Naughty Words

     Have you noticed how many persons – how many supposed Americans – have come out against freedom of speech lately? The media are almost unanimous against it. The following example is typical:

     Looks like Pamela Geller will get her wish: More dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims. Hell, the hatemonger finally even got ISIS to pay attention to her.

     Last week Geller — whose repulsive anti-Muslim ad campaign caused the MTA to ban all religious, opinion and political ads — held a $10,000 contest in Texas. The aim? To draw caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which she knows is forbidden by most Muslims and frowned upon by the rest.

     The result? Two violent radical Muslims opened fire on the group, and the shooters ended up dead at the hands of the police. Yesterday ISIS claimed credit and vowed to kill more Americans.

     Violence and its ugly brother, violent protest, is the lowest form of human expression and runs counter to what most of the great religious and philosophical prophets, from Jesus to Muhammad to Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, preached.

     But so is hate-filled propaganda against any one religion. Geller, like ISIS and al Qaeda, revel in hate and nothing would make any of them happier than to be the catalyst for the killing of hundreds of innocent Americans to prove a point. Geller would be a hero to the hateful. Damn the cost in innocent lives, damn the heartache.

     So if Muslim savages run amok murdering innocent Americans, it will be Pamela Geller’s fault for offending them! Amazing! Does this principle apply to domestic violence? If she says something that offends him, and he strikes – or kills – her for it, is her injury or death “her fault?” Or is that different somehow?

     But perhaps that’s a bridge we shouldn’t cross, being civilized and all. (I omit any Muslims that happen to be in the audience.) If memory serves, the First Amendment was enacted with a particular purpose: to protect the freedom of speech of the press. It looks to your humble commentator as if a lot of “journalists” feel they don’t need it any longer. (Let’s pass in silence over the inclusion of Muhammad, seventh-century fantasist, poseur, warlord, slaver, multiple adulterer, and pedophile, in the ranks of “great religious and philosophical prophets.”)

     Even Fox News, supposedly a media bastion of American principles, is giving space to such sentiments:

     Pseudo-conservative Bill O’Reilly opined as follows:

     O’Reilly burnished his own anti-jihadist credentials as he said, “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid… It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to defeating the savage jihad.”

     In fact, O’Reilly argued that it actually “hurts the cause” to fight jihad, and Laura Ingraham agreed with him that it isn’t “beneficial.” Neither of them discounted the importance of the free speech, but as far as O’Reilly’s concerned, that’s “not in play” here.

     Oh? Why isn’t freedom of speech “in play” here? Does O’Reilly even understand the concept?

     (Apropos of nothing much, apparently holding a celebration of the death of a would-be murderer is quite all right. But then, the standards are lowered for camel-raping, goat-fellating savages.)

     Pamela Geller has demonstrated her own dedication to freedom of expression, and has backed it with her personal safety. Let no one be in any doubt about what Muslims would do to her if they had the opportunity:

     Sean [Hannity] had Pamela Geller on with the infamous Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary to discuss whether Geller should be put to death for organizing a cartoon contest.

     Yes, you read that correctly. ISIS has of course, vowed to slaughter Geller and “everyone who houses her events,” and “gives her a platform to spill her filth.” The New York Daily News reported Wednesday night that ISIS said in a posting on a message board that it was sending “all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

     “Our aim was the khanzeer (swine) Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her,” it said.

     Interestingly, Geller told Hannity, the FBI and Homeland Security have not been in touch with her in the wake of these threats.

     Choudary, who has been on Hannity’s show many times before, was asked point-blank, “Do you support this death threat against Pam Geller because she ran a free speech contest?” Via Mediaite:

     Choudary argued there’s a difference between cartoons of Mickey Mouse and cartoons of Muhammad, and said Geller went in “knowing full well” many Muslims consider blasphemy an issue worthy of the death penalty. Hannity went off and shouted, “You want her to die!”

     Choudary said Geller should be put before a court and tried, and she would end up punished. Geller shot back, “To blame me and say that my cartoons are controversial… murdering cartoonists is controversial.”

     Not surprisingly, they ended up getting in a huge shouting match...

     (Geller told him to stop interrupting and at one point said “I know you’re used to stepping over women”), and Choudary told her she “knew the consequences.”

     I have no knowledge of whether anyone, in any public, recorded forum, has asked Choudary whether he regards HAMAS and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, whether Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs, or whether shari’a is the only correct law for Mankind (or whether he himself has ever raped a camel or fellated a goat). Such inquiries are generally considered “inappropriate”...meaning risky.

     It is vital that Islam’s proponents be compelled to expose themselves and their beliefs. It takes both determination and skill; neither alone is sufficient. Consider how shifty were the Muslim participants in this interview:

Rod Dreher: Do you believe that homosexuals convicted in a sharia court should be killed, or otherwise punished physically?

Mohamed Elmougy: I don’t condone homosexuality. I have a lot of friends, a lot of people who work for me, just so you know. I don’t go kill them. But, you know, I don’t condone what they do outside of work, so long as it’s something not in front of me. So do I condone the sharia? We don’t apologize for our religion. If that is what our religion says, we certainly accept it open-heartedly.

Rod Dreher: But what do you think *should* be the authority. That’s what I’m asking. In an ideal situation, would you like to see sharia law be the basis for law in this country, and how would you reconcile that –

Tod Robberson: Or put it another way. In this country, the law of man takes precedence over the law of God. In your opinion, is that the way it should be?

[garbled answer by heavily accented man, saying something to effect that the law is flexible from country to country, but there are some things that we don’t have the authority to change.]

[Ghassan – did not get his last name]: President George Bush feels that he is inspired by God, and based on that he makes his policies. He made that known to us. [crosstalk] President Bush told us that law made by man is not good enough law, that we should be following God’s law.

Rod Dreher: Just describe to me your view, the Islamic view, of sharia. What role should sharia play in this society?

Mohamed Elmougy: [garbled] I don’t sit up all night thinking what the role of sharia needs to be. All I can tell you is that we as American Muslims, living in a non-Muslim country, are ordered to follow the rules of the country that we live in, no matter how much we agree or disagree with. So do I go after you if you’re homosexual, to try to kill you today? No. We haven’t seen that.

So I think to go focus on that and to leave all the other good things that American Muslims are part of, and that the religion is talking about, and only focus on things that to you sound or feel strange is just not the correct approach. Forget paranoid, it’s just not the correct approach. And it does nothing, as I said, but alienate our children from the society that they’re going to be living in, and die in.

     By contrast, consider the following exchange – posted once before – between a young Muslim college student and conservative speaker David Horowitz:

     When compelled, whether incidentally or by their own foolishness, to expose themselves and their vile creed to the world, Muslims show us the true face of evil – and it has nothing to do with Pamela Geller or anyone else staging a “Draw Muhammad” contest. If Islam were not styled a “religion,” it would be regarded as no better than Nazism, with which it shares many specific tenets. (Nota Bene: This is also true of left-liberalism. As Jonah Goldberg once asked an audience of left-liberal college students, “Apart from the genocide, what don’t you like about Nazism?” Of course, many on the Left would endorse genocide on the basis of one’s political leanings. After all, “re-education” isn’t guaranteed to work.)

