"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy,
And the dogs that bark revolution.
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies!"
(Robinson Jeffers)
Other participants at a forum of which I’m a member are agog over the insults currently being dealt to freedom of religion. The concerns most frequently cited are same-sex marriage (i.e., having to cater one) and abortion (i.e., the possibility that doctors who oppose it might be forced to perform them). I reflected on the matter for a while and offered the following perspective:
Freedom of religion in the U.S. died a long time ago.
The possibility of freedom of religion exists only in a state that’s confined to certain limits. The Constitution, our founding document, attempted to define and impose those limits. But as any good TimeBomber will be aware, the 88,000 governments of these United States ceased to pay any attention to the prescriptions and proscriptions of the Constitution a long time ago – like with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
When the State is “free” to make law on any and every subject whatsoever, and to whatever effect it pleases, there cannot be freedom of religion for a simple reason: There cannot be freedom of any sort. Every human activity becomes a matter of whether the State will give us permission, explicitly or implicitly. Conduct required by one’s religion might be forbidden, while conduct forbidden might be mandated.
Just now I’m embroiled in a rather expensive wrangle with the township in which I live, which points up the most important aspects of this thing. When I bought my home, there was a shed on the property that had been built by the previous owner. Apparently, when he built that shed there was no need to get a permit from the town. When a storm a few years ago blew down the shed, reducing it to a pile of hazards, I disposed of the detritus without a second thought.
Well, here we are five years later, and the town wants to fine me for not having applied for a demolition permit (and of course, for not having paid them the customary bribe). They claim I needed a permit merely to get rid of the refuse from an act of Nature – and they’ve threatened to prosecute me for not having done so.
Welcome to the Land of the Fee and the Home of the Slave, where everything not compulsory is forbidden. I wonder how things are going in Russia these days?
But as I completed that thought, the celebrant’s homily from this morning’s Mass returned to mind. He led off with a simple question:
“If Christianity were to be made illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”
It's a question a lot of us who call ourselves Christians would do well to ponder – and not with an eye toward concealment.
Just a quick pre-lunch morsel of food for thought.
Among my other oddities, I’m an aficionado of the traditional music of England, Ireland, and Wales. Much of it is as good, lyrically and melodically, as anything written by a well known composer (and scads better than most contemporary pop). In my days as a semipro entertainer – no, there’s no reason you would have heard of me – I incorporated a lot of it into my repertoire. My audiences usually enjoyed it.
It stands to reason that the known compendium of British Iles Traditional music, compiled from a period at least eleven centuries deep, should contain much that’s excellent and little that’s disposable. Time is the best of all filters. It winnows out that which has no staying power, preserving only what has merit. But there’s another reason as well: traditional music reliably expresses the highest convictions and aspirations of those who produced it.
A friend once told me that it’s considered a settled dictum that every item of British Iles Traditional music will concern itself with one or more of the following subjects:
Sex
Violence
Drinking
The supernatural
And yes, occasionally you’ll stumble over a B.I.T. folksong that involves all of them. However, what’s on my mind at this unreasonably early hour are the many that involve the supernatural, from hauntings to Almighty God Himself.
As I pondered this emphasis, it began to seem a confirmation of something I’ve long believed: that men desire (and, when humanly possible, will insist upon) justice. That is: we believe in justice, both as an attainable state among us and as a process to be exercised when the rules of right and wrong are violated. Moreover, we desire justice so ardently that when temporal justice fails, we continue to believe in eternal justice: a justice that will be done in the hereafter, inexorably.
Even the darkest of all the songs in the Childe Catalog of British Iles Traditional music incorporates this theme:
In Bruton town there lived a farmer,
Who had two sons and one daughter dear.
By day and night they were contriving
To fill their parents' heart with fear.
He told his secrets to no other,
But unto her brother this he said:
'I think our servant courts our sister.
I think they has a great mind to wed.
I'll put an end to all their courtship.
I'll send him silent to his grave.'
They asked him to go a-hunting,
Without any fear or strife,
And these two bold and wicked villains,
They took away this young man's life.
And in the ditch there was no water,
Where only bush and briars grew.
They could not hide the blood of slaughter,
So in the ditch his body they threw.
When they returned home from hunting,
She asked for her servant-man.
"I ask because I see you whisper,
So brothers tell me if you can."
"O sister, you do offend me,
Because you so examine me.
We've lost him where we've been a-hunting.
No more of him we could not see."
As she lay dreaming on her pillow,
She thought she saw her heart's delight;
By her bed side as she lay weeping,
He was dressed all in his bloody coat.
"Don't weep for me, my dearest jewel,
Don't weep for me nor care nor pine,
For your two brothers killed me so cruel-
In such a place you may me find."
As she rose early the very next morning,
With heavy sigh and bitter groan,
The only love that she admired,
She found in the ditch where he was thrown.
Three days and nights she did sit by him,
And her poor heart was filled with woe,
Till cruel hunger crept upon her,
And home she was obliged to go.
[“Bruton Town,” as performed by Pentangle]
Of course the materialist and the atheist will sniff at such a belief. Yet it appears in countless other songs from the Childe Catalog. It reminds us that even if temporal justice should fail us, the ultimate justice rendered in and by eternity will not.
The Friday afternoon confessions were seldom well attended. Schliemann hadn't had a penitent in more than ten minutes. His mind was beginning to wander when a new shadow appeared on the confessional screen.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
The old priest sat straight up.
"Louis?"
"I'm sorry it's been so long since I've been by, Father."
"I've been worried, Louis. Are you all right?"
There was a long silence.
"No. This will probably be my last confession."
A cold hand slipped around Schliemann's heart and squeezed. Oh, my God.
The priest listened in silent agony as Louis recited a litany of minor faults and self-indulgences. He always confesses to the same things. Never anything serious. He's about to face the Particular Judgement, and I have yet to hear anything about two killings committed in his front yard.
Louis fell silent, waiting to hear what his penance would be.
