Liberty's Torch

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Eighteen Years Later Part 2: Those Who Would Have Us Forget

The Left always plays the long game. Gramsci described its lineaments in his famous phrase “a long march through the institutions.” For anyone with the patience to analyze that pithy phrase, the Left’s whole program is there. This is nowhere more visible than with reference to Black Tuesday: September 11, 2001.

As I wrote yesterday, America’s current crop of teenagers knows only that others have told them about the 9/11 atrocities. Well, who are those others and what have they been saying?

And we also have:

And let’s not forget the claims that it was all a government conspiracy.

The “institutions” have relentlessly striven to shift the responsibility for the 9/11 atrocities away from religiously motivated Muslim terrorists, from Islamic hatred of America, and from our catastrophically lax immigration and border control systems. Toward what? It hardly matters. Create enough noise around the event and the facts will be obscured beyond recovery.

That’s not all, of course. We also have the ongoing sallies by “peaceful” Muslims to distance Muslims and Islam generally from Islam-powered terrorism. Yes, it’s a formidable undertaking, but they try their best. Review the Ilhan Omar video embedded above. Then review this one:

And this one:

Then think about the vulnerable, impressionable young Americans being deluged with this...and the America that will someday be theirs to operate and govern.

Few things anger me quite as much as the objections – always from a representative of some group that claims “oppressed” status – that the rest of us shouldn’t hold the deeds of their miscreants against them. Why not? Because “we’re not all like that.” See the Brigitte Gabriel video embedded above for the perfect rejoinder.

Religiously-powered violence is particularly egregious. For those who lack a clear understanding of why, allow me to make it maximally explicit:

A command from God supersedes all other commands.
It annuls all constraints.
It abrogates all other obligations and priorities.

The religious warrior has no choice in the matter. He must do as God has told him. Allah has told Muslims that holy war against “unbelievers,” to bring them low and compel them to submit to Islam, is their supreme obligation. It’s in the Koran, which Muslims are taught is the literal word of God. As we mathematical types like to conclude, quod erat demonstrandum.

Mention that, and the cries of “Islamophobia” (and “racism,” though Islam is not a race) will surely rise to assail you. You’re a “bigot.” You want to “oppress” innocent Muslims – the very people who not only refuse to cooperate in locating the terrorists and terror organizers among them, but who shield and succor them as a religious obligation. The very people who claim Jews are “the descendants of apes and pigs.” The very people who believe – once again, as a religious doctrine – that no Muslim is required to accept the authority of any “unbeliever” in any situation...and therefore, that a sincere Muslim can hold no allegiance to anything but Islam.

Yes, really.

The “institutions” of particular note:

The educational system;
The news media;
The entertainment industries;
The bureaucracies;

...are all Left-dominated, which gives rise to the key question of the hour: why? The Left and Islam are completely opposed on many things dear to Leftists’ hearts: abortion, homosexuality, unbridled sex, public displays of flesh and vulgarity, atheism, and others. Why, then, do the Left’s institutional bastions do so much to protect Islam and Muslims?

The answer is fear. Not fear for themselves; they have little of that, despite the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Jyllands-Posten. Islam and Muslims are perfect instruments for promoting fear among the rest of us. Fear that our country has been targeted for subjugation by a theocratic creed whose allegiants are swarming into our land. Fear of the vipers they have brought among us, who might strike at any moment. And of course, fear of the Left’s condemnations of us as “Islamophobes,” “racists,” and “oppressors.”

If you wish to control a people, make them fear. Disarm them if you can, so that they must repose all hope of defense in the State. If you can make them sufficiently fearful, they will accept whatever controls you care to place upon them, in the name of “security.”

The irony could not be more dramatic...nor more extreme.

I reserve my greatest ire for those who’ve dared to equate Islam with Christianity, the faith whose Founder said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” These bring out the beast in me. I vividly remember one odious bastard who dared to do so to my face, at a dinner party to which we had both been invited. That I didn’t indulge my desire to lay him out cold on the floor, out of misplaced concern for the good opinion of my hosts, is among my few severe regrets.

There are persons with significant public profiles who’ve been straining to do that ever since 9/11, if not before. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris come to mind at once. There are others. Most of them pretend to frame their calumnies as opposition to all religions as “irrational” and “unnecessary.” Have a good look at their actual targets and draw your own conclusions.

The harm these bastards do is beyond my ability to capture in a net of words. In synergy with the Left, they are steadily pushing Christianity to the margins of society: a set of convictions and practices not to be admitted to polite discourse, as though it were somehow shameful. But what have they said about Islam? Anything comparable?

Can you hear the crickets chirping? I can.

Those who would have America forget that the atrocities of Black Tuesday were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists motivated by Islam’s explicit commands will relent no more readily than the Islamists themselves. They must be countered. Yet few have risen to the need. I’ve tried, but mine is a minor voice in a cacophonous landscape. I shall continue for as long as my voice holds out. Any effort is better than none.

What about you, Gentle Reader?

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Eighteen Years Later

Today’s American teenagers have lived their entire lives since the atrocities of 9/11. All they know of it is what they’ve been told by others – and a lot of those others have made it their mission to falsify the event: its genesis, its nature, and its consequences.

I remember it well. Indeed, I couldn’t forget it if I tried. But with all the carnage and destruction, all the tales of fear and heroism, this is the aspect of Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001 that’s most vivid in my memory:

That video is far from unique. That very day there were televised scenes of Palestinian Muslims firing AK-47s into the air and handing out sweets on the streets in celebration. There were imams and Islamic “scholars” declaiming about how America deserved to suffer that atrocity. There was a young Iraqi, nattily dressed in a Western-style suit jacket, sneering at the camera and proclaiming that “It should have been worse.” I saw them all.

Such celebrations have followed every Islam-powered atrocity perpetrated in a non-Islamic country ever since. Yet today, there are more than three million observant Muslims in the United States, and more enter the nation every day. There are mosques and “Islamic centers” throughout the country. There are Muslim “street prayers” deliberately arranged to block traffic on busy city streets. We have chapters of the murderous, al-Qaeda-affiliated Muslim Brotherhood on thousands of college campuses. We have designated representatives of CAIR and ISNA “advising” several federal bureaucracies. We have Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib in the Congress of the United States. And we have this:

...and ask yourself whether their plaintive cries about “Islamophobia” deserve even a nanoparticle of respect.

Have a nice day.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

A Labor Saving Device

[A short story for you. Among the “classic” motifs in science fiction, time travel ranks very high. H. G. Wells’s novel The Time Machine seems to be the origin of the sub-genre. Despite their similarities, time-travel-based stories have incorporated many variations. The one below has languished in my “Someday” file for quite a while. Perhaps it will make you smile. -- FWP]

     Canfield emerged from the time vortex a bare yard from the giant brass doors of the Neutra Memorial Public Library. The effect of emergence proximity to so massive and immobile an object was to thrust him backward with sufficient force to send him sprawling onto the pavement. He quickly righted himself, clapped the dust from his coverall, looked about to assure himself that no one had noticed, and grinned at his pessimism.
     I’m getting paranoid. Who’d be on the streets at this hour?
     He approached the doors a second time. They were a formidable barrier, but Canfield’s expertise in short-displacement time travel was more than sufficient to solve them. At 0.0006 seconds per foot of spatial displacement, the four-space interval between the two points required a displacement of only 0.0036 seconds to put him safely on the other side of them. He needed barely an instant to calculate it, and an instant more to effectuate it.
     The great library was dark and deserted. Unless he were to encounter a security guard, he expected no problems locating the volume he sought. Given that the old Library of Congress numbering and indexing scheme was still in effect, of course.
     It took longer than he expected. The place was so vast, the halls so long, and the number of books in each category so large, that even after locating the Memoirs section he needed another forty-five minutes to zero in on his target. His eureka! upon finding it was louder than appropriate for a secret investigation, but after a few minutes’ nervousness he concluded that he’d done his mission no harm.
     He hadn’t expected so garish a cover. The colors were riotous and the elements bizarre, far from relevant to the volume’s presumed subject. Apparently the publisher had decided upon pulp-style shock value for a sales tool.
     No matter. It’s the content that counts.
     He’d meant to tuck the book into his backpack and trigger the displacement sequence that would return him to his proper place and time, but it occurred to him that despite the book’s seemingly perfect match to his search parameters, it might not be the one he really wanted.
     Only way to be certain is to read some of it.
     He toted the volume to a nearby carrel, seated himself carefully so as not to bruise the displacement device, and cracked the cover.

