2026’s Most Inconvenient Question

     In the philosophical realm, arguments about meaning can go on forever. Meaning arises from interpretation, which makes it a personal matter rather than something that can be pinned down once and for all. But average persons don’t spend a lot of time in the philosophical realm, Ayn Rand’s exhortations notwithstanding. By and large, we deal with one another on the objective plane. In that plane, the meanings of the words we use must be agreed upon with a high degree of specificity.

     Consider just how awkward and irritating communication with others would be, were we all to take Humpty Dumpty’s attitude toward words:

     'As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven't time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—'
     'Certainly,' said Alice.
     'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
     'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
     Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
     'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
     'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
     'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
     'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

     The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are surely familiar with the Left’s tactic of redefining common words to give them wholly new meanings. The manipulation of language for political purposes is among their favorite ways to avoid actually confronting an issue. It’s frustrating and maddening, which is why it works. Communication is impossible between two persons who give different meanings to common words.

     But this is the Year of Our Lord 2026. The hour has come in which the Left’s unwillingness to give words specific meanings can be turned against them. It has arrived in the form of a question the Democrat Party cannot answer:

What does it mean to say “I’m a Democrat?”

     Like it? I thought you might.

* * *

     The domination of electoral politics by two major parties has many negative consequences, but it does provide one convenience: to attain political power requires alignment with one major party or the other. For power-seeking purposes, if you’re not a Hatfield, you must be a McCoy. And the Left is utterly consumed with power. Therefore, it has focused on capturing the Democrat Party and bending its stances to serve a hard-Left agenda.

     The men who determine the platform and tactics of the Democrat Party are focused on getting their candidates elected. Those strategists naturally want there to be more Democrat voters than Republican voters. All else is a sideshow. What their victorious candidates will do with their offices after being seated is almost completely irrelevant.

     This has given rise to a “Big Tent” pseudo-philosophy in which – by the decisions of party leaders – it’s unnecessary for any two persons who claim to be Democrats to agree on anything. All that matters is that they vote for Democrat Party nominees. What do those candidates stand for? Never mind that; just pull the “straight ticket” Democrat lever and go home.

     That makes “What is a Democrat?” answerable in only one fashion: “He votes for Democrat Party nominees exclusively.”

     Do you doubt this? Then read this article:

     Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin closed his party’s summer meeting in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 15 by calling the Democratic Party a “big tent” and telling members to stop applying litmus tests to one another. The speakers who followed him over the next hour demonstrated how much room that tent is being asked to cover.
     Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe told members to stop using factional labels at all. Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) claimed to be part of the “economic patriotism wing” of the party and laid out a policy agenda. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who sits on the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that progressive candidates must be careful not to hand Republicans ammunition.
     Martin, closing a three-day meeting that also adopted the party’s 2028 presidential nominating calendar, framed the argument around the size of the party’s coalition.
     “We don’t strengthen our party through stricter and stricter litmus tests,” Martin said. “You do not build a majority by constantly looking for reasons to throw people out of it.”
     He traced the point to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition, which he said brought together big-city residents, small-town Americans, rural Southerners, northern labor unions, and working-class families. That coalition also included “people who have been pushed to the margins, including religious, racial, and ethnic minorities,” Martin said, and the party welcomed all of them into the Democrats’ “big-tent party.”

     I find it particularly illuminating that Martin cites FDR, as that president governed in a fashion diametrically opposed to his party’s 1932 platform. Yet it was that platform that got Roosevelt elected.

     Here is what Roosevelt said when confronted by that disjunction:

     The broken party platform, as an object, had a curious end. Instead of floating away and out of sight as a proper party platform should, it kept coming back with the tide. Once it came so close that the President had to notice it. Then all he did was to turn it over, campaign side down, with the words: "I was able, conscientiously, to give full assent to this platform and to develop its purpose in campaign speeches. A campaign, however, is apt to partake so much of the character of a debate and the discussion of individual points that the deeper and more permanent philosophy of the whole plan (where one exists) is often lost."
     At that the platform sank.

     [Garet Garrett, The People’s Pottage]

     This makes the question “What is a Democrat?” effectively unanswerable.

     Say, remember when Matt Walsh was asking various Democrats and Leftists “What is a woman?” They didn’t care for it much, did they? Does that suggest anything to you, Gentle Reader?

* * *

     I just looked back over this mountain of drivel and was appalled. It quotes Lewis Carroll, The Epoch Times, and Garet Garrett in a single Liberty’s Torch piece! Amazing! And probably never to be repeated… well, at least this year. But the point remains salient. There is no way to distinguish a Democrat from a non-Democrat other than by the lever he pulls in the voting booth.

     Given that distinction, is it fair to ask a Democrat “What are you voting for?” Or is it merely cruel? And to what or whom is the matter of most use?

     I may return to this tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a nice day.

Imperfections

     Among the things that tire me most severely are comments to the effect that this, that, or the other thing “isn’t perfect.” Given the general lack of understanding of what constitutes “perfection,” I’m tempted to launch into a lecture about the speaker’s choice of words and the failure of comprehension they reveal. But in these later years of life, I restrain myself, so as not to add to my already unfortunate “body count.”

     One observation, pithily phrased by the late, great C. Northcote Parkinson, puts the whole subject to bed:

     Perfection is finality, and finality is death.

     It seems that too few persons are sufficiently acquainted with the Great Lawgiver to have encountered that one, so here we are.

     Just this morning – yes, I know it’s early – a French commenter at X, in the midst of a spirited defense of market capitalism, said this:

     Market capitalism isn’t perfect.

     That lit my boiler, and moved me to resurrect the following piece from 2015. But don’t hurry away if you remember it, for I have a trailing comment to make.

---

     No doubt every Gentle Reader has encountered, at least, someone who constantly and vociferously denounces the status quo for some perceived flaw. Such a person will be known to complain constantly about his personal lot in life, as well. It won’t matter how well off he is, or how well supplied with friends, lovers, opportunities, or comforts. The comparison of his situation to that of far less fortunate others will not affect his malaise. Anything he perceives as a defect, whether in his circumstances or “The System,” will be enough.

     To which the recently deceased Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, he of the ten World Series rings and endless records, deposeth and sayeth:

     If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

     Many people have chuckled over Berra’s supposed malapropisms, thinking only that the Yankee great had intended to say something plain and obvious, but that it was muddled by his low facility with the English language. For my part, I find an immense practical wisdom in many of them. The above is a case in point.

     There are two piercing insights to be had here. The first is the more general of the two. That which is perfect is finished, complete, at the terminus of its evolution. It cannot be improved. It requires no changes. Indeed, it tolerates no changes, for any change rendered to a perfect thing or context would destroy its perfection.

     Therefore, if “the world” were perfect, it would deny Man any latitude for action. Any sort of change at all would deface it. Since Man, as Loren Lomasky has put it, is a “project pursuer,” a “perfect world” would destroy a fundamental requirement of human life: opportunities for action in pursuit of improvements to oneself or one’s condition. A “perfect world” would find Man intolerable. We would shortly be extinct.

     The second insight is more personal. It’s highly unlikely that any two persons would agree on what constitutes a “perfect world.” Our personal priorities and preferences vary too greatly for that. Indeed, for some of us, “perfection” equates to absolute hegemony over others. But what of the others? Are they to be allowed no say in the matter?

     The old pastimes “What would you do with a billion dollars?” – yes, it used to be a million, but prices are higher these days – and “What would you do if you were king?” cast additional light on Berra’s truth. Your billion would not be mine; your monarchy would limit my sphere of action. Your use of either of those things would deprive me of something I value: in the first case, the ability to afford whatever pleasure or luxury you’ve gobbled up, thus raising the price above my means; in the second, the freedom to live and act as I see fit, without a requirement for anyone’s permission or approval.

     And so, if “the world,’ however conceived, were “perfect,” however conceived, it wouldn’t be. Quod erat demonstrandum.

     I find it fitting that such wisdoms should have come from Yogi. Perhaps the American Philosophical Society should confer an emeritus membership upon him. By the way, does anyone know when they hold the balloting for the Philosophy Hall Of Fame?

