he’s best known: the right to keep and bear arms:

I oppose the modern concept of incarceration, as well as the notion and phrase that any man has a “debt to society” that must be paid. No man has a debt to society. If he has stolen he has a debt to the victim. If he murders, rapes [or] kidnaps, he should be put to death.

Please read the entire article for the all-important stimulative events and their consequences. If you’re a gun-rights absolutist – for the record, I am – you’ll immediately sympathize with protagonist Brian Bridges. But seeing the connection between Bridges’ plaint and Herschel’s statement above is likely to take a bit more thought.

Among the shibboleth phrases of contemporary “justice,” “debt to society” is critically important, for what it implies as well as what it says openly. Its import is comparable to that of another detestable phrase, “compelling government interest.” The general acceptance of the implied notion has made it possible for governments everywhere to replace the clear and simple idea of justice with something that more closely approximates slavery.

I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that the above is a bit of hyperbole. You might see matters differently by the end of this tirade.

I dedicated yesterday to Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” Today’s foray into absolutes will address the nature of justice, and the techniques power-mongers have employed to rob us of it.

A passage from Isaac Asimov’s early novel The Caves Of Steel has much point:

     “...I am a robotics expert, and I assure you that the essence of the robot mind lies in a completely literal interpretation of the Universe. It recognizes no spirit in the First Law, only the letter. The simple models you have on Earth may be incapable of threatening a human. An advanced model such as R. Daneel is another matter. If I gather the situation correctly, Daneel’s threat was necessary to prevent a riot. It was intended then to prevent harm to human beings. He was obeying the First Law, not defying it.”
     Baley squirmed inwardly, but maintained a tight external calm. Hard as it would be, he would match this Spacer at his own game.
     He said, “You may counter each point separately, but they add up just the same. Last evening, in our discussion of the so-called murder, this alleged robot claimed that he had been converted into a detective by the installation of a new drive into his positronic circuits. A drive for justice.”
     “I’ll vouch for that,” said Fastolfe. “It was done to him three days ago under my own supervision.”
     “A drive for justice? Justice, Dr. Fastolfe, is an abstraction. Only a human being can use the term.”
     “If you define ‘justice’ in such a way that it is an abstraction, if you say that it is the rendering of each man his due, that it is adhering to the right, or anything of the sort, I grant you your argument, Mr. Baley. A human understanding of abstractions cannot as yet be built into a positronic brain.”
     “You admit that, then — as an expert in robotics?”
     “Certainly. The question is, what did R. Daneel mean by using the term ‘justice?’”
     “From the context of our conversation, he meant what you and I and any human being would mean, but what no robot could mean.”
     “Why don’t you ask him to define the term?”
     Baley turned to R. Daneel.
     “What is your definition of justice?”
     "Justice is that which exists when all laws are enforced.”      Fastolfe nodded. “A good definition for a robot, Mr. Baley. Justice is a very concrete term to him since it is based on law enforcement, which is in turn based upon the existence of specific and definite laws. There is nothing abstract about it. A human being can recognize the fact that, on the basis of an abstract moral code, some laws may be bad ones and their enforcement unjust. What do you say, R. Daneel?”
     “An unjust law,” said R. Daneel, “is a contradiction in terms.”
     “To a robot it is, Mr. Baley. As you can see, you mustn’t confuse your justice and R. Daneel’s.”

This passage, from a writer whose political premises and demands were far distant from mine, is so penetrating that it should stand alone before the next coffee-refill break. And so it shall.

If Asimov is correct, and justice is an abstraction based upon another abstraction – a moral code shared by many, if not most of Mankind – then how could we arrive at the notion of a “debt to society?” What aspect of our moral code – informally speaking, the conception of rights and responsibilities that were first articulated recognizably by the Enlightenment philosophers – delineates how an individual could incur such a debt?

To cut directly to the chase, the thing is impossible. It fails on two grounds at the very least:

Justice is bound to the protection of rights, which are the properties of individuals;
“Society” is a mirage, for it has no persistent identity that can be injured.

I have absolutely no doubt that some Gentle Readers are recoiling from the above. Take your time over it. There’s more and worse to follow.

The notion of a “debt to society” came about through the exploitation of horror at a badly abused practice of olden days – debtors’ prisons – and the passage of laws that forbade “crimes” that have no victims. One such crime – prostitution – makes a good case study.

Prostitution, as Michael Emerling once replied to a questioner, is merely the combination of free enterprise with sex. That it should be considered criminal is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back less than two centuries. Yet the great majority of Westerners would reflexively say that it should be illegal, though they’d differ as to why.

Once an act is declared illegal, those who perpetrate it incur the possibilities of pursuit, indictment, trial, conviction, and a consequence normally called “punishment.” What’s the point of that process? There must be one, since it involves labor and costs that are often quite substantial. So why do “we” do it?

To establish justice;
To deter others who might be tempted to break the applicable law;
?

We’ll get back to the matter of justice. The desirability of deterrence flows from the evaluation of the act as “unjust.” But is there a third reason? Fill it in if you can, Gentle Reader; I can’t.

(A useful tangent: At least one federal law of current interest, the law against entering the United States without prior authorization or exception, is “punished” solely by deportation, as long as the illegal entrant has violated no other law. But why?)

As for the “injustice” committed by one who violates a law against prostitution, where is it? If justice is about the maintenance, protection, and restoration of individuals’ rights, what right is affected to any degree whatsoever by Smith’s desire for sex and willingness to pay for it, coupled (pardon the pun) to Jones’s willingness to provide sex for some monetary compensation?

For most of human history, no such violation could be found. The proscription of prostitution was a religious matter, not a legal one. Only in the most recent centuries has it been regarded otherwise...usually under the rationalization that “society’s” norms of “decency” had been “harmed.”

Hearken to a great mind of the Twentieth Century, Frank Chodorov, on the nature of “society:”

[Society] is not an extra “person”; if the census totals a hundred million, that’s all there are, not one more, for there cannot be any accretion to Society except by procreation. The concept of Society as a metaphysical person falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse; as in the case of a “ghost town” or of a civilization we learn about by the artifacts they left behind. When the individuals disappear so does the whole. The whole has no separate existence.

If “society” is a phantasm as Chodorov maintains, then there’s no way to incur a debt to it. All debts must be owed to particular individuals or organizations made up of such individuals. Moreover, one can only incur such a debt in a sharply limited number of ways:

A purchase coupled to a deferred payment;
Voluntary agreement to lend and to borrow;
An injury done by one to the other.

However, the phantasm is quite useful to those who want power over others. They can usurp the debt owed to the victim of a crime by calling it a “debt to society,” thereby justifying the exclusion of the victim from compensatory consideration. They can create mala prohibita – crimes that are crimes merely because the State says so – and use them to mulct both the “criminal” and the taxpayer. And of course – and this might be the most important consideration of all – they can take us for a ride on Ferris’s wheel:

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against – then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can be neither observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.” [From Atlas Shrugged]

To sum up: Herschel’s main representation is absolutely correct. The appropriate penalty for non-property crimes with an identifiable victim is a separate consideration, albeit a worthy one. But above all else, if we’re ever to make sense of “law” and “justice,” we must rid ourselves of the absurd notion that a man can “owe” anything to a collective hallucination that lacks identity, persistence, and the ability ever to repay a debt that it owes to those who endure it. Verbum sat sapienti.

