Ok, this full-court press on the Weather Channel’s shilling for climate change is just amazing. When I think I’ve hit it pretty hard already they just crank it up ad astra. It makes you wonder if you live, like, 24/7 in a propaganda soup no matter the topic:
2/13/22 — “Home Collapses into Ocean on Outer Banks.” “Scientists say that as the world warms and glaciers melt problems like this will only get worse. Some homes built on the barrier island years ago are now sitting at the edge of the water.”
2/12/22 — “More Bad News for Coffee Drinkers.” “Climate change is coming for your morning cup of Joe. A new study found regions that grow coffee plants will be hit hard by 2050. The main reason is rising temperatures. . . . Droughts have already caused coffee prices to spike.”
2/11/22 — “Gas Stoves Release Methane Even When They’re Off.” Methane is about 25 times a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Studies suggest that gas stoves could have the same global warming effect over 20 years as half a million gas-powered cars.
2/9/22 — “US Army’s First Climate Strategy: Cut Emissions in Half By 2030.” “The Defense Secretary stressed how climate change is already a threat to troops. Supply chains and Army infrastructures have been impacted. And working in extreme temperatures, hurricanes, and wild fires is taking its toll on soldiers. So part of the plan includes a road map to adapting troops and bases to climate extremes.”
2/8/22 — “Climate Change Creating More Intense Smell of Snow.” “Here’s an impact of climate change you might not have thought of. It’s changing the way snow smells. Researchers say that as the air and ground get warmer that encourages the circulation and intensity of odor molecules. So snow is producing more intense smell as a result of climate change.” We’re done for, Mabel.
2/8/22 — “Even Mount Everest Is Melting.” “Climate change is causing the highest glacier on Mount Everest to melt frighteningly fast – and it has far-reaching effects for more than one billion people.”
2/1/22 — “Great Barrier Reef Could Face Another Mass Bleaching.” “Greehouse gas emissions in the atmosphere are leading to climate change that’s making the world’s oceans hotter. And experts say bleaching will become more frequent.”
12/25/21 — “Afghans Suffer in Extreme Drought Made Worse By Climate Change (PHOTOS).” “Amid decades of war, the coronavirus pandemic and the chaos of the Taliban seizing power and U.S. and NATO troops withdrawing earlier this year, Afghanistan is in the grips of a second year of crippling drought that experts say is made worse by climate change.”
“The ongoing drought in the West and unrelenting heat waves fueled wildfires that burned towns to the ground . . . .”
“Hurricanes pounded the East Coast.” [This is new.]
Tornadoes wiped out homes and lives . . . .” [Also new.]
“. . . Texas plunged into a deep freeze that collapsed the power grid, leaving millions of people without power and heat. Hundreds were killed.” [They died with climate change.]
12/20/21 — “Drought, Fires, Floods, Mudslides and One Devastating Deep Freeze: The Images of 2021.” “We’ve compiled a slideshow of both the most devastating and awe-inspiring imagery of the last year. While this year’s climate change-driven weather disasters brought immeasurable suffering and destruction, photographers still caught fleeting moments of beauty . . . .”
[As I’m coming off an unsatisfactory book giveaway, and the question “Why do you style yourself a curmudgeon?” has been asked afresh, I shall give myself an easy day by reposting this exegesis, which first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 in March of 2020 — FWP]
***
Long time Gentle Readers are aware that I style myself “The Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web.” And it is so. I am a grumpy sort. It’s a cultivated variety of grump, carefully refined over the decades, best summed up in the classic phrase “Get off my lawn.”
The curmudgeon is ever ready for disappointment, degradation, and disaster, for these are the most frequent visitants to every society in every era, from the most primitive to the most advanced. He looks toward the clouds rather frequently, for experience has made him certain that either the Flying Purple Shaft is hovering nearby, waiting for a moment of inattention in which to strike, or it will rain soon.
If you hear a curmudgeon laugh, put one hand on your wallet, the other over your genitals, and get to shelter right away. You’ll thank him later.
The curmudgeon is not the most accommodating of folks. He neither throws parties nor attends them. He keeps his toolshed locked. He has no interest in joining Neighborhood Watch. Whereas other sorts will mumble “I told you so,” he proclaims it to a fanfare of trumpets.
Alexander Pope once said that “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” Old Alex was wise to get his name on that sentiment, for it is inarguably so. Any curmudgeon will tell you.
If the average age of curmudgeons is greater than the national mean, should that come as a surprise? Experience is the forge in which the curmudgeon is formed. He probably started out as optimistic and sunny of outlook as any other untraveled fool. It takes time to beat that crap out of a man.
The great majority of curmudgeons are men. Women, with their innate inclination toward “support groups” and consensus thinking, are more resistant to the condition. It is not yet known whether there’s a causal connection between that aspect of the female psyche and curmudgeonry among married men, but research continues.
Those puzzled by my curmudgeonry have often asked me, “Don’t you believe in people?” Oh yes, I believe in people. After all, they’re everywhere. And they are what they have always been and always will be: wishful-thinking ignoramuses, good for at most one thing. They treat facts as opinions and opinions as facts. They dismiss data and events that conflict with their preconceptions, no matter how well verified. They mangle the punchlines of jokes while talking with their mouths full. They’re useful mainly as the butts of pratfall gags.
[T]he curmudgeon is a pessimist, whose grumpy outlook is born of long experience, and of the realisation that what good there is in the world has been hard-won and is perpetually vulnerable to the hare-brained schemes of dreamers, utopians, and idiots of every stripe….
The curmudgeon greets the day by wondering “What fresh hell is this?” The curmudgeon greets a stranger by wondering: “What are you trying to sell me?” The curmudgeon greets an exciting new idea by thinking of all the disastrous ways in which it will go wrong. And, given a bit of time, the curmudgeon more often than not turns out to have been right. The financial writer Christopher Fildes, I think it was, who had the theory that financial crises occur whenever the last bank employee old enough to remember the last one retires. That is classic curmudgeon wisdom.
Leith also provides this observation:
In this respect the curmudgeon is the very praetorian guard of conservatism…Conservative politics, as our own Ed West points out in his fine new book Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, has its historical origins in the need to resist what was then called religious “enthusiasm”. It has continued to honour that mission, and the curmudgeon has always been at the forefront of resistance to enthusiasm of any sort, religious or otherwise….[A] society without a very hefty proportion of curmudgeons is the sort of society that careens down the hill to chaos very fast indeed, and that will, as Peter Cook warned of Britain, “sink giggling into the sea”.
Indeed. Someone must resist the fads and fashions, the panics and passions, the mad manias that sweep through a nation and carry its rationality away. Someone must stand fast against the tides, upholding the banner of reason. For reason, like the curmudgeon, has always been unpopular. It defeats the airy-fairy fancies, the dreamy what-ifs and why-nots that catapult a people into disaster. It upholds the tragic vision of existence:
All things have a price.
