Feb 05 2022

Pearls of expression.

Sen. Josh Hawley questioned the lust for war with Russia whereupon Jen Psaki accused him of “digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points” and not being in alignement with “long-standing, bipartisan American values.”

A ZeroHedge commenter had the perfect response:

Soviet politics pure and simple. If you ask about the problem, then you are the problem. We’ve been living under these rules for two or more decades, from government down to the corporate workplace to the school board meeting. Time to give them the collective middle finger.[1]

Where did so many nimrods and dimwits in America suddenly develop this uncanny ability to detect misinformation, disinformation, and Russian talking points delivered with an American accent?

Notes
[1] Comment by Fishtowner on “War Mania Leads White House To Condemn US Senator As Russian Propagandist.” By Joe Lauria, ZeroHedge, 2/4/22.

Feb 05 2022

Russian thinking about encroachment.

No natural barriers divide Russia from the rest of Europe. Its defence against all four invasions from the West over four centuries was, therefore, vitally dependent on its ability to trade space for time and to exploit enormous distances—as well as brutal climate—to wear down attackers. Having a solid buffer zone along the country’s western frontiers is still perceived by Russian leaders as strategically imperative.

This is the context in which the latest crisis over Ukraine must be seen.[1]

Russians’ understanding of the concept of strategic depth is thus rooted in bitter experience. Foreign invasions have been existential threats to them; WWII losses were hideous. Americans’ experience of foreign military invasion is virtually nil. Even our WWII losses were far, far fewer than Soviet losses.

Our elites’ fanatical desire to expand “NATO” to the very borders of Russia is thus arrogant and reckless. They ignore the Russian experience and the bedrock realities of their survival. America’s political elites play at war with our asinine female Rangers and affirmative action hires on the bridges of naval vessels.

By way of contrast, the Defense Minister of Russia, Gen. Shoigu, who is fluent in nine languages and a student of the French invasion of Russia, does not look like he is a great kidder.

Notes
[1] “The Madness of Russophobia.” By Srdja Trifkovic, Chronicles, 2/22.

Feb 04 2022

A Little More on Earn It

I downloaded the bill’s text (don’t forget, Thomas.gov is now Congress.gov – the old links don’t work). Some of the provisions are very interesting:

  • 4 Members of the Commission “shall be survivors of online child sexual exploitation, or have current experience in providing services for victims of online child sexual exploitation in a nongovernmental capacity;
    • In other words, there will be FOUR members that either ‘out’ themselves as a sexual abuse survivor, or have worked for an NGO (is there ANY doubt in your mind that those will be Leftist NGOs?)
  • 2 Members “shall have current experience in matters related to consumer protection, civil liberties, civil rights, or privacy;” (and, we all know that the experience of non-Leftists will not be accepted as valid)
  • 2 “shall have current experience in addressing online child sexual exploitation and promoting child safety at an interactive computer service with not less than 30,000,000 monthly users in the United States;” (am I wrong in thinking that those numbers are tailored to making sure that the FAANGs will be part of this?)
  • And, if somehow the Commission gets “stuck” with non-Leftists (residual members, oddball appointments), never fear, there is a solution!
    • “QUORUM.—A majority of the members of the Commission shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number of members may hold a meeting.” So, just don’t invite those NLDs to the meeting!
  • They will, should this pass, also amend other legislation already passed – “HOMELAND SECURITY ACT OF 2002.—The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 101 et seq.) is amended— (A) in section 307(b)(3)(D) (6 U.S.C. 187(b)(3)(D)), by striking ‘‘child pornography’’ and inserting ‘‘child sexual abuse material’’;
  • Other legislation that would be amended include:
    • Immigration and Nationality Act
    • Small Business Jobs Act of 2010
    • Broadband Data Improvement Act
    • CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
    • Title 18, United States Code
    • Tariff Act of 1930
    • Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965
    • Museum and Library Services Act
    • Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968
    • Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974
    • Victims of Crime Act of 1984
    • Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990
    • Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act
    • Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006
    • Protect Our Children Act of 2008
    • Social Security Act
    • Privacy Protection Act of 1980
    • Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990
    • Communication Act of 1934
    • Adds an Amendment to Federal Sentencing Guidelines
      • “EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this section to title 18 of the United States Code shall apply to conduct that occurred before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that SPECIFICALLY prohibited by the Constitution?
  • The bill makes sections of it severable – that is, if one part is held to be unconstitutional, all other parts of it will survive. That’s a common provision of these “Comprehensive” bills; they ask for the moon, and eventually, settle for most.

So, what does “Sexual Child Abuse Material” mean?

AMAZINGLY, they do NOT define what that offence IS. Which would lead a suspicious person to conclude that they intend to classify online discussion and opposition of medical treatment of children for “TRANSformation”, childhood sexualized activities promoted by the Left, pedophilia promotion, abortion services and other vile activities of the Batshit Crazy Left, as fitting under this definition, if not following the Leftist Line. In other words, if you OPPOSE sexualizing children, YOU are the offender.

The Sponsor is Rep. Sylvia Garcia – (D-TX). Co-Sponsors include Rep. Ann Wagner – (R-MO), Rep. Tom Rice – (R-SC), and Rep. Byron Donalds – (R-FL). I’ve included their links, so you can express your displeasure personally. If you would also contact other legislators from that state, and ask for their assistance in delivering a B!tch-Slap to those members, that would be great.

Feb 04 2022

A Completely Uncoded Message

     If you’re not aware of them, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the few organizations actively fighting for freedom of communication in today’s media, especially the Internet. They’ve made the unearthing, publicizing, and combating of threats to communications freedom and privacy their sole priority. They’re very good at it.

     So when the EFF publicizes a new threat, we should pay attention:

     A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that was dropped in the face of overwhelming opposition. Let’s be clear: the new EARN IT Act would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features in technology used by people around the globe. It’s a framework for private actors to scan every message sent online and report violations to law enforcement. And it might not stop there. The EARN IT Act could ensure that anything hosted online—backups, websites, cloud photos, and more—is scanned.

     The bill empowers every U.S. state or territory to create sweeping new Internet regulations, by stripping away the critical legal protections for websites and apps that currently prevent such a free-for-all—specifically, Section 230. The states will be allowed to pass whatever type of law they want to hold private companies liable, as long as they somehow relate their new rules to online child abuse.

     The goal is to get states to pass laws that will punish companies when they deploy end-to-end encryption, or offer other encrypted services. This includes messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage, as well as web hosts like Amazon Web Services. We know that EARN IT aims to spread the use of tools to scan against law enforcement databases because the bill’s sponsors have said so. In a “Myths and Facts” document distributed by the bill’s proponents, it even names the government-approved software that they could mandate (PhotoDNA, a Microsoft program with an API that reports directly to law enforcement databases).

     Please read the whole article. (Try to stay calm during and after the ordeal.) So you thought the invasions of digital privacy would halt with the discovery of the NSA’s massive call-recording setup, eh? Think again.

     Note that the EARN IT bill has support both from Democrats and from Republicans. Despite its plain unConstitutionality and its apparent unpopularity the first time around, it appears ready for a rematch.

     EARN IT should be a wake-up call for anyone who’s assumed that the Republicans are reliable friends of freedom and Constitutional government. The indications are that the GOP is as interested in these new surveillance powers as the Democrats. Many will scratch their heads over this, though the underlying dynamic appears plain enough.

