E-Book Reviews
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Obama and his henchmen didn’t read SB 1070. Well, perhaps somebody should read them the Riot Act.
Of the last ten or so pieces I’ve written for the most spot-on blog around, Eternity Road, during the writing of at least half of them, I’ve had to think twice about including language that I thought might be interpreted as encouraging people who care about freedom and the future of this Republic to “take the law into their own hands.” I could imagine three or so FBI agents knocking on my door in the dead of night asking what I meant by the things I wrote. Of course, in real life they wouldn’t get within 200 feet of our perimeter without being “challenged.” The amplified sound of a double barrel shotgun chambering a round, like the sound of a screaming mimi is pretty unmistakable. Note that we no longer live in Sea Cliff where most of the homes are so close together if one family member catches a cold the next door neighbor sneezes.
Unfortunately, though, our President’s words and non-action in the past week have forced me to rethink my positions. He’s escalated his attempts to get out his idiot base vote by calling loyal opposition racists which is a strategy that stopped working when he let the Panther sub-humans go free; the ones who were caught intimidating voters in Philadelphia. Then topped it off with a crack about a “stupid Cambridge cop” named Crowley. Like the Saul Alinsky wannabe he is, Obama also spouts class warfare nonsense when he’s not on the golf course showing the American public that he couldn’t swing a club correctly if his life depended on it. Sometimes I get the feeling he’s taking lessons from one of Tiger’s old girlfriends. Obama truly swings a club like a 6 year old girl. Then there’s his attacks on the people of Arizona for wanting to be free from marauders crossing the border and killing them. Obama’s ice cream store remark should have caused the mainstream media to lambast him from pillar to post, but, for some reason, they stayed quiet as nurses in Unit 731 in 1945 Japan. Obama’s political clones spewing out Jew-hating, and Hitler-friendly remarks should be the shot across the bow that the American people have been expecting. Hating our friends and loving our enemies has been the rhetoric of Obama since inauguration day. How can anyone interpret it as anything but Obama harboring a deep hatred for the United States? How ironic that this nation voted him President. Is that 53% of the voting public really that stupid? I guess they are.
At any rate, with Obama attacking freedom-loving Americans on so many fronts, the way I look at it, I have no choice but to raise my groups’ alert status to the equivalent of DEFCON 3. Which means the next time Obama overflies any part of the constitution, he will be met by, at the least, a harshly worded letter from ACT, a little less understanding than the Boy Scouts who Obama snubbed this week, and a bit more mean spirited than Code Pink whose idea of a violent act is to grab Karl Rove by the lapel pin. Although I’ll go on record as respecting the Presidency which is about the only reason Obama can fall asleep with only a 10MG Ambien pill every night, I refuse to be held responsible if Obama further desecrates the constitution and the rights of free Americans. Obama’s communist beliefs (let me rephrase that) Obama’s obviously held Communist belief system puts him, as a U.S. President, in uncharted waters. Obama isn’t just the worst President in the history of the United States, he’s the most dangerous; a threat to every man, woman and child. If you think I’m joking, note that I didn’t start out the sentence with, “There once was a man from Nantucket.”
One final thought is directed at anybody out there still giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. That is to say, if you’re on the fence as to whether Obama is intentionally trying to destroy this nation, just consider who he pals around with; former members of the PLO; admitted anarchists/communists/progressive followers of Lenin and Stalin who are responsible for the murder of tens of millions of Russians. When’s the last time you sat down and ate dinner with foreign and domestic terrorists who like to joke about Israel needing to be erased from the map? With Obama, it’s a habit. Names like Ayers, Dohrn, Flager, Sunstein, Soros, Evans, Jones, Rashid Khalidi. All would happily slit your child’s throat if they thought it would hasten the spread of communism to America.
Of course, as with Jeremy Wright, Obama will tell you he can’t remember all the killing/hating words his pals say. But that’s why Obama’s accumulated over 6 million Frequent Liar Miles, which, coincidentally, is about the number of Jewish lives Hitler snuffed out. Which, coincidentally, is the number of lives Obama and the Democrats snuff out every five years through the slaughter known as abortion.
In terms everybody can understand, I’ve got to say, “Obama, back off.” You’re killing this country. Killing the hope of our children to have the American dream. You may believe in what you’re doing, but so did Benito. So did a lot of little men who at the end of the day were just bums from the neighborhood. Many, many Americans are drawing lines in the sand. Considering how you butchered the BP disaster, you’re in way over your head. It’s really time to resign yourself to the fact the American people are fed up with everything from your race mongering to your effeminate flowery detached personal style. I really do disapprove of you. I’d rather put a rat next to my sleeping child’s pillow than have you spend another day in the White House infecting this nation. Barack Obama reminds me of the truly bad umpires in the 1950’s who used to make bad calls against the Brooklyn Dodgers because they broke the color line and hired number 42. You’d hear all over the park after a bad call. “Throw the bum out.”
Obama, somebody has to read you the Riot Act. Consider this the first installment.