American idol.

As a Nation of Islam heavyweight, boxing legend Muhammad Ali referred to Caucasians as “white devils” and “crackers” and told mosque worshipers that “black women have the best sons and daughters in the world,” according to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records obtained by Judicial Watch. Known as Cassius Clay before converting to Islam, Ali also said “programs of integration are useless,” that blacks want separation not integration and that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “swindle.” The three-time heavyweight champion also told Muslims during a mosque delivery that “the so-called Negro is the original man and is superior to the white devil” and that he’d rather be with his own people than “blue-eyed devil white people.”

"'White Devils'—FBI Records Show Muhammad Ali’s Racist Mosque Tirades as Family Uses his Fame to End Racial, Religious Profiling." Judicial Watch, 5/2/17.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

What Is Truth? A Kinda-Sorta Ruminaton

Sunday is a special day for any Catholic, as anyone conversant with Catholic practices will know. Yes, we’re supposed to attend Mass, but the significance of the day doesn’t end there...even if many Catholics follow their Mass observance with entirely secular pursuits.

Sunday is a day well suited to reflecting on what the late Russell Kirk called “the permanent things:” that which stands apart from human manipulation, perception, and opinion. Henry Grady Weaver laid a delicate but definite emphasis on this role for the day in his 1953 book The Mainspring of Human Progress. It’s a concept long overdue for resuscitation, no matter what the panjandrums of the National Football League might have to say about it.

I spend a fair fraction of each Sunday on “the permanent things.” Prominent among them are the great questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and heuristics. The title of this piece is one of them, perhaps the most important of all. That it should have been asked most memorably by the man who sentenced Jesus of Nazareth to death is singularly appropriate.

During my years in academia, I came in contact with some remarkable minds. One of those was astrophysicist Steven Strom, a uniquely capable educator with a delightful sense of humor. One of the points he made in the course of his lectures on the properties of the Sun was that a useful mathematical analysis of its surface must treat it as flat. A student asked him, somewhat sarcastically, “But it’s not flat, is it?” To which Professor Strom replied “Oh, it is...except at the edges.”

Yes, it got a good laugh, but there was an important point buried in it as well:

There’s a difference between fact and truth.

That difference makes all the difference in any attempt by men to grapple with the cause of some observable phenomenon. A fact is an element of objective reality, indifferent to our preferences and opinions. Truth, by contrast, is a listener’s evaluation of some statement about reality: specifically, that the statement conforms to his perceptions and convictions about reality.

Facts are the Holy Grail of all sincere quests for knowledge. However, we can never know them to an absolute degree of precision – i.e., with a zero margin for error. We must make do with measurements determined by instruments with a known degree of imprecision. Whether we accept those measurements is our verdict upon their “truth.”

Truth, like meaning, is a matter subject to interpretation.

One of the most pernicious developments of the past few decades is the oft-heard statement that “truth is relative.” This is actually a palmed card: he who maintains it usually seeks to invalidate the perceptions and inferences of an opponent. What he wants to say (but can’t quite) is that the facts of some subject are a matter of opinion: a statement any five year old could refute without ever having heard of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

In the determination to know the facts as precisely as possible lies the critical distinction between destructive and constructive varieties of skepticism. The destructive skeptic, calloused against all representations of this or that as “truth,” descends toward nihilism: the position that nothing can “really” be known. The constructive skeptic, wary of the limits on his own perceptions and intelligence, pokes mercilessly at every generalization, seeking qualifications, exceptions, and most important of all its domain of proper application. While dubious about the notion of absolute truth, he remains faithful to the concept of sufficient truths, which possess useful properties applicable to particular circumstances.

Thomas Sowell, in The Vision of the Anointed, presents a striking and important illustration:

Despite attempts to dismiss unpalatable conclusions on the grounds that they are “oversimplified,” nothing is oversimplified unless it is wrong—and wrong specifically for the purpose at hand. The ancient Ptolemaic conception of the universe has long since been rejected in favor of the more sophisticated Copernican system, but the Ptolemaic system continues to be used by modern astronomers to compute the times and durations of eclipses—and it does so with accuracy down to fractions of a second. the points on which the Ptolemaic system is wrong simply do not affect these kinds of calculations. Since its assumptions are simpler than those of the Copernican system, it is easier to use for calculation, without sacrificing accuracy. For other purposes, such as sending a spacecraft to Mars or Venus, the Ptolemaic conception of the universe must give way to the Copernican conception—because the latter gives more accurate information for that purpose.

In Sowell’s observation lies the seed from which all sincere quests for truth, for whatever purpose, must sprout: All assertions of knowledge must be confirmed by repeated successful predictions, within a previously established margin of error. Only such assertions can lay a just claim to the title of “sufficiently true.”

In the light of the above, let’s examine one of the most contentious of all issues in social policy: that of the necessity, size, and scope of the welfare state.

A liberal would say that:

The welfare state is necessary, because otherwise people would starve in the streets.
There is no upper bound on its size, for there is no limit to how many persons might be in need.
Rather than have it ignore one truly needy person, we must be willing to accept that the not-truly-needy will sometimes be served by it.

A conservative will normally dismiss those claims as the “simplistic” emissions of a “bleeding heart.” In contrast, he would say that:

Human need can and should be addressed by private action.
If there is to be a welfare system, it must be restricted to providing the necessities of life to the truly needy.
Therefore, a welfare system must incorporate a test for true need: if he is not physically or mentally incapable, or otherwise helpless before events, the mendicant must be required to work for his benefits.

These propositions, the liberal will dismiss as “uncompassionate,” or perhaps “heartless.”

Full disclosure: I lean heavily toward the conservative position. Yet I must allow that with certain provisos, both sets of propositions are sufficiently true:

Both private and governmental action, however well intentioned and thorough, will irrationally include some unworthy and exclude some worthy persons. Of these, the latter will get more attention, for no civilized society will tolerate a significant number of deaths by starvation or exposure.
There will always be a gray zone around the concepts of “necessities” and “the truly needy.”
Work imposed as a requirement for the receipt of welfare benefits tends either to be pointless “makework,” or to have undesirable effects upon those who practice that occupation for their daily bread.

Moreover, the focus of charitably inclined citizen Smith, whether he inclines toward private or public action, should not be limited to the relief of “need,” however defined. He must be aware of “moral hazards” and the great desirability of preventing need before it arises – the conservative argument against government interference in the economy, particularly the labor market. While it’s admirable to jump into the river to rescue those being helplessly propelled toward the falls, if it should be determined that someone upstream is throwing people in, Smith should give some thought (at least) to stopping him.

