Grinning cannibals, or, Those punctiliously objective TV newscasts just keep on coming.

Grimly determined to serve you better, I force myself to monitor the telescreen for the latest news about the progress of our multicultural socialist empire, and the other night I caught a story on WANE-TV, the Fort Wayne CBS affiliate, about how northeast Indiana leads the country in recruitment for the National Guard.

According to the newsies, most of the new recruits are juniors and seniors in high school.

To illustrate something or other, WANE-TV aired tape of their attractive female Hispanic reporter venturing out upon the Guard training ground to engage in a padded-baton duel with a female recruit. Naturally the munchkinette journalista got herself slammed to the ground toot sweet — and, boy, was she ever happy about that! In fact, she was happy about everything.

All of the On-Air Personalities back at the studio were happy, too.

The chirping happyface newsreaders wound up their story by displaying the phone number for Guard recruitment.

And once again I had to run to the medicine cabinet for that bottle of Emetrol. [Nicholas Strakon]
 

I don't know whether TLD's bailiwick lags behind the national average in employment, but I do know that military recruiters are not meeting their quotas in most of the country. And one factor they cite is the good economy.

How inconvenient for those corrupters of youth.

Wouldn't it follow that if our overlords need to increase the recruitment figures it would be in their interest, ceteris paribus, for unemployment to increase? [Ronn Neff] (May 2005)

Strakon's neutron-bomb option. I don't hold with this sort of political activism, but if I believed that members of Congress were ordinary humans engaged in a defensible human enterprise, and that there was any point in communicating with them, I might offer U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle a truly nuclear option.

It wouldn't prevent filibusters; far from it; it would lead to more and better filibusters. Under my proposal, when any President submitted any nomination for the Central Government bench, senators of the opposite political party would do everything they could to delay, undermine, and — if all went well — kill it. And it wouldn't make any difference if Solomon himself had been proposed for a judgeship.

A fraction of statutory law purports to reflect the natural law — I'm thinking of laws against robbery, rape, murder, arson, and so on — but most statutory law is just positive law, which is to say fake law. Your typical statute is merely a legislative edict seeking to punish the commission not of a malum in se but of a malum prohibitum — i.e., an act unpopular with politicians, at least when ordinary sheepizens commit it. And that is especially true of the "law" that the "federal" court system is charged with helping to enforce.

Of course that isn't the half of it. Over the past fifty years "federal" judges-for-life have taken to issuing edicts of their own, and I trust I needn't belabor that point.

But the "federal" court system has long been overburdened, and for decades U.S. Attorneys have been forced to be extremely selective in the prosecutions they initiate. Unremitting filibusters and other disruptive maneuvers in the Senate would prevent the replacement of dying or retiring social engineers masquerading as judges, worsen the logjam on the court calendars, and eventually, just maybe, bring the whole tyrannical machine to a grinding halt.

Well, I'd like to see it. But I'm not actually going to be calling up any senators, you understand. I've got better things to do than ask tyrants to fight tyranny. [Nicholas Strakon] (May 2005)

But not too limited. George Reisman was an associate of Ayn Rand and a "name" in the Objectivist movement "back in the day." He is also an economist and an advocate of limited government.

In the May 2005 issue of The Free Market, published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Reisman has an interesting proposal for gradually ending Social Security. It's not a terrible proposal, and unlike the Cato proposal for reform, it actually ends the horrible plan ... well, eventually.

A key to his proposal is an income-tax exemption, an exemption that he notes should be "progressively increased from year to year to keep pace with rising prices and rising wage rates."

I consider all income-tax exemptions fine things. The more, the better. But then we read this: "States with income taxes of their own should be required to adopt the same tax exemption."

Required? By whom? This doesn't sound like the sort of language one would use if what he means is, "Voters in states with income taxes of their own should require their legislatures to adopt the same tax exemption."

So just who is supposed to be doing this requiring? If you are at all like me, in vain will you search the Constitution that is supposed to limit government for any provision permitting any federal authority to dictate tax policy to a state.

Has the libertarian movement really become so degraded that it takes anarchists to notice that a proposal is unconstitutional? Are limited-government libertarians so myopic that they don't know what a usurpation even looks like anymore?

I have asked it before, and I'll ask it again: Does it ever occur to defenders of limited government that the reason they make no headway in their policy forums is that they don't seem to take their own principles seriously? [Ronn Neff] (May 2005)

All cheer the perp walk.. An Army Reserve support company recently returned to Fort Wayne from deployment Over There, and for about a week the local telescreen outlets were aflutter with daily stories. All the coverage I saw was designed to hammer home the same point; it came out most explicitly in the stories about a downtown war rally where the returning legionaries were the honored guests. (Too bad no aerial photo was taken; it would have shown a converging web of slime tracks leading to the rally, deposited by the area's pols and ward-heelers.)

The big important point the electronic newsies were determined to make was that the soldiers and soldierettes are all heroes who deserve praise and gratitude for "defending our freedom" or "fighting to keep us free." (My quote marks are to be taken literally.) It's a safe estimate that, for most proles and members of the Outer Party, two minutes of an "objective" TV news story declaring that Bush's War is about "defending our freedom" has a more powerful effect than the publishing of two hundred detailed analytical pieces by Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, or Steve Sniegoski.

Let me be ultra-clear: those "defending-our-freedom" evaluations were not editorial comments supplied by the station managers in separate segments; they were embedded in what were represented as news stories, chirped at us by newsreaders and accompanied by the compulsive head-nodding that seems to reflect a rather split-minded species of sincerity: See? I agree with myself!
 

As I've observed before, sheeple-stroking sentimentalist propaganda is apparently the natural result of today's faddish "community-oriented reporting." This specific propaganda, of course, falls under the rubric of "supporting our troops," which the telefolk don't see as controversial. They don't consider it an editorial issue at all: I don't just agree with myself — nod, nod — I cannot even conceive of any disagreement on your part!

Some may argue that it is possible, in principle, to "support our troops" without supporting their war. A few antiwar leftists have essayed such verbal trickery, but they've had a hard time selling it. I don't buy it, and the RPG-Fodder Replacement System and Weepy Gratitude Brigade here on the home front don't buy it, either.

I've seen horses counting ... dogs walking on their hind legs ... chimps holding news conferences ... but supporting the troops without supporting their war? — that's one thing I've never seen.

Have you? [Nicholas Strakon] (May 2005

A related writing
by Strakon.

Call for papers: Did any TLD reader hear any news broadcast about the Soviet-style celebration of the end of World War II (European theater) that so much as mentioned that the Soviet Union had been in on starting the war in the first place?

Once a Bolshie, always a Bolshie: During the coverage by "All Things Considered" of the celebration in Red Square, the NPR newsreader mentioned that the Soviet Union had lost 20 million people "in the four years of war."

"Four years"?

I wonder how many more the Soviets lost in the other two years when they were attacking Poland, Finland, and the Baltic nations as the Nazis' allies. [Ronn Neff]

Victory in Europe. While parading through the wreck of the old Soviet Empire the other day, the Wee Emperor said some things that Minitrue is interpreting as a rebuke to the strategic policy of his own father, Bush I. The secession of the various Soviet republics, including the Baltic states, distressed the first Bush because the disintegration of the Soviet Empire threatened to send temblors shooting throughout the entire world imperial system. It's messy cutting up the world's pie if your partners are a contemptible rubbish of small states, as Mr. Hitler memorably put it; and in Bush I's time, who dared dream of unilateralism? Not even those sage and percipient gentleman in the employ of Israel, it seems.

Even more remarkably, Bush II's recent utterances are seen as a rebuke to the 20th century's ultimate statesgod, Franklin Roosevelt: Yalta was a mistake! It was terrible, just terrible, for the West to suddenly and unexpectedly abandon all those little countries, which quickly became captive nations under Stalin! (Stalin ... he certainly wasn't the same fellow as that twinkle-eyed, pipe-smoking Uncle Joe, was he? Our heroic, peaceloving, fraternal, democratic ally?) Alas and alack — cue those great wet crocodile tears, now — great states, in managing great events, sometimes neglect the injustices they're accidentally inflicting on miniature peoples. Thus spake our Leader.

None of this will come as a surprise to those on the Left who believe that Bush II — that dastardly laissez-faire extremist, more extreme even than Bush I — is trashing and overturning Roosevelt's legacy on the domestic front, too.