"Anything else, Louis?"
"No, Father, I'm done." I can't let it pass!
"What about the two men you killed?"
A hiss came through the screen. The shadow head pulled itself a little higher.
"What about them, Father?"
Schliemann's throat was dry. "I seem to recall a commandment on the subject."
"As do I. But did it forbid killing, or murder?"
"The text says, 'Thou shalt not kill.' "
"That's the English text. What was the Aramaic? Or the Hebrew?"
Schliemann started to expostulate and stopped himself. A twitching was developing in his right elbow. It made him want to jerk his arm.
"Actually, Father, it isn't two men, it's four. And all for the same reason: because I caught them practicing the abuse of the helpless. I don't tolerate that sort of thing."
"You don't tolerate...when and where were the other two?"
"About eight years ago, on a back street on the fringe of the city. They were raping a teenage girl, holding a knife to her throat." Louis's tone was conversational. "I killed them both and walked the girl home."
"How is it that a man of your size and gentility knows so much about violence as to be able to kill two men at will? You weren't carrying your shotgun that day, were you?"
"No, Father, I wasn't armed."
"Well?"
There was a pause.
"Call it a gift. I'm not exactly what I appear to be. I never have been."
"And you feel no remorse for any of this? My God, Louis, what kind of man are you? Have I ever known you at all?"
"I may not be exactly what I appear to be, Father, but I am a man." The words were droplets of molten iron. "Twice, when there was no one else to do it, I've acted in defense of my kind. To do so, it was necessary that I kill. Was it horrible? Yes, just as it should be. Did it leave me with nightmares? Yes, just as it should have. If the necessity were to recur, would I do it again? Yes, in a heartbeat. And that, too, is as it should be."
Schliemann had had all the words shocked out of him. The twitch had traveled down from his elbow to his hand, whose fingers were dancing beyond his control. Something seemed to be happening in his ribcage, too.
"The Church doesn't have much to say about earthly justice, Father. I've always wondered why. Maybe the notion of divine justice is as much as it has to give us. But justice in this world is a human artifact. Either it's made by individuals or it doesn't exist. I have made my share of it, and I don't regret it in the slightest. Now you've heard about all of it, though I never intended that you should. Does the Church cast me out for this?"
If there is to be justice in this world, men must make it. We must make it. But there’s more and worse: Whenever we decline to make justice, injustice will reign – and should injustice pile sufficiently deep, all justice will be extinguished.
There’s been a lot of injustice recently, so much that our individual practitioners of injustice for power and profit have become extremely brazen. The following video from Bill Whittle gives us an example thereof:
Hillary Clinton has gotten away with the violation of the laws concerning the security of classified information. Whether you like them or not, they are federal law, and they bind everyone equally. However, to be a Clinton is to be above the law, at least in the Clintons’ eyes. However they contrived it, Hillary got away with it – and the Clintons got the attorney-general and the director of the FBI to collaborate with them.
This was made possible by our tolerance of previous injustices, in particular our tolerance of the politicization of the Justice Department and the many injustices Bill Clinton committed while he held the Oval Office. It appears irreversible. All we can do now is refuse Hillary Clinton the presidency.
I have no doubt that should she fail to gain the prize, Mrs. Clinton will rant and rave about having been cheated of it. The unjust can always rationalize away their failures. The amazing part of that is how swiftly they leap to proclaim that they’ve been treated unjustly...and how readily their allegiants will swallow and parrot the claim.
There’s nothing to be done about that. If Donald Trump prevails on November 8, we’ll be forced to endure it. Perhaps we should regard it as part of our penance for having tacitly acquiesced to so many injustices up to now.
Tolerance has become the favorite shibboleth of the Left. It’s the word they use to cow us out of our sense of injustice, particularly an injustice committed by one of their mascot-groups. Consider the stabbing rampage in St. Cloud, Minnesota as an example. Here’s what Mark Dayton, the Democrat governor of that state, said to Minnesotans immediately afterward:
“I ask everyone in the St. Cloud area and throughout Minnesota to rise above this atrocity and act to make religious and racial tolerance one of the ways in which Minnesotans again lead our country.”
More than sixty Americans have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists in calendar 2016 – and Mark Dayton dares to tell his constituents to be tolerant! The political ineptitude of the statement aside, could there be any clearer demonstration of the Left’s penchant for deflecting the odium from a mascot-group member and blaming the innocent victim? Has Dayton ever read Adam Smith to the effect that “Mercy toward the guilty is cruelty to the innocent” – ?
Well, that’s the Left for you. Injustice is their stock in trade, and no exceptions shall be made – especially when one of the groups they’ve chosen to shield is on the wrong end. And unfortunately, that stock is selling rather well.
If we need justice, as I believe we do, the current trend cannot continue without rendering us less than human – beasts of predation and prey in a world in which human life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” I can’t put it any more plainly than that. No one can.
I’ve written before about the “vigilance committees” of the territorial West. They were a response to the public perception that the “authorities” were either uninterested in justice or were actively creating injustice. Those who participated in the committees were migrants and the sons of migrants. They’d moved westward for freedom, for opportunity, and to escape the political corruption rampant in the rapidly urbanizing East.
There’s no frontier to which we can flee, today. Nor are we well supplied with the sort of men who voluntarily took up arms to enforce justice despite the effort required and the danger involved.
Forgive me for producing such a pessimistic piece, Gentle Reader, but at the moment it’s not looking good for these United States.
The news remains static and uninspiring, and I have several fictional matters banging around in my head, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Stay cool, stay dry, and don’t take any wooden dialogue.
Every patriotic American knows soccer is a Communist conspiracy. The anti-American protest by lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe merely confirmed this, while also making clear what every patriotic American also knew, that soccer is a sport only homosexuals play.
