I Wish I’d Written This

In accordance with the long-standing tradition of this blog, when I find something I really think is relevant and well-written, I repost it with attribution. Usually it’s an excerpt. Or ten. Occasionally, it’s an entire piece. Today is one of those “entire piece” days. I meant to cross-post it here some time back, but things happened and it slipped my mind, but now I’m fixing that. By permission, from a post at Facebook by Brad R. Torgerson:

Long thought. Don’t say you had no warning.

The explicitly secular perspective is that there is no proof of a spiritual layer to human experience, therefore this spiritual layer does not exist. Or if it exists, it exists purely as a construct of the human mind. A figment. Untestable. And that while it’s all well and good to have morals, principles, and values, any of these things rooted in spiritual soil—amounting to supernatural belief in that which is unseen and unknown—is self-delusion. Perhaps even dangerous self-delusion?

But I ask: what of the self-delusions of those who turn their backs on “old time” faith? Surely by now it’s abundantly evident that those who deny the old churches and the old ways of believing (coping?) merely fashion new churches and new beliefs (again, coping?) to explain not just how the world and the universe work, but what our purpose in this world ought to be. Why we’re here. Or, if not why, what we ought to be doing with ourselves during our finite lives.

The Marxists replaced God with the State. Whose purpose was to perfect the human condition. But which did in fact make immense human misery across the decades of the Marxist Century (1920-2020.) And there are Marxists who insist to this day that their paradigm is the paradigm which will own the human future. They agitate for this. Protest for it. Threaten it.

How is the belief of the devout Marxist—after an entire century of woe, pain, death, and suffering on every continent—in any way different from the belief of, say, a Catholic? Or a Muslim? Or a Mormon?

We have all the proof in the world that Marxist economies and Marxist governments are doomed to failure, and waste human life at an unconscionable level. Yet the Marxist, like a Scientologist, seems to think we’ve yet to achieve the necessary level of understanding (cough, “OT,” cough) which will make the perfection of the human condition possible. So we need to try one more time.

Always, there is one more time. Disregard all the awfulness of the past hundred years. It just doesn’t matter. We need to do it again, comrades!

Is this not a church? Is this not unbreakable faith? Despite all the evidence telling us it’s unfounded?

And now we have sexual and ethnic identitarianism, as well as environmentalism, rolled up into the Marxist tapestry. The purpose of the State is not just the perfection of the human condition, it’s also the salvation of the planet from certain catastrophic climate doom. As well as the full liberation of the transhuman mind to express itself as any gender it wants, any sexual flavor it can conceive. And all of this must be respected and enshrined by human activity as well as interactivity.

I’d call anything that denies the realities of biology and medical science, a kind of religious faith. Faith in the plasticity of people such that they can decide things for themselves which nature (or God, if you prefer) decided in the womb. A sort of gender and sexual Lysenkoism. The politics tell us it is so, so it must be so. Even when our genes and our bodies tell us, “Nope.”

I’d also call anything that revolves around doom prophecies of climate Armageddon, borderline cult-ish.

Consider: if you’re a street preacher who hangs a sign on his body and stands on the corner shouting, “The end is near!” they call you crazy. But if you’re Greta Thunberg and you go to a posh international conference and shout into a podium mic, “The end is near!” they put you up at the nicest hotels, publish your books to international fanfare, and make you rich.

And I’ve barely addressed the priests and priestesses of anti-racism. Consider someone like Robin DiAngelo, who’s made herself into a millionaire selling white guilt to wine moms. How is this any different from a plastic-haired televangelist who used to sell fire-and-brimstone guilt to evangelicals?

So, I think we have to conclude that humanity is in fact wired for faith. And even if we throw out the old churches and the old ways, we just invent new churches and new ways.

And I am frankly scared to death of the new churches. Cultural Marxism. Environmental Marxism. Equity Marxism, as preached by the anti-racists. It’s all prosecuted with a kind of religious zeal. Especially regarding punishment of designated evil-doers. Do not get caught being a kulak, comrade. It might not go well for you when the rainbow Cheka comes.

At least the old churches (many of them, anyway) bend a knee to a higher power. Concede that innocence is the default state of man, not guilt. And present a path for rehabilitation and redemption. Both temporal and spiritual. Our entire Western Enlightenment edifice of temporal law is predicated on it. Men are to answer for their own crimes, not the crimes of others. Collective guilt is anathema. You can’t punish a person merely for belonging to a category.