We are no more surprised than the leftists, but our lack of surprise is better grounded. Wiping away Little Bush's rhetorical ketchup about justice and injustice, we may observe that imperial strategies evolve in response to changing circumstances. In the time of Roosevelt, the United State was angling to destroy two of its imperial rivals — Germany and Japan — and angling also to inherit the status of senior world empire from the reeling, bankrupt British. In pursuit of that, the Soviets had to be tolerated; in fact, after the war the former Great Ally served usefully as a Great Enemy, providing a rationale for the garrison state at home and imperial entanglements abroad. Now, however, after the fatal failure of the Soviets' obsolete style of totalitarianism, the American Empire has marched to supplant the Soviet Empire and keep the successor Russians tractable, driving the frontier of NATO right up against the old Soviet border.

Roosevelt himself was assigned to direct an evolving, and expanding, empire in a rapidly changing world. It's easy to think of him as little more than a Soviet dupe, but he would have understood what the Chimp-in-Chief and his trainers are doing (even if Poppy Bush doesn't).

No doubt Bush II's great and good friend Vladimir Putin understands, too. It will be interesting to see whether he can do anything with that understanding. [Nicholas Strakon]

It wasn't Yalta; it was Spam and Studebaker. If the Bush II people succeed in keeping the focus narrowed to "Yalta revisionism," they will have done a pretty good job of ideological damage control: by the time of Yalta, Roosevelt was sick, you understand; sick and helpless and really not to be blamed for anything ...

In fact, however, Yalta was little more than a formal recognition of the new power structure in Central and Eastern Europe, emerging inevitably from the enormously expensive four-year operation to rescue Stalin, an operation that the Roosevelt regime had doggedly pursued in sickness and in health. To dig any deeper than Yalta would risk revising our whole understanding of the Last Good War. [Henry Gallagher Fields] (May 2005)

Scribo quia absurdum. Both have produced their share of corpses, but as leviathan's current crimes go, I do understand that its war on methamphetamine fades in comparison with its war on the Iraqis. I'm drawn to keep writing about Indiana's pseudoephedrine enactments, though, partly because it shows to what absurd lengths our supervisors, and the ward-heelers they own, will go to prosecute their drug war. I write also to show — call it Exhibit #3,529,016 — that in response to the predictable failure of their purported aims, our rulers will always move further toward tyranny and further away from freedom. Sooner or later, some of the bolder among us may risk generalizing that that's just what government people do.

And, finally, I write of the pseudoephedrine pseudocrisis because it demonstrates with renewed force the extent to which this poor country has become just unrecognizable to those of us who grew up in the '50s and even the '60s, as degraded as those eras were: there is now no tiny aspect of our lives that our masters do not feel free to invade and control. For us Old Americans, life itself has become absurd as we stumble through the ruins of this country that once was ours.
 

It's taken me a few days to discover the fate of the pseudoephedrine bill that was pending in the Indiana General Assembly, and what I've found may seem to contradict what I've just written about our heroic tribunes' bent toward ever greater tyranny: for the Indianapolis Star has been authorized to report that the lawfakers agreed on a "compromise" bill that would permit businesses without pharmacies to continue to sell cold medicines containing the wicked nasal decongestant pseudoephedrine. ("Legislators agree on meth bill / Vote expected today on more flexible proposal," by Michele McNeil, April 29, 2005)

Shades of Lexington and Concord — for us small-town rhinovirus sufferers, it's the sneeze heard 'round the world!

The Star was further permitted to reveal that "under the compromise on Senate Bill 444, which is expected to be voted on today [April 29], consumers would be limited to 3 grams (about 100 tablets) per transaction per week. To buy cold medicine, shoppers would have to be 18, show a state or federal ID and sign a logbook."

Digression. Here's a detail I find interesting. A few hours after posting the original "Stop and think" installment on this subject Friday night, April 29, I was surprised to hear on the evening news that the legislature had up and adjourned sine die. I quickly embedded, in the "S&t" installment, a little "Stop press" comment reflecting that fact. I wondered whether the adjournment meant "that the lawfaking has really been suspended," noting that "parliamentary legerdemain is rife."

Now comes a Chicago media outlet, ABC7Chicago.com, to report in a story dated May 2 — Monday! — that the bill in question passed both houses of the legislature "tonight." Indeed I understand that there may be some confusion here, but, look, I didn't start it.

If you're a betting man, this part of the Star's coverage is sure to get your attention: "The ID and logbook requirement would end in 2008, which gives the State Police time to evaluate how that provision is working, legislators said." Now, on which possibility would you put your money? — that the State Police will find that the provisions are working; that they aren't working and need to be repealed; or that they aren't working and need to be toughened. Wonder what odds they'd lay in Las Vegas.

According to the Star, the big dispute over which version of the bill would make it through didn't actually center on the pharmacy/non-pharmacy question, at least in the eyes of the bill's original author, Sen. Mitchel Young (R-Indianapolis). Instead, he "refused to consider putting cold medicine behind a counter or in a locked case." However, our Paladin of Liberty, Suitably Regulated, agreed at last to compromise, so that under the bill as passed, the cold medicine — uh, will be put behind a counter or in a locked case.

Well, you know, politics is the art of the possible. That is made clear by Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon and a "legislative negotiator," who "called the compromise meaningful: 'We're not going halfway here.'" If you thought a workable definition of "compromise" involved going halfway, you may need to take an updated civics class.
 

As I wrote before, Gov. Daniels had preferred the utterly Stalinist version of the bill — which was also utterly fascist, since it would have handed official pharmacies a monopoly on dispensing the cold meds. The bill as passed, though, permits convenience stores to sell up to four tablets at a time to a customer! Despite that lavish liberality, the Star quotes one of the governor's mouthpieces describing the new law as "very strong legislation that responds to the meth problem." The fact that General Secretary Daniels is happy only serves to deepen our understanding of the glories of "compromise" under our current political system.

A final lesson for us wide-eyed students of representative government: ABC7Chicago.com reports that, after all the sober debate and impressive parliamentary bustling, the bill passed both houses unanimously.

That's right — unanimously.

If we were watching all this from another planet, it'd be hilarious. [Nicholas Strakon] (May 2005)

Glorious mysteries of majority rule.  I've been reading about that prescription-drug bill that passed the U.S. House in February. It was narrowly approved only after debate was extended to 6 a.m. and then only after two Republicans changed their "nay" votes to "yea."

As is now known, the bill is going to be much more expensive than everyone was told it would be when all the arm-twisting and campaigning for it was going on. And plenty of people — not least, the Republicans who changed their votes — are just mad enough to spit.

But how come — really, now — if there were so many who opposed it in the first place and so many who voted for it who now wish they hadn't ... how come someone doesn't just introduce a bill repealing it?

It would probably pass.

Or is that the reason? [Ronn Neff]

Pseudoephedrine and pseudofreedom. The Indiana legislature still hasn't passed the bill controlling the sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, and time is running out in the session. Lately — praise Chronos! — the lawfakers have been stemwinding over daylight-saving time. But they've done that deed now, and it seems likely that some cold-med bill will indeed pass. According to the Indianapolis Star, the chief source of congestion is a disagreement between the bill's Senate sponsor, who apparently is only a moderate totalitarian, and Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is turning into a right proper dictator-governor along the lines of the Lincolnite thug-Governor Oliver Morton. That is to say, the Senate bill as currently written isn't harsh enough for Daniels; he prefers the House version, which would transform — hey, presto! — cold meds containing this year's devil chemical into controlled substances, dispensable only by pharmacists upon presentation of a "proper" photo ID.

Michele McNeil, writing in the Indianapolis Star, reports that "a legislative committee is negotiating over Senate Bill 444 and how far to go to fight the escalating methamphetamine problem, which is fueled by the active ingredient in many popular cold medicines." ("Daniels may not like meth bill," April 22, 2005. This link will not stay active for long.)

If the hard-line version passes, it will be impossible to legally buy cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine in my little town — there's no pharmacy here. The suspect cold-relievers are sold only at the town grocery and the convenience store/gas station. Now, there are big, official, state-approved pharmacies within ten miles in either of two directions along the four-lane highway that runs by Roanoke, and that's a good deal for us; but Mom-and-Pop pharmacies in small towns are close to being an extinct species, and I'm sure there are plenty of Indiana towns with no pharmacy that are considerably more isolated than Roanoke is.

