Reading the Non-Fashionable

It wasn't until I watched a Jordan B. Peterson interview with British North London luvvie Helen Lewis where she introduced Friedrich Nietzsche as "the Nazi's favorite intellectual" that I knew I had to read Nietzsche from cover to cover. I had always "known" that Nietzsche was somehow not respectable, and the reason was something to do with the Nazis. But what exactly? Only the Zeitgeist knew.

The same thing with Carl Schmitt. He actually was a Nazi, or at least a camp-follower, or at least a man that knew which side his bread was buttered. Eeeuw! But if you haven't read his The Concept of the Political you don't understand politics.

I had always understood that E.O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology and Consilience, was a bit of a kook. But there's an interview with the recently departed Wilson in Quillette. I see the problem. The witch-hunters of 40 years ago -- guys like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin -- were after him. And his theories, proposing like the psychologists that we are mostly our genes and our unconscious, go against the Blank Slate worldview that helps prop up the lefty religion of politics with everything, They went for Wilson because

it was thought at the time that raising the specter of a biological basis for human behavior was not only wrong, but a justification for war, sexism, and racism.

How about that passive voice: "it was thought at the time..."

Really, I shouldn't be so surprised and scandalized. If the COVID episode of the last two years has taught us anything it is that almost all humans almost always go with the flow of conventional wisdom. Of course we do: we are social animals.

I'm reading a piece of conventional wisdom right now, Richard J Evans' book The Coming of the Third Reich. Right now I am in the middle of the Gleichschaltung (or co-ordination) period at the beginning of Nazi rule where all the vast undergrowth of German social institutions, from gymnasiums to gun clubs, were Nazified. You had to have Nazis in charge, or else.

Of course, we are all horrified at what the Nazis did, but what is different, except in degree, with the present moment where all good corporations have signed onto the BLM critical race theory co-ordination directed by our liberal-left educated ruling class. And all public schools are teaching the evils of systemic racism -- except that they aren't, no siree, no such thing as critical race theory!

And how many conservatives still have jobs in the universities, senator?

My theory is that any ruling class worth its salt should keep the kooks and the crazies properly fed and watered, and for two reasons.

The first is that, you never know, the kooks may be right, and if they are we rulers will want to co-opt their ideas and make them our own.

The second is that we rulers want to keep an eye on the crazies. And the best way to do that is to let them operate in the open -- with maybe a few FBI informants signed on to keep tabs on them.

But the big question is: what unfashionable and de-plaformed kook should I be reading next? Holocaust deniers?  Critics of feminism? Ultra-nationalist whackos? Climate deniers? And would it be safe for me to read them without being corrupted by their lies?

Honestly, I don't know. But my antennae are always searching: for the kook that really isn't a kook.

Misinformation, Disinformation, and Wartime Censorship

In the last few days we have seen "scientists" censored by Twitter for... something. Like Robert W. Malone, MD. Or journalist John Solomon.

What is all the ruling-class frenzy about "misinformation' and "disinformation" all about? And why does the media chime in and censor Wrongthink?

I think it is because the ruling class -- and by extension Big Media and Big Social Media -- experience the current COVID crisis as a war, a war they are fighting to save civilization.

And in a war, you suspend freedom-of-speech in favor of the ruling-class narrative and propaganda.

Because when you are fighting a war it is "get with the program, Jenkins" and "everyone on the same page." The strategic plans and war narrative may, of course, be all wrong. But, as long as we are in a war then everybody has to get with the program and we fight the enemy united. There's the enemy, the hated, horrible enemy. And then there are our noble warriors, fighting to save us from a fate worse than death. And then there is the glorious victory that will transform life on Earth.

And the really special thing about a war is you get to spend money, borrow money, tax money, and print money. And order everyone around. Hoo boy, what fun!

Notice that this only applies to the wars that our greater ruling class approves of: World War I, World War II, Climate Change, COVID. The greater ruling class was not on board for most of the Cold War -- because after all, the Commies were fighting for justice and because of the horror of McCarthyism -- and it was not on board for most of the War on Terror -- because colonialism or Islamophobia or Palestinians or something.

I guess my angle on this is that I am hoping that the ruling class narrative of masks and lockdowns and vaccinations is about to drive off the road into the ditch. Because the masks didn't work; the lockdowns didn't work, and the vaccinations didn't work -- not the way they were promised.

In other words, I am hoping that the American people -- and particularly the American women that have been 100 percent behind World War COVID -- will experience the COVID war as a defeat.

Here's what Candidate Joe Biden was selling in 2020.

We are the United States of America. We can beat this virus.

There is no challenge we cannot meet, no enemy we cannot face, no threat we cannot conquer when we stand together.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 28, 2020

Obviously, the whole war effort of masks, lockdowns, and vaccinations was intended to show that indeed, "we can beat this virus." Now it looks like we can't and so the ruling class is changing its narrative and hoping you don't notice.

When you think about it, defeat in war is first of all a defeat for the ruling class narrative. And when the ruling class narrative has been defeated it creates a space for another narrative.

By the way, I was reading a 2009 Orson Scott Card novel, Hidden Empire, about a global pandemic issuing from a monkey virus in West Africa. One of the things his president promised was that he was not going to shut down the economy.

A Lefty Reviews the Last 30 Years

Like about 2-1/2 other people, I believe that all humans live in their own bubble, their own explanation of reality. And it's mostly stuff we have picked up from the Zeitgeist, the narratives being offered by the various Professor Marvels out there: political prophets, ruling class stenographers in the media, gubmint professors and teachers.

But it's helpful to get a full meal of lefty narrative in one place, such as Ryan Cooper's look at the American left over the past 20 years.

I entered high school in 2000, and watched in bafflement as the Supreme Court handed the presidency to Bush in a decision even a 14-year-old could see was cynical politics dressed up with legalese.

So, Ryan, baby, now you know how the Trump supporters feel, I'm sure.

when Bush defeated John Kerry — the only time a Republican has won the popular vote in a presidential election since I was 2 years old, by the way — running on war and homophobic panic.

"Homophobic panic?" I must have missed that.

My half-baked suspicion at 17 years old that "invading Iraq for no reason seems like a really bad idea" turned out to give me more wisdom on war than three-quarters of Congress and the entire D.C. foreign policy establishment.

Good point. But if you are World Hegemon -- from any party -- you make sure to dominate the towel-heads sitting on top of the world's oil.

[In 2008] I was bewildered to learn that Wall Street had somehow built a grenade under itself that blew up and took the global economy down with it. 

Akshully, Ryan, the crash had a lot to do with the gubmint's 50 year program to subsidize home mortgages that created a massive bubble in home prices. Kinda like right now.

Then came Obama, a "golden opportunity was almost totally squandered. "

Influenced by neoliberal economists the president hired (most of whom were deeply implicated in the crisis itself), the party passed an obviously inadequate stimulus package that stopped the recession but led to the weakest economic recovery since the 1930s. 

Well, Ryan, racist-sexist-homophobes like me think that the Obama stimulus failed because it was just a payout to Democrat supporters, not a program to restart the economy. But what do we know?

Their one major social policy achievement before that loss was a heavily compromised health care reform that, while better than nothing, failed to truly solve any of the real problems — like the endless cost bloat that continues to devour the economy from the inside. 

If you think that the problem with the health care system is not enough government, I gotta bridge to sell you.

The disappointments of Obama led directly to the first major leftist grassroots movement of the century: Occupy Wall Street. 

No, Ryan. There is no such thing as a "leftist grassroots movement." They are all AstroTurf, gussied up by the scions and the functionaries of the ruling class, chaps like you. That goes for BLM too.

Earth to Ryan: grassroots movements are the ones that make the educated ruling class -- chaps like you -- react in horror. 

The disappointments of Obama and the example of Occupy no doubt helped inspire the second leftist mass movement of the last two decades: Black Lives Matter.

OK, so you think the problem is "mass incarceration and police brutality." We racist-sexist-homophobes think the problem is gubmint education and gubmint welfare programs that create a huge underclass of boys without fathers: men that don't work much and women that don't marry much.

But now we have Bernie Sanders and

The American left has a serious national presence for the first time since the 1940s, a toehold in Congress, and a significant presence in many state governments.

 And the supporters are young!

One byproduct is a truly enormous partisan age gap — probably the largest in American history, and one that was important for Biden's victory in 2020.

Except that now

Biden's approval rating among under-30s has dropped by 50 points, likely thanks to the party's constant dithering on passing its own agenda, and disgruntled leftists have been known to turn to the right on occasion. 

And the electoral success of the left is triggering a crackdown.

what traditionally happens in American history when there is any serious leftist political movement is it is smashed through a combination of state repression and racist vigilante violence. That's what happened to the multi-racial labor coalition in the South after the Civil War. It's what happened to a budding socialist movement during the First Red Scare between 1918 and 1920. And it's what happened in the McCarthy era.

You see what I mean about people living in a bubble? But I wonder, exactly, what Ryan means by "racist vigilante violence?" Rittenhouse? Blacks murdering blacks in Chicago? MAGA types hanging a noose around innocent Jussie Smollett?

But that is nothing compared to what will happen if the Republicans get back into power.

Republicans are openly announcing that they intend to replicate the McCarthy formula by whipping up a shrieking moral panic over "woke" phrases and "critical race theory," by which they mean anything that discusses racism whatsoever. 