#
     “Yo! Wake up!”
     Canfield realized he was being prodded in the back with something hard and blunt. He came sluggishly out of his slumbers, raised his head from the carrel desk, raked his hands over his eyes, rose and turned to confront his tormentor.
     That individual was elderly, portly, uniformed, and rather conspicuously armed. He’d been prodding Canfield with the muzzle of an automatic pistol. Canfield immediately raised his hands in surrender.
     “What year?” the guard growled. His gun was pointed straight at Canfield’s chest.
     Canfield pretended confusion. “Excuse me?”
     “Knock it off, time vagrant! What’s your base year?”
     Damn. He’s got me.
     “Ah, 2061.” He peered at the handgun. “Isn’t there anything better than that yet?”
     “Don’t change the subject, asshole. Yeah, 2061 sounds right. Temporal displacement engines were invented in 2059, but they were pretty bulky back then. We banned them late in 2062. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
     Canfield shook his head. “Who banned them?”
     “The World Stabilization Authority, who else? Oh, right, that was something else you didn’t have yet in ’61. Never mind. They’re illegal as sin now, and you’re in open possession of one, so you’re in for a rough ride.” He glanced at the book lying open on the desk. “What the hell was so important that you risked the causal stability of the world line for it?”
     “It’s...a memoir,” Canfield murmured.
     “Whose?”
     “Mine.”
     The guard’s eyes went saucer-wide. “You displaced yourself twenty-five years forward to read your own memoirs?”
     “Actually,” Canfield said, “I meant to steal it.”
     The guard’s look of incredulity deepened. “You’re a real prize. You could have made off with any of twenty-five years’ worth of news, tech developments, social studies, or what have you. Stuff you could use to make yourself a fortune. But this mattered more? What were you going to do with it? Show it to some girl you want to impress?”
     “No, sir,” Canfield muttered.
     “Then what?”
     “Well,” Canfield said, “you see, I haven’t actually written it yet.”
     The guard waited, still mystified.
     “I knew I’d write it eventually,” Canfield said, “but I haven’t, ah, done much of anything yet. So I figured I’d come forward, find a copy, bring it back to ’61, and use it as a guide to the adventures I expected to have jumping around the timeline. You know, to prepare myself, see what sort of hazards I’d face, what sort of weapons and other supplies I’d need. That way I could be sure I was ready for...well, for whatever I was going to head into.”
     “But you fell asleep over it.”
     “Yeah,” Canfield muttered. “It’s great reading. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.”
     “But the world line it describes,” the guard said, “has just been blown to smithereens.”
     “Huh? What do you mean?”
     “You’re here, aren’t you?” The guard smirked. “You’re about to spend three years in prison for illegal temporal displacement and your life afterward well removed from your temporal origin. So you’ll never have any of the adventures in that book.”
     “But—”
     “There might never have been a world line in which you had them.”
     “Then who wrote it?” Canfield demanded. “And based on what?”
     “Not my problem,” the guard said. He fished a set of handcuffs from a back pocket. “Now turn around and put...what was that?”
     Canfield smiled. Mere seconds later the restabilization wave swept over the world line with a grinding roar, as if two huge planets were rubbing against one another. When it had passed the guard was nowhere to be seen.
     When he was certain the changes had completed, Canfield turned to the carrel, picked up the book, and slipped it into his backpack. He looked down at the controls on his displacement unit. They were as they had been.
     “Figures,” he murmured. “Minimum alteration for maximum causal stabilization. Just like it says in the book.”
     He pressed the toggle that triggered the return sequence. As the time vortex that would carry him back to 2061 and his basement lab formed around him, he glanced back once at the huge hall, and shrugged.
     “Now I won’t even have to write it.”

==<O>==

Good Morning, World!

Years ago, a sister-in-law (same name as mine, different husband - why, yes, it DID cause confusion as another brother also married a girl with the same first name) walked outside on an early morning. It was wonderful weather, and she was so struck by the joy of waking up on such a day, that she sung out:

Good Morning, World!

A neighbor didn't even have to turn around - he knew who that would be and replied:

Good Morning, Linda!

It's that kind of a day today. I slept in (woke up with a sore knee, took some meds and went back to bed), and when I woke, my husband had already turned on the TV. We both rejoiced to see that it was Election Day, and that our Interstate Nightmare would soon be over. We live in SC, on the border of NC, and the down-and-dirty fight for the 9th District House seat (between Dan McCready and Dan Bishop) is nearly over!

We've been inundated with some of the nastiest mud-slinging commercials I've seen in years. They have been non-stop for much of the evening, sometimes as many as 10 in a hour.

So, we look forward to the end of all that - at least until next year.

For something to wash that foul taste out of your mouth, here's a link to an essay by a French soldier, praising the American soldier - his fitness, his professionalism, his willingness to run to a fight. It truly makes me proud to claim relation to some former soldiers and sailors.

Reaping What They Have Sown

I’ve probably embedded this video before. It’s Nicholas Freitas’s declamation to the Virginia House of Delegates on firearms, gun violence in schools, and the attitudes of the Democrats. Even though my thoughts this morning are not about those subjects, Delegate Freitas expresses a point so pertinent to current events that I cannot imagine it being put better. Please watch it – and pay particular attention to Delegate Freitas’s statement about how the Democrats persistently compare Republican supporters of the Second Amendment to Nazis, and imply that they’re all being paid by the NRA:

To his credit, Delegate Freitas merely demands that the Democrats display respect for Republicans’ integrity and sincerity, reciprocal to the respect Republicans have shown them. That’s the position of one who believes that civility can be restored to political discourse. As I haven’t acquainted myself with what followed Delegate Freitas’s statements, I can’t say whether his demand was met with respect or venom. However, I’d be surprised if the Democrats, who appear as firmly committed to disarming Americans as ever, were to change their tack at this stage of the debate.

Many commentators in the Right have predicted that should the Left continue to assail the Right with Nazi comparisons and imputations of being boughten mouthpieces for the “gun industry,” we in the Right would abandon our hope for a resumption of civil discourse and would adopt the Left’s tactics for our own use. Note that Delegate Freitas says explicitly that he doesn’t assume pro-choice Democrats are in the pay of Planned Parenthood. Yet the case for such an accusation is at least as good as the Democrats’ accusation that defenders of Americans’ Second Amendment rights are in the pay of the NRA, an organization that has repeatedly betrayed its charter and its membership by lending its support to gun control measures of various kinds.

As the Left has merely intensified its attacks on the Right – and has recently added physical attacks to its repertoire – the consequences predicted above have arrived.

Please review the following recent articles:

Is the pattern of events clear to you, Gentle Reader? It seems utterly pellucid to me. The Right hasn’t yet produced an equivalent to Antifa, but given recent events such as the savage beating and hospitalization of Andy Ngo, how much time do we have before one emerges – with or without anyone else’s approval? And when, not ‘if,’ that should come to fruition, can you foresee any outcome other than blood in the streets?

America is gazing into an abyss.

It brings me no comfort to predict that when the pustule of political militancy bursts, the Left will fare worse than the Right. I’d hope the prospect doesn’t please you.

Today, reputations are being destroyed and careers are being ended. What of the day when life and limb are actually at stake? How far away is that day? What will we do when families are ripped asunder over politics, when neighbor is set violently against neighbor? Will anyone be able to stand aloof from the chaos?

The fracas proceeds from the Left having awarded itself the palm of moral and intellectual superiority, on which basis they have exempted themselves from all moral constraints. Destroying us “deplorables” is quite all right; we’re obstacles to their notions of “progress,” so we have no rights in their eyes. If you doubt this, there are articles scattered throughout the Web that will enlighten you. I encountered one just yesterday with the charming title of “When is it Okay to Punch a Nazi?” Yes, really; look it up.