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     A nice trip down Memory Lane, wouldn’t you say, Gentle Reader? But wait: there’s more! For we see defenders of the free market say it “isn’t perfect” with appalling frequency. That raises two questions:

1. Why do they do it?
2. What usually follows?

     The answer to the first question is that the speaker feels compelled to admit that free markets don’t solve all the problems of the world. Now, if you’re of a rational but sarcastic bent, as is your humble Curmudgeon, you might say “Well, what would?” But that is exactly what the Leftist dueling with you wants you to say. He has this “solution,” you see…

     That’s the answer to the second question. Admitting that there are imperfections in the world provides an entering wedge the Leftist can use to go on the attack. The Left strives always to be on the attack. (Note how vituperative Leftists become when forced onto the defense.) Any admission by a Rightist that there are “problems” gives him an opportunity to mount an offensive against “the System.”

     Never mind that the Left’s prescriptions have always produced poverty, oppression, and hopelessness. Leftists don’t want to address the record of socialist and communist systems. Force them to do so and their mildest rejoinder will be to call you “heartless.” (That usually follows their perennial deflection: “That wasn’t real socialism.”) Their whole aim is to attack freedom’s “imperfections” and claim that they can be remedied by their methods.

     Don’t fall into their trap. Free markets don’t exist to fulfill Utopian objectives. They can’t; nothing can. The existence of marginal people, less well off than the rest of us, does not indict capitalism. Nothing but copious charity could raise their lot to that of an American middle-class wage earner… and we have learned the limits of large-scale charity:

     We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief...On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for. – Thomas Mackay, Methods of Social Reform

     So have done with the “capitalism isn’t perfect” crap.

A New Entry In The War Of Words

     As my Gentle Readers already know, a great part of political combat is conducted through clever (and occasionally not-so-clever) choices of rhetoric. That makes it imperative that we who love freedom stay informed about what new and incisive rhetorical weapons are being deployed.

     The Left has been considerably more adroit in its rhetoric than the Right. Consider its transition from “global warming” to “climate change.” Once it became clear that the Earth is not warming, its flacksters moved from the previous phrase to the current one. They made it the spearhead of a new attack: “Senator do you believe in climate change?” Some public figures were unprepared for the shift and handled it ineptly. A similar rhetorical shift is observable in the Left’s campaign against the right to keep and bear arms: from “gun control” to “gun reform” to “gun safety.”

     For a change, the Right has struck back, specifically with regard to the Left’s tendency to use recent tragedies as bludgeons against gun rights. The phrase that’s just made the news, courtesy of Braden Langley of Langley Outdoors Academy, is “coffin surfing.”

     Braden is one of the most articulate popular defenders of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. He’s been at it for a while and is conversant with all the Left’s gimmicks. This latest sally pertains to Leftists’ piling demands for gun control onto news of mass shootings. The meaning he gives to “coffin surfing” could not be more obvious, nor its impact more acute.

     Leftist ghoulishness about shooting deaths has been obvious for some time. The new phrase is a powerful blow against the psychology behind their tactics. Second Amendment defenders and other devotees of freedom should look for opportunities to use it. It lays bare the perversity that lies behind the Left’s habit of politicizing every tragedy that comes along. Leftists will cringe before its implications.

Agenda Giveaways

     Sad to say, these days there aren’t many questions that don’t have a political component. Politics has crept into places where it never was before and – in the great majority of cases – doesn’t belong. I’ve written about the reasons for this in the past, so I shan’t bore you this morning by repeating myself.

     Among the most egregious cases of politics where it doesn’t belong are those that pertain to science and / or technology. Some of the political players manage to disguise their agendas better than others, which is why I’m writing on this subject. It’s vital that Americans who want to see clearly be equipped to detect a political agenda in an issue that “should” rest on purely rational considerations.

     One I have in mind this morning, courtesy of Glenn Reynolds, is the nature of electrical power generation and distribution. The U.S. has three distinct power distribution regions, or “grids.” One services East of the Rockies; one services West of the Rockies; and one services the state of Texas. There are people who see this as a problem. Why? What advantages would accrue to American electrical power consumers were the three grids to be integrated?

     This article in IEEE Spectrum discusses the subject – in a politicized way. It’s fairly long, but if you have the stamina I suggest that you read it for yourself rather than take my word for its orientation.

     The article is in the form of an interview, but it doesn’t take long to detect that putative interviewer Steven Cherry is entirely in agreement with interviewee Peter Fairley that the grids “should” be integrated. It doesn’t take much longer to detect Fairley’s agenda. All one must do is note the occurrences of words and phrases about highly politicized pseudo-issues:

• Wind farms
• Climate change
• Renewable energy
• “move off of our largely carbon-based sources of power”
• “accelerate the shutdown of coal-fired power”
• “U.S. administration’s connections to—devotion to—the coal industry.”
• “the oil and gas industry is definitely also a major political backer of the Trump administration.”
• “states have their own public utility commission that has to approve new power lines.”
• “making renewable energy look less competitive.”
• “the Trump administration...violates DOE’s own scientific integrity policies”
• “recognize the huge challenge that climate change poses and to change the way we live and to change our energy system”

     At several points Fairley asserts that “the financial and reliability benefits are substantial” and that the integration of the three grids would “pay for itself.” Yet he adduces no evidence to that effect. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado did a study that says so; that’s enough for him.

     Notice also that there are questions that interviewer Cherry never bothers to ask:

What’s the downside to integration?
What would it cost?
What disruptions would it involve?
How long would they last?
What new vulnerabilities would it create?
Who would be affected and to what degree?

     The failure to ask those questions is the deadest of dead giveaways. Cherry is no more a disinterested interviewer than Fairley – a journalist, not a scientist nor engineer – is a disinterested student of the subject.

     The subject is interesting and complex from a technological standpoint, but even more so from a political perspective. A single, nationwide grid would naturally come under the control of some federal agency. How would that control be used? What constraints and what oversight would apply? Would power producers have equal, unbiased access to the grid, or would there be wheeling and dealing to exclude disfavored competitors? Would the state governments have any role? Who would be held liable for anything that might go wrong?

     This has been an agenda-detection study in the public interest – the real public interest, in which the public is presumed interested in what might be done to it, under what rationales, and who would make out like bandits as a consequence.

     Beware him who offers you something for nothing, something that’s all upside and no downside, something “too good to be true.” For that, too, is a giveaway.

Simulated Outrage Dept.

     We’ve all seen it before: the leftist, when asked a question which, candidly answered, would tell the public something the leftist doesn’t want anyone to know, reacts with seeming outrage. But seeming is the key. I feel morally certain they practice it before a mirror several times per week. Because behind the “outrage” is actually a great deal of fear.

     Here’s the most recent illustration:

     A top press secretary for Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign erupted in anger on Thursday afternoon after he was asked during a live television interview if Biden has been using a teleprompter to answer questions during media interviews....

     “Has Joe Biden ever used a teleprompter during local interviews or to answer Q&A with supporters?” Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked.
     “Bret, we are not going to eng–, this is, this is straight from the Trump campaign talking points,” Biden spokesperson TJ Ducklo erupted.
     “Well yeah, they’re using it,” Baier responded.
     “And what it does, and what it does, Bret, is it’s trying to distract the American people,” Ducklo ranted.
     “They’re using it; they talk about it every day, can you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?” Baier pressed.
     “They talk about it every day, Bret, because they don’t have a coherent strategy—” Ducklo continued.
     “Well, you haven’t answered,” Baier pressed. “Yes or no?”
     After Ducklo continued to rant, Baier responded, “I understand, but you can’t answer the question.”

     Yes, Gentle Reader, we’ve definitely seen it before. Remember John Kerry’s “I refuse to have my patriotism questioned?” Remember Donna Brazile’s fury that she – “a Christian woman” – had been accused by implication of deliberate deceit for political purposes?

     The dangerous question asked by Bret Baier above goes to the most important aspect of the current presidential contest: Is Joseph Biden mentally capable of discharging the duties of the presidency? If the answer to that question is no, the Democrats have knowingly nominated an unfit candidate and are knowingly campaigning to give him powers and responsibilities for which he is unfit. Baier’s question has such an implication. Therefore Ducklo must evade it. And the Left’s go-to tactic for accomplishing such an evasion is to pretend to be outraged.