That last bit—about punishing people for their demographics—has been the focus of equality activism in America since the inception. And we had almost reached this point where everyone agreed it was wrong to exclude, defame, slander, judge, or jail anybody because of their sex, their gender, their ethnicity, who they sleep with, who they marry, et al.

But the new gods are jealous, and seek to drive out the old God. New types of sin are invented to replace the old type. And new villainy is invented to replace the old villainy.

Consider, stealing is no longer wrong, but misgendering somebody is.

Consider also, you can sleep around all you want, no harm no foul, but you better give up your car and buy an EV, or you’re a wretched climate sinner.

These are just two examples. I could spell out many, many others. I am sure you could, too. And is it not all just religion? Is it not just scriptures and a holy class of learned clerics piously insisting, while also making accusations of wrong, followed by threats of damnation? Except, nobody’s in their box ready to hear your confession. Give you penance. Nor will there be baptism for the cleansing of sin. No salvation promised. Merely incrimination.

For being a kulak, comrade.

A race kulak. A gender kulak. A sex kulak. A climate kulak. Sooner or later the bleeding edge of self-styled intellectual progress gets around to branding everyone a kulak for some reason. And each new breed of iconoclasts topples the statues and touchstones of the old, to in turn be toppled again by the iconoclasts who come after. Revolution as the perpetual state of things. Endless overturning of all that is established, for all that is new. Or believed to be new.

Is this insistence on perpetual revolution—especially as it destroys good and necessary institutions—not a kind of religious fanaticism?

Oh, there might not be any God in any of it, per se, but the zeal is the same as that possessed by the legendary mob who set fire to the library of Alexandria.

We must keep pushing the Year Zero button, comrade! The perfection of the human condition is at hand!

I want to hope that we can snap back from this. That we haven’t so thoroughly shed our Christian Enlightenment skin that the entire project tips into the sea of history. And in a thousand years some future civilization has to try to re-invent all that we made and did, from 1500 A.D. to 2000 A.D. Learning all the lessons all over again. Following an interminable dark age of suffering, ignorance, and a massive backsliding for the human species, from where we were at in 1999.

But the candle of my hope flickers too much these days. I see how easily the doctrines and gospels of the new religions fire the eyes of too many. Who’re absolutely certain in their hearts they’ve got all the answers.

Just like the Bolsheviks of 1920, the Neo-Bolsheviks of our time are going to bring it all down. Then make it all new again, in their own image. Because people who’ve never built anything in their lives, know precisely how civilization and society ought to be rebuilt.

Their faith in themselves and their ideas tells them this is true. And they will seemingly not be dissuaded.

Too Little, Too Late

The Rightmost edge of the Left is beginning to understand the situation. Too little, too late.

In Matt Taibbi’s August 1 Racket News column, (RTWT linked below) he says:

The cognoscenti never figured out or accepted that the support for protest candidates like Trump or Bernie Sanders even is rooted in wide generalized rage directed their way. To this day they don’t accept it. They keep thinking they can wish it away, describe it away (see Bump’s description of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as “not at this point serious competition”), indict it away. If you drop 76 charges on a candidate and he goes up in polls, you might want to consider that you might be part of the problem. But they can’t take even that heavy a hint.

Just last week David Brooks, the New York Times token “Conservative” wrote a piece, “What If We’re the Bad Guys Here?” (also linked below) in which he asks:

We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”

The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.

Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession.”

Seriously read that entire thing.

Then read Angelo Codevilla’s 2010 piece “America’s Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution.” Pertinent excerpt:

Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

And also:

Important as they are, our political divisions are the iceberg’s tip. When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences “undecided,” “none of the above,” or “tea party,” these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind. That is because while most of the voters who call themselves Democrats say that Democratic officials represent them well, only a fourth of the voters who identify themselves as Republicans tell pollsters that Republican officeholders represent them well. Hence officeholders, Democrats and Republicans, gladden the hearts of some one-third of the electorate — most Democratic voters, plus a few Republicans. This means that Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics.

Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority’s demand for representation will be filled.

Taibbi is observing what Codevilla predicted. Brooks is echoing what Codevilla explained with precision in 2010.