If you want it, you must pay it.
And don’t leave your hat on the counter.
In this vision, as in wine, there is truth – and this vision has fewer calories.
When the remnant of the anarchist Spooner Federation fled Earth before the genocidal wrath of the States, the fugitives had only the slimmest chance of finding a habitable world orbiting a benign star. Yet 544 years after embarking on their planetoid-ship, they found one that seemed too good to be true. They named it Hope.
Like all things that are too good to be true, Hope isn’t what it seemed.
For 1200 years, a secret Cabal has elevated powerful psi talents to the management of Hope’s crust, at the eventual cost of their lives. The alternative was a choice between mass death by heavy-metal poisoning and mass death by starvation. But the pool of psi talents has dwindled till only two remain: Armand Morelon, heir apparent to the richest and most prestigious clan on Hope, and Victoria Peterson, a young woman of great beauty and intelligence immured in poverty and abuse. But one is utterly unwilling and the other is murderously insane. And the survival of Mankind hangs in the balance.
U.S. officials have offered to help the Trudeau government end an anti-vaccine mandate protest blockade that is sending ripple effects through the American economy and causing increasing concern in Washington.
The White House says U.S. officials had multiple conversations on Thursday with their Canadian counterparts about the blockade on the Ambassador Bridge, a major trade artery which connects Windsor, Ont. with Detroit.
The White House said Thursday the U.S. federal cabinet and senior administration staff are now seized with this issue.
“[They] have been engaged around the clock to bring this to a swift end,” the White House said in response to questions from CBC News.
How interesting! An authoritarian regime – which is definitely illegitimate – is offering to assist a totalitarian regime in quelling a nonviolent protest of its policies. From one perspective, it’s perfectly understandable. Bad guys see other bad guys as kindred spirits. And there is that old saw about honor among thieves, isn’t there?
But let’s look at the thing from another angle. Why do men accept that governments are “necessary?” What dispreferred outcomes are governments supposed to thwart?
The two major arguments for governments are and have always been:
Only government can maintain domestic peace and public order.
Only government can protect us from other governments.
Well, gee. Here we have the U.S. federal government offering to use the powers of the U.S. federal government to aid the Canadian federal government in ending a peaceful protest. That protest is against Canadian federal policies that are harming thousands upon thousands of Canadians. Who’s protecting whom, and from whom, and why?
The facade has crumbled, Gentle Reader. We are staring at the naked face of evil.
For anyone who’s been having trouble with the tenor of my recent essays, I’ll reduce it to fundamentals. Governments are instruments of power: power over others. Ergo, governments are always hostile to freedom. Even a government that exercises its powers solely to protect life, liberty, and property is a potential threat to all those things…and you may be sure that there will be factions inside even such a government that seek to turn its powers to evil ends. It’s in the nature of the power-seeker. And as power-seekers tend to have no other items on their agenda, they are also monomaniacal and relentless. They persist until they are dead.
You may be equally sure that the supply of power-seekers is bottomless. They will always exist, because Man is fallen. Destroy one group, and the Hydra will produce another…unless you lop off the Hydra’s head with a sword fresh from the forge, one hot enough to cauterize and sterilize the wound. There is only one forge that produces a sword hot enough for the purpose: the forge of absolute and unqualified freedom. That forge says that to pre-exculpate and indemnify any organization for its uses of coercive force is inherently evil and not to be borne. Engraved upon its sword is the maxim that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
This is the hour. Freedom is the theme. Are we the people for it?
“Only one thing do I know, and that is that I know nothing,” – Socrates of Athens
“All this has the disadvantage of being clean contrary to the observed laws of Nature,” observed MacPhee. The Director smiled without speaking, as a man who refuses to be drawn.
“It is not contrary to the laws of Nature,” said a voice from the corner where Grace Ironwood sat, almost invisible in the shadows. “You are quite right. The laws of the universe are never broken. Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws; whereas they are only the remote results which the true laws bring about more often than not; as a kind of accident.”
If one of the greatest of all philosophers and teachers regarded himself in that fashion, you’d think we lesser sorts would draw the moral. But it’s rather the other way around today. That might have something to do with the removal of all mention of Socrates from American educational curricula. Or it might have something to do with a seldom heard maxim: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
No one has more than a little knowledge…a very little. And for most of us, what we think we “know” is largely a tissue of opinions and simplifications. Even such things can be useful, but to regard them as immutable truths of reality is dangerous.
One of the little digs one can hear from the scientifically inclined pertains to technological suggestions from less educated people. “That would be great…if it didn’t violate the laws of physics.” Usually the speaker will believe that he knows those laws, or a relevant subset of them. He’s nearly always wrong.
Virtually everything we mean when we speak of “the laws of physics” consists of a model of reality, whose applicability is bounded by limits of size, speed, and time. Today, physicists believe that the seemingly elementary law of conservation of mass-energy is violated at the quantum level, for periods of time short enough that we can’t detect the violation. When evidence of those violations was discovered, it shook the “conservation absolutists” rather badly. It also won Arthur Compton a Nobel Prize.
The wise man does not assert that he “knows” unless he can also predict with accuracy, within the applicable bounds on his knowledge. Such predictions flow from the mathematical models we have made of the behavior of matter and energy as we have observed them. But outside those bounds he must admit to ignorance. Not to do so displays arrogance.
If you thought the last few years on planet Earth were bad then you’re in for another letdown – a scientist has now claimed that life after death is “beyond the realm of scientific probability”.
A professor who has dedicated much of his life studying the laws of physics and claims that the laws of the universe does not allow consciousness to continue to operate after we die.
Dr Sean Carroll, who is a cosmologist and a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology in the US argues that for there to be an afterlife, consciousness would need to be something that is entirely “separated from our physical body.”
And here’s the bad news – that’s a possibility that the laws of physics deny.
His conclusion on life after death is built on the understanding that “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood”, so everything occurs within the realms of this.
Dr. Carroll has omitted to consider that physics can only deal with what physical instruments can detect and measure. His assertion that “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood” is itself absurd, when “everyday life” includes the mysteries of consciousness, self-awareness, and volition, none of which have physical explanations. But he’s not alone. Many scientists, though not all, are equally arrogant about things they cannot see, hear, smell, touch, or taste.
It’s a besetting fault of those who regard themselves as knowledgeable to think they know more than they really do. The trichotomy of human thought:
Propositions that can be proved or disproved: mathematics.
Propositions that can’t be proved but can be disproved: science.
Propositions that can neither be proved nor disproved: religion.
…doesn’t enter into their considerations. If it were otherwise, they would speak in much more measured tones about matters in that third category.