     But media luminaries such as Bill O’Reilly proclaim that "Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should say it…It is stupid. It accomplishes nothing." His face decorates millions of television screens nightly. Surely we “should” defer to his wisdom, only say what he thinks we “should” say...or think.

     There is a word in all discussions of this matter whose significance is critical: the word should.

     Should is routinely used about consequences: If we do this, then this should happen, or inversely, this other thing should not happen. When we’re discussing a physical process – say, the operation of a machine – should expresses our confidence in our knowledge of the applicable physical laws.

     Machines, of course, are non-sentient. They lack free will. But what of men? Men assumed to possess free will and a knowledge of the law? Men who, feeling that something of importance to them has been “insulted,” decide to take up weapons and commit murder? How does should apply to them?

     Megyn Kelly has a few thoughts for you:

    

     In discussions of individuals’ rights, including their right of free expression, there’s no naughtier word than should. It’s time to banish it from all discussions about Islam. Should never applies to whether speech is free. It never applies to any individual’s exercise of his rights, for the consequences, as long as they involve no violation of anyone’s rights, are irrelevant. I’ll allow should in one specific context: What should civilized people do to expunge this seventh-century madness from our societies before it spills still more blood?

The Roots Of Antifamilism

     Yes, yes, there I go again, making up words – we pretentious types call them neologisms -- so I can decorate one of my relentlessly boring, hyperintellectual screeds with stuff that will, as Gerard Van Der Leun puts it, “go Boing! in the brain.” Well, Gentle Reader, if you’re a regular, you’re already aware of that little proclivity of mine and have resolved to endure it for the sake of an off-chance at some low-grade humor. If you’re new here...are you sure you’re feeling quite all right? What on Earth brought you here, anyway?

     Anyway, a nice fluffy neologism now and them will sometimes allow me to avert a fit of screaming, mug-crushing, soul-curdling rage, such as the one that began to creep over me when I encountered this article:

     So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families.

     There are your first warning signs: “inequality” and “fairness.” If you weren’t yet aware that you’re about to read a Leftist tract, you’re surely on notice of it by now.

     The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment.

     Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.

     ‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.

     ‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’

     So far, not too ominous, though we should remember that when a “philosopher” takes interest in a natural institution – i.e., one that arose before the State and needs nothing from the State to sustain itself – he’s highly unlikely to approach it from a non-interventionist point of view. But we haven’t gotten to the good part yet:

     According to Swift, from a purely instrumental position the answer is straightforward.

     ‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’

     There’s that “social justice” chimera again! It appears in many places these days, but it’s indispensable in a tirade about “inequality.” (I did warn you.) But wait: there’s more!

     It seems that from both the child’s and adult’s point of view there is something to be said about living in a family way. This doesn’t exactly parry the criticism that families exacerbate social inequality. For this, Swift and Brighouse needed to sort out those activities that contribute to unnecessary inequality from those that don't.

     ‘What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.

     The test they devised was based on what they term ‘familial relationship goods’; those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members.

     For Swift, there’s one particular choice that fails the test.

     ‘Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school.’

     And these...persons are not finished with the family. Everything that occurs within the family is to be evaluated and potentially banned or restricted:

     ‘The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says.... ‘You have to allow parents to engage in bedtime stories activities, in fact we encourage them because those are the kinds of interactions between parents and children that do indeed foster and produce these [desired] familial relationship goods....We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life....We should accept that lots of stuff that goes on in healthy families—and that our theory defends—will confer unfair advantage,’ he says.

     I added the italics in the above.

     Take a moment to shudder while I fetch more coffee...no, I think I’ll make it decaf this time.

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     In Screwtape Proposes A Toast, the incomparable C. S. Lewis mentions an aspect of tyranny that has a long and venerable lineage:

     What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

     (Remember that one of the other traits of the Greek Tyrants was their penchant for enlisting philosophers as advisors. Concerning notable philosophers of that period, Plato believed that infants should be taken from their parents shortly after birth to be reared and educated exclusively by the State. Aristotle was of the opinion that the great majority of men are unfit for freedom – that they are natural slaves.)

     The insertion of the State into the family unit to prevent the emergence of “inequality” is a central feature of Marxism. Here’s the brilliant Dystopic on the subject:

     Some time ago, I suggested that Socialism’s greatest flaw is in its inability to scale. Two people who get married share resources, money, and expertise. This operates along principles not terribly different from Socialism. Extend this further. Many families are composes of several generations, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc… and there is a degree of sharing among them. There was a time where one’s retirement plan was the family.

     Indeed, my wife’s grandparents moved in with her parents. They watched the children during the day, contributing what they could (and saving child care costs), in exchange for room and board. But since this was a family unit, it wasn’t accounted like that. It was expected that each contributed what they were able, and took what they needed. Anyone who contributed less than their ability, or took more than their share, would face the wrath of the rest of the family. No matter how Marxist this sounds in theory, it worked well, because the scale was small. Everyone knew everyone else. If someone was slacking or becoming a glutton, it was obvious to all.

     Now, the reason I point this is out is not to sing the praises of Marxism, but rather to point out something many on the Right fail to understand: Marxism regards the Family unit as competition. Indeed, Marxists are jealous of the family, because it operates more efficiently and less tyrannically than Socialism does. Good families stick together and support one another in ways Socialist Revolutionaries could only dream about. We might call families Communal instead of Socialist, because families actually have some chance of working in the long term.

     Families, by and large, function well – not because political Marxism is actually a practicable, scaled-up version of family life, but because the bonds of affection, interdependence, and mutual responsibility that join family members are clear, strong, and well internalized. But Marxists will hear no such objection to their schemes. Instead, they jump directly to their endgame: Man must be remade. The New Man will be a natural socialist, incapable of prioritizing his own needs and desires, or those of a loved one, above those of a faceless stranger...or those of the State. If the family stands in the way, then so much for the family! It must go...for the greater good, of course. A commenter to Sara Noble’s Independent Sentinel notes the following:

     And this comes at the same time that some Statist flunkies in Buffalo, NY are advocating for public boarding schools. It’s not a conspiracy theory if they really are out to take your children.

     What’s that? You’re shuddering again? Well, I do need more decaf.

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     I wrote some time ago:

     What's that you say? You want very intelligent people in government? You, sir, are a hazard to the body politic. What on Earth are you doing at Eternity Road? Don't you know what sort of mischief smart people get up to when entrusted with power? Didn't we get enough of a demonstration from the Clintons? Do you really want a reprise of that disaster?