     There’s precious little candor in politics these days. That’s what makes Donald Trump a political stand-out: he’s always candid, even if he’s not always grammatical. The contrast between Trump’s speaking style and that of anyone on the Left, when combined with his exemplary performance in office, “should” garner him a fifty state sweep on November 3.

     In the long term, something must be done about political dissimulation and pretense. What that something might be, I have no idea. However, Arthur Herzog does:

     The press could be challenged to present a daily Thought Pollution Index—not that it would, but at least reporters could be encouraged to attend the Platitude Recognition Training Sessions, the object being to raise cliche-consciousness and overcome the serious problem of cliche-deafness that settles over crowds when a speaker mounts to the podium. In these sessions, platitudes will be flashed on a screen, and if they are allowed to pass unchallenged the participants will receive electric shocks from wires attached to their skulls....Audiences skilled in Platitude Recognition can deliver a crushing blow: the mass yawn. This quickly forces the speaker to take stock of himself.

     We “should” try it, but first let’s see to this bit of overhead:

     That will make the yawns much more emphatic – and who would be more angered by the mass yawn, possibly to the point of foaming at the mouth on camera, than a faker straining to simulate outrage?

     The entertainment possibilities alone make it worth a try.

Provocation And Counterattack

     Every now and then, it’s important, even for the most confrontation-averse of us, to go on the attack. In politics and public discourse, the unwillingness ever to attack, even when a clearly positive opportunity presents itself, is a fatal weakness. No battle can be won by remaining permanently on the defensive. All that even the most successful defense can achieve is to endure.

     However, spotting the time and place to attack is a variety of discernment that requires refinement. The exchange proposed here is a good example of how one can attack the Left’s current favorite rhetorical tactic, often with devastating effect. However, the typical cringing reflex reaction most whites have to being called a racist inhibits the perception of the opportunity.

     David Harsanyi’s article at The Daily Signal presents a good case for study:

     “Words are violence” has always been an illiberal notion meant to stifle speech and open discourse. Popularized by a generation of coddled and brittle college students, it now guides policy on editorial pages at newspapers such as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and most major news outlets....

     You may also have noticed another progressive slogan gaining popularity these days: “Silence is violence.” It’s no longer enough not to peddle wrongthink in the op-ed pages of the local paper, but now you must also actively champion woke progressive positions or you, too, are tacitly engaged in violence and racism.

     This is a neat trick: To speak out in the wrong way is violence. Not to speak out is violence. Not to speak out in the way progressives dictate is violence. This is why your apolitical local lawn care company is sending out emails promising to dedicate themselves to Black Lives Matter. No one wants to be accused of harboring counterrevolutionary sympathies.

     Harsanyi stops short of the obvious inference, possibly because he doesn’t want to be accused of felonious incitement. Yet I, your fearless Curmudgeon Emeritus, will state it openly, and in large font at that:

If words are violence,
And silence is violence,
Then I’m ready for some real violence!
Are you, Lefties?

     At which point the Left, which is acutely conscious of its minority standing – why else would it be attempting censorship by intimidation? – will swiftly back off. Being outnumbered and outgunned five to one will normally elicit a plea for an armistice, Jim Morrison’s silly notions notwithstanding.

     Here’s another, ironically presented by someone who might know better, superannuated guitarist Peter Frampton:

     This is dishonest, and dishonesty always signals an opportunity for a counterattack. The simplest method is to highlight the dishonesty and the agenda it conceals:

     “If you don’t like my saying that ‘White Lives Matter,’ you clearly think they don’t. You think the thousands of white victims of black criminals are insignificant, whereas the nine unarmed blacks killed by the police last year are all-important. You think blacks should be immune to the law and law enforcement, even as black rioters and looters demonstrate how important to the protection of white lives and property the law and the police really are. That makes you a supporter of thugs. Keep your hands where I can see them and back away from me slowly, dude; I’m armed.”

     Yes, there’s anger in the retort. Anger is appropriate at such a time. If you’re a decent American, you’d better be angry right now. What I’ve cited here are important tactics in a campaign intended to take your country from you. Anyone who grasps that is either angry as hell or part of the Leftist insurrection.

     Have a few words from KT at Ace’s place:

     [D]uring the Korean War, the ChiComs got American POWs to cooperate with them by encouraging small concessions. And I've noticed that people are starting to pay more attention to the Marxist training of the activists who started BLM.

     Could that have anything to do with people feeling manipulated by the phrase, "Black Lives Matter"? Could it have anything to do with people losing their jobs for saying "All Lives Matter"? Why all the efforts to explain why it is necessary to repeat the mantra, "Black Lives Matter"?

     The Left and its black racialist adjunct aren’t striving to “explain” anything. They’re working to suppress facts and the convictions the facts support, and to program us with a sense of guilt for nonexistent offenses. Ceaseless repetition of a simple maxim, a tactic revolutionaries have used for many decades, can do little more...but it can do that much, if we fail to counterattack it with energy and, yes, anger:

Activist: Black Lives Matter!
American: Prove it, scumbag.

     Have a nice day.

The Socialist Front In The Lexical Wars

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. It’s yet another unnaturally wet and foggy day here on the fabled Island of Long. As noted social commentator Tom Bombadil has observed, wet days are good for getting the wash done...but not much else. As the news has been fairly boring, I shall return to one of my favorite obsessions, which, owing to the state of the presidential campaign, has become particularly relevant. But first, a musical lead-in:

     (Does anyone know whether Brenda Ann Spencer is still in prison?)

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     If you can control the terms of debate, and the meaning of those terms, you can guarantee victory regardless of the opposing forces’ arguments and rhetorical skills. This effect is growing particularly important within the Democrat Party: first, among those who’d like to preserve it beyond the 2020 elections; second, among those who want to impose their own agenda on it.

     It should not be news to any Gentle Reader that Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) is currently the front-runner in the Dems’ nomination contest. Sanders is, of course, an avowed socialist...but, he will immediately add, he’s a democratic socialist. How does a democratic socialist differ from an unmodified socialist? Sanders won’t elucidate. Moreover, every attempt to probe for a difference that makes a difference elicits the conventional Leftist response of attacking the questioner’s motives.

     Historically, when “democratic” socialists rise to power in some land, they maintain a pretense of deference to majority opinion for a while, but are replaced in short order by full-on / conform-or-be-shot authoritarian socialists. That’s the kind that doesn’t give a fig for the consent of the governed. Their attitude is that “We know what’s best so sit down, shut up, and take what we give you.” The most recent progression of this kind was in Venezuela.

     Indeed, even in the “democratic” phase of the disease, if the regime can’t produce an authentic show of majority support, it will contrive to create the appearance of one. Election fraud is the first stage. Voter intimidation follows soon after. And in the sweet rushing fullness of time, the regime begins imprisoning popular dissenters and shutting down organs that dare to criticize the goings-on. At that point the transition to authoritarian socialism has been completed.

     All this is well documented in case after case. However, the aspiring “democratic” socialist will avert all discussion of such naughtiness. He’s different, you see. He cares about “the people,” or “the workers,” or “the marginalized,” or whatever flag he’s chosen to wave for his current campaign. And don’t you dare to differ with him or he’ll call you, in the treasured formulation of an old friend, “everything but white.”

     But the progression will roll on as it always does. He and those who back him really do believe that they know what’s best. If those idiots the voters disagree, well, they’ll just have to be made to accept it. Given time they’ll learn to like it...and if they don’t, well, the regime has all the guns. Disarming the populace is an absolute and indispensable prerequisite to socialism.

     But Americans have made it impossible to disarm us. There are too many of us, we have more guns than any populace in history, and we’ve made it clear that any attempt to take them from us will trigger a civil war. So what’s a socialist to do?

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     An old saying that probably originated in some corporate conference room is pertinent here:

If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance,
Baffle ‘em with bullshit.