     Knowledge of what people are thinking and saying is valuable to the maintenance of power generally. This is especially true today, when any comment can result in being besieged by the militants of “cancel culture.” (Anyone who doubts this should consult James Watson, Lawrence Summers, and Gina Carano.) Don’t imagine that the Establishment Right is less interested than the Left in such an ability. Just now, the GOP looks set to regain control of Congress; the ability to peer into anyone’s communications stream would allow themselves to cement themselves into Congressional hegemony. The Democrats are probably thinking that that ability could help them to maintain their grip on power, as well. That one or the other must be mistaken doesn’t really matter.

     In our post-Constitutional era, gambits such as EARN IT are beyond enumeration. Everyone in politics is looking for a “wonder weapon” the possession of which would guarantee enduring dominance in Washington. What usually retards them is suspicion. When the Democrats propose a new power for the federal government, the Republicans will normally suspect their motives and form a wall against it. The same is true with the parties reversed. But with some proposed powers, such as those in EARN IT, both can take an interest, especially when control of Congress appears up for grabs.

     Just as the repeal of Prohibition didn’t do away with federal oversight of alcoholic beverages, should EARN IT be enacted and signed by whoever is sitting in the Oval Office, the power it creates will never, ever go away. Both parties would find it too useful. What remains of communications privacy will vanish. Surveillance America would be here at last. And of course, it would all be “for the children.”

     Say, how about a bill that would make proposing new federal powers “for the children” a capital crime? I could get behind that one.

Feb 04 2022

Non-acoustical submarine detection.

Chilling stuff:

“Rising importance of Non- Acoustic detection technologies of Stealthy.” By Rajesh Uppal, International Defense, Security and Technology, Inc. (CA, USA), 2/10/21.

Feb 03 2022

History And Its Lesson

     “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

     I sometimes envision History as a teacher standing before a classroom filled with squalling teenagers. The kids are entirely uninterested in what Miss History has to say. Who cares about all that old crap? This is today! We know better now. Yet she stands up there, chalk in hand, facing a sea of eight billion desks, while the spitballs fly, the gigglings and gropings continue, and the din of voices raised in senseless defiance of her wisdom swells unbounded. Undaunted, she goes on mercilessly telling her class – that’s us, Gentle Reader – stuff that we all really ought to know…but which the majority of us refuse to acknowledge.

     If anyone should have an absolute and unabridged right to say I told you so to Mankind, it’s Miss History.

***

     Foremost of all History’s lessons is that we should pay attention to History. But when we do, we quickly become aggrieved, for it tells us things we don’t want to hear…things that would make us question our own wisdom. So we prefer to ignore it.

     History tells us innumerable things about the perniciousness of government. Brilliant men have written extensive chronicles of what follows when men turn to the State: for protection from others…for the elimination of conditions they dislike…for things they ought to provide to themselves, by their own intelligence and sweat. A record six thousand years long of oppressions, predations, and slaughters, conducted by and through governments, is available to anyone who takes an interest. Yet we go on as if what men do when awarded power over others is an unexampled, utterly mysterious thing.

     So the parade of horrors continues.

     Why? Why are we so resistant to the lesson? Can we really be that vain of our own wisdom? After so many failures, can we sincerely believe that “we’re smarter than they were; we can do it better” — ? And when we fail yet again, how can we exculpate ourselves in the face of so much accumulated knowledge – knowledge sufficient to convince anyone with eyes to see that what we’ve attempted is by its very nature impossible?

***

     There are many who “think” with their desires instead of their reason. He who lusts after power will appeal to these with a promise of riches for submission: Give me power over you and I will fulfill your dreams of avarice. The lie must be properly packaged, of course. It must include at least one devil-figure. That figure must somehow be connected to the ills and unfulfilled desires of the Great Unwashed. But The People’s Champion will do battle against the devil and cast him down…and thereafter riches will flow forth from the cornucopia the devil had seized for himself.

     There are others who are consumed by envy of others of greater ability or effort. The power-luster will promise to reave them of their “ill-gotten gains” and distribute them among his beloved People. Thus will he relieve all misery and want, while simultaneously assuaging The People’s desire for “justice.” For it is unjust that some should have more than others, is it not? After all, we didn’t ask to be born stupid, or shiftless, or careless! We deserve redress!

     There are others who are filled with fear. The power-seeker will promise them protection. It is a need most urgent, for The Enemy is everywhere. He’s poised to strike and could do so at any moment. We may not know his name or face, but his ubiquity is certain. What’s that you say? Let the commoners possess the arms required for the job? Unthinkable! They might harm one another, or themselves. Look how much damage they do to themselves with paper cuts alone!

     The lies are many. All of them have been used before. The would-be tyrant’s chief skill is in the packaging.

***

     Yes, I’m in a mood. I’ve been an aficionado of history all my life. Hegel was essentially correct: we learn, if not nothing, then very little from history. The power-mongers fool even the best of us more often than not. All it takes is a more colorful, more glittery wrapping for the Lie of the Moment.

     But what is the Lie of the Moment? What deception has been used to fasten today’s yoke upon our necks? Systemic Racism? COVID-19? Fear of Russia? Mean Tweets?

     The lies have broken down among our neighbors to the north. Canadians have decided that they’ve had enough. They’ve gotten up on their hind legs and roared a mighty roar, and the powers-that-be are cowering in terror.

     What of us? Are we still prisoners of the Lie? For there is really only one Lie, you know. It changes costumes frequently enough, but the body underneath remains constant:


We know better than you.
Trust us.
We’re here to help.

     It hasn’t been believable since Solon of Athens. But to learn that, we’d have to pay attention to History…and we won’t.

     Time to wise up, Gentle Readers.

     Put not your trust in princes. – Psalm 146

Feb 02 2022

Right Ways And Left Ways

     Time was, soldiers had a saying: “There are three ways to do anything: the wrong way, the right way, and the Army way.” It was facetious, of course; an Army that refrains from doing things the right way as a matter of policy wouldn’t last very long. But the saying expresses some of the frustration soldiers feel – especially new recruits – at the regimentation Army life demands.

     In point of fact, “the Army way” is as rigid and demanding as it is for very good reasons. First, it conditions the soldier to taking orders. Second, it habituates him to doing things in one, specific, maximally precise way. That way, certain actions will become “muscle memory,” and will be executed immediately upon command and exactly as taught, even under the pressures of lethal combat. These qualities are vital to a fighting man in an Army that could see combat at any time.

     It has its downside, of course. It can impede other qualities, such as flexibility and spontaneity, that are of greater use to a soldier who’s left the military. It can also get in the way of “outside the box” thinking. But those are unavoidable side effects of the mental conditioning required of the man at arms.

     Mental conditioning isn’t unknown outside the military. You’ll find it at work in several other venues, especially quasi-religious cults. We refer to the specialists who rehabilitate cult followers to normal life as “deprogrammers” for a reason.

     Left-wing activists exhibit the mental rigidity and programmed behavior patterns characteristic of cult members. This is especially noticeable in their verbal behavior and reactions to others’ statements. It’s a great part of why it’s usually profitless to argue with a leftist.

***

     Just now there’s a wee contretemps in progress over a recent faux pas by television personality Caryn Elaine Johnson, who usually goes by the name “Whoopi Goldberg.” If you’re unacquainted with the details of “Whoopi’s” misstep, here’s a brief Newsbusters report on it.

     This is an excellent illustration of leftists’ programmed reactions, in this case specifically about race. In starkly factual terms, the Holocaust was not a racial pogrom, as European Jews were and are almost all racially Caucasian. Yes, the Nazis “racialized” their campaign against the Jews for the purposes of effective propaganda. But neither the bare facts nor the racial character of Nazi rhetoric were genuinely germane to “Whoopi’s” reaction. As a leftist, she is programmed to react harshly against any use of the concept of racism when Negroes aren’t on the receiving end.