Delegate Freitas demanded that the Democrats acknowledge Republicans’ sincerity and integrity. As matters stand, that demand has not been answered positively. Meanwhile, assaults on conservatives’ persons and property have been multiplying and intensifying. What will follow seems obvious. The only question that remains is when.

We met on the beach amid rumours of war,
Your head in your hand -- what you saw
You won't say --
As the newspapers flew in the wind
I can see you're one of that kind
Who carry around a time bomb in the mind
No one knows --
When you'll slip the pin
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...
I see that your dress is torn at the edge,
You are lost, intense, like a man on a ledge
Waiting to jump --
As the waves break over the shore
You say there's a storm that can't be delayed,
And lately it seems to be coming this way
You can hear it break --
Like the slam of a door
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...
You tell me, just look all around,
At the past and the present, the Cross and the Crescent
The signs and the planets
Are lining up like before
There are souls on fire in the day and the night,
On the left and the right, in the black and the white
You can see it burn
In the eyes of the rich and the poor
Rumours of war...
Rumours of war...
("Rumours of War," Al Stewart)

Monday, September 9, 2019

Mourning The Loss Of A Colleague

There are people I haven’t met who are dearer to me than anyone I’ve known in the flesh. One of them has just passed away.

The Blogosphere has lost one of its titans. Charles Hill of Dustbury has just died of injuries he received in an auto accident.

Charles had been in poor health for some years. His mobility was declining steadily, and he’d had premonitions that his time on Earth was soon to end. Still, I doubt he foresaw this. We who loved him from a distance are immeasurably poorer for losing him.

Love ‘em while you’ve got ‘em, Gentle Readers. You know not the day nor the hour.

Farewell, Charles. May Heaven welcome you with a fanfare of trumpets – and may you grace those precincts with all the dry wit and clever puns you were known for in life. I’ll miss you terribly.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Quickies: On Humility

This surged back to mind earlier today while I was conversing with longtime friend Pascal:

One of the best supports to humility is keeping always in mind the possibility that your life might have been designed to be a warning to others. – Originator unknown.

“That’s all, folks” – Bugs Bunny

Lovings: A Sunday Rumination

The word love is one of the most overloaded words in the English language. It has more meanings, of more hues and shadings, than Carter has Little Liver Pills. We “love” our spouses, our children, our parents, our homes, our neighborhoods, and our Buick Rivieras. We also “love” sleeping late, Rembrandt, Bach, cherry pie, Villa Bellangelo’s Seyval Blanc, and having our feet rubbed. But we don’t often reflect on what we mean by “love” when we use it...sometimes as we use it.

Yet there is a common core to all those uses. If it were otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of all those loves.

What one “loves,” one values. Moreover, we value it above those things we don’t “love.” Some comparisons are foolish, of course; categories matter. For example, we might “love” Bach and only like Brahms, but it would be absurd to say that we “love” Bach more than cherry pie. (After all, the two can be enjoyed together.)

What about love of God? Jesus told us that it’s really important, didn’t He?

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
     [Matthew 22:34-40]

What does love mean in that supremely important context? If love is a conscious action, what are we (supposed to be) doing when we love God? And in light of the phrase “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” when are we supposed to do it?

Not many persons give this stuff any thought whatsoever. Yes, Christians included. I think it’s one of the reasons people tend to avoid me.

God is the Supreme Being, the Source of all that exists. To speak of valuing Him sounds a bit presumptuous. Indeed, as He stands outside all categories, we must ask whether “love,” in any of the senses in which we apply the notion to people and things under the veil of Time, can possibly apply to Him, or to our relationship to Him.

There’s a wealth of insight available from contemplating these questions. They compel us to ponder the characteristics we attribute to God. That’s something else most persons don’t think about. God cannot be defined – definitions are for things that fit within categories – but there are some things we can know about Him. Some we can infer from His position as the Supreme Being and Source; others we can deduce from the nature of the universe He has created for us.

It doesn’t take long to reach the core of the matter: God, as the Source of all that exists, is also the Source of all that we value. Whatever we value in any person or thing under the veil of Time, we are appreciating His work – and it is appropriate that we thank and praise Him for it.

Love of God consists in this: that we recognize Him as the Source, that we remain conscious of that fact, and that we express our gratitude to Him in prayer. All values and their enjoyment deserve to be celebrated in this manner: that behind each of them, from the greatest to the least, is His hand.

This coordinates with another aspect of Man’s relationship to God, our “fear” of Him.

You’ve heard the expression “God-fearing.” It was once heard much more often than it is today...but I doubt that it was better understood then than it is now.

To be “God-fearing” is not to cringe away from Him in fear of punishment. That interpretation has never held water. Why would anyone fear his Creator, the Being responsible for his very existence? To create is to love. Is it reasonable to fear what we love?

Yet generation upon generation of preachers have defined fear of God as the fear of punishment. They did so to induce compliance: not with His laws for a decent life, but with their own preferences and notions of propriety. This perversion of the fear of God constitutes one of the greatest offenses one man could do to another.

Fear in the theological context really means awe.

When a properly humble man contemplates the little he knows about God, his overwhelming conviction is of his own littleness. We are all equal in God’s eyes because of that littleness. The greatest among us is sub-microscopic by comparison to Him. At least, I haven’t created any universes lately; have you?

But in admitting to our littleness we gain a profound appreciation of His regard for us. For He loves us. If not, He would not have created us. He would not have placed us within a lawful universe where we could learn, grow, and prosper. The awe thus inspired gives rise, once more, to gratitude for His gifts, including the forces that correct us when we go astray.

Thus the love of God and the “fear” of God are seen as one.

I’m somewhat out of the norm for lay preachers. My need is for comprehension: to understand the wherefores of the great events. Most preachers are uninterested in promoting comprehension. They emphasize obedience: again, far too often obedience to their notions rather than to the two Great Commandments or the Ten Commandments of the Decalogue. The great challenge to the thinking man is to understand why He went to all this trouble. It rises to its apogee in contemplating the Passion and Resurrection of His Son, Jesus of Nazareth. The following scene from The Case For Christ provides the key:

He so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son to preach, suffer and die for our sakes – and by His Resurrection, to provide living proof of His benevolence and the glory that lies beyond the grave.

May God bless and keep you all.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Shamelessness Unbounded

Courtesy of Pacific Pundit, this morning we have the following:

David Fahrenthold is a reporter for the Washington Post, and has also appeared on PBS, NBC, and MSNBC as a commentator. If we combine the secretive tone of this document-seeking email with the Post’s notorious and unbridled anti-Trump bias, the immediate conclusion must be that Fahrenthold is seeking “dirt” on President Trump and / or his organization. At least, that’s the only conclusion I could reach from the above.

Fahrenthold has defended his email as “normal journalistic protocol.” Really? Did he take any comparable steps during the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama? A great many things about Obama were scrupulously concealed from public view. For example, to this day no one who attended Columbia University is willing to testify that he knew Obama there.

Journalists once did things out in the open. They “pounded the pavement” seeking out the facts about important events. Why the furtive probing for disloyal employees at the Trump Organization? What’s the end in view?

If I were President Trump of any member of his family, I would be incensed. The president can’t afford to act against Fahrenthold or the Post, but he can express himself about it. He can also advise his sons, who now operate the Trump Organization, on how to discourage responses to this sort of fishing expedition.

Mind you, this isn’t something we should think to be “outside the playbook” for the Post, or for the media generally. The Post has already come out against facts, reason, and civility. Why not encourage disloyalty to one’s employer, if the employer is a Post target for calumny? Why not pretend that there’s nothing untoward about such machinations?

As I wrote just yesterday, I want it all to go away. But it’s been a long time since I last gained the sympathy of any wish-granting entity.

The shamelessness of the Left and its various allies appears boundless. It’s consistent with their priorities, of course. To him who cares about power and nothing else, there are no binding constraints of any kind. At one time leftists at least exhibited a desire not to be “found out” for such tactics, but that appears to have gone by the boards along with the rest of the moral-ethical rules the rest of us are expected to observe.