Yes, well. Don't look now, but what I read tells me that the Republican Party is becoming more and more the party of the working class: people that have a job but don't have a college degree. And that includes, I read today, 80 percent of Hispanics, who are turning rapidly to the Republicans.

But hey, McCarthyism! Here's how Ryan Cooper ends his salute to the left:

The future isn't set in stone, but unless the Biden administration and congressional Democrats do something to protect democracy and America's civil rights, the relative toleration the left has enjoyed since 2000 will come to an end. But there's still time to recognize that American democracy needs the left as much as the left needs democratic freedoms. 

 You know, I think there's a word for this kind of word salad: word salad.

But imagine an America that provided even "relative toleration" in the nation's universities and elite media institutions to the center right -- never mind the "far-right!" Imagine that!

The Current Racial Frenzy Will Abate, But...

 George Will has a piece out prophesying the end of the current race frenzy: "National conservatives and racial identitarians have a common enemy: Individualism." But our problems will not be solved with the race frenzy abatement, because the nationalist right is almost as bad as the racist left. Both the nationalist right and the racist left are united in a war against individualism. Individualism, is something new under the sun, he says, invoking Michael Oakeshott.

Modernity’s greatest achievement, which was the prerequisite for its subsequent achievements, was the invention of the individual. Oakeshott argued that, in the 14th and 15th centuries, conditions emerged that were “favorable to a very high degree of human individuality,” meaning “persons accustomed to making choices for themselves.”

And the conditions were particularly favorable in Italian cities.

Well, I can understand that Buckley-era conservatives like Will would look askance at Trump-era populist conservatism; it's centered on the identity and the economic interest of the very ordinary middle class American rather than the business-owning middle class of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Indeed, in 2021, U.S. “national conservatives,” who are collectivists on the right, recoil against modernity in the name of communitarian values, strongly tinged with a nativist nationalism and with a trace of the European blood-and-soil right.

Really? I have a better idea, a higher idea, that floats above the decaying remnant of Buckleyism and the eternal lefty search for the transformative community that will lead directly to justice do not pass go.

It is this.

All politics is built around the friend-enemy distinction. The point in any politics is to define who is one of "us" and who is one of "them," the enemy that "we" might have to fight and kill.

Once the size of human community has expanded beyond the hunter-gatherer band of the kindred the big man and the politicians and the clerics have to come up with a new narrative that explains the new community. Enter the age of "tribalism." And I maintain that all tribalisms are fake tribalisms, a likely origin myth and  "story so far" that explains and exalts "our community" and unites the community with feeling of belonging together.

In particular, I suggest, almost all political identities are forged by the veteran soldiers in the army, the brothers in arms that founded the state that we descendants come to think of as having existed for all time.

What is "nativist nationalism?" It is, presumably the tribe of people in a contiguous nation state that are native to the place. As opposed to more recent arrivals who maybe don't yet identify as natives, but as an immigrant community that still identifies in part with its identity in the old country. It is not hard to understand that the natives of a country would be suspicious of more recent arrivals, and vice versa.

And it is not surprising that politicians and priests would take advantage of this.

Obviously, this is the story of politics in the United States at least since the Irish started arriving in the 1840s in consequence of the potato famine. Immigrant groups arrived in steamships from Europe and coalesced in immigrant "ghettos" for a generation or two. And soon after they arrived the local political machine started to organize them into its own personal vote bank. 

Obviously the left has invented a new form of tribalism based not on place but on class and race. To me, this is just another opportunistic "fake tribalism" that teaches a group of people to feel an identity that just happens to benefit the educated ruling class that wants to unite various lower-class groups into a political army to fight against the middle.

And this is the game of all political ruling classes, to conjure up some kind of "fake tribalism" to unify the people you want to unify into a political identity, and then lead them to war against some enemy, foreign or domestic.

It is telling that the current leftist politics based on race or the slightly less racist notion of "oppressed peoples" has arisen in a time when an appeal to workers as a class is not as politically useful as, say, back in the 1930s.

But whatabout nativist nationalism and race identitarians?

Well, I would say they they are both led by political leaders that experience themselves as creative individualists.

In other words, I would say that all "individualists" are upper class people that see themselves as transformative and creative leaders. On the conservative side these might be people that see themselves as intellectuals imagining a political framework of limited government, or business start-up entrepreneurs imagining how they are going to transform the business world, or lefty political activists imagining how they are going to bend the arc of history towards justice.

And so all this fits into my reductive Three Peoples theory, where the nativist nationalists are people in the Responsible middle class who identify with nation and the race identitarians are lower class Subordinates who identify with their non-American national origin or class or race rather than with the larger political community. And Individualists are all members of the Creative class imagining that they are doing a great thing.

But I could be wrong.

Women Complain Because They Want to be "Soothed"

Now there's one thing in the world that I trust absolutely.

And that's My Girl Mary-Ann Evans. That's George Eliot to you. She was the daughter of a carpenter that rose to be an estate manager, managing the estates of rich rural magnates in the old rural England. Her chef d'oeuvre is probably Middlemarch.

So, we can say of George Eliot that, like Susan Sowerby, mother of ten in The Secret Garden, "she knows."

Now, in order to celebrate Christmas I have been re-reading Eliot's first full-length novel Adam Bede. Adam is a carpenter and rises to become the estate manager for Arthur Donnithorne. Adam is tall, strong, worthy, and courageous.

But Adam's mother is an eternal complainer, as in my earth-shattering notion that women have a Culture of Complaint.

But now comes Mary-Ann Evans, and "she knows." So here is a fragment about Adam's mother, Lisbeth Bede.

Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly.

Did you get that, guys?

Women complain in the expectation of being soothed.

Does that align with my notion of "women expect to be protected" or not?

By the way, guess who is George Eliot's Soother-in-chief?

Right first time. It's Dinah Morris, the sainted Methodist lay-preacher and heroine in Adam Bede. and one of the people she soothes is Adam's mother Lisbeth.

(She also soothes the antagonist Hetty Sorrel before Hetty needs soothing. But she will need soothing, of course, and the sainted Dinah already knows it.)

Now, if a woman is complaining it is probably because she is anxious. And why is she anxious? Because she is concerned that she may not be protected.

And so, what is the point of soothing the anxious woman? To assure her that, don't worry darling, you are going to be protected.

By the way, this all aligns with our current safetyism, the notion of women all complaining about "stress." Not to mention workplace harassment. This all aligns with my talk about Women in the Public Square, that they are in the process, per Georg Simmel, of adapting the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

Women expect to be protected; they need to be safe. When they are uncertain about that protection they complain. When they complain they don't want to be told to shut up and stop complaining -- such a guy thing! They want to be soothed, and they want to be told that everything will be all right.

Hmm. I remember, back in the olden time, how my sainted mother used to chuckle about my Dad. How he would tell her "it'll be all right."

See? Mary-Ann Evans is right. And my mother at least had the wisdom to laugh about my Dad's efforts to soothe her when she was complaining about something.

Whatabout Kids' Education?

We were dining with friends, whose daughters are both in college. And the father opined as how kids shouldn't go to college until their mid twenties. And I agreed.

But, really, when was the last time we, the American people, thought about our kids' education? Other than making sure to buy a house in a good school district and then send the kids to a good college? 

And when was the last time that our noble rulers thought seriously about kids' education?

My potted history of US education is:

Aristotle: "Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man."

Jesuits: Ditto.

Shakespeare: This son of a glovemaker in England went to the local grammar school at Stratford on Avon where he learned, among other things, Latin. In those days kids started work at age eight unless they went to grammar school.

Tocqueville: He thought American education in the 1830s was "widespread and mediocre." Your average backwoodsman had "the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers."

Horace Mann: Main force of the common school movement in the 1830s. The idea was for the Transcendentalists to outflank the remaining Puritans and reeducate the Catholics. His system was influenced by the Germans.

Irish Catholics: First build the school, then the church, Horace Mann.

High schools: Universal secondary education began to be widespread after the National Education Association recommended twelve years of education, with the idea that every kid should be taught the same material in the same way. And basically prepare kids for a job.

John Dewey: Believed in education as "a social institution through which social reform can and should take place."

School Choice: Advanced by economist Milton Friedman in the 1950s, it centers around "vouchers" so that parents can send kids to the school of their choice. With gubmint money.

Mega high schools: In The American High School Today in 1959 Harvard President emeritus James B. Conant recommended mega high schools so they could offer more and varied programs.

Home schooling: Began in the 1960s as a pushback against compulsory gubmint education.

School busing: A 1971 Supreme Court allowed busing of school children to "diversify the racial makeup of schools."

A Nation at Risk: This 1983 report said that American schools were failing, so reform was needed.

Charter Schools: Schools within the gubmint school system that offer alternative educational methods outside the rigid rules of the standard schools.

No Child Left Behind: This Act in 2001 proposed national standards in education.

Bill Gates: High schools are too big.

Self-education: "Given tablets but no teachers, Ethiopian children educate themselves."

Common Core: Starting in 2010 a state effort to provide nationwide common education standards.

CRT and Equity: America and schools are racist; enough of grades and math already.

COVID School Closures: Close schools during a modest epidemic. Because safety and morbidly obese women teachers.

Most people will agree that this history adds up to a total cock-up on the education front that is Making Things Worse. 

All these experts have had their turn. Now it's my turn:

I propose that nearly all education reformers are Klueless Klots that don't have a Klue.