     Now, bullshit is, in a sense, the universal currency of politics. All politicians, in practical terms, are bullshitters. They might represent themselves as caring about the nation – the smarmier ones will attempt to convince you that they care about you personally – but in point of fact, their highest priority is political advancement: a higher office, more power, grander status and perquisites. The lowliest town clerk will tell you – if you get him drunk enough, at least – that he could run this country better than whoever is currently in the Oval Office. The implications for the character and pretensions of the political animal “should” be “obvious.”

     But socialist bullshit is different – indeed, it differs in kind from conventional political bullshit. Socialist bullshit has major three aims:

1. To promulgate the fantasy that government can provide you things “for free:”
2. To obscure the congruity of the speaker’s program with those of all other socialist regimes;
3. To delegitimize all criticisms and critics of the speaker’s claims by attacking them as evilly motivated.

     The astute observer can see all three of those aims being advanced in the campaign rhetoric of Bernie Sanders. Moreover, they interlock in mutual support: a perfect, highly useful political ideon.

     The first aim, the fantasy of “free stuff,” ought to be the easiest of all to counter. After all, nothing in the material world is free of cost. Anyone who claims otherwise has never been responsible for his own upkeep. Those who claim a “right” to free education, free housing, free healthcare, or what have you are actually claiming they have the “right” to reinstitute slavery, to produce the freebies they demand. But to note that out loud makes you the vilest creature on Earth, and they’ll be sure to say so.

     The second aim is a bit tougher to cope with, but only because Americans’ knowledge of the histories of nations that have lapsed into socialism is meager. There’s quite a lot of history about socialism, but it’s not taught in schools, and the typical American adult’s leisure reading doesn’t cover it...assuming that he reads at all, which many don’t. That leaves a relatively clear field for the socialist campaigner to claim that his version of the ancient evil will “work,” in comparison to all those other “fascist” regimes that falsely wore a socialist label. They “weren’t real socialism,” and once again: don’t you dare to differ with him if you don’t want to be drowned in his venom.

     The third aim – the rhetorical tactic of denouncing the opponent – is extremely tough to counter because the target’s immediate, automatic reaction is to go on the defensive: to deny the vilifications. To this response, the attacker can reply with more lies and an “Oh yeah? Prove it” stance that demands that the target humiliate himself. Moreover, the attacker will often “argue” that his critic must be of low motives and character: “He’s trying to deny you all this free stuff! Why else would he do that?”

     Hearing this must get Demosthenes spinning in his grave fast enough to power Los Angeles. Personally, I would prefer the customs of the Camiroi.

---

     In effect, the socialist front in the lexical wars is a struggle over the meaning of certain words fundamental to political discourse: most particularly “socialism,” “rights,” and “free.” Bernie Sanders is an active combatant in that war. He gets away with his deceits and concealments routinely, but then, those who have the opportunity to challenge him mostly share his positions and wouldn’t want to see them defeated.

     Sanders has never had to debate anyone who both knows his stuff and is willing to challenge him on specifics. Thomas Sowell would have him bawling within ten minutes. Anyone sufficiently knowledgeable, who possesses the courage required to stand his ground against a flood of vilification, could do so. But actual debates, in which facts matter and a panel of judges decide who has the better arguments, have vanished from use. And in that observation lies the explanation for the inroads socialist promoters have made with our woefully miseducated youth.

Mincing Words Are An Indicator

     Does anyone remember President Ronald Reagan’s televised statement about the Iran-Contra scandal? Reagan admirers emphasize that he said “I take full responsibility” – which he did say, though absent an impeachment and Senate trial that “responsibility” was weightless. But he said something else that made my ears prick up: something that suggested that certain criminals would never be prosecuted for their crimes:

“Mistakes were made.”

     Note the passive voice. Note the aversion to naming the makers of those “mistakes.” And consider that criminal acts share a distinguishing characteristic that separates them from mere “mistakes.”

     And now we have this:

     In December, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Justice released a report showing significant problems with the warrants that the FBI submitted to FISC in order to secretly wiretap Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. While the OIG's report concluded that the agency was justified in investigating whether Page was unduly influenced by his connections with the Russian government, it also determined that the FBI withheld important details from the FISC that might have influenced its decision to grant these warrants. These omissions were not in Page's favor, and ultimately the OIG found 17 different errors or omissions in the warrant requests, some of which were not corrected in subsequent applications.

     The FISC's judges were extremely unhappy to discover information had been withheld from them, and then-presiding Judge Rosemary M. Collyer (who has since retired) ordered FBI Director Christopher Wray to send a plan to the court by January 10 explaining how the FBI would avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

     Wray submitted his plan last week. It's a dense and technical response that is mostly inscrutable to anybody who does not have a history of involvement with the court's surveillance processes. Wray provides a list of 12 actions the FBI has taken or will take to make sure future applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants include all the information judges should've had when the FBI sought permission to surveil Page. Wray's plans revolve primarily around adding most steps to verify and re-verify information contained in the warrant requests to make sure that FBI agents and supervisors are not omitting information that might undermine or compromise their case for a surveillance warrant. Wray also says the agency will improve training by creating a case study program to teach FBI agents about historical precedents (I'm guessing the Page warrants will play a starring role).

     Note the first sentence of the second paragraph: The FISC's judges were extremely unhappy to discover information had been withheld from them. Another case of the anonymizing passive voice! The information didn’t withhold itself; it was withheld by some FBI agent. Moreover, inasmuch as the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign personnel and of the campaign itself constitute the largest purely political scandal in American history, to characterize its actions, which the actors must have known were against the law, as “mistakes” is a vile, contemptible act of word-mincing.

     The mincing of words, like “mistakes,” involves a deliberate decision by a conscious actor. It is not something that “just happens,” and the rest of us have to cope with it. The FBI is plainly desperate to retain some of the gloss of “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” that has been troweled onto it over the decades since Prohibition. Those who find the FBI useful will naturally be inclined to assist it in that undertaking....unless their consciences should impel them in another direction. But conscience, as I’ve noted at many other times, is a liability to one who seeks to serve the Omnipotent State.

     The Omnipotent State isn’t quite coterminous with the Deep State, but the two have an awful lot in common. The Deep State is well served by anonymizing devices and word-mincing “explanations” for its faceless minions’ “mistakes.” And while it’s still rather early in the morning, I cannot imagine a better rationale for tearing down the whole edifice – every Cabinet department other than State, Defense, and Justice, and all the subdepartments, agencies, and bureaus therein – than the adroit and all too frequent use of passive voice and mincing words to avert cold scrutiny of the “mistakes” those minions commit, for which they strain and squirm to avoid being called to account.

The View From Here

     The political Left – i.e., the Democrat Party and its media handmaidens – is suffering badly. The series of blows delivered to it by the success of Trump Administration policies and the failure of Leftist attempts to undermine its principals has staggered it more seriously than any events since Warren Harding ended the depression that followed Woodrow Wilson’s War. (In case you’re unfamiliar with Harding’s method, he simply reduced federal spending by 40%.) At this point President Trump looks likely to repeat Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election tally. With things going this well, there’s nothing the Democrats have to hope President Trump “steps on his own crank.” That’s not impossible, mind you, but it’s not very likely.

     Are there still some clouds in the sky? Of course. When haven’t there been? There are still unemployed Americans. There are still zones of urban blight and violence. There are still teens and young adults who have no Playstations.^® It’s called to my mind one of Eric Hoffer’s more ominous observations:

     A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

     You see, the subject of today’s tirade is political temptation.

---

     Many years ago, the late Ursula LeGuin wrote an extremely affecting story titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It was, as the authoress said openly, “a variation on a theme by William James.” It described an idyllic city, a place where all the observer can see are peace, prosperity, and safety. Yet there are some who elect to “walk away” from such seeming perfection. Here is LeGuin’s stunningly powerful conclusion:

     The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

     Why do they walk away from what appears to be a realized Utopia? Because the joy of its residents was purchased at a price: permanent isolation and misery for one innocent child. Each of them must be acquainted with that price upon attaining his majority. Some find it unacceptable. In walking away, they reject the bargain.

     That’s the only thing they can do. Even to speak a kind word to that child would violate the bargain for all of Omelas. The consequences are left to the reader’s imagination, but LeGuin leaves no doubt that they would be harsh.