It’s no wonder Americans are weary of politics and political discourse. It’s become unbearable. The maneuverings – the ones we know about, at least – are shocking. We can’t help but be aware that we’re being lied to and manipulated by conscienceless aspiring dictators whose servants are the basest of thugs. It’s enough to daunt anyone.

An increasing fraction of the country is entering fight-or-flight mode. If we elect to fight, where do we aim? Whom do we target – and with what?

Yet there’s nowhere to flee. Venus is too hot and Mars is too cold. Halley’s Comet isn’t expected back this way until 2061. As for other, more fanciful destinations, there’s no convenient wandering planetoid in prospect.

All that’s left is to pull one’s head into one’s shell and hope to outlast the whole miserable mess.

The great majority of Americans are perfectly decent...if you can get them not to talk about politics or government. That can make the most decent of us froth at the mouth and tip over backwards. The entertainment media have abandoned all pretense of allegiance to traditional American values, so there’s no balm to be had from them. Not that there’s much worth watching on the big or small screens, anyway.

If there’s refuge to be had, it lies in rigidly avoiding politics and political discourse, shunning government at every level, and cultivating an ethic of privacy in all things. Relating to other people as friends and neighbors only, and never making any slightest suggestion about larger organizations and involvements. With 88,000 governments all striving to insert themselves ever more deeply into our lives – yes, Gentle Reader, there really are that many in these United States – that’s a harder task than it’s ever been before – for anyone.

And as I have just realized that I’ve reached the edge of recommending that my Gentle Readers not come here for any more of this upsetting drivel, I believe it’s time to close.

Natives are restless.

All the abiding normality of the past seventy years is slipping away into flux. Modernity is finally yielding – to what? Nobody knows.^[1]

And the natives are restless for good reason. The lessons of the last century about enormous state power have been unlearned or were never absorbed in the first place. In America, all pretence of adherence to the Constitution has been abandoned and in its place is the massive, unaccountable, unrestrained central state the Framers and Ratifiers sought so artfully to prevent. More than a century of horrific, industrial scale warfare and yet more fearsome weapons entering nation state arsenals have not been understood by Western national leaders in even a superficial sense.

Nor have Western elites been such as to inspire confidence. Chief executives and legislatures of most Western nations have often enough come across as obtuse in assessing national interests, actively hostile to their own citizens or indifferent to their needs, psychotically devoted to the needs of minorities, freaks, and foreigners (and primitive foreigners at that), or stunningly reckless in handling spending, debt, and the fundamentals of all that makes for political legitimacy.

It's not so much that modernity might be yielding to something frightful as that decency and rationality have yielded to modernity, the putrid and obscene nature of which gushes down our street, into our schools, into our media, and throughout the culture.

The rotten plutocracy that has commandeered our great civilization is failing at every task that makes for peace, decency, and prosperity. Modernity has become rank stupidity and malevolence.

Notes
^[1] "Unsettled Weather." By James Howard Kunstler, ZeroHedge, 9/6/19 (emphasis removed).

Friday, September 6, 2019

Front Page Mag Down

I was following a link and got this.

Error?

Forgot to pay the hosting bill?

Enemy Action?

This Article Is Not Self-Contradictory. (Really!)

These are the times that try a commentator’s soul...and his patience...and his ever-shrinking time for reading the news. The politicization of everything continues apace. The Left is straining to ensure that every imaginable aspect of human activity is seen first and foremost through a political filter. Consider this list of things the various Democrat candidates for president want to ban. Never fear: anything they’ve left out, they’ll get to once the federal government is once more securely in their hands.

You’d think this would be the perfect grist for a commentator’s mill, wouldn’t you? And from one perspective you’d be quite correct: he who writes about politics, political contests, and public policy is normally delighted by a profusion of such things. But for me at least, it’s gotten to be too much. Yes, I can keep up; I read rapidly, comprehend easily, and have a nearly perfect memory. My problem is that I don’t want to keep up any longer. I want it all to go away and leave me in peace.

I can’t help wondering whether, in 1775, a majority of the American colonists felt the same.

If you enjoy the occasional video game – I do – you may have taken an interest in the “GamerGate” squabble of a few years ago. I addressed the core of it in this essay, which I continue to believe strikes the right chord:

     The entire point of video gaming is fun, delivered through virtualized adventures in which a gamer can face all sorts of challenges and trials without actually risking life, limb, or loot. The gamer can imagine himself to be an intrepid explorer, a mighty warrior, a brilliant detective, a pioneering spaceman, or whatever. For a few hours he can experience challenges and take risks that his mundane life doesn’t offer. Afterward, he can pop out the DVD, turn off the console, and return to that mundane existence nicely refreshed.
     But while we’re having fun, we’re not focused on some Cause. We’re not straining under some heavy load of moral obligation. We’re not engaged in some humorless, self-righteous attempt to remake others according to our priorities and preferences. To whatever extent we ever indulge such considerations, the play impulse shoves all of them to the back of the stove.
     Fun and the Left are mortal enemies.

Today, in a perfect example of what not to do with a simple, fun-oriented pastime, Cathy Young revisits GamerGate:

My own retrospective view, having reported on the GamerGate saga from early on, can be summed up as: “(almost) everything you’ve heard about GamerGate is wrong.”
The standard narrative, recycled in the Times and elsewhere in recent days, has made the media rounds many times before. It goes like this: A vengeful ex-boyfriend launched a harassment campaign against Quinn with a false accusation of trading sex for good reviews; the ensuing scandal unleashed an army of “misogynerds” who terrorized women, feminists, transgender people, and progressives in the video game community, forcing some women to flee their homes and/or cancel public appearances. Then, Breitbart publisher and populist evil genius Steve Bannon harnessed this virtual mob to boost the far right, including the racist and anti-Semitic alt-right brigades, and to recruit for Donald Trump’s cyber-armies. And, because the media didn’t take the threat of GamerGate seriously enough, the far right won.

Young’s piece recapitulates the errors of those who allowed the Left to impose a political filter on the subject of video games. But video games are supposed to be about having fun – and fun is antithetical to politics. Only one who is opposed to the existence of a private sphere of life in which the emphasis is on private matters such as “fun” will be happy with such a perversion of perspectives.

Ponder that for a moment while I fetch more coffee.

WARNING!

If you’re too tender-minded to cope with profanity, the prescriptions that follow are not for you. They will bruise your sensibilities and abrade your notions of propriety. Time was, I tried to accommodate such readers by forbidding the Anglo-Saxon vulgarities here, and at the predecessor site Eternity Road. But matters have grown too dire to continue that policy.

The greatest strategists are those who contrive to triumph without fighting. They posture as though they’re willing to fight – and in the usual case, they are. But they regard the victory above all other victories as inducing the adversary to surrender before battle is joined. To win without firing a shot is their supreme goal.

I have become convinced that this is the one and only proper attitude for us in the Right. Rather than allow ourselves to be drawn into battles over an endless series of discrete subjects, we must learn to win before such a contest can even begin. And I believe I have the formula.

The formula is simple. Indeed, it consists of two words deployed at the right time. The right time is whenever you’re confronted by someone – anyone, Left or Right – who seeks to introduce politics into an inherently private aspect of life. You must be willing to do this if you don’t want your life energies consumed by Cause People, aspiring tyrants, and humorless scolds.

Here’s how it works:

Politicizer: We have to do something about—
You: Fuck off.

Simple, isn’t it? Sadly, it cross-cuts most people’s notions of common courtesy. If Politicizer is a treasured friend or relative, it risks the continuation of the relationship. It can be difficult if Politicizer is merely someone whose sincerity you credit, such that you’d prefer not to offend him for “caring.” But at this point it’s what remains to us:

Do Not Allow The Left To Politicize
Properly Private Matters.
It’s A Mistake.
It Always Was.
We Ought To Have Learned That
Long, Long Ago.