I have to wonder what other common products will be yanked from small-town shelves over the next few years in order to advance the great state-building project and (not incidentally) award special privilege to the pharmacy industry. I hope some demented subculturals don't start stuffing toilet paper up their nose, lest we villagers be forced to hit the highway in search of a licensed druggist from whom we might score a few rolls of Charmin.

Naturally all of that is of exceedingly minor importance. No one cares about us hamlet-dwellers; I grasp that. However, I have another, bigger development to report, one that will be of special interest to students of Polite Totalitarianism. Two nationwide retail chains — Target and Wal-Mart — have already taken the cold meds off their shelves and hidden them back with the pharmacist. And they've done it "voluntarily," don't you know, quite independently of local legal requirements.

The Pharaonic rule used to be, "So it shall be written; so it shall be done." But we seem to be getting to the point where the scribes don't actually have to write down and formally publish Pharaoh's decrees. Nowadays it's enough if Pharaoh just waves his hand: and before the scribes ever put pen to papyrus, it is already done. [Nicholas Strakon] (April 2005)

New frontiers in "Libertarian" radicalism. Every April 15 you can expect to see TV coverage of tax victims driving up to the main post office in the evening hours to mail their returns. But it's pretty boring, and in order to add a spoonful of spice, sometimes the newsies will tape a few seconds of a sidewalk demonstration by Libertarian Party members. I'd always considered such demos — however brief and, well, cartoonish in terms of communicating ideas — to be vastly preferable to the efforts of the Party to win "legitimacy" as a player within the System, persuade people to endorse leviathan by voting, and get access to Power. The street action certainly had the edge in terms of morality.

Foiled again! by my congenital Pollyannish optimism: at least with respect to what the Party is doing in Fort Wayne, Ind. This April 15, the LP's sidewalk soldiers in front of the main p.o. were displaying the usual placards — "It's Your Money!" and "Honk If You Hate Taxes" and so on — but the Party official interviewed by the telescreen undermined all that, so completely that it fell with a thundering echo into a bottomless black cavern. Mike Sylvester, chairman of the Allen County LP, informed us that what the Party was really proposing was tax simplification. A stipulation dreadful enough, one would think, but once again we were to be spared nothing. Sylvester also told viewers: "You need to pay your taxes."

It's not that I expected Sylvester to tell people, on camera, that "you need to refuse to pay your taxes." That would have been pretty presumptuous, and in any case the Secret Police would have persecuted him for saying it. But what was Sylvester up to, in going out of his way to proclaim the very opposite, as some sort of imperative?

Sylvester's proclamation makes the "It's Your Money!" claim on those placards sound about as sincere as it sounds when George W. Bush the Campaigner says it. Whatever happened to "Taxation Is Robbery"? Just another casualty of "Libertarian" party-building, I suppose. [Nicholas Strakon]
 

I'll get the file ready, Strakon — ready for those letters to the editor we're sure to get from LP members protesting that Sylvester isn't representative of LP thinking, and promising renewed efforts to elect good people to Party offices. [Modine Herbey] (April 2005)

The "PDT." If the scriptwriters of a Cop Propaganda Show that I saw a few nights ago are reporting accurately, the Tax Police have come up with an interesting bit of in-house jargon: "PDT." It stands for "potentially dangerous taxpayer."

Now, as you know, I myself advocate nothing that our glorious, mighty, and sacred rulers might find inconvenient — nothing, in fact, but bending the knee and tugging the forelock in instant acknowledgement of their slightest whim — and I trust the eternally vigilant NSA satellites orbiting over us will detect and record that stipulation. I must observe, however, that the Patriot-Criminals of the First American Revolution were PDTs; and that if the kind but hungry wolves now among us should ever come to look upon even a sizable minority of us sheep as PDTs — why, the new Revolution would be here at last. [Nicholas Strakon]

 
I want to be a Good and Careful Citizen just as much as Strakon does, but I'm wondering whether we the sheeple may be permitted, at least, to coin our own jargon. I'm thinking in terms of "ADG" — "actually dangerous government." [Modine Herbey]

 
Success in the search for silver linings! I've derived one small mercy from this spring's soaring gasoline prices: at least they've put the quietus on that inane talk from the more naive sectors of the Left about a "war for oil." Now during Tax Robbery Season I've identified another consolation: we're no longer hearing the old statist saw that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Who can repeat that with a straight face these days, as all about us the primates caper, screeching and yowling? [Nicholas Strakon] (April 2005)

During John Paul II's final illness, one commentator on the telescreen lamented the fact that the Pope's indictments of "capitalism" never received as much attention as his indictments of communism. It was a complaint I'd heard before.

Now, while it's likely that the Pope hadn't as sophisticated a grasp of market economics as Mises or Rothbard, there's still plenty of room for disagreement about what JPII was really indicting. For instance, some market-friendly Christians would insist that his principal target wasn't freedom at all but rather soul-hollowed materialism, which we can find at least as readily in old-style totalitarian societies as in freer societies.

I say "freer," not "free." That's because "capitalist societies" don't actually exist, and that's something else to keep in mind. At best what we have are state-capitalist societies, with all the distortions, stagnation, and injustice inherent therein. That fact blurs any attack on "capitalism" that fails to make the crucial distinction between freedom and fascism.

But I wonder whether there's another reason that the Pope's criticisms, as they were received, fell relatively flat. Can it be that some vestigial historical memory survives, among some part of the thinking population? So that people remember that it wasn't capitalist or even state-capitalist societies that engineered famines designed to kill tens of millions of Christians and others? That it was, instead, communist societies that committed those crimes? That it was communists who liquidated millions by more direct means and sent still others, in their millions, to suffer and die in Arctic labor camps? If people don't have substantial historical knowledge at their command — which seems likely — perhaps they retain images, indelibly colorful images, of the Red Terror. Call it soulless materialism if you want, but informed by those images most people would much rather saunter into McDonald's than be bundled into a bread van and carted off to the Gulag.

The technocratic elites of the state-capitalist system have indeed started persecuting Christians, usually employing the indirect techniques of Polite Totalitarianism that they have long honed; but they haven't actually boarded up seminaries or turned churches into museums of atheism. And they haven't started torturing and shooting dissident Christian clerics. Not yet, at least.

I'm not trying to exonerate the Polite Totalitarians of any of the crimes they have committed; in fact I believe that their modernized rulership, while less overtly bloody, is ultimately a much more thorough and effective form of tyranny than that practiced by the old jackbooted gorillas carrying tommy guns. What interests me is how eagerly the anti-Christian Red Guards exploited the Pope's critique. What interests me is the intelligentsia's insistence on putting "capitalism" and communism on the same moral level. You see, it's not the statist part of state-capitalism that they hate; it's the capitalist part. [Nicholas Strakon] (April 2005)

Gumshoes in pursuit of the wicked heart. I've suspended my researches into the influence of Linear B on the evolution of Etruscan — it looks as though TLD's annual 19-day seminar in Florence will have to be postponed this year — in order to catch up with John Sandford's "Prey" series of crime novels. (I do plan eventually to translate Sandford's œuvre into Albanian and Mediæval Manchurian.) As I read, I'm beginning to see that in addition to being a master of plot, pacing, setting, and character, and the owner of a wry and lively style, Sandford has some things of sense to say about how people are evil. He has some things to say, too, about how they become evil, but I think he's at his best in showing how they are in their evil.

The series, which Sandford launched about 15 years ago, stars homicide detective Lucas Davenport of the Minneapolis PD; and in addition to being a genius multimillionaire, Davenport is, well, more than a little wolfish, and in a couple different ways. A lapsed Catholic who draws blood when he cuts corners, he's the sort of character whom mainstream critics would delight in calling "morally ambiguous" — such eggheads relish any and all ambiguity — and since I've brought up that notion it's just as well to hit it head on, as it applies to Sandford's criminal villains. Some of them, too, may appear "morally ambiguous" to reckless readers.

In the trashier movies and TV shows, and even in many crime novels, villains are left opaque to us. They're just evil — that's all we need to know. But Sandford lets us inside his villains' heads. Typically his villains are recognizable as people; they are neither cardboard nor cartoon; they are evil people who do evil things. Sometimes they understand that what they are doing is evil, but they rarely consider themselves evil.