I propose that gubmint schools should properly be called "Government Child Custodial Facilities."

I propose an end to compulsory schooling.

I propose that the standard model of childhood education should be neighborhood mothers getting together to educate their children with tablets (see above) and the mothers that don't get with the program should be named and shamed and shunned by the other mothers.

I propose that after age 11, children should be forced to crawl over broken glass if they want to go to school.

I propose that employers should offer education opportunities, as the employers of apprentices did in the olden time.

I propose that the US should pass a constitutional amendment forbidding the federal government to fund or legislate about universities.

As you can see, I am a profound moderate when it comes to education. Merry Christmas!

The Eternal Question About Government

Government knows only two modes. First there is the call to arms against an enemy. The call to arms may be against the Vikings, the Frogs, the Krauts, the Commies, the A-rabs, the Pox.

But the question is ever the same. Is a total mobilization of The People to fight the Foe the only option? Or even the best option?

We can see this with World War COVID.

Was it really a good idea for President Trump to make it a headline affair? With daily press conferences at the White House?

Was it really a good idea for Democrats in Fall 2020 to raise questions about the "Trump vaccine?"

Was it really a good idea to push universal vaccination? And vaccine mandates? And tell anti-vaxxers that they are bad people, aka the enemy?

My point is that this is the way that government approaches everything. There must be an enemy! We must all unite together! Anyone that doesn't rally to the colors is a coward! You must follow the orders of the leader! Attack! Attack! Attack!

Let's say, for the sake of argument that when the nation is threatened by a new pestilence, then the strategy of mobilizing the country as for war, and creating an army to attack and vanquish the foe is appropriate.

But, I think, it is pretty obvious that, by now, the World War COVID approach is no longer appropriate. And the question is: was it ever appropriate? How do we know? How can we tell?

Let's segue to the question of governments and the poor.

Obviously, I would say, the COVID lockdowns were a mistake because they have flung a lot of marginal people out of work. And people who have responded to the government rent and mortgage pauses by skipping on your payments you are now in a world of hurt.

So now what? Do we throw more money at the folks thrown out of work whose lives are now in a spiral dive? Maybe homeless?

Let's go back to the Crash of 2008. Whatabout the people thrown out of work back then? That lost their houses because of their underwater mortgages? How good of an idea was it to subsidize mortgages, pump housing prices into the sky, and then have to deal with the human rubble after the crash? How well did government deal with and help the human rubble of the Crash of 2008.

By the way, back in the 1980s our liberal friends were making a big issue of the homeless, that they blamed on Reaganomics. But maybe they were folks thrown out of work in the stagflation and subsequent credit crunch and recession in 1980-81. And the inflation of the 1970s? Due to the Great Society of the 1960s and coincident Vietnam War? And maybe the end of the government-subsidized union jobs that got union worker wages way above the market rate?

By the way, back in the 1930s we had another crack-up, deriving from the Crash of 1929 and the failure of the Federal Reserve Board to act as lender of last resort. And the FDR government mucking around with 1,001 gubmint programs recommended by the best and brightest that didn't help get the US out of the Great Depression. Back then they call the homeless camps "Hoovervilles." Or Skid Row bums.

Oh, back in the 19th century we had the Long Depression in the 1870s after the US did a bit of Deflation after the civil war to get back on the gold standard. About ten years of misery and ruin. Back in the day, young chaps like Andrew Mellon and his dad Thomas Mellon reckoned that the economy moved in about five good years followed by five bad years, rinse and repeat.

Back in 1820, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars things were pretty bad for workers and peasants in England, and they had the Captain Swing riots.

Back in Prussia, after the Seven Years War, King Frederick tried to get the economy going again. He "did what he could to help the peasants... a downtrodden class." But his "simple agrarian reforms... was hampered by the conservatism of the countrymen"; an echo of centuries of agricultural "improvement." And his clumsy efforts to promote industry were a mixed bag.

And prior to that, in the age of agricultural "improvement" peasants were chucked off baronial estates because they did not pay.

And the governments of the age lurched from anti-vagrant laws to indoor relief to outdoor relief to workhouses to I know not what. In other words, they didn't have a clue. Never did, never will.

See, I think that the current liberal lurch towards criminal reform and release of criminals pre-trial -- except when the criminals do a car-jacking on a Democratic congresswoman -- is really a reaction to the failure of liberal politics. See, it's one thing to use state violence on armed insurrectionists, who are, after all, the enemy. But it cannot be that state-certified victims can be hunted down like armed insurrectionists. That's only for the enemy.

Unfortunately the inner-city thugs are just behaving like pre-agricultural humans. They are patrolling the border of their urban territory, and anyone they encounter is an enemy, and subject to looting and plundering.

But how to cure them of this culture?

Well, I think that politics and government, with their friend-enemy distinction, are not the vehicle to help the poor. In fact, I suggest, the history of the last 200 years is that the introduction of the poor into the industrial economy was totally unexpected and unpredicted by the best and the brightest. And even when it was in full swing, by the middle of the 19th century, you had rich kids like Marx and Engels predicting that it would all end in tears. Only they were wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, their solution to the workers problem was Communism, the worst nightmare visited upon humans short of a plague that takes away one-third of the population.

Actually, it makes sense that politics and government would not be the solution of the poverty problem. Because politics is about the enemy -- and we don't really want to think of the poor as an enemy. And government is about force -- and we don't really want to use force on the poor, do we?

I have a modest suggestion. Government is for war. And only war. Everything else must be done either at a local, municipal level, or by voluntary associations.

Back in the day, about the first thing that Hitler and his pals did was demolish the vast growth of German associations, by forcing them to have Nazis in control. In the conventional-wisdom The Coming of the Third Reich, Richard J. Evans writes about Northeim, in Saxony right in the middle of Germany. 

Northeim had a rich associational life, much of it more or less unpolitical[.]

That included the local "consumer co-operative... clubs for the disabled... the Boy Scouts... singing clubs... shooting clubs... swimming association... football clubs... gymnastic societies." But the Nazis burned them all down and co-opted them into the national state.

Is the co-opting of everything in America into the woke any different? Except for the lack of jackboots and swastikas?

See, underneath the stunning brightness of the glorious state is a vast human network of social interactions beneath and beyond the gaze of the political class. And it may be that most of the work of the world has been and will always be conducted by the ordinary people in their ordinary clubs and association and charities. And that without them human society would grind to a halt.

But do our rulers have a clue about that?

Alternatives to Politics and the Enemy

 If politics is the friend/enemy distinction, that "there is no politics without an enemy," then the interesting question is: "whatabout the alternatives."

And obviously the alternatives to the war against the enemy is something a bit less bloody. Such us religion and the good / evil distinction, and law and the legal / illegal distinction. And economic exchange and the trusting / cheating distinction.

But then an email acquaintance proposed the following:

Politicians need an enemy.
Corollary:  The enemy must be more feared than government.

That's a good point. Because clearly government likes to swing its weight around. I'd say it is pretty clear that since the January 6 riot our ruling class has -- deliberately or instinctively -- come down like a ton of bricks on the "armed insurrectionists" and also anyone in the Republican political sphere that might feel like lending them a hand, right Speaker Pelosi? Because, what with the resources of the government you can sure make life unbearable for any government critic or Outer Party partisan. As in bankrupting them.

Actually, there must be a further corollary to "politicians need an enemy." Clearly, practical politicians in the ruling class's Inner Party would really like it if members of the Outer Party had a healthy fear of the Inner Party.

And that is obviously what Our Nance and the Cancel Culture are all about. They are not interested in persuasion any more. Just intimidation.

Which tells us that they have given up on persuading us of the glory of their arc of history bending towards justice. Just shut up and fall into line, peasants.

But my point is that, really, we humans should attempt to spend as much time as possible outside the political world and its friend  enemy distinction. Because treating other people as the enemy implies physical conflict and ultimately the possibility of killing.

And the point about conflict and killing is that it is very expensive. Particularly for men. That is why, I have read, primitive tribes do not go in for pitched battles and the risk that the entire male warrior group could be killed off. When the males are all eliminated it means the end of the tribe, and the women are absorbed into the neighboring tribe.

You know, just like German women after World War II becoming GI war brides.

Primitive tribes prefer a nice surgical dawn raid to a pitched battle. More civilized, old chap.

And so also religion, which deals with malefactors by naming, shaming and shunning, rather than by conflict and killing. More civilized, old chap.

And law, which short-circuits the revenge and reparations culture with a legal trial, rules of evidence, and a final disposition of an argument over land, inheritance, wimmin, and a deal gone sour. More civilied, old chap.

And the market economy, which, as indicated by the Science™ of trust and the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, rewards acts of trust and penalizes acts of deceit. Notice that the market economy is gentler than the religious game of naming, shaming and shunning, and the expensive law game of trials and lawyer bills.

Amazing, innit, that the most civilized version of the friend-enemy distinction should be the one thing anathametized by our lefty friends. I wonder why? Is it because, at heart, they are primitives, or at least reactionaries, as in my Great Reaction.

Hey, you gotta say, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat are most keenly experienced in the political sphere, where all is won and lost in the decisive battle. So I understanding my lefty friends having a certain hankering, a certain nostalgia, for the good old days.

But I say that the destiny of mankind is to civilize conflict and disagreement. Because that is the whole point of social animals.