     That programming – the absolute prohibition against allowing that racism against whites is even possible – caused “Whoopi” to depart from the path of prudence. The reactions of her co-hosts ought to have put her on notice. Since then, after a massive counterblast from “The View’s” audience, “Whoopi” has issued a terse admission of error. Apparently ABC has penalized her mildly for it, as well.

     But I doubt severely that “Whoopi’s” behavior will be any different in the future.

     “Whoopi’s” behavior was in obedience to “the Left Way.” We could summarize it as an absolute adherence to rhetoric that expresses the Left’s certified positions. That includes an immediate contradiction – usually in unsparing, even insulting terms – of anyone who infringes on a Leftist issue, even in a metaphorical sense. The Left will permit no one to speak of “racism” in any setting or terms that don’t specifically involve Caucasians’ abuse of Negroes. It shall not pass!

     The tactical value of such rigidity would strike most reasonable persons as dubious. It forecloses factual discussion. It certainly prevents reasoned argument. (I no longer cross swords with leftists for this reason, among others. Should I ever feel a need to be insulted…well, I am married, you know.) But its true value is in the reinforcement of leftist attitudes and adherence. It “keeps ‘em in the church.”

***

     Leftism cannot be defended with reason and evidence. Therefore it must rely on other forces to maintain its grip on its adherents. This is a subject on which many commentators have held forth. I shan’t duplicate their efforts here, except to note once again that the inability to defend a proposition with reason and evidence marks it as a matter of pure faith.

     All faiths involve premises whose acceptance is utterly necessary to the rest of the faith’s propositions. You can’t argue with a man’s premises, unless they involve direct and verifiable contradictions of observed or observable facts. The Left’s premise is that leftists are intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us. In Thomas Sowell’s formulation, this constitutes an assumption of differential rectitude, with the implication that he who contradicts the Left is stupid, evil, or both.

     It is in expressing that assumption, whether in maintaining some position or as a blanket matter, that the leftist reinforces his conviction of superiority. Logically, it’s circular: To hold leftist beliefs is to be intellectually and morally superior to others. Why is that? Well, it’s because those are the Left’s positions, and the Left is intellectually and morally superior to the non-Left. But breaking out of that circle is painfully difficult. It requires a frank admission that you’ve been duped.

***

     “Whoopi’s” misstep won’t cost her much. She’s a card-carrying leftist whose fellows have all been programmed the same way. They won’t question her bona fides. The major media are wholly owned by such persons. They don’t normally act against their own. They do so only when the Left suffers intolerable damage from the errant allegiant’s words or deeds.

     However, the incident is instructive. It illuminates the course decent persons should follow: Draw attention to the stratum of programmed behavior beneath it. If we in the Right can get enough others to take it seriously, the Left Way will doom the Left itself.

Feb 01 2022

Authority And Reality

     One of the giveaways that an authority – of whatever kind – is evilly motivated is an attempt to suppress divergent convictions. George Orwell’s 1984 expressed this through its motifs of doublethink, its motto “Ignorance is Strength,” and Oceania’s Ministry of Truth. That last organ of the State labored continuously to “correct” the record by destroying anything that might cast doubt on the Party line. Supporting its labors was the Ministry of Love: Oceania’s not-quite-secret police, which worked to “correct” individual dissenters.

     Things are bad just now in America, if not quite Oceania-level bad. Our “authorities” are straining to suppress certain information and opinions as antithetical to their aims. They’ve had only limited success – limited principally by the World Wide Web, the First Amendment to the Constitution, and Americans’ attachment to freedom of expression. But there’s no denying the strenuousness of their efforts. They’ve succeeded in enlisting most of the major media in their campaign.

     Consider this matter of Joe Rogan. As it happens, I’ve yet to hear one of his shows. Indeed, I’ve only been aware of him for a few weeks. But our “authorities” are so savagely determined to shut him down that through their efforts alone, millions of Americans, including myself, have become interested in his work. We’re a horde of potential new Rogan listeners, whether for good or for ill…and the “authorities” are frantic about it. So they’ve enlisted CBS in the effort to suppress him:

     A few marginal players have joined the effort:

     There’s no question of rights here. The producers of CBS Mornings are free to express their opinions. “Journalism professor” Jeff Jarvis is free to refrain from patronizing Joe Rogan’s sponsors. But the agenda could hardly be clearer or more distasteful. That distaste is having an effect the would-be suppressors did not anticipate.

***

     I wrote recently that We the Not-Stupid are aware of what’s being done to us. The topic then was election law; today it’s the suppression of information and opinion. When an “authority” tells us that “You mustn’t listen to that; it’s dangerous,” it triggers a priceless national asset: American defiance. Among the phenomena of the time that lifts my spirits, this one is near the top.

     [Digression begins: Fifty-three years ago, a promising young science-fiction writer tried to give substance to the idea of “dangerous information.” He dressed it in a coordinated if fanciful conception of maturity, but the essence of it was plain: there are some things you must not be allowed to hear:

     “Our safeguards prevent the relay of any physically dangerous transmission—the computer is interposed, remember—but they can’t protect our minds from dangerous information….[W]e know that this alien signal caused a mental degeneration involving physical damage to the brain. All this through concept alone. We know the hard way: there are certain thoughts the intelligent mind must not think.”

     The story is replete with all the other left-wing notions current in the late Sixties, so the above doesn’t startle at first…until it becomes the linchpin of the entire 480 page novel. End of digression.]

     Until quite recently the Left has been making inroads, largely by exploiting our aversion to confrontation. Leftists would scream “This is offensive! It oppresses / demeans / belittles / marginalizes someone or other! Shut it down at once!” and until recently rather than flipping them off, we’d scurry to unruffle notionally ruffled feathers. However, the approach has been weakening, owing to several factors, foremost among them our aforementioned national trait of defiance and after that the burgeoning suspicion that what we’ve been told not to listen to is a better articulation of reality than the Left’s preferred narrative.

     So the Left has retreated to Herbert Marcuse’s prescription for censorship and his rationale for it:

     The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and ‘philosophies’ can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the ‘end of ideology’, the false consciousness has become the general consciousness–from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities. It should be evident by now that the exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise, and that liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters.

     Note all the red flags in that paragraph: “clear and present danger;” “emergency;” “false consciousness;” “small and powerless minorities;” and the like. Thus Leftist cant is adapted to the conditions of a free society. It’s pure swill, laughable when analyzed rationally. Yet historically it has worked well, because a great many people respond in a predictable way to a shout of “Emergency!”

     With the federal government and the major media behind it, it has some prospect of success. The key to defeating it is to stay calm, recognize the motivations, and insist on knowing the facts – the ground truth – the reality.

***

     When a great many voices, some of them deafeningly loud, are screaming multiple versions of “the facts,” the burden of deciding what’s real and what’s not falls on the individual listener.

     It’s not enough to rely upon established records for veracity. A liar can tell the truth occasionally, just as a resolutely honest man will lie if he perceives a sufficiently serious need. Neither is it enough to discern motivations that would cause the speaker to prefer one version over another. Motivations are powerful but not irresistible. The sole trustworthy source of real-world data is one’s own sensorium…and there are ways to deceive even that.

     But most of us are separated from direct perception of the facts – at least, when we need them in quantity. Consider the COVID-19 vaccine controversy. You may know someone, or a few someones, who’ve suffered harm plausibly caused by the vaccines. But how many people do you know who’ve been vaccinated, and how many people do you know who’ve been harmed? Is it a large enough and random enough group to be statistically significant? For most of us, the answers don’t – or shouldn’t – inspire confidence.