I Did Not Know That
This post wasn’t originally written to go here, nor was it written in response to Our Curmudgeon’s recent (and ongoing?) series, “Bastions and Batteries.” But, on reading it over and polishing it at BabyTrollBlog, I realized it really should be posted here at ER as a part of this ongoing converstation.)
I DID NOT KNOW THAT THESE RAIDS WERE going on across the nation. But now that I do, several things occur to me. (Exposition at link.)
First: these are an infringement upon liberty.
The Ninth Amendment insures that unenumerated rights are not to be disparaged. In the Declaration of Independence, the writers (some of whom also participated in the framing of the Constitution) affirmed that among our (including but not limited to...) inalienable rights are those of life and liberty. Therefore, it can / may /should be argued that the Ninth Amendment specifically affirms and protects a right to liberty.
Liberty: autonomy: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence
freedom of choice; “liberty of opinion”; “liberty of worship”; “liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases”; “at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes”
personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression
We may, therfore, take it as given that the right to liberty is a part of our Original Intent. So definitely a part that the Framers held it to be Self-Evident.
Included in liberty must surely be the right to engage in free commerce with all and sundry, in any object and at any price the market may allow, without hesitation, delay, or let on the part of the state. Yes, this does imply that laws against markets in drugs are unconstitutional. It also means that the state has no lawful authority to limit the citizens’ access to arms. Suck it up.
Second: in the article, it is alleged that officials from several states (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois) colluded to institute a strategy of raiding private associations for the distribution of farm products. This is a conspiracy in restraint of trade. If the Congress can claim to be legally permitted to force a farmer to destroy crops raised for his personal consumption because his consumption of it denies his custom to interstate commerce, certainly we can claim that the states have no authority to regulate agriculture, since it impinges on interstate commerce, which is the exclusive purview of Congress.
And, yes, I will quite easily turn right around and argue that Congress does not have the lawful authority to regulate private exchanges wholly contained within one state. Arguing different theories in the same case in different venues is a long-established legal practice on which no shame should attend, especially not in the defense of liberty. The purpose of governments, (this, too, is a part of our founding intent), is the preservation and defense of liberty, and all activities which neither defend or protect liberty are perversions, not to be tolerated under any circumstances. All tactics toward these ends are appropriate.
So let’s hear no more about “compelling state interests.”
However. There is in the United States Code a law requiring that those who conspire to deny the free exercise of civil rights are subject to fines and/or imprisonment. There is even a provision for doing so under color of law, which disposes of the idea of sovereign immunity. These are the sections in code so famous in these parts: 18USC241-242.
Third—and here’s the part that is—in part—in response to Our Curmudgeon’s call for comment: the assumption that governments have the legitimate power to regulate what a free people may choose to exchange among themselvs is specious and a gross perversion of the purposes of government (see liberty above). Yes, this does mean the FDA, the USDA, the DEA, and the rest of those regulatory edifices that so eat up our sustenance and trammel our liberty.
So what do you do about it? How do you struggle against a program of subversion going back over 100 years? How do you respond?
The Chicago Way.
When they pull a knife, you pull a gun. When they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue. When they infringe upon your liberty and trammel your rights of association and commerce, you attack their right to exist.
Works for me.
…
Addendum:
We may have to take some pages from the enemy’s playbook. Back in the late ‘60s, a group of radicals in Chicago made a great deal of headway in the public mindspace by turning a courtroom into a circus, denying the legitimate authority of the state to try them on the crimes of which they stood accused. To them, it is now widely known, this was a pose. A hail Mary shot never intended to garner as much publicity, sympathy, and support as it did.
We, on the other hand, have truth on our side. In abrogating the limits placed on the state by the Constitution, the ruling class has vitiated the legitimacy of the Federal government. It may take a few of us throwing ourselves—figuratively—on the spears of the centurions of the usurpers to make the point, but we have a good chance of winning in the long run, so long as we accept that we’re in a fight for our lives and the existence of—I don’t think it’s a stretch to say—of civilization itself, and act accordingly: like the damned thing mattered. Then, perhaps, we might begin to haul this thing around to point it in the right direction—away from so-called progressivism and back toward liberty and justice for all. And maybe we can avoid opening the Pandora’s box of violent civil war. ‘Cause we REALLY don’t want that.
And, by the way, go read Ann Coulter’s column today for encouragement and an example of how to deal with quislings among our own ranks.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Bastions And Batteries Part 3: The Megaphone And The Marshals
"I saw the time when Logres was only myself and one man and two boys, and one of those was a churl," Merlin said. "Yet we conquered.""It could not be done today," Ransom said. "They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived. We should die without even being heard of."
[C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength]
The techno-fascists' ability to sell their wares arises almost entirely from their alliance with like-minded persons in the Old Media. As just about everyone in the Old Media is sympathetic to techno-fascism, that amounts to an enormous, unopposed megaphone, blaring out its beauties at all hours.