Under the veil of Time, Man cannot know with absolute certainty that God exists, that human souls exist, that there is a second life after the death of the body, or many other things. These propositions are neither provable nor disprovable given our limitations. Indeed, there are things we cannot know about physical objects. For example, astrophysicists have been grappling with the gravitational closure of the universe for some time. At this time the consensus postulate is “dark matter,” which interacts gravitationally with normal matter but in no other way. It “makes the equations balance.” However, the universe is indifferent to our equations, which are merely models that describe the behavior of things we can see, hear, and so forth. For my part, I await developments.
What we can know is this: the spatiotemporal environment we call the universe exhibits a persistent sense of order. That persistence allows us to probe its properties. Even though at any given moment in the advance of human capability, we can only probe so far, the enduring consistency of our discoveries leaves us with a conviction that order prevails – that there are laws that reign, even if we can only know them partially and conditionally. James Blish stated the matter most succinctly:
You know, this quoting-other-novelists business is fun:
“We’ve waited a long time to get something on you. You honest men are such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you’d slip sooner or later—and this is just what we wanted.” “You seem to be pleased about it.” “Don’t I have good reason to be?” “But, after all, I did break one of your laws.” “Well, what do you think they’re for?” Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Rearden’s face, the look of a man hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to see. Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing; he was intent upon delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap. “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against—then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of lawbreakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
For all its flaws, Atlas Shrugged is proving to be a monumentally useful book in this time. All right, Rand didn’t anticipate the government’s employment of illegal drug use as a tyrannizing technique. Neither did she give much emphasis to welfarism. She was principally concerned with power-mongers’ desire to subjugate the most productive members of society.
By the way, take note of that word subjugate. I chose it quite deliberately. Etymologically, it means “to put under a yoke.” There are several different yokes being fastened upon us. To name just a few:
Executives asserting “emergency powers” in the name of “public health;”
Rule of all commercial enterprises by bureaucracies;
Massive expansion of the welfare state;
Tacit encouragement of drug use;
Destruction of the dollar.
None of those things is Constitutionally licit, of course. Item #4 is particularly pernicious. Federal drug law isn’t Constitutional in any way, but neither is a federal subsidy for crack pipes. A twofer!
The “emergency powers” bit might seem superficially plausible to persons unacquainted with constitutionalism. The word emergency appears nowhere in the Constitution of the United States. It ought not to appear in any state-level constitution or charter, for it is an undefined and undefinable term. Yet the governors of many states have claimed to exercise “emergency powers.” By what right, code, or standard? Who decides what shall qualify as an “emergency?” To what superior authority can we appeal for redress from the oppression that has followed?
It is obvious that many a State policy formulated to bring about some well-conceived end has failed to do so. Sometimes the failure was inherent in the policy conception; sometimes it was the result of discontinuity in administration or application. What matters is that the result upon which the policy was founded was not achieved. How, then, shall we defend, morally or practically, the imposition of collective decision-making that overrode individuals’ claims to rightful autonomy, when the very good they were promised in exchange for their rights has failed to materialize? Shall we make restitution to those who were deprived of their lives, liberties, or properties in service to the unachieved goal? If so, what becomes of collective utility’s conceptual superiority to individual rights? If not, why should individuals agree to submit to the usurpation of their rights, however conceived, in the first place?
If we look back at the damage – the carnage — inflicted on this nation by the recent “pandemic” restrictions alone, we are owed restitution that boggles all my arithmetic. Tens of thousands have suicided. Children’s lives and minds have been sacrificed. Trillions of dollars in trade and ruined businesses have fueled the flames. Families have been torn asunder. Nothing imaginable could possibly correct for this…but the blood of the criminals who forced it on us with their “emergency powers” would provide some sense of closure. I doubt we’ll see any of it spilled, my preferences to the contrary notwithstanding.
“I want to know what the law is, what it permits, requires, and forbids. I want my clients to know. And the only way to reach that result is to insist that the words of the law have exact meanings, not arbitrary, impermanent interpretations that can be changed by some supercilious cretin who thinks he can prescribe and proscribe for the rest of us. “The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn’t mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what the Constitution means, then no one can know whether any other law conforms to it. At that point, all that matters is the will of whoever’s in power. And that’s an exact definition of tyranny.
My character Stephen Graham Sumner speaks for me. What about you?
The following comes from an old novel: Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization. I believe it will be illuminating to persons struggling to understand why the Usurper Administration is effectively promoting the consumption of the most dangerous recreational drugs:
***
“Let the prisoner rise,” a voice said from behind the screen. The voice, thin, flat and emotionless, came through a small amplifier. Barrent could barely understand the words; tone and inflection were lost, as had been planned for. Even in speaking, the judge remained anonymous.
“Will Barrent,” the judge said, “you have been brought before this court on a major charge of non-drug addiction and a minor charge of religious impiety. On the minor count we have the sworn statement of a priest. On the major count we have the testimony of the Dream Shop. Can you refute either of these charges?”
Barrent thought for a moment, then answered, “No, sir, I can’t.”
“For the present,” the judge said, “your religious impiety can be waived, since it is a first offense. But non-drug addiction is a major crime against the state of Omega. The uninterrupted use of drugs is an enforced privilege of every citizen. It is well known that privileges must be exercised, otherwise they will be lost. To lose our privileges would be to lose the very cornerstone of our liberty. Therefore to reject or otherwise fail to perform a privilege is tantamount to high treason.”
There was a pause. The guards shuffled their feet restlessly. Barrent, who considered his situation hopeless, stood at attention and waited.
“Drugs serve many purposes,” the hidden judge went on. “I need not enumerate their desirable qualities for the user. But speaking from the viewpoint of the state, I will tell you that an addicted populace is a loyal populace; that drugs are a major source of tax revenue; that drugs exemplify our entire way of life. Furthermore, I say to you that the nonaddicted minorities have invariably proven hostile to native Omegan institutions. I give you this lengthy explanation, Will Barrent, in order that you may better understand the sentence which is to be passed upon you.”
This is a very short clip, yet critically important.
Tucker Carlson asked why public officials ignore the significantly irregular rise in deaths in the last quarter of 2021. Adding “Why aren’t they screaming.” For some reason Charlie Kirk simply did not come up with one particular motivation even though he broke the story. It is not like he didn’t have time to think about it.
The motivation I speak of, one that when explored here in the past, usually generated very few responses. Thus our Gentle Readers may themselves be able to explain why that one motivation somehow didn’t get air time.
Honestly, there may be a legitimate reason why Carlson and Kirk overlooked one motivation in a world where megalomaniacal thoughts such as Eric Pianka’s get repeated frequently.
Please speculate on a few good reasons. Maybe then a proper response will be aroused in the intended targets.
The “president” and his Homeland Security thugs are appalled that millions of Americans have reached evaluations and opinions that differ from the Official Story. This must cease! Of all things under heaven, only The Narrative is sacred. Therefore freedom of expression must be curtailed. Henceforth only “responsible speech” shall be deemed acceptable – and we’ll make sure of it!
