Portentous Phrase Pugilism

     I managed to misplace this Angelo Codevilla piece when it first appeared – possibly because of my travails with the Brave browser – but thanks to Mike Hendrix it’s come back to mind.

     As with all Codevilla’s essays it’s a worthy read from first to last, but there are two segments I feel compelled to cite in particular. The first one:

     William Webster, the only person ever to have headed both FBI and CIA, seized that opportunity with an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he claims both agencies acted to protect “the rule of law,” and that they should continue to do so. That claim abstracts from the undeniable—and undenied—clash between the FBI and CIA’s anti-Trump campaign and current law.

     Hold on tight to that well-focused little paragraph, because it’s “one” of a one-two punch. Codevilla trashes Webster’s claim in a few nicely pointed sentences, and arrives here:

     In short, Webster’s “rule of law” amounts to the assertion that he and people like himself are the law. Hence, to criticize them is to criticize the rule of law.

     Got you right on the chin, didn’t it? Codevilla’s argument is simplicity itself. The Supreme Law – the Fourth Amendment – requires probable cause for a search warrant of any sort. Even if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) permitted the use of unverified, slanderous allegations as adequate grounding for surveillance – it doesn’t – it does not override the Fourth Amendment requirements. It can’t.

     Ergo, Webster’s claim about “the rule of law” is a complete falsehood: one hundred eighty degrees from the truth. Anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with the Bill of Rights should see it at once. So why did he make it?

     Heh, heh, heh!

---

     Allow me a seeming tangent. The genuinely excellent movie God’s Not Dead contains two scenes of striking relevance here. In the first of these, a college freshman struggling to defend the tenability of his belief in God to a philosophy class confronts a statement by physicist Stephen Hawking:

     In the second, the student counter-thrusts against Hawking’s statement with a reciprocal logical technique:

     In the first scene, the snooty Professor Radisson (played by Kevin Sorbo), submits an argument from authority: that is, he invokes Stephen Hawking’s prestige in physics as the basis for his thrust. He even attempts to amplify it by calling Hawking “the greatest genius in history,” which he was not. In the second clip, freshman Josh Wheaton (played by Shane Harper) counter-thrusts with a second authority of greater relevance – John Lennox, a professor of mathematics and philosophy – setting Professor Radisson’s “argument” at naught.

     An “argument from authority” is not an argument. It’s an implicit claim that the question under discussion has been definitively answered, but it is not an answer. You’d think the difference “should” be “obvious.” Yet to many people, it isn’t obvious at all.

---

     William Webster was (at separate times) the head of two prestigious federal agencies. That’s the source of whatever “authority” he wields. Yet neither of those posts has any bearing on “the rule of law.” That phrase has been bruited about by the Democrats in Congress as if it were a complete argument for their crusade against President Trump. Yet it is nothing of the sort. It is, however, what R. A. Lafferty once called “a good round thumping phrase:” the sort that can be used as a bludgeon against those who react to such formulations without thinking.

     The careless slinging of portentous phrases has done a great deal of harm to public discourse. “The rule of law,” which is merely shorthand for the principle that no one shall be deemed exempt from the law’s requirements simply because of who he is or what stature he may have achieved, is one such phrase. Another, which I’ve already torn to shreds, is “national security.” Neither phrase is an argument of any kind, no matter whose mouth pours it forth.

     If you’re an habitué of the talking-head shows, I suggest you start a little journal. Include in it, as far as possible, all the instances you encounter of portentous phrases being submitted as arguments. Note who did so, what sort of “authority” he claims, and which edge of his axe he was trying to grind. Take special note of the use of one portentous phrase to counter another; such occasions can provide amusement of a unique variety. After a week keeping track of these things, you’ll be an authority of a sort yourself: on the vacuity of discourse as practiced by partisans and would-be “experts.” Who knows? A dissertation on the subject might get your authority officially recognized...especially if you contrive to include as many “good round thumping phrases” as the subjects of your analysis.

     What’s that? You think I should undertake this effort? Sorry, I have a novel to finish. But do have a nice day. (:-)

Lest You Fall to the Propaganda About Trump

He is more focused on initiatives that will benefit the USA than on protecting his reputation.

Look. We didn't hire him to be ALL things to ALL people. There are some things he does better than others - and one of them is pushing projects to completion. If necessary, he will cajole, flatter, bribe, or threaten opponents. All of which I'm OK with, as I'm not a nancy-pants Liberal.

But, the most important thing he is doing is setting up a framework that will withstand pushback, once he is out of office. He's put in non-Leftist Federal judges, exposed the Deep State and its reach (presumably as the first step in gutting it), started the Wall while putting sufficient Border agents in place - with instructions to Get 'Er Done. He's cancelled deals, something he knows, from experience, can be done. Other deals, he's renegotiated - again, personal experience helps him.

In some agencies/departments, he's had to put people in place, and hope they take measures that move his policies forward. Some of them, such as DeVos in Education, have performed far better than expected. Others have been disappointments. That's the norm.

The next few months will be critical. GOP members of government need to know we will kick them out if they don't support him in this crisis. At the grassroots level, replacements for the retired/retiring GOP legislators need to be found, financed, and assisted in their election runs.

Of course, the other side will be Chernobyl-level nasty - lying, cheating, vote-stealing. I have NO idea why a challenge to NY's proposed issuance of driver's licenses to illegals is not being made. At the least, it invalidates the REAL ID act, and that is something that Trump can take to court.

New York wants to gut their licenses as REAL ID? Prepare for airlines/other transport to be instructed, by the FAA, NOT to accept them. The airline industry will go ballistic, and not at Trump, but Cuomo.

Conversations

     Welcome to winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Gentle Reader. Today we will have the winter solstice: the moment at which the plane that passes through the Earth at the equator is at its greatest angular distance from its orbital plane. Thus, today will be the shortest day of 2019 in the north. In olden days this was sometimes called “the dark of the year:” the day on which pagan tribes would light great fires and offer great sacrifices to their gods in propitiation: a plea for the return of the light and warmth of the Sun.

     Of course, we don’t do that any more. Now we get seriously soused on brandy-laden eggnog and Vin Glogg, stuff ourselves with finger foods and chips and dip, and carp to one another about the roads, the property taxes, and our ungrateful kids. Later in the evening, when the lights have been lowered and everyone is sufficiently pickled, we might “take liberties” with one another’s spouses in between Christmas carols. All in the spirit of the season, of course. Hey, it’s only once a year.

     By sheerest happenstance, today the Wall Street Journal has posted an article about Christmas’s influence on the secular world. I passed the C.S.O.’s desk as she was reading it, and the following exchange occurred:

FWP: The Journal has a news story about the Nativity?
CSO: About its influence on the secular world.

FWP: If that’s considered news, I can’t imagine when they’ll get around to Moses parting the Red Sea.
CSO: That was about “climate change.”

FWP: So the disturbance of the previously stable Egyptian climate began when the waves crashed over the Pharaoh’s army?
CSO: Naah, it really began with the frogs. Remember, from the plagues?

FWP: And if only the Hebrews had been willing to negotiate, we might have been spared this!
CSO: Just think of all those dead firstborn sons. My God, the horror!

     Have a nice day.

This Has to Stop...

...I'm going to get a Traumatic Brain Injury from banging my head on the wall.

So. To put it in simplest terms:

An actual woman can be "put in her cis-place" by a MAN, dressing in Fake-Femme, and told to shut up about WOMEN'S ISSUES.