At this point in our deterioration, the only way to halt the torrent of politicizations is to use the formula presented above. It doesn’t matter whether you like it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a tough row to hoe – which it is. It doesn’t matter whether there’s some subject that you’d like to politicize. Indeed, if there is, you’re part of the problem.

At this point the shock “should” have worn off. Perhaps it has, and you’re ready to pose the usual questions:

“Why must we say ‘fuck off’ to the politicizers? Why is it necessary to be rude? Why not simply say ‘No, we don’t need laws about that?’ We can get the same result without being vulgar, can’t we?”

The answer is simple: No, we can’t. It’s been tried. The Left has perfected what my friend Dystopic / Thales calls weaponized empathy: the fine art of using our sensibilities against us. And from the instant we display any concern whatsoever for the “feelings” of the politicizers among us, that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Only absolute, blatant indifference to their “feelings” will suffice.

I don’t expect everyone to see this the way I do. I know my take on things is unique. But I base my conclusions on reason and evidence. Therefore, if you want to persuade me that I’ve erred. you must use those tools and no others.

I await your thoughts.

Probably.

Sadly, instead of answering deeply penetrating questions from the parliament on how to restore growth, establish a proper budget and energise recovery across the Eurozone, she [Christine Lagarde] blathered on about combating populism and how to address climate change as a macro-economic priority – favoring green bonds in any new asset purchase program. Europe is doomed.^[1]

It's comical in a sick way how Western governments make a big show of "taking action" on certain minor items but fail to address existential threats. U.S., German, France, Sweden, and Britain officials wet their pants at any citizen who dares to criticize open borders and the fable of multiculturalism. But both are destroying Western civilization. Any discussion of that? No fricking way. Look. I've got my fingers in my ears. I can't hear you!

One has to laugh at the U.S. government's enthusiastic prosecution of people for alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And it certainly parsed the commas and "the"s of Gen. Flynn to find a violation of 18 U.S. Sect. 1001 (respecting false statements made to federal officials). This, while Hillary's egregious toilet-based United States Secretary of State email server is – so far – ignored. Trump makes much of the allegedly improved "unemployment" numbers but won't dare emphasize for Americans that every legal and illegal immigrant inside our borders has taken a job from an American. 90M+ of whom are in fact un-bleeping-employed not "out of the job market."

We have massive debt and massive, pointless military adventures ongoing around the world but, no, the Department of Justice is really energized about supposed FARA violations and false statements. Some fret over the Fed's distortions of monetary policy and creation of asset bubbles yet where is there outrage over the fact that the Constitution does not authorize the creation of a central bank in the first place? Or the second?

Alcoholics Anonymous does the Lord's work in getting alcoholics to face up to the precise way in which they are out of synch with their family, friends, employers, and themselves. Yet there seems to be no mechanism in public life to jerk the reins on the psychopaths, fools, and grifters who constitute our political class for the most part. Certainly voters have no desire or stomach for such necessary chastisements.

As a result we have the Lagardes of this life essentially dispensing advice to 400-lb. guys looking to improve their marital prospects that they should buy some new ties without gravy stains.

This is turning into a five-hanky movie.

Notes
^[1] "Blain: 'Central Banks Are No Longer A Solution – They Have Become The Risk.'" By Bill Blain, ZeroHedge, 9/5/19.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Spin-Off From the Feminist Revolution

There was a time when the wives of political leaders only advanced to high positions - either in government or in industry - in 3rd World countries, or poorer parts of the USA.

Miriam "Ma" Ferguson took office when her husband had reached his time limit, under the TX Constitution. Her tenure as governor was largely as a figurehead who gave her husband another shot at governance.

Evita Peron was a classic example of a woman who derived her power - both politically and economically - from her husband, Juan Peron of Argentina. Her financial dealings provided considerable for the avaricious couple; her effectiveness with women of the poorer classes was considerable.

"Lady Bird" Johnson putatively ran the television stations, but, according to this story, never would have been that successful without her husband's political influence.

Was LBJ's wife a capable manager? Possibly. But, she clearly had a major edge over the competition via her husband's influence.

More importantly, she she continued the Democratic practice (started by Eleanor Roosevelt with her daily newspaper column) of using her position to manipulate the media.

Both aspects - public relations/media influence, and questionable money-making actions, were a hallmark of the Johnsons' legacy. That returned, full-bore, with the Clintons' White Office takeover.

Even before becoming President, Bill Clinton had benefited from the once-removed money-grubbing his wife engaged in - most notably Whitewater. After Clinton's first few months in power, his wife handled the 1st Lady duties, and used most of her time making alliances with Leftist/Liberal heavyweights. It wasn't until after his exposure as a sexual predator, that HRC would strike out on her "own", with her Senate position.

After her Coronation, HRC was on her own - and she did very badly. She ignored much of the savvy thinking of her husband, and fell into the habit of using female cronies to guide her political career. Their advice, that of largely single/divorced career women, was atrociously bad. She was a largely ineffective Senator, whose ambitions were obvious, and who was widely mistrusted by other politicians. Her complete lack of people skills - the "schmoozing" she did was limited to "tell me how wonderful I am, and grovel when you do so", doomed her in a field that was heavily a people business, both in the part of dealing with the electorate, and cajoling/cooperating with your peers.

Arranging a job for the "Little Woman" is a ploy that allows money (bribes) to flow to the couple through the wife, without tainting the husband. So, that method of getting - um - PERSUASION money into the family's hands, without triggering an investigation, is the preferred way of handling these undocumented donations.

HRC was the quintessential female politician/bureaucrat/money-grubber. Others have followed her avaricious and partner-entangled example, including:

Bruce Ohr and his wife, Nellie
Willie Brown and his former main squeeze, Kamala Harris
Bryan Bowlesbey (Major) and his politician wife, Tammy Ducksworth
Fauxcahauntas Warren and her professor husband, Bruce Man - together, their income is nearly $ 1 million/year
Bob Dole and his 2nd wife, Elizabeth - she held a few government positions, but made far more money on foundation and corporate board

The REAL Revolution Today

It's not noisy.

It doesn't take place in the streets.

You might not even see it happening.

It's the quiet watching - of the Elite, by the Deplorables.

Most of them aren't even all that keen on Trump - the Left is foaming at the mouth about him, but he isn't the cause.

He's the Bellwether. The indicator that something is deeply wrong with the power situation in this country. Oh, I'm not saying that he isn't doing a good job - for the most part, he is. He's slicing through political decrees disguised as executive actions, taking out bureaucratic regulations that hamper the economy, and appointing judges at a furious rate - which will change the judiciary for a generation or more.

But, the real change is in the American people.

We're less inclined to go along with Bull$hit in public life. We've started answering back, at work, and in the public arena. We've stopped trying to keep our heads down and blend in. We're working on self-education, pushing back on indoctrination-in-place-of-education, and are no longer telling our kids "Go to college, get a good job".

Average people are pushing back against the Leftist policies that have made their cities/states such cesspools of feces, drug addiction, violence. They're tired of being priced out of the housing market by Elites that live unmolested in their rent-subsidized apartments and gated communities.

The Media long ago lost its credibility with the average American, giving the blogs, forums, and dissident social media sources an opportunity to counter the official narrative. This access to media alternatives drives them nuts, goading them to ever-more-outrageous stories and statements.

Women are key to the rise of radical politics. Without participation by women, these radical organizations wouldn't fill a Taco Bell restaurant during a blizzard.

Why?

Look at the demographics of those organizations, largely:

Very young women, without families to care for - they are looking for fill those empty hours with something that they can point to as meaningful
Old - post-menopausal women, often without children or grandchildren (or, not in regular contact with them) - they use the younger people in the movement as a way of passing on their legacy
Women who are employed in jobs that have regular hours and little pay - leading them to use their role in those organizations to validate their sense of importance

They are using the same radicals in multiple organizations - astroturfing most of the membership through social media posts shared by bots. Look at the leadership of some of the orgs - they are interconnected with multiple groups.

SIDE NOTE: I've been watching the Dems, and it looks as though Marianne Williamson is in danger of being cut - we might be able to keep her there longer by changing a practice, and telling pollsters that we plan to vote for her. Not that it will propel her to the top, just muck up the machinery a bit. She is gradually becoming Woke to the Leftist Tactics, and she might add an interesting twist to it all.