     So we fall back on factors such as established trustworthiness and inherent motivations. These things are not to be disparaged, especially when the sources under consideration are institutions with known dynamics and substantial histories. One institution in particular has a record so bleak that to extend it one’s trust verges on lunacy.

     When an institution insists that it is The Authority and demands that you ignore all other sources as non-authoritative…when it does its best to keep those other sources from being heard…when it cajoles or coerces other institutions into compliance with its demands…there are good reasons to deem it dubious. An authority may dislike reality. It may hope that it will “go away.” But it cannot “trump” reality – and the overt attempt to insist that it cannot be wrong, and thus to suppress opposing voices, is sufficient grounds to ignore it.

Jan 31 2022

Just Woke Up a Short Time Ago

It’s really NOT like me to sleep in. I generally beat the birds out of bed.

But, my sleep has been strewed with woke-in-the-night moments for the last several days (NO idea why), so, I didn’t get up until around 8:30.

I checked the fridge (most of the things I planned to make were held up by the limiting ingredient – the milk is finito – so I put on some coffee and sausage, and sat down to catch up on news – well, KINDA news, as most of network TV is.

I did a quick check of the morning “news” shows. Lots of celebrities hyping their latest efforts to suck money out of the audience’s purse. Fox had a talking head about the bridge collapse in PA – more here. As you might suspect, the money that was INTENDED to pay for repairs and replacement went to more IMPORTANT things.

Now, a person NOT believing in conspiracies might think “How TERRIBLY convenient the timing of this ‘accident’ was!”. Such a person would assume that the Left, as is their wont, jumped on a human tragedy for political reasons, and plan to jump-start the BBB bill, with frills and MUCHO, MUCHO more demands on our hard-earned money. There are, in fact, coincidences in life, hard to distinguish from planned action, and leading the more suspicious of us to feverishly work to connect imaginary dots.

OTOH, it truly wouldn’t take much to weaken a bridge with little traffic, and wait patiently for the inevitable fall. With Trump out of office, it might seem that at least a few of the people working in 3-letter agencies have a little time on their hands before they gear up for the next election. You might even say that this could represent a desperate effort to salvage a failing administration, by giving them at least ONE ‘success’ to brag about.

On to COVID fears and misconceptions. The forcible jabbing is deeply unpopular, both with Americans who have a spine, and, now, Canadians.

The actual numbers of unvaxxed truckers aren’t all that high; in percentages, it’s around 10%.

Yet, somehow, those few men and women will ABSOLUTELY prove to be a risk, despite their prior work before a shot was available, was NOT a risk (well, it was, but mostly to THEM). If you had to come up with a percentage that represented ‘herd immunity’, 90% comes awfully close.

So, it’s not the danger those truckers pose to the public. It’s their defiance of the government that cannot be accepted.

People who’ve never met Canadians won’t understand this. By and large, despite Canadians being near-genetic twins of Americans, their culture is VERY different. The most fervent wish for a Canadian is to get along with others. The government makes insane mandates non-negotiable – that EVERY communication between organizations (public or private) and the public be bilingual (English and French). That was brilliantly mocked in Canadian Bacon.

Still makes me chuckle.

The Canadian Left is used to imposing their demands by fiat. And, to getting little to no pushback. Canadians just don’t like to make waves (well, other than the damn French-speaking ones). That a small group of truckers are saying, not just “Hell,NO!”, but taking direct action is causing the Trudeau administration to “mouiller leur culottes” (if that’s not a good translation, blame Bing).

CBC – the Canadian national broadcasting station – is merely covering the “few thousand” who showed up at the Ottawa government offices. They aren’t even mentioning the truck convoy.

This protest is VERY popular with the public. Average people worldwide are getting tired of being pushed around.

My personal thinking about COVID deaths?

It’s hitting the elderly and weak almost exclusively (and, yes, the Fat, but, like it or not, they ARE part of that group). In recent years, the more advanced nations managed to keep old people alive long after they would have died in a less medically saturated environment – similar to the % that occurred before WWII. So many are living LONG past retirement age, that the monetary effort to keep them alive is draining money available to the young.

Have some fun playing around with the stats on these interactive graphs.

The ones that died during COVID were living on borrowed time. OK, a few were helped on to their Final Reward by the vicious actions of some of the Democratic Left, but most of the deaths, other than that, occurred to people who had exhausted their lifespan, and just needed a small nudge to start the slide into death. Only a tremendous expenditure of money and resources could keep many of them going.

Now, there was some degree of medical/nursing malpractice involved. The widespread practice of putting those patients with respiratory distress on their backs may have made things worse. I know I do resist my husband insisting on dragging me out of bed, sitting up in a chair, and clapping me on the back when I’m having a bad respiratory infection. All I want to do, at that point, is lay down and close my eyes.

That natural desire has to be challenged, lest the excess fluids not get expelled. To do otherwise risks severe complications, and even death.

Other useful techniques here. Why the techniques are so helpful explained here, and the practice is part of a study at Boston University.

The alternative to assisting the ill, sequestering those who are actually ill, and letting rest of us just get on with our lives, is destroying the economy, handicapping our children’s education and normal development, and furthering a fearful, isolated society.

Not worth it.

Take a FREE breath!

Jan 31 2022

Why I Wrote And Promote The Spooner Federation Books

     Regular Gentle Readers have noticed that I’ve been indirectly touting this novel recently. A couple have expressed curiosity about it: “If you’re going to sneak pitches for your novels into your op-eds, why that book? It’s one of your oldest.” One, whom I know more personally than most of my other readers, went even further: “Why did you write this? It seems unlike you.”

     The conversation that followed was interesting, to say the least. Apparently, my interlocutor, aware that I’m a retired engineer who’s been steeped in the sciences and technology practically from the cradle, expected that a science-fiction novel from my pen would involve a lot more whiz-bangery: i.e., the speculative scientific and technological motifs that characterize what’s usually called “hard” SF. Which Art In Hope contains practically none of that. It concerns itself with the society of a world without any government whatsoever. Moreover, it depicts that society, and the lives of those within it – with a few notable exceptions – as orderly, even tranquil.

     That is exactly why I wrote it, and why I’ve decided to push it at this time, though the explanation might take a few words more.

***

     Lately, the foremost of the topics on my mind has been habituation. It’s well known among cognitive scientists that human adaptability includes the ability to accommodate oneself to conditions one cannot change, as long as they’re not utterly unsurvivable. Other things being equal, people generally dislike certain conditions and try to avoid them: intense heat or cold, isolation or crowding, and others. Yet people sometimes choose to endure those conditions. He who chooses to live in the Sahara Desert will accommodate himself to the heat. He who chooses to live in Oymyakon will accommodate himself to the isolation and the cold. He who chooses to live in Calcutta will accommodate himself to the crowding. And so forth.

     Note that people choose – usually – to live in those places despite conditions they would otherwise strive to avoid. Such people have priorities that put other considerations higher than avoidance of the disliked conditions…possibly much higher. And as the saying goes, what can’t be cured must be endured. So they accommodate themselves to the disliked features of their chosen locales. Perhaps, after a while, some of them cease to notice them. In any case, they “make their peace” with them.

     This is the case with government – all government. Centuries of habituation have persuaded us, subconsciously at least, that government, however noxious typical instances of it may be, is inevitable. Centuries of habituation worked their magic on the Founding Fathers. Thus, rather than abjuring government a priori, they strove to detoxify it with a Constitution that sharply limits what it may do. That arrangement worked very well for a while, then fairly well for a while more, then haphazardly for a couple of decades more. Today it no longer works at all.