Because, TransFemme.

I'm so old I remember when a MAN telling a WOMAN to shut up was a Hate Crime.

Remember the wise words from Working Girl:

Pearls of expression.

But what was historic about it was not that Donald Trump became the third president to be impeached. What was historic was the way it was done. That was a first.

Because it was not the House that impeached President Donald Trump, it was the Democratic Party. Which just happened to have the majority in the House. They appear to think that this is all that’s needed, which is a big mistake and an even bigger gamble.

"Only The Damage To America Is Real." By Raul Ilargi Meijer, ZeroHedge, 12/20/19.

Fanatical pursuit of the last penny of advantage.

From a ZeroHedge post on the failure of the European Union:

A multi-polar world became a uni-polar world with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama said it was the end of history.

Those were the days my friend, I thought they would never end, but they have.

During globalisation the balance of power shifted from West to East.

During globalisation China went from almost nothing to become a global superpower.

During globalisation the influence of the US and the West went into decline.

What went wrong?

The idea:

If we leave the wealth in private hands it will create more jobs and wages.

The problem:

The wealthy could get better returns on their capital in the faster growing Asian economies, and this is where the jobs and wages were created.

What did they miss?

The Government may not spend the money as efficiently as the private sector, but they do spend it in your country.^[1]

Millions also missed the fact that their political class would be filled to the brim with malevolence for them. And that, thus, no government would lift a finger to stop the export of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs and the import of millions of hostile, parasitic primitives.

Too, Batman11 defines the problem too narrowly. Leaving commerce and innovation to the private sector is indeed the correct policy. However, as I frequently point out in comment streams, free enterprise or capitalism or free markets were never intended to operate without an eye to the requirements of ordered liberty. Monopolies are properly regarded as a distortion and abuse of free enterprise. As are breach of contract, fraud, unfair competition and the like.

After our horrendous experience with globalism, we now know that to the list of such distortions of free enterprise we must add addle-brained worship of foreigners and chasing the last penny of wage advantage to the lasting harm of one's own people.

Notes
^[1]  Comment by Batman11 on "Europe's Age Of Humiliation." By Slawomir Sierakowski, ZeroHedge, 12/19/19 (emphasis removed).

Political War News 2019-12-19

     Well, as everyone from here to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud should already be aware, the House of Representatives voted yesterday to impeach President Trump. All the “for” votes came from Democrats; one Democrat voted “against,” one split his vote on the two articles, and a third voted “present.”

     Several pundits have commented darkly on this turn of events. Andrew McCarthy and Andrew Davis both foresee this sort of political warfare as a “new normal:” whenever the president is of one party and the House majority is of the other, the president will be impeached irrespective of any substance. The Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfeld commented dryly:

     In the U.S. Senate, where impeachment trials are held, lawmakers are set to acquit President Trump.

     Then we have just another year to wait before the House tries to impeach him again.

     All of that was to be expected. But the fun has spread even more widely than many are aware.

---

     Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has demanded changes in the Senate’s rules for the trial. One of those rules is that the calling of a witness to testify before the Senate requires a majority vote. This displeases the Democrats, who want to introduce witnesses who would make allegations against the president that go beyond the House’s articles of impeachment. We may call this the “Kavanaugh strategy:” a method by which the Democrats could prolong the Senate trial indefinitely, as they tried to do when Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court.

     That would certainly not be favorable to a trial on the merits. Indeed, it summons memories of the Star Chamber, in which an Englishman could be compelled to face charges not specified in advance. The unspecified charges could – and often did – go beyond what the law forbids: i.e., accusations of “moral turpitude” that could get the defendant sentenced to an interval in the stocks, a public flogging, or having his ears cut off. The Democrats demand a similar Senate trial in which they could call an arbitrary number of witnesses to allege whatever would keep the proceedings going and the media dirt mills churning. Under such conditions, even Republicans nominally committed to acquitting President Trump might be moved to vote for conviction, if only to get the hell out of there.

     Nancy Pelosi has muttered about not submitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate until the rules are changed to make them “fair.” This is a second string to the “drag it out” bow: a charge that the trial rules are themselves slanted against the Democrats. Mind you, allegations that the proceedings during the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees were slanted against the Republicans were sniffed aside. But that won’t stop the Democrats from leveling the same charge against the GOP-controlled Senate.

     Imagine a state of affairs in which President Trump must face the voters while still awaiting trial, because the media are trumpeting the “unfairness” of the Senate’s rules. Can you imagine the capital the Democrats’ media handmaidens would make of that situation?

---

     At this time, the impeachment can be cast as a purely partisan move. Should the Senate dismiss the charges on a party-line vote, the Democrats would have a stick with which to counter-flail the GOP for partisanry. Of course, at this time there’s still a possibility that one or more Senate Democrats would join the Republican caucus in dismissing the charges or a summary acquittal after a brief trial, but no one can be certain about that yet.

     Even should the Senate not approve changes to the trial rules, further media involvement could arise through interviews and publicity granted to “witnesses” not permitted to “testify” in the trial. As the media are wholly enlisted in the anti-Trump movement, this is more likely than not – and would permit the fomenting of public suspicion about a “cover-up” of presidential wrongdoing.

     The existing situation, as farcical as it is, has commentators such as Mark Levin saying that it makes the impeachment of the next Democrat president absolutely imperative. Congressman Louie Gohmert and Senator Lindsey Graham are similarly minded:

     “I'm really saddened for my country," Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, told the Washington Examiner. “I'm really concerned that the irreparable damage that now every president that has a different party in the House in control of the House will have to fight impeachment his whole term. It's just a very, very dangerous precedent. There will definitely be some people wanting payback.”

     Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday impeachment payback is inevitable.

     "Anything you do to us, we can do to you," Graham said. "We have some people on our side just as crazy as people on their side."

     This is not a pleasant prospect for the future of the Republic.

---

     The Democrats have lost heavily in opinion polls and canvasses of probable voters because of the impeachment farce. Their strategists have undoubtedly gathered to discuss how they might alter their approach to recoup. The current standoff, in which a thin margin provided the vote to impeach the president and a thin margin will likely acquit him, provides all sorts of fodder for speculation.

     There’s much to think about – and to fear – in the current situation. “Normal” politics has been displaced by total warfare politics, in which there are no rules other than victory. Under such a mindset, what remains unthinkable? Assassinations? Pogroms against districts heavy with political opponents? The complete suspension of the Constitution?

     It becomes ever more likely that a majority of decent Americans will decide it’s time to reach for the musket over the mantel. For what else is there to do when the opponent’s power-lust has caused him to reject all moral and ethical constraints?

     Once more, with feeling:

You cannot fight power-lust with logic and evidence.
You have to kill it.
There are no alternative methods.

     Have a nice day.

Some Thoughts About Political Power

Not mine, Brothers and Sisters. I've not that sort of intellect.

But worth reading.

I've long held that the key to defeating the Leviathan that is the Civil Service is not personal action - "You're Fired!" - but reduction-attrition-outsourcing.

Trump needs to set a goal, to take place right after the next election (which, I'm assuming, he and the GOP will win). That goal:

To PERMANENTLY reduce the Civil Service staffing.

This can be done several ways (my form of intelligence is not creating the Big Picture, but in practical actions that make it so).

(1) NO more hiring. None. Any position that opens up will be filled with contract workers, who - as a condition of employment - will NEVER be able to be hired by government.