No. No smart people in office. Please! Smart people are too good at reinterpreting their marching orders and rationalizing their way around moral or Constitutional constraints on their authority. If any of the Founding Fathers was a genius, Thomas Jefferson was -- yet he, most libertarian of them all, violated the Constitution's constraints on federal power several times in his first term of office. He rationalized his transgressions as "necessary" and "practical." So highly did Congress, and the people generally, think of him that he always carried the day.

High intelligence is almost always accompanied by a high opinion of oneself. He who thinks that well of himself is all too easily led to see himself as above the rules that bind others. If you were looking for a capsule summary of Eliot Spitzer's downfall, you have it now.

What Americans should seek in their public officials is men who can understand the duties and limitations of their offices, and will cleave to them unswervingly. This demands a routinier, an "organization man," a dullard. It's not the right billet for a genius. Very bright people chafe at taking orders, even from brighter, more knowledgeable people; they're always looking for an angle, a way to finesse their way out of doing what they've been told.

The duties of an elected official are spelled out in either the Constitution of the United States, or some similar charter subordinate to it. The powers that attach to whatever government his office pertains to are spelled out in a similar fashion, albeit not always with the degree of specificity a libertarian-conservative would like. If those rules and constraints are seriously meant, then we don't want our officeholders looking for ways to chisel around the edges. We want good, solid dullards, schooled from the Bible and the handle of a broom, who'll do as they're told, without the slightest trace of creativity.

We don't often get such men, these days.

     Men who style themselves “philosophers” are the most arrogant of all pseudointellectuals. Plato – he who proposed that form precedes substance, that “horseness” is prior and superior to the horse! – is their standard-bearer. But worse by far than their arrogance about their intellects is their lust for power – their ardor for the wherewithal to impose their dictates upon others willy-nilly. The advocates of freedom – the Socrateses, Ciceros, and Ayn Rands among them – are rare and precious.

     Of course, no self-nominated “philosopher” would take more than sneering notice of my contempt. He’d meet it with a single, scornfully raised eyebrow and a slight curl of the lip. Never mind that I could easily demolish any of his ideas, original or derivative, that aren’t rooted in the teachings of either Socrates or Christ. He’s a “philosopher,” I’m not, and that’s what really matters.

     Now about your children...hm. Those shudders have persisted quite some time, haven’t they? Perhaps you should see your doctor...or your local guns-and-ammo salesman. Present trends continuing, you’re guarantee to need one or the other soon enough.

Racism – the real deal.

The real repository of racism in America—manifest in violent interracial assault, rape and murder—is to be found not in the white community, but the African-American community. In almost all interracial attacks,, whites are the victims, not the victimizers.

"The Washington Post And The Color of Crime." By Patrick J. Buchanan, VDARE.com, 8/20/07.

Somebody's Gotta Say It Part 2: Further Remarks On Intelligence

     After reading yesterday’s tirade, longtime reader Eskyman commented, in part, as follows:

     That mean old bell curve tells no lies- though I remember (in a previous life) hearing of some psychologists back in the 1920s who gave IQ tests to Australian Aborigines; they interpreted their results as, "them guys is dumber than rocks!"

     What the psychologists didn't know was that the Aborigines had no concept of passing time. There's "now" and "then" and "dreamtime." Most Aborigines were (and are) pretty unreliable on the concept of number too, and anything over 3 is uncertain.

     On the other hand, if those psychologists were dropped in the middle of the Great Sandy Desert, I wonder how long they would last; no matter where they placed on the Bell Curve, it wouldn't help keep them alive.

     All quite correct, and a perfect launching pad for a disquisition on the nature of measurable, abstract, generalized intelligence and its significance in a post-subsistence society.

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     I’m absolute death on the phrase “emotional intelligence” and similar attempts to bastardize the concept. “Emotional intelligence” is a perfect parallel to “social justice:” the first word destroys the meaning of the second one, leaving an empty phrase into which some activist can pour whatever sentiments his/her/their/its agenda requires.

     Etymology makes plain why intelligence means what it does and nothing else. It comes from the Latin verb intelligere, “to understand.” But understanding is about the causes of things – and one doesn’t truly understand unless one can abstract from specific cases to a general rule, and then use that rule to analyze other specific cases and predict what will come of them.

     Eskyman’s observations about the superior survivability of Aborigines in the Great Sandy Desert highlights the essential difference between the Abo context and that of a typical contemporary society. The former is a subsistence context, in which survival imperatives are immediate and paramount at all times. The latter is a far different sort of place; as a friend of mine once said of American life, “Unless you’re down – unless you haven’t a quarter with which to buy your beans – life is a game.” That statement applies to nearly every human society extant in our time. (For those with qualms about the price of beans, the context of that statement was Rockland County, New York in the fabled year of 1968.)

     Consider life as a game for just a moment:

• Every game has a set of rules.
• Some rules, when followed, lead to success on the part of the follower.
• Some rules, when violated, impose a penalty on the violator.
• Though a player can “lose,” he will survive to play again (notable exception for Russian Roulette).

     Now consider the nature of a rule:

• It applies to a particular class of contexts.
• It defines a particular class of player actions.
• It specifies the consequences such an action will evoke in such a context.

     A rule is an abstract statement about the operation of cause and effect within the relevant context. A player must have at least sufficient capacity to understand such a rule – sufficient intelligence -- to play the game without courting embarrassment.

     A humorous counterexample: the old prank-game “Grapes.” This is typically pulled by two “players” on an unenlightened third party. For the sake of sheer blind variety, let’s call the pranksters Smith and Jones, and the third party Davis. The gag goes thus:

Smith: Say, Jones, how about a quick game of Grapes?
Jones: Sure, why not? You go first.
Smith: Okay: avocado.
Jones: Elephant.
Smith: Daiquiri.
Jones: Confession.
Smith: Hah! Grapes! I win!

(Davis, of course, is looking on in total confusion. Perhaps Smith and Jones play another round or two, with equally incomprehensible “plays” and “winner.” Then comes the payoff.)

Smith: Say, Davis, ever played Grapes?
Davis: Uh, no, but—
Smith: It’s a lot of fun. Want to give it a try?
Davis: Well, I don’t really understand—
Smith: C’mon, you’re smart, you’ll pick it right up. You go first.
Davis: Uh...okay: avocado.
Smith: Hah! Grapes! I win!

At this point Davis is feeling completely lost. Smith urges him to try again, but this time Smith goes first.)

Smith: Avocado.
Davis: Wait a minute, didn’t I just—
Smith: C’mon, it’s your move, play!
Davis: (flustered) Grapes. I win.
Smith: (frowns) No, no, that’s illegal.

     Got the idea? There are no rules. It would take a significant number of rounds for a person of average intelligence (one who’s unaware that he’s being pranked, of course) to work that out. A person of high intelligence might deduce the nature of the thing more quickly, but not necessarily, for a rule-free contest is insoluble by the methods of intelligence.

     Only rule-based societies value intelligence in their common participants, for it has value nowhere else.