If you want excitement, then build a spaceship and go to Mars. Hey, Elon Musk may have a job for you.

Schumer, Pelosi, and the Nature of Politics

If you needed reminding that there is no politics without an enemy, just take a look at the reaction of Sen. Schumer (D-NY) to Sen. Manchin's decision that he's not supporting the Build Back Better bill in the Senate.

We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act – and we will keep voting on it until we get something done.

In other words, "once more unto the breach, dear friends."

Then there is Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

"We will continue to fight to pass the legislation," Pelosi said. "It must happen and we will do it as soon as we can."

See what I mean? Both Pelosi and Scbumer are talking as though there's a war on.

And in fact that is exactly what the BBB bill is all about: forcing Americans to pay for more social spending for Democratic lower-income constituencies and forcing Americans to pay for more green energy programs.

Because?

Because we must smash systemic racism once and for all.

Because we must transform the energy economy before the planet fries from runaway climate change.

Now, over at National Review they are talking about one-the-one-hand on-the-other-hand politics.

A close election and a narrow majority call for a modest agenda and for some bipartisan policy-making...

But the political psychology of a bitterly partisan time firmly resists modest agendas and bipartisan policy-making.

Trump won a narrow election but pushed the limits on his political agenda; Democrats won a narrow election and are pushing the limits. Both sides think the they was robbed, etc. 

I guess I live on a different planet from the NR guys.

Because I don't experience the present era as two sides fighting over the spoils. I see the current era as the ordinary middle class rebelling against a century of the educated class increasing government spending from 10 percent of GDP to the present 35-40 percent of GDP.

That is to say, the educated class has moved the United States from a society in which about 10 percent of its economy was decided by force to a society in which about 35-40 percent of its economy is decided by force.

Now I would say that, at some point, the ordinary people of a country are going to rebel when their rulers decide 35-40 percent of who gets the moulah. Because, human nature being what it is, the chances are that the rulers will prefer their friends and supporters when it comes to handing out the loot.

I interpret the current Democratic regime as racing to enact as much of their agenda as possible -- damn the torpedoes -- before they are out of power for a generation.

And what I dream of is a ruling class that does not think that a society that decides 35-40 percent of its economy by force is a good thing.

What I dream about is a ruling class that thinks: hmm, I wonder if there is a way to reduce the amount of government force in our lives without, of course, compromising the gloriousness of the most glorious ruling class in world history.

Because, you see, in my view, the problem with big government programs is that you can never change and adapt them. So they go on, plowing along, full speed ahead, until they hit an iceberg.

And it doesn't matter if Captain Biden on the bridge is the smartest guy in a generation, or if the Chief Engineer Pelosi in the engine room really knows steam propulsion like nobody else in the world. If you a blindly steering full speed ahead into a field of icebergs, you are going to have trouble right here in River City.

And then, of course, it's a question of whether there is enough time for everyone to get in the lifeboats before it's too late.

See, I have this weird notion that whenever you do something by force, you are probably Making Things Worse.

I wonder why.

Disinformation, Misinformation, Where Does It End?

The problem with censorship is not the harm it does to conspiracy theorists, regime enemies, racists, sexist, homophobes, and armed insurrectionists, although their sufferings are not to be marginalized.

No, the big problem is that when the regime gets to censor its opponents it gets to do stupid stuff that ends up hurting the ruling class and its power.

Yep, every ruling class wants to control the narrative, and it usually does, because almost all the voices in society want to suck up to power.

For instance, my nickel says that, at the end of the COVID experience, wise heads will nod at the idea that the censoring of critics of the lockdown, vaccination, testing regime will turn out to be a strategic mistake for the ruling class, that ends up damaging it and its reputation.

It seems pretty clear that regime spokesmen like Anthony Fauci have used their power to censor perfectly valid scientific and research opinion. For what, St. Anthony?

Social media like to flag regime-critical posts as "disinformation" and "misinformation." Facebook recently flagged a British Medical Journal article article on a "host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia" a "contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial." Facebook flagged the article as "missing context.. could mislead people." Really, Facebook? Apparently the article was flagged by a Facebook contractor called "Lead Stories." And I am supposed to believe that an outfit I have never heard of is more reliable that the BMJ?

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Look it is getting pretty obvious that the censorship on COVID-related reporting is coming around to haunt all the governments of the world. They have turned to massive lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations and suppression of alternative narratives because that is what governments do.

And if they can get away with censoring alternative viewpoints they will do that, because having to answer critics makes their job harder, in the sense that they have to get their messaging to align with the overall message from science, not just the ones that support their messaging and their policy.

This all got into high gear during the ruling class's five year campaign to get rid of Trump, and it clearly extended from the usual Democrat-aligned media to manipulation of search-engine results and social media posts.

In my own case, I found that my government spending site suddenly experienced a cut in traffic by 50 percent on April 2, 2019. I think that on that day Google implemented a search engine policy that promoted known institutions over mere websites. Which is fine, but what if the known institutions are lying? Or just stupid and ignorant? How would you know? By trusting the government? By trusting fact-check sites? By responding to pressure from the White House?

Really, there is no substitute for letting the various political sides, from right-wing conspiracy sites to left-wing activist sites, fight it out in the public square.

Because, you know what? In politics, in culture, in religion, everyone is creating a narrative based on their own particular understanding of the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."

And if you give people half a chance, they will start to lie, and cover up their mistakes, and silence the opposition, especially when their sacred narrative, their prophecy, starts to fail to provide an accurate and useful picture of the world. Because that's when they get desperate.

And in the end, they will damage their own interest, because they will use their power to censor the opposition in order to cover up their follies and their mistakes.

My own feeling is that censorship of any kind should be illegal except in the case of world war.

And I'm not sure that censorship is a good idea in a world war either.

Why, Dems, Why?

So, the Democrats have decided to put off their gigantic Big Government plan, Build Back Better, until next year. Meanwhile they are going to push their nationwide vote-by-mail election reform bill. Because Democracy.

And we have Our Nance's January 6 committee that is making gigantic demands of cellphone records on Trump aides and staffers, because armed insurrection. Now the aides and staffers are suing.

I must say that all this rush and bustle, to take the fight to the enemy, is a bit puzzling to me.

I refer to the late great Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who opined that you don't want to pass a big bill unless it has 70-30 support in the Senate. But you know, I can't find a reference to this in Google Search. Wait, here is a CNN transcript, with David Frum saying:

When President Clinton tried health care reform, Daniel Patrick Moynihan advised him, anything big passes the Senate 70-30, or it doesn't pass at all. The president is turning this into a political war. The Republicans are to blame, too. This is a problem America needs help with. But the parties have to deal in good faith. I am not sure the president is doing that.

Hmmm. Moynihan's point is that you don't want legislation rammed down the throat of the opposition. You want all reasonable people to agree that this is a Good Thing and so have it become part of the All American consensus.

This accords with the basic point in Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent. Only they go a bit further. They say that the only just voting system is unanimous consent, because it forces the supporters of a piece of legislation to compensate the opposition for the costs that the legislation imposes upon them.

So, you see, for me, there is a basic practical reason for not ramming things down the throat of the opposition. It is that politics is civil war by other means. In other words, partisans can wrangle and speechify and manipulate in Congress without resorting to "speak, hands for me" as Casca says moments before the assassins plunge the daggers into Julius Caesar.

The point is: if you can't get a supermajority for your proposed legislation then all you are doing is stirring up conflict.

Now, I realize that our liberal friends don't see it that way. They see politics as a fight for justice, and their ideas are the just ideas, and the opposition is nothing but a bunch of racist-sexist-homophobic bigots and haters.

Yes, yes. And do you know, dear liberals, that every war is a just war -- to its warriors. And every religion is a true religion -- to its believers. And every cause is a just cause -- to its activists.

But whatabout the other guys? The chaps on the receiving end of the just war? The chaps on the receiving end of the true religion? The chaps on the receiving end of the just activists? Whatabout them?

Now, it is my belief, after Nazi Carl Schmitt, that politics is the friend enemy distinction. Or, as Curtis Yarvin writes, "there is no politics without an enemy."

You know, dear liberal friends, I don't think that "enemies" is a good idea. Because, as Carl Schmitt writes, when you are talking about enemies you are talking about the possibility of conflict -- and actual killing. Are we really talking about "conflict" with our fellow Americans? Even getting to killing?

Hello liberals?

Is that what you stand for, dear liberal friends, with your faith in politics and justice?

You see, I don't think of my liberal friends, or even BLM/AntiFa activists as "enemies." I think of them as fools and knaves, and I believe they Literally Know Nothing, and that they are unknowingly Making Things Worse.

But actually, I think we are experiencing another proof of God's existence, right now.

Because the Democrats are falling into a hole not because of their stupid Build Back Better or their nationalizing of vote-by-mail, but because of the sudden surge in inflation.

Golly, Democrats, I thought we had that inflation thing beat, what with MMT and all! You don't think that all the racist-sexist-homophobe conservative economists were right after all, that if you print money you get inflation?

Golly Gee Willikins! Ya think?

I mean, to me, the number one thing is Don't Do Stupid Stuff. If you are heaven's anointed, on a holy quest to bend the arc of history towards justice, then surely Job One is: Don't Do Stupid Stuff, like crank inflation up into the stratosphere.

My History of the Last Half Century is:

First, the ordinary American people reacted against LBJ's Great Society and elected Richard Nixon. But the Dems taught him a lesson. Hoo Boy!