This shuts off the spigot. I'm fine with giving them subsidies to buy health insurance, a 1:1 match for any pension contributions to PRIVATE pensions/IRAs. I will NOT permit them to join a union, or to organize for one, or to use work time for political activities. Those are removal offenses.

They will NOT be subject to worktime HR meetings. They will NOT be subject to non-work demands of the staff.

(2) Reduction in force. Eliminate at least 25% of EVERY department. Part of this can be done by moving those departments/agencies out of Washington. As we have seen with Agriculture, a whole lot of workers will not follow.

Face it - too many agencies/departments are overloaded with staff. These are make-work positions, meant to secure a vote, hamper the changing Executive branch, and pay off a donor. Without government, the various foundations and NGOs, and the local recipients of Washington's generosity with OUR money, Leftists would all be living in Mumsy and Daddums basement.

Because of the first rule, displaced workers may not find another job in the federal government - unless they want to enlist in the military. This provides another choke point, which cuts off the "dance of the lemons". If they want to stay in the Washington area, they'll have to look for private sector work. IF they can find it.

This eliminates the current tactic of laid-off workers spending their unemployment time lobbying for their return (with the bonus that ALL money they WOULD have earned IF they were working is paid to them). No more treating layoffs like deferred-pay vacations.

When you're out, you're REALLY out. Let them find out just how expensive Washington is to live in, on a salary like the average worker has.

TIP: If you own housing in Northern VA, or other locations close to Washington, sell - NOW. Pretty soon, the prices will plummet.

I wouldn't buy my latte locally for a while; you're likely to be attacked by a disgruntled worker.

(3) Oursourcing. This is the heart of the change-over. CERTAINLY, workers displaced from one government job may apply to work for the companies providing the temps.

However, they will have to work without union representation and adhere to ALL rules of contract employees. If they don't, they can be fired.

Need I add that conviction of a felony is a barrier to employment? As are serious job offenses - physical assault while on the job, theft of government property, etc.

They'll have to do things like actually WORK, show up (on time), present a pleasant demeanor, and not sexually harass, watch porn, or surf the Net. For a few of the former employees, this will be a new thing.

In the future, ONLY those employees needing a high level of classification would actually work for the government. All others would be temps. This is already done in many jobs - my son-in-law got one contract job, thanks to having a still-active classification from the military. There's a lot of vets that could get a leg up that way.

Normally, I would think that the chances of this being put into place would be nil. However, Trump has shown that he doesn't buckle when pressured.

And, pressure there would be. So few of those on-the-street former employees could manage to get a job with a salary even close to their former wages, that this, alone, could break the Leftists.

Which, of course, would devastate all of us.

For reals.

For Virginia With Hope

     [A short story that might not be fiction for long. The hope spoken of in the title is that it will prove unnecessary...but that if it does not, Virginians will do what must be done. -- FWP]

---

     They had disdained the courtrooms, even once cleared of the pestilential scum that had roosted there. The aroma of corruption and power-lust remained even after the former occupants were no longer among the living. It would be some time before the stink of injustice had dissipated and those chambers could be used once more by honest men. Instead, they held the trial in a large clearing in the woods west of the capital.

     A thick cordon of men armed with battle rifles provided security. An ancient oak, sixty feet high and five feet through the trunk, stood behind the judge’s bench. Prosecutors and defendants sat on lawn chairs behind folding picnic tables. The jury and spectators made do with blankets spread over the loam.

     The judge took care to keep his face impassive throughout. He knew it was not for him to decide the verdict, only to ensure that the law was served and that the principals adhere to the forms and procedures of a fair trial. When the verdict was announced, his experience at law sufficed to tell him what sentence must follow.

     The defendant exploded in fury.

     “This is a mockery of justice!” he raved. “You have taken it upon yourselves to make the law according to your preferences, instead of adhering to a law passed by a duly constituted legislature and signed by a sitting governor! And for what? Your fantasy of a right that innumerable legislatures and courts have dismissed! Have you the least idea what could stem from this outrage?”

     The judge maintained his bland expression with an effort. He waited for the defendant to sit before replying.

     “I think we do,” he said. “I think that proceedings of this sort are long overdue in many other states and municipalities, in large part because of what you have only just said. You speak of ‘a law passed by a duly constituted legislature and signed by a sitting governor’ as if it hung weightless in space, absolute in authority and meaning, with no need of support from any other edifice. But that is not the case. In thinking that it would pass muster without objection or resistance you failed to judge accurately whether you would have the sine qua non of all governance: the consent of the governed. And as you can see here, you did not.”

     “But this is a farce!” the defendant cried. “A judge who was never raised to the bench, a prosecutor who was never appointed as such, and a jury of...peasants! Men randomly selected from a rabble in arms. No court in the Commonwealth would sanction it.”

     “In this, you are correct,” the judge replied. “The courts of the Commonwealth have been so thoroughly corrupted that no verdict they issue can be trusted. They dismissed all considerations of right and justice in favor of partisanry and the currying of favor with the governor’s mansion. Therefore, we held this proceeding, in which the real dictates of the law – a law for which you have no affection and had planned to ignore – could be obeyed.” He glanced once more at the written jury verdict. “Have you anything else to say before I pass sentence?”

     The defendant sputtered but said nothing intelligible. When he had fallen silent the judge read the verdict the jury had prescribed, and ordered that the defendant be taken to secure confinement until it could be carried out.

---

     The judge surveyed the platform briefly. It seemed sound, though he had no experience in such things. He looked a question at the lead carpenter.

     “It’s not fancy,” the carpenter said, “but it will serve the need.”

     “Very well,” the judge muttered. “I suppose we can proceed.”

     The carpenter frowned. “You sound reluctant.”

     “I am,” the judge said. “We should all be. This is likely to touch off a firestorm.”

     “But you said—”

     “I know what I said,” the judge interjected. “I know what the verdict said, and what the sentence must be, and that it was my duty to pronounce it. But what we just went through will spread throughout the nation. It’s going to happen, and it’s going to be bloodier than what happened here. And that the victors could and did impose justice by their own standard in the aftermath guarantees that it will be much bloodier than what happened here.”

     “But it wasn’t ‘our own standard,’” the carpenter protested. “It was the law of the land.”

     “That’s not what the media will say.” The judge was overcome by a wave of weariness that threatened to send him to his knees. He fought it off, straightened himself, and turned to the copse of trees where the defendant was shackled. “All the same, best to get on with it.”

     He strode toward the guards with as much confidence as he could simulate.

---

     The defendant would not cooperate. It was necessary to bind his legs at the knees and ankles, and to carry him up the steps. The trap door squeaked when he was deposited upon it. He screamed in fury and fear. Two husky men held him upright and in place as the judge put the noose around his neck.

     “You will regret this!” he shrieked.

     “I already do,” the judge replied, “but not for the reasons you have in mind.” He gestured to the guards to hold the prisoner firmly, turned to the waiting crowd, and composed himself for a final statement.

     “We have had a trial, a verdict, and a sentence,” he boomed into the silence. “It remains only for the gravamen of the matter to be proclaimed and the sentence to be carried out.”

     He swept his gaze over the thousands assembled before the makeshift gallows. They appeared as solemn as he felt. There was no jubilation in them.

     Nothing like this has happened for a very long time, and they all know it. Better if it had, long before matters could come to this pass.

     “The charge is the infringement of a Constitutionally guaranteed right of the people, specifically the right to keep and bear arms, and the use of military force to do so. The prisoner was tried according to the established forms and procedures of the criminal law, and was found guilty by the unanimous vote of a jury of twelve of his peers. That jury also fixed the sentence at death by hanging, which will now be carried out.” He turned to the prisoner. “Have you any last words?”