There are several tests of a claim of truth by an advocate for some cause:

“Have you confirmed this by experiment?”
“What are the required initial conditions?”
“How long must you wait for the results?”
“Have others replicated those results?”
“What’s the margin for error?”

These are questions the dogmatist refuses to face. He has “the truth,” and he won’t brook any quibbling from you. We see here also the reason that religious propositions – i.e., propositions that can neither be verified nor falsified – must always be matters of individual conscience. There’s no experiment that could possibly apply to them. In the absence of experiment, all that remains is faith: a personal decision to believe or disbelieve, either of which is intellectually defensible, neither of which can be justly imposed on another.

The relativist, though his focus differs from that of the dogmatist, is just as pernicious. He’ll dismiss claims that have been adequately confirmed as “your truth.” Often he’ll do that tactically, as a way of maintaining his convictions in the face of adverse evidence. Consider in this light the absolute predictability of declines in employment when a legally mandated minimum wage is introduced or increased. Liberals have denied that multiply confirmed, never contradicted observation for decades. On the other side of the ledger, many conservatives remain intransigent about the War on Drugs despite the observed fact that supply will always rise to meet demand, so contrary legislation can only create outlaws and enrich organized crime.

All the above having been said, it is inherent in human psychology that we should wish to know absolutely about those matters of greatest importance to us. We seek “truth” almost as ardently as food and water. Those “truths” we embrace become foundation stones for our lives. Many have maintained such convictions at the price of their lives, as the roster of men martyred for their faiths will attest.

Nevertheless, the possession of absolute truth, absolutely reliable in all circumstances and beyond the possibility of contradiction, is denied to us. This is one of the drivers of Man’s search for a standard above human frailty and imprecision. However, if such a standard exists, it must necessarily lie beyond the limits imposed by human nature.

In this we glimpse the desirability of faith. More, we confront the immense importance of finding the discriminants that distinguish acceptable faiths, which provide hope and comfort to the adherent without inflicting injury on the non-adherent, from unacceptable faiths, which seek the subjugation or extinction of those who disagree.

God sees the truth, but waits. – Leo Tolstoy

Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.
As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. [John 8:28-32]

May God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Add Title Later

I’ve been at this blogging stuff for more than twenty years now, and there are days I ask myself why I keep doing it. My op-ed readership is very modest – I have a lot more fiction readers, if you can believe that – and my influence over others’ opinions is negligible. The effort involved in keeping up with developments and composing serious commentary about them is most definitely not negligible. I certainly have enough alternative uses for the time required. So why not kick back, pour out fiction that actually brings in some revenue, and let younger, more energetic types such as Bookworm, Dystopic, and Sarah Hoyt do the heavy lifting?

The articles linked above provide three excellent illustrations. Each of them bears part of the credit / odium for my presence at the keyboard at this moment. Writers and thinkers inspire one another. Indeed, we need one another, even when we disagree. The lone, “Plato’s cave” type gets very little done; he’s too busy contemplating the pattern made by the lint in his navel.

If you have the time and the inclination, ponder Aristotle’s conception of encomium as a species of epideictic rhetoric in light of the above. If you lack either of those things, feel free to do something more productive.

I have readers who refuse to believe that I have no idea what I’m going to write about when I first set my fingers to the keys. They look at something like this essay, or this brief story, and say “No way! He had to have planned that out beforehand. He probably outlined it two or three different ways!” Actually, those pieces, and the great majority of the other helpings of drivel I’ve posted here, were spontaneous. I can’t write any other way. Yes, that includes fiction.

Just yesterday I encountered an interesting exception. You’ve seen the teasers about Innocents, the novel I’m currently writing. For a few days I was as stuck about how to continue it as I’ve ever been over a piece of fiction. I was trying very hard not to think about it, in the hope that some time away from the story would grant me new insight into how the Marquee characters would proceed from a climactic event – an event I promise you, Gentle Reader, will shock you to the core. It wasn’t working: the time away from the tale had merely made me more reluctant to keep hacking at it.

Then I had a brain flash: the spontaneous recollection of a writers’ maxim I’d encountered at some point in the distant past. I remembered chuckling over it at the time. It struck me as typical of the sort of “formula writing” I tend to decry as cliched – a fictioneer’s variety of cheating, akin to the deus ex machina ending.

Then I used it. And it freed me. It provided a convulsive, even explosive relief from my writerly constipation. I was able to proceed with the meat of the tale confidently, even joyously – and how much more can anyone ask of a fictional technique?

No, I’m not going to tell you what “cliched technique” I employed just yet. I’m still chuckling to myself about having used it to such liberating effect. Maybe I’ll let on at the end of this ramble. Be patient.

Any number of writers have discoursed about the “happiness problem:” specifically, why we humans, who seek happiness as “an end in itself and for no other reason,” have such a hard time getting to it and then hanging on to it when we finally do. Surely an organism that has such an innate need should have the insights and powers required to satisfy that need. Otherwise, it would constitute a failure – an evolutionary dead end. It would shortly be superseded by organisms with a better chance of success, however that elusive concept might be defined.

Maybe it’s because we’re so easily lured.

There are innumerable persons, forces, and institutions dedicated to persuading us to equate happiness with things: i.e., that this, that, or the other thing, once acquired, will make us happy. Some of them are pretty good at it. However, the root of the thing lies in our persuadability: our tendency to be enthralled by “visions of sugarplums:” seductive images and their associated implications. That those implications can all be traced back to a false premise eludes most Americans – and as P. J. O’Rourke has observed, “America is the Happy Kingdom.” No other nation has ever been founded upon the notion that We the People have an inalienable right to pursue happiness. Never mind that the actual capture isn’t guaranteed.

(An aside: It’s been reported by several opinion surveyors that according to their surveys, happy people have more sex. But which way does the causal arrow point? Are you sure?)

Add to this that there are persons who have sustained a peculiar sort of damage. I’m unsure what categorization would apply; it consists of an inability to take command of their own lives and circumstances, and for the responsibility for what flows from the choices they make. In a sense, they reject cause and effect, at least as it applies to their own decisions and actions. Many such persons blame something or someone else for their misery. In this connection, have a little C. S. Lewis:

     “Studdock,” said Dimble, “this is not a time for foolery, or compliments. It may be that both of us are within a few minutes of death. You have probably been shadowed into the college. And I, at any rate, don't propose to die with polite insincerities in my mouth. I don't trust you. Why should I? You are (at least in some degree) the accomplice of the worst men in the world. Your very coming to me this afternoon may be a trap.”
     “Don't you know me better than that?” said Mark.
     “Stop talking nonsense!” said Dimble. “Stop posturing and acting, if only for a minute. They have corrupted better men than you or me before now. Straik was a good man once. Filostrato was at least a genius. Even Alcasan—yes, yes, I know who your Head is—was a plain murderer: something better than they have now made of him. Who are you to be exempt?”
     Mark gaped.
     “Nevertheless,” continued Dimble, “knowing this—knowing that you may be only bait in the trap—I will take a risk. I will risk things compared with which both our lives are a triviality. If you seriously wish to leave the N.I.C.E., I will help you.”
     One moment it was like the gates of Paradise opening——then, at once, caution and the incurable wish to temporise rushed back. The chink had closed.      “I—I'd need to think that over,” he mumbled. “It's a question affecting my whole future career.”
     “Your career!” said Dimble. “It's a question of damnation or—a last chance. But you must come at once.”
     “I don't think I understand,” said Mark. “You keep on suggesting some kind of danger. What is it? And what powers have you to protect me—or Jane—if I do bolt?”
     “I can offer you no security. There is no security for anyone now. I'm offering you a place on the right side. I don't know which will win.”
     “As a matter of fact,” said Mark, “I had been thinking of leaving. But I must think it over. Supposing I look you up again tomorrow?”
     “Do you know that you'll be able?”
     “Or in an hour? Come, that's only sensible. Will you be here in an hour's time?”
     “What can an hour do for you? You are only waiting in the hope that your mind will be less clear.”
     “But will you be here?”
     “If you insist. But no good can come of it.”
     “I want to think. I want to think,” said Mark, and left the room without waiting for a reply.
     Mark had said he wanted to think: in reality he wanted alcohol and tobacco. And he wanted Jane, and he wanted to punish Jane for being a friend of Dimble, and he wanted never to see Wither again, and he wanted to creep back and patch things up with Wither somehow. He wanted to be admired for manly honesty among the Dimbles and also for realism and knowingness at Belbury. Damn the whole thing! Why had he such a rotten heredity? Why had his education been so ineffective? Why was the system of society so irrational? Why was his luck so bad?
     It was raining as he reached the College lodge. Some sort of van seemed to be standing in the street outside, and there were three or four uniformed men in capes.
     “Excuse me, sir,” said one of the men. “I must ask for your name.”
     “Studdock,” said Mark.
     “Mark Gainsby Studdock,” said the man, “it is my duty to arrest you for the murder of William Hingest.”

I have several reasons for regarding That Hideous Strength as one of the most important works of fiction ever written. The above passage is only one of them.

That’s about it for this damp, rather dreary Saturday morning on eastern Long Island. I might be back a bit later with something more...conventional, but I plan to put the bulk of the day to fiction and a few household necessities. As for the rest of you, I recommend:

Watch and read as little news as possible; remember Heinlein’s Neurosis Dictum.
Ignore the calorie counts for a change; have a Snickers for breakfast and wash it down with a pina colada.
Read something light and frothy; maybe this little romance would qualify.
And above all other considerations, never whistle while you’re pissing. You might...miss!

Have a nice day.

PS: The mysterious fictional technique I used to break my logjam is one I encountered in one of Lawrence Block’s books on writing: When the action starts to flag, bring on a man with a gun. It worked rather nicely. Try it!

Friday, May 5, 2017

The Conservation Laws

[A little fiction for this morning: a short cautionary tale about one of the undiscussed dangers of our age. – FWP]

     Smith was certain of many things. His sanity wasn’t one of them.
     He was beginning to think he’d stepped across a border between parallel universes. The people around him were almost entirely unacquainted with persons and things he remembered with perfect clarity. Now and then he’d encounter someone who remembered some detail from what he remembered. But even when they agreed that some once-prominent figure had existed, or some event of significance had occurred, the match between his memory and the other's was never complete. Not even with Brenda, his wife of twenty years. Yet she had been with him, equally a witness to many events that he recalled...and she did not.
     It was beginning to worry him.
     “Sanity is not about how many people agree with me,” he would mutter to himself. He did so often. Yet as the discrepancies mounted it had ever less effect. How could he, one man on a world of teeming billions, be the only person whose recollection of the past was complete and accurate? Wasn’t it much more likely that he’d imagined it all? That the world of people and events he thought he remembered was other than the one in which he stood?
     That nagging little idea—that it was his memory, not those of others, that was faulty—seeped ever more deeply into his consciousness. Over time it became dominant. Nevertheless, he struggled to resist it. He spoke of it to no one.
     Until one night at the neighborhood bar.

     “President who?”
     Jones was peering at him as if he’d announced himself to be a Martian. Smith breathed deeply, slowly and silently counted to ten, and produced a pleasant smile.
     “Andrew Purcell,” he replied. “The one before Coleman. Served two full terms, retired to obscurity in Nebraska, died just two years ago. You don’t remember him?”
     Jones squinted as if he’d tasted something unpleasant and was straining to swallow it. “No, not at all. Just that somebody...wait a minute.” He set his beer stein down on the gleaming cherrywood bar.
“Who’s Coleman?”
     They were the words Smith most feared to hear. He knew better than to deepen the mnemonic gulf. He shrugged, said “Nobody important,” and sipped at his own beer.
     I could quiz everyone in this dive. I could flog them into ransacking their memories. I could hit them with every association between national events and the Purcell and Coleman Administrations. It wouldn’t matter. They won’t recall any of it. They can’t.
     The problem is mine. It has to be.
     He steered the conversation to Overtime, the surprise hit cable TV show that had all of Onteora County talking. Jones would talk about that, at least...though he couldn’t recall anything about ice hockey star Dave Pargeter’s career previous to television.

     “Do you remember any of these things, Doctor?”
     Zebulon Davis, B.S., M.D., D.Psy., slowly shook his head. “I’m afraid not. But there’s a way to check which of our memories is the better one.”
     Smith was stunned. “How...how on Earth could we do that?”
     Davis peered at him uncertainly. “The Internet, of course. You are familiar with it, aren’t you?”
     The unfamiliar word buzzed unpleasantly in Smith’s ears. “No, I’m not. What is an...internet?”
     He could see that the psychiatrist was struggling to maintain a pleasant, completely unthreatening demeanor. “It’s an information distribution mechanism,” Davis said. “You need a computer to access it, but once you’re online, it connects you to more data and opinions than previous generations could ever dream of accessing.”
     Smith fought for calm. I might not be crazy after all! “I’ve never owned a computer, Doctor,” he said in low, even tones. “I could never see the point. What would a construction worker do with such a thing?”
     “What we’re about to do,” Davis replied. He turned in his chair, plucked a large, rectangular artifact from the table behind him and set it on his desk, pried up its upper plane and did something to it that made a group of lights begin to glow. “We’re going to check some online sources for information about what you remember and I don’t.” He leaned over the device and locked eyes with Smith. “Are you prepared to take the chances involved?”
     That I might be too deluded for him to help? “I suppose so,” he said. “I think I need to.”
     Davis nodded. “Then come around to this side of the desk and we’ll go over your memories together.”
     Smith rose and did so.