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Jimmy Carter's "stagflation" and elected Ronald Reagan president. The Dems tried to teach him a lesson with Iran Contra but didn't quite succeed.

Then the ordinary American People reacted against Barack Obama's big government lurch and elected a GOP Congress and then elected Donald Trump. The Dems taught him a lesson and managed to defeat him in 2020. And impeached him twice in the House and went after his supporters with the January 6 committee.

I wonder what happens next?

Shocked, Shocked by Inflation Explosion

You gotta love our lefty friends, blaming Big Oil and Big Meat for the current inflation explosion.

It would be funny if it weren't so predictable. We get big time inflation in the wake of the Federal Reserve Board printing trillions in the wake of the COVID crisis. And Democrats blame big business.

One of the biggest voices going after Big Meat is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Hey Liz, you were there in 1979 at the height of the previous inflation. You were 30 years old. Do you really mean to tell me that you can pretend that it is all about greedy big business when you actually lived through the 1970s as an adult?

You don't seriously think that solving inflation is a question of complaining to the manager, Sen. Karen?

I must say that, as a man who lived through the 1970s as an adult, I shake my head at the present inflation explosion.

I mean, where are the "experts™ agree" being rammed down our throat by social media? Where are the social media censors on the "disinformation" of the blame-business liars? Where are the wise heads in prominent media telling the politicians that they need to ease up on the loot and plunder for a while until the economy recovers after the COVID meltdown?

Where are the "schientists™ shay" from our noble media? The economists? I mean, this is not rocket science, although it wouldn't hurt to listen to Elon Musk, now would it, Sen. Karen? You print money; you get inflation. Full stop, end of story.

OK. But I get it. There is no politics without an enemy. And when you defeat the enemy you kill his men and you rape his women and you loot and plunder his lands to the bare walls and give the loot to your supporters. Or you pass a Build Back Better Act which puts lipstick on the pig of old-fashioned loot and plunder.

But here's the point. We know better than that. We have knowledge about how the economy works. We know that loot and plunder ravages the economy. We know that FDR's New Deal and its handouts was an economic disaster that extended the Great Depression until World War II made the New Deal lefties use Big Business to supply the tanks and trucks and airplanes for their Crusade to save the world from Nazis and Japs. We know that LBJ's Great Society was a neutron bomb that has irradiated the lower orders in America, in particular blacks.

We know that it was the "amiable dunce" Ronald Reagan that had the courage to back the Federal Reserve to kill inflation and send interest rates up to 18 percent in 1981. Yep, sometimes it takes an "amiable dunce" to do the right thing when the wise heads duck their heads because they don't have the backbone to do the right thing according to the science™.

Well, my fearless forecast is that the Dems are going to be blown out of the water in the next two elections. And it serves them right.

Because you really don't want to eject all non-lefties from the education system. You really don't want to make establishment media a conservative-free zone. You really don't want to stage a cancel culture to shame people that don't adhere to ruling-class political and cultural norms. You really don't want to increase and extend the welfare state. You really don't want to come up with a joke of a theory like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that tells the spenders to go for broke.

Etcetera.

It's a funny thing, but in my version of history, the 1968 Nixon election was the first rejection of lefty big government. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Reagan, the "amiable dunce" was elected in 1980. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it.

Then Bush Two was elected in 2000. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Bush must have stole it.

Then Trump was elected in 2016. And liberals were shocked; they couldn't believe it. Trump must have colluded with the Russians.

Do you see a common theme running through all this? 

Hmm. I wonder what it is.

Well, I expect that the Democrats will learn their lesson in about ten years, and purge the crazies and tell us that they are New Democrats. And so we will get a moderate like Bill Clinton.

And then a new generation will arise that knew not the stupidities of the 2020s, like we now have a generation like AOC that knows not the stupidities of the Sixties and Seventies.

And "thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Shakespeare, dontcha know.

Religious, Legal: How Different from the Political?

Ever since reading Nazi Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political, that reduces to Curtis Yarvin's maxim that "there is no politics without an enemy," I have been thinking about the other social distinctions. But first, Schmitt on politics:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be traced is the distinction between friend and enemy.

But whatabout the others? Schmitt mentions various others, "moral, aesthetic, and economic." The distinction in the moral is between "good and evil" and in the aesthetic between "beautiful and ugly," and in the economic between "useful and harmful, or, for example, profitable and unprofitable." I think we need a table.

Social Category	Positive	Negative
Political	Friend	Enemy
Moral	Good	Evil
[Religious]	[God]	[Satan]
[Law]	Legal	Illegal
Aesthetic	Beautiful	Ugly
Economic	Useful	Harmful
Economic	Profitable	Unprofitable
Economic	[Collaborator]	Competitor

Note that I have inserted some ideas of my own -- with square brackets -- in respect of the religious. And in respect of an economic collaborator. Schmitt makes it clear that "enemy" in the political sense is a public, or collective, enemy.

In Section VIII of The Concept of the Political Schmitt criticizes "liberal thought" for trying to imagine that the political is not really about friend vs. enemy. "The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]" In other words, "liberal thought" confuses the issue of the political and the enemy. Schmitt thinks that

Liberalism does not radically deny the state, but on the other hand it has not found a positive theory of state or its own state reform, but only sought to sequester the political on the basis of ethics, and to subject the political to the economic; it has created a doctrine of the separation and balance of powers, i.e., a system of checks and balances of the state that cannot be called a state theory or a constructive political principle.

 So what does all this mean when it's at home?

I think it means that the political is the biggie. If there is a political issue then nothing else matters. There is an enemy, and everything is secondary to the question of the enemy.

But then we get to the problem that, on the one hand the "liberal thought" of the Enlightenment wanted to bury the political in its doctrine that there really is no issue that makes us think of the "other" as the enemy. And there is the left that reduces all questions to the political, and thus to the friend / enemy distinction, and thus reduces everything to a fight with the enemy.

And there is the critique of Buckley conservatism, that it amounted to a rhetorical standing aside history shouting Stop, when it should have considered the Left as an actual enemy, against whom conflict was possible, as with the Soviet Union.

So, I would say that all the lines in the table above, other than the political, are questions of social distinctions for man-the-social-animal once the question of the enemy has been dealt with, and the enemy has been defeated; they are all disagreements about values, and good-vs-bad behavior.

But is the left really all about the political and the definition of the "other" as the enemy? It is interesting that the left always plays at conflict, as with its "activism" as a stand-in for revolution. As I say, the left's activism is really play-acting at revolution, as the medieval romances were play-acting at rough-tough feudal lords when the lords had become soft courtiers and needed the nostalgic recollection of the bad old days when men were men, and would just as soon cut off a chap's head before breakfast as eat a haunch of venison.

And when the left is in power, whether in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, or today when the woke left is in power in the US, it treats the populace not quite as enemies, but definitely as subhumans -- slaves really -- who need regular applications of the cowhide whip.

I wonder: should we call the left's bluff, and suggest that if they are really serious about revolution and the elimination of white supremacists and armed insurrectionists they should put their money where their mouth is.

Now, I like to say that the Age of the Political is over, in that I don't believe that the "other" is ever really an enemy since life on this Earth is no longer about securing food-growing land against other claimants for said food-growing land.

But I understand that there are bound to be reactionaries that still hanker for the good old days of enemies and revenge, and want to drive their enemies before them and hear the lamentation of their women.

It still comes down to the question, of how to deal with lefties that think of us as the enemy while we think of them as spoiled brats.

The Unbearable Whiteness of "The Nutcracker"

I was to a live performance of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker on Sunday and, of course, the lead child actors were black. And there were a couple of blacks in the corps de ballet.

But, sensitized as I am to all matters racial and cultural, I gotta say: The Nutcracker is as white as white can be. The first act takes place at a Christmas party in a very haute bourgeois household. And the girls get nice dollies as presents and the boys get to act like boys, playing at soldiers, and ambushing the girls as they play with their dollies.

Then, in the second act, we get a prime example of Edward Said's Orientalism, or non-European as exotic. Strictly speaking, we are talking about various sweets in the Land of the Sweets. So there is Spanish Chocolate, Arabian Coffee, Chinese Tea, Russian Candy Cane. Then Mother Ginger and Marzipan.

Yes, but whatabout South Asian Spice, and African fruits? How come they don't get a dance? Raciss!

The other takeaway for me, now I am so sensitized to everything, is that ballet, at its high noon with the classic Tchaikovsky ballets, is nothing but a display of the female form. The pas de deux seems to be designed to show off the prima ballerina's legs. The corps de ballet is a throng of pubescent girls fluttering around. The tutu is, again, displaying the legs of the female dancer.

And so on.

So I went and looked up ballet at La Wik. It started in the courts of the Italian Renaissance, featuring noble amateur dancers, and then spread to France with Catherine de Medici. It reached its peak under Louis XIV with a formal court ballet with a court ballet master and the five positions. Then it declined after 1830 in France until revived by the Russians. I seem to remember reading that in Paris, the ballet dancers of the Paris Opera were "available" to the various rich patrons.

I was reading about how San Francisco's Great Dickens Christmas Fair has descended into racial madness. It seems that some nice black ladies got involved and then brought their race politics with them. They want racial quotas for everything except that BIPOC characters can only be represented by BIPOC people.