It is interesting that some of them commit their worst crimes after their initial, ambitious crimes — aimed at self-enrichment — have gone awry; and the justification they adduce for their final, most terrible acts is a natural one, which they consider absolute: self-preservation.

Now, to recognize villains as human is not to fall into "moral ambiguity," though it is sometimes mistaken for it.

Many of Sandford's villains are moral monsters whom you wouldn't mind having a beer with, assuming you didn't think you were next on the hit list. In one "Prey" novel I read recently, Davenport opportunistically has a dance or two with a very fetching Wichita bar owner, and falls into an evanescent infatuation with her, without having any idea that she's the professional killer he's trying to identify. Though she knows all too well who Davenport is, she speculates on what it would be like to have a fling with him — while at the same time trying to figure out whether she's going to have to murder him.

In another of the Sandford books, the principal villain is a stone-cold multiple killer and wannabe rapist (he doesn't get the latter deed done), who near the end delivers to the woman he's abducted a passionate little speech, informed by militia ideology, about how ordinary Middle Americans are manipulated and tyrannized by distant, alien, contemptuous elites. Sandford did not write that speech the way a left-wing metrosexual propagandist would have, nudging us to sneer; he wrote it straight; and it almost brought me up out of my chair cheering. When the police sniper finally blew up our man's skull with a .30-caliber bullet, I exclaimed, "Finally! Good!" — and felt melancholic about it.

That's an ambivalent response, and I think it's here that a lot of people go wrong, diagnosing moral ambiguity. The character's evil deeds were unambiguously so; and he had walked far down an evil path; and he paid. But in view of the fact that not everything he thought and felt was yet evil, the reader could fairly conclude that he was not yet wholly evil. And the reader could look back, meditating on this villain's wrong turning — and perhaps speculating about the redemption of other, real-life villains. That's actually the moralizing element in Sandford's fiction, at least for me: moralizing and admonitory. (Yes, yes, I understand that mine is a thoroughly banal and petit-bourgeois approach to fiction.)

True moral ambiguity in literature, I think, makes some people happy; it lets them off the hook in their own lives and allows them to relax in a warm slimy bath of worldly wisdom; but the ambivalence I feel about Sandford's (non-psychopath) villains, as they proceed relentlessly toward their chosen fate, is painful. It should be; I trust it is meant to be. "What might have been" — "if only" — "what a waste" — that's good pain, at least when it's fictional; it may help us avoid bad pain for real. [Nicholas Strakon] (April 2005)

Calm as a turnip, peaceful as a carrot. On March 29, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, reported that he'd just seen the dying Terri Schiavo, and she looked "very calm, relaxed, and peaceful."

Sure is funny how they describe vegetables these days, isn't it?

I'd already had some reason to suspect that this "persistent vegetative state" category the docs came up with some time ago is yet another misleading term of art, in a society already hagridden with them. Lawyer Felos seems to agree — but it is odd to hear him, of all people, admit it. [Nicholas Strakon] (March 30, 2005)

Terri Schiavo passed away on March 31, 2005.

The usual two-week embargo has been lifted from this column, and it has been posted to the Sobran's site. (March 2005)

The "fiery libertarian." In Newsweek's issue of March 21, reporters Michael Hirsh and Richard Wolffe assess John Bolton's nomination as the new U.S. proconsul at the United Nations, and they point out that Bolton "has spent most of his career blasting the United Nations in public, calling it an example of global government gone wild." ("Ruffling Feathers: An undiplomatic diplomat may tip the balance on Iran," p. 32) Elsewhere I've seen Bolton described as an "anti-diplomat."

A foe of the UN! An "anti-diplomat"! Well, the Birchers will be overjoyed. And not only they: libertarians, too — for Hirsh and Wolffe go on to tell us that the old apparatchik is a "fiery libertarian." Now, they do, strangely enough, name former UN proconsul Jeane Kirkpatrick as one of Bolton's "fans" — Kirkpatrick, whom I've always considered a fiery authoritarian — but doubtless this is just another case of imperialism making strange bedfellows, and not to be worried over.

Enough comedy. If the imperial regime has named a fierce UN critic as its proconsul on Turtle Bay, it must have one of two aims. Either it is seeking to tighten the empire's reins on the UN, which it created for imperial purposes in 1945 but which often behaves in a less than ideally puppetlike manner; or it is seeking to further marginalize the outfit, seeing it as a fatally outmoded instrument of world management.

Whichever is the case, the imperials certainly wish to avoid, in the future, the sort of inconvenience they suffered in early 2003 when the UN failed to fall to the floor worshipfully in the face of the planned U.S. invasion and conquest of Iraq. And that may serve as a hint that the Likudniks currently in control of the Empire aren't finished with their invasions and conquests. Or at least with their brutish intimidation of other countries: keep in mind that business about tipping the balance on Iran. I ought to mention that in addition to describing Bolton as a "libertarian," the Newsweek scribes also label him a "superhawk."

Hirsh and Wolffe aren't exactly helping us understand what's going on, in setting Bolton up as a libertarian. But immediately I have to take that back. They have helped me understand one thing only too well, and you may take this as a P.S. to my previous comments on our strategic linguistic defeats: the word libertarian is gone, just gone. [Nicholas Strakon, ANARCHIST] (March 2005)

Well, they've got one boot on the ground, anyway. Have you caught any of Minitrue's recent stories about maimed legionaries being semi-repaired and sent back into combat? Including amputees? The Ministry is representing it as a joint breakthrough in military medicine and humanitarianism. It strikes me, though, as a fairly desperate resort for an imperial military that is fast running out of warriors who still have all their original parts. Something's got to give. [Nicholas Strakon] (March 2005)

Could the Central Committee please straighten out the party line? On March 11, WANE-TV, the Fort Wayne CBS affiliate, ran a feature by CNN reporter Gary Tuchman on the question of whether men and women find different things funny, and if so, why. Sorority sisters were paired up with fraternity brothers to watch a variety of comic material, and in terms of responding to humor, Tuchman observed that "more often than not, our couples looked like they were watching different programs."

In a cut to the de rigueur academic snippet, psychologist Ed Dunkleblau, an "expert on humor," proposed that "genetically, the thing that allows people [males] to like the Three Stooges is the same thing that requires them to hold the [TV] remote." Discounting the routine and gratuitous male-bashing, meditate on that word "genetically." In certain very similar contexts, it's almost as unspeakable as the "n" word.

CNNster Tuchman said that "culture, of course, is a major determinant of what males and females laugh at, but some in the medical field believe the way our brains are wired may have something to do with it, too." Cut to another academic snippet, this time featuring Dr. Ruben Gur of the University of Pennsylvania, who said: "It appears that men and women have very different, not just cognitive styles, but perhaps more importantly, emotional styles."

Neither Dunkleblau nor Gur was represented as a wild-haired thoughtcriminal.

What actually spurred me to write this observation more than anything else was the black female newsreader's intro to Tuchman's story: "We all know men and women think differently." Ah, yes: "We all know."

But in Minitrue's coverage of the latest Lawrence Summers Scandal at Harvard, it was not casually presumed that "we all know." Quite the contrary! As you may recall, the Harvard prexy broached the possibility that inborn differences in men's and women's brains — genetically based differences — naturally give rise to different cognitive styles when it comes to the study of math and science. The Red harpy-academics at Harvard erupted in a firestorm. And Minitrue dutifully reported Summers's ideas as incandescently controversial — not as something that "we all know."

That "we all know" bit really gets me. In a country and in a climate where a wide range of opinion was encouraged and welcomed, the radically different import of the CNN story and the Harvard harpy firestorm would be unremarkable. But we don't enjoy such a climate here in the birthplace of the First Amendment, where the ruling class controls Big Academia and Big Media, and all the respectable Little People immediately hop into the tall grass and shiver like rabbits in the presence of dissident opinion. Thus my puzzlement. How can this CNN "deviationism," which is so obvious to me, be so invisible to almost everyone else? What's going on?

It's my guess that what we see here isn't really a crooked party line so much as something I've diagnosed before: the result of epistemological chaos, strenuously and relentlessly promoted among the people. It's bad enough that Americans have been rendered incapable of recognizing radically different contexts, leading them — for instance — to believe that failing to pay one's "fair share" in taxes amounts to Theft from the People, and that unprovoked attacks on foreign countries are a form of self-defense. But even worse, Americans have been rendered incapable of recognizing similar contexts: that is, rendered incapable of generalizing. In this particular case, they are expected to recognize a superficial difference in context — a humorous story about humor versus a serious story about serious human traits — while at the same time remaining oblivious to a substantial similarity of context.