     I put it to you, Gentle Reader: What is the key characteristic of this scenario, the one that motivates those who walk away?

     No partial credit for near misses.

---

     The great political temptation is to look at something disliked, to classify it as a “problem,” and to imagine that it can be “solved.” “Problems” ought to be “solved,” right? You don’t just let them sit there. You get to work!

     That temptation has come near to ruining these United States. Do-gooders have classified one social condition after another as a “problem” and demanded that government “solve” it. In nearly every case the political “solution” demanded has made matters worse – usually not just for those afflicted by the “problem.” The ironies peak in noting that in many cases the “problem” had been dissipating all by itself, with a strong implication that the “solution” actually retarded its amelioration.

     I cannot imagine that the forces that propelled these movements are unaware of what they’ve done. Indeed, in some cases the outcome they produced was the one they intended. But for the purposes of this screed, that’s a side issue. The pernicious effects of temptation are the core of the matter.

     Just now, the official unemployment rate is very low. Let’s imagine, entirely for our current purposes, that only the 3.7% “unemployed” are involuntarily without work. That figure has a certain poignancy to it. “Can’t we do something for those poor people?” the meliorist cries. “Surely the power of the federal government can be brought to bear on this!”

     History contradicts the meliorist in the harshest possible tones. There are exactly zero examples of a government program that has reduced involuntary unemployment other than cosmetically – i.e., by making the unemployed into disguised wards of the State. The attempts have been many; the costs have been great; the successes have been none. With the weight of politico-economic history so solidly behind the “can’t do it” verdict, one would reasonably conclude that it can’t be done. Yet the meliorists continue to screech for it...and others continue to listen to them. Why?

     The answer is “justice.” Note the sneer quotes before you read onward.

---

     The rhetoric of the Social Gospelers was Christian. It was our Christian duty, they proclaimed, to address the plight of the downtrodden. That rhetoric had a massive effect. For as long as the response was private, confined to individuals and their voluntary associations, it did net good at an acceptable cost. The negative consequences of such private charitable action were bearable, as they’ve been throughout history.

     In our time, Social Gospel preachments are less effective than they were. This is especially the case in view of the immense outlays governments at all levels lavish upon “social programs.” A huge fraction of Americans’ taxes go to funding such programs, and the public is fully aware of it. It gives the old rejoinder “I gave at the office” a peculiar force.

     So those who would once have preached about our “Christian duty” have altered the terms of their outreach. Today they talk about “justice.” They tell us that it’s “unjust” that some should have more than others. It’s “unjust” that some should be involuntarily without jobs. It’s “unjust” that some trades compensate their workers so little. And so forth.

     Conceptually, justice is indivisible from rights. There is no definition of justice that can be separated from the rights of the individual. Americans have a clear conception of individuals’ rights, even those who can’t quite articulate it. That lends its clarity to their conception of justice...which is why the reformers of our time are at pains to muddy the concept by adding the word “social.”

     If we insist on the original conception of justice as a process for preserving, defending, and at need restoring the rights of the individual, the notion that government could properly be involved in the mitigation of individuals’ miseries is sharply limited. For the typical “underprivileged” individual is not in that condition because of injustice. He might not be skilled enough to be employed at a better wage. He might be lazy, or handicapped through no fault of anyone else’s. He might have a history that inclines employers to avoid him. Justice as Americans understand it simply isn't involved.

     Compelling a do-gooder to face those facts deals him a severe blow. He’s likely to call you a racist and scurry away. But he won’t retire from the fray. He’ll simply look for a more susceptible, less critical audience. Those 3.7% unemployed are counting on him!

---

     There are do-gooders of every stripe pressing for the attention of the Trump Administration. Some of them are President Trump’s relatives, and have his ear. Herein lies the most significant risk to the overall successes of the Administration to date.

     The risk emerges from the interplay of previous successes with “good intentions.”

     President Trump has proved himself to be a winner: one who can do what he’s said he’ll do. He’s wrestled several national afflictions and nuisances into submission, and is addressing further ones as we speak. Even the Reagan Administration can’t claim Trump’s number and degree of successes. It’s a record to be proud of.

     Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. – Proverbs 16:18

     If the do-gooders in Trump’s orbit should persuade him that there’s nothing immune to his golden touch, they could corrupt the most successful federal administration of the century behind us. Their most promising approach would be to tempt him to overreach by playing to his pride in his achievements to date.

     Take this business of mass shootings. There have been a few in recent years, though their frequency is not increasing. (Neither are the annual body counts of lives lost to unjustified homicide.) In a nation in which private persons can acquire firearms, such things will happen now and then. There’s no way to prevent them – and that admission is key to the whole affair: We can’t do anything about them.

     A legislative or executive attempt to prevent mass shootings would be overwhelmingly more likely to increase the body counts. It would do so by depriving law-abiding Americans of the means of self-defense, including their means of reacting constructively to the emergence of a would-be mass shooter. If President Trump remains focused upon what’s possible and what isn’t – i.e., if he keeps in mind the huge number of annual uses of privately owned firearms to prevent crimes or thwart them in progress, and ponders the consequences of prior infringements on the right to keep and bear arms – he’ll resist the importunings of the “we’ve got to do something” crowd.

     But Trump’s pride of achievement will be their target. “You’ve achieved so much already,” they’ll purr. “Surely you can do something about this!”

     That’s only an isolated case. There are many others.

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     The worst thing you can do to the liberals is take away their grievances. – Bill Moyers

     Almost-redressed grievances are all around us. They’ve been getting smaller since the end of the Obamunist Interregnum. Some are beginning to look pretty damned small...small enough that just a leetle federal intervention might stamp them out for good. That’s what the reformers, meliorists, and do-gooders with access to high Trump Administration officials will chant.

     At this time the Left is in a compromised position. Things are going too well, economically and internationally, for their usual persuasive approaches to gain traction. That’s why the parade of aspirants to the Democrat presidential nomination is composed of socialist fruits and nuts. No one with a dash of sense remaining to him wants to go up against the most successful administration of our time.

     There’s no shortage of cunning among the Left’s strategists and tacticians. They have a sense for where there opportunities lie. Remember how, in the 1930s, they seized upon the Depression as an opportunity to push socialism and communism? In the 1960s, the approach was to point to Michael Harrington’s “pockets of poverty” that only federal action could salve. And in the 1980s, with Reaganomics reviving the American economy, their focus turned sharply toward “environmentalism.” All chimeras – but all subjects on which they could at least pretend there were “problems” to “solve,” and that they cared, whereas the powers in place did not.

     Keep an eye on the Left’s pet think tanks, opinion-mongers, and publicity specialists. Watch what subjects they address. There will be a shift in their emphasis: possibly before the election, but more likely immediately afterward.

     And provide President Trump, along with the electoral support to which his achievements fully entitle him, a service akin to that rendered to kings and emperors of yore: the individual tasked with periodically whispering in the monarch’s ear:

“Remember, O King, that thou art mortal.”

“Truths” That Must Be Disputed

     It appalls me how often verifiably untrue claims are put forth under the explicit heading of “truth.” The tactic has a specific intention behind it: to render argument about the asserted “truth” unacceptable. It’s a step beyond the “everybody knows” approach, which remains open to counter-evidence. In that regard it’s a bit like the warmistas’ frequently heard statement that “the science is settled” – which it never is, in the inherent nature of science.

     But as you know, I’m an old dinosaur who maintains that words have an exact meaning, that facts trump theories and opinions, and that the laws of this universe make exceptions for no one’s preferences or feelings. Such positions are intolerable in our happenin’ world. They bruise too many egos. They drive persons of fragile self-regard to seek a “safe space.” They make it supremely important that I be silenced.

     That hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure someone is working on it.

---

     Here’s the article that’s set me off. I shan’t excerpt it, as it deserves to be read in its entirety. The writer, “Ammo Grrl,” is apparently:

• smart,
• and articulate,
• and well-intentioned.

     That makes her one of the most dangerous persons in America.

     Why dangerous? Because good intentions are a close cousin to wishful thinking. They can deflect the rational faculty from dispassionate observation and inference, and redirect it to rationalizing a course of action that’s at odds with the facts. Good intentions are like that. It’s why they’re the curbstones on the road to Hell.