     The prisoner screamed unintelligibly. Spittle flew from his lips and flecked the clothing of the men who held him. After a minute his head drooped and his screams lapsed to a hoarse, exhausted panting.

     The judge found that he could not proceed without a final statement of his own. He looked briefly at the ground, drew a deep breath, and faced the crowd again.

     “When He hung upon the cross, Jesus said ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.’ He told us to forgive and pray for those who have wronged us, just as He forgave the men who executed Him. But forgiveness cannot preclude punishment, for without punishment justice is a phantasm. We must do this, as little as it pleases us, and despite the foreseeable consequences here and elsewhere. But let us wait a moment and find in our hearts a spark of forgiveness for this man...even though he knew exactly what he was doing from first to last.”

     He bowed his head and recited the Lord’s Prayer. The crowd did so as well. When the final “Amen” was said and no longer echoed through the woods, he turned to the prisoner.

     “May God have mercy on your soul.”

     The guards released their grip on the deposed governor, and the judge pulled the lever that triggered the trapdoor beneath him.

---

     Copyright © 2019 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Incandescent Fury Edition

     I’ve been told – more than once – that a man of my years should not allow himself to become furiously angry. It’s bad for the cardiopulmonary system, they say. I am quite willing to believe it...but all the same, there are incidents that simply demand an angry response. And I’ve just had one.

     I’m a retired software engineer. I was a damned good one, at that. For many years I was considered a high authority in my field (real-time software). So I retain a powerful appreciation for that field, its disciplines, and the constraints under which software artisans must labor.

     Among the absolute, inviolable commandments of software engineering, there is one that every practitioner must absorb so deeply into his psyche that it can never be expelled:

Thou Shalt Not Lose The Customer’s Data.

     It’s the gravest sin in the field. The customer’s data is invaluable. It represents his time, judgment, labor, and much else. Sometimes it’s the bedrock of his business, without which he’d be on the bread lines. So a practitioner who loses the customer’s data is going to catch hell. He’s often unable to continue in the software trade.

     Well, this morning a program lost my data. And I’m ready to chew girders and spit rivets.

---

     The Brave browser, which I’ve used for a couple of years, first attracted me by promoting its integrated ad-blocking and some innovative security features. As ads are consuming an ever greater fraction of Internet bandwidth, and Web security is as great a concern as ever, I liked what I read about it. So while it was still in the beta-test stage I downloaded it and endeavored to transition to it.

     Beta-test software is still “under development.” The engineers are still laboring over it: adding features, fixing bugs – when they can distinguish them from features, at least – and refining aspects of the program such as ergonomics and esthetics. So I was rather cautious about my use of Brave for quite some time. Over time it advanced in reliability, and my level of caution diminished.

     This morning I was running Brave V1.1.22: an official, post-beta release and the most recent one. As many writers do, I keep a rather extensive set of bookmarks in my browser, divided into folders according to their application. That’s “customer data” as it pertains to a Web browser. If there’s anything a browser is absolutely forbidden to do, it’s to lose that data.

     But Brave did so – and for the third time in the past two months, at that. The details follow.

     I had a page open that I wanted to add to my “Future Columns” bookmark folder, where I keep links to pieces about which I intend to write later. That folder already contained five links. I sought to add a sixth. So I right-clicked on that folder, clicked on the pull-down menu choice that says “Add page”...and the whole folder was deleted.

     The first time that happened, I persuaded myself that it was my fault. Perhaps a visual aberration had caused me to click the wrong menu choice. I resolved to be more careful thereafter.

     The second time it happened I was incensed. I was certain I’d done what I intended, and that most certainly wasn’t to delete a folder full of valuable links. Fortunately I was able to recover most of those links from an export I’d performed a week earlier. However, I held back from dismissing Brave as my default browser. I should have known better.

     This third time I was unable to recover any of the data Brave had deleted.

---

     Not only have I been a Brave user these past couple of years; I’ve also promoted it to friends who’ve complained about the proliferation of ads that made Web browsing an annoying chore. This morning I regret having done so. I’ve already reported my experiences and my anger to Brave’s support community. However, I shan’t return to using Brave unless and until I receive absolute assurance that:

• Brave alerts its user community to the existence of this elusive, randomly striking fault;
• The problem has been investigated and reproduced;
• The nature of the fault has been determined and the problem has been fixed;
• Brave’s developers issue a mass mailing to their users about the repaired edition.

     To lose a customer’s data is the gravest of all software sins. I will not forgive it without a sincere admission of fault and a crash effort to find and fix the problem. Nor will I back up my bookmarks every few minutes just to be on the safe side. So for the time being, it’s back to Chrome.

     Beware, Gentle Reader.

Happy Holidays? MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I absolutely despise the craven groveling of educators, who have done their best to re-name Christmas Break as "Winter Break".

Listen - I'll obediently fall into line with the designation - however I feel about it - the very first time that "Winter Break" is scheduled, but does not include December 25th.

That's not gonna happen - ever.

So, anytime I'm subbing, I always say "Christmas Break". If chided by the little darlings about the PC-term, I explain my reasoning. They always end up agreeing with me that the re-naming is deliberately anti-Christian. I mean, they have no trouble identifying the Muslim holiday as Eid, rather than substituting some bland secular language.

Christmas Break is inconvenient. It comes just before the end of the semester. When the kids come back, teachers need to spend most of the rest of the semester reviewing for the upcoming tests.

If this vacation time was actually a "break", the school boards would move it to January, after testing is over, having kept school open through December (maybe taking just a one-day break on the 25th, if it fell on a weekday).

But they don't. They close down schools for 2 weeks. Schools clearly recognize that time period as special, as they hold special "Holiday Concerts", have "Secret Santa" gift exchanges, and "Door Decoration" contests. It's not just another unimportant or minor occasion.

They do this, despite their best efforts to secularize the season. They know the parental and community pushback they'd face if they did not.

In contrast, the holy days of Easter are ignored, except for the youngest students (maybe - the push to eliminate sweet treats in school has just about killed those celebrations). But, Easter is, in fact, the most important holiday of Christians. And, it has been bypassed by the blandly named "Spring Break", which is held without regard for Easter's revolving date.

All of that without a smidge of pushback.

Only in small towns, rural areas, Catholic schools, and in some parts of the South does this Spring time off coincide with Eastertime. For most of the country, it's just an artifact that provides a temporary pause in the school year.

The Easter Bunny tradition was brought to America by German immigrants. It's just never been all that important to any other heritage group.

Easter is taken seriously by Christians. Except for decorating eggs, and a few stories about Easter bunnies, most literature, film, and songs deal with actual events. Unlike the birth of a child, it's difficult to playfully celebrate a human being being put to death for alleged crimes against the state. Even the joy of Resurrection is tempered by a whole lot of human suffering and misery.

I truly don't care much about whether schools schedule their holidays around Christian holy days. What I do care about is not using mealymouth language to hide the fact that the sole reason for Christmas Break is to accommodate Christians.

It's not a crime to recognize that many Christians have family and cultural traditions that revolve around a Holy Day. That so many of them travel during this time virtually mandates closing down schools for an extended time period.

Just stop pretending that you're closing for "Winter" reasons.

Man up - admit the truth.

Pearls of expression.