“The cognoscenti never figured out or accepted that the support for protest candidates like Trump or Bernie Sanders even is rooted in wide generalized rage directed their way.” – Taibbi

“As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.” – Brooks

“Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority’s demand for representation will be filled.” – Codevilla

I’m betting on sooner, and badly.

Links: Campaign 2024, Officially Chaos – Matt Taibbi https://www.racket.news/p/campaign-2024-officially-chaos

What if We’re the Bad Guys Here? – David Brooks https://dnyuz.com/2023/08/02/what-if-were-the-bad-guys-here/

America’s Ruling Class, and the Perils of Revolution – Angelo Codevilla https://spectator.org/americas-ruling-class/

I found this piece after writing the above: Yes, David Brooks, You Are the “Bad Guys” – Sasha Stone Excerpt:

Your question, “Are we the bad guys”? The answer is yes. You are the bad guys. You have systematically dehumanized half the country because they dared to want to be represented by someone you don’t like. You have gone along with a warped distortion of who Donald Trump actually is, and you have perpetuated that lie to your own detriment.

Oh, it’s much worse than that, Mr. Brooks. Are you sitting down? This is the moment just before the aristocracy you write so eloquently about comes crashing down around you. You might say you have just spotted the iceberg on the horizon. The water is too still. The ship is moving too fast. It can’t be turned around in time. The ship is made of iron, and it will sink.

Like so many times before, an aristocratic minority can only stave off its ultimate collapse at the hands of the discontented majority for so long. Just look around at the abandoned mansions of the Gilded Age, a world that once was. Or take a trip to France and look at the chateaus in the countryside, or you might even look around in the American South at the plantations and high society before it was all Gone with the Wind.

I’m not necessarily saying the red states are going to drag America back in time – that’s your narrative and the false opinion of the ruling class. This is about a new America waiting to be born once the establishment elite gets out of the way.

You do get points for noticing, Mr. Brooks, even if it is too little, too late.

Do read that whole piece as well.

From Quora:

Q: Isn’t it a troubling sign that a thrice indicted former president is still popular amongst roughly half the U.S. population? How serious could the fallout be?

A: Serious. Because what it means is that confidence in the justice system specifically and the government in general is zilch.

Once government has lost legitimacy, bad things are bound to happen.

Something I stumbled across in the archives of this blog from 2013:

“We should expect many years of political turmoil, peaking in the 2020s. And because complex societies are much more fragile than we assume, there is a chance of a catastrophic failure of some kind, with a default on U.S. government bonds being among the less frightening possibilities.”

Out to Lunch?

When a challenge to California’s Roberti-Roos Assault Weapon Ban, Silveira v. Lockyer, reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002, there was an appeal for an en banc review of the decision that supported the ban. That appeal was denied. In one of the dissents to that denial the very eloquent Judge Alex Kozinski wrote:

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms. Indeed, to conclude otherwise, they had to ignore binding precedent. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), did not hold that the defendants lacked standing to raise a Second Amendment defense, even though the government argued the collective rights theory in its brief. The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller’s weapon – a sawed-off shotgun – was reasonably susceptible to militia use. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale. If Miller’s claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller‘s test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out to lunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

Well apparently you can. In New York’s Goldstein v Hochul case, a suit to remove New York’s ban on firearms in synagogues, citing the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision I have cited here before, the Federal judge has denied an injunction of the ban while the case is being decided. His reasoning?

The Bruen test “is considered by many to be an impractical and intellectually flawed approach.”

AKA: The Supreme Court was “out to lunch” when they last visited a constitutional provision.

His justification?

There were also restrictions on firearms access and ownership by Black people and Native Americans unrelated to whether they were law-abiding. See generally Adam Winkler, Racist Gun Laws and the Second Amendment, 135 Harv. L. Rev. 537 (2023). The implications of firearm ownership in both the founding and reconstruction eras was thus dramatically different from those in 2023, and thus, answering the question of whether statutes and regulations from those respective time periods are “relevantly similar under the Second Amendment”, Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2132, is an enormously difficult task that is likely to lead to inconsistent decisions that are untethered to reality, and is considered by many to be an impractical and intellectually flawed approach.

So because certain groups were previously denied the privileges and immunities of citizens under color of law, it’s OK to still do it now?