     “Amazing,” Davis murmured. “If these sources can be trusted, and I have no reason to think otherwise, your memory of these things is perfectly accurate. It’s mine that’s lacking. Mine and all those others you’ve mentioned. How can this be?”
     Smith was still coping with his amazement at the Internet and its riches. If only I’d known about this thing! “I don’t know, Doctor. That’s why I’m here.”
     Davis shook his head. “We might be looking at an important phenomenon. These days, virtually everyone has a computer and Internet access. Virtually everyone considers the Net the first and best place to look for anything at all, including the details of history. Is it possible that this facility has somehow stolen our memories—deprived us of the ability to recall anything on our own hook?”
     Smith kept silent.
     Presently Davis shut down the computer, closed it up, and turned to face Smith squarely. “You’re the only person I’ve encountered who remembers all this,” he said. “Now we know for certain that those who claimed ignorance weren’t gaslighting you. They really didn’t and don’t recall what you do. If pressed on it, they’d do what we just did—go to the Internet and dial up an authoritative source. Whatever the reason, Smith, it appears that of all your friends, relatives, and acquaintances, you’re the only person who actually knows what’s gone before the present moment. The rest of us have somehow been hobbled, deprived of personal knowledge of those things.”
     The psychiatrist rose, and Smith did as well. “You’re not deluded,” Davis said. “Neither is this a world other than the one you were born into.” He smiled and stuck out a hand, and Smith clasped it. “You’ve done me a great service. There’ll be no charge for this session. Go home and relax.”
     “Thank you, Doctor,” Smith said. “I’ll do just that.”

     Smith was jubilant as he opened the front door of his Oakleigh home and stepped inside.
     Brenda will be so happy. She was as worried about me as I was. Now it’s over.
     He strode into the kitchen, smiling broadly. Brenda was there, standing at the counter with her back to him. She was chopping vegetables for what would probably be a stir-fry dinner. “Sweetie!” he called out. “My memory’s just fine! Doctor Davis used this Internet thing to prove that I’m okay!”
     Brenda stiffened at the sound of his voice. She turned slowly to face him, clearly alarmed by his presence. Her cleaver was still in her hand.
     “Who the hell are you,” she hissed, “and what are you doing in my house?”

==<O>==

Thursday, May 4, 2017

What Matters: A Midweek Rumination

I seldom ask myself whether what I write, whether here or in fiction, “matters.” I do it by choice; it matters sufficiently to me. But I have my moments. One of them arrived yesterday, in the middle of other diverse and troubling cogitations.

I suppose everyone wants to “matter,” however the word is defined. At least, I’ve never met anyone who hopes that no one is aware of him nor will remember him after he’s gone from their lives. But the intensity of one’s desire to “matter” appears to be roughly proportional to the effort he invests in what he does.

I’d venture to guess that by that measure, many persons would feel that they don’t “matter” enough. That’s fertile soil for a lot of emotional maladies.

“A man who believes in nothing will believe in anything” – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
“Without God, all things are possible.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This brief article should get major publicity. I’m not going to excerpt it; it’s far too striking and important. Please read it all before you continue on with my drivel.

While author Annie Holmquist notes the powerful negative correlation between religiosity and involvement in some secular “cause,” she doesn’t delve into the understratum of the thing. Yet it could hardly be plainer.

Causes lend “meaning” to their adherents.

Alternately, an activist “matters” to the extent that his cause “matters.” The relentless promotion of a cause as an issue of inherent justice or a matter of life-and-death can make it “matter” quite a bit...at least to those who swallow the promotion.

People are willing to do an awful lot for that which “matters,” and therefore allows them to “matter.” The word martyr carries immense significance for exactly that reason.

The search for personal meaning by investing oneself in a secular “cause” can result in harm to others. Often it does. After all, if the aim is to “matter,” the rights, needs, and prerogatives of others must take second place at best. This is seldom addressed by contemporary analysts of the “cause” phenomenon.

For example, recently I’ve become moderately friendly with two “transwomen:” biological men who prefer to live and present as women. They’re not the first transwomen I’ve known; however, my previous acquaintances were severely damaged persons, incapable even of looking after themselves. It was illuminating to meet persons of that persuasion who appear well balanced and capable; I began to think that the syndrome might not always be better treated with psychotherapy than with surgery.

Well known transwoman Blaire White has something to say about it:

Regardless of all other considerations, these folks are being badly served by those who’ve taken up their “cause” and raised it to the pinnacle of contemporary issue-urgency. Moreover, those who dramatize the subject through fiction are doing them no favors. The villains in their stories are always political conservatives or Christians: the very groups most likely to treat them with tolerance, even if mixed with some degree of disapproval.

This phenomenon deserves cautious but close analysis. Among other things, a transgenderism activist who smiles upon such groups as “Antifa” or “Black Bloc” because of their opposition to us naughty Righties and Christians should study what happens when such forces attain genuine political power. Few remember that Jews weren’t the only group Hitler targeted.

I’ve written before about the desire for meaning that appears to be universal among men:

     “Today” is made “sweet” by an injection of Meaning: something to fill the yawning void created by their abandonment of God and the hope of individual salvation. For Man is the Project Pursuer, the Engineer: he who must have a goal to advance toward and a plausible means for approaching it. His consciousness of time and his own mortality will not abide an empty, hedonistic existence. Without the hope of salvation in an afterlife, the requirements for which really are quite straightforward:
     Now a man came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.” [Matthew 19:16-19]

     ...Man will commit himself to some other absorbing Idea, some Cause to which he can dedicate himself. For we all desire immortality, and the variety derivable from the notion that one’s Cause will live after one’s own flesh has returned to dust is, if not wholly fulfilling, at least better than nothing.

I’ve never been more certain of Man’s utter requirement for a transcendent religious belief system. Of course, the nature of the system “matters,” too. It must be wholesome: beneficial to those who accept it and (at the very least) harmless toward those who don’t. The benefits must include temporal ones as well as spiritual promises, which is why I cite that snippet from the Gospel According to Matthew so often. Once again, Chesterton put it best:

The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

Bookworm adds a few thoughts on the matter:

     Islam is not about fun or even happiness. Nor are these missing attributes limited to the reverence associated with direct worship. For example, when we’re in a house of worship we don’t make fart jokes. Instead, the whole point of Islam, at least according to the Ayatollah Khomeni, is to vacuum any possibility of joy out of life:
     Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.

     No wonder that the Islamic clerics and their mobs routinely deliver death to people who dare to dance or sing in a sharia-controlled world.
     Contrast this Islamic world view with Dennis Prager’s take on happiness. When his radio show played in my area, I frequently heard him say that, because God gave us the capacity to be happy, we have a moral obligation to be so. He also wrote that true faith should in itself inspire happiness:
     I once asked a deeply religious man if he considered himself a truly pious person. He responded that while he aspired to be one, he felt that he fell short in two areas. One of those areas, he said, was his not being a happy enough person to be considered truly pious.
     His point was that unhappy religious people reflect poorly on their religion and on their Creator. He was right; in fact, unhappy religious people pose a real challenge to faith. If their faith is so impressive, why aren’t these devoted adherents happy? There are only two possible reasons: either they are not practicing their faith correctly, or they are practicing their faith correctly and the religion itself is not conducive to happiness. (Prager, Dennis, Happiness is a Serious Problem, paperback edition, p. 4.)