And what’s with this “freedom of choice” stuff, says the American “Civil Liberties” Union. We can’t have that, especially not in schools! Parents could make the wrong choices. They could endanger their children and their neighbors’ children. American families must not be permitted to choose risk!
Even though the Left’s true intentions are now plain to anyone with eyes to see, it doesn’t mean that we can sit back, confident that the restoration of freedom is drawing near. For one thing, millions of Americans – well, they call themselves that, anyway – still support the Left and its totalitarian ways. For another, as Tucker Carlson has pointed out, a regime that feels its grip slipping always doubles down. In its last throes, it resorts to undisguised force – outright violence.
Indeed, we may already have entered that phase of the action.
***
This is not a new subject for Liberty’s Torch. I’ve ranted about anarcho-tyranny several times already. Yet the subject is far from exhausted. One aspect of out current condition deserves special emphasis.
At this time, the federal government is striving to find a way to take firearms out of the hands of law-abiding private citizens. This isn’t new; it’s been going on since 1934 at least. However, at the same time, governments across the country have been “standing down” in the face of huge outbreaks of violent crimes and crimes against property. They’ve been refusing, de facto, to enforce the laws that protect life and property. For example, in several major cities, when a retailer reports a “smash and grab” attack on his establishment, the local police shrug. “We weren’t there, so what on Earth could we do about it?” seems to be the message. But for retailers to arm themselves and their employees is regarded as beyond the pale. Why, that would suggest that the streets of San Francisco aren’t safe! The “authorities” step on it at once.
Some time ago – I’ve misplaced the link – another commentator drew what seems to me to be an irresistible and irrefutable inference: America’s criminals are acting as arms of the State. In effect, they’ve been exempted from the laws that bind the rest of us. They’re imposing a new standard upon us – Thou shalt stand ever vulnerable and undefended — and they’re doing it with the tacit approval of the “authorities.”
Meanwhile, whatever we might do to protect ourselves is being ever more closely restricted. Even in those circumstances where a citizen does wield force lawfully in protecting or preventing a felony, he immediately becomes a target for prosecution. This is the deadliest of all the State’s methods for inflicting punishment. Whether the accused wins through to acquittal is almost irrelevant, for he will be impoverished and his reputation destroyed; the minions of the State will make certain of it.
“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.”
What other way is there to read the tea leaves?
***
So the Usurpers are determined that we shall not speak against their precious Narrative. Their quasi-private cat’s-paws – there are many such – are determined that we shall not choose what they disapprove. Meanwhile the very worst criminals — outside the corridors of power, that is – rampage unchecked except for occasional acts of heroism by private citizens. And it goes on.
I’m growing weary. I can’t keep repeating the same propositions without feeling a “What’s the use?” twist of the guts. I know I’m not alone that way. But the need is as great as ever. The demonstrations of the utter necessity of mass rebellion multiply daily.
But I will repeat myself once more:
So also with safety, as elusive a commodity as that always is.
The Biden administration is set to fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its plan to advance “racial equity.”
The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for “smoking kits/supplies.” A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and “any illicit substance.”
HHS said the kits aim to reduce the risk of infection when smoking substances with glass pipes, which can lead to infections through cuts and sores. Applicants for the grants are prioritized if they treat a majority of “underserved communities,” including African Americans and “LGBTQ+ persons,” as established under President Joe Biden’s executive order on “advancing racial equity.”
Glory be to God.
***
I once thought my task as a commentator was to explore connections that others might not see otherwise. I thought it would demand some analytical and synthetic skill. I put my strengths in those areas to work in composing each day’s essay. I often took pride in the result.
It’s becoming impossible to do that. The connections among events and political developments are all too tragically clear. The Usurper regime is openly funding and encouraging every sort of evil, insanity, and social dissolution. Its fans in the Establishment are cheering it on, as if there’s money to be made from it. Perhaps there is.
The United States of America isn’t just “at a crossroads.” It faces complete collapse – and its supposed government is orchestrating and promoting the collapse. The fruits of the stolen election have been revealed to us in all their infernal majesty:
Censorship has been privatized.
Facts are now deemed “misinformation.”
The dollar is being reduced to wastepaper.
Elections have been rendered meaningless.
Christianity has been condemned as hateful.
Biological reality has been ruled prejudicial.
Parents no longer have authority over their children.
Lies from the Regime’s toadies are called “science.”
Violent “demonstrations” by the Left have been blessed.
Every sort of vice and dissolution is approved – even promoted.
Protests from the Right are violently attacked with Regime approval.
How can this go on? Why are we permitting it?
It should be enough to note that the federal government is not just illegitimate by reason of the stolen elections, but openly in league with America’s enemies…but there’s that word again. A nation populated by free and patriotic citizens would not allow this to go on. The implications are too bitter to consider.
This lunacy would make the “bearded Spock universe” look rational and benign.
Time to back away from the keyboard. I’m running out of spit. Perhaps I’ll be in a better mood later.
Namely, in trying to understand US dissembling about Russia, just factor into your thinking that there’s zero Russian advantage to invading Ukraine; all the rest is just manufactured hysteria. Moreover, note the complete absence from NATO and State Department maneuvering over eastern Europe of even the slightest recognition of any legitimate Russian interest in keeping hostile actors somewhere other than on its very borders.
We’ll decide what your interests are, Russian peasants. Pay not attention to these nuclear-capable cruise missiles out by your mailbox. This is just us providing the “leadership” for which the world yearns. You may pound sand.
Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat. All countries have come to realize that the world has reached a point at which no industrial economy has the manpower and political ability to mobilize a standing army of the size that would be needed to invade or even wage a major battle with a significant adversary. That political cost [reality?] makes it uneconomic [unwise?] for Russia to retaliate against NATO adventurism prodding at its western border trying to incite a military response. It’s just not worth taking over Ukraine.[1]
Nor is there slightest advantage to Russia in taking over a basket case like Ukraine.
Where the US starts is from the unshakeable position that “we” have a vital interest in expanding NATO eastward in order to prevent Putin from recreating the USSR and dominating eastern Europe as in the good old days. However, every day that passes it’s clear that the US is re-enacting Woody Allen’s classic lobster scene with the new woman in “Annie Hall.” The US absolutely refuses to get over itself and its awesomeness and move on to just being one of a multitude of nations on the planet. Our fiscal, monetary, and economic stupidity will ensure that that epiphany lights up the odd Deep State skull in the US soon enough. But that’s another story.
“Death is the price we pay for life, and for all life.” — Ursula Le Guin
It is so. All that lives must die. Whether it’s by accident, disease, violence, or simply old age, all that lives must die. Realists know it. We know it couldn’t be any other way.
That doesn’t make it any easier to cope with the loss of a loved one.