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     There are higher and lower levels of abstraction, but all center on rules: their formation (inductive reasoning), their use (deductive reasoning), and the testing of the former by experiments designed with the use of the latter.

     (A slight digression. Nonhuman creatures have exhibited no provable capacity for abstraction. The sole possible exception I know of is the dolphin. The late Gregory Bateson related a tale of one particularly bright dolphin that appeared able to grasp the abstract concept new after an extended series of both conditioned-in responses and subsequent contradictions thereof. Though the story is suggestive, the effect proved irreproducible in other dolphins, and thus must be classified as an interesting occurrence, no more.)

     Though one can be “under the gun” and required to solve a problematic situation swiftly in hope of great gain or at the peril of great loss, in the most important situations relevant to ordinary life in a post-subsistence society, intellectual height is more a matter of accuracy than speed. In other words, we normally have time enough for persons of ordinary intelligence – call it IQ 100 – to solve ordinary problems susceptible to cause-and-effect reasoning; what matters is the accuracy of the answer rather than how swiftly it’s found.

     The scientist must possess facility with both inductive and deductive reasoning. He gathers data about some interesting observable phenomenon, notes patterns in its occurrence and absence, and formulates a hypothesis about the causal relation – the rule – that governs it. That hypothesized rule must abstract the required features of the initial conditions – the context required by the phenomenon – and the cause – the stimulus required – to produce the effect predicted by the hypothesis. The hypothesis then implies the consequences that would follow from reproducing the relevant features of the contexts in which the phenomena were observed, adding the required cause, and waiting an adequate time for the effect predicted by the rule. Should such an experiment produce the predicted results, it would constitute a confirmation of the hypothesis, but should it fail to do so, the hypothesis would be deemed to have been disproved. The procedure, first proposed by Francis Bacon, is called scientific method, and constitutes the one and only method by which one can demonstrate one’s knowledge.

     The engineer, by contrast, usually works with well-confirmed rules about the physical world arrived at by generation after generation of scientists. He applies those rules to produce desired effects, for whereas the product of the scientist is knowledge, the product of the engineer is particular effects reproducible on demand. (When an engineer generates new knowledge, he implicitly crosses the boundary between the disciplines and functions, for a time, as a scientist. The categories are about orientations and applicable procedures, not about particular persons, degrees, or some other sort of “guild membership.”)

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     The above surveys why students of human cognition believe that intelligence is abstract. Two other characteristics integral to it remain to be surveyed.

     We believe that intelligence is measurable because the results of intelligence tests – IQ tests – are highly reproducible and correlate well with the testee’s subsequent success in abstraction-oriented labors. Quibbles about “language limitations” and “cultural bindings” are easily addressed with test variants that de-emphasize linguistic skills and frame their puzzles in terms for the testee’s cultural matrix. The tests’ shared characteristic is their rule-based nature: they probe the testee’s ability to induce the rules of the puzzles presented, and to apply them deductively in comparable situations.

     We believe that intelligence is generalized -- i.e., that intellectual facility can be applied to a wide variety of problems dissimilar on their faces – because the tests probe for such generality, because the possessors of high intelligence (as indicated by the tests) demonstrate such facility in their courses through life (albeit perhaps limited by perceptual or learning disabilities of particular kinds), and because abstraction itself is a generalizing process. Thus, there are both theoretical and practical reasons for believing it.

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     The detractors and denigrators of intelligence as conventionally understood are unsatisfied by the above, of course. There’s no way of mollifying them, for they are uninterested in evidence. Their agenda is to erect a pseudo-standard of the sort implied by phrases such as “emotional intelligence:” one that negates all possibility of measurement and destroys any distinction enjoyed by athletes of the mind. It’s a form of radical egalitarianism premised on the notion that denying a thing is equivalent to disproving it. It deserves no respect whatsoever.

     The subject is large and can’t be exhausted in a single essay. Nor am I a high expert in the cognitive sciences, able to give you a glimpse of the frontiers of investigation and the horizons of knowledge therein. But the above should suffice to establish a foundation from which laymen can talk comprehensibly about intelligence and its effects on the world. It should further enable us to dismiss the shrieks of those unwilling to accept that something real, substantial, and inherently valuable undergirds the higher achievements of societies where intelligence is recognized and rewarded, such as the United States of America.

Somebody’s Gotta Say It

     The title of this piece is shamelessly stolen from Neal Boortz’s book of that name. I found that particular book unimpressive, mainly a compendium of soft libertarianisms. There was little original thought in it. It was still of some value; the freedom philosophy can always use another popular voice. My theft pertains to the sort of thing I’ve been writing lately, particularly on the ever-hazardous topic of race.

     We’ve been experiencing race riots. They’ve been massively destructive. They’ve inflicted injuries on both rioters, police, and the uninvolved. They’ve thrown the afflicted locales into social, economic, and political chaos, at least for a time. Yet despite the undiluted racial category of the rioters, the media have resolutely refrained from calling them race riots.

     One or two other low-gauge Internet commentators have noted the correlations and have dared to speak them aloud. Here’s one:

     Then there’s the other narrative, the one no one dares say for fear of being labeled a monster. On the television you see young black males mugging for the cameras as they commit pointless acts of mayhem. You see blacks running from burning stores with arms full of goods. Of course, the liquor store is robbed and you see blacks carrying away the liquor and beer. These scenes are narrated by the same old voices saying the same old things. To spice it up, they interview a local, who mumbles through the interview, confirming everything you see on TV.

     This, of course, is the simple reality of places like Baltimore, Detroit, East St. Louis and so on. When the government banned private discrimination in in the 1960’s, whites fled the cities to avoid having to send their kids to school with blacks. Responsible and intelligent blacks tried to keep it together, but they threw in the towel in the 80’s and 90’s when crack turned American cities into war zones. They headed for the suburbs to live with the whites. What’s left in these urban reservations are low-IQ violent nitwits.

     Of course, no one is allowed to say any of this in public. Racial solidarity requires blacks, who know better, to defend their dimwitted brothers rioting in the streets. Liberal whites think there’s profit in the riots so they cast about for a black hat on whom to pin the blame. Crime thinkers like John Derbyshire believe that the truth of things will eventually will out. I think John is right that reality will always win eventually, but I know I’ll never live to see it. Everyone alive today is too deeply invested in the myth that if we just turn the right knobs and push the right buttons, biology will be overcome. Fantasy is powerful stuff.

     Z Man is probably wiser than I in his decision to go by an anonymizing Internet moniker. It’s not my style and never has been; besides, I want my readers, whoever and wherever they may be, to know that I stand behind my words. If I’m proved wrong, I’ll admit it. This is a subject on which I’d like to be proved wrong. I just don’t think there’s much likelihood of it.

     The reason for my skepticism is the normal distribution.