This fight is long from over.

What stops one branch of the U.S. government from becoming too powerful in the states?

That was a question at Quora. Here’s my answer:

Well the answer in Civics class is “Either or both of the other two branches.”

Problem is, the Legislative Branch has abdicated a lot of its lawmaking power to the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch has allowed it. Now we have multiple Executive Branch Bureaus, Departments and Services that serve to make regulations (Legislative), enforce regulations (Executive) and punish violations (Judicial) essentially without oversight. We don’t elect the people in these organizations. We have no power to remove them.

Our only hope is the Legislative Branch or the Judicial Branch will stomp on their excesses. The Supreme Court recently did that with the EPAs abuse of the “Clean Water Act” in Sackett v. EPA. The legislature failed to do so in their review of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s recent redefinition of pistol braces, making what was legal now a federal felony. Senate Democrats reject measure to block pistol brace rule.

Edited to add this:

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4049929-nightmare-court-decision-upholds-the-right-to-be-heard-before-a-real-court/

The Executive Branch is not happy about the Judicial Branch doing its job. Odd, that.

Still Fighting the Fight

There’s a group over at Quora, “Gun Memes R Us” where I like to read and post. I came across this one and put it up:

It has inspired a number of comments, but I want to archive this thread:

Paul:
Nobody is coming to take away your guns. The only reason you continue talking about something that will never happen is that it supports your violent fantasies about murdering your fellow countrymen.

Me:

UPDATE: Paul has responded, in a sense. The reply below and the remainder of the comment thread are now gone. END UPDATE.

Paul:
Look at that. Another Trumpanzee who can only communicate through memes that were created by someone smarter than you. I’ve run across your cult before. I always feel bad for you knuckleheads.

I get your message, though. You couldn’t begin to refute my comment about how no one is coming to take your guns, and that disturbed you. To self-soothe, you posted a bunch of memes in the same way someone with epilepsy might have a grand mal seizure.

Me:
Look at that, someone who comments on a meme page and complains about memes. (Most of which are screenshots of his ideological brethren.)

We’ve been told “no one is coming for your guns” for decades, while at the same time we get stuff like this from legislators:

Or this exchange between North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop and the loathsome Jerry Nadler over H.R. 1808:

“Would anyone on the other side dispute that this bill would ban weapons that are in common use in the United States today?” Bishop asked.

“That’s the point of the bill,” Nadler replied.

“So, to clarify, Mr. Chairman, you’re saying it is the point of the bill to ban weapons that are in common use in the United States today,” the Republican representative pressed.

“Yes,” Nadler clarified. “The problem is that they’re in common use.”

So, no one wants to take our guns? Pull my other leg.

Paul:
I’m impressed. Most people who speak in memes literally can’t communicate otherwise. You actually made a coherent point.

It’s wrong. First, nobody is trying to take “all firearms” from you (as this meme stated). In the case of HR 1808, that’s a ban on assault weapons, similar to what we had before when mass shootings were much less frequent. You can still have the rest of your guns.

I know, I know. You’d sooner watch a thousand kids mowed down by AR15s than part with yours. That’s your prerogative. But not everyone is a sociopath, and they have their prerogatives too.

Me:
What, you’d prefer them mowed down with 12 gauge shotguns? 9mm pistols? How many children are you willing to let die? If the number of guns is the problem, then the solution must be reducing the number in circulation to as close to zero as to make no difference. That’s the logic. “If it saves one life!” So excuse me if I don’t kowtow to your “It’s only ‘assault weapons!’ “ argument. It’s bullshit.

I’ve been doing this for about thirty years now. I have the receipts.

Pundit Charles Krauthammer stated the obvious in his 1996 column “Disarm the Citizenry, But Not Yet”:

“Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically.

“It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.

“Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic – purely symbolic – move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.”

In 1988 the Violence Policy Center, a group founded on the platform of banning all handguns (we could keep rifles and shotguns, for now) wrote a white paper entitled “Assault Weapons and Accessories in America.” From its conclusion:

“Assault weapons are increasingly being perceived by legislators, police organizations, handgun restriction advocates, and the press as a public health threat. As these weapons come to be associated with drug traffickers, paramilitary extremists, and survivalists, their television and movie glamour is losing its lustre to a violent reality.