***
Way back in the dim, dark ages of 2005, I adopted a kitten. It wasn’t something I’d set out to do. I’d simply shown up at my preferred pet-supplies store when there was a woman there with a kitten in her arms that she hoped to adopt out. The little guy was about six weeks old, jet black, and had the most brilliant blue eyes I’d ever seen on a feline. I took him home then and there. I named him Uriel.
Uriel grew swiftly. He proved to be a big boy at full growth. But his size didn’t prevent him from being a cuddlebug. From earliest kittenhood to full maturity, a human lap – usually mine – was his favorite thing in all the world.
He had a typical Fortress of Crankitude life. That is: he was loved and pampered by all the residents of this dump, and he returned love for love. He made friends with all the ambulatory creatures here, regardless of size or species. I don’t recall any of our other pets ever having a conflict with him, and we’ve always had a lot of them.
The years pass too easily. We forget too easily, too.
Early this morning Uriel’s life ended. He was worn out. He’d lost most of his weight and coat, and had caught an infection of some kind as well. From all indications, he simply surrendered to what had become inevitable. When I arose I found him lifeless, arranged for his cremation, and…well, that’s all there is to say about that.
Except that it isn’t.
***
We humans are blessed – or cursed – with too much awareness, too much comprehension, and too great an ability to love. Over the course of a typical life we love others of our kind, but also members of other species: dogs, cats, horses, hamsters, ferrets, three-toed sloths, what have you. I’ve loved pets of every kind. I once had a Norwegian white lab rat that my wife saved from a pointless death because “they didn’t need him.” I loved him too.
You can’t love without the possibility of loss. What makes it a possibility rather than a certainty is only this: you might die first. They they’ll mourn you, to whatever extent they’re capable.
From the moment you first choose to love – and it is a choice, always – you open the door to loss. If your loves include creatures of less lifespan than is given to Man, you’re likely to face loss several times on that account alone. It’s part of the bargain.
But love enlarges you. By loving, even in loving an animal, you grow to be more than you were. Love is never wasted. Neither is the grief you feel over loss.
That last bit is the part that’s hardest to accept, and to remember.
***
Uriel had a good life. We made sure of that. But no power can defeat death. Not permanently, anyway. Uriel had used up his allotted span.
I was taught long ago that animals’ souls die with their bodies. I’d rather not believe it. I know quite a lot of other Catholics who don’t. But I won’t know the facts of the matter on this side of the veil of time. I suppose I’ll just have to wait a while longer…not too much longer, matters being as they are.
Someone, at some time in the past, said something similar to this:
“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
The original source is heavily disputed, so let’s not go there. The core of the sentence is perfectly plain: To impose an alien ideology upon Americans, employ their most cherished symbols as camouflage. And indeed, that’s what the proto-fascists of our nation have been doing for more than a century. They’ve been getting away with it, too.
People argue – naturally – about what constitutes Fascism. My preferred definition for Fascism comes from the originator of the doctrine, Benito Mussolini:
“The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism, the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative….All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Thus, in a Fascist polity:
State authority is unbounded and absolute;
Individuals have no rights against the State;
The State may revise or override the laws at any time;
Individuals and groups are instruments for advancing on State goals.
Keep that paradigm in mind as you read what follows.
***
The American form of Fascism comes under a twofold cloak: “Emergency powers” claimed and wielded by the executive branch, and “compelling government interest.” These notions allow the regime to rationalize the “suspension” of Constitutional provisions and guarantees.
Anyone who’s lived through the two years just behind us will be familiar with how governments use “emergencies” to arrogate previously uncontemplated powers for themselves. The assertion of such powers proceeds under a “government interest” which is claimed to take precedence over any individual’s rights. From that earlier essay:
“Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all its wants. Your country’s Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them.” [Eric L. Harry, via fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev in Harry’s novel Protect and Defend.]
It would appear that “superior power” acknowledges no rights. The rationale is almost always “compelling government interest:” that is, the State’s interest in…what? How can the State, a fictional creature made up of individuals such as you and I, hired to do the relatively simple jobs (NB: “simple,” not necessarily “easy”) of keeping the peace in the streets, operating a court system, and defending the territory of the United States, have “interests?” It’s a BLEEP!ing hireling, and hirelings have no interests; they have responsibilities and delegated, enumerated powers, nothing more.
The State’s “interests” are nonexistent. However, the individuals at the levers of power don’t see it that way. They want power, and as much of it as they can grab. Your “rights?” Sorry, buddy, they were just an Eighteenth Century philosopher’s idle fancy. Just a few words on a scrap of parchment. At any rate, we shan’t concern ourselves with them today. There’s oppressing work to be done!
Actually, the “woke” are just fine with racism: racism against whites. Indeed, it’s one of their main tools for fastening a yoke upon us. Apart from that, Miss Smith’s assessment is quite accurate. Were the “woke” presented with an anonymized description of government power in the Third Reich, they would approve of all of it, with the possible exception of its anti-Semitism. Even genocide is all right with them, as long as it’s in support of the “woke” agenda: to remove “ineducable dissenters” from the body politic, for example. Remember Bill Ayres’s Weather Underground comrades discussing the necessary execution of 25 million Americans who would resist “re-education?”
Because individuals will always retain some grip on reality and some sense of ineradicable moral bounds, once a Fascist regime gets rolling, there will be outbreaks of horror – moral horror – over its operations. That’s when the “woke” start openly quoting Stalin about eggs and omelets. The ineducables were impeding the work of the State, and that must not be impeded! It was a tragic necessity that they be lined up along a trench lip, shot dead, and their bodies tumbled into a mass grave, but a necessity even so. Now sit down and shut up, Citizen…unless you want to join them.
***
I’m not going to enumerate the many ways in which the Republic has degenerated into a neofascist construct. My Gentle Readers are observant and intelligent enough to note the correlations for themselves. But we might take note of an episode from some years ago, when Jonah Goldberg addressed a left-leaning college audience. He asked them a single pointed question:
“Other than the racism and genocide, what was so bad about fascism?”
Two years after leaving the EU Britain has made almost none of the promised progress towards economic liberalisation. While Brussels hasn’t been helpful, libertarian ministers in the Tory government have been both conquered by the bureaucracy of the civil service and even turned into high spending statists. There has been no attempt to reduce the state’s suffocating dominance over the economy.[1]
Forget the sophistries of left-right, socialism, fascism, capitalism, trickle down, stimulus, free trade, cheap labor and the like. All topics that stimulate the lizard brains of grasping, conniving, race-baiting, grifting, spirit cooking midgets to be sure. But here is a issue of the ages staring us right in the eyes: We’ve allowed massive power to drift into unaccountable hands that have brought the West to its knees.
Roughly 50% of our income, give or take, goes to fund the most asinine, poisonous, and destructive stuff imaginable yet there’s only position that ever prevails in the politics of this garbage — the government’s. Day in and day out, month after month, we hurtle to disaster because government has got the bit between its teeth, screwed the pooch, circled the wagons, and flown the coop.