“Thou shalt be happy” might not be one of the tenets of the Decalogue, but all the evidence of Creation, particularly that which inheres in Man’s nature, points to the necessity. Happy people don’t involve themselves in ridiculous Causes. They don’t need them for confirmation that they “matter.” They already know that.

May God bless and keep you all.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

The Nastification

“The personal is political” – old Leftist mantra

It’s been said many times that the world loves a good loser. No one enjoys losing. No one seeks to lose. Yet there are compensations for defeat that parents once taught their children to reflect on and appreciate. Recent developments suggest that the practice has waned:

     Stephen Colbert is what happens when you let politics take over your life.
     You become ugly, nasty and mean....
     Colbert broke character for CBS, revealing that he is actually angrier and pettier than his nearly 20-year-old Comedy Central alter ego. His jokes have become increasingly bitter and partisan, and his style of humor uncomfortably personal. Get him near politics and watch him froth.

As the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are no doubt familiar with the “comedian’s” tirade, I’ll refrain from repeating the details.

(Methinks I can hear some of you muttering Glenn Reynolds’ wisdom: “Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.” As the professor himself would say: Heh. Indeed.)

This episode is likely to become a landmark in television history, not because no comparable episode has occurred before – though I can’t remember one, I’d be surprised if there were none – but because CBS, Colbert’s employer, will not discipline him in any way. The network certainly won’t fire him.

There’s a war on, you see. You can’t win a war, especially a war to the knife such as the media are waging against the Trump Administration, the Republican Party, and the American Right, while maintaining an image of your enemy as a good and decent sort. Thus, as long as the Left and its media allies are determined to destroy Trump et alii and claim power for themselves alone, the nastification of all things into which politics is permitted to insinuate itself will continue.

Can it get even nastier without provoking bloodshed? I can’t imagine how, but then, I’m not trying very hard.

The entire project of the Left is to politicize everything. Let there be no private property, no private rights, no private decisions of any kind. All things must be subject to the approval of our political masters...as long as our masters are Leftists, that is. When the hated enemy holds the reins of the State, he must be opposed a outrance, and with every weapon at the Left’s disposal.

For a while, those weapons consisted of explicitly political campaigning and the use of friendly media to spread and reinforce the Left’s pronouncements. No longer. Too much personal space remained in which private citizens could think, reflect, and talk to one another. It was obligatory that those spaces should be persistently, mercilessly squeezed, such that opinions contrary to Leftist dogma would find no forum in which they could be expressed. It was a challenging problem in a nation founded on such antediluvian notions as individual freedom, but that didn’t stop them.

Perhaps they didn’t expect resistance. Perhaps they expected the protests of the enemy to be token, easily shouted down and overridden. (“Why am I not ahead by fifty points?” – Hillary R. Clinton) They certainly didn’t expect the resistance to give the hated Republicans absolute majorities in Congress and elevate Donald Trump to the White House.

As Becket Adams observes above, the nastiness of the Left’s spokesmen is a natural consequence. Politics – the pursuit of power over others – is the one and only thing that matters to them. Being denied power, especially by someone they hold in contempt and have made a practice of defaming, is the most hurtful thing they could imagine...and in the United States of America in this year of Our Lord 2017, they don’t need to imagine it.

The nastification of our nation and its political discourse might be permanent. Indeed, it will persist for as long as one side or the other maintains the “power uber alles” attitude the Left holds today. Their Brownshirted tactics aren’t helping, neither when they prevail nor when they’re turned back. In the former case, it encourages them to press more forcefully and widely; in the latter, it enrages them, just as does any successful opposition.

Worse may yet be upon us. The Right has maintained civility and public decorum in the face of steadily increasing harassment and violence. “Don’t sink to their level” has been the maxim, and most on the Right have abided by it. But the indications are that conservatives’ forbearance is about to come to an end...if it hasn’t already.

There isn’t much that’s nastier than open street warfare. Nor is it guaranteed that the “forces of order” will stem the violence rather than exacerbate it. Cops equipped with MRAPs and other military hardware could succumb to the temptation to stage a few “demonstrations” of their own, to cow us back into nonviolence. And cops choose sides, too.

Pray.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Mask Slippages Dept. (UPDATED)

This article has me wound tighter than a 1,000,000-to-1 stepdown transformer:

     After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as “trickle-down economics” — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Talk show host Michael Savage called him “Lenin’s pope.” Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. “I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” he told the Italian press.
     Pope Francis grew up in socialist Argentina, an experience that left a deep impression on his thinking. He told the Latin American journalists Javier Camara and Sebastian Pfaffen that as a young man he “read books of the Communist Party that my boss in the laboratory gave me” and that “there was a period where I would wait anxiously for the newspaper La Vanguardia, which was not allowed to be sold with the other newspapers and was brought to us by the socialist militants.”
     The “boss” to whom Pope Francis referred is Esther Ballestrino de Careaga. He has described her as a “Paraguayan woman” and a “fervent communist.” He considers her one of his most important mentors. “I owe a huge amount to that great woman,” he has said, saying that she “taught me so much about politics.” (He worked for her as an assistant at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aires.)
     “She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death,” he has said. Learning about communism, he said, “through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her. According to the author James Carroll, Bergoglio smuggled her communist books, including Marx’s Das Kapital, into a “Jesuit library.”

Please read it all.

The pope is not the Church. The pope’s statements, except on theological matters, carry no authority; they’re just one man’s opinions. Yet this man, unwisely elevated to the Throne of Saint Peter, is steadily dismantling the Church by his refusal to restrict his pronouncements to matters directly relevant to Catholic theology and Catholic ethics. I know for a fact that at least one potential convert – an intelligent man strongly interested in the Catholic faith – has turned away from the Church, entirely because of Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio a.k.a. Pope Francis.

Imagine Pope Benedict XVI declaiming on economics or climatology to the exact opposite effect of Pope Francis. Imagine Pope John Paul II doing so. Glory be to God! Imagine any pope previous to this one making a strong, public statement in favor of capitalism or against the global warming / climate change hysteria. What sort of reaction would the world media have toward a pontiff who made such a statement?

The Church has weathered so many dislocations, catastrophes, and scandals that I’ve often wondered if anything at all could destroy it. Many believe that it’s defended by Jesus Himself. But an antipope with access to (and connivance from) the blatantly left-wing media is making me wonder whether it will survive to replace him.

Pray, fellow Catholics. Indeed, pray, fellow Christians of every denomination, because if the Church should fall, you won’t last very much longer.