Now as intellectual ducking-and-diving goes, that's pretty intricate, and don't ask me exactly how it is accomplished. I'm still trying to figure all of that out — how we are educated to be exquisitely sensitive to precisely where thoughtcrime resides, and how we are trained to unreflectively and automatically blank out potentially dangerous mental connections before they reach the level of full consciousness. Unquestionably it is a great triumph on the part of the Polite Totalitarians. Now that most media consumers and schooling-victims have been rendered incapable of coherent thought, our supervisors don't have to keep tabs on every little deviation and squash it, all too publicly. Our masters can celebrate the simulacrum of free expression without being skewered by the real thing. [*] [Nicholas Strakon] (March 2005)

Another strategic theft, another strategic defeat. In his recent essay "George Washington: The dark side," Henry Gallagher Fields writes of how thieving consolidationists obliged true federalists to resort to the term "Anti-Federalist," and he goes on to describe "the dismal American tradition whereby Lincoln could orate about defending self-determination while pulverizing its remnants in the Southern States; socialists could steal the term 'liberal'; and technocratic tinkerers could steal the term 'libertarian.'" That type of strategic thievery isn't committed only by Americans. The theft of "liberal" by socialists, for example, actually began in England and Germany.

Now I've come across a passage in James Billington's Fire in the Minds of Men that reminds me of something I started to recognize in my college days when I was a left-libertarian: "socialism" and "socialist" themselves represent an important act of — well, I'll say misappropriation instead of theft, because no one else previously "owned" the terms. Billington writes:

[Saint Simon's] followers in the 1830s first gave widespread use not only to the word "socialism" but also — in the course of 1831 alone — to "socialize," "socialization," and socializing the instruments of labor. These usages were at times only an extension of older Saint-Simonian terms like organization and association, but they carried new suggestions of social control and of challenge to liberal individualism. (p. 216)

Early American individualist-anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker opposed "capitalism" as it was developing in the 19th century (i.e., state-capitalism), and they even misguidedly attacked some elements of real capitalism, such as interest and rent. But as I recall from my reading of Tucker (in my college days), he associated himself with the label "socialist" not only because of his critique of capitalism but also because he saw plainly, and insisted upon, the distinction between society and the state. I myself, owing to Tucker's influence, began sometimes describing myself as a "socialist," proclaiming that "socialist," rightly understood, was synonymous with "anarchist."

Some other young libertarians of the day were on the same wavelength. At the big antiwar demo in Washington in April 1971, the Radical Libertarian Alliance comrades with whom I marched described themselves to the surrounding statist-leftists as "people's market socialists." Now you may detect, in that, a bit of sucking up to the Left (also known as creative "outreach"), but I think the RLA guys were sincere. The actual leftists (and drugged-out hippies) around us, though, just scratched their hairy heads. Some probably assumed we were spies for John Mitchell who hadn't quite got the lingo down pat — along the lines of undercover cops trying to infiltrate the Yippies while wearing buzz-cuts and white socks.

What lesson did I learn from that, comrades? The lesson that important linguistic defeats are irreversible. They are permanent, out in the great world, or at least as permanent as any social phenomenon can be. What, then, is to be done? As I see it, we ought to continue to protect our own language and talk plainly among ourselves — and try to do it without becoming utterly unintelligible to the people around us. A tall order, I admit, in our era of epistemological chaos. (What edition of the Newspeak Dictionary are we on now?) Here's a taller order. Though we won't able to stop further Orwellian thefts and reversals in popular language, we can try getting something across to the few who may heed us: Our rulers distribute, to the ruled, subsidies and welfare "benefits," and we know what those things really are; but the language distributed by the ruling intelligentsia is often stolen property, too. And stolen property of the most profoundly corrupting kind: the kind that actually prevents thought.

Yes, you'll probably just be rewarded with more head-scratching. But you never know — enough massaging of the scalp, and a fellow may eventually jostle some brain cells into waking up. [Nicholas Strakon]

James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980)

(March 2005)

Once again, it's even worse ... At a time when most folks would think you'd have to be just nuts to sign up for the National Guard and be sent to Iraq for God knows how long, we find this story breaking in the Indianapolis Star:  "National Guard recruiter charged in sexual assaults:  Westfield man indicted by Hamilton County authorities for allegedly assaulting six young women he enlisted,"  by James A. Gillaspy (February 28). Here's a slice:

"These were very young women who were being recruited out of high school classes," said Hamilton County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp. "Most of these activities took place either before they signed up as an actual recruit for the National Guard or just after their recruitment had been established but before they left for basic training."

•  Follow-up story in the Star (March 1).

Meditate a moment on the import of the reporters' lead sentence. And also on the irony of those No Child Left Behind provisions. [NS, March 5]

Do these people hear what they're saying? On March 1, the last day for bills originating in the Indiana House to be approved and sent to the Senate, all the House Democrats walked out and stayed out, forestalling a quorum and derailing 132 bills, including the hotly debated Daylight Saving Time proposal. (The Republicans did the same thing a year ago when they were in the minority and were blocked in trying to pass some anti-homosexualist legislation.)

On March 2, in the course of reporting the story, a newsreader for the Fort Wayne CBS-TV affiliate declared that "Republicans control both the House and the Senate."

Uh, no. The most salient implication of the very story the poor fellow was trying to report is that Republicans do not control the House. Right? All they have is a majority there, which clearly they have been unable (or unwilling) to translate into control. I've seen the same moronic error many times in news coverage of the U.S. Congress. It must originate from assumptions about democracy and "majority rule" that have failed to evolve beyond the kindergarten level.

Now, I'm not asking for political analysis of a Machiavellian subtlety. I'll settle for ordinary logic and the ordinary use of ordinary words on the part of those journalistas, and other adults, who managed to graduate from kindergarten. But I'm being a little subtle here myself: Imagine the upheaval that would result if, in thinking about politics and government, people did rely on ordinary habits of mind! [Nicholas Strakon]

P.S. Naturally, in refusing to do their job as lawfakers the Democrats struck a blow for liberty. Here's one example. Among the bills derailed was one that would have denied work permits and driver's licenses to those leaving school before age 18. Actually these bills are as hard to kill as a vampire, but if we're lucky, this forced-schooling measure is one little blood-sucker that will not rise from the grave. (Yes, I know: work permits and driver's licenses are pretty noxious to begin with. Ihre Papiere, bitte!) [NS] (March 2005)

A Best Picture worse than we could have imagined. My first warning about "Million Dollar Baby" centered on the insidiousness of the moviemakers' exploiting the heroic-struggle-for-success-against-all-odds theme to promote the creepy and nasty "sport" of female boxing. On the surface "Baby" looked like a cinematic example of what Ayn Rand called romantic realism — a portrayal of life as it can be and ought to be — and people nowadays are just starved for that sort of thing. If people are starving they can be more easily tricked into consuming good-looking garbage.

Thanks to a couple of brave and honest critics, even those who swore a blood oath never to see "Baby" now know the "secret" of the film, and know also that, as usual, the truth is even worse than they could have imagined.

Two-thirds of the way through, the heroic female-boxer character, played by Hilary Swank, takes a bad hit while fighting, and falls and bangs her head — and she spends the rest of the movie paralyzed from the neck down. She has to have a leg amputated. She begs the Clint Eastwood character to murder her, and he finally does.

So much for romantic realism. Imagine an alternate Atlas Shrugged in which, two-thirds of the way through, the minions of Mr. Thompson turned John Galt into a C-4 quad, and Galt spent the rest of the book pleading with Dagny Taggart to murder him. Imagine also that neither the reviews nor the blurb on the book's cover mentioned that odd little plot turn, which abruptly cut every bit of ground out from under the book's apparent theme. Do you suppose one or two readers yearning for a story of human efficacy and achievement might have felt betrayed?

Enraged, even?