I dare say that the same thing will soon apply to ballet and the Xmas Nutcrackers that are featured every Christmas in all our major cities.

It's amusing, really. Because ballet is such a whitey-white thing (as is Dickens). Everyone wants in on the white things, and then they want to bring their anti-white racism with them.

If I may be permitted to extend the dance metaphor just one step more...

Don't you realize you wokies and BIPOCs and all the ships at sea? You are not dancing to your own authentic dance tradition. You are dancing like marionettes, and ruling-class educated white liberals are pulling the strings.

And as I say with my Little Darlings notion, One Fine Day you will wake up and find the bed empty, because your ruling class Sugar Daddy has found a new Little Darling to pamper and exploit.

After Democracy

Back in the day, it seems to me, government was a simply hierarchical thing. The warriors ruled; their servitors served them, and the peasants serve the servitors.

Let's say that the rising bourgeoisie wanted something more than that. They wanted government under law, an expansion of the political class beyond the landholders of the feudal regime.

But they set a movement in motion that ended up with universal democracy, where governments are elected through the vote of all adult men and women.

And starting probably with Rousseau and Babeuf, and not later than Marx, we got the over / under political formula that rules us today, the coalition between the educated class and the underclass against the middle class.

The formula is the formula of any ruling class: we are protecting you helpless ones against the enemy. The enemy started out as the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, became a generalized notion that the country-club set didn't care about the man on the street, and finally became the notion of oppressed peoples under the thumb of white oppressors.

Really, it is an immensely cunning idea, that the rulers -- in this case the educated professional class -- are fighting for the folks at the bottom of the class or race or gender hierarchy. If only the bloody middle class or capitalists or patriarchs or white supremacists weren't arrogantly oppressing the poor helpless lower ones!

Of course, it has been a lie from the very beginning. The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, the fathers, the white middle class don't have any ideology of supremacy. They are just living their lives, operating their businesses, presiding over their families according to the rules, without any idea of ruling or oppressing anyone. If their business succeeds, they hire more people and promote the ones that show promise. If the business does not succeed then their try to cut costs, and may lay off workers, and also try to cut labor costs.

But when anything goes wrong with the economy, the educated class does not hesitate to blame the businessman. Of course it does. The problem could not be the educated class, and it could not be the workers.

I'd say that this formula worked very well in the day when the working class was a majority of the population, and the middle class a definite minority. But now the middle class is probably a majority of the population.

So the question arises, can the old over / under political formula of the educated class continue?

Obviously, it can, especially if you convince people in the middle class that they are really helpless victims, and create new categories of victims to swell the ranks of the underclass.

But if you screw up the economy and Make Things Worse for the underclass and the fake victims then you may find that your over / under political formula no longer works.

Or, a cabal may arise within the ruling class to appeal directly to the middle class and get them to fight back against the rule of the educated class.

Obviously, according to the ZMan, the old conservative movement was not that cabal. It was always, as William F. Buckley, standing astride history, shouting Stop, but not really doing anything about it.

But what would such a new regime look like?

To start with, if it is a politics then it must have an enemy. That enemy would be the educated class of Barnacles and Stiltstockings: the Barnacles being the hangers-on to the megastate, and the Stiltstocking being the whole activism grift. Because? Because the ruling class had ruined the lower classes by its New Slavery of entitlement programs. Because it had declared war on ordinary people that just wanted to live ordinary lives of work and family. And because it had bankrupted the nation with its eternal fake existential crises from climate change to systemic racism.

Would it be an alliance between the middle class and the lower class against the educated class? Is such a thing possible? I don't know.

Here's the problem. I don't think that the middle class is interested in power. The whole point of the middle class is that it just gets on with life. It really doesn't believe in enemies, unless you stick it in the ribs with, e.g., recession and or inflation, like right now.

Take the Reagan years. Reagan got elected in the aftermath of the Democrats' failed 1970s "stagflation." He served a couple of terms, his vice president served a term, the Democrats said: "we are all moderates," and it was over.

Even so, the Reagan revolution was merely about fixing the most egregious mistakes of the previous decade. It never got to eat real meat, as in reform of the welfare state.

And Donald Trump said, right up front, that he wasn't going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Guess what. One Fine Day, some president is going to have to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Could the over / under political era be replaced by a middle / out regime, that rules under a political formula that says that the middle class is the best class, the worthiest class, the sensible class, the most American class, and the educated are conceited asses and the lower class needs to get a clue?

I don't know.

The Fire Next Time

With today's inflation numbers coming in with Drudge's flashing blue light -- remember that? -- I find myself saddened, having been a young man in the inflationary Seventies.

Aren't we humans supposed to learn from our mistakes?

And isn't the point of wise old men in human culture -- Biden, Pelosi, Schumer -- that they carry the memory of former times and stop the young firebrands from making the same deadly mistakes that they made in their youth?

But my reading of US politics since the dawn of the 1980s and its rling-class notion of Ronald Reagan as an "amiable dunce" is that our Democratic friends have exerted every effort NOT to learn the lessons of the Seventies and Arthur Laffer's  supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve that suggests that, at some point, when you increase tax rates you get less revenue. See "laffer curve debunked."

Well, they are going to learn their lesson this time, "good and hard." But so are the rest of us, and so are the ordinary Americans that don't know nothing about economics but vote their perceived interest, and the lower-class Americans who are the ones that will really be hammered by the economic chaos of the next few years.

And some eevil speculators, like the chappie that did The Big Short during the 2006-08 bear market, are going to make out like bandits.

Think of that liberals. Every time you do something really stupid, some eevil Wall Street guy cleans up. Mind you, sometimes the eevil speculator is George Soros and uses his ill-gotten gains to finance all your sacred activism! Yay!

But what is the lesson that the Next Regime needs to learn from the current debacle? I'd say there are two lessons.

First, the over / under politics of the last 170 years since it was codified by Marx is social poison. It is a false narrative to tell the lower classes that, by looting the middle class and the rich and getting entitlements in return, they will win the "struggle for justice." No they won't; they will just become the serfs and creatures of the new ruling class and will not be learning the skills to wive and thrive in the market economy.

Second, the administrative state of the last 120 years since it was imagined by the Fabians and the Progressives is a conceit of the educated class. Human society and the market economy are too complicated to be directed by an administrative elite of the educated and evolved.

Back in the day, when our Founding Fathers were codifying the structure of the United States they were conscious that they were doing something new and risky. How could they construct a government without a hereditary monarch and make it work? They studied all the authorities, ancient and modern, to answer the question. I'd say that the result of their studies was practically a miracle and a proof of God's existence.

But what should the Founders of the Next America know? I say that the answer is contained in the Greater Separation of Powers proposed by Michael Novak in his Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and in the fundamental limitations of political power laid out in my Four Laws.

The notion of the Greater Separation of Powers is that the three sectors of modern society -- political, economic, and moral/cultural -- should be separate. When politics meddles in the economy, and when businessmen meddle in government, the result is not good. When politics and religion get together the result is not good, especially for people believing in the wrong religion. Whenever all of the three sectors combine the result is really bad. And we have a name for a society in which all three are combined: Totalitarian.

My Four Laws are, of course, not mine. They are the ideas of far better men than I.

Socialism cannot work because it cannot compute prices (Mises). 

The administrative state cannot work because the Man in Washington does not have the bandwidth to run the economy (Hayek). 

Regulation does not work because “regulatory capture” (Stigler). 

Government programs cannot work because you can never reform them (Chantrill).

Well, maybe that fourth law really has been invented by me. Because when I Google Search it I just get entries on welfare reform until I put the law in quotes. And then all the responses are directly connected to me.

But do you see that the Four Laws are a direct attack on the politics and government of the last century or so -- and its conceits?

Socialism: how did that work out, Vlad and Joe and ZeDong and Fidel?

Administrative state: how is that working out, St. Anthony Fauci?

Regulation: Remember when we deregulated railways and airlines? Oh the huffing and puffing!

Gubmint programs: Yeah, you try reforming gubmint pensions and gubmint health care.

My hope and faith is that the architects of the next regime will be maybe half as wise as the American Founders of two centuries ago.

But don't get your hopes up. Not yet.

The Border Between Criminal and Immoral

What is the difference between a criminal act and an immoral act?

In other words, where do we draw the line between applying government violence and applying moral censure?

On the question of discrimination on the grounds of race?

I raise this because an acquaintance recently brought up the study of hiring managers discriminating on the basis of racial clues in the resumés of job applicants. Here's one such study on the Harvard Business School website: "Minorities Who 'Whiten' Job Resumes Get More Interviews."

I think that "all good people" agree that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of race in this manner, even if it is unconscious. And that such people should be frowned upon, and even named, shamed, and shunned.

But should they be sued by the local human rights commission? And pay a fine?

I would say that, e.g., universities that have racial quotas and that deliberately set up selection criteria to disadvantage east Asians that would otherwise completely dominate the student body should be criminally prosecuted for racial discrimination and their Heads of Diversity and Heads of Enrollment and University President should be jailed in Washington DC in conditions approximating the conditions of the notorious armed insurrectionists of January 6.

But I would say that hiring managers that inadvertently prefer "whitened" resumes are should not be imprisoned in durance vile like the J6 rioters. But no doubt they should have scarlet letters on their chests.

The problem here is that our lefty friends have tended, over the last century or so, have tended to view the struggle for justice as a purely political matter. This was illuminated for me today reading "The Turn" by Liel Leibowitz at The Tablet. She used to be an ordinary lefty.