Oddly enough, Senator Warren and other capitalism critics seldom ask how the system got rigged and what might be done to undo the rigging. But of course, the rigging is done in Washington, sometimes when special interest groups—including corporations—lobby congress for favorable treatment.

And how might that be undone? By trimming away uneven regulation and adopting policies that expose all business firms to the refreshing winds of competition. Put another way, by forcing capitalists to act like capitalists and not lobbyists.

"Why Is The System Rigged?" By Bruce Yandle, ZeroHedge, 12/14/19 (bolding and underlining removed).

In Summation...

     Further commentary is unnecessary.

Audiences

     We’ve had enough political crap for a day or so, I think. The merry-go-round won’t stop turning because the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have looked aside for an article or two. Besides, by my current estimate, the Democrats’ hunt for an impeachment pony under the eyelash-deep pile of FBI, DoJ, and Deep State corruption manure will still be in progress on January 19, 2025. So let’s talk about something else.

     Like why you come here to read the drivel we post, perhaps?

---

     One of the mantras relentlessly repeated by and at writers of all varieties is that you must know your audience. In other words: know what sort of reader you’re writing to attract, and what it is he wants that you can offer him.

     “Who is my audience?” isn’t a question to be answered with a list of names. It’s concerned with the qualifications, convictions, and specific desires the writer imagines his reader to possess: his background, intelligence, degree of literacy, other eruditions, orientation, and appetites. Despite the aforementioned mantra, very few writers ever think about the specifics of those things. In consequence, we mostly wind up writing to please ourselves.

     Mind you, that’s not a bad thing. If you can’t please yourself with your written work, you’re unlikely to carry on with it for long. Nevertheless, it helps if, once in a while, the writer asks himself the questions implied by the above. As I’m of an analytical bent, I probably do so more often than most.

---

     I conceive of the audience for what’s posted here at Liberty’s Torch as above-average in intelligence, and at least moderately knowledgeable about such things as history, current events, and contemporary controversies. While it is a commonplace that readers gravitate to op-ed sites such as this one not for enlightenment but for confirmation of their existing opinions and beliefs, I’d like to think that our readers are open to a change of opinion should hard, verifiable evidence point in an unexpected direction. In other words, I imagine the typical reader of this site to be bright, erudite, and intellectually honest.

     Consider for a moment the reinvigorated issue of pornography, which is more easily obtained today than ever before. Recently op-ed articles have appeared claiming that scientific evidence has established that porn is harmful to its consumer, irrespective of his age, sex, or orientation. The proponents have claimed that this constitutes an argument for outlawing porn. Now, that’s not a complete argument for outlawing something; if it were, cigarettes would have been outlawed decades ago. But it does at least suggest that the sober-minded citizen should review the evidence, if only for his own sake and the sake of his dependents.

     Consider also the claims of gun-control advocates and groups that both interpersonal violence and suicides could be greatly reduced by banning the private ownership of firearms. Now, those claims have been refuted in case after case – but to refute them, rather than simply dismiss them, is the obligation of an intellectually honest man. Fortunately, the evidence that countervails the gun-controllers’ assertions is publicly available. But what if it pointed in the opposite direction? Once again, the intellectually honest man would be required to concede that point, whether or not there remains any argument that private firearms ownership should be legal.

     Readers who can grasp what I’ve said in the above and agree with the principles involved are my target audience here at Liberty’s Torch.

---

     When I write fiction, it’s always to please myself. Whether it be science fiction, fantasy, supernatural events, romance, a family saga, or erotica, the “first consumer” – myself – is the one it must satisfy. Even so, I have a conception of the sort of person who’d enjoy delving into the kinds of stories I choose to tell and the way in which I tell them. And yes, I have him in mind at least some of the time as I fashion my tales.

     First, he must be unafraid of my tendency to imbue a story with the Christian moral / ethical framework. That’s absolute, as I never write anything from which those moral and ethical principles are absent. Sometimes – often – they’re “the stars of the show.” Indeed, they’re the main reason I write at all.

     Second, he must be willing to accept, at least for fictional purposes, the existence of heroes: persons of high character who are willing to place themselves at risk, or to embrace extraordinary tasks that require great effort and personal sacrifice, for something they deem more important than their own interests or well-being. Many readers are unwilling to believe that such persons could exist. They’re “too much larger than life.” Even some of my Supporting Cast characters have a hard time with the notion. But I consider the absence of genuinely heroic figures from contemporary fiction to be a major contributor to the cynicism and malaise common among today’s young people. I want to give them models to emulate, as best they can.

     Third, he must be able to endure my writing style, which is somewhat high-flown, moderately fussy, and a trifle archaic. I know many readers are miffed by the intricate involutions I indulge and the prissy phrasings I prefer. (Some of them are offended by alliteration as well, but there’s a treatment for that now.) It takes a somewhat quirky sense of humor to enjoy the way I tell a tale. The willingness to consult a dictionary every so often helps, too.

     (An English teacher once said of my style that “It went out of style around 1910,” so it would be foolish of me to regard the dislike of my style as some sort of bigotry. Chacun a son gout, as they say.)

     Fourth, he must not be looking for a retread of some sort. I can’t bring myself to write stories that involve old, overused settings and motifs, such as:

• Space wars (i.e., spaceships shooting at one another);
• Galactic empires;
• Time travel;
• The end of things as we know them (i.e., post-apocalyptics);
• Traditional monsters (e.g., vampires, werewolves, zombies);
• Quest stories about a hunt for some critically important object;

     I’ll occasionally read such a story, but I can’t overcome my desire to explore genuinely original motifs and settings when I write. That leaves me off all the bandwagons to which writers looking to “get on the gravy train” are attracted.

     That’s my target audience: the readers I can imagine would enjoy the tales I tell and the way I tell them. It’s also why I can hardly give my novels away.

---

     Audience awareness, whether or not his audience is consciously imagined and chosen, is fundamental to a writer’s chances of being read. Yes, he must please himself. But if he manages to please himself only, he’ll languish in obscurity. Few writers aspire to be unknown, unsung geniuses.

     If you write – fiction, exposition, op-ed, travelogues, cookbooks, what-have-you – how do you envision your audience? Co-Contributors? Colleagues from elsewhere on the Web? Graduates of the Famous Writers School? Bueller?

Figures Don't Lie, But...

...you know the rest.

There's an article about the upcoming "Student Debt Tsunami" that will destroy the American economy in the near future.

Of course, the numbers are used to argue the case for "Free" College for All. I don't need to point out to readers of this blog the stupidity of that idea.

One 'heart-rending' factoid used in the article is that Black students will be 'unfairly' the biggest recipients of the crash. The figures are below.

Student Loan Default Rates Are Highest For African Americans

The default rate among African American graduates is more than five times the rate of white graduates.

BACHELOR'S DEGREE GRADUATES	TOTAL AMOUNT BORROWED	DEFAULT RATE
Black	$55,667	20.6%
Hispanic or Latino	$28,599	8.6%
White	$26,005	4%
Asian	$30,612	1.4%

Notes

Debt and default among bachelor's degree graduates 12 years after college entry, 2004 entry cohort.

Source: Judith Scott-Clayton, Brookings Institution

Several considerations come to mind:

Black students are borrowing more than twice as much as White students, which might lead one to ask:

Are Black students majoring in subjects that pay off at higher levels than White students?

The short and dirty answer - No. A study of college majors, and the proportions of students by ethnicity and sex, is here. Very scholarly, very much supportive of the idea that minorities do not major in fields that will pay adequately with just a bachelor's degree.