Discretionary Authorities

One of the perennial problems for analysts and commentators on public policy is the existence – or non-existence – of legislative accommodations for discretion on the part of an executive. For example, a law drawn to provide for a hypothesized need must provide for the decision that the need has arisen. What would be appropriate then must not begin until then. For another example, a law drawn to resolve some current need with appropriate action must also allow for the time after resolution. The action that ameliorates a troubled period is usually inappropriate after the trouble is past. However, it’s usually not left to the legislature to recognize those transitions. That responsibility is normally placed in the hands of the executive branch – by law.

That automatically awards a degree of discretion to the executive that many persons – especially legislators – find disturbing. Yet in our era it’s become a consistent practice: effectively unavoidable.

Problems for public comprehension arise when the extent of the executive’s discretionary authority is unknown. For example, the Trump Administration has levied tariffs on imports from various countries. Tariffs are a form of taxation under the Constitution, which would seem to put that power in Congress’s demesne. But legislation on the subject could easily include a clause granting the president discretion over the imposition of tariffs and their severity. The precise wording of the legislation is what matters in determining the legality of President Trump’s actions...but the general public is unlikely to know the particulars.

Just yesterday, FOX News contributor Andrew Napolitano railed against the Trump Administration’s tariffs as unConstitutional. Yet current federal law on tariffs speaks otherwise:

SEC. 232. SAFEGUARDING NATIONAL SECURITY.
     (a) No action shall be taken pursuant to section 201 (a) or pursuant to section 350 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to decrease or eliminate the duty or other import restriction on any article if the President determines that such reduction or elimination would threaten to impair the national security.
     (b) Upon request of the head of any department or agency, upon application of an interested party, or upon his own motion, the Director of the Office of Emergency Planning (hereinafter in this section referred to as the "Director") shall immediately make an appropriate investigation, in the course of which he shall seek information and advice from other appropriate departments and agencies, to determine the effects on the national security of imports of the article which is the subject of such request, application, or motion. If, as a result of such investigation, the Director is of the opinion that the said article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under Such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security, he shall promptly so advise the President, and, unless the President determines that the article is not being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security as set forth in this section, he shall take such action, and for such time, as he deems necessary to adjust the imports of such article and its derivatives so that such imports will not so threaten to impair the national security.
     (c) For the purposes of this section, the Director and the President shall, in the light of the requirements of national security and without excluding other relevant factors, give consideration to domestic production needed for projected national defense requirements, the capacity of domestic industries to meet such requirements, existing and anticipated availabilities of the human resources, products, raw materials, and other supplies and services essential to the national defense, the requirements of growth of such industries and such supplies and services including the investment, exploration, and development necessary to assure such growth, and the importation of goods in terms of th6ir quantities, availabilities, character, and use as those affect such industries and the capacity of the United States to meet national security requirements. In the administration of this section, the Director and the President shall further recognize the close relation of the economic welfare of the Nation to our national security, and shall take into consideration the impact of foreign competition on the economic welfare of individual domestic industries; and any substantial unemployment, decrease in revenues of government, loss of skills or investment, or other serious effects resulting from the displacement of any domestic products by excessive imports shall be considered, without excluding other factors, in determining whether such weakening of our internal economy may impair the national security.
     (d) A report shall be made and published upon the disposition of each request, application, or motion under subsection (b). The Director shall publish procedural regulations to give effect to the authority conferred on him oy subsection (b).

The phrases national security and economic welfare in the above effectively award the president complete discretion over the imposition of tariffs and the rates to be imposed. Judge Napolitano should be aware of that. Apparently he isn’t – and in his ignorance he’s made a false, misleading statement about President Trump.

In another part of Judge Napolitano’s statement, he condemns President Trump’s use of funds allocated to “the military” for the construction of the wall along the southern border. In Napolitano’s eyes, this is a usurpation of Congress’s power of the purse. But the allocation of funds to military expenditure places discretion over the actual use of those funds in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief: i.e., the president. Besides that, walls and other barriers have obvious military applications. Judge Napolitano has no more standing to condemn this application of military funds than he would to condemn the purchase of shovels for digging trenches. So once again, a respected commentator has misled the public...hopefully out of ignorance, though for a retired federal judge that doesn’t seem like a respectable claim.

I could go on about this sort of thing. When Congress wants to bind the executive branch to a rigidly specified course of action, it legislates in the language required for that purpose. Congress has chosen not to do any such thing in the two areas above. Critics of Trump Administration policies might decry the relevant legislation – and the relevant portions of Article II of the Constitution – as much as they please. The discretion President Trump has exercised was left to the president in the clear language of the law, including the Supreme Law that created his office and defines his powers.

But remember the Prime Directive: Don't "think white."

It took several decades before they [Irish immigrants to America] fully settled down and bridged the achievement gap with WASP Americans. But bridged it was. By the 1950's studies showed Irish-Americans at the high end of the economic spectrum. . . . Contrast that with the position of America's blacks. After half a century and trillions, yes, trillions of dollars spent trying to 'bridge the achievement gap' between blacks and Whites the gap today remains as wide as ever. Meanwhile blacks' ancestral homelands are without exception poverty-stricken hell-holes which are getting worse rather than better. Despite an avalanche of Western aid.

"The same was said about the Irish." The Irish Savant, 9/4/19.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Scum’s Gonna Scum...

...and while there are plenty of scummy types on Capitol Hill, some definitely “outperform” the rest.

It’s generally known that Ilhan Omar is in Congress solely because of the large population of Somali immigrants in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional district. Omar herself is a Somali immigrant. Given the state of affairs in that African sewer, one might reasonably imagine that Omar would be grateful to have been admitted to this country. However, when it comes to the behavior of a Muslim, reason seldom has a place at the explanatory table.

The rumors about Omar having married her own brother to commit an immigration fraud have been circulating for some time. They’ve just acquired lots of additional substance:

In the past three weeks I have circled back to interview sources whom I have found to be highly reliable in the Omar saga. They open a window onto the scandals from the perspective of Ahmed Hirsi, her long-time partner and the father of her three children. According to sources, Hirsi is telling friends:

that he will not go to jail for Omar;
that while Omar did indeed marry her brother (Ahmed Elmi) for fraudulent purposes, Hirsi did not know at the time that she had married Elmi;
that Omar is threatening Hirsi he would be in trouble along with her if the truth were to come out;
that Omar has asked him to state publicly that all is well with their marriage even though it is completely done and finished; and
that in fact they are living apart and have been divorced under Islamic law (although they remain legally married).

Having humiliated Ahmed Hirsi by her affair with Tim Mynett, Omar now wants Hirsi to perform public relations services for her to suppress the scandal. That is cold.

Interesting, no? The hard-left Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which has treated Omar with unconcealed adulation up to now, is suddenly on the case:

     New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.
     Omar has denied the allegations in the past, dismissing them as “baseless rumors” first raised in an online Somali politics forum and championed by conservative bloggers during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota House. But she said little then or since about Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the former husband who swept into her life in 2009 before a 2011 separation.
     The questions surfaced again this month in a state probe of campaign finance violations showing that Omar filed federal taxes in 2014 and 2015 with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while she was still legally married to but separated from Elmi.
     Although she has legally corrected the discrepancy, she has declined to say anything about how or why it happened.
     The new documents also detail the Omar campaign’s efforts to keep the story of her marriage to Elmi out of the press, arguing that detailed coverage would legitimize the accusations and invade her privacy.

The response from Omar? It’s all right-wing plotting and Islamophobia:

     Omar spokesman Jeremy Slevin issued a statement Friday asserting that the questions about her personal life are illegitimate:
     “Since before she was elected to office, Ilhan has been the subject of conspiracy theories and false accusations about her personal life. Emboldened by a president who openly treats immigrants, refugees and Muslims as invaders, these attacks often stem from the presumption that Ilhan — like others who share those identities — is somehow illegitimate or not fully American.
     “Ilhan has shared more than most public officials ever do about the details of her personal life — even when it is personally painful,” he continued. “Whether by colluding with right-wing outlets to go after Muslim elected officials or hounding family members, legitimate media outlets have a responsibility not to fan the flames of hate. Continuing to do so is not only demeaning to Ilhan, but to her entire family.”