As the indie-publishing revolution has gained steam, a mated phenomenon has risen as well: the swelling of the writer’s email inbox. Readers like to open dialogues with the writers whose work they enjoy, and email makes it easier than it’s ever been before. Moreover, most writers enjoy hearing from their readers, and do little or nothing to throttle the incoming missives. Communication in the Internet age has become almost effortless, at least as long as it’s one-way.
As I’m aware of the possibility of misinterpretation should I fail to respond, I try to make it two-way. Yet despite all the time I spend chained to this Cyclopean monstrosity, I do get behind on my communications now and then. I get a lot of email: perhaps two hundred pieces on any given day, not counting the spam. Should I fail to answer a particular item immediately, it will sometimes “fall off the back of the stove.” I hope my Gentle Readers won’t conclude that I’m ignoring them, though inevitably some will. I’m sure I’m not the only writer who has this problem. If I may speak for my colleagues in this matter, please think kindly of us. We do care what you think. In fact, we care about you personally, and more than you might imagine.
But there are hazards. Some of them are more serious than one might imagine. Now that essentially every literate person on Earth has Internet access, those hazards are becoming unpleasantly visible. As the news remains unpleasant and ho-hum – yes, it’s possible to be both simultaneously – I thought I might spend a few words on the subject.
The first aspect of this I’d like to discuss is the division of the globe into time zones. A writer who has readers in faraway places will sometimes receive email from them that he won’t see until many hours later, simply because his morning is their night or vice-versa. If he hasn’t responded promptly, it’s likely to be for that reason alone.
Shortly after I first published Chosen One and On Broken Wings, I received a large number of emails from readers in India. That surprised me at first, as I hadn’t reckoned on the international reach of electronic publishing. (I also hadn’t factored in the status of English as the de facto international language.) Those emails were almost uniformly positive, which warmed the cockles of my spiny little heart. I tried my best to reply to each of them promptly and individually.
However, one young Indian woman believed that because ten or twelve hours would elapse between her missive and my reply, I was ignoring her. Over time her emails became rather shrill, accusatory, and eventually sarcastically self-deprecating and despairing. I tried my best to dispel that notion in my replies, but to no avail. Eventually I ceased to hear from her. I’ve worried over that ever since.
I suppose there isn’t much one can do about such a phenomenon, but those Gentle Readers entering into the electronic publishing realm, or considering doing so, should bear it in mind.
The second aspect of the thing is the inability or unwillingness of many readers to grasp the immense difference between a writer and his characters. I’m nothing much, really, just a retired engineer who writes. I hope that by doing so I can both entertain and edify my readers, while making a few bucks in the process. But a surprising number of my correspondents assume that I resemble my male protagonists in important ways.
That’s dangerous, Gentle Reader. Especially in my case. In fact, my kinda-sorta bios at Amazon and Smashwords are tongue-in-cheek attempts to disillusion anyone who might think that when I write about Louis Redmond, Todd Iverson, Armand Morelon, or Stephen Graham Sumner I’m actually writing about myself. I’m not! Really! I’m not a hero; I write heroes. Genuinely heroic figures are desperately needed in our time. Few other writers are producing any such icons, though there are exceptions.
In short, I can’t solve anyone’s problems, be they political, legal, economic, academic, or romantic. I wish it were otherwise, but...well, I’m only what I am, a retired engineer who writes. (Also, I’m married.) I’m sure other writers have this problem, too.
The third and final aspect I’d like to address today is the weirdly stout resistance of the creative faculty to direction. On this subject I can’t speak for anyone but myself. Other writers might not share this problem with me. However, I suspect that it afflicts many of us, maybe even most of us.
Now and then I receive requests from my readers to write about a particular subject or hero, or to continue a particular saga. This is immensely flattering, and I love them for it. Often the request will mesh with my own desires. In such a case, I might sit down to this monstrosity fully determined to do as I’ve been asked, as it accords with my own inclinations and has verifiably pleased at least a fraction of my readership...and get absolutely nowhere with it.
I can’t explain this. If I want to do it and my readers want me to do it, then by the Law of Wishful Thinking Regnant I should be able to do it, right? But in the great majority of such cases I can’t make it happen, and I don’t know why.
For example, this short romance novel has evoked a slew of requests for more about Jana and Tim. Believe me, I appreciate the feedback, and I love those of you who’ve read and loved that little story. It’s a book I sometimes can’t believe I wrote, simply because romance has always seemed alien to me. (To any Gentle Readers contemplating romance with an engineer: beware! Here there be tygers.) I can’t even remember the chain of events and impulses that led me to write it. I doubt that I could produce more along those lines, at least at the moment.
And once again, it’s not that I disdain to give you what you want.
I hope my Gentle Readers won’t be put off by the above. I certainly hope you’ll continue to write to me. You matter to me more than you know. I just thought it appropriate that you hear about some of my limitations. When there’s so great a gulf between a writer and his fictional imaginings, the possibilities for failing his readers are many and vast. Louis Redmond would tell you so, but he’s dead.
I have just one short piece today, as my other obligations are more pressing than usual and the “news” offers hardly anything new.
A few short years ago, conservative commentators started calling the American Left “bookless:” a reference to the dearth of contemporary intellectual efforts (not to say achievements) by liberal thinkers and writers. The Left, the reasoning ran, had become unable to advance intellectually. Its tenets, long dubious under rational examination, had been refuted by history. Yet it was unwilling to abandon those tenets, which effectively crippled its powers of reasoning.
This is easy to follow. Clearly, he who clings to an idea that’s been proved false will have a hard time evolving new ideas that don’t come “pre-refuted.” But that does raise a question: why would anyone cling to a provably false idea?
The late Don LaVoie promulgated the idea that left-liberal thinking is moored to “sunk capital:” i.e., that those refuted tenets are so intimately married to other elements in the leftist psyche that they cannot be extracted. The phrase is pretty but as an answer it fails to satisfy. Why does a mind become so firmly attached to a set of ideas that they become unquestionable even as the evidence accumulates that they’re incorrect? What’s the mechanism?