I felt secure in my politics. Truth and justice, I believed, leaned leftward. If you were some version of a decent human being, you cared about those less fortunate than you, which meant that you supported a whole host of measures designed to even the playing field a little.

OK, there was Joseph Stalin, but what a glorious feeling: socialist youth, marches with Palestinians, PhD, parties on the Upper West Side with the literati.

But then maybe you are concerned about free speech, about lockdowns and "the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and most vulnerable in our society." Oh and Israel. And your friends might disown you if you disagreed with them.

I still remember how confusing and painful it felt to know that my beliefs—beliefs, mind you, that, until very recently, were so obvious and banal and widely held on the left that they were hardly considered beliefs at all—now labeled me an outcast.

Notice that Leibowitz's entire piece is written in the language of feelings and morality: "you supported a whole hosts of measures designed to even the playing field a little."

As the guy up the street up the hill on swank Palatine Av. says on his yard-sign: "equality never hurt anyone."

There is, in the minds of such people, no comprehension of my banal maxims:

Government is force.

There is no such thing as justice, only injustice.

There is no politics without an enemy.

Hey kids. How about we get together and think up a way to fight poverty without force, i.e., without government?

How do yo get through to nice Jewish girl PhDs that when you use government for any reason you are using force. And that is not good.

And I would say that, before we use force, we should exhausts all other possibilities.

There is another problem, I think. And that is that women, in the community of women, do not use force. They use a form of moral persuasion based on the fact that women need to be seen by other women as "nice." They do not have direct confrontations with women that disagree with them. It is all done indirectly.

Thus it is easy for women to miss the fact that, when things are decided in government, it is not the same as the ladies in the neighborhood deciding to do something. Because when government decides to do something its word is law, and it obtains the funds for its program by force.

It's only when you find yourself on the wrong side of "the whole host of measures" that you get your "come to Jesus moment."

And that's when it starts to dawn on you that you are being forced to pay for government programs that Make Things Worse. Even though nice Jewish girl PhDs only just realized this yesterday.

So, what do we do? Well, for a start we can think about Michael Novak and his Spirit of Democratic Capitalism where he proposes what I call a Greater Separation of Powers between the political sector, the economic sector, and the moral/cultural sector. When you combine them together you get totalitarianism.

Using Nazi Carl Schmitt's analysis, we could say that

The moral/cultural is the good and evil distinction; its method is judgement.

The economic is the profit and loss distinction; its method is competition.

The political is the friend and enemy distinction; its method is conflict and war.

Now I would say that we should reduce the political as much as possible but no further, because in the political anyone that disagrees with you is an enemy.

And if you don't get that then I think you have a problem.

For the great questions of politics and morality come down to the border: what do we do by force, and what do we do by persuasion?

The Usual Ruling Class Lies

Back in the day I read Winston Churchill's The Second World War from cover to cover. He didn't actually say that "history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." But, certainly, by writing the most well-known history of WWII he didn't do himself any harm.

And, for people like myself that have read his history, his narrative necessarily colors what we understand about the world's biggest and deadliest war.

But over the years I have come to distrust more and more the ruling-class narratives of the past. That's because I have also come to believe that the actions of nearly all governments are a story of fumbling incompetence and bad faith. Thus I tend to disbelieve all histories that present the past as a glorious victory against evil forces.

I do not say this in a spirit of spite, but from my understanding of the nature of government, and the impossible situation of most governments most of the time.

The only warrant for government action is existential peril, such as an invasion across the border, or an armed insurrection of a disaffected sector of the population. Unfortunately for would-be national heroes the incidence of such perils is very small, so most would-be national heroes have to make it up. Otherwise they are just footnotes to history.

And when a national hero does get to rescue his nation it is never a simple and glorious tale of the march to victory but a catalog of errors. That is how all human action works. You think you have a fantastic idea that will make your fortune. But usually the idea is seriously flawed, and it is only by overcoming a succession of mistakes and errors that you win through to fame and riches and the love of beautiful women.

So I regard World War I as a complete bungle. What in the world was the point of Germany and France going to war, except the memories of the Franco-Prussian War of the previous generation and the Napoleonic War of a hundred years before?

What in the world did President Wilson mean by getting the US involved in WWI? How about letting the Brits and the Krauts and the Frogs battle each other to exhaustion?

What in the world did President Wilson think he was doing by imposing a humiliating peace on defeated Germany?

What on earth did the progressives in the US and the Fabian socialists in Britain think they were doing in building a gigantic entitlement state in which their peoples were enserfed to a huge government that gave millions of jobs to the educated class and subordinate benefits to the lower orders?

What did liberals think they were doing when they implemented reverse racism on the American people after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s? Wouldn't that be switching from the anti-black racism of the Jim Crow era to an anti-white racism that continues to this day?

What was going on when the Global Cooling narrative of the 1970s switched to Global Warming in the 1980s?

And don't get me started on the War on Terror.

My conceit is to assume incompetents at work, stitching together some threadbare justification for a new government initiative and increased government power. And then writing deceitful narratives about it all when the glorious future doesn't quite live up to the hype.

Today I have been reading Ron Unz's review of Robert F. Kennedy's The Real Anthony Fauci that accuses Fauci of pushing a false narrative that the HIV virus was the cause of AIDS deaths, and then pushing the AZT vaccine as a cure to HIV-caused AIDS when in fact AZT was a real killer. On Kennedy's narrative Dr. Fauci silenced voices that opposed his narrative and policy and denied them research funding and killed their careers. And this is the guy in charge of the fight against COVID.

My point is that I would expect this. We have a guy of moderate accomplishments but with a knack for using government power against people resisting the narrative. So did he screw up the AIDS fight? Good question. Is he screwing up the COVID fight? Who knows? More research is needed.

But be sure that there will be an official narrative about how the political principals were heroes fighting to save us from existential perils, and that any objection is nothing more than conspiracy theory.

Unless the current regime is replaced by a new regime and the history dictated by the new regime naturally represents the old regime as losers and fools and knaves and the new regime as glorious heroes that have saved America from a fate worse than death.

The Rich Paid at the Office

On American Greatness and elsewhere, Salena Zito wonders why The Rich (or C-suite as she calls it) are not as community minded as in olden times. Such as when Mark Twain lived in Hannibal, Missouri.

Zito tells the story of John Garth, playmate and school friend of Samuel Clemens, how he went to New York City.

Garth and his wife Helen, also a childhood friend [of Clemens], had briefly moved to New York City, where he prospered in the banking, brokerage, and manufacturing industries[.]

Then they returned to Hannibal, built a fancy house, and devoted themselves to good works.

They provided jobs, donated to worthy causes such as the Home for the Friendless, and attended church shoulder to shoulder with the people in the community. And when Garth died, his wife donated $25,000 for a stand-alone library to be built in the center of town.

But today's rich don't do that. Imagine Jeff Bezos doing that. According to Steve McMahon, "Washington-based public affairs professional and co-founder of Purple Strategies",

those who run the corporations that employ millions and dominate the culture have shed their connection with both their employees and their customers. 

And who among us, who live in America's super ZIPs, knows or cares about the ordinary middle class?

Back in the day, Zito wants us to think, the rich and successful did not look down upon the ordinary.

That cannot be said about today’s cultural curators in our C-suites of legacy media, corporations, education, bureaucracies, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, who have decided that those who live outside of their super ZIP codes deserve nothing less than a daily onslaught of vigorous attacks on their values and way of life. 

So what has changed?

I'd say it is the over / under culture of our present ruling class.

Our present ruling class experiences itself not as the top of a natural cultural and political hierarchy, but as noble activists fighting for the rights of the oppressed against the oppressors.

Yes, you may ask, what "oppressed" and which "oppressors?" Thank you, senator, I'm glad you asked me that.

The difference is clear in the whole Black Lives Matter frenzy of 2020.

Back in the day, the kid that made it big in the big city came back to the town of his birth, built a fancy house, and did what was expected of him. He built libraries, helped the poor, and was ready to lend a hand.

Today, the well-educated resident of a gentrified neighborhood puts up a BLM sign and the billionaires put up millions to support left-wing activism.

And in Washington DC our ruling class erects museums celebrating their support of helpless victims, as I write today in The American Thinker in "Let's Build a National White Trash Museum. Not." 

What is the point of the National Museum of African American Culture and History? It's obvious. It is to celebrate how advanced and anti-racist our current ruling class is, and how its support for the oppressed former slaves is just about the most wonderful thing in history. The same with the Holocaust Museum. There was no Jewish Holocaust in the United States. But the US ruling class wants you to know that it attacked Nazi Germany and ground it into dust for the mass murder of Jews. And the same with the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum does nothing for the conquered and decimated tribes of North America. But it certainly puts our modern ruling class in a good light.

Do you see the point? The modern elite is all about virtue-signaling its magnificence, and nothing about actually helping people in their communities.

Put it this way. Back in the day, the ruling class built magnificent palaces to demonstrate its magnificence. Today's ruling class builds virtue-signaling museums to demonstrate its magnificence.

And having paid for the museums, and made contributions to left-wing activist causes, and paid its taxes, and contributed to politicians, our modern overclass figures it has made its contribution to society. That it already paid at the office, thank you.

Hey, who can blame them?

But I dream of a better America. 