UPDATE: A fellow Catholic, “Thomas in Singapore,” just wrote to me as follows:

     All men and women are today the result of their respective experiences. The Holy Father is no different. Keyboard kommandos throughout the blogosphere, many professing to be faithful Catholics, seem to delight in finding fault and casting aspersions upon Pope Francis. Thanks to a wonderful Jesuit priest here in Singapore, I came to realize that the Catholic church was where my soul could find peace. When Jorge Bergoglio was elevated to the papacy, tears of joy streamed down my cheeks. For me it was a sign from God, confirming that my decision was correct, and that after 50 years of searching I was truly, finally home.
     Say what you want, believe what you want. Cast aspersions, cast stones. Fanny about like the pharisees acting all holier than thou. At the end of the day, we are all sinners. Who are you to judge Pope Francis, or any other person? Don't get me wrong Fran. I have to remind myself constantly to not judge others. But it really gets up my nose when I hear my fellow Catholics, mostly cradle Catholics who should really know better, forget or outright ignore their own shortcomings while running their mouths about the perceived shortcomings of others.
     Instead of attacking our Holy Father, try praying for him.

And what makes you think I don’t, Thomas? What makes you think I don’t pray daily that Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio will learn that the Throne of Saint Peter is a sacred trust, and that the authority of the papacy is not to be abused -- that his expertise in anything other than theology is negligible and does not entitle him to use his altitude in the Church to make political, economic, or scientific proclamations as if from On High?

As for “who am I to judge,” this is who I am: a Catholic who remembers that Jesus Himself separated Church and State; that He forbade the crowd to stone “the woman caught in adultery, in the very act.” I also know, from personal contact with others, that Pope Francis is the reason several previously firm Catholics are contemplating leaving the Church and several who were considering conversion from other Christian denominations have decided otherwise. This is not unexpected, as a similarly political priest in my very own parish has had the same effect on others.

Clerics should stick to their clerical duties: the conservation and promulgation of the faith, the administration of the sacraments, and counseling those who bring them theological, ethical, or moral problems. All else is vanity.

Goals And Behinds

For those who’ve never watched Australian Rules Football, the scoring differs somewhat from any other game that’s called football. I suppose that’s not much of a surprise, since the game itself differs greatly from any other game called football. Anyway, to propel the ball between the two tall middle goalposts at the other team’s end scores a goal, which earns 6 points, whereas to propel it over the end line between a middle goalpost and one of the outer posts (called “behind posts”) scores a behind, which earns 1 point. Needless to say, the higher-earning score is the one the players strive to achieve.

What’s that you say? Why am I nattering about AFL football at this hour? Well, I’m not, really; I’m writing about the Trump Administration’s achievements and disappointments to date.

There’s a tendency toward self-congratulation among writers in the Right that isn’t entirely healthful. Consider, for example, this Kurt Schlichter column:

     In the first 100 days since Felonia von Pantsuit was not inaugurated, the goofy collection of commie traitors, coastal snobs, and crack-pot weirdoes that hilariously styles itself “#TheResistance” has only managed to successfully resist success. Oh sure, they and the catamite media tried their darnedest but, as Yoda said, “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.” And, as Yoda also said, “Chelsea Clinton is best Democrats can do, say you? Kidding me, you are.”
     Yeah, after 100 days President Trump has reintroduced the world to Alpha America after eight years of Barack’s fussy betaism, gutted a Schumer-ton of regulations, and broke the Senate Democrats’ spirit by suckering them into a loser play that resulted in Justice Gorsuch today and, I hope, Justice Crazy Conservative Caveman to replace Justice Kennedy this summer. Plus, of course, his two greatest achievements – not being Hillary, and surviving even after being subjected to every slander, lie, and fake news report the gyno-hat left could throw at him.
     Really, that #TheResistance could throw at us, because #TheResistance is not really resisting Trump as much as it is resisting us. The elite establishment is outraged that we normals have demanded to govern ourselves rather than begging for scraps from our betters in DC, NY and LA. It wasn’t just that horrible, sick old woman that we rejected; it was them. And by doing so, we “stole” what they see as their birthright to reign sovereign over us. They try to cover up their humiliation with tales of “Russians” and “hacking” because the truth is too painful to face. This election was about the people they sought to rule looking at them and their track record of failure and saying, “Nah, you suck.”

Please read it all.

I shan’t denigrate the Administration’s achievements at rolling back Obamunist regulations. Neither will I depreciate the elevation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, an eminently worthy addition to the Court. But three major tenets of Trump’s campaign:

Build a wall along the border with Mexico;
Repeal ObamaCare;
Cut tax rates, especially on businesses;

...have not occurred. These were goals, big scores those who elected Trump were anxious to see. Apart from the elevation of Gorsuch, the Administration’s accomplishments to date, though beneficial, were relatively minor: behinds.

Granted that Trump as president is greatly preferable to Hillary Clinton as president. Granted that we’re barely into his tenure, “one swallow doth not a summer make,” and so forth. But with the really big items still lagging, it’s not yet time to do a lot of gloating.

The Democrat caucuses in Congress, with prodigious assistance from their media annex and so-called “moderate Republicans,” have succeeded (so far) in thwarting the three goals mentioned above. The recently passed five-month federal budget is illustrative: apart from an increment to defense spending, it gives no support to any of Trump’s major goals. Indeed, the funds allocated for border security include the proviso that not $1.00 is to be spent on the construction of a border wall.

Trump and his allies aren’t doing a victory dance over this. The very best that can be said about it is that the budget had already been negotiated during the final months of Obama’s presidency. Yet it makes plain that there’s still a large, intractable roadblock to major change in Washington. It’s composed of Democrats determined to defeat the Trump Administration and Establishmentarian Republicans who, while they might dislike the Democrats, are willing to collaborate with them to that end. Besides, what could anyone say positively about Senator Lindsay Graham’s (R, SC) proclamation that State Department funding would be cut “over my dead body” -- ?

At this time, it appears that too few Congressional Republicans are willing to “go to the mattresses” for the Trump Administration’s major goals. Behinds, okay; they’ll sit quietly for those, especially as they provide both pitch points and cover with the constituents who voted for Trump for President. Note in contrast the glee of such as the Dishonorable Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and the Execrable Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) over the passage of the budget. Note how their triumph has been repeated and amplified through the media’s bullhorns. And note, by all means, the persistence of the media in negatively characterizing Trump initiatives and downplaying his successes.

We the People didn’t elect Donald Trump to settle for a succession of behinds. Neither did we return so many Republicans to Capitol Hill to watch them go limp in the face of resistance and calumny from Democrat minorities. We want Trump’s campaign goals – the ones he promoted most passionately – and the big scoring increments that would come from them: the cessation of the flood of illegal aliens into our communities, the increases in industry, commerce, and general prosperity that sharply reduced taxes would bring, and the removal of the federal government from our decisions about medical care and medical insurance. Moreover, we want them in the first half – i.e., before the 2018 midterms – so we can be certain that allowing Republican control of Washington to continue is really in the nation’s best interest.

Monday, May 1, 2017

For The Readers Of Liberty’s Torch

First, a happy announcement; then, a question of the utmost gravity:

1. Announcement.

Hans Schantz’s science fiction techno-thriller The Hidden Truth is available today and tomorrow for only $0.99, which makes it the biggest bargain in high-quality indie fiction since I last gave away Which Art In Hope. Moreover, Hans tells me that the sequel is nearing completion. Treat yourself!