In "Million Dollar Baby" Hollywood has managed to give us a Best Picture that is execrable in the sight of both Christians and Randians. Quite an accomplishment. What a stinkfest. It's past time for Eastwood to retire; he's betrayed everything he once stood for. [Nicholas Strakon]

One might think that "Baby" could have at least one wholesome and beneficent effect: discouraging young female viewers from participating in such an insane and degraded "sport," in view of the catastrophe that befalls the Swank character. But what do you want to bet we'll soon see some wire story or TV report proclaiming the good news that "Million Dollar Baby" has provoked a wild upsurge of interest in boxing among young girls, who are simply flooding into the gyms ...? I don't put money on the fights, but I'd be willing to put money on that. [Modine Herbey]

Unfilm vaporized doubleplusquick. The System doesn't mess around. In a wrap-up on the Oscars that was distributed to CBS affiliates February 28, reporter Manuel Gallegos declared that 2004 was a year "with no really big box-office blockbuster." Whoosh goes "The Passion"! — right down the memory hole. [NS] (February 2005)

Transportation is one of those "commanding heights" that any good totalitarian regime will want to keep its boots firmly planted on, and our own American totalitarians, grimacing at us from behind their goo-goo smiley masks, have long since proved the usefulness of state-managed transportation for exerting social control.

That includes transportation of children, as we all saw during the forced-integration busing crisis. (Forced-integration busing continues, of course, but it's no longer a crisis because no one has enough energy left to protest it, and familiarity has not bred contempt but instead extinguished it.) A suburban Fort Wayne school district — Southwest Allen County Schools — now steps forward, stomping its boots and rattling its armor, to remind us how commanding this particular commanding height can be.

On January 19 (the birthday of Robert E. Lee and Lysander Spooner, as it happens) the suburban district adopted a program of random drug testing for students who participate in extracurricular activities or who enjoy the "privilege" of driving themselves to and from school. Students who decline to surrender to this atrocious invasion of their person will lose their driving "privilege." (See "SACS Approves Drug Testing Policy," WANE-TV News, January 19, 2005.)

As I always say Ronn Neff always says, it's always worse than you think. These jumped-up Stalinists have the power to induce most children to attend their schools, by robbing the children's parents of the money they could otherwise use to buy proper education on the market. Now it turns out they also have the power to regulate how their captive customers get themselves to school. You don't want your kid riding the school bus? So you supply him a car and pay for the gas? Well, don't expect anyone to thank you for freeing up a seat on the old kid-hack. No, they'll thank you for something else — you've just driven your kid even farther under the School Stalinist heel.

How did these smelly little tyrants get this power? When did they get it? How deeply were we sleeping when they got it?

One poor girl quoted by WANE-TV — she's a senior at Homestead High School — sees nothing wrong with the program, saying, "I have nothing to hide. The people who don't have anything to hide aren't really worried about it."

The education of America's youth proceeds apace. [Nicholas Strakon]

Comment. Since most state schools in the suburbs have isolated themselves on their own sprawling compound — oops, I mean campus — these Stalinists must actually be talking about parking privileges, since there's probably no legal street parking within blocks or even miles of their drone-factory. I guess you could say that control of parking can be a commanding height of a commanding height. [Modine Herbey] (February 2005)

The symbols that are fashionable among the trendy, cool, and celebrated can clue us in to what's happening in the culture at large. Twenty years ago no one who was trendy, cool, and celebrated would dare wear any Christian iconography. Ankhs, yes; crucifixes or rosaries, yecch! In those days, the overall cultural atmosphere was still sufficiently Christian that someone might actually have blundered and accused a Beautiful Person of being a Christian! Or at least of being Christian-tolerant. That would have been excruciatingly embarrassing at best, and if the trend-worshipping masses had believed the accusation, why, the Beautiful Person would have risked being demoted to Ugly Personhood, if not Unpersonhood.

You've come a long way, Damien. The Beautiful People aren't worried any longer, if we're to believe a little item I saw in my local paper's features section, based on wire reports:

Before, it was Madonna with her Kabbalah yarn bracelets. Now it's Britney and Becks [soccer star David Beckham] with their rosaries.

When they and other trendy celebs started wearing rosaries as necklaces last fall, sales of the beads boomed in Europe.

"Rosaries are the new pearls," declared one fashionable blog. ("Glorious mystery," Fort Wayne [Ind.] News-Sentinel, February 4, p. 1F)

Catholic clergy are unimpressed.

I am impressed, though. In 2005 the overall de-Christianization of the West has apparently progressed far enough that the Beautiful People are no longer afraid of being taken for Christians — because none of their admirers, however moronic, is likely to make that mistake any longer. In the metropolitan mind, Christian symbols are receding into the realm of mere fashion, becoming trivial trinkets and baubles signifying nothing beyond themselves. [Nicholas Strakon]

There may be more to it, Strakon. Some of the Beautifolk may not actually be indifferent to Christianity. They may be flaunting those rosaries in order to show contempt for Christianity. [Modine Herbey] (February 2005)

The war against drug users  is a war against everyone. We see that demonstrated anew in the latest proposals from our little totalitarian lawfakers. Being considered in both the Indiana General Assembly and the U.S. Senate are bills that would remove common OTC cold medicines from the shelves and hide them away, back in the pharmacist's fortress. The Senate bill is being sponsored by none other than Evan Bayh (D-Goldman Sachs), who was re-anointed by freedom-indifferent Indiana voters in November.

Some leading cold meds, you see, contain pseudoephedrine, a chemical that is used in making methamphetamine, which is the latest Demon Drug that the Authorities are all upset about. If the bills pass, you'll have to queue up and request the meds from your pharmacist, showing whatever "proper" ID the state may permit you to have, and letting the state-drone behind the counter take it down and send it in to the Drug Police.

One area pharmacist was interviewed about the scheme, and he said there would be no problem in implementing it. That's because all the high-tech gear for communicating with the Drug Police and sending them information about customers is already in place at drugstores.

Good to know they're looking after us this way. (Better stock up on Vitamin C while it's still legal.)

By the way, since Bayh the bankers' and war-contractors' tool is involved in the Senate bill, it won't surprise you to learn that there is a fascist element to this totalitarianism. It would award special privilege to pharmacies, by leaving convenience stores that sell common cold meds ... well, out in the cold. They're not wedded intimately enough, electronically or otherwise, to the Central Authorities. [Nicholas Strakon]

Follow-up. According to an Associated Press story February 20, bills controlling cold medicines are pending in at least 26 states; and the controls are already law in Oklahoma. An important provision of the "model bill" that I originally neglected to mention is its restriction on the quantity of cold meds any one customer could buy at a time. [NS] (February 2005)

In the "debate" over Social Security, we hear the Democrats say over and over that Social Security is not an investment plan, but an insurance plan; nevertheless they voice their support for expanding the opportunities for Americans to invest. At the same time they explain that there would be no problems with Social Security (until 2074 or so) if the president's tax cuts would just be reversed.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that expanding opportunities for investment might have something to do with reducing taxes.

As for the Republicans, no matter how much they talk about "ownership," the one suggestion they will not be giving any consideration whatever to — neither, for that matter, will any of the libertarian policy wonks who take part — is to make participation in Social Security voluntary.

It doesn't seem to occur to them that if the people who wanted out were allowed to get out Republicans would have fewer difficulties finessing those so-called transition costs. [Ronn Neff] (February 2005)

OK, we're not even going to try unpacking this one. As we've noted previously, there's a move afoot in the Indiana General Assembly for a constitutional amendment to keep state officials from licensing the live-in liaisons of homosexual couples ("gay marriage"). On February 8, while testifying against the proposed ban, an advocate of homosexualism asserted that Hoosier "gays and lesbians" were over in Mesopotamia "fighting for our freedom" and asked, rhetorically, what kind of "freedom" those heroes and heroines were going to find back here at home.

Sorry if that makes your head swim. (February 2005)

The other night I was stopped by one of the larger and more dangerous gangs in Fairfax County, Va. They have been in existence for a long time and most of my neighbors don't mind them. What I'm saying is that I had to pass through a police checkpoint to get home. The peace officer who required me to stop without charging me with having committed a crime and who demanded (politely, to his way of thinking) to see my state-issued permission to operate the vehicle I purchased without his help was a youngish man. He explained that there had been a fair amount of gang violence in the neighborhood recently. What that had to do with me he never said. But it is true that there has been a fair amount of gang violence nearby lately — in an adjacent neighborhood made up of rental units occupied mostly by Salvadorans. And I am told that some of the younger boys in my neighborship may be members, which I guess is a crime.