But we won't get it while the Department of Good Works is a government department spending north of 35 percent of GDP per year.

Facing Down the Religion of Leftism

One of the standard conservative narratives is that conservatives are influenced by reality and objective truth whereas lefties are simply religious believers that will say and do anything to advance their sacred cause.

Actually, I think that the ZMan puts out a straw-man when he writes that "bourgeois objectivism" is the problem,

the assumption that all social problems have a correct set of answers and the point of politics is to discover those solutions.

I think that is more the assumption of our educated ruling class, who themselves are bullied about by the lefty crazies.

So I would analyze our situation as this:

There are lefty crazies, who want to transform the world with politics elevated to a kind of religion.

There are Inner Party educated-class liberals, who believe themselves to be the only qualified people to direct the political affairs of the nation.

There are Outer Party conservatives that believe in ruling with a light touch, but truckle to the Inner Party Pooh Bahs.

All the above sectors belong to the ruling class of educated people, the Educated Gentry. There are two other sectors:

There are ordinary middle-class Americans that just want to live their lives, do their jobs, and live a decent life. I call these people Responsibles.

There are lower-class Americans that attach to lefties and or the educated ruling class because they are Subordinate people that need a lord to protect them.

Since the Outer Party conservatives do not have a religious priesthood directing their morality, they are rather less energized than the Inner Party and its lefty priesthood. It is this that demoralizes and annoys folks like the ZMan.

The only thing that can stop the coalition between lefties and their educated-class allies is a Great Rebellion of the ordinary middle class. No doubt the Outer Party will adapt itself to become its leaders.

But I do not think that the Great Rebellion has a chance without the lefties and the Inner Party having first ruined the country and the lives of the ordinary middle class.

Yes, I know. You would think that the Biden administration has been chosen by God to do just that.

See, I think that it is natural and physical that stupid scions of the educated class would believe stupid things like the idea that politics can bend the arc of history towards justice.

And, unfortunately, over the past 200 years, the stupid scions of the educated class have been able to persuade the lower class that loot and plunder delivered by the government was the answer to their problems. It is only in the past 50 years that the social center of gravity has tended towards the middle, where the biggest sector of society has become the ordinary middle class, rather than the lower-class peasants or lower-class industrial workers.

I think the sign that the current lefty plus Inner Party sector is in trouble is precisely the culture war of the past couple of decades. A confident ascendant ruling and cultural class does not need to amp things up.

Indeed, a witch-hunt / reign of terror / great purge / cancel culture is a sign that things are going wrong for the believers, that the prophecy of the lefty prophets has failed, and that the progressive, or lefty, or liberal era has Made Things Worse. When the prophecy of your priests has failed, you do stupid stuff, like:

Defunding the police and letting criminal defendants go free.

Creating a crazy cult that the planet is going to burn, unless we go back to sun power and windmills.

Making a sacred cult out of abortion.

Enlarging an already over-large government entitlement state.

In fact, I believe we need a radically reduced state. Why? Because the modern economy rewards people that are trustworthy and punishes people who are untrustworthy. Thus, most people are "nudged" by the need to present themselves as trustworthy, and act in a trustworthy fashion. They don't need much supervision and ordering about.

We need police forces to repress those that refuse to be trustworthy, and we need navies to deal with pirates that might take a shine to a 200,000 ton container ship. That is all.

But what comes next? 

I don't know, but I suspect that the current system will need to collapse in hyperinflation and misery before we can get a majority of people to stand up against the lefty activists and the educated-class grifters.

Here's how I look at the history of the world so far.

First there was the Age of War. It made sense because land was the only thing that mattered. It paid to defend your land and you could increase your wealth by conquering your neighbor's land.

Then there was the Age of Politics. It made the Age of War look like a walk in the park, with monster wars about -- what exactly? And monster governments that oppressed and killed their own people -- for what exactly?

Now comes the Age of Trust. Trustworthy people will wive and thrive; untrustworthy people will struggle, unless and until they mend their ways.

Of course, we could give Elon Musk a gubmint contract to take all the untrustworthy people to Mars and let them figure it out there. Just as the Brits gave Sir Walter Raleigh a gubmint contract to take the "waste population" to the Americas. See "My 1584 Project."

But human life will always be a muddle. Sorry, make that "emergent phenomenon."

The World After Roe v. Wade

The problem with abortion politics is that it's not really politics: it's religion. 

If you are an educated-class woman abortion is a kind of talisman that empowers you to fulfill yourself in a career, to confirm that the age-old rule of the patriarchy is well and truly over. If you are a commoner woman then abortion-on-demand is a demonic insult to families and to the sacred trust that women hold to bear and raise the next generation in the miracle of life. 

Only in the lower class is abortion less than religious, for if you are a subordinate woman then abortion is a necessary and practical tool to survive and carve out a life in the disorganized and storm-tossed seas of underclass life.

I was in Washington DC earlier this week during the Supreme Court peaceful protests, and I heard various women in the hotel breakfast room holding forth on abortion: some of them were agreeing with each other on their Christian religious views.  One group of three was actually debating, trading Bible verses against "my spirits;" they agreed to disagree: imagine that.

Of course, the problem with Roe v. Wade is that its original proponents really did not understand what they were doing. Law is not really a thing that divine educated gods impose from on high. In the Anglo-American common law tradition the judge-made law moves from one sticky problem to another, and in the legal decisions tries to disentangle the knots that dumb humans get into in their stumbling walk through life.

It is, of course, the staggering folly of our lefty friends to imagine that they can craft political doctrines from on high that will magically bend the arc of history towards justice, for all humanity, and especially for their particular charge, the helpless victims of which you've heard tell.

As if it is their vision of justice that will make the world anew and make injustice vanish from our midst.

Only, as I say: "there is no such thing as justice, only injustice." And when you legislate your vision of justice on the world you are visiting injustice on the people at the receiving end of your glorious justice. Sorry about that.

That is the problem with Roe v. Wade. It was decided on Mount Olympus by the liberal gods, imagining that the divine ones could decide the question of abortion once for all. Because they knew. 

Deciding the future of the world from Mount Olympus is all very well when you are deciding the tos and fros at Troy in the all-important Trojan War. But reality is more complicated.

Reality, as we know from our day-to-day life, is one damned thing after another. And abortion is no different.

Back in the day, I'd imagine, aborting a baby almost always meant the death of the mother. Just guessing. So it would make sense that humans would develop the idea that abortion was evil and inhuman and anything else horrible and demonic.

But today, abortion is "safe." Hey, you can even abort a baby at full term and today's health-care professionals are real proficients in the procedure of collapsing the baby's head so it comes out of the birth canal real easy.

But then there is the moral dimension. My morality says that all abortion is shameful, going back to having sex with a woman whose baby you are not already committed to raise. My morality says that terminating a pregnancy at any point is the taking of a human life.

But morality is not everything. There is the criminal dimension. At what point in the progress of a pregnancy does society regard the aborter of a zygote / foetus / unborn baby as a criminal and an enemy of society, and subject to criminal rather than moral penalty?

In France, they tell me, you can abort a baby up to 12 weeks (or 14 weeks after the last period). But after that fuggedaboudit. That baby is going to term or the gendarmes will want to know about it.

But in our country we have the pro-life moral community preaching that life begins at conception, and the pro-lifers are right. And we have the pro-choice community preaching that a woman owns her own body, and the pro-choicers are right.

So, shall we decide the issue by one side annihilating the other in a complete victory and imposing its religion and its values on the rest of America?

I have to admit that I would rather enjoy seeing our liberal friends humiliated and routed from the field, and I sympathize with the commoner women for whom childbearing is a sacred trust. To me, careers for women is something of an educated-class conceit, an activity that insulates well-born women from the seamy side of life. And I think that almost all women should be engaged in their communities, helping each other, raising their children, engaging together to educate their children and the children of their kin and of neighbors and friends, and doing all the myriad of community work that lubricates and elevates human society.

But I accept that for liberal women, the shape of a fulfilling, and creative, and advocating-for-justice life is different. And I am happy that they should pursue their own visions of the good life.

So I think that the women on both sides need to compromise on abortion.

And yes, I believe that the decision on the abortion question is the responsibility of the women of America.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 our liberal women friends have had the whip hand, partly because they are the educated class and the educated class gets to set the moral and cultural agenda, and partly because of the power of the Supreme Court to issue dicta from its judicial Mount Olympus.

But, I would say, it is the duty of the ruling class, the noble elves, to have compassion and understanding for the ordinary lives of the hobbits, and allow them space to live their cramped and limited lives according to their lights, provided of course that the the hobbits do not interfere with the glorious destiny of the noble elves of the educated and ruling class.

For, if the educated and ruling class does not allow the subordinate commoners a certain amount of space to live their lives according to their lights, then, eventually, the commoners will rebel.

Really, the answer is not that hard. Almost all the other countries in the world have abortion laws that allow abortion up to about 12 weeks, and disallow it after that. Right now, the insistence by our liberal lady friends on abortion up to -- and even, in some cases, after -- birth is, in my opinion, a foolish and proud conceit that issues at least in part from the natural tendency in any ruling class that "we make the rules around here, peasants."

Alas, I fear that our liberal friends are too proud and too foolish and too invested in their moral superiority to do the sensible thing.

But, I tell you, dear liberals, if you don't do the sensible thing you will regret it. Or your children will regret it. And sooner than you think.