     But the dominant premise was and remains that government is inevitable. For centuries the contrary idea has largely gone unexamined. Some writers have examined it:

     The other writers in that list are, of course, far better known than your humble commentator. (One or two of them are almost as good 😁.) But our tales differ widely in scope and focus. Theirs were largely about clashes between governed and ungoverned societies. Mine was about the achievability of normality without government.

     I had a mission, you see: to open a path in the reader’s mind to dishabituation from government. If those other writers shared that mission to some degree, nevertheless the stories they told emphasized other considerations.

     In my opinion, government is no more inevitable than acne, overweight, or rheumatoid arthritis, to name just a few other unpleasant conditions. We have been habituated to it over many generations by persons with an innate interest in persuading us of it. The interest was usually a desire for power over others who had no such aspiration. And because those who captain governments and proclaim their inevitability are unusually good at deceiving others, they’ve almost always had their way.

***

     The Spooner Federation Saga is about the requirements of individual freedom, about the progression by which it gives way to government, and the historical remedy for government’s ascent to tyranny. That remedy is not revolution. As many commentators have noted, revolution almost always results in worse tyranny. Rather, they who were determined to be free had to flee: to seek a frontier across which they could escape. Until about 1900, frontiers of that sort existed on the land surface of the Earth. They exist no longer.

     The closing of the land frontiers has led many to believe, whatever they believed beforehand, that at long last government has become inevitable. After all, there’s no patch of habitable land that remains unclaimed by a government of some sort. (Some are claimed by several entities claiming to be governments, but that’s a topic for another tirade.) While there is a prospect of a “high frontier,” which entices many to believe that Mankind might reach for freedom once again, few imagine that it will open in their lifetimes. Indeed, governments have done all they can to control access even to low Earth orbit – and while that’s a generally inhospitable locale, it’s a necessary “first step” to more agreeable real estate elsewhere in the Solar System.

     But however remote the possibility of escape might seem, the spirit of freedom – the fervent desire for individual liberty and the conviction that government can be dispensed with, whether in whole or in large measure – must be kept alive. Many labor to sustain it. We don’t all agree on methods, current directions, ultimate destinations, or what specific issues to engage. The method I chose is fiction.

     Fiction has proved more persuasive than any other method of communication. The reasons are well known. The demonstration is the extraordinary influence the great stories of freedom have had throughout the years. Probably the best known today is Atlas Shrugged, which for all its flaws awakened more minds to the requirements of freedom than anything written in a century or more. So I mention it whenever the context makes it relevant…which, given my proclivities, is pretty often.

     But I have a couple of advantages over Ayn Rand and her magnum opus. For one, I’m still alive and writing. So I tout my own stuff as well. Given the threat of ever-expanding, ever-encroaching government, which even here in the Land of the Supposedly Free has eliminated de facto the concept of inviolable individual rights, I consider it a moral obligation. Perhaps it’s even a religious one, for did Our Lord not tell His disciples that “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32) – ?

     I hope that will suffice.

Jan 30 2022

Conditional Property

     Have you ever seen the phrase above? I’ve encountered it only once, and that was in a fictional context:

     “What made you think that I’d accept a gift of this kind?”
     “It is not a gift, Mr. Rearden. It is your own money. But I have one favor to ask of you. It is a request, not a condition, because there can be no such thing as conditional property.”

     Is that assertion factually correct? Or have developments in the sixty-five years since it was published replaced true, unconditional property that’s yours by right with conditional property – property that can be withdrawn from you like a government-issued license?

     It’s worth a few minutes’ thought.

***

     Ever since the infamous Kelo v. New London decision, in which the Supreme Court ratified a Connecticut city’s seizure of a whole neighborhood to turn over to a private developer, it’s been clear that there is no such thing as “real property” in these United States. Frankly, it was a belated recognition. What about property taxes? “Your” land and home can be take from you for not paying those levies, right? So how “real” was your “real property” before the Kelo decision?

     The stories of cash seizures by police on absurd pretexts are now too many to enumerate. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the citizen thus victimized never gets any of his money back, despite never even being charged with a crime. Ironically, the usual reason is the amount it would cost the citizen in lawyer’s fees to sue successfully. However, there’s also the little matter, once the suit has been won, of forcing the government to issue the refund…which can take months or years after the refund is ordered.

     Then there’s the banking system. You may feel secure about your savings, but how real are they? In the usual case you can’t touch them. No one could, for they consist of entries in a digital ledger. Under “normal” circumstances you can draw on them – once again, digitally – to pay various bills and other obligations. You can withdraw some of them as pieces of paper with steel engravings on them, whether through an ATM or at a bank teller’s window…for the moment. But the entire system is digital – virtual – and under the control of the Federal Reserve Board, whose members are political appointees and whom you probably couldn’t name.

     I could go on. I could talk about cryptocurrencies, stocks and bonds, 401(k) and IRA accounts, town and county emergency-seizure ordinances, eminent domain…. The number of rationales under which a government can seize “your property” is sufficient to give anyone who reflects upon the matter a nice little chill. Perhaps you’re feeling that chill about now.

***

     If Ragnar Danneskjold was correct, and there can be no such thing as conditional property, then does property exist at all?

     There’s a good argument that it doesn’t. Property, in the original American conception, involved an individual right rather than a grant of permission. To seize it required extraordinary circumstances and specific actions. First, a case for the seizure had to be presented to a judge of the appropriate jurisdiction. If the judge deemed the case valid, he would issue an order of condemnation. But he would also order the relevant government to pay “just compensation” for the property seized. In no case could a man’s property – real or movable – be taken from him without all those steps first being taken and approved.

     It’s not that way today. Eminent-domain proceedings have become a farce. Worse, “emergency” and “proceeds of crime” rationales are rubber-stamped in nearly every case. Even when it’s paid, “just compensation” seldom bears any resemblance to actual justice.

     Those who find the state of affairs acceptable strive to dismiss the many documented injustices as infrequent “excesses,” exceptions to an otherwise acceptably just system. Susette Kelo’s “little pink house” was merely an unfortunate casualty of one such “excess.”

     The matter of money and currency is more difficult for the statists to defend. Money was not the invention of any government. It came into existence through spontaneous order. Persons who traded in barter markets sought a way to refine their commerce and preserve some portion of what they had gained. Over the centuries one form of money would last for a while, then give way to a superior form, until the practical optimum – the precious metals – came to hold sway. When governments got involved, they swiftly substituted currencies for money, and contrived to seize the money metals for themselves. As banking blossomed and extended its scope, governments seized upon it as well. Eventually they replaced even the greater part of their irredeemable paper currencies with virtual systems entirely under their control. Thus we arrived at the state of affairs we endure today.

     As for other forms of “property” such as stocks and bonds, have they any greater reality – or reliability – than the speedily devaluing pieces of paper in your wallet? Be prepared to show your work.

***

     Just now, the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers opposed to the Trudeau Regime’s imposition of vaccination mandates upon their industry is the biggest news on Earth. Needless to say, the Mainstream Media are determined to avert our eyes from it. Nevertheless, it is so – so much so that Trudeau has fled Ottawa out of fear. But while we can and should celebrate this stroke in the cause of freedom, there are a few “grace notes” along the edges that deserve a moment’s attention.

     The provincial government of Nova Scotia has threatened the truckers and anyone who supports them with massive fines. Canadian federal politicians have threatened to imprison the truckers and seize their trucks. And of course today’s most prominent enemies of freedom, AntiFa, are doing their best to incite actual violence that the government can blame on the Convoy. That would create a rationale for treating the Convoy members as terrorists – and these days that means the sky’s the limit. The January 6 protestors can tell you all about it.