I remarked that with all the bright lights that were set up in the middle of the street and with all the police cars flashing their rack lights, it seemed to me unlikely that the police would catch many gang members; they'd just intercept a bunch of old farts like me. The peace officer smiled, lowered his voice, and said, "We have a saying: we only catch the dumb ones."

He returned my permission to operate my vehicle and wished me a good night.

I was not in the least bothered by any of this. I understood perfectly:

Here were a bunch of cops — about 10 — who were working a completely safe detail. They were all armed. They were many. And they weren't likely to actually have to deal with any gang members. Those "dumb ones" who did stray into their net would be likely to be docile and compliant. The peace officers themselves were probably safer at this checkpoint than any of them would have been if they'd been out stopping speeders or drivers who coasted through stop signs.

So here you have these guys hanging out with their buds for a few hours, more than half a mile from where the violence actually was taking place. They get to shoot the breeze with the guys they hang out with anyway. Many of them were probably collecting overtime pay. Heck, they could even have had a few pizzas delivered. ("What's that address, sir?" "Never mind. You can't miss us.") Assuming the delivery guy didn't look like a gang member. In the end, they took down all their equipment and went home. Or out for a couple of beers. And the people in my neighborhood will all breathe a sigh of relief at this display of power and protection. "At least the police are doing something," they will say. How often do peace officers get patted on the back for doing virtually nothing?

What's not to like? [Ronn Neff] (February 2005)

Republicans have across-the-board majorities in the new Indiana General Assembly, and they've reintroduced a measure to place a ban on homo marriage into the state constitution. There's already a statutory ban in place, but the Republicans are insisting a constitutional amendment is necessary, on the theory, it appears, that a constitutional provision is less vulnerable to being chewed up in court by the homo lobby. (Ha, ha. Grownups have their little fantasies, too.)

Naturally the homo lobby is being heard from. On February 1 the CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne, WANE-TV, quoted a spokesman for the Indiana Civil Liberties Union to the effect that there are 1,300 "federal benefits" available to state-licensed normal couples but not available to homosexuals, because their liaisons are currently unlicensable. Naturally the homos want their share of the more-lucrative variety of "civil liberties."

Really, it all comes down to the swag these days, doesn't it? [Nicholas Strakon] (February 2005)

From Doug Olson's Freak Files: It's not the hate, it's the honkies. A bizarre series of events at Wooster College, an 1,800-student liberal-arts institution 60 miles south of Cleveland, provides an important glimpse at the truth about "hate crimes": it's not "hate" that the anti-haters hate, it's white people.

Last fall, two dormitories fell victim to graffiti. Most of it was embarrassingly inane, such as crude drawings of penises, references to "eel semen" and "F*ck the hippie bullsh*t," but a Jewish and black roommate combo received a swastika and an "I hate minorities" in dry-erase marker on their message board. That made it a "hate crime."

The campus was in an immediate uproar. The college president pronounced himself "dismayed and angered," and wrote that "we cannot and will not tolerate actions ... that are intended to intimidate." The student paper demanded that the hate-criminals be expelled. At a forum, students cried and told how "p*ssed" and scared they were.

Who did it? "A typical white male," tolerant, non-judgmental freshman Kamilla Fellah recalls thinking. "Those bastards!"

Then, nearly two months later, the perps themselves called a meeting to unmask themselves. There were six, described by Cleveland Scene as "men and women, gay and straight, women's studies and philosophy majors. One of them was Jewish. They were all sorry."

They included Stephanie Wedryl, ethnically unidentified, and Megan Mitchell, a senior double-majoring in philosophy and black studies. (Note the pointed absence of "black and white" in the Scene's description, as well as the omission of the black-studies reference.)

The students claimed that they had been promised leniency for confessing. They had been drunk, were trying to be funny, and hadn't realized that one of their victims was Jewish.

How odd it was, then, that running randomly amuck they managed to place the swastika with a Jewish student! But how convenient that they happened to do their work with dry-erase markers on message boards, avoiding any messy charges of actual property damage. In that respect, at least, some Higher Power really must look after drunks.

Following their confessions, the vengeful crowd melted. "If I were in your position, it would take a lot of courage," said one onlooker. "I'm pretty sure that you are good people," gushed another.

The wrathful student paper quickly withdrew its demand for expulsion: "Even though this is a very serious crime, it is important to address it through education, rather than through just outcasting [sic] these people." The president suddenly became "tolerant," and he suspended, rather than expelled, the miscreants, who can return in 2006.

It goes without saying that a gang of white males who made precisely the same confession, in the same forum, under the same circumstances, would have been lucky to escape with their disgusting pale skins intact. The only difference was the ethnicity, religion, (homo)sexuality, and leftist politics of the perps — which was enough to turn all the useful idiots' fears and tears into empathy and compassion. "White bad, nonwhite good" is the inexorable lesson — even when the nonwhites are demonstrably not good, and the whites are demonstrably innocent.

Like nearly all phony "hate crimes" these days — and especially those on campuses — the truth about the perpetrators will be buried deeper and more completely than any Egyptian pharaoh. You read it here — but just try to find it anywhere else outside north-central Ohio! [Douglas Olson]
 

Comment. Didn't it strike anyone as suspicious that the supposed "hate message" was expressed in politically correct language? What sort of racist would actually say "I hate minorities" when there are plenty of pungent ethnic, racial, and religious insults within the vastness of the English language? [Malcolm Reynolds] (February 2005)

Strength through Joy. If you have any doubt that the Washington Times is nothing more or less than the Völkischer Beobachter of our times (the New York Post is Der Stürmer), get a load of the print-edition headline for January 31, in about 90-point bold, no less:

JOY EXPLODES ACROSS IRAQ

Nothing biased there! On the other hand, one might find the use of the word "explode" an unfortunate choice, considering the context. [David T. Wright]

$80 billion more in stolen money. That's what they want to spend over there now. $80 billion more. $80 billion more. $80 billion more.

$80 billion more.

Dispassion. In deciding on the latest Oscar nominations, the Academy has denied "The Passion of the Christ" recognition in any major category, tossing Gibson's blockbuster two minor noms and one middling nom (for musical score). Maybe Christians and Christian-friendlies shouldn't get too indignant over this snub. Sometimes it's better — cleaner, at least — to go unrecognized by one's enemies. As a compulsive moviegoer (movie-renter, actually), I'm not yet ready to "secede" from Hollywood, but maybe we ought to thank the Hollywood Establishment for reminding us how definitively they have seceded from us. [Nicholas Strakon]

Boots off the ground. In preparing the "Died-in-Vain Watch" for the week of January 16-22, I was struck by the ratio of U.S. legionaries wounded to those killed. It was about 17 to 1. (120 WIA vs. 7 KIA.) I believe that in World War II the ratio was only about 2 to 1.

It's very difficult to kill an imperial legionary these days. Most observers are satisfied to celebrate the sophistication of the military's modern medical service, pointing out that unless a soldier is killed outright, immediate evacuation from the front and 21st-century trauma techniques are highly likely to ensure his survival, in one condition or another. (Body armor and other such space-age equipment play a part, too.) But those concerned to assess the success or failure of the Iraqi and Afghani insurgencies may want to look through the other end of the telescope. In college I knew an Army veteran who had been a company armorer for a time and seemed to possess an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge about military small arms, especially pistols. He claimed that in choosing a pistol caliber the European militaries operated under a philosophy different from that of the U.S. military. At the time, the U.S. military still issued the Colt Model 1911 in .45 ACP, while European militaries (including those of the Warsaw Pact) preferred pistols firing the 9mm Parabellum.

According to my friend, the U.S. military — after its nasty experience with hopped-up Filipino guerrillas bursting out of the bush swinging bolos — chose the .45 for its immediate stopping power: the big, heavy, rather slow bullet struck with tremendous shock, and one result was that a good body shot tended to kill the insurgent.

The Europeans, expecting conventional forces in line of battle to be the more exigent threat, went with the 9mm, a higher-velocity round with greater penetrating power that tended to wound more often than kill. My friend claimed that the Europeans actually preferred that result, because wounding a soldier placed a heavier burden on the enemy — on its transport and medical services — than simply killing him would have.