“Because of this fact, assault weapons are quickly becoming the leading topic of America’s gun control debate and will most likely remain the leading gun control issue for the near future. Such a shift will not only damage America’s gun lobby, but strengthen the handgun restriction lobby for the following reasons:

  • It will be a new topic in what has become to the press and public an “old” debate. Although handguns claim more than 20,000 lives a year, the issue of handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press, and public. The reasons for this vary: the power of the gun lobby; the tendency of both sides of the issue to resort to sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments when discussing the issue; the fact that until an individual is affected by handgun violence he or she is unlikely to work for handgun restrictions; the view that handgun violence is an “unsolvable” problem; the inability of the handgun restriction movement to organize itself into an effective electoral threat; and the fact that until someone famous is shot, or something truly horrible happens, handgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons.
  • Efforts to stop restrictions on assault weapons will only further alienate the police from the gun lobby. Until recently, police organizations viewed the gun lobby in general, and the NRA in particular, as a reliable friend. This stemmed in part from the role the NRA played in training officers and its reputation regarding gun safety and hunter training. Yet, throughout the 1980s, the NRA has found itself increasingly on the opposite side of police on the gun control issue. Its opposition to legislation banning armor-piercing ammunition, plastic handguns, and machine guns, and its drafting of and support for the McClure/Volkmer handgun decontrol bill, burned many of the bridges the NRA had built throughout the past hundred years. As the result of this, the Law Enforcement Steering Committee was formed. The Committee now favors such restriction measures as waiting periods with background check for handgun purchase and a ban on machine guns and plastic firearms. If police continue to call for assault weapons restrictions, and the NRA continues to fight such measures, the result can only be a further tarnishing of the NRA’s image in the eyes of the public, the police, and NRA members. The organization will no longer be viewed as the defender of the sportsman, but as the defender of the drug dealer.
  • Efforts to restrict assault weapons are more likely to succeed than those to restrict handguns. Although the majority of Americans favor stricter handgun controls, and a consistent 40 percent of Americans favor banning the private sale and possession of handguns,[129] many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home self-defense and the majority of Americans mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.[130] Yet, many who support the individual’s right to own a handgun have second thoughts when the issue comes down to assault weapons. Assault weapons are often viewed the same way as machine guns and “plastic” firearms—a weapon that poses such a grave risk that it’s worth compromising a perceived constitutional right.

So excuse me if I reject your “They only want to take X away” bullshit for what it is. It’s a camel’s nose under the tent, and your side has no compunction about lying to achieve it.

Paul:
There’s a reason mass shooters choose AR15s over a 12-gauge or a 9mm pistol. That reason is the same as why HR 1808 exists. The AR15 is an assault rifle (and yes, spare me, I know that’s not what the “AR” stands for). It can also be considered a “battle rifle,” as the cops in Uvalde called it. It’s a gun for little boys to pretend that they’re GI Joe (best case scenario) or to mow down a bunch of people (worst case). It has no positives to it.

Regarding this quote from above:

“Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this. A civilized society can’t be armed like this. However, I understand we will never be disarmed due to the 2nd Amendment and the impossibility of repealing it. Therefore, the US will never be a civilized society. Everyone in government understands that. Seriously, to find someone in government who believes we can take away all guns would require finding someone as dumb as Marjorie Tailor Greene, and the left doesn’t have people that dumb.

Me:
“There’s a reason mass shooters choose AR15s over a 12-gauge or a 9mm pistol.” Really? Pray tell, what is it? The last one had an AR, but used a Kel-Tec Sub 2000, a pistol-caliber carbine. The majority of them are carried out with handguns because handguns are portable and concealable. Columbine? Shotguns, a pistol-caliber carbine and a pistol.

But all you want is “assault rifles”? Yeah. Right. For The Children.

I want the school staff that is willing to be able to carry, and I want signs like this posted around the campus:

In the Tennessee shooting the Sheriff reported that the shooter had considered a different target, but because it had security she chose the Christian school instead.

I want to do something that WORKS. You want security theater.

Paul:
Ok, you want to do something that WORKS. (Caps lock noted…you’re serious!)

Do you know any educators? How many do you think have the aptitude and inclination to use a gun to defend a class of kids against an assailant armed to the teeth? Remember, the Uvalde cops were shit scared to confront such a shooter. But you want Mrs. Harrison who teaches the 3rd grade to handle it.