     If a political protest – merely a dramatic expression of dissent from a dictatorial policy that threatens the livelihoods of the protestors in particular and the well-being of Canadians generally – can be shut down in this fashion, the system will have triumphed. At this point in events, the outcome cannot be known.

***

     “A man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun.” – Don Henley

     “Without private property there can be no private decisions.” — Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

     The men with briefcases are many…but we are many more. Their predations are made possible by our compliance with the system they’ve erected. They think it’s inescapable. Ask any one of them! “Give up,” they say. “It’s a closed system,” they’ll tell you. “You’re in it from the day you’re issued your Social Security number right up to the day you die. There’s no escape.”

     But there is.

     We could put an end to their hegemony simply by refusing to participate in it. The reason they’ve succeeded to date is by offering us convenience. And there’s no question that their system makes things convenient…especially for them.

     The price for that convenience has been staggering…and it increases daily.


Private property is essential to freedom.
Freedom is not given.
It is not legislated.
It is not permitted, licensed, or approved.
It is taken.

     It’s time to give some thought to withdrawing your consent.

Jan 30 2022

Oh, Canada.

The corporate media in Canada is largely homogenous, liberal and unabashedly globalist. To them, anything outside of Toronto or Ottawa is “flyover country”. Anything that happens there doesn’t matter unless it’s some issue that can wrapped within a narrative of victimhood to shame the populace into believing their country is a structurally racist, carbon spewing abomination.

“Corporate Media And Big Tech Align Against #FreedomConvoy.” By Mark Jeftovic, ZeroHedge, 1/30/22 (emphasis removed).

Jan 29 2022

Trust: What It Can And What It Can’t

     I feel certain that my Gentle Readers have all, at some time, heard the acidly funny line, “What are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” It’s not really funny, of course. Nevertheless, it alludes to a condition that has become almost as pandemic as the Kung Flu: the determination of politicians and their media handmaidens to convince us that what we see and hear isn’t really happening.

     I’m sure any reader could cite a dozen instances of such behavior off the top of his head. The current federal regime provides new examples daily, as do the many Organs of State Media that posture as clear-eyed, candid, and fearlessly independent seekers of truth. For me, it recalls to mind one of the most poignant statements I’ve ever encountered, from a man who was at one time regarded as the ultimate exemplar of economic analysis and financial understanding:

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith — personal, national, and international — is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace.

     [Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914–1946]

     If you’ve been reading my drivel for long, you’ve surely seen that statement before, whether here or at Liberty’s Torch V1.0. Dr. Anderson believed that trustworthy government is possible. His experience had persuaded him of that proposition. The years of the Hoover and FDR Administrations persuaded him of the contrary proposition as well.

     Myself, I’m inclined to view trustworthy government as a fleeting departure from the norm – and on this subject, no positive connotation should be attached to “the norm.” Whatever the case, people who are accustomed to trusting have a hard time withdrawing their trust. They tend to cling to it, sometimes in a future-facing way: “It will get better. Just wait for the next elections to come around. You’ll see.”

     But even the most optimistic such persons will not trust forever. There’s a breakdown-level of credulity abuse that no amount of happy-talk propaganda from the Mainstream Media can salve. When that point arrives, all bets are off.

***

     Just now, a lot of attention is focused on the Freedom Convoy that’s just arrived in Ottawa. There isn’t much of genuine importance in Ottawa. Strike off the Senators – the hockey team, not the parliamentarians – and you’ve rendered the city irrelevant to the typical Canadian. However, the parasite class – I can call them that; most Canadians are too polite – that infests that otherwise inoffensive burg has issued decrees about vaccinations for the Kung Flu that have angered a very large number of truckers. And that, Gentle Reader, is a class of men no sane person would deliberately anger.

     Wait. Stop. Check that. I had American truckers in mind as I wrote that last. I don’t know any Canadian truckers. I’ll have to watch for a bit. Will they extract the totalitarians from their hidey-holes, tar and feather them – warmly, I hope; it’s rather cold up there at this time of year – and go back to the business they’ve practiced for decades, no longer fettered by political nonsense? Or will they merely exercise their air brakes and air horns a bit, then go home with their ire slaked, and comply with the parasites’ ukases?

     And what about American truckers, whose livelihoods are just as threatened by political insanity as their Canadian colleagues? Can we expect anything from them, or have the Usurpers and their tin god Fauci broken them to harness?

     It’s a matter of trust. Some people trust the current regime to attend to their grievances. Others trust that the upcoming elections will compel the Usurper Regime to cease and desist. Perhaps at one time, there were grounds for such trust. But while trust can help to perpetuate the tenure of a floundering regime despite repeated “failures,” it cannot put goods on store shelves. Neither can it lower the prices of necessities nor pay the bills of a man who’s lost his job because of a mandate from Ottawa or Washington D.C.

***

     I could go on, but I shan’t. Matters are becoming too grave to blather about. From the machinations of the Deep State and the stunning theft of the 2020 elections has flowed more political malice and deceit than I, a notable pessimist about the behavior of politicians and governments, dreamed in my darkest nightmares. People have already suffered and died in large numbers because of it. More will do so, and no one knows how to prevent it.

     As for trusting that all will be made right after “the next elections,” I refer my readers to the circus of November 2020 and what has followed thence.

Jan 29 2022

Pearls of expression.

The constant expansion of NATO has led to what the scholar Richard Sakwa calls a “fateful geographical paradox”: NATO, Sakwa says, now “exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”

“Maté: The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers.” By Aaron Maté, ZeroHedge, 1/27/22.

Jan 28 2022

Some Random Links and Observations

I’ve been largely at home for the last few days. The winter storms have left me disinclined to venture out of the heated house without a REALLY good reason.

I’m in OH, and, for many of us, NOT venturing out is more the norm. It’s for that reason that we stock up in our pantries before winter. We are well aware that – although we COULD go out of the house – we will likely not WANT to.

Which is where I’ve been this week. Home. Snug. Eating from my stored foods.

It’s given me time to leisurely peruse the blogs. One of them has an interesting post on the largely hereditary governments of the past, and the implications for our society.

Here is the original post at Zman’s site.

I’ve been reading about COVID from a variety of sources. Many of the articles/posts at BOTH ends of the extreme seem to be based less on science, and more on deep-rooted suspicions of the opposing side. However, the near-complete shutdown of alternative points of view certainly leads one to question just how accurate the CDC and FDA numbers are. The government figures have been called into question by a number of people – SOME of them without an agenda, but actively looking for some truth.

Vitamin D is one of the unsung preventatives that might hold the key to keeping most people over 50 alive – the average person is deficient in this nutrient. The deficiencies rise as people age.

However, as so many people “sheltered in place” during the alleged crisis, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that even younger people are severely deficient in this vitamin. Too few people are going outside (myself included, although that might be considered sensible in this current weather). Even children have been discouraged from playing outside by parks closing to unmasked people, and limiting close contact with others.

Add to the masking (keeps the sun from being absorbed on the face), the use of gloves and other clothing to reduce possible skin-to-skin contamination, and the likelihood of Vitamin D deficiency skyrockets. You have to have skin exposed to the sun to get that absorption. Below is a picture of a common use of sunlamps to prevent rickets in Russian children.

It’s even more important for darker skinned people that those with less melanin (i.e., White people). Vitamin D deficiency might account for a lot of the differential in long-term health outcomes in different races.

Even many of the blog/news sites/organizations that profess to be on the side of freedom may only fulfill the task of Cooling the Marks, by keeping them from taking effective steps to stop the Oligarchy. For that purpose, many of the “top-down” organizations have been built. As of today, there are few that were not exposed by Trump; THAT was his real crime.