     Trouble is, the great majority of us have good intentions – and in America those good intentions tend to be of a particular sort. They conform to what C. S. Lewis called the Law of General Benevolence. We want peace, prosperity, and good will to pervade our nation. We don’t want anyone, or any group, to be left out.

     Mind you, I’m in substantial agreement with a couple of Ammo Grrl’s “truths.” Numbers 2 and 3 are assertions against which I’m disinclined to argue, in part because I’m unaware of any facts that would contradict them. But Number 4 is not a “truth;” it’s a question that begins with “if,” whose answer is a matter of opinion. Number 5 is a prediction. Number 6 is historically questionable. Numbers 1 and 7 are verifiably wrong – powered, I would guess, by Ammo Grrl’s fervent desire that they be true.

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     Today, you’re a “racist” if you dare to notice that there are differences among the races. Yet those differences exist. They’re plainly visible. Moreover, we make use of them from time to time. The causes for those differences might be a matter worthy of dispute; the differences themselves are objectively verifiable.

     For that reason, Ammo Grrl’s Number 1 “truth” is flatly false. Just one of the visible differences between American blacks and American whites – the vast number of out-of-wedlock births among black women, and the subsequent prevalence of black children raised in single-parent / female-headed households – is critically significant for urban zones’ problems with crime and violence. The refusal to notice facts that are contextually significant would give rise to still worse problems. Refusal to acknowledge facts is like that. That most of those problems would fall upon whites makes Ammo Grrl’s assertion highly ironic...in a way, self-refuting.

     Number 7 is false as well. We do need further “conversation on race.” What we don’t need are the constraints imposed on such “conversation” by the Left: i.e., the unchallengeable premise that the differences among the races are a consequence of white racism and “privilege.” It is vital that we determine, whether through “conversation” or investigation:

• What causes the legally and socially significant differences between American blacks and the other races;
• If something can be done to ameliorate the deficiencies that afflict American blacks, what might it be;
• If nothing can be done, what we might do to reduce interracial discord even so.

     As Numbers 1 and 7 are the “truths” that most well-intentioned Americans would leap to assert, and would defend a outrance, disputing and refuting them is critical. Yet few have the courage to question them.

---

     The very worst aspect of contemporary discourse is the Left’s stranglehold on the premises for it: specifically, its strident insistence that certain assertions be accepted without question. With regard to race and racial disparities, it’s my contention that that practice is creating racism of the genuinely harmful variety: the sort that promotes racially-based practices over practices that would take note of individual character and ability:

     When a society makes special provisions for a particular class of persons, such that those persons have a good expectation of not suffering for illegal or antisocial behavior, it has committed the worst imaginable injustice against the persons in that class who honor their society's laws and norms: it has equalized the legal, social, and moral positions of good citizens and thugs. Thus, if ninety percent of such a class is law-abiding and decorous while ten percent is violent, dishonest, or disruptive, the latter category will come to overshadow the former in the perceptions of persons outside the class -- not because ten percent is a majority, but because that anti-social subgroup is identified with the class's special set of privileges.

     The insistence that the American black demographic cohort’s legal and social deficiencies must be the consequence of “white racism” and / or “white privilege” is obstructing a dispassionate, objective search for their causes and the implied remedies. Persons of good will, regardless of their race, their politics, and their preferences, must not go along with it. Doing so makes this outcome more likely. That’s always the way it is with counterfactual dogmas: “truths” that run directly counter to what anyone can see with his own eyes, and hear with his own ears.

     (The linked story is also available in this collection.)

To Avert Responsibility, Collectivize!

     To him who hopes to deceive others for profit, the most attractive of all occupations is rhetorical tactician. Perhaps it always was that way. Demosthenes would probably say so; he was, after all, the man who framed rhetoric as the art of making “the worse appear the better cause.” Whatever the case, if your principal skill is lying, there’s no better job for you than rhetorical tactician for a political organization.

     That’s not to say that all politicians and political organizations are equally deceitful. Some tactics aren’t infinitely adaptable. That includes the one I have in mind this morning.

     Let’s start with an example: more exactly, a schematic of one. Imagine that you’ve signed on with some political group as a rhetorical tactician. Such a group will naturally prioritize protecting its members, its agenda, and its funding. At least, if it doesn’t have those things at the top of its priority list, it won’t last very long. But a political group’s focus will be on political action: i.e., on influencing the State, its agencies, and its agents toward support for the group’s agenda. That implies an orientation toward political incentives and governmental responses, usually as instantiated in law and executive policies.

     Now something unfortunate happens for your group: One of its more prominent members is caught doing something naughty. Moreover, the specifics of the naughtiness appear contrary to your group’s overt agenda. You’ve been assigned the task of detoxifying the event rhetorically: i.e., it’s your job to craft rhetoric that will frame what he did as something harmless or irrelevant to the group’s interests. What methods, in categorical terms, are available to you?

     There aren’t many choices. If there were a plausible alternate suspect to whom the deed could be ascribed, that would serve the purpose...but let’s postulate that your guy was caught red-handed. That excludes any possibility of attributing the offense to another individual. What’s left?

     Now now, let’s not always see the same hands!

---

     Just yesterday there was another mass shooting, this time in Philadelphia. The targets were Philadelphia police officers, six of whom were hit. The shooter eventually surrendered and is now in police custody. Media commentators immediately launched into rants about “white supremacy” having created “a climate of fear.”

     But the shooter is black. It takes some work to find a picture of him being apprehended, but they exist:

     Moreover, the shooter isn’t exactly unknown to the police. So how does this connect to “white supremacy” or “a climate of fear?”

     Yet this is what the Left’s mouthpieces do. They strain to redirect the responsibility for the crime from the individual onto some group, preferably a group hostile to the Left’s interests. They put a special effort into it when the individual is from one of the Left’s “mascot groups” (Thomas Sowell).

     It’s been going on for a long time. Ordinary people have begun to tune it out. Yet it will persist, because categorically speaking there’s no other way for the Left to deal with offenses committed by members of groups allied with them, or which they find politically useful.

     There are several such groups. American blacks. Illegal aliens. Muslims within America’s borders. (I refuse to call them “American Muslims” or “Muslim Americans,” as their creed commands them to deny their allegiance to anything but Islam and its ummah.) The media’s coverage of such persons’ misdeeds is invariably gentle; the political rhetoric wrapped around them is invariably deflective and collective.

     The consequences are coming home to roost.

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     Collectivization begets collectivization. When the flacksters’ tactics become consistent enough and uniform enough to be widely recognized as what they are, those who recognize them are moved toward a “counter-collectivization” inimical to the flacksters’ agenda. We’ve already seen that identity groups will evoke counter-groups of other – usually opposed – identities. Groups that attempt to redirect responsibility for their miscreants onto “the police” or “society” have become noxious in the public mind. The reactions are unpleasant; they’re definitely the opposite of what a good person would wish.

     Ironically, the best counteraction to the presence of serious, disproportionate misbehavior within an identifiable demographic, regardless of whether it’s united by race, ethnicity, creed, occupation, or any other characteristic, is the institution of internal discipline. That is, the good people within the group would do best to deal with the criminals, disrupters, antisocials, et cetera internally, such that they can represent to those outside that “we know we have a problem, but we’re dealing with it, so please be patient with us.” For people cannot be prevented from seeing things in groups united by categorizing characteristics. We’re hard-wired to do so, and no amount of “re-education” will prevent it.

     The behavior of early Twentieth Century bootlegging gangs is instructive. Those gangs were often at war with one another. Blood often flowed freely during those contests...but only the blood of gang members. The bosses were scrupulous about not allowing gang-on-gang violence to involve outsiders. Outsiders were their customers; their good will had to be preserved. As for law enforcement, the bosses preferred bribery to the murder of policemen, wherever and whenever possible.

     The paramount need is to prevent government and its agents from taking a collectivist attitude toward the citizenry: regarding us not as individuals responsible solely for our own actions, but as members of groups that bear collective responsibility for whatever any of its members might do. That attitude, when inculcated in the State and its agents, invites preferential enforcement of the law at the very least. It can result in pogroms and “ethnic cleansings.” However, the prevailing political-rhetorical dynamic is in the direction of collectivization, and has been for some time.