Also, do you know how little teachers get paid for the amount of work they put in? But you want to add on top of that the requirement to buy a gun and be trained on it all on the same salary, because let’s face it, giving teachers more money is un-American to a republican.

Is this what you think will work?

Me:
How many school staffers are veterans? How many staffers are there compared to the teaching staff? Hell, the janitor can carry if he’s willing. Why do want to deny the willing and able? You’re using Uvalde as an example? Those guys signed up for that job, then didn’t do it. That didn’t happen in Tennessee.

What makes you think, in a nation where about a third of the population owns guns, that no school staffers – including teachers – already owns guns? Already have concealed-carry licenses? I know one teacher. She taught middle school math and science for 40 years. She owned a gun most of her professional career, but she wasn’t allowed to even have it in her car on campus.

Yes, I want schools to be less attractive targets.

Paul:
Your questions are all valid. However, don’t pretend you know the answers. You have no idea if there are enough veterans or gun owners at each school to protect them.

The reason I mention the Uvalde cops is because, yes, they signed up for that job. And they didn’t do it. But you’re expecting people who did not sign up for that job to do it instead?

Also, who’s paying these people? “Oh, by the way, Mavis, starting on Monday we’d like you to start providing security for your Spanish class. It’s just another part of the job.”

This could be a viable plan if it gets past these obstacles. But I don’t expect it would.

Me:
Utah has allowed staff to carry on campus for years. I personally know that many trainers offered staff free training so they could get their permits. When was the last school shooting in Utah?

You don’t seem to have any faith in your fellows. Just because you cannot see yourself defending yourself or innocents doesn’t mean others can’t. You’d rather disarm everyone so you don’t have to feel guilty about it. (End – for now.)

I’m curious to see if he’ll come back with anything.




What Passes for Exceptional

I want to give this guy props for trying, but more importantly, I want more people to be aware, that he is EXCEPTIONAL, not average. He’s TRYING.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old – about 130 million people – lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

Per another study, “One out of every five bachelor’s degree holders among employed college graduates ages 21 to 65 lacks minimum skills in literacy. For numeracy, the number is one in three.”

Employed. College. Graduates.

Literacy has declined, according to John Taylor Gatto, from 96% in 1942, to 81% in 1955, to 73% in 1973. Today it’s 46%. The Department of Education was formed in 1979 in part to combat the trend. The 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” declared:

“Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. This report is concerned with only one of the many causes and dimensions of the problem, but it is the one that undergirds American prosperity, security, and civility. We report to the American people that while we can take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges have historically accomplished and contributed to the United States and the well-being of its people, the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur–others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

It was an act of war. But a foreign power wasn’t responsible.

It’s easier to control a population that cannot think.

XX

On this day, May 14, 2003, I hit “Publish” on my first blog post at the original Blogspot site.

This blog is now officially 20 years old.

I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to figure out what was going on, and it now appears uncontestable that what is going on is an attempt to return society to a two-tiered feudal system, with the people Thomas Sowell calls “The Anointed” as the royalty, and everyone else as the serfs – owning nothing, and no one giving a damn about their happiness.

Happy anniversary.

Another Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations

In the summer of 1776, after years of increasing abuse from their government, including an attempt to disarm by force the militia of Concord, Massachusetts, a group of wealthy, politically powerful men representing their individual colonies met in a hall in Philadelphia to commit treason. Fifty-six men committed a nation of about three million to an irreversible action with the promise of dire consequences. Perhaps a million of that population was in favor, a million opposed, and the third million ambivalent. Many of the 56 paid dearly for that decision, as did thousands of other colonists, but they birthed the most free, most wealthy and powerful nation the world has ever seen by increasing the liberty of ordinary people through the establishment of a new form of government dedicated to protecting the rights of individual citizens. What does Politifact want you to know about them? Most were slave owners.

Liberty has been defined as a right to act without control or interference by government or other power so long as those actions do not infringe on another’s liberty or property. “Liberal” used to mean “In favor of maximizing individual liberty.” No more.

The Western World in general and the United States in particular has gone, in the words of someone I respect*, “batshit fucking insane.”