Perhaps we don’t yet know enough about the human mind to deduce a complete answer. But we do know this: when a chain of impeccably sound reasoning leads irreversibly to an incorrect conclusion, the fault lies in the premises. One or more of the premises must be wrong.
Note that “incorrect” is not synonymous with “absurd.” To be called “absurd,” an idea need merely challenge existing preconceptions. At one time, it was deemed absurd to imagine that the Earth is any shape but flat. Many an “absurd” thesis has been demonstrated to be correct – and the preconceptions that opposed it incorrect – once the means to experiment – e.g., sailing ships that could circumnavigate the globe – became available.
A good premise, serviceable and sturdy, must be grounded in a great deal of observation. In other words, it must arise from our common experience of the world, preferably over a long period of time. But left-liberal premises aren’t of that sort. Consider a few typical ones:
Education can be divorced from moral and ethical values.
Benevolently intended government action cannot cause harm.
Those propositions aren’t consistent with the evidence of history. Rather, they’re expressions of desire: wishful thinking. No matter how deeply felt those desires are – and I’m certain that many Americans who incline to the Left are wholly, benevolently sincere about their inclinations – the observable facts have always militated against them.
There’s no small amount of substance to the contention that left-liberalism is really a species of religious faith. However, to endure over time, a religion must accommodate itself to discoveries of fact; religions that have failed to do so have been abandoned. This left-liberalism has failed to do, preferring instead to buttress its political stature with campaigns founded on envy, class division, and the fomenting of interracial and inter-ethnic distrust and hatred.
There’s a considerable irony here. Left-liberals have made a habit of condemning the intrusion of religious convictions into public policy. Yet the religious convictions of American Christians, at least, are not disprovable, whereas the tenets of left-liberalism are demonstrably false.
It seems inescapable that the tenets of left-liberalism, if unsound by the rules of evidence, must therefore meet some emotional need in him who cleaves doggedly to them. Perhaps they allow him to see himself as a “good person.” Or perhaps he maintains them because those he admires (and with whom he wants to associate) maintain them. Whatever the binding, it’s outside the domain of evidence and logic.
If there’s a moral to this story, it would be the old saw – multiply attributed, including to Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Swift, and G. K. Chesterton – that “You cannot reason a man out of what he never reasoned himself into.” If left-liberalism in its entirety is founded upon already-refuted premises that left-liberals will not abandon, reasoned argument against its positions becomes pointless. Indeed, it was probably pointless a century ago...not that the pointlessness of an argument has ever deterred persons who have one to advance.
That’s you, Gentle Reader. At least, it could be, if you got a few bad breaks.
The drive for the legalization of “euthanasia” – etymologically, “good death” – was never an isolated controversy. It was a starting point. Indeed, it could be nothing else.
When I wrote this piece, I hoped that my readers – never numerous but unusually thoughtful and vociferous – would grasp the point and argue more passionately about it than my capacities allow. Maybe some did. But if so, it doesn’t seem to have done much good.
You see, “euthanasia” as its proponents described it was supposed to be something which the victim had consciously, affirmatively chosen as the best of the alternatives for relieving his suffering. In other words, it was his idea. But the “medical community,” especially in Europe, saw possibilities the rest of us did not. We old fuddy-duddy moralists simply couldn’t conceive of an argument for killing innocent, defenseless people for “the common good.”
No pull quote this time. Read the article. Read the two articles it links. Then sit back and ponder for a moment the incentives created by the increasing demand for transplant organs. And be aware as you ponder that despite all efforts to ban the practice, people are successfully bidding for and paying for preferential access to those organs.
Back in the Sixties, science fiction writer Larry Niven included in his developing “Known Space” canon a story titled “The Jigsaw Man.” If memory serves, Harlan Ellison included it in his Dangerous Visions anthology. The plot driver was a society in which transplantation technology had coupled with an increasing fear of death to yield a legal code in which execution was the penalty for virtually every kind of offense. The protagonist anticipated being executed for a traffic violation – in an operating theater, of course, so his organs could be harvested for others’ use.
There have been persistent rumors that the Communist Chinese have been performing executions in this manner. Well, if so, they’re not alone, as the article cited above should make clear. Except, of course, that the “patients” being “euthanized” by those “compassionate” Low Countries “doctors” haven’t necessarily consented to the procedure. Some of them are intellectually handicapped. Others are mentally ill. And a few just might have been “sacrificed” to the “greater good” – and a cash payment – with the connivance of their next of kin.
This is what happens once a human life is no longer considered a sacred gift from God. It’s what happens when we grant attention to moral idiots that claim that “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” It’s what happens when self-styled “medical ethicists” such as Daniel Callahan and Zoe Fritz proclaim that physicians should treat some of their patients to death instead of life in the name of the “greater good.”
Where there’s a demand, a supply will inevitably emerge.
I can’t go on about this much longer. It horrifies me too deeply. What makes it worse than the “mere facts” is that so many people are willing to entertain the idea that a human body is merely one more commodity – that “doctors” should be granted the power to kill if they deem it “in the patient’s best interests.” The easy segue to “in society’s best interests” is overlooked.
The civilized world abolished slavery on the grounds that a human life is not a commodity – that it’s the inalienable right of its possessor to continue to live it unmolested, as long as he does so without violating the equal rights of others. The reduction of that right to a commodity puts human lives on the same plane as all other tradable goods – i.e., deemed morally exchangeable for other considerations. Add that most terrible of all insubstantial arbiters, “society,” to the mix, and Niven’s “Jigsaw Man” pops over the horizon and approaches at express-train speed.
Think about that as you contemplate giving someone else – spouse, child, or anyone else – a power-of-attorney that could some day determine whether you’re to live or die. Ponder whether that “loved one” might, at some cash-strapped future time, see you as just a bag of recyclable, highly marketable parts.