     That dynamic must be countered and reversed. It might be inimical to the strategists of the Left – it certainly wouldn’t be good for the career prospects of their mouthpieces – but it’s one of the chief necessities of our time.

     More anon.

Attacks And Defenses

     First, a brief citation from another blogger that expresses the sentiments of many on the Right today:

     I am exhausted of having to campaign or every red c**t hair’s breadth of my civil rights.

     I am so ready to stack bodies of black bloc and the pussyhat #Resistance on the National Mall like firewood, grab microphone and shout into the night:

     “I am tired of these radicals setting the tone of the national debate. I am tired of having to fight constantly to preserve even the basic semblances of the rights guaranteed to me in the Constitution. Go argue over tax rates and spending cuts and those kinds of things that normal Americans care about. Stop being beholden to the insane Radicals. If you do not understand that, I’ll stack up another 10,000 in black masks and pink hats until you do get the message that we don’t want Socialism and we don’t want to give up our civil rights. It’s the economy you stupid fucks, fix that and leave the Bill of Rights fucking alone.”

     Have you been feeling like that, Gentle Reader?

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     The period between the invasion of Poland in September of 1939 and the blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France in May of 1940 is often called “the Phony War.” It didn’t look like there was a war in progress. There were no maneuvering armies, no shooting, and no casualties being reported among the major combatants. Things were happening at sea, but they seemed largely irrelevant to the people of Britain and Western Europe. Nazi Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway, and the Soviets had attacked Finland, but those contests, like the sea engagements, were largely ignored by the citizens of the Allied Powers.

     Yet a war was in progress. It would prove to be the largest war ever fought on Earth. Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would host its battles. Many millions would die. The geopolitics of the world would be completely rewritten.

     America is currently in a “phony” phase of its domestic war: i.e., the war over who (and what ideas) shall dominate our nation’s governments. There’s a lot of angry rhetoric, but very little actual violence. Indeed, much of the fighting is explicitly over the meanings of words:

     One of the key lessons of the 2018 elections is that the Left is waging – and winning – a linguistic war. The Left claims and occupies more and more linguistic ground with each new fight.

• Defense of the Founding Fathers becomes defense of white, racist, slaveowners.
• Defense of American identity becomes an act of white male domination.

     ....Wanting to obey the law in counting votes becomes an effort to suppress votes and disenfranchise poor people, minorities, and immigrants.

     The presumption of Democrats winning is so great that Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown said, “[I]f Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it, it's clear.”

     Every day, we are watching Democrats break and stretch the law for the sole purpose of winning, while they attack Republicans for wanting an honest count of legal voters.

     Democrats and their liberal media allies know that if they repeat something often enough it begins to be accepted as truth.

     Newt Gingrich’s column goes on to argue that these verbal attacks on the Right are a kind of battlespace preparation: the creation of conditions in which mob violence against conservatives, whether public servants or private citizens, seems morally justified. He could well be right.

     There a war on, and it’s no phony.

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     I’ve wanted to believe that the electorate would come home to traditional American values: individual freedom, the free market, Constitutionally limited government, and national sovereignty. At various points over the previous three decades it looked as if we might be making progress. At other points we appeared to be backsliding toward socialism, globalism, and authoritarian government. All the while, the Left strove to change the meanings of words essential to political discourse.

     How long has it been since you first heard the ominous phrase our truth? I recall seeing it in print more than twenty years ago, during the height of the Sturm und Drang over government funding for AIDS research. The implication that truth itself could be “privatized,” such that what’s true for Smith might not be true for Jones, is terrifying. If we don’t face a common reality with objectively perceptible facts, how could we manage to communicate or cooperate to any worthwhile end?

     The answer isn’t hard to find; it’s just hard to face. Yet the Left has assailed the concept of objective truth – an accurate statement of fact independent of anyone’s feelings or opinions – for decades, promoting in its place a quasi-solipsistic notion that “my truth” need not have any relation to “your truth.” That’s the entering wedge for the replacement of evidence and reason by propaganda.

     The only defense is infinite stubbornness about the meanings of words: an absolute refusal to grant an iota of respect to persons who misuse them. Such persons might think they’re on the side of the angels. Indeed, the Left rhetorical machinations are designed to get them to think so. But they aren’t – and under no circumstances should we accord them the presumption of integrity, for they have enlisted in the effort to make communication and cooperation impossible.

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     Columnist Maggie Gallagher once observed that if there is no such thing as objective truth, our communications amount to nothing more than attempts to manipulate one another, a constant struggle to use and not be used. The battle over the reliability of words we use and the statements we construct from them will only remain nonviolent for a little while. After that, our ability to trust one another will be gone, perhaps forever. Then the lead will start to fly.

     I wish I could end this on a hopeful note. I can’t.

Quickies: “Radical”

     Much has been written about the corruption of language for political purposes. Start with George Orwell, who certainly knows the subject. Real-world examples abound, especially today. Just now, one in particular stands out:

     GQ columnist Julia Ioffe said Monday on CNN that President Trump has "radicalized" many more people than ISIS ever did. Republican commentator David Urban took offense and demanded that CNN host Jake Tapper condemn what Ioffe said.

     "I think this president, one of the things that he really launched his presidential run on is talking about Islamic radicalization. And this president has radicalized so many more people than ISIS ever did," Ioffe said during a CNN panel discussion on the synagogue massacre.

     The colloquial meaning of radical in describing a political position is roughly: “This position is unacceptably far from the norm.” (See here.) “The norm,” of course, refers to “what we’re accustomed to.” However, the word carries a connotation of violence: a radical — note the use of the word as a noun that refers to an individual – is someone who’s willing to use extreme measures to get the political results he wants.

     The legacy media have taken to describing President Trump’s positions on trade, the borders, religious and civil liberties, and so on as radical. But those positions are:

• Advanced non-violently;
• Traditional for America;
• Highly popular.

     But according to Julia Ioffe, the president has supposedly “radicalized” us who support him. What can this mean?

     Which side of the contemporary political face-off has been willing to use extreme measures to get what it wants? Which side has used violence and intimidation to suppress the other’s public events, rallies, and presentations? And which side has a growing wing – including the supporters of the presidential contender who came in second in its nominating contest – that explicitly calls for the replacement of the still-somewhat-free American economy with socialism?

     When the meanings of the words we use are corrupted, communication becomes impossible. When communication is impossible, so is peaceful discourse.

     The Left has gone all in. Alea iacta est. They have crossed America’s political Rubicon in both word and deed. The final reckoning can’t be far off.

     Be ready.

Unsatisfactory Lexicon

     Political discourse, insofar as any remains that doesn’t involve epithets, slanders, threats, or actual violence, requires a lexicon: a set of terms whose meaning are agreed upon by all the participants. Without agreement on the meanings of the words we use, discussion of any sort is pointless, for we can convey neither evidence nor reasoning. In these United States in this Year of Our Lord 2018, we lack such an asset. My secret heartthrob Adrienne provides a case study:

     Yesterday at history club a gentleman informed me he was the token liberal in the group. He and his wife had been traveling for the past seven months so it was my first encounter with him.

     After declaring his liberalism he was quick to add that he was anti-abortion and pro 2nd amendment. Um, okay.

     My suspicion is always aroused when someone is so hasty to declare themselves in an almost confrontational manner with not a clue about the person to whom they are speaking and apparently no desire to find out.

     Finally I asked him what he believed that made him define himself as a liberal.

     He sat there for many minutes and if he had a trapdoor in his forehead I could have popped it open and witnessed the wheels of his mind churning at warp speed. It was clear no one had ever asked him that before because he finally answered, "I don't really know."

     The above is not an outlier; it is representative of the actual understanding, if I may use the term somewhat sardonically, of the term liberal at this time in this nation.

     Please read the rest of Adrienne’s post. She goes on to ask whether it remains possible to use the words conservative and liberal in a fashion that conveys usable information. It’s an important inquiry. The lack of an answer tells us quite a lot, if we’re listening.