Now, I recognize that part of this story, as it concerns the Europeans' ratiocination, has to be bogus. Pistols have a negligible tactical effect; at least that is so in modern warfare, whether conventional or counterinsurgency. Usually pistols are issued exclusively to officers, and mostly just as morale-sustainers. What I'm focusing on is the burdensome effect of "merely" wounding enemy soldiers rather than killing them. That sounds true.

At least it is true enough that we shouldn't neglect, as many seem to be doing, the mounting totals of WIA in the Likudniks' Mesopotamian adventure. 120 in a single week! Those soldiers were removed as effectives, and in addition to the financial cost of transporting and caring for them, some proportion of them won't ever be returning to battle. The loss of those, in terms of operations, is just as absolute as if they had been killed. Amid all the praise for the Empire's ultra-modern trauma care and next-generation Kevlar, we'd better not forget the financial and tactical costs of a legionary's "merely" being wounded. Our imperial supervisors would be happy if we did forget them; in this as in so much else, they depend on our forgetfulness. [Nicholas Strakon] (January 2005)

The accountability moment. Who could have thought that George W. Bush, renowned for his inability to speak in coherent sentences, could actually come up with a Clintonism that was better than many uttered by the notorious Bill Clinton himself?

Remember how Clinton's facile explanations and twinkle-toed dodging used to have the right-wingers tearing their hair out in frustration? Well, now Bush seems to have gotten the knack for that kind of thing as well. It's true that he'll never be as slick as Clinton (or slick at all, for that matter), and, since he's capable only of a kind of painful-looking smirk, he can't hope to duplicate Billy-Boy's patented coprophagous grin. But Clinton himself must have shaken his head with admiration at Bush's latest response to a hard (well, semi-hard) question.

In an interview with the Washington Post published January 16, Bush declared that there was no need to hold anyone accountable for the massive, burgeoning disaster of the U.S. war against the Iraqis. "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," he said. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

There you go. Bush won the election, therefore anything that was an issue before the election is settled. He doesn't have to answer to anybody. If Richard Nixon were still alive, he'd be slapping his forehead and muttering, "Why didn't I think of that?"

But that's not all. In response to a question on why the Empire has been unable to run the Evildoing Fiend Osama bin Laden to ground, despite the fact that the United State invaded and occupied an entire country in a purported effort to do just that, Bush's response was clear, concise, and irrefutable:

"Because he's hiding."

Zowie! And Sniegoski says he's stupid! [David T. Wright]

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Our Great Teacher and Philosopher of Democracy. I'll go further than the esteemed Mr. Wright and declare that Little Bush has proved himself a truthteller and sage, far more percipient and profound in his understanding than the intellectual flyweights of the media who proclaimed, after the late election, that Bush voters had meant to vote only for "moral values" or only for two SUVs in every garage — for anything, that is, but the war. Professor Doctor Bush knows that a voter's compunctions and complicated motives don't matter; however half-hearted a voter may be with respect to one or another aspect of a candidate, his vote cannot be. It's all or nothing. A winning pol has a perfect right to claim that the voters have endorsed his policies across the board, during that pitiful "accountability moment" the System permits them, and that's doubly so when the pol has established a record on the basis of those policies.

Democracy is Glorious, isn't it? [Nicholas Strakon]

Nonfalsifiability, here we come.  According to CBS News on January 18, the Empire is now saying that if some Iraqis vote on January 30, The System Will Have Worked. The Wee Emperor himself was even bolder, saying that even if Iraqis are too scared to dodge the explosions on the way to the polls, and decide to stay home, "They wanna vote, and that's important." [Henry Gallagher Fields] (January 2005)

David T. Wright has once again confected an image that our imperial masters may or may not appreciate. We're pretty sure you will, though. (January 2005)

Million-dollar poison. The movie "Million Dollar Baby," just released, is garnering universal praise from the consensus world for its portrayal of a low-class — "trailer-park trash" — young woman's heroic struggle to achieve self-fulfillment. It stars the brilliant and appealing Oscar-winner Hilary Swank, and it is directed by the brilliant and appealing Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood, who also plays the male lead. Perennial Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman is in it, too. I probably won't catch the flick in the theater, but I doubt I'll be able to resist renting it when it comes out on video.

I should resist, though. The movie deals with female boxing.

For those of us who have kept a wary eye on the explosion of female athletics over the past couple of decades, "Million Dollar Baby" represents another ugly milestone on the highway to the post-Western dystopia. For many years, visitors to New Orleans have been able to sample "nude female mud-wrestling," but lately a somewhat cleaned-up, semi-nude form of female wrestling has achieved enormous popularity on the mass-mind telescreen. Can coed wrestling or boxing be far behind? Already we hear of a schoolgirl's feministically demanding to be allowed to play football with the boys.

Given the collapse of chivalry and decency among American males, and the decline of simple normality in so many men's sexual thinking, I fear we may be seeing a convergence of female athletics with an especially vile form of violent, sadistic pornography. In particular, I fear that "Million Dollar Baby," represented as an inspiring drama of heroic endeavor, will fertilize certain awful impulses among many male viewers.

The anti-culture practiced by Hollywood already puts real-life young ladies in danger when it shows little 120-pound women flipping through the air, strutting about with karate kicks, and pounding 250-pound musclemen — also expert in karate — into the pavement. May God forbid that girls who consume those movies and TV shows ever come to believe that such cartoonish nonsense depicts reality. And may God forbid that boys who consume the same crud ever come to assume that girls may be freely manhandled and slapped around, because, after all, They can take it. They fight, don't they? (And play coed football?)

You've come a long way, baby, since "The Perils of Pauline."

Those of us determined to revive our Westernness have no difficulty smelling, and spurning, garbage movies starring Adam Sandler or Pam Anderson. More tempting, and insidious, are movies that are exquisitely crafted, heroically themed, brilliantly acted — and equally poisonous to our mores. [Nicholas Strakon]

Roger Ebert says "Baby" is "the best film of the year."
 

Comment. The ultra-violence of our time is in itself one clear sign of our collapse, but a sad corollary is the fact that many young women feel the need to learn karate or other martial arts, or adopt the .45-caliber alternative (my own resort). I'll always enjoy shooting (paper targets), but I do have to ask: Where are our male champions? [Modine Herbey] (January 2005)

I get tired of it, too, but these days we dissidents have to point out the obvious over and over and over again. The obvious point this time is that U.S. government aid to the victims of the South Asian tsunami is not charitable and is not benevolent; its only moral import derives from the fact that it is made possible by robbery, extortion, and fraud. It is nothing more than the distribution of stolen property. Charity and benevolence are inherently voluntary; they do not survive at the point of a gun.

Those unimpressed by moral arguments may wish to reflect on the fact that fake government "charity" literally has the effect of suppressing real charity: less wealth is available to the truly charitable among the productive members of society. And when approached for donations the productive may be forgiven for saying, "No, sorry, I gave at the IRS." [Nicholas Strakon]

Let's at least be adults about this and recognize that, whatever Washington is pretending to do on the "charitable" front, it's actually doing it for reasons of state. [Modine Herbey] (January 2005)

I've been waiting patiently for someone to mount a major new production of The Merchant of Venice so I could pass along a little historical tidbit I stumbled across a year or so ago. It's time: a movie version starring Al Pacino as Shylock has just come out, and once again we're hearing the mandatory characterizations of Merchant as an inherently anti-Semitic play.

In his nonfiction book If Britain Had Fallen (1972), Norman Longmate includes a lengthy account of the German occupation of the British Channel Islands, and he tells what happened when an amateur theatrical group on Jersey innocently decided to put on a production of Merchant (p. 160). The local German propaganda chief became "very angry and literally foamed at the mouth," according to the actor playing Shylock. Longmate says the official saw the production as "an attack on German policy." The actor told Longmate that "it never entered our heads that The Merchant was any different to [sic] any other Shakespeare play."

Part of the Germans' reaction seems to have been provoked by what they saw as this particular actor's "sympathetic" portrayal of Shylock — but doesn't that in itself contradict the idea that the play is "inherently" anti-Semitic?

In any case, aren't the Nazis the expert practitioners when it comes to anti-Semitism? Establishmentarians might want to read a little history before issuing their facile defamations. (Sorry if I've proposed something like that before.) [Nicholas Strakon] (January 2005)
 

2004

Published 2005 by WTM Enterprises.