Consider the dependence of most of society on electronic devices (I am as great a user as anyone – I depend on them to keep me SOMEWHAT connected with family and friends, as well as write, conduct business, and interface with my hearing aids, security system, and network). Depressing to realize the extent to which we are all enmeshed with the Net. Understand, it’s not merely entertainment. THAT we could jettison without much of a problem.

No, it’s the apps that people need to work (teachers call in sick via an app, and their subs pick up the jobs with the same one), conduct business (Zoom calls, email and phone messages, online professional development learning and mandatory HR training, online forms for workers and customers, mandatory tracking of warehouse or production workers to make sure that they are “maximally productive”), online ordering – goods, food, meds – the list goes on and on.

It’s apps that people use to manage their lives – medical appointments, delivery of meds or food, check-ins with caregivers, virtual doctor visits, tracking of elderly family members, so they can continue some degree of independence, GPS travel, interfacing with medical devices.

Little of this is trivial. Little of it is private and under our sole control.

Jan 28 2022

Humility And Confidence

     Do those two qualities sound mutually exclusive to you? They’re not, though quite a lot of people think they are. In fact, they complement one another to an extent that only experience can adequately illuminate.

     No, no political blather today. This is more important.

***

     I’d bet that most of my Gentle Readers have heard or used the term impostor syndrome at some time. It’s a fairly common affliction, especially among young adults who find themselves in positions of authority and responsibility they hadn’t previously imagined they’d ever occupy. Here’s a concise definition-description of it:

     Impostor syndrome (IS) refers to an internal experience of believing that you are not as competent as others perceive you to be. While this definition is usually narrowly applied to intelligence and achievement, it has links to perfectionism and the social context.

     To put it simply, impostor syndrome is the experience of feeling like a phony—you feel as though at any moment you are going to be found out as a fraud—like you don’t belong where you are, and you only got there through dumb luck. It can affect anyone no matter their social status, work background, skill level, or degree of expertise.

     Mind you, some people feel like frauds because they are frauds. But they’re not impostor-syndrome sufferers, merely individuals aware that they’re not what others take them to be.

     Impostor syndrome is more common today than it was a century ago, for a reason that will surprise few: back then prepubescents and adolescents were given significant responsibilities, and were expected to meet a relatively high standard in discharging them. The practice allowed those young people to build confidence in themselves. By the time they became adults expected to look after themselves, they’d had enough tests of their ability to trust that they would rise to any challenge adult life might present them.

     Those young folks of a century ago were also aware that their contemporaries were undergoing the same sort of maturation-through-responsibility. Johnny on Apple Street would know that James on Pear Street bore a burden comparable to his own – and that James was meeting his responsibilities quite as adequately as Johnny. This inhibited young folks against comparing themselves to one another in a haughty, preening fashion. Even if their responsibilities were quite different, each knew that the others’ parents expected roughly as much from their kids as those kids were capable of doing. The “parental network,” whose main communications medium was the midafternoon kaffeklatsch among neighborhood wives, kept things roughly balanced.

     Thus, while the adolescents’ confidence in themselves built steadily, their awareness that their burdens did not differ significantly from those of their peers kept them humble in the best sense: they viewed one another as equals, equally deserving of respect. Neither impostor syndrome nor arrogance was significant among them.

***

     It’s hard to do anything of substance if you lack confidence. Indeed, a lack of confidence can paralyze you, such that you can’t even bring yourself to start. But there’s no “royal road to confidence,” any more than there is to geometry. Confidence comes from testing oneself against challenges, and overcoming them.

     Contemporary youths don’t get enough such testing. They tend to enjoy a much longer period of sheltered non-responsibility than did their ancestors. Combined with this are the many technological advances that have simplified and eased the tasks young folks do face. Consider only one: research for a term paper, performed at a library or two, compared to research done via Google.

     But among our social maladies, behavior that expresses arrogance rather than humility is equally serious. How ironic that it proceeds from the same source: a lack of testing! For it’s easy to over-assess oneself if one is never tested. From there to deeming oneself superior to others is a short journey.

     I find myself wondering whether the “self-esteem fad” of the most recent decades has its roots in the above.

***

     If you’re wondering why this is on my mind, it’s because today is the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus of the Catholic Church, the saint to whom I feel the greatest attraction. (Settle down, you in the peanut gallery; it’s because he and I are both compulsive writers.) He sought the religious life from an early age, against the wishes of his wealthy family. According to several accounts, his parents and siblings tried everything short of red-hot pincers to dissuade him from becoming a Dominican friar, including imprisonment in the family castle and repeated temptation with prostitutes. Needless to say, Aquinas withstood it all, joined the Dominicans, was eventually ordained, and today is celebrated as the most important Catholic intellectual of all time.

     Clearly, Thomas Aquinas was confident in his calling to the religious life. He was equally confident that he had contributions to make to Catholic thought. If he ever wavered while being tested, it is not recorded. Yet toward the end of his life, he wrote something that also expressed a profound, even transcendent humility:

     While he believed that reason and logic made the best arguments for the mind of man, Aquinas was also devoted to prayer. He never shirked the execution of his monastic and priestly duties. Pious exclamations dot the margins of his work, and he was transported by heavenly visions. When he set down his pen on December 6, 1273, after receiving such a vision, it was with words that should strike at the heart of any who dare scribble on a sheet of paper and think it good: “I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.”… But the simple reality is that Aquinas came to recognize the vanity of all intellectual accomplishment, no matter how great. All that matters, ultimately, is the Beatific Vision. His last words were a simple prayer. He had lived and worked, he said, in obedience to the Catholic Church, and if he had ever erred by ignorance, he trusted to that same Catholic Church to correct and forgive him.

     [H. W. Crocker III, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church]

     In the Beatific Vision, we are all humbled to dust, for what temporal creature can claim any stature to compare with that of our Creator? Yet we are also exalted and urged to confidence, for we are made in His image. Our gifts of perception and reason are the greatest of the tools He gave us. They allow us to make sense of the world around us. But even more than that, if properly employed within the Vision’s premises, they enable us to make sense of our relation to Him: a relation whose elucidation by Thomas Aquinas has never been surpassed.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Jan 28 2022

Thirty years of utterly wasted opportunity.

If the path forward is unpredictable, what got us here is easy to trace. The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course.[1]

And good luck figuring out the reason for this hostility toward Russia.

It’s the U.S. that’s been bombing and sanctioning people and providing “leadership” hither and yon and the notion that Russia is intent on reestablishing the U.S.S.R. is nonsense.

This is yet another example of how American elites pursue agendas that are grotesquely distorted, contrary to the wishes of American citizens, and contrary to common sense. An ordinary American looks at what his government does at the federal or state level can only conclude he lives in a carnival house of mirrors.

Notes
[1] “Maté: The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers.” By Aaron Maté, ZeroHedge, 1/28/22 (emphasis added).

Jan 27 2022

Just In Case I’ve Never Mentioned This Before…

     …there is a novel – a remarkably brave and optimistic novel – that addresses the possibility of an America without government. It’s clear-eyed; it allows that there would be some difficulties and some dangers. It also allows that such a project would probably have a limited lifetime. But it is among the most cheerful documents ever to emerge from science fiction. Indeed, it’s almost as good as this widely celebrated masterpiece.

     The novel of which I speak is the late Cyril M. Kornbluth’s magnum opus The Syndic.

     It’s free. Download it! What have you got to lose?