---

     Here is a visual depiction of the normal distribution, perhaps better known as the “bell curve:”

     And here is an excellent survey of its properties for the intelligent layman. For the more mathematically inclined, the curve follows the following equation:

     ...where σ (the lower-case Greek letter sigma) is the usual symbol for the distribution’s standard deviation. The standard deviation is a reliable predictor of what percentage of the distribution will fall within a particular band around the horizontal axis of symmetry of the curve, which passes through the arithmetic mean. The mean indicates what it always does: 50% of the points under the curve lie to the left of that axis, and 50% lie to the right of it. (In the first graphic above, the mean has been arbitrarily taken to be 0, though this is merely for simplicity in the depiction of the curve.)

     As for the use of the standard deviation:

• 68% of the points under the curve lie within 1 standard deviation of the axis;
• 95% of the points under the curve lie within 2 standard deviations of the axis;
• 99.7% of the points under the curve lie within 3 standard deviations of the axis.

     Further than that from the axis lies very little indeed.

     The important point about the normal distribution is its normality. Virtually every human characteristic is distributed among humans according to this formula -- not because we want it that way, but because the laws of probability have decreed that it shall be so. Among those characteristics are:

• height;
• weight;
• intelligence;
• strength;
• speed;
• agility;
• propensity for aggression and lawlessness.

     More, there are some notable correlations among those factors, and between each of those factors and the three anthropologically agreed-upon races of Mankind.

---

     For as long as general intelligence – i.e., the ability to reason from abstract propositions when presented with specific cases in a relevant context -- has been measured, the scores of the races have fallen into a particular relation:

• All three curves have been normal distributions;
• The Caucasian race has exhibited a mean of 100.
• The Mongolian race has exhibited a mean of 107.
• The Negro race has exhibited a mean of 88.

     The standard deviation of those three normal distributions / bell curves is 15 points.

     Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray dared to discuss this openly, despite the enormous pressure put upon them by other researchers in the cognitive sciences to keep their conclusions to themselves. Those two unusually accomplished, bright, and candid men published anyway, expecting that controversy, dissension, and vilification would follow...and they got it in spades. But what none of their critics were able to do was to refute their conclusions.

     Those conclusions led immediately to a statement that John Derbyshire was roundly castigated for making:

     The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”

     Poor John Derbyshire, an eloquent conservative and a mathematically able man inclined toward stating a conclusion when it stares him in the face, has been so viciously vilified for noting the above that he’s become anathema in conservative circles. He failed to comply with Heinlein’s Law:

Being Right Too Soon
Is Socially Unacceptable.

     Yet his numbers are accurate and his conclusions flow from them.

---

     There is another correlation with race that our media refuse to allow us to draw, mainly by suppressing the data that would lead us to it: the correlation between race and propensity for lawlessness.

     You will not see American Mongolians as rioters. You’ll see very few American Caucasians destroying property or looting stores. You will see an overwhelming preponderance of American Negroes at such an event. Some will even allow themselves to be filmed doing it.

     Are all American Negroes willing lawbreakers? Of course not. But the bell curve seems to have put a greater fraction of them reasonably close to the mean that when given a rationale, that fraction will riot, burn, and loot. There will be some inclined to help the police to restore order. However, as The Z Man notes in his above-cited essay:

     Responsible and intelligent blacks tried to keep it together, but they threw in the towel in the 80’s and 90’s when crack turned American cities into war zones. They headed for the suburbs to live with the whites. What’s left in these urban reservations are low-IQ violent nitwits.

     In other words, they did what sensible, adequately perceptive people do when confronted with a dangerous situation they’ve decided is beyond their control: they fled those environs. The ones that remained there are the lawless – the “low-IQ nitwits” – who have so narrow a reasoning horizon that they cannot or will not see that their actions will leave them worse off than before.

---

     For the purposes of this tirade, please take a collectivity to be a group of persons who share some observable characteristic and who exhibit behavioral cohesion. Following from that, the social acceptability of any collectivity will depend upon its discipline in adhering to social norms. Such discipline can only come from two places:

• From within the collectivity itself;
• From outside it.

     In the former case, there will be minimal tension between that collectivity and the larger society. In the latter, the collectivity will be deemed “unruly,” in need of “restraint,” perhaps requiring it to be “civilized.” If the measures put to that end are sufficient, the collectivity might eventually shed its unruly ways and thereafter be accepted equally in the larger society. If not, there are only two possible outcomes:

• Separation of the collectivity from the larger society;
• Warfare, possibly ending in the extermination of the collectivity.

     The American Negro collectivity has exhibited cohesion in several ways, but most important for the purposes of this tirade is its observable disinclination to discipline its unruly sub-cohort. The American Left, which dominates the educational system, the communications and entertainment media, and the political elite of both parties, has stood firmly against the external application of effective restraining or civilizing measures to that collectivity.

     Draw your own conclusions. I stand by mine.

     To suppress a truth is to give it force beyond endurance – Victor Hugo

This, from one of my readers, is stone awesome

This is from one of my readers, and gave me chills:

I will continue to say it until they put me in the ground.

I am a free man. I have earned what I have though my own efforts not some invented privilege by those to lazy, untalented and dishonest to denigrate my efforts and excuse their own failures. Their envy is one of the deadly sins as is their sloth.

I succeed even as the deck is increasingly stacked against me because of the triple threat that I am a white, male christian. This makes them even more virulently hateful as I foil their plans. They become more resentful of my ingenuity in the face of their aggression. I do not quail in their attempts to marginalize my existence as it is people like me and those who frequent this forum who have made this country the success it has enjoyed.

We are the restoration of this country as the most enlightened experiment in human interaction in the history. No where in history had freedom, liberty and the paramouncy of individual sovereignty and God given rights been the focus of the organizing principles of a nation of peoples. Blood and appearance had been the primary organizing factor. To the current left it still is.

It is those of us who agree with those ideals of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness who are the really advanced homo sapiens. In the words of Calvin Coolidge:

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.[vi]

All the so-called “progressive” movement has done is walk us back to a brutish rule of willful elites.

Think of it like you would your own development. When you were young you needed much guidance and structure from someone wiser. As you matured you needed less and less until finally you were capable of doing things and making decisions on your own for your own benefit. This was the fledgling United States as we had perhaps the greatest array of human talent guided by the greatest thinkers of the day and of the past to create what can only be described(with one obvious flaw) as a miracle of divine providence and human ingenuity.

The progressive, since then, have sough to turn the clock back. In their conceit, informed by their own rigging of the game, you must be put back in the playpen because they don’t think you capable of being sovereign. The main conceit is they are some how a special breed who never are mistaken.Since they never pay the price for their mistakes they conclude they must be infallible. Those they impose their conceit on aren’t so lucky. They don’t trust humans to make their own way. But then what are they? They are just as human as any one else(allegedly) and in many ways atavistic ant-human Luddites.

The solution is not easy and I’m afraid with the dishonesty that pervades will not be peaceful. It does not matter that we are civil or not, turn the other cheek or not. They will cover us in their bile and hatred. As we all know the victor writes the history. More so than anything we need to defeat and expunge the related diseases of progressivism, fascism, racism, “liberalism”, collectivism et al.