Among the often invisible processes that have overcome the good sense of Us the Formerly Free is the displacement of individual freedom by the notion of “democracy,” which in its turn is eventually displaced by what a self-nominated “ethicist” recently called epistocracy:
In an epistocracy, political power is to some degree apportioned according to knowledge. An epistocracy might retain the major institutions we see in republican democracy, such as parties, mass elections, constitutional review, and the like. But in an epistocracy, not everyone has equal basic political power. An epistocracy might grant some people additional voting power, or might restrict the right to vote only to those that could pass a very basic test of political knowledge. Any such system will be subject to abuse, and will suffer from significant government failures. But that’s true of democracy too. The interesting question is whether epistocracy, warts and all, would perform better than democracy, warts and all.
It seems attractive at first, doesn’t it? Why shouldn’t those who know more about thus-and-such have more decision-making power over it? Isn’t that the reason we go to a doctor rather than attempt to medicate or (God help us) operate on ourselves? Where would we be without specialists who know how to do things we don’t?
The ball-hidden-under-the-shirt is, of course, the transition from expertise recognized and patronized by the expert’s lay customers to expertise proclaimed by a government and enforced at the point of a gun.
I’ve known nominal experts, in fields about which I know little, whom I wouldn’t patronize under any circumstances. (In one case, I did patronize that expert – once.) It has nothing to do with any presumed gaps in their knowledge or skill. Rather, it arises from my evaluation of their ethics or my dislike of their officious conduct. Think “bedside manner” if it helps to clarify the distinction. And things being as they are (in those fields, at least), I have the option of seeking the services of their competitors.
Jason Brennan’s notion of epistocracy would award, to “experts” selected by government-decreed criteria, power that might well include the elimination of my freedom to choose among them. Indeed, when we speak of the “rule of experts,” that’s exactly what we mean. The “expert,” who possesses a State credential of some sort, is awarded the power to override certain of the decisions of the layman.
This is already the case in certain areas. Medicine. Legal practice. Education. Building codes. As there are currently more than eleven hundred licensed and regulated occupations in these United States, plus innumerable more areas in which “experts” inside the government possess such a power, I could go on about this for quite a while.
There’s nothing inherently objectionable about recognizing expertise and choosing to defer to it, if that’s the layman’s free choice. My problem with it is the way the “rule of experts” goes from “This is the way it’s done” to “This is the way it’s always been done” to “This is the way it must be done, and you’ll take it and like it.” But then, I’ve always had a problem with persons who stick a gun into my ribs and tell me “It’s for your own good.”
The process is the problem. It’s advanced a millimeter every time we defer to an expert. Moreover, it operates in fields most people wouldn’t even suspect.
The essence of the taboo in American society is linguistic: not to speak the forbidden thought or attitude. So one such as I, who holds many taboo beliefs, is supposed to remain silent about them all. That would reduce me to prayers, requests to pass the condiments, and the occasional statement of approbation for the New York Rangers. Needless to say, I've chosen to express myself rather more broadly than that.
But even those of us who defy the taboos ideologically are expected to obey their constraints on our vocabulary. Certain words are forbidden to us with a firmness that hints at a mouthful of soap to come.
The tabooing of particular words or concepts is a preliminary step in the process. After all, if there’s significant, openly expressed dissent, the experts cannot rule with assurance. Thus, the layman’s freedom to express himself about the experts’ targeted field must be quenched before they can confidently exercise the authority they desire.
It’s worse than that, actually. An assemblage of experts in some field will usually include some dissenters. The dissenters within the expert-group are very dangerous to the rest; they make it plain that there are well-informed persons with an equal claim to expertise who oppose the arrogation of authority. Thus, not only is it necessary to silence the layman; it’s even more important to delegitimize and expel the dissenters within the experts’ ranks.
Officials in charge of an Australian writers festival [the Brisbane Writers Festival, which ended Sunday] were so upset with the address by their keynote speaker, the American novelist Lionel Shriver, that they censored her on the festival website and publicly disavowed her remarks. . . .
Ms. Shriver criticized as runaway political correctness efforts to ban references to ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation from Halloween celebrations, or to prevent artists from drawing on ethnic sources for their work. Ms. Shriver, the author of 13 novels, who is best known for her 2003 book, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” was especially critical of efforts to stop novelists from cultural appropriation. She deplored critics of authors like Chris Cleave, an Englishman, for presuming to write from the point of view of a Nigerian girl in his best-selling book “Little Bee.”
Ms. Shriver noted that she had been criticized for using in “The Mandibles” the character of a black woman with Alzheimer’s disease, who is kept on a leash by her homeless white husband. And she defended her right to depict members of minority groups in any situation, if it served her artistic purposes.
“Otherwise, all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59-year-old 5-foot-2-inch white women from North Carolina,” she said.
“Officials in charge,” eh? Persons who claim to speak for a much larger group? Persons who claim some sort of authority over what may and may not be said? Persons determined to deny the legitimacy of a viewpoint that differs from their own? How fortunate for Miss Shriver that they can’t yet prosecute her for her deviationism!
It’s an intermediate step...but how long has it been since such an expression of opinion, while it might have incurred an argument, was completely noncontroversial? Doesn’t it seem that our “progress” from “This is the way it’s done” to “This is the way it must be done” has accelerated sharply in recent years?
The process, and the fettering it augurs, is of course most threatening when politics becomes involved in it. However, that’s the penultimate step: the one just before the Omnipotent State acts to remove our freedom of choice. At that point, the outcome is almost guaranteed.
When experts of any sort openly lobby the State for the use of its powers on their behalf, the situation is desperate. Think about the “global warming / climate change” chimera, particularly the attempts by various state attorneys-general to criminalize dissent from the experts’ decrees, and you’ll have an excellent sense for the thing. They didn’t miss it by much this time. They know it, and they’ll be back.