Let us look at what has happened over the last few years:

  • Let’s start with the thing that woke up a significant portion of our population: Whether you believe the 2020 election was stolen or not, if you’re intellectually honest you must admit that some very questionable things went on, some so blatant Time Magazine bragged about them. None have been adequately addressed. And we’re headed into another election that promises to be every bit as questionable.
  • The U.S. Department of Education, established in 1980 in response to declining public school performance, has presided over a rapidly accelerating decline in those schools over the last forty years. No one is held responsible for this decline. 54% of the population is functionally illiterate. According to this paper: “One out of every five bachelor’s degree holders among employed college graduates ages 21 to 65 lacks minimum skills in literacy. For numeracy, the number is one in three.” Employed. College. Graduates. And these people vote. This was not accidental. The 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Whoever they were, they won. (Hint: They weren’t foreign.) We’ve gone from mediocre to abysmal. This has made possible everything else I report on here.
  • Mediocre male athletes now compete as women – and win competitions, and set records that are accepted by the sanctioning bodies. Objecting to this gets you called “transphobic.” We’re told that children should have the ability to choose their genders, up to and including hormone treatment and surgical sterilization, and their parents should have no say in it except to pay for it. Worse, some parents champion this.
  • Government policies sold on the idea of “improving” the plight of the homeless – who are, by and large mentally ill, drug addicts or both – have instead exponentially increased the problem where they have been implemented. The result of this failure? They double-down. The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only harder!
  • District Attorneys elected with funds from foreign sources, acting ostensibly for “criminal justice reform” have created chaos. Open-air drug markets, unrestricted shoplifting and rioting resulting in closures or relocations of dozens of businesses who can no longer sustain the financial losses, or whose employees fear to come to work. The result of this is the collapse of commercial districts serving the very people that “criminal justice reform” was supposed to benefit. The response? Do it some more, only harder!
  • Multiple agencies of the Federal government have blatantly and unconstitutionally censored the speech of American citizens on social media and not just recently. It cost Elon Musk $44B to uncover the evidence. No one involved will pay any price for this, and the media has suppressed the story as far as possible allowing society to turn a blind eye.
  • The government has been collecting data on the entire population – locations, emails, texts, phone calls – for decades. This was exposed by Edward Snowden. No one denies it’s being done. It hasn’t stopped. Snowden lives in exile in Russia.
  • The Federal government in response to a pandemic essentially suspended civil liberties, put people out of work, cost them their businesses, forced minimally tested vaccines on the general population, and suppressed reports of severe adverse reactions. The idea of “vaccine passports” was seriously promoted -internal passports restricting travel of ordinary citizens. Again, no one will pay any price for this.
  • Further, the government suppressed any alternative treatments. A viable treatment would negate the “emergency declaration” allowing the mRNA vaccines to be administered. All of this was done with the enthusiastic cooperation of the media that was itself censored.
  • The pandemic restrictions resulted in the largest transfer of wealth in history. That’s a feature, not a bug. As Russell Brand said, “What the government want is control. What the corporate world want is money. What both of them want is power. What neither of them care about is you.”
  • The job of Congress is to write laws, the Executive to pass and enforce them, the Judiciary to judge and administer them. Two hundred and thirty years of this has resulted in a U.S. Code that runs 53 volumes. The U.S. Code is the laws written by Congress and signed by the President. In addition to that is the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, an additional 50 volumes of regulations written by the various agencies created by the Executive branch authorized by the U.S. Code. We have reached the point where you cannot go an entire day without probably committing three felonies. And should the government decide to, any competent District Attorney can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. What chance do you have when you can be indicted on a dozen felonies, any one of which can put you in prison for years? Is there any question why 98% of federal prosecutions result in plea bargains?
  • The Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service have been weaponized against ordinary Americans. A two-tiered “justice” system protecting those politically connected and persecuting ordinary Americans has become obvious. Ordinary Americans have become the Enemies of the State.
  • I don’t think anyone who has read it can honestly deny Prof. Angelo Codevilla’s (PBUH) observation that we have separated into a Ruling Class and what he called the Country Class – ordinary Americans. Our Ruling Class and the Ruling Classes of the West all share a common philosophy – they are in charge because it is their right to be in charge. They are the people who have accumulated vast wealth and power because of their superiority. Of course they should rule. They know best. We are merely ignorant peasants. We should eat the bugs, sleep in the pods, use only public transportation, be restricted to virtual currency they control, hear only that information they approve for us, receive only the medical care they determine we’re worth, and shut the fuck up.