That's a hard thing to get minorities/women to understand. A college degree is not just a college degree - major field of study counts.

I once had a discussion with an English teacher, who was indignant that her brother, with 'only' a bachelor's degree, made considerably more than she, with a Master's in English from a prestigious university.

I asked what her brother had majored in.

Electrical Engineering, I was told.

I diplomatically suggested that the field of engineering was short of people to fill those jobs, and might, therefore, pay more.

After being lectured about how pay should have NO relation to the number of applicants, but should be the same for the same 'level' of education required, I shrugged, and left.

She wasn't unique. MANY women, and minorities, have those egalitarian principles. Of course, that does inhibit upward mobility for individuals, but, hey - they keep their 'pure' ideals.

So, how should the student debt crisis be handled?

Put a ceiling on the amount that can be borrowed. Limit that amount to a MAX equal to the amount that the average person in that field earns after 5 years. No loan guarantees after that amount.

Also, put a maximum on the amount that can be borrowed each year equal to a year's tuition, minus other financial aid. If a college really wants a kid to attend, let them pony up a GRANT for room and board.

What does this mean? Fewer kids going to 'away' colleges, more attending local ones, including community/tech colleges.

NO money for coursework that is below college level. Let them take those classes at a junior college, before attending a four-year one. Admittance to four-year colleges for the low SAT/ill-prepared dependent on successful completion of an associate's degree.

Yes, I realize that this will likely KILL Big 10 football/basketball, but some sacrifices have to be made.

How Schools MIGHT Teach History

I'm re-reading The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. It's an absorbing tale that has an inspector of the English police, recovering from a workplace injury, in a hospital, and quite bored. He starts examining the criminal case against King Richard III for murder of his two nephews.

Interspersed between the research into the long-ago crime, is commentary about what today would be called "Fake News", and how people respond to evidence that they have been tricked. From a postscript in a letter to the injured policeman, 

 It's an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don't want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed.

 It does make you think, doesn't it? How a normal person, naturally with some individual flaws, can be recast as the Absolute Essence of All that is EVIL. And how resistant people can be to any examination of the facts that would put that characterization into doubt.

A Danger To The Public

     Wherever there are Leftists and Democrats, there is a citizen disarmament campaign in progress. It might not be well advanced. It might not have positive legislative prospects. But it will be there. Citizen disarmament and absolutely unrestricted abortion are the Left’s two imperatives, from which they will never retreat.

     And so, when the Democrats won the Virginia Governor’s mansion and majority status in both houses of the Virginia legislature, the very first thing they did was to prepare bills to effectuate a sweeping gun ban and confiscation. (Apparently, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s earlier endorsement of infanticide has made that subject a bit too warm for the moment.) Make no mistake: they want the citizens of the Commonwealth rendered unable to defend themselves – and without even the hint of a gun-related problem as a foundation for their proposals.

     It’s been said by others that when a politician wants to take your guns, it’s not because he fears for your safety but for his own. He’s got plans which, were you properly equipped, you’d shoot him for even contemplating. So you must be “dis-equipped,” that he might radically increase his power over you without a risk of armed resistance.

     The irony here is that those most alarmed by the prospect of a shoot-out over the right to keep and bear arms are those with the arms. We’re the ones most vocal about what a bloodbath would result. We’re the ones who fear for the lives of persons who might just be following orders, doing an unConstitutional job, out of fear for their careers in “law enforcement.” (As of today, none of America’s 88,000 governments have instituted agencies explicitly for tyranny enforcement, but give them time. It’s just semantics anyway.) It’s we in the Right who wring our hands about it.

     In response to the “Second Amendment Sanctuary movement” in Virginia, which has now swept over the great majority of the state’s counties, a Democrat legislator actually proposed employing the Virginia National Guard to enforce a confiscation law. More recently, the Legislature has considered a bill that would strip county-level “public safety” officers of their jobs and pensions for refusing to enforce a state-level gun ban or confiscation. A level-headed person then opined passionately:

     "They keep jacking this up, begging for war. Good Lord. Do they understand how awful this would be?"

     Some do -- but much, much more to the point, their tacticians know that gun owners know it would be a horror without precedent. That's what they're counting on: that gun owners and shooting enthusiasts, being decent persons who wish to harm no one, will submit to their tyranny rather than inflict that horror on the country we love.

     Nothing doing. Not this time around. This time, Virginians will fight. They must.

---

     It is well verified by the historical record that an armed citizenry that succumbs to political blandishments and agrees to give up its weapons will never get them back. Moreover, the political class almost immediately starts doing things that would provoke a revolt...if the public were still armed. The vector of oppression will point only forward from then on.

     Ironically, the American Revolution was triggered (pardon the pun) in large part by an attempt to confiscate the colonials’ weapons. Even more ironically, Virginia was one of the critical sources of pro-rebellion, pro-independence sentiment. That Tyrant Northam and his henchmen are attempting to subjugate the descendants of the Founding Fathers has great symbolic power: “If we can get away with it here, where couldn’t we?”

     If Virginians choose to fight, as I fear they must, there will be large-scale bloodshed. Indeed, there could follow a complete toppling of the state government. The lesson to America’s other anti-gun forces, wherever they are and however constituted, would be valuable. They would pull in their horns lest the assertion of the right to keep and bear arms encompass them just as bloodily. There would follow an interval in which our rights as armed citizens of a republic whose governments are responsible to us first and foremost would be respected...on the surface.

     But make no mistake: the determination to disarm us would not be extinguished. Aspiring tyrants know they cannot rule armed men. Like Tolkien’s Shadow, they would fall back to take another shape and resume their campaign.

     The central point here is simple and stark:

An armed citizenry can resist encroachments on its rights.
It possesses the means by which to defend them.
A disarmed citizenry cannot.

     We must hope that Virginia’s gun owners are aware of the danger to the public posed by the Democrats’ initiatives. My sense, from the swift progress of the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, is that they are. What follows will tell us all what sort of future these United States will face.

     Have a nice day.

How Democracy Made Us Dumb.

A speech by Ilana Mercer at the Mises Circle in Seattle on September 14, 2019. Fifty-five minutes and worth your time. Her characterization of Karl Rove is choice.

Ilana Mercer is her website.

A Loss Of Some Magnitude: A Sunday Rumination

     As I prepared myself for Mass this morning – and remember, it’s Gaudete Sunday, so be sure to get in some rejoicing – I was struck by a thought that seemed to come completely out of left field. It was about the inseparability of gain from loss: the impossibility of making progress in any dimension without simultaneously and unavoidably losing ground in some other. And as it is Sunday, a day on which my attention is turned to matters of faith and the spirit, that got me thinking about some of the gains and losses we have experienced, over the century behind us, that pertain to those things.

     One thing we have lost – or have sacrificed voluntarily – is the use of our religious affiliation as an organizing principle.

     That phrase might look a bit odd to a Twenty-First Century American Christian. Yet a few moments’ thought will unpack it easily.

---

     One’s religious affiliation was at one time a major determinant – for some, the sole determinant of importance – of one’s major life choices and activities. Think about the decisions Americans once made based on the dictates and constraints of their chosen faith and denomination:

• Where to live;
• Whom to marry;
• Where to school the kids;
• Where to attend services (of course);
• How to spend a large fraction of one’s “free time.”