It strikes me as inevitable that in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s September 11 collapse we’d be treated to a spiral of ever-wilder speculation. She doesn’t have pneumonia, she has Parkinson’s. No, she doesn’t; she has brain damage. She’s using a body double to deflect queries about her health. No, it’s the double who’s actually unhealthy; Clinton herself hasn’t appeared in public in nine months, for fear of assassination. Wait, wait: Clinton is actually dead. The double will take office in her place, to secure her name in history as America’s First Woman President!
Has anyone yet entertained the possibility that there is no Hillary Clinton – that there never has been? I mean, we all know about Bill’s sexual proclivities. Why would he marry that? It’s much more likely that “Bill’s wife Hillary” has been played by a succession of B-list actresses. Actors, after all, must master the art of lying for money. Not to mention all the accents “Hillary” has tried to fake...
Of course, those actresses had to be carefully selected. Each one had to be a near-perfect fit to the prescribed pattern. Each one had to appear the right age under the klieg lights. Each one had to possess the ability to feign all the necessary emotions – and, of course, the erudition expected of a lawyer. And it was absolutely vital that none of these actresses become emotionally attached to “her husband.” That would have been disastrous.
It wouldn’t have taken much for the Governor of Arkansas, arguably the most inept, most corrupt government in the United States, to arrange for the required deceptions and concealments. And a wife, as we know, is politically required for an ambitious politician. One that lacks a wife will get very unpleasant attention from the media. When Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen Axson, died in 1914, he was quick to replace her with Edith Bolling, whom he married in 1915 – and he was already in the White House.
So Bill, who was set on the presidency from a very early point in his career, had to have a wife. Moreover, she had to fit a certain set of parameters:
A Democrat, of course;
Acceptably, but not too physically attractive;
Apparently intelligent, as would befit a successful lawyer;
In keeping with the era, a somewhat militant feminist / “social justice” reformer;
And willing to clench her teeth and “stay with him” despite the humiliation from his straying.
But such a woman is a lot like technetium; if such women do exist in nature, they’re extremely, even vanishingly rare. As for such a woman marrying him? A horny hick from Arkansas who can’t even master his waistline, much less his libido? Forget it!
My word! Why hasn’t anyone else deduced the implausibility of a real Hillary Rodham Clinton? Why is all the heavy lifting left to me? She’s an android, Gentle Reader. A certified golem! Body by Fisher, training by Stanislavski, scripts from whatever part of Hollywood produces B-movies and slasher flicks!
The Plutonians must have been out of their mind to back this “power couple.” But then, their ambition to conquer the Solar System and relocate their frigid orb to Earth’s orbit has always been a trifle dubious. I mean, the opposition from the Hermesians and Venerians alone would guarantee the stiffest sort of resistance, to say nothing of what the Illuminati would think.
The sticking point about this otherwise perfectly logical and utterly convincing thesis is that the FBI must know already. I mean, don’t they know everything? Apart from what the CIA is keeping from them, of course. Therefore, by unimpeachable inference, the FBI is in the pay of the conspiracy! Why, I can feel their telepathy ray invading my brain as we speak!
Would one of you Gentle Readers kindly preserve this screed for me? In case I should become the next victim of an Arkanicide? And make sure the residuals from the Star and the Weekly World News go to my heirs, please? Thanks.
Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.
The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view.
Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”
Note that the ruling class of Massachusetts has arrogated the privilege of defining a house of worship as a “public accommodation” – something never before claimed by the enforcers of any anti-discrimination statute. And it appears they’re serious about it:
“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”
What pastor, regardless of denomination, would say that any of the services held at his church are “not open to the general public?”
“The law bootstraps the idea of gender identity onto existing Civil Rights laws,” [Massachusetts Family Institute] president Andrew Beckwith tells me. “Even having a sign in your church that says “This Bathroom is for Biological Women Only” could subject the pastor of the church to up to 30 days in jail.”
Beckwith said under the law, the sign would be treated the same as if it had said, “Whites Only.”
He said the MFI reached out to the attorney general’s office for clarification on the law and they were instructed to “get an attorney.”
The threat is real. Ignore the unctuous reassurances such as this one:
I reached out to the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and they told me Commissioner Sunila Thomas George said there’s really no need for alarm.
“By and large, places of worship are not held to the Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination statutes that deal with places of public accommodation,” she said. “We are not by any means saying that the anti-discrimination laws absolutely apply to them.”
Don’t walk away reassured just yet:
“There are circumstances where places of worship hold activities at their facilities or in their buildings that are purely secular events,” she said.
Among the activities that the state considers secular are soup kitchens, day care, housing, and polling places.
“In those circumstances, places of worship could be seen as open to the public,” Ms. George told me. “The operative word is ‘could.’”
Let’s imagine that the enforcers of this “anti-discrimination” law are currently all – 100% – devout Catholics who'd never dream of imposing the demands of this statute on a Christian church. Who is willing to bet the well-being of his parish that they’ll always be exactly that?
Just one more illustration of what we’ve allowed to be done to us in the name of anti-discrimination.
“What is the News and what is 'the News?'” I hear you cry. Quite simply, the News is that it’s now undeniable, despite all the previous denials, that the Democrat Party’s presidential candidate is seriously ill. Since Clinton’s dramatic collapse yesterday at the 9/11 Memorial service in lower Manhattan, Hillary Clinton’s health has become the central issue of the day. The candidate’s campaign, of course, is trying to represent Clinton’s condition as an infectious disease – pneumonia – that will pass in the course of time. “The News” is that virtually the entirety of the Main Stream Media has swallowed that line, along with the attached hook and sinker, and is parroting it as widely as possible.
But what the media could do easily in previous decades has become impossible in this year of Our Lord 2016. There are too many cell-phone cameras, and too much Internet bandwidth. Too many people watching and asking the wrong sort of question. Too many alternative media sites and too many honest – or at least alternately biased – “citizen journalists.”
We could be watching the World Series and the Super Bowl simultaneously, and the combination wouldn’t be enough to keep this from being the talk of the globe.