Productive people see the money they work hard for turned over to contemptible buffoons, liars, and demagogues. But it’s ALWAYS steady as she goes. Defiticts to the moon and lesbian storybooks in the schools. And old Mitch is red hot on anyone’s messing with the filibuster. Theft of a presidential election? Not so much.
So there’s a campaign issue for the ages, if not a way of life. Remove evil, conniving, goofy, dishonest swine from power. Make it impossible for them to jimmy elections, profit while in office, or silence our voices. Destroy their sinecures, unearned privileges and immunities, and their intolerable, liberty-destroying, vicious laws, regulations, and court decisions that turn free people into serfs and destroy our families and the peace and security of our neighborhoods. Destroy the Department of Justice, disband the FBI, and repeal the United States Code. Have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron Paul be in charge of what statutes get re-enacted.
No more welfare and no more civil rights law for damn sure. Turn federal offices into condos. Have the Supreme Court hold hearings in the Dollar Store parking lots. Appoint at least one veteran, one cop, one victim of violent crime, and one truck driver to the Court. Expel all students who can’t read or solve simple mathematical problems, or who are disruptive. Destroy the Fed.
“Clean fucking house” in words of few syllables. Can you bastards who mewl about the rule of law and preserving [stuff] actually do something for a change? America — the entire Western world — is unrecognizable. A cowardly, whimpering, helpless shadow of its former glory, terrified into silence and immobility lest the cry of bigotry and meanness be heard throughout the land. You disgust us.
But oddly, if you dare to point out fascists in Ukraine you’re told that such people are a small minority, that most of those on Maidan, and then supporting the post-Maidan government, were normal, decent, democratic folk, and you shouldn’t allow the presence of a “few extremists” to taint the “revolution of dignity” as a whole.
Now, if it were different people saying these different things, then it wouldn’t be a problem. But as we’ve seen with the case of Amnesty, it’s not. Nor is it in the case of Canada’s political elite, including the ruling Liberal Party. Fascists in Ukraine? That’s Russian disinformation, they tell us. When the mob attacked the police and toppled the [Ukrainian] government, they saw only democracy. But a bunch of truckers sitting around in Ottawa honking their horns – fascism! A threat to our most cherished values.[1]
The reference to Amnesty is about its conclusion that the Ukrainian government’s actions in 2014 were not justified as they did not “pass the test of being a ‘pressing social need . . . .’” The disturbances in Maidan Square were the start of a coup d’etat and tens of people were murdered by snipers. No pressing need to shut that down, I see.
Well, it’s just another day in the joke that Western civilization has become. Who knew that mild-mannered Canada, brash Oz, and Krazy-Kat/rock-and-roll/Route-6 America would embrace state repression with such glee. Question mark.
Notes [1] “Fascists in ottawa. None in kiev!.” By Paulr, Irrusianality, 2/4/22. The sappy bleating in this article of one Alex Neve about the fwightful Canadian truckers’ protest is a classic of manufactured snowflake outrage and airiness about the truth, shall we say.
The push for total censorship is relentless. You can’t say THAT and you certainly can’t say it THERE.
WikiLeaks was a threat and they took care of that.
The Drudge Report was a threat and they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Facebook, Twitter, etc. were potential threats and they got these “private companies” to implement their programs to end “misinformation” and “dangerous” content.
They always had the mainstream media, but they are subsidizing their continued existence so they can continue to run cover and protect the authorized narratives.
Joe Rogan and Spotify were becoming a threat …
This Trucker protest is a threat and so they have mobilized all their assets to make sure this threat doesn’t spread world-wide.
Substack citizen journalists are becoming a threat so there is now a “campaign” to shut them down.
I see a pattern here. I see an effort to neutralize any threat that might prevent the Powers that Be from fully implementing their complete agendas.
‘I don’t understand your viewpoint,’ she said. ‘You broke his nose, yet he had done you no harm of any sort. You expect me to approve that?’
‘But Persephone,’ he protested, ‘you ignore the fact that he called me a most insulting name.’
‘I don’t see the connection,’ she said. ‘He made a noise with his mouth-a verbal label. If the label does not fit you, the noise is meaningless. If the label is true in your case—if you are the thing that the noise refers to, you are neither more, nor less, that thing by reason of some one uttering the verbal label. In short, he did not damage you.
‘But what you did to him was another matter entirely. You broke his nose. That is damage. In self-protection the rest of society must seek you out, and determine whether or not you are so unstable as to be likely to damage some one else in the future. If you are, you must be quarantined for treatment, or leave society-whichever you prefer.’
‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’ he accused.
‘Crazy? Not the way you mean it. You haven’t paresis, or a brain tumor, or any other lesion that the Doctor could find. But from the viewpoint of your semantic reactions you are as socially unsane as any fanatic witch burner.’
[Robert A. Heinlein, “Coventry”]
“Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington. You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”
“What things?”
“You understand what I mean.”
“No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”
“What is?”
“You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”
“As what?”
“Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”
If I were to recount all the words and phrases the Left has striven to render unspeakable, I’d run out of breath long before I got to the pronouns. These days, they act as if they hold an absolute veto power over our locutions. But I didn’t award them any such. Did you?
Thing is, they censor us selectively, according to political / tactical considerations. They allow their favored and protected ones to get away with what they forbid to others. That, of course, is in harmony with Leftist thinking generally. A concise exegesis was provided by chekist Martin Latsis, way back in the early days of the USSR:
We are not making war on individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class…. Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, education, profession. These questions should determine his fate. This is the essence of the Red Terror.
Today, the Left identifies its targets by their politics more than by their “class.” This article is on point.
There is a theory beneath it, of course. It’s expressed in the Atlas Shrugged quote at the top of this piece. It’s equally well expressed by the famous Syme quotation from 1984:
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it….The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak….”
“By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ”freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
(Why yes, I could make up an essay entirely from quotes. Especially if I were allowed to quote myself. But not today.)
While perusing my archives, I ran across a Curmudgeon Emeritus essay I first posted at the Palace of Reason in 2004. Rather than repeat myself still further, I’m going to post the relevant snippet of it below. Read it – preferably securely seated; it’s rather rough – and reflect. Reflect particularly upon what our unwillingness to defy the would-be censors has wrought upon us and our nation.
***
With regard to the anathematization of the words colored,Negro, and nigger — is your Curmudgeon the only honky in America willing to spell that last word out in its entirety? — a confluence of forces was at work. One of these was a genuine contrition among white Americans for the racial sins of prior generations, and a willingness to overcompensate for them as a gesture and proof of good will. Another was the rise of black racial-identity politics, which used undeserved guilt as its principal weapon, and reinforced it cleverly with the continual reassignment of words to and from the “taboo” category, so that whites would always be off balance and hesitant about what they could say.