I know not what course others may take…

The Burning Of Baltimore: A Coda

     I’m fairly sure my Gentle Readers are all thoroughly sick of the Baltimore atrocities by now...but I want to take this opportunity to make you all much, much sicker:

     House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer defended Baltimore city officials’ reaction to the riots erupting in the city by asking for more federal tax dollars.

     The Daily Caller asked Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, if the city’s leadership had failed, since the West Baltimore area was still being rebuilt from the 1968 riots. Hoyer replied, “We have to invest in making sure that we have proper infrastructure and proper housing so that we have neighborhoods that are safe and that we have safe conditions in which to live.”

     “But I wouldn’t call it a failure, certainly, of Baltimore,” he added. “But we’re going to have to as a country invest if we’re going to have the kinds of communities we want.”

     A Democrat has responded to a question about the failure of Baltimore’s “leadership” – merciful God, how I hate the notion that political officials are our “leaders!” – by calling for more tax dollars paid into the Treasury by Americans from other cities and states to be expended on “infrastructure.”

     What an incredible surprise.

---

     It’s been said many times (now and then by me) that when a politician, or a political interest group, proposes the same “solution” to every “problem” that comes down the turnpike, you can bet your last dollar that the “solution,” not the “problem,” is what the politician or group really cares about.

     Add to that the observable, terrifying rate of failure of political “solutions” to proposed “problems.” Quoth H. L. Mencken on “the sex problem,” by which he was referring to the pervasiveness of prostitutes (and customers for them) in cities of significant size:

     There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe.

     Every political “solution” requires three things:

1. Laws,
2. Hands,
3. Funds.

     When the “solution” fails to eliminate or substantially reduce the “problem,” what follows?

1. Legislators virtually never repeal the applicable law; that would be an admission of error.
2. Those who “work” for the agency charged with the “solution” have livelihoods to protect, and will fight tooth and nail to retain them – even to enlarge them.
3. The money not spent on government employees is spent on material and outside “experts,” who acquire an interest in the perpetuation of the “solution” at least as strong as that of the government employees!

     Sociologists call this an “Iron Triangle,” which defends its politically created turf with the ferocity of a lioness protecting her cubs. This is the prime example of the importance of individual motivation and its priority over notions of “civic virtue:” To those with a personal stake in the “solution,” its perpetuation outranks the “problem” in importance.

     Theorists will theorize, moralists will moralize, and political strategists will politically strategize until the Moon should fall from the sky. None of them will ever change that central fact about government and government programs. It is the key to why all political systems, including anarchism, are inherently unstable.

---

     Race riots aren’t new. We’ve had fifty years to get accustomed to them. They invariably feature Negro mobs running rampant through urban districts, smashing and looting. There’s always a triggering event, of course, but the trigger is seldom of enduring importance. What matters is the facility racialist mouthpieces have developed at inciting anger among American Negroes, who have been remorselessly propagandized about how they’re “oppressed.” Raise that pitch high enough and they’ll riot.

     I’m about to say something that’s likely to offend a great many persons, so those with excessively tender sensibilities or generally weak constitutions should leave the website at this point.

     Have we cleared the room adequately? Good, ‘cause here I go:

When was the last riot by American Caucasians?

     It doesn’t matter whether the disparity is a consequence of intellectual deficiency, emotional susceptibility, or simple lust to loot and destroy. Negroes riot; Caucasians don’t. More, they’ll riot regardless of the merits of the triggering event. All they require is “just cause,” and yes, those are “sneer quotes.”

     John Derbyshire touched off a huge controversy with his column “The Talk: Nonblack Version.” Yet not one of his critics could refute his assertions. What those assertions amount to is that concentrations of American Negroes constitute a hazard to the life and property of non-Negroes.

     I submit that we have had enough demonstrations of this proposition to grant it our confidence.

     Negro racialists know their audience. They know how easily it can be whipped into a furor. They know how little can be done to restrain a black mob bent upon looting and destruction, if the authorities are unwilling to use force to the necessary degree and in the necessary amount. They know that at least for the present, the response of “authorities” to such riots is far more likely to be conciliatory – Steny Hoyer’s approach – than punitive. Last and most significant, they know how to profit personally from the sequelae.

     There will be more such riots, in more cities, over ever more trivial occurrences.

     Draw the moral.

What Will Follow

     The riots in Baltimore are horrifying enough. But when you combine those savageries with this atrocity and this one, the aggregate becomes overwhelming.

     Life and property are not safe in the United States of America. Neither is any other “freedom” we once enjoyed.

     Ace suggests that a fission is coming:

The fascist SJWs, and their easy way with all corporations (such as GoFundMe), plus Saturday night spurred me to say aloud what I've thought to myself for years:

     It's time to begin seriously discussing secession.

     As the man says: the center cannot hold.

     No one actually seems happy in this national marriage.

     It's time to admit this and separate.

     If such a schism could be achieved peacefully, it would be best for all concerned. There’s just one little problem: the political elite would not sit still for it.

---

     I’ve written on too many occasions to bother backlinking to them that power is most attractive to those that love power above all other things, and that their lust for power naturally propels them to the top of such edifices. I’m not the first to make that point, of course; Friedrich Hayek got there well before me. But Hayek’s insight, when combined with a reflection on the nature of political power, yields a result more terrifying than any riot:

     He who lusts for power over others is inherently evil. I trust this requires no great argument in its justification. The evil man, once he has some degree of power, will use it to acquire more, for power is a drug that doesn’t sate. However, the enjoyment of power requires that it be used. For, as O’Brien said to Winston in 1984, to enjoy your power, you must be actually coercing your victim at the moment:

     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’

     Political power – i.e., power over others – is relational in nature. Its wielder requires victims upon whom to exercise his power. If he has no victims, his power is illusory. But by extension, the magnitude of his power can be measured by the number of his victims.

     The political class of this country is no better than that of any other. It will employ every means at its disposal to keep all of its victims...and they dispose of quite a number of such means.

---

     Fission into two nations would also be opposed by those on the Left who appreciate that their fortunes are made possible by those of us who differ with them. Allow me to start from Robert A. Heinlein’s partition of “Makers, Takers, and Fakers.” Heinlein posited that there is no third category, and I concur.

     Makers produce goods and render services that maintain life, enable prosperity, and support a tolerable social order. Not all Makers produce tangible products. The humblest counter girl at a fast-food restaurant facilitates the provision of an objective good – food – to those who would purchase it. That gives her a claim on the title of Maker quite as valid as any farmhand or factory worker.

     Takers are persons unable or unwilling to produce or serve others. They’re sustained by the production of Makers; without Makers’ largesse, they would perish. Not all Takers are willfully so; there are millions of persons unable through no fault of their own to support themselves by productive effort. But the great majority of Takers are not of that blameless sort.