You read that right: the globe. The whole of the human race. The candidates for the most powerful position in the most powerful nation on Earth are of interest to everyone alive. There are statesmen in Europe, Asia, and South America wringing their hands over the possibility of a repeat of Woodrow Wilson’s final years. There are autocrats and oligarchs smacking their lips over the prospect of a weak, befuddled American president. And most of the American electorate, whether it was previously for or against Mrs. Clinton, is asking just exactly who would be running things in “her” Administration: Bill or Huma?
Yes, you may well shudder.
I dislike to prattle about the same crap everyone else is running on at the mouth about – enough of that and you might change the channel – so let’s return to the title of this piece for a moment. This is where the really interesting speculations are: What will “the News” do should Hillary Clinton fail to gain the Oval Office?
Say what? You can’t see that as an issue of interest? But really, Gentle Reader, the media conglomerates that have dominated American journalism and entertainment for the century past are very heavily invested in the First Woman President. It should come as no surprise, even if you haven’t been following the action; media support and protection of Barack Hussein Obama was almost entirely due to the color of his skin. Can’t have the First Black President – who’s actually a mulatto, but we mustn’t linger over that – trip over his own feet! What would become of our Myth of Interracial Amity? (Never mind that the black racialists have only grown more strident, and their demands more extreme, as time has passed.)
Just as the media knew from the start that Obama was a fraud, basically an empty suit, its managers have known from the start that:
Hillary Clinton is an unprincipled, massively corrupt power-monger;
Her achievements are nil; her altitude in American politics is mainly due to having been First Lady;
The remainder of her prestige comes from the adulation of the media itself, which have shamelessly promoted and covered for her;
And given the way the media have treated the Trump campaign and the Republican Party generally, if she fails to win the Big Prize, the media themselves are in for a very big comeuppance.
The media cannot afford to have the Clinton for President campaign fail. Clinton could drop dead in public, and the media would do its level best to persuade the public that it was “just a stumble,” “the candidate is recovering nicely,” “her supposed incapacity is entirely her opponent’s fabrication,” and “the inauguration will take place as scheduled.”
All of which makes it mandatory that “the News” be “Nothing to see here, the candidate is recovering nicely, let’s move on to something else.”
Cynicism is neither a virtue nor a failing. It’s merely an attitude that one can adopt in the face of developments. Certain developments seem to call for it. When the media go “all in” for a particular politician or candidate, whitewashing his sins, hyping his accomplishments, deflecting attention from his failures, and generally promoting him as a modern-day George Washington, it’s understandable for a reasonably aware and intelligent American, who knows that in our time politicians are the least accomplished and least trustworthy people on Earth, to take a cynical stance toward the Fourth Estate. “They’ve placed their bets,” he’ll say, and sniff at what follows as “just what I expected.”
We’ve had a few genuinely good and accomplished men enter federal politics since World War II: Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Mitt Romney. Whether you agreed with the policies they espoused is irrelevant to their characters and what they achieved as private citizens. Note how little the media thought of them. Note how stolidly they bore the disdain of the columnists, the ill-disguised assaults of the “reporters,” and the calumnies of their opponents. And note that not one of them ever had an unkind word to say about anyone on the other side of the aisle.
Such aspirants to office are dwindling. A time will soon be upon us when no one in politics is anything but a thug. That time may be upon us already. Name the federal officeholders you’d trust with your daughter or your ducats. Mine is a very short list.
The descent of our political class into total venality doesn’t have much further to go. Nor can it be corrected through the electoral process. As H. L. Mencken has told us, we’d only be replacing one set of rascals with another.
But the media, whose power is tightly tied to an involute web of political alliances, will not allow any discussion of that. “The News” must remain a choice between Good and Evil, even if ordinary Americans can’t see the difference between the candidates. Don’t turn off your TV! Without “the News” to educate us about which of the choices is which, how will we choose between them?
Let’s have a little Orwell to close:
"Gentlemen," concluded Napoleon, "I will give you the same toast as before, but in a different form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm!"
There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes flitted from one face to another. Some of them had five chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.
But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Reporter David Shuster posted to Twitter Sunday evening that operatives in the Democratic Party have told him an emergency meeting by the Democratic National Committee is being considered to replace presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the heels of her case of pneumonia allegedly causing her to collapse Sunday morning at the 9/11 15th anniversary commemoration at Ground Zero in New York City.
That would be the most dramatic shakeup of a presidential contest in my lifetime. Stay tuned.
Hillary Clinton had a “medical episode” that required her to leave a 9/11 commemoration ceremony early on Sunday, a law enforcement source who witnessed the event told Fox News.
The Democratic presidential nominee appeared to faint on her way into her van and had to be helped by her security, the source said. She was “clearly having some type of medical episode.”...
But a witness told Fox News that Clinton stumbled off the curb, her "knees buckled" and she lost a shoe as she was helped into a van during her "unexpected early departure."
After Clinton left the ceremony, the reporters following her on the campaign trail were prevented from leaving the media area for a period of time.
Still think she’s fit as a fiddle and ready for the most powerful and the most stressful office in the world?
[U.S. Commission on Civil Rights] Chairman Martin Castro's remarks were included in a report released Thursday titled: "Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties." A link to the actual report on the USCCR's website is currently broken....
"The phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance," Castro, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, said.
He added: "Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others."
Really? So the Founding Fathers intended that there should be laws that privilege the demands of some over the religious convictions of others? How...interesting.
Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Constitution and the thinking of those who designed it will be aware that the Founding Fathers intended that there should be very little law indeed: the bare minimum required to protect individuals’ rights to their lives, liberty, and property. The Bill of Rights, particularly the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, should make that clear, the contrary representations of the Left notwithstanding. Never in a million years would they have agreed to laws against “discrimination,” one of the Left’s all-time great shibboleths. They would see immediately that such a law tramples on freedom of every sort, especially freedom of religion and freedom of association. They would have sternly catechized whoever might dare to suggest it.