2. Opinions Badly Needed!

I really need your help with this one, Gentle Readers. Please take it seriously.

Can a 65-year-old married engineer buy a red Corvette convertible without making a fool of himself?

Please post your opinions in the comments. Hurry!

Simulation Writ Really, Really Large

“We of Es Toch tell a little myth, which says that in the beginning the Creator told a great lie. For there was nothing at all, but the Creator spoke, saying, It exists. And behold, in order that the lie of God might be God’s truth, the universe at once began to exist.”
[Ursula LeGuin, City of Illusions]

     “Could Yarl the Omnipotent create a stone so heavy he could not lift it?”
     “No.”
     “Why not?”
     “He would not.”
     “That is no answer.”
     “Yes it is. Think about it. Would you?”
     [Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead]

Scott Adams, whose thoughts and jottings have begun to range very far afield, provides evidence that we might be characters in a huge simulation:

     There should be a difference in how a real species and a simulated species views its own history. The real species would have a real history with full details. The simulations would have something closer to history on demand. And by that, I mean the history only comes into existence when current circumstances require that history. If we are software simulations, the simulator presumably has resource constraints. That means the simulation would not create every part of the universe just in case it is needed; it would create what it needed on demand. For example, a simulated universe would not contain details about undiscovered planets. Those details would be rendered by the simulation at the time of discovery.
     To put this in simpler terms, if we are real, the past influences what we do in the present. But if we are simulations, what we do in the present could be creating the past.
     For example, here’s an article describing how quantum physicists have determined that the present creates the past as needed. Freaky, right?
     If we are simulations, we should expect to see two additional qualities in the universe as partial confirmation:

We should expect that we can’t travel past the boundaries of the simulation.
We wouldn’t be able to observe the basic building blocks of our reality.

     Sure enough, we meet both criteria.

Hmph! There are days I wonder whether I’m the only person alive who isn’t certifiably insane. But then, if I were uniquely and irremediably insane, I could easily reach the same conclusion.

Of course we’re characters in a simulation! Haven’t you been paying attention all this time?

Longtime Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch will be aware that real-time simulation was my occupational forte. At one time I was one of the foremost experts on it. (Play “Glory Days” if you must, but keep the volume low.) The art of real-time simulation rests on a pair of precepts:

The simulation must respond to stimuli in the same way as the thing being simulated;
The response must be generated within the same time frame as the thing being simulated.

Indeed, all really useful simulations must be real-time simulations or the closest possible approach to it. The point, of course, is that an ideal simulation should be impossible to distinguish from the real thing. Otherwise, what good would it be?

Now let’s talk about what we habitually call reality. Reality, colloquially speaking, is the aggregate of all real things and their behaviors. This is a critical stipulation: while the “whole” is important, the “parts” are even more so. After all, we deal with the parts, not the whole of reality.

But that leaves us needing yet another definition of sorts. A colloquial definition of real might be “that which is unaffected by our desires, opinions, and convictions.” Real things are tough. Their properties resist our willfulness. They exhibit endurance: i.e., observable persistence over time.

But we don’t deal solely with real things. We also grapple with imaginary things: images, which exist in our minds and nowhere else. Among the most important of those imaginary things is the concept we call causality.

Think about causality in the abstract for a moment. Imagine, if you will, that you’re a simulation engineer confronted with a device to be simulated, who has suddenly and for the very first time asked yourself what’s the point of this? The rules of real-time simulation require that you instantiate the behaviors and response times of the device in an artifact to be governed by software. You must act as if the device must behave in a certain way. But:

What if the specification contains an error? It’s happened before.
What if it were to break down spontaneously? Devices do that, don’t they?
What if the design of the device itself is faulty, such that it will misbehave now and then?
What if it were to be interfered with from outside? (Sledgehammer or power spike, you choose.)
Finally, what if some degree of randomness was deliberately designed into the device, defying causality?

All of those things happen to real devices. No engineer, however gifted, could simulate all of them; the range of possibilities is unbounded.

A useful simulation is always a partial simulation. Bounds are clamped upon it a priori, for neither can the simulation engineer nor his customer deal with anything else.

The bounds clamped upon us who live under the veil of time are called the laws of nature. We don’t know them in their entirety, nor is any of our knowledge infinitely precise. We don’t even know if they vary over time or place; the universe is larger than any test bed we could build. That’s part of why Richard Feynman proclaimed that science – the quest for reliable knowledge about the laws of nature – demands that we reject all claims of infallibility from “experts.”

The more deeply physicists probe the smallest of things – quantum physics – the more complex and variable our temporal reality seems. They keep hoping they’ve “reached the bottom,” only to find that another layer of laws and entities lies beneath their deductions. Some have thrown up their hands over the seemingly infinite depth of reality. Others soldier gamely on, determined to find “the bottom” of the stack of entities and laws that determine reality.

As their investigations have advanced, a new idea has taken hold in a few remarkably open minds: there might not be a bottom. A small number of theorists working at “the other end” of reality have begun to entertain the possibility that there might not be a “top,” either.

If I haven’t driven you to drink quite yet, Gentle Reader, feel free to congratulate yourself on your intellectual perseverance. There is a point to this, though it might not be entirely evident from the foregoing material.

We are made so that our knowledge of reality can never be complete. Our advances, no matter the direction, never hit a terminus. Neither can we be perfectly certain about what we think we know.

The laws of nature, if it makes sense to speak of “laws” that might have an infinite number of exceptions, keep us from traveling beyond the bounds of our mental universes. They confine us without allowing us to be certain that we’re being confined, or by what mechanisms, or to what purpose. We remake our postulates and conceptions with the greatest of difficulty: typically, one great, world-shaking mind at a time. And with each restructuring of our conception of “reality,” the next one becomes exponentially harder to achieve.

“Reality” can only be a simulation, albeit of a sort no mortal could possibly construct. It would require a transtemporal consciousness of infinite extent...at least, infinite by the metrics we time-bound persons would use. Nothing else would be capable of coping with the demands.

If we stipulate this for the sake of further investigation, we immediately arrive at two things: an answer, and a question.

The answer seems bleak at first: We cannot know all there is to know. The Simulation Engineer has deliberately bounded us to make that impossible.

The question is one that has persisted throughout the history of Man, and will persist until Man is no more:

Why?

Have a nice day.

Announcement

I’ve just made two changes to Liberty's Torch's commenting policy. I expect one to be popular, the other not.

The likely-to-be-popular one is this: I’ve turned off the maximally annoying “Are you a real human being?” mechanism. I’ve been receiving complaints about it for a while now, so wave goodbye to it.

The unlikely-to-be-popular one is this: To comment here, you must have a Google account, and must be logged in under the email address you registered with Google. I’ve grown tired of dealing with anonymous offal hurlers, and will have no more of it or them.

Comments will still be moderated.

Your Neighborhood Curmudgeon,
Fran