     Fakers are those who pose as Makers but who are quite as parasitical as the willful worst of the Takers. Politicians and their hangers-on are Fakers. As Sir Fred Hoyle wrote in The Black Cloud, we treat them as important because the newspapers say they are, whether explicitly or implicitly. Yet they’re as helpless to sustain their lives by productive effort as any Taker.

     The visible, vocal Leftist is a Faker. He’s overwhelmingly most common in the “communicative” fields: education, journalism, and entertainment. These fields are made possible by their opposites: those that produce the goods and services that actually sustain life. Universities, the least dubious of Faker institutions, may be necessary to a high society in some rarefied sense, but they are not sufficient. Without the legions of Makers that support them from “below,” they would perish...and most of their denizens are aware of it.

     In these United States, the Takers and Fakers have succeeded in fastening themselves onto the Makers through the exploitation of unearned guilt. They’ve multiplied and grown fat while the Makers have grown lean. Yet were the Makers to withdraw their support, they would perish in a body – and they know it.

     No schism that makes two nations where there was one would be worthwhile unless the Makers could leave the Takers and Fakers behind. But as I wrote in the previous segment such a separation would be opposed by all the force at the Fakers’ disposal. For them and their Taker constituents, it would be a matter of survival.

---

     Pleasant thoughts for a Tuesday morning in April, eh? But this is how it looks to me. If there is to be a separation, it will require us to pass through a revolution bloodier than any other in human history. Most of us are aware of that in some semiconscious way, which is why we continue to search for a non-violent solution.

     I desperately want to find such a solution. Others of my bent are equally passionate in their similar efforts. But our sincerity and yearning doesn’t guarantee that such a solution exists...and the longer we search, the less likely our success becomes, for time is running out.

     Thoughts?

A Quiet Riot

     (Say, wasn’t there a band named Quiet Riot?)

     From the national news media, you might not think matters in Baltimore were much different from their usual. From the national news media, you might infer that the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody is generally regarded as an explainable, if tragic occurrence – i.e., no big deal. From the national news media, you might assume that the political authorities and law enforcement agencies of Baltimore had the situation well in hand.

     You might. You’d be wrong.

---

     I expected there to be at least some unrest, and many strident calls for an independent inquiry, into why a young man who was healthy (apart from asthma) when the Baltimore police detained him should have died with his spine 80% severed. After all, he was black, and these days that’s considered cause enough to disrupt an American city.

     The reports I’ve read say that Freddie Gray was transported to detention in a police van, shackled but not seat-belted or otherwise secured. This appears to be the cause of the fatal spinal cord injury that took Gray’s life. But for the life of me, I can’t find the reason for which he was originally arrested. Apparently, the Baltimore police were out in force in a part of the city known for drug traffic, but I can’t find any information beyond that.

     No one in authority in Baltimore has yet said whether Gray was about to be charged with any crime. This might have been an arrest-on-suspicion. Suspicion of what is not definite, though the region’s reputation for drug activity seems most likely.

     One way or another, the police arrested a man for reasons they haven’t disclosed, and that man died in their hands. There’s a good chance that this was a fatal miscarriage of justice.

     But there’s no chance whatsoever that whatever happened can justify widespread violence and the destruction and looting of private property. Yet that’s what’s happening – and with the open connivance of the political authorities.

---

     Hearken to Sara Noble:

Former DC detective Rod Wheeler joined Fox & Friends this morning to explain what went on. Mr. Wheeler is a great guy but his promotion of the new policing techniques needs to be challenged.

The police deliberately allowed the protesters to do this, Mr. Wheeler observed. They stayed out of the picture. There were no military-type uniforms. There were no armored cars, he said.

Some officers didn’t wear helmets, he reported as if it was a positive step.

That seems to be putting the police in grave danger.

After they destroyed some cars and committed crimes, the police started moving in.

It’s similar to what went on in Ferguson when the mayor allowed 28 stores to burn down to keep the criminals calm.

Mr. Wheeler said the new tactics generated a different response from the crowd. It’s what they learned from Ferguson.

The crowd gets more aggressive if the police do, so now the police confine them to an area but when “they really start becoming destructive, we start moving in.”

“For the most part,” Wheeler said, “it wasn’t that bad.”

     I wonder if the persons injured in the riots and the proprietors of the stores that were looted and destroyed feel “it wasn’t that bad.”

---

     It’s beyond dispute that when a sufficient number of persons concurrently become inclined to violence and disorder, there will not be enough police to restrain them. Even an overtly totalitarian society can’t afford that much enforcement power. So under contemporary conditions, in which heavily propagandized American Negroes are easily provoked to mass violence, the police are effectively neutralized. An effective organized response would be on the order of a military invasion, which Americans are unwilling to tolerate.

     The only effective diffuse response would be for law-abiding citizens to go to their guns. But Baltimore is in Maryland, and Maryland is among the states most hostile to the private ownership of firearms. Atop that, should a store owner kill a rioter, upon whom do you think the authorities of the city would descend with the full weight of the “law?” To assist you in arriving at your answer, here’s a picture of the current Mayor of Baltimore:

     And here is what she said to the press about the tactics the police were instructed to adopt:

"I made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech.

"It's a very delicate balancing act. Because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well. And we worked very hard to keep that balance and to put ourselves in the best position to de-escalate."

     That came from the mayor of a major American city – a city that, among other things, is the birthplace of Catholicism in the United States. It’s perfectly clear what she’d think of a private citizen who would dare to defend his property with force. A white store owner shot a black looter who was merely exercising his “right to free speech” by trashing the white man’s place of business? Unthinkable!

     But I don’t write merely to note a horrific development and express my disapproval. I’ve made it my mission to forecast what will come of it.

     I predict an outward migration of whites, especially white small-business owners, from the city of Baltimore. I predict that the cost of living in Baltimore will rise as insurers add “risk premiums” to their commercial coverage policies and the remaining businesses pass those cost increments down to their customers. I predict that as blacks in other cities “learn” from Baltimore’s example of laid-back riot “control,” the events there will be reproduced elsewhere, with similar demographic and economic consequences. I predict that racialist mouthpieces, starting with Al Sharpton, will blame the further deterioration in majority-black urban neighborhoods on “white greed.” And I predict that the national media, to the extent that they deign to cover those phenomena at all, will rationalize the violence as “to be expected” and deplore the flight of whites to safer, less racially mixed regions as “racist.”

     Who would like to bet against me?

I put this up at my other site

And this is a thing that must go viral. Follow the miscellaneous instructions within, and it will bring you right back to FWP's links among others. It must be spread, and I'm going to "plead the fifth" for all the value that still has.

New Knee Brace

Picked it up today; I can already feel the difference.

I'm looking forward to the end of the school year.  It's not the kids (well, they HAVE been a little squirrelly lately - Seniors).  But, I really need the less structured time in the summer to heal my arthritic knee.  I'm looking forward to being able to swim daily, have the time I need to do my PT exercises, and just catch up on household stuff.