Imagine any Republican – imagine any white male Christian — attempting to deflect such serious and well-substantiated accusations in a comparable fashion. Imagine what would become of him.

There’s been a lot of talk about a two-tiered justice system in this country: the powerful skate on even the most serious offenses, while the little guy suffers the full weight of the law. It’s demonstrably that way as regards the coup attempt against President Trump orchestrated from within the FBI and CIA. What underlines the scurrility is the likely success of the attempt by Omar to evade scrutiny for crimes that would get an ordinary immigrant deported. She’ll receive all the protective cover her Democrat colleagues can contrive.

The Democrats always do that for one of “their own.” Look at the cover they’ve provided Charles Rangel. Look at how they attempted to protect Anthony Weiner. And do I really need to mention Ted Kennedy? Power is what matters to the Democrats. Indeed, nothing else does.

Worse, the Republicans almost always yield to it. They can’t bring themselves to confront such arrant lawlessness. The press might say something unflattering about them. Not that the press won’t do so anyway. But the typical GOP public official has his spine surgically removed before taking office. Whether his conscience is left in place remains unclear.

Yet there are still people who demand to know “how we could have elected Donald Trump.” How dare we choose a man from outside the political elite! How dare we opt for one known for brashness of statement and daring in action! How dare he defy all precedent by working to fulfill his campaign promises – and how dare we stand loyally by him as the rest of the mortally offended ruling class labors to bring him down! It is to laugh...hollowly, and with many a tear.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Some Thoughts on the China Situation

The first thing to remember is - despite what SOME people will say - Asian people are NOT all alike.

Even the relatively physically similar Han people of China - the similarities are, in part, to their common ancestry - have distinct differences in different regions.

Culturally, the Chinese citizens of southern China have a completely different outlook than the ones in the north - or, the east or west. The more rural interior of China has different interests than the more commercialized coastal areas. Additionally, China, like America, is simply too big to not have some regional differences - along with dialect, history, and politics.

But, the central government, as well as the educational system and the media, impose a rigid worldview and conformity on the country as a whole. The Chinese expect all to fall in line with the thinking of the Elites.

Bookroomworm has a perspective that I'd not thought about - namely, that China's cultural and political hegemony is intensely resented by nearby Asian nations, and, within its own country, too. That sense of superiority that has often been remarked on does NOT make friends of other cultures. A loss of power would provide economic opportunities for Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, among others, as well as greater freedom to ally with countries without fear of China's ham-fisted interference.

On Fun In Discourse

The piece below seems to have hit a nerve. Perhaps two nerves, as some of the respondents have been rather acerbic. “You shouldn’t be making fun about this,” they write. Cause People can be like that, as we know...but Americans in the Right, too? I didn’t expect that.

Allow me a seeming tangent, as whether you want to or not I’m going to take it anyway. The world is filled with a number of things...yet there are “shortages.” Can you work out why a world packed full of so many good things should have “shortages?” It’s not because anything we genuinely value is all that scarce. The rarest of the elements are present in the Earth’s crust in such quantities that no one could possibly possess or consume the whole supply. So what’s going on?

The sneer quotes around “shortages” should have given the game away...but there I go saying “should” again.

It’s quite simple, really: There is no such thing as a “shortage,” separate from considerations of price. He who says “there’s a shortage of X” is really saying “I want more X but I’m unwilling to pay the going rate for it.”

An old joke has much point here:

Butcher: Good morning, Madam. What can I get you today?
Customer: What are you asking for pork chops?
Butcher: Three dollars per pound.
Customer: What? Why, across the street they’re only two dollars a pound!
Butcher: Why don’t you buy them across the street, then?
Customer: They don’t have any pork chops.
Butcher: Well, when I didn’t have any pork chops, they were two dollars a pound here, too.

As it is with pork chops, so it is with fun.

I’ve become a fan of comedian James Veitch. Some of his bits on YouTube are enough to get me laughing uncontrollably. The one I have in mind just now is embedded below:

It can seem as if there’s a shortage of fun just now. Not so! There’s fun to be had from most things, including quite a lot of things that irritate or frustrate us. You have to pay the price: i.e., you have to put in the effort required. There’s a lot of fun to be had in fencing with Cause People. There’s even fun to be had from dealing with our detractors and those who want to subjugate us. Do you think President Trump isn’t having fun when he tweets about his Fake News detractors? I’d bet my bottom dollar that he laughs out loud, thinking of the reddened faces and clenched fists at the Washington Post and CNN. The key is, in James Veitch’s words, to “find the game.”

There’s just about always a game available, especially when you’re confronted by some humorless scold who wants your freedom, or your money, and / or your immortal soul. I’ve even had fun with door-to-door religious solicitors, a species of which Long Island has no “shortage” whatsoever. You wouldn’t believe some of the reactions I’ve received – and just in case you’re a newcomer to Liberty’s Torch, be advised that I take religion seriously...especially my own.

This isn’t a blanket prescription. For some varieties of harassers, the business end of a 12-gauge is the only sensible reply. But when you’re in the mood to play, play! Find the game. There’s almost certainly a game to be found, and you won’t know how much fun you can have with it until you unearth it and set it in motion.

Just a thought.

Quickies: A Bit Of Fun

I can’t say exactly why, but this squib from Sarah Hoyt has put me in a whimsical mood. The following conversation is entirely hypothetical...but maybe it should be a template for future exchanges with hairy-eyed doom-shouters (HEDS):

HEDS: We have only twelve years to save the Earth!
FWP: (calmly, in his professorial voice): You’re going about this the wrong way.
HEDS: Huh? What are you—
FWP: Look, your cause is important to you, right? You sincerely believe in it?
HEDS: Well, of course! That’s why we—
FWP: Stop right there. I’m listening to you, right?
HEDS: Well, yes! And I need you to—
FWP: No, no, slow down. How many other people have stood stock-still and listened to you?
HEDS: Well, not a lot. But—
FWP: You probably think people are rejecting your cause. But your problem isn’t your cause. It’s your competition.
HEDS: Huh? I don’t get it...
FWP: Have you ever stopped and taken a count of all the causes out there?
HEDS: Uh, no...
FWP: That’s the key. There are dozens of them, and hundreds or thousands of people promoting them. And they all want the same thing: other people’s attention. But people only have so much attention to give – and what’s worse, nearly all those other causes are bogus. Not like yours!
HEDS: So what should I do?
FWP: Think about it. If the problem is your competition using up other people’s attention for bogus causes, what do you need to get other people to ignore them and listen to you?
HEDS: (the light dawns) You mean...I have to get all those other cause promoters to shut up and go away?
FWP: You’ve tried the direct approach and it hasn’t worked, so why not try something else?
HEDS: You’re a genius. Thank you, Thank you! (runs off to harass the "competition")
FWP: (smiles) Just doing my job, sir. Just doing my job.

And I alone am escaped to tell thee.

Monday, September 2, 2019

Quickies: Do We Need Such Men?

“We are the sin eaters. It means that we take the moral excrement we find in this equation and we bury it down deep inside of us, so that the rest of our cause can stay pure. That is the job. We are morally indefensible, and absolutely necessary.” – Colonel Eric Byer, played by Edward Norton in The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy wasn’t well received critically, but it did well even so, in part because of the all-star cast. For me, the quote above is the keystone to the rest of the story. It was uttered after a “black op” reaped the lives of a number of innocents along with its intended target. Colonel Byer says it to Aaron Cross, a super-agent who’d been part of the operation and who’d only just learned of the unintended casualties.

The underlying thesis is plain: the most morally stainless society will still need men willing to do things others would regard as morally indefensible, to protect the rest and to keep clean the hands of those overtly in power. Jim Butcher also uses this as a motif in his “Harry Dresden” novels. The notion is horrifying...yet a great many people would agree with it, albeit grudgingly.