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     You can look up the words liberal and conservative in any dictionary. But you’d learn nothing that would help to explain the positions, preferences, and behavior of those who label themselves as one or the other. The same is true of several even more important words: rights, justice, and freedom. What they retain are only connotations; auras of significance that seldom attach properly to the specific ideas to which those words are currently applied.

     This separation of politically potent words from their actual meanings has been mostly deliberate. The Left wants to appropriate those powerful words to its exclusive use. They have emotional weight; they glow with an inherent merit, a kind of sanctity, that lends power to him who can wield them. But if we probe them for objective meanings according to contemporary usage, we get nothing but contradictions.

     Rights is probably the most important of the three. Ronald Dworkin called rights “political trumps held by individuals.” To claim a right is to argue that the referenced condition outweighs all practical concerns.

     When a Leftist asserts that illegal aliens have a right to remain in the U.S., he’s claiming that no other consideration could possibly matter. Border control laws? Port-of-entry laws? Customs enforcement? Extradition treaties? Sweep them away! There’s a right on the table.

     That is the current position of many who clamor for an “amnesty” for the approximately 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. at this time. Many; not all. Some argue on practical grounds. But the ones getting the most air time and column-inches are the ones screeching that everyone has a right to be an American.

     Consider in this light the demands of Leftists for guaranteed incomes, for a high minimum wage, for free higher educations for all, for “safe spaces” for innumerable minorities, and so forth. The word rights always enters the picture sooner or later. No other word can “trump” the legal and practical considerations that oppose their demands.

     The word is powerful. But according to current usage it has no objective meaning. The same is true for justice and freedom.

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     Conservatives tend to be cautious about the use of rights, justice, and freedom. We generally think we know what we mean by them. However, we’re leery of going beyond the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States as amended. Even the most strident conservative advocate wants some scriptural basis in a claim of rights. As for justice, we tend to be only slightly less legalistic.

     Which is part of why when the shouting starts the Left’s screeching tends to drown out our arguments. We argue from tradition, whether legal, scriptural, or Anglo-American; they’re working with pure emotion, the easier to mobilize the troops.

     In this connection, freedom is more often used as a fundamental rationale than a debating point. Conservatives’ understanding of freedom – i.e., the absence of coercion or constraint from all areas of decision making that don’t involve force or fraud – has roots sunk a thousand years deep. Leftists’ conception of freedom is quite different: they see it as the absence of unfulfilled desires. They seek to elevate every desire to a right – except the desires of conservatives to be left alone in peace and privacy, that is – and to charge the federal government with the obligation to fulfill the lot of them.

     Isn’t it plain from the above that arguments between Right and Left are impossible to resolve? We don’t even agree upon the meanings of the words we use. How, then, could we possibly settle any more specific dispute?

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     The most recent foofaurauw to claim national headlines and front-page space arose from the mobilization of high school students for various gun-control propositions. The Left has played that drama to the hilt. Most significant for this discussion, they’ve prattled about “a right to be safe.”

     When I first heard that notion put about, I could barely restrain my laughter. Yet it was a bitter thing, for millions of Americans have swallowed the “right” to “be safe” unreflectively. No one who has ever lived has been 100% safe – i.e., absolutely assured that he will come to no harm – regardless of who he was or where or when he existed. Danger inheres in every setting and every undertaking. We do what we can to eliminate as many risks as possible, especially when it comes to our children. We do a better job of it than any previous civilization. But we can’t eliminate them all.

     An example: While school is in session, a fire alarm is pulled. Classes begin evacuation procedures. During the evacuation, a student stumbles and falls. The student behind him trips over him, and the screams trigger a stampede. Several children are hurt; perhaps some are killed. This has happened more than once. No imaginable prior arrangement could reduce the probability of such a tragedy to zero.

     The “right to be safe” is thus both objectively meaningless and physically impossible. But this is the case with virtually every claim of rights that goes beyond “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

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     I could go on. Sometimes I do. But the above will serve for the present. It’s my argument for not crossing rhetorical swords with someone on the Left. He could be 100% sincere; it matters not. If we don’t mean the same things by the words we use, we cannot communicate. We will resolve nothing.

     As for engaging the insincere Leftist, whose true aim is for unlimited and unbounded power over all of us...need you ask?

Decency

     “What is decent?” This three word query conceals a vast layer of unanswered questions.

     Not long ago I offered a criticism of a normative statement from Ben Shapiro:

     We all ought to behave with decency and truth.

     In that earlier essay, I argued that “ought to,” which is equivalent to “should,” is too slippery and too loaded for use in a discussion of politics and public policy. It occurs to me this morning that I shortchanged the subject by not approaching decency, another slippery, loaded word, with more rigor.

     The lack of rigor is what allows the Left to twist seemingly reasonable statements into weapons against us.

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     The root of the English word decency is the Latin word decens, which means fitting. A particular statement or action cannot be evaluated as decent or indecent without reference to the context in which it occurred. The question “Was that decent?” should be translated to “Was it appropriate to the context?”

• Who was present?
• What were the circumstances?
• What priorities pertained to those persons and circumstances?

     A moment’s thought should make it plain that what is entirely decent in one context would be shockingly indecent in another. Surgeons reviewing an operation would find it fitting to discuss the details in the hospital break room. Indeed, their conversation might result in lives saved in the future. However, the same discussion would be unacceptable at a family dinner table with children present – even if the head of the household were the surgeon who performed the operation.

     Even in seemingly comparable contexts, differences in certain details can render what’s fitting in one unacceptable in the other. Imagine four persons gathered for social purposes discussing their favorite strong beverages. On the surface it sounds decent enough. Little is thought of it when it happens at the neighborhood tavern. But were one of those persons an alcoholic, the decency of the subject would be dubious, to say the least. If the four were surgeons gathered around an overdose victim, collaborating in an operation, it would be in shockingly bad taste.

     “Wholly decent” and “wholly indecent” are poles between which lie a range of gradations. An early scene from the recent movie Doctor Strange provides a case study. The title character conducts a complex operation on a patient’s brain...while engaged in a contest of sorts over musical trivia. Perhaps such goings-on are commonplace in American operating theaters; I wouldn’t know. But I wouldn’t want to be the guy on the operating table with his skull open under those circumstances. I’d fear that my life was in the hands of someone, however good he might be, whose attention isn’t fully on his work.

     In judgments of decency, context is everything.

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     The political Left has made capital out of abstractions we once held harmless by redefining the words used to refer to them. Decency is a good example, especially when we approach it through its negation. A very brief snippet of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s recent interview with Cathy Newman presents an example of the technique:

     When Newman speaks of “a right not to be offended,” she’s really saying that to refuse to address a transgender by his/her/its/their preferred pronoun is indecent. Moreover, she’s implying that the indecency is so extreme that to make conformance a matter of law, the violation of which would be subject to punishment, would be fitting. That’s inherent in the nature of an individual’s rights: to violate one is inherently unjust, and therefore is properly punishable by the State.

     The complete absence of context is just as staggering as Newman’s bald assertion. Dr. Peterson riposted gracefully, as he usually does -- see the complete interview for details -- but the interview context was an unsuitable one for addressing the larger problem: the Left’s use of linguistic kidnapping as a tactical ploy. It wouldn’t have been fitting even if Newman had permitted it.

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     When we all agree on what we mean by the terms of a discussion, we can generally conduct it without rancor. Indeed, we can often resolve a debate at the start of which the sides disagree completely, merely by insisting that words be used according to their established public meanings. One side can be shown to have the better case, at which point the other would be expected to concede courteously.

     It doesn’t happen often these days, and often the reason for that is that the Left insists on a tendentious redefinition of a word for something the rest of us understand quite differently. The connotations of the word, including its traditional role in law and jurisprudence, are yoked to the Left’s arbitrarily imposed denotation. Decency, rights, and justice are important tokens in the Left’s game.

     It’s dirty pool being played for high stakes: the true individual rights we possess. They’ve been under attack in this fashion for so long that ninety-nine out of any hundred people would be unable to answer the critical question:

What is the difference between a right and a permission?

     Of course, if you were to pose that question to a Leftist, he’d immediately denounce it – and you – as “indecent.” But that’s a subject best left for another screed.