With hard work, I may finally be able to lose the weight I've gained over the last several years.

Creeping Totalitarianism Part 2: Present And Future

“Romney didn’t win, did he?” – The Dishonorable Harry Reid

     Yesterday’s emission was one of many that started from the David French article about Wisconsin’s persecution of conservative activists. The DextroSphere is generally up in arms over it; grass-roots conservative activists were the targets, so grass-roots conservatives everywhere sense the dimensions of the threat.

     The big guns are lining up as well. Hearken to Rush Limbaugh on the subject:

     I mean, it's incredible. They could literally set out to destroy you, and the only thing standing in the way of it is the honor system. If you have a corrupt prosecutor (which this story has), and if you have a corrupt judge, (which this story has), and if you have a police department that is also corrupt (this happened in Milwaukee, mostly), then you can pull this off.

     There's even a quote from a couple police officers who were forced to participate these midnight raids on innocent people who had not done a thing other than support Scott Walker. That's all they had done, and cop car after cop car, cop after cop, SWAT teams, you name it, show up with battering rams to break into these people's homes! They're kicked out of their homes at midnight, at one o'clock in the morning. They're not allowed to take anything; they're not told why.

     They're not allowed to explain to anybody that this has happened besides the neighborhood which can see it. Years after the fact, mothers are reporting their young kids that were at home when this happened are still traumatized. People are reporting today that they get scared and traumatized and panicked when they see a uniformed police officer just walking a beat. They hightail it away.

     It is the fear that I think a lot of innocent people experience when law enforcement is pursuing them. I know. I've been there. I know a number of things. Law enforcement's never doubted, other than the civil rights community. The media doesn't doubt them. Law enforcement can leak anything they want about anybody, and the media writes it, and it becomes fact. Even average, ordinary Americans say, "Why would the cops lie? Why?" I mean, they take it on faith.

     However, there has still been no notice taken of this atrocity by the Main Stream Media. Worse, the Democrats have rallied to defend such practices:

     One of Texas’s acute corruption problems is the fact that the Travis County district attorney’s office, which prosecutes corruption cases, is absurdly, comically corrupt—by which I do not mean the “Hey can you get my dopey kid into UT law?” level of corruption that is commonplace in Texas, but Boss Hogg levels of corruption. You wouldn’t know it from the typically witless and servile reporting of the Austin American-Statesman, but the drunk-driving conviction of Travis County district attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is the least of that office’s problems—much more significant is the fact that is she recorded on camera threatening legal retaliation against the police who booked her. She is as explicit as can be about this: “You’re going to be in jail,” she said.

     The same prosecutor is trying to put former governor Rick Perry in jail for having vetoed funding for her office. Why did he veto the funding? Because the corruption prosecutor is grossly corrupt and a convicted criminal to boot. She went to jail, for pity’s sake.

     The Texas state house understandably has passed a bill that will curtail the Travis County district attorney’s special role in prosecuting ethics and corruption cases against elected and appointed officials. Instead, those cases will be investigated by the Texas Rangers. (Old punishment: jail. New punishment: Ranger roundhouse kick! Okay, not really, but that would be kind of awesome.) Naturally, Texas Democrats have sought to block that reform. And a handful of Republicans have, to their discredit, joined them, which is inexplicable.

     Please read the entire article; it’s brief (which Kevin Williamson seldom is) and piercing (which he always is). But don’t stop with being outraged. Do something Democrats and other leftists seldom do: think about second-order effects.

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     You cannot have social stability where there is privilege for the rulers and subordination for the ruled. That’s a Society of Status (Isabel Paterson, The God of The Machine), in which the “Emmanuel Goldstein dynamic” will operate until it collapses:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

[George Orwell, 1984]

     When the High’s brazenness about their special status leads to the outright dismissal of the laws they claim to have passed “for the general good,” while they simultaneously exercise the full weight of their powers to oppress and silence their critics, the conditions for their overthrow have been established. The sequel is likely to be extremely unpleasant:

     [America is] becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

     Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

     Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

     That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind....

     What is the end game, liberals? Do you expect these people you despise to just take it? Do you think they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we better comply?” Do you even know any real Americans? Do you think you’ll somehow be able to force them into obedience – for what is government power but force – after someone finally says “Enough?”

     Kurt Schlichter and I are asking the same question.

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     The Party in 1984 strove to cement itself into permanent power by exerting that power to the utmost. The conditions to which the proles (“the Low”) were subjected were so crushing that they couldn’t even conceive of rebelling. The Outer Party (“the Middle”) was kept almost as poor materially as the proles, was regimented to the hilt, and was watched continuously for the merest hint of deviation. The few Outer Party members who dared to deviate were remade psychologically, in a fashion that would break them of the will to resist. The Inner Party (“the High”) was composed entirely of fanatic loyalists willing to do anything whatsoever to retain their hegemony. Thus the Party attempted to solve the age-old problem of political stability.

     1984 is fiction, of course. But at least one element of it has crept into American reality:

     [C]onservatives already do outbreed the left — which is why the left is so determined to maintain its iron hold on education, K-through-12-through-infinity. If they can’t (or won’t) breed more lefties, they know how to make them.

     That’s why homeschooling frightens them so much. That’s why they fight so hard against their own strongest constituents in the effort to prevent school choice and teacher accountability.

     Twelve years of endless harangues about “social justice” and the like will leave a mark on a child that’s near to indelible. It lacks the intensity and focus of O’Brien and Room 101, but it compensates with duration. Many parents find themselves helpless against it.

     Winston Smith wrote that “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” A few moments later he added, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” The proles of our place and time are utterly dependent on the State. The State is their father: protector and provider both. they will never even imagine that their protector / provider is really their owner, to be overthrown if they are to advance. There is no hope in them.

     We are the Outer Party. Not in material matters – even a “poor” American lives a life of riches undreamed by emperors of old – but in the view of the political elite. They don’t have the technology to watch us continuously, though with their drones, license plate readers, and the proliferation of “smart” appliances” they’re advancing on it. They haven’t yet disarmed us, though they’re working on that as well.

     The political class, regardless of Democrat or Republican affiliation, is our Inner Party. It uses its tools to subjugate where it can, and to propagandize where it cannot. With the recent, unabashed resort to political prosecutions to destroy its opponents, its consciousness of itself has become complete. Do not doubt that it will go on as it has begun, and to ever greater intensity.

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     Somewhere in the future lies a point of no return, at which all prospect of deliberately ejecting the political class will have vanished. Somewhere nearer to the present lies a point at which the possibility of doing so non-violently will have been extinguished. The Spoonerites waited too long, and were forced to flee. Unless there’s a planetoid wandering through that I haven’t heard about, we won’t have that option.

     It’s not enough to complain to one another. It’s not enough to vote. It’s not enough to support this or that promising-looking candidate. We’ve tried all that.

     What, then, must we do?