I’ve written on this subject in the past. I’m sure I’ll need to address it in the future. But that a federal bureaucrat – a man not even elected to his position! – should baldly claim that the very first of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights is nullified by his notions about “discrimination” requires the most severe imaginable response. Perhaps we can send out a blast email accusing him of having blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad. That would certainly interest the three million or so Muslims in America, don’t you think?
Barack Hussein Obama appointed this...person. Perhaps that’s just one more entry on Obama’s long list of offenses against the American people, but to me it’s a particularly heinous one, especially in light of the demands that Catholic parishes perform same-sex weddings and Catholic doctors perform abortions.
Yet people plaintively ask what could account for the reasons for the rise of the Alt-Right. For my part, I want to know where Americans’ spine has gone. Even a hundred years ago, this sort of obscenity would have us massing around both the White House and Capitol Hill with torches and pitchforks. But back then, we had a grasp of freedom as encompassing more than just “voting for a change of masters.” That appears to be missing from our time.
If you’re an American Catholic, you’re surely aware of how persistent the Church has become in demanding:
Submission;
Money.
Of the two, submission is easier to accept, at least when it’s confined to Gospel-supported doctrine. The latter, especially these past few years, has put many of us under stress.
It’s no small matter, either. We’re all aware of Jesus’s teaching concerning beneficence toward those in need:
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. [Matthew 25:34-45]
Where we have a problem is in the ever-expanding definition of need, such that a prom dress or a new iPhone are deemed quite as needful as sustenance for the body. It’s for that reason among others that I advise Christians to do charity solely by giving sustenance goods: food, clothing, and (if possible) shelter. He who “needs” more than that is a grifter.
But let me not wander away from the point I intend to make. I hope we can agree that a priest’s imperative duties are to preach the Gospels and celebrate the sacraments. A priest who stints those things but gives his time and energy to other activities has failed his profession. He has placed that which is vital below that which is optional, and in so doing has shortchanged his flock.
Which brings me back to my point. Catholics are expected – obligated, according to the Church – to attend Mass on Sundays. (In recent years that’s been broadened to include Saturday evenings, just in case Sunday is unworkable for some reason.) It follows that an ordained priest must be available to act as celebrant. But what if no priest is available? Indeed, what if the priest assigned to celebrate a particular Mass should be detained somehow...or should oversleep?
This has happened at my parish three times so far in 2016, though only today’s instance was on a Sunday. Despite having two priests in residence in the rectory, no one was available to celebrate the 7:30 Mass today.
I shan’t call this “inexcusable.” Yet it’s not something I can wave aside. It damages the allegiance of the congregants to the parish, and so damages the Church itself.
If there’s an extra irony here, it would be that our pastor recently spent three weeks as a guest celebrant in another parish, to allow that parish’s pastor to go on vacation. The icing on the cake? That parish is in Montauk, Long Island: one of the most heavily visited vacation spots in the United States.
I have yet to hear of a priest failing to attend to a request for Extreme Unction. I hope I never do.
Are such things happening to other American Catholics, in other parishes? Add the expansion of the notion of “charity” to cover all sorts of not-needful things. Add the steadily advancing politicization of the pulpit, such that political prescriptions are getting to be ever more common during sermons. Are we seeing an inversion of clerical priorities here, or is it just me?
Should its ordained ministers fail of their duties to their congregants, will the congregants’ departure from their parishes be far behind? Nor is it guaranteed that those who depart will find other parishes. Some will retreat to their homes and Bibles for choice.
This is surely not the Rumination I intended to write. Yet I felt it important, even obligatory, to write it.
Sundays aren’t meant for this sort of emission – I’m unsure whether any day of the week is more suitable – but this is currently churning my gut, so I’ll get it out before it can trigger something even more unfortunate.
Do you know anyone who not only wants something for nothing but expects it? Someone who feels that merely asking you for something imposes an obligation on you –an obligation that lays absolutely no weight on him? I’d bet that you do, simply because the species has grown so numerous in recent decades. It’s part of the “if I want it, it’s mine by right syndrome” that’s aspiring to pandemic status.
Such supplicants cluster around me rather thickly. Many such acquaintances start off pleasantly enough. It takes time for their parasitism to emerge – not a lot of time, mind you – but when it does, they’re entirely unembarrassed about it. They also tend to react to refusal rather badly.
Perhaps there’s something in me that attracts such creatures, or perhaps it’s just bad luck. Whatever the case, in these latter years of my life the phenomenon has become massively wearying.
The most recent manifestation of the syndrome involves Amazon book reviews. I’m not the most prolific of reviewers – I think I’ve posted about eighty of them – but I put a fair amount of effort into a review. When I encounter a book that has impressed me sufficiently, whether positively or negatively, to deserve a review, I spend a while thinking about what ought to be said about it. The result is certainly more informative and involved than the two-sentence dismissal or dithyramb typical of the form.
Over the past couple of years I’ve been solicited for book reviews by about two dozen writers:
Who don’t know me;
Whom I’ve never read;
And who react negatively when I specify a quid pro quo.
The most recent instance was particularly interesting. A writer contacted me cold, opening with “I’m a fan of your reviews.” Sure he is! He’s probably a fan of everyone’s reviews! Of course, that was an opening line; he wanted me to review his latest book, which he would send me gratis. Feeling brisk – brisker than usual, at any rate – I replied that “I expect reciprocal service,” and offered to send him a free copy of any of my books if he would agree to review it. He responded that he “didn’t know you were an author,” he “didn’t want to feel the pressure to return a five-star review” of one of my books, and – hold on to your seat, Gentle Reader, he felt that my time -- my time! – would be better spent “working on your manuscript,” thereby adding a severe and unwarranted insult to the exchange.
It occurred to me at that moment that many persons’ lives are prolonged solely by their distance from those they’ve insulted.
I hope to be back later with something cheerier, though considering the state of the nation and the ongoing presidential campaign, that might be a forlorn hope. At any rate, until then.