Because of the circumstances of the Sixties and Seventies, in particular the complete dependence of the whole country on the ideologically uniform newspapers and broadcast media for news about the war, it took a long time before the typical American learned that Tet had been a huge, bank-breaking victory for our forces in Vietnam. Though the media’s duplicity wasn’t the whole of the reason for our ultimate withdrawal from Vietnam, Miss Coulter is quite correct that the misrepresentation of Tet was a major factor in the public’s disaffection from the war, for which popular support had never been better than lukewarm in the first place. The media crowbar was strong enough to pry the government and the electorate apart.
Because of the willingness of white America to overcompensate for the racism of prior generations, the black racialists of the Sixties and Seventies succeeded at conditioning the overwhelming majority of whites into self-censorship. The main significance of this result was not a reduction in offense offered to blacks by whites; that was already about as low as it was going to get. It was a stutterer’s hesitancy among whites: a nervous, self-doubting reluctance to address race-related subjects at all, no matter how extravagant the claims of exploitation and victimization offered by black racialist leaders. One could not know what word or phrase black race-shouters would fix on as a pretext to attack one’s motives, objectives, or character, thereby destroying the preconditions for discussion.
Truly, words have power. But sound, consistent ethics have even more power, as recent developments have demonstrated.
The black racialists have revealed their real agenda by their ceaseless maneuverings for money, power, and prestige, in pursuit of which they’ve repeatedly sacrificed the well-being of those they claim to represent. As a result, white Americans have grown calluses over their sensitivities, and have largely cast off the undeserved guilt in which the racialists have tried to swaddle them. More, the racialists have been countered effectively by a new set of black voices of great integrity. The racialists are stunned by the power of these new voices. To this point, they’ve managed no response other than increased stridency and volume, which isn’t working.
But what of the desire not to give offense?
A prime tenet of the old Gentleman’s Code was that a gentleman never gives offense unintentionally. But a gentleman is also supposed to speak truth and shoot the arrow straight. More, though noblesse oblige commands him to show generosity toward the less fortunate, and patience toward those less well reared than he, he is not required to apologize or make reparations to those he has not harmed, nor to kowtow to the insincerely “sensitive” sort who seeks pretexts for offense in the innocent behavior of others.
What’s this antiquated nonsense about a “gentleman’s code,” you ask? Why trouble about gentlemen when the species has been extinct longer than the dodo? Why hasn’t your bloodthirsty pale-assed mick-wop Curmudgeon staked out a position of his own on the thing? But he has:
The Curmudgeon’s Code:
Try not to annoy others without cause.
Try not to be too easily annoyed.
Assume sincerity, decency, and good will in others until they demonstrate otherwise.
Once they’ve demonstrated otherwise, cut them no slack at all.
Support and defend America in all dealings with other countries and their governments, unless it is absolutely and indisputably in the wrong.
Not quite what you’d have expected of a fascist war-mongering ofay from the privileged white capitalist patriarchal ruling class, is it? Well, we tophatted oppressors expend most of our energies on maintaining iron-fisted control of our dark Satanic mills, so we tend to be easygoing about everything else except our bank balances, our coupon-clipping, and our ius primae noctis. But to those who find it noxious even so, a parting word of advice: If you decide to shoot at your Curmudgeon, don’t miss.
In contrast to the idea that a globalist depopulation agenda would be the result of the die-off of billions and billions of people across the world, the actual realization of this pursuit appears to be much more subtle. That realization is also becoming harder and harder to deny. This is demonstrated in part by recent revolutions from England and Wales from the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics (“ONS”). The ONS recently found that more than 50% of women in England and Wales born in or after 1990 were childless by the time they turned 30 in 2020. The literal majority of 50.1% drastically increased from a rate of just 18% measured in 1971.[1]
Just like millions of high-fertility, third world invaders just “ended up” in the ghettoes, banlieus, Sensitive Urban Zones, and assorted other no-go areas of Western countries?
And tens of thousands of American factories just drifted across the Pacific to the shores of a communist country without a peep from the unions or the Commerce Deptartment? Stuff happens, lads.
If salus populi is a consideration that seems to you to be strangely missing from the calculations of our “leaders” you are not alone:
Why wage a war in furtherance of interests not our own? ask paleoconservative patriots like Messrs. Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson. The question, alas, is a non-sequitur, as it is incorrectly premised on the false notion that the United States government and Department of State conduct foreign policy in the interest of the American people. The assumption of congruity between US foreign policy and the interests of the American people is utterly false.[2]
Ms. Mercer’s last sentence there warrants a separate “pearls of expression” treatment all by itself.
“Tell your men to sheathe their blades, my lord. Else I shall collapse the whirligig upon them, and Anam will be once more without a balance.”
The baron’s eyes lit with understanding. His hand retreated from his sword. “Practical considerations, sorcerer?”
“Just so.”
“Will you take my realm from me, then?”
“I will not,” Gregor said. “I leave upon the instant. My word, you see, is good.”
Semmech’s jaw clenched. He raised a hand, and his men returned their swords to their scabbards.
Would you like to know what gets a freedom weenie’s blood pressure up to moonshot levels? The sort of thing he simply can’t cope with no matter how hard he may try?
Practical considerations.
Yep. That’s it. That’s all. Tell a liberty-minded guy that “we can’t have that” because “it’s not practical” and watch him turn the most amazing shade of purple. And would you like to know why?
It’s simple, really. It’s because sometimes there’s no counter-argument. Some things, however desirable they might be in theory, are unworkable in practice. In operational terms, the cost of the thing would outweigh the gains from having it.
Of course, people can argue about costs and gains: how they’re assessed, in what coin they should be counted, the extent of the costs and gains spread over time, and so forth. But such arguments are by nature interminable. They eventually run down, and the decisions involved are made by a majority or supermajority consensus.
Here follows an old favorite essay. It first appeared at the Palace of Reason on June 5, 2002.
I can’t imagine why not. The above are a fair sample of some of America’s most potent magic numbers. If they don’t cause you to swell with mystical potency like Gandalf facing the Lord of the Nazgul, at least they ought to make you tipsy.
Each of those numbers is part of a written statute, at the federal, state, or municipal level. The number controls what certain persons may do with the blessing of the law.
Twenty-one years is the legal drinking age in much, if not all of the country. A person below that age who knowingly imbibes alcohol has committed a misdemeanor. A person over that age who serves him alcohol has committed a felony.
Seventeen years is the minimum age of a capital offender in the state of Texas. Recently, Napoleon Beazley, who had murdered in the process of a carjacking just before his eighteenth birthday, discovered this to his dismay. The authorities put him to death despite protests that, at the time of his offense, he was “only a child.”