Myself? I don’t know. I do know that the current milieu, in which spree shooters and suicide bombers can reap countless lives before anyone knows what they’re about, is more challenging than any previous era in American history. Moreover, I expect matters to get worse before they get better. The advance of technology will bring us ever more effective methods of swiftly killing large numbers of unaware persons. With governments everywhere taking the lead in directing and funding all scientific research and technological development, you can bet your last dollar on it.

Is the only imaginable counter to such threats a cadre of men willing to kill innocents if and when they must do so to eliminate their intended target? And what about this opinion of torture, from legendary NHL coach and broadcaster Don Cherry:

“If hooking up one rag-head terrorist prisoner's testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camel shagger will save just one Canadian life, then I have only three things to say: Red is positive, black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet.”

Are Byer and Cherry’s sentiments morally justifiable? I don’t want to say yes...but it’s getting harder, day by day and atrocity by atrocity, to say no with any degree of firmness.

Labor Day: A Debunking

Few things get me as angry as a priest preaching politics. It never fails to light my boilers – and my parish is afflicted by not one but two such priests. Yesterday one decided to heap praise on unions. “In honor of Labor Day,” he said.

If there’s anything that deserves less praise and lots more condemnation than the labor union, it’s not coming to mind at the moment. A labor union is a device for denying the right to work to some persons, and for denying the right to hire and fire to some employers. It’s antithetical to everything this country is supposed to preserve and protect. Yet it continues to be celebrated by ignorant persons (and members of labor unions) as if it were responsible for American industry in toto.

It ain’t that way, folks. But I’m here to prattle about Labor Day specifically, so I’ll get back to that.

There are three fallacies about Labor Day that most Americans accept without question. All three have had a significant impact on American life. All three are plainly false. Therefore, it’s time for them to be refuted, hopefully for all time.

The first fallacy, which has arguably had the widest impact, is that Labor Day is a contrivance of Franklin D. Roosevelt established to promote the sale and employment of outdoor barbecuing equipment. Not so! It predates FDR’s administration by several decades:

Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, different groups of trade unionists chose a variety of days on which to celebrate labor. In the United States and Canada, a September holiday, called Labor or Labour Day, was first proposed in the 1880s. In 1882, Matthew Maguire, a machinist, first proposed a Labor Day holiday while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union (CLU) of New York. Some maintain that Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor put forward the first proposal in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labour festival held in Toronto, Canada. In 1887 Oregon became the first state of the United States to make Labor Day an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty U.S. states officially celebrated Labor Day. Thus by 1887 in North America, Labor Day was an established, official holiday.
Following the deaths of workers at the hands of United States Army and United States Marshals Service during the Pullman Strike of 1894, the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve legislation to make Labor Day a national holiday and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law six days after the end of the strike. Cleveland supported the creation of the national holiday in an attempt to shore up support among trade unions following the Pullman Strike.

There isn’t much about the presidency of Grover Cleveland that I disapprove, but kowtowing to the unions after having used the Army, quite legitimately, to break up an illegal strike is one such item. (We can, however, blame FDR for the Norris-Laguardia and Wagner Acts, and should do so at every opportunity.)

Second, we have the widespread belief that Labor Day marks “the end of summer.” This is astrophysically incorrect. Summer is the period between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. These are defined as follows:

The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet's semi-axis, in either northern or southern hemispheres, is most inclined toward the star that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23° 26'. This happens twice each year (once in each hemisphere), at which times the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.

In the northern hemisphere the summer solstice occurs within two days of June 21. As for the end of summer:

An equinox is an astronomical event in which the plane of Earth's equator passes the center of the Sun, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the planet. The equinoxes are the only times when the solar terminator (the "edge" between night and day) is perpendicular to the equator. As a result, the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.
In other words, the equinoxes are the only times when the subsolar point is on the equator, meaning that the Sun is exactly overhead at a point on the equatorial line. Equinoxes occur twice a year, around 21 March and 23 September. The subsolar point crosses the equator moving northward at the March equinox and southward at the September equinox.

So as you can see, Labor Day, set by legislation to be the first Monday in September, has nothing to do with the “end of summer.” Feel free to keep the pool open.

Third and last for this tirade, despite the prevalent opposed conviction, it is perfectly all right to wear white after Labor Day. There has been no legislation on this subject. As for sartorial conventions, the highest imaginable authority has already ruled:

Back in Emily’s day—the nineteen 00s, 10s and 20s—the summer season was bracketed by Memorial Day and Labor Day. Society flocked en masse from town house to seaside “cottage” or mountain “cabin” to escape the heat. City clothes were left behind in exchange for lighter, whiter, summer outfits. Come fall and the return to the city, summer clothes were put away and more formal city clothes donned once more. It was an age when there was a dress code for practically every occasion, and the signal to mark the change between summer resort clothes and clothing worn for the rest of the year was encapsulated in the dictum “No white after Labor Day.” And it stuck.
Of course you can wear white after Labor Day, and it makes perfect sense to do so in climates where September’s temperatures are hardly fall-like. It’s more about fabric choice today than color. Even in the dead of winter in northern New England the fashionable wear white wools, cashmeres, jeans, and down-filled parkas. The true interpretation is “wear what’s appropriate—for the weather, the season, or the occasion.”

However, those who are prone to spilling ketchup or mustard on their garments might be advised to avoid wearing white on Labor Day itself, for purely practical reasons.

So much for these pernicious misconceptions about Labor Day. Remember that it’s not FDR but Grover Cleveland we have to blame for the event. Feel free to continue to enjoy your summer from tomorrow onward to this year’s autumnal equinox. Wear whatever colors you damned well please. And enjoy your barbecue equipment for as long as the weather permits.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Sunday Miscellany

NOTE: I started this last Saturday - a week ago. Finishing it just fell through the cracks until now.

A Chinese student in America is bewildered by some of the differences in the cultures. Some of the differences he noticed might be due to his presence in a college community. But, many of them are cultural - in America, most of its citizens operate according to the cultural norms of Western Europe, where the original Americans (mostly) came from. I say original Americans, to distinguish them from the occupants formerly known as Indians, and now, indigenous peoples.

Want to sound all smart and informed about the 1st Amendment? Download this book (free link expires Sept. 9, so don't delay).

Free Speech has no greater champion that Camille Paglia, who has long talked and written - in nonapproved ways, to the grim disfavor of Modern Feminists - about men, women, and the complicated relationships between them, and society. City Journal has a feature on her career defending the right to say, write, and do exactly as she pleases.

And, last, an article in Popular Science, about rational thinking, and its disconnection from ability to think rationally.

In other words, even high-IQ people can have tangled, illogical thinking.

That isn't a surprise to regular readers of Liberty's Torch - we regularly skewer the illogical thought processes of Liberals. But, to be fair, even non-Liberals often engage in mushy thinking, with results simply confirming their biases.

I'm not a terribly high IQ person. I'm smarter than the average (probably not by all that much), but I know that my biases can lead me to erroneous conclusions - that, in fact, they have in the past, and probably will again in the future.

I consider myself lucky to have had a dad who understood logic sufficiently that he was able to pass on the basic ideas of the Syllogism - that logical process that is defined thus:

A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.

When discussing principles and positions with others, I'm always struck by how few are able to understand what, to me, is dead-on simple. They truly have no understanding of that type of reasoning, and cannot follow the inherent logic of it. Their "reasoning" is emotional, echoing that of other people whom they associate with, and immune to change based on logic.

As a kid, I loved the logic puzzles in science magazines, whether they involved spotting the logic flaw, untangling the seating arrangements, names, and occupations of train riders, based on very limited information, or using patterns of letters and their frequency to decipher cryptography puzzles. Those activities didn't involve very high levels of intelligence, just application of known principles, and a little logic, to the problems. With only an average intelligence, children can - and were - taught the methods, and could apply them to practical problems.

That skill is one of the targets in modern American education. Can't have the proles able to spot the logical fallacies in the politicians's/Elites' arguments, can we now?

For a fuller description of the failure of American public education, go here.