     Some of those choices have been ripped out of our hands by economic forces. For example, rare is the family in our time that can afford a genuine religious education for its children, no matter how much they might want it. Property taxes have greatly diminished the ability and the willingness of typical parents to pay for a religious education. Other choices have been greatly affected by material matters regardless of whether we’re aware of it. For example, one’s choice of residential neighborhood is likely to be constrained by where one can work – a choice that grows steadily more confining as the specialization of all occupations accelerates.

---

     Whereas one’s faith was once a major principle of organization, by which one’s major life choices were guided if not determined, for the great majority of contemporary American believers it has taken a distant back seat to other considerations.

     This is not uniformly true, of course. Some sects still treat their faith as the consideration that eclipses all others. For example, the typical Hasidic Jewish family will almost certainly be found in a neighborhood that’s populated all but exclusively by other Hasidic Jewish families. Mormons also tend to dominate the neighborhoods in which they live, though not to the degree of the Hasidim. And Jewish parents still urge their children to marry within their faith, though they no longer chant the Kaddish if Junior should marry a gentile.

     Alongside those things, Americans’ faith was once an important determinant of their use of the leisure time. Adults would involve themselves in charities organized by the church or synagogue. Children would participate in games and sports affiliated with their church or synagogue. There was a greater emphasis on outreach as well, a practice that today seems confined to the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Much of this vanished with the old public service pitches about how “the family that prays together stays together” and how we should “go to the church of your choice.”

     Some would say we’re better off today – that contemporary life is freer and richer for the reduction of churchly importance in our lives. But it occurs to me that many of the social malaises we know today were all but entirely absent among those who put faith and involvement in it at the center of their lives.

---

     Before the rising cost of living forced American wives out of their homes and into wage employment, the Missus had more hours per week and more energy for neighborhood involvement. In a faith-centered community, such involvements were likely to draw in the other family members. That strengthened the attachment of the various family members both to the faith and to the family. Divorces were rare. Children tended to marry from within the neighborhood, and therefore within the faith. The whole edifice was strengthened.

     Yes, there were drawbacks. It could seem confining. A genuinely unhappy couple could find the stresses to be unbearable. And the kids would complain, as kids always have and always will, about Mom and Dad imposing on “their time.” Nothing worth having comes without cost.

     But what do we lament today? Marriages that fly apart at a touch. Large scale anomie among the young and pervasive loneliness among adults. Neighborhoods in which the neighbors are strangers to one another. A general rootlessness in which the only things that seem to endure are taxes and zoning inspectors. And piles and piles of gadgets that absorb an unholy fraction of our time and attention...whether we will it or not.

---

When I wrote the following in Which Art In Hope:

     “Excuse me, Miss,” Stromberg’s voice boomed out. Teresza jerked her head around to find the sociologist and most of the class staring straight at her. “Yes, you who’re holding Mr. Morelon’s hand in a grip of steel.” A titter ran through the hall. Teresza flushed. “Do you have an opinion on the subject?”
     “Uh, no, Professor.” Teresza rose and gathered her thoughts as best she could. “I was just surprised to hear that they had all that junk.”
     Stromberg smiled broadly. “Everyone is, Miss...?”
     “Chistyakowski.”
     The sociologist frowned. “Teresza Chistyakowski? Aren’t you a junior?”
     How on Hope did he know? “Yes, sir.”
     “Then you must have taken this course two years ago.”
     Teresza nodded. “Yes, sir, with Professor Friedland.”
     Stromberg started to say something else, but apparently changed tracks before it could come out. “Well, you may take my word for it, Miss. In 2061, thirty-four percent of the economy of the richest sector, which was called the United States, was devoted to entertainment and diversions. As a category, that outstripped the second largest sector, medical services, by more than two to one. If our histories are accurate, its products were consumed with an unbelievable avidity, and its customers were perpetually hungry for more.”

     ...I was principally concerned with family shrinkage and the prevalent obsession with material goods of a transiently entertaining variety. I hadn’t yet started to think about the importance of faith in holding the family together. But the connection is strong.

     There is no Last Graf. It’s wrong to encourage people to adopt a faith for “practical reasons” or to advance “community integrity.” Nor is there any prospect of strengthening religious involvements among people who lack the desire. But the loss of religious affiliation as an organizing principle counterbalances our material gains rather dramatically. Sometimes the loss seems the larger of the two.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Driver, let me off this minute!

I have been watching this train wreck [shoveling massive amounts of money into the repo markets] unfold since it began and have written numerous articles on how the Fed's statement that this is "not QE" is completely and utterly laughable. The expansion of their balance sheet is happening at such a rapid velocity that it is now occurring at a faster rate than the immediate months following the announcement of QE2 and QE3!

* * * *

Call it what they want. ["QE" or "not QE."] However, I believe history will show that QE4 is not going to begin at the end of 2019, nor the beginning of 2020, nor even later that year—because it has already begun.

QE4 began with the Federal Reserve’s massive injections into the repo markets in September 2019, despite the Fed's absurd claim that an accumulation of over $300 billion in debt within three months is "not QE".

The question is, how much more will they accumulate? How much more before they can put out this debt garbage fire, and how many more digital, fiat dollars will be created out of thin air before the pain stops?

Who knows? But one thing I do know is that this isn't over yet. Far from it.^[1]

The citizen monetary policy naïf has to marvel at the sophisticated concepts used by the real experts in these lofty matters. "Not QE" is breathtaking in its precision and inspires confidence that the experts are on top of that Confucian calling things by their right names thingy. That concept that if you don't use accurate terminology in matters of governance the kingdom sooner rather than later goes tits up, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

Despite the impressive building that houses the Fed and the impressive credentials of the people who work there, I'm wondering if, to borrow from the Chinese oncet again, whether we're actually looking at more of a Chinese fire drill than anything indicating actual stewardship.

Notes
^[1] "The Fed’s Recent 'Not QE' Is 'Not Working' and People Are Starting to Notice." By Nathan McDonald, ZeroHedge, 12/14/19.

Resurrection

Yep, we're back up and running at the dear ol' Cold Fury house of ill-repute and deliquency, folks, and mighty thankful to Annette and the Hosting Matters crew for that welcome change in status, too. There are still scattered functions not a-functioning hereabouts as of yet—comments in particular—and much tweaking of settings, re-uploading of files, and other such left to take care of yet, some of which I'm gonna get to as we go along this evening. But what I want to do most at the moment is deliver myself of the pent-up aggravation and stress this interminable nightmare has caused me via splattering some serious verbal hostility about the place, so a-posting we will go. Thanks for your patience, everyone. And special thanks to Our Humble Host at LT for giving me a set of keys and letting me skulk around over here.

Assorted

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I’m rather weary, have a lot to do that’s not (gasp!) Web-related, and have a lot of material in the “Future Columns” collection that really needs to be addressed. So once more, with feeling: Have a smorgasbord of interesting tidbits and brief commentary thereupon.

---

1. “Political Correctness.”

     Kurt Schlichter is one of the most popular contemporary columnists in the Right. A great part of the reason is his humor, but an even larger part is his directness. Here’s a particularly salient example:

     This PC leftist garbage is simply about power.

     You can’t prove your innocence or change their minds because actual facts are beside the point. The point is to generate a narrative that results in you being deprived of the moral capacity to assert your own rights and interests. You are disenfranchised, totally, by the moral failure that is your race or your sex or your religion or your sexual preference or whatever has been designated as bad this week. That is why we get evil concepts like “white privilege,” “mansplaining” and “heteronormativity” tossed around as if they are conceptual trump cards that instantly silence you merely by being asserted.