Eighteen years is the nationwide age of commercial consent, and of the franchise. An eighteen year old may enter into binding contracts, including labor contracts and contracts that would commit him to military discipline. He is deemed fit to help select our representatives in Congress and the state legislatures, and the occupant of the White House as well. His judgment doesn’t extend to the responsible use of intoxicants, but toting an automatic weapon and hurling grenades? Choosing the men who’ll run the country? Hey, who could be hurt by that?
Sixteen years is the legal age of sexual consent in the state of New York. A sixteen year old is deemed by New York law ready to decide about when, how, and with whom he’ll copulate, with neither parental veto nor legal consequence.
Fourteen years is the minimum age for a young woman to marry in several Southern states. A subset of those states require parental consent to the match; a few do not. I haven’t checked the statutes of those states for their ages of sexual consent. If any have it set higher than fourteen, it would have interesting implications for the child brides and their grooms.
We’ll get to the others in a bit. For the moment, I hope I’ve conveyed to you some sense of the ubiquity and incoherence of these magic numbers. They control access to many aspects of life, but neither they nor their rationales show any degree of consistency.
Perhaps it’s too much to ask for rational consistency in such things. Each of the numbers above is the product of a continuous, ongoing political struggle. The statute ages typically satisfy no one; in any particular case, about half the agitators wanted it to be higher, and the other half wanted it to be lower. Such processes are the reverse of rational, and cannot fairly be expected to yield rational results.
But what would a rational result be?
When the law partitions the citizenry into a portion that’s deemed responsible enough to exercise certain choices, and another that’s deemed unready, it’s making an arbitrary choice. There is no science behind a voting age of eighteen. There’s no study to reassure us that an eighteen year old will possess the necessary mature judgment to exercise the franchise. Considering how so many of them drive, the evidence is against it.
We are largely agreed that some of us are too young to be allowed independent choices about certain matters, such as sex and intoxicants. But when we get down to specifics, the final decision will always be a matter of political pressures rather than reasoning. There can be no reasoning on these matters; the varying rates of individual mental and emotional development guarantee this.
We are largely agreed that, after a certain age, individuals must be held to answer for the consequences of their deeds. But when legislatures and courts try to make rules, we reach the edge of our agreement. Political pressures take over. Some states will execute a murderer at age sixteen; others insist on a minimum of eighteen. Of course, still others won’t execute at all.
This is not an argument against these statutory ages. I cannot claim that any of these numbers “ought to be” other than what it is. Nor can I argue against the use of statutory ages in general. This is merely a reflection on the way they’ve proliferated and diverged, according to the topic they address.
It is in Man’s nature to study himself, and never to be satisfied that he knows himself adequately well. If it were otherwise, we could argue, as someone once did with the Patent Office, that the legislatures had completed their work and could be adjourned sine die. I regret to inform you that this has not occurred, not even in Rhode Island.
Part of our self-study is, of course, the study of our process of maturation, and the consequences of allowing the young access to the privileges and perquisites of the adult. From this, we produce statutory age thresholds, and adjust them over time. When our legislative process is working well, the adjustments are responses to the lessons of experience. When it isn’t, they’re determined by which pressure group has the largest PR budget.
Now, as to the last three numbers:
Six months is the age of a developing fetus at which a mother’s decision to abort can be regulated by an act of a state legislature.
Twenty-five years is the age in the state of New York at which a driver must be removed from his insurance company’s Assigned Risk pool, that he may keep a greater sliver of his laughably trivial earnings.
Eight is the number of cats permitted to a single-family dwelling in the City of Yonkers, by court decision.
Didn’t expect that last one, did you?
***
I called them “magic numbers” out of whimsy, back then…but upon reflection there’s a deeper meaning to be had from the term, even if I didn’t grasp it at the time. The magic in them is twofold: first, they reduce contention; second, they excite dissension. The consensus that agreed to them was sufficient to give them legal staying power, which made them sound as practical considerations. However, no consensus is perfect; unanimity is unknown among us quarrelsome humans. And while it may seem paradoxical, it’s often the smallest dissenting minority that can excite the biggest noise.
Allow me two examples. Time was, a certain Peter Singer, who billed himself as an ethicist, tried to argue that “abortion rights” ought to extend beyond the womb. If memory serves, he thought a new mother should have the right to kill her baby for thirty days after birth. Why thirty days? Why not fifteen or sixty? Beats me. But that’s what he argued.
Singer’s notion didn’t get a lot of support, but it did get some. He got at least one quasi-favorable interview with a regionally important media organ. Since then – it was a number of years ago – we’ve heard little to nothing more from or about him.
For a more recent numerically based contretemps, we have this:
Stephen Kershnar is a professor at State University of New York at Fredonia, and a pedophilia apologist.
Here’s Kershnar on video saying that an adult male having sex with a 12-year-old girl is not obviously wrong, and that calling it wrong is a “mistake.” In the same clip, he refers to pedophilic rape as “adult-child sex,” another euphemism that, just like “minor-attracted person,” is being used in an attempt to run cover for evil.
It gets worse. Twelve isn’t young enough for Kershnar. He continues to defend pedophilia, remarking “The notion that it’s wrong even with a one-year-old is not quite obvious to me.” He goes on. “I don’t think it’s blanket wrong at any age.”
Note that, in the “Magic Numbers” essay, I admitted that the states have differing ages of sexual consent. This highlights the matter in a fashion that Kershnar and his fellow travelers would appreciate. Yet it doesn’t win the argument for them. There is an essential consensus that takes precedence:
Consent is essential to sex.
Sex without consent is rape.
Some persons cannot validly consent to sex.
Ergo, to impose sex upon them is rape.
The argument over who can and who cannot validly consent to sex gives rise not only to age-of-consent laws, but also to laws that protect adults who are deemed unable to consent: the comatose, the mentally ill, and the mentally feeble. Note that parts of this argument are still in progress, for example over whether a drunken or semi-drunken person can validly consent to sex. But more important still is this: The core of the argument is over practical considerations: i.e., how to design the laws so as to minimize the amount of harm done while minimally interfering with individuals’ rights.
When there’s no other way, we must fall back on consensus. Of course, a claim that “there’s no other way” is itself a trigger for dispute, but that’s an argument for a much, much longer essay.
Fran the Freedom Advocate has long wrestled with certain “practical considerations.” As I’m horrified by the evils to which governments give birth, I’ve strained for decades to find a way to defend a country without resorting to a government with the power to tax, or a way to enforce a uniform standard of justice in such a country without a unified system of courts, or a way to enforce acceptable standards of decency in public places without creating municipal police forces. These are the “public-goods problems” that have frustrated thinkers ever since the Enlightenment. And as much as I love Spoonerite anarchism in theory, I can’t find a way to provide for those things without exciting the very political processes that give rise to majorities imposing their will upon minorities…in other words, to governments.
Perhaps someone far wiser than I can solve those problems. In the meantime, we must use consensus…which means enduring the clamor from noisy minorities that scream that their rights and prerogatives are being trampled thereby.