Jan 27 2022

Something That Desperately Needed To Be Said

     Today – indeed, for some years now – any attempt to argue with someone on the political Left has been met with vituperation and accusations of evil motives. “Racist!” “Sexist!” “Xenophobe!” and so forth have become the Left’s standard responses to any sort of disagreement. These pejoratives have lost some of their ability to silence decent Americans – we’re losing our unwillingness to fight quite as swiftly as they’re losing their vestigial credibility – but they haven’t lost their ability to enrage us.

     Today, a man who really deserves to be nationally known has laid down a marker:

     Nicholas Freitas may be a humble state-level legislator, but in the above he speaks for millions of Americans who have simply had enough and will have no more of being slandered and condemned by persons who:

  • Practice the lowest, tawdriest, most deceitful imaginable sort of politics;
  • Recognize no standards of conduct to which they will adhere;
  • Never accept responsibility for their failures.

     Please, please spread this one around!

Jan 27 2022

What You Don’t Know You Know (Or Pretend That You Don’t)

     Most Gentle Readers probably remember Donald Rumsfeld, when he was the Secretary of Defense in the Busy the Younger Administration, talking about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns:” gaps in our knowledge that we’re aware of, and others that we’re not. Rumsfeld’s comments were important not only at that time and for those circumstances, but for a great many other times and contexts in which people and organizations attempt to plan their moves.

     I have a different, though at least rhetorically related, subject in mind this morning: knowledge we possess but are unaware of…or, alternately, are unwilling to admit.

     It’s a strange idea, isn’t it? Why would anyone be unaware that he knows something? What sort of knowledge would make the knower unwilling to admit that he knows it? In truth, the mystery is quite superficial. Our knowledge can often be used against us: to make us feel or look guilty.

     The late Barbara Tuchman touched on this in her book The March of Folly. She defined folly succinctly as “knowing better but doing worse,” a neat encapsulation that applies perfectly to a great deal of political foolishness. Governments, in particular, are notable for knowing better but doing worse. Our current inflation woes are a salient example.

     But of course, governments are merely collections of individuals raised to positions of authority. It’s individuals that really know things. It’s individuals that make decisions…even when the decision in question is the result of a majority vote. One of the consequences of allowing certain decisions to be determined by a majority vote is that the responsibility for the decision and what follows from it is diluted by the number of persons who approved it.

     The great Herbert Spencer was particularly incisive in this regard. Here he is commenting on the proper limitation of legislative power:

     I asked one of the members of Parliament whether a majority the House could legitimize murder. He said no. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by the decisions of statesmen, then similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal.

     Here, he quotes an unnamed scribe on the same subject:

     Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad; and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we “vote” this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be.… Practically, men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting.… It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become such, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting!

     Both quotes are from Spencer’s essay series “The Proper Sphere of Government,” which is included in the volume The Man Versus The State.

     Like all immanent and immutable truths, this “should” be “obvious.” Yet men routinely behave as if they believe that “if we ‘vote’ this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be.” Do they believe it – really and sincerely?

     I contend that in the main, they do not.

***

     As long as I’m quoting, have one from Heinlein:

     Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal — else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority… other than through the tragic logic of history. The unique ‘poll tax’ that we must pay was unheard of. No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead — and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.

     [From Starship Troopers]

     Americans have cried out repeatedly for relief from the financial and economic burdens loaded upon them by government expenditure. But they invariably scream Don’t take away our freebies! with equal fervor. They want the “entitlements” but not the bills. They want the authority to command massive government spending but not the responsibility for what follows: inflation, ever-rising tax rates, and ultimately the financial exhaustion of the nation.

     The legislators who enact such a policy shrug and say “My constituents voted for it.” The executives who implement the policy shrug and say “The legislature voted for it.” The jurists prefer not to say. What follows is as predictable as the Sun rising in the East. We know it full well, but admitting it would compel us to accept responsibility for it.

     Might this be what Alexander Tytler had in mind?

***

     What we know but don’t know or won’t admit extends to many subjects, not just the ones measured in currency. We know some obvious things about race, for example. Most of us won’t even speak them aloud, for fear of unpleasant social consequences. We know some obvious things about how “vice” laws corrupt law enforcement, too. But it’s socially unacceptable to say “Legalize it all and let them kill themselves with it.” That would make you sound “hard-hearted.” And we know what H. L. Mencken said about the character of politicians:

     The typical lawmaker of today is a man devoid of principle – a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would cheerfully be in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

     But we cheerfully vote for this one over that one because of the capital letter after his name, often on the grounds that all we can do is support “the lesser of two evils.” Thus we perpetuate the system, with its built-in dynamics and incentives that inevitably rob private persons of their rights and wealth. We stop short of considering that there might be a third alternative that deserves a moment’s thought. That alternative has an ugly word attached to it: anarchy. We can’t have that!

     It’s time to ask some hard questions, this one most imperatively:


We already have anarchy;
Must we have tyranny as well?

     Hold that thought.

***

     If you believe the official line:

  • Over 150 million persons voted in the November 2020 elections;
  • 81 million votes were cast to install Joe Biden in the White House;
  • And there was no appreciable vote fraud.

     Given Biden’s history of deceit and corruption, his habit of slandering his political adversaries, his demonstrable physical and mental decline, and his non-campaign, is it imaginable that 81 million persons really believed he would be an acceptable president? Americans in possession of sufficient wit to hold a job could not have imagined any such thing. If 81 million votes were cast for him, who cast them and for what reason? Could that many people have rejected a second term for Donald Trump on account of his tweets?

     It doesn’t wash. Indeed, it seems impossible that over 150 million votes were cast. With President Trump’s best efforts, he barely got a tax-cut bill and three Supreme Court nominees through Congress. The rest of his accomplishments were via executive orders. His supposed co-partisans on Capitol Hill gave him nearly no support on any other initiative. You would think that they regarded him as a threat to their power and perquisites.

     Who would consciously, knowingly grant his consent to be governed by the gaggle of smarmy frauds that occupies Washington D.C.?

     The smarmy frauds are aware that We the Private Persons of America would prefer that they all dissolve into ether and float away. That, of course, is not in their plans. They like power and what it brings them. But they must continue to maintain that government in these United States possesses the consent of the governed, as Thomas Jefferson prescribed. Their principal weapon for maintaining that illusion is the biennial vote tally.

     Keep an eye on the reported vote totals. Regardless of who gets elected, the number of votes we’re told have been cast is a critically important datum. Were it to fall below a certain, undetermined threshold, Americans would realize that “the consent of the governed” no longer exists. The political Establishment must prop that number up by any and every means available.

     After all, without robust vote totals, how could they continue to evade responsibility for their actions? How could they maintain their pretense that they’re only doing what We the People want them to do?

***

     I have a colleague, somewhat younger than I, who has said on various occasions that “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.” Now, this gentleman is reasonably intelligent, a well regarded engineer. But his assertion is utter nonsense – yet no power on Earth could make him see it. (Yes, I tried.) He rejects without a moment’s consideration the rationality of the decisions of millions of others – some of us more intelligent than he – not to participate in a system used to maintain that we consent to be ruled by villains and thieves.

     For some non-participants, it’s a matter of laziness, but for others, it’s about our revulsion at the idea of taking even a shred of responsibility for the blackguards’ dance in our capitals.

     The politicians can’t have it. They need to maintain the illusion that we consent to their capers. Few of them sincerely believe that vote totals are low because it’s difficult to vote. Those totals must be supported to maintain their hegemony – and if they must manufacture the numbers, then so it shall be. The alternative – being held responsible for their depredations – is unthinkable.

     I maintain that we know all this. That millions remain unwilling to admit it is irrelevant. The rest is left as an exercise for my Gentle Readers.

Load more