     Indeed. If the Left were interested in ideas, and open to the possibility that some of its ideas might be wrong, we wouldn’t see, hear, or suffer BS such as Schlichter excoriates. But there’s a larger point – one that almost no one has addressed squarely and fearlessly:

You cannot fight power-lust with logic and evidence.
You have to kill it.
There are no alternative methods.

     So it has always been, and so it shall always be.

---

2. “Great Men.”

     “Great” is not a synonym for “good.” A “great man” is one who has had large and sweeping effects upon the world or his part of it. The great monsters of the century past were all “great men.” That, of course, doesn’t keep us from reviling them.

     The recent passing of former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker provides an example:

     [A] table of a dozen guests were arranged around [Volcker.] The dinner was clocking along amicably enough, when, suddenly, a spat erupted between Volcker and the person seated next to him, our older daughter, aged 15. It flared so fiercely — the topic was baseball — that the rest of us sat and gawked. Then it blew over.

     After dinner, we helped our eminent guest on with his coat and gave him a copy of a book of the Sun’s editorials on the gold standard. He put his hand on our shoulder as we walked him to the door. “Just remember,” he said, “you can’t go back.” It was the closest we ever got to a policy prescription from the great man.

     In the morning, our 15-year-old descended for breakfast. “Do you know who Paul Volcker is?” she demanded. Yes, we exclaimed, he’s one of the great central bankers of all time. “No, no,” she said, “that’s not who Volcker is.” So we asked who he was. “He was on the baseball blue ribbon commission!” she exclaimed — nailing the fact that one of the reasons Volcker will be so widely missed is that was a man of many parts.

     The editorialist considers Volcker a great man. There’s an argument to be made for it; his policy decrees certainly did have large and sweeping effects upon others. But he was not someone I’d have chosen for the role he played in the Carter and early Reagan Administrations. He was a dedicated ideologue of central banking and politically controlled currency. He reacted negatively to contrary views, despite his admission that the historical record of such systems was uninspiring. His successor, Alan Greenspan, demonstrated far greater penetration into problems of money and currency.

---

3. Feminism.

     I have been of the opinion for quite some time that the degeneration of equality before the law feminism into gender-war / gender-privileges feminism accounts for much of our social malaise. Concerning recent reports that “liberated” women are far less happy than their supposedly oppressed predecessors, Suzanne Venker provides some thoughts:

     In fact, it isn't surprising at all when you consider that women have been lied to for decades about what constitutes a happy life. Academic and elite feminists, who reside in our universities, in the media, in politics, and in Hollywood, have told women all kinds of things that just aren't true. Things that make women (and by extension, men and children) very unhappy.

     Such as the idea that women don't need a man and that children don't need fathers: "Women are realizing more and more that you don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have that child," noted Jennifer Aniston in this 2010 interview about an upcoming film.

     Or that men and women must make the same life choices with respect to work and family to be deemed "equal": “An equal world will be one where women run half our countries and companies and men run half our homes. We will not rest until we reach that goal,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in 2018.

     Or that staying home to raise a family is less important, valuable, or satisfying than earning a living: "These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit." now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said in 2006.

     Or that there's no such thing as the biological clock: "Be cautious about metaphors like the 'biological clock'— don’t take them literally," writes Catherine Aponte Psy.D. at Psychology Today.

     These are all lies.

     Please read it all, especially if you’ve had a more than glancing acquaintance with contemporary feminists and feminism.

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4. The Point Of “Public Education” Is Not Education.

     Have a recent, quite appalling demonstration:

     A Mason [Michigan] High School student turned to the police alleging a teacher assaulted her during school hours because she supports President Donald Trump.

     Sadie Earegood told NEWS 10 that the teacher involved was Paul Kato.

     Paul Kato is the media technology teacher at the high school. Students say that he has not been in school since the alleged incident on Dec. 5, but Mason Schools has not confirmed that.

     Earegood claims she was assaulted by Kato when he ripped her "Women For Trump" pin from her shirt.

     Earegood is 16 and a junior at the school. She said Kato, started off by saying he didn't like the pin she was wearing.

     "I was just really shocked that a teacher would especially do that," she said. "He's talking about the 'Women for Trump' pin and I said, 'that's fine you don't have to like it, we can have our opinions.'"

     Earegood described a struggle between herself and the teacher where he tried to take the pin off her.

     "He grabbed it and I pulled, I tried to push his hand away and he grabbed my shoulder," she said. "(He) just kind of put his hand there, and then he started pulling more and more and I just started backing up."

     She said the teacher then put the pin upside down on his shirt and stated that it belonged that way.

     Imagine if that had been an Obama pin. Imagine the national outcries from the media. Oh, and apropos of nothing, the teacher, Paul Kato, is a Nigerian immigrant. Draw what conclusions you will.

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5. Impeachment: Why?

     You’ve probably seen the following graphic:

     We offended the political class by choosing a Chief Executive from outside their ranks. That’s been obvious for quite some time. RedState’s Kira Davis concurs:

     No, impeachment isn’t about impeaching Donald Trump…it is about impeaching the American voter. It’s a punishment. The Democrats and the ideological Left have been angry at the rest of the country for three years now, and it is their intention to make us pay for daring to buck their rules.

     Trump’s presidency is a direct repudiation of the elitist class, as bizarre as the whole thing sounds. A Manhattan billionaire becoming a symbol for the little guy? Weird. But that’s where we are. The Democrat party (and some Republicans) will never forgive us for circumventing their power structure and playbooks and taking a wildly different path. The American people are only supposed to feel like we have some measure of control at the top. In reality, there is an entire class at the top who set the rules for succession, who deserves our support and how elections shape up.

     Trump’s election spit in the face of the conventional wisdom they’ve forced on us for decades and now we’re all paying for it.

     We must suffer through this farce as penance for our “sin.” Mustn’t ever defy the “experts,” kiddies! They know stuff, don’t y’know.

“The people have lost the confidence of the government...Would it not be simpler to dissolve the people and elect a new one?” – Bertolt Brecht, during the 1953 Berlin uprising.

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     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. With luck, the trials of the day will release me to you for further blatherance on the morrow – which, come to think of it, is Gaudete Sunday!

Chorus:
Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete
Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete

[“Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born,
“From Mary the Virgin, rejoice.”
“Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born,
“From Mary the Virgin, rejoice.”]

Tempus adest gratiae, hoc quod optabamus
Carmina laetitiae devote redamus

[“The time of Grace has come, which we have waited for
“Let us devotedly render Him joyful songs”

Chorus

Deus homo factus est natura mirante
Mundus renovatus est a Christo regnante

[“God has become Man, and Nature is astounded
The world has been renewed by the reigning Christ”]

Chorus

Ezechielis porta clausa per transitur
Unde lux est orta salus invenitur

[“The closed gate of Hezechiel has been crossed
“From there the Light has risen, Salvation has come in”]

Chorus

Ergo nostra cantio psallat iam in lustro
Benedicat domino salus regi nostro

[“Therefore, our congregation, praise Him in brightness!
Bless the Lord! Greeting to our King!”]

Chorus

     Therefore, rejoice. I’ll see you later.

#WeVoteDeplorableRed

I did manage to take a picture, but the wifi was funky where I was. Here's the picture (Why, yes, this was before my coffee!).

For Those Too Young to Remember...

...what happens when a President gets bluffed out of a firm response.

To get this to happen didn't require a lot - except for someone with a firm sense of morality, and the guts to state it plainly.

Two years later, the Wall was history.