Currently in Congress they’re looking at passing what is called the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology” bill – ominously acronymed “RESTRICT” – that will vastly amplify what the Patriot Act did to privacy. Restriction is the antithesis of Liberty.

Governments are moving to reduce food production in the name of “saving the planet.” Fertilizer restrictions, farm closures, herd reductions. Don’t think that won’t spread. The fundamentalist religion of Climate Change will see to that.

Restrictions on energy production have resulted in climbing costs not just for energy, but everything energy is used to make and transport, with no relief in sight. Again, Climate Change is the clarion call.

There are undeniable signs that world governments including our own are looking at going to strictly digital currency – a cash-free society – that will eliminate all private transactions. Remember when the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of people who donated to the trucker’s convoy? How would you like to learn that something you posted on Facebook got your accounts frozen and you can’t buy groceries or gas?

Unrestricted spending has resulted in a U.S. national debt of $31,700,000,000,000 and climbing exponentially. This is the definition of unsustainable. There has to be an end-game. The Ruling Class is arrogant, but not stupid.

In July of 1776 fifty-six men signed a document that declared:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Instead of a nation of three million, we are now a nation of more than 330 million, but more than half can’t read above a sixth grade level. Twenty percent of employed college graduates are functionally illiterate. Fewer are numerate. In 1776 the literacy rate was reportedly 90%. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published in January of 1776, sold 500,000 copies by the end of that year, again, in a nation with a population of only 3,000,000 people – one copy for every six people in the country. 2022’s best seller moved 2,729,007 copies. It was a romance novel.

I watched the recent interview of Elon Musk by Bill Maher. Elon told the story of a parent asking his high-school aged children what they knew about the first Presidents. They knew George Washington. What did they know? That he was a slave owner. Apparently their textbooks are vetted by Politifact.

If you’re paying attention, the current long train of abuses and usurpations is no longer deniable, but damned few are paying attention. There’s no group of people to stand up and say “NO MORE!” and no populace willing to back them.

Now what?

(*Thanks to TheGeekWithA.45 for editorial help on this one.)

“May You Live in Interesting Times.”

Kurt Schlicter in Townhall has written an interesting piece, The Only Way to Restore the Norms Is to Finish Them Off.

Excerpt:

The Democrats are a disorganized crime family. They are all corrupt, really corrupt, not “Some money to settle a dizzy tramp’s sex claims got mischaracterized in the books” corrupt. And that makes them vulnerable.

Remember, all those norms and principles they cavalierly pillage are not really there to protect us. We’re not crooks and we have all the guns – nothing to hide and the power to rule. Norms are to protect them. So let’s stop protecting them.

For a long time, we had a norm about trying not to prosecute political opponents even when we could. You beat them at the ballot box. But then they got more brazen, and there was no ambiguity about their crimes. They were actual crimes, and they rubbed them in our face. The Felonia Milhouse von Pantsuit toilet server stuff struck a nerve because so many of us knew what a big deal treating classified materials like her husband treated interns is (or was) – if we had done that, we’d be charged and in some fed pen converting large rocks to tiny ones. But she did not get charged. That looming doofus James Comey invented a new legal requirement for the statute that never existed before and never would exist if it was us. And there’s the First Crackhead buying a gun when he’s a drug addict – again, you know that if we lied on a Form 4473 the AFT would be SWATing us in our cribs. They took the sensible norm of reluctance and mocked us with it.

So, let’s not do that anymore. Let’s not bend over backwards to avoid charging our political enemies with their crimes. And if we have to be creative about the crimes and create novel new theories to ensnare our opponents, so be it. Alvin Bragg was creative. That’s the New Rule. Let’s see how they like being served up a dose of that kind of legal suppository.

“BUT THE RULE OF LAW!!!!”

Yeah, what rule of law is that?

Lawfare works both ways. But remember what Prof. Codevilla warned us about, it’s not Republicans vs. Democrats, its us against the Ruling Class. The Ruling Class is an exclusive club, and we ain’t in it. And the Ruling Class control the DAs and the Courts.

RTWT, but I think Schlicter mssed out on the Ruling Class angle.