"Unopposed?" Did your Curmudgeon just type "unopposed?" Hm. Indeed he did. Well, perhaps our Old Media aren't quite unopposed. But they do aspire to that estate. Consider:
I UNDERSTAND how Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official who was forced to resign last week, must have felt.Last year I, too, resigned from an administration job, after I uttered some ill-chosen words about the Republican Party and was accused — falsely — of signing my name to a petition being passed around by 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Partisan Web sites and pundits pounced, and I, too, saw my name go from obscurity to national infamy within hours....
Anyone with a laptop and a flip camera can engineer a fake info-virus and inject it into the body politic. Those with cable TV shows and axes to grind can concoct their own realities. The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as our national immune system, zapping scandal-mongers and quashing wild rumors. As a step toward further democratizing America, we shrunk those old gatekeepers — and ended up weakening democracy’s defenses. Rapidly developing communication technologies did the rest. [From the New York Times]
For many liberals, Ms. Sherrod’s hasty dismissal carried strong echoes of the ouster of Van Jones, an environmental adviser to the president who was forced to resign after Fox News focused attention on some of his past work and statements, and his decision to sign a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. [Also from the New York Times]
Got the idea, you knuckle-dragging, guns-and-Bibles-clinging reactionary, you? You're not supposed to learn what the Old Media don't want you to learn. It's for them to decide what "news" to expose you to -- and don't you dare question their judgment, or you'll be called a racist!
Meanwhile, a development that could affect every family in America is reported solely in the alternative media:
A bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., would reinstate a compulsory military draft during war time and require U.S. citizens not selected for military duty to perform a "national service obligation" – as defined by President Obama – for a minimum of two years.Rangel introduced the Universal National Service Act, or H.R. 5741 on July 15. The measure was referred to the House Armed Services' Subcommittee on Military Personnel on July 23....
Rangel took to the floor of the House to reintroduce HR 5741, stating, "I have introduced legislation to reinstate the draft and to make it permanent during time of war. It is HR 5741, and what this does is to make everyone between the ages of 18 and 42 – whether they're men or women, whether they're straight or gay – to have the opportunity to defend this great country whenever the president truly believes that our national security is threatened."
Are you between the ages of 18 and 42, Gentle Reader? Do you have a son, a daughter, a nephew or a niece in that age bracket? Don't you think you ought to have been alerted to this bill sooner than 13 days after its submission to the floor of the House?
Today, facts, the who-what-when-where-why which were once the sine qua non of journalism, are filtered for suitability by Old Media editorial boards. What matters is "the narrative." If the facts can't be induced to conform to "the narrative" required by techno-fascist preferences, then they must be suppressed. But suppression requires the control of all conduits by which the facts might be submitted to a candid world.
The Old Media, and those who profit by their mendacities, want nothing more than the restoration of their monopoly status as it existed before talk radio, the Internet, and the multiplication of low-overhead independent publishers. Those alternatives have made it possible for Americans to learn more than they should...according to Old Media standards and tastes, anyway. And so we have major political figures and public intellectuals arguing and legislating for censorship: the recently invalidated McCain-Feingold Act, Julius Genachowski's attempts to restore the Fairness Doctrine by administrative fiat, Elena Kagan asserting before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FEC has the authority to censor books, Hillary Clinton's call for a "gatekeeper function" on the World Wide Web, and Cass Sunstein's proposal that op-ed Websites be required to cite others with opposed views.
Clearly, such persons reject Thomas Jefferson's dictum that in any encounter with falsehood, truth will always triumph. Either that, or they don't think the truth is on their side. It's for you to decide, Gentle Reader; your Curmudgeon has enough duties.
Yet, of the several bastions held by the techno-fascists, their media megaphone is the only one that's seriously threatened at this time. It constitutes a weak point in their battle array. Because of the abovementioned alternatives and their expanding reach, the Old Media are losing "mindshare," and are growing ever less relevant to journalism in our time. Our batteries are penetrating this bastion; therefore, we must rush more forces into the breach.
Unfortunately, our current positions require adjustment. There's too much emphasis on interpretation -- opinion-editorial pieces -- which is essentially counter-battery fire. Though worthwhile, it has a defensive cast, and no war has ever been won on defense. To seize the offensive, we must take up the tasks the Old Media have relegated to secondary importance: the gathering of facts and their objective presentation to interested readers.
There are costs, of course. There are also risks. Even today, New Media journalists rely heavily on reportage from Old Media sources. Those sources have begun to fire litigious rounds at the most popular Web news organs. "Fair use" law doesn't shield us all that well, and sources of facts unencumbered by Old Media filters would serve us better in the long run anyway. Recent raids by squads of armed U.S. marshals on large Web hosts, on nonspecific allegations of copyright violation, emphasize the importance of the issue.
Can we mobilize for this effort? How long will it take us?
More anon.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Bastions And Batteries Part 2: Techno-Fascism, 2010
The neologism techno-fascism, which your Curmudgeon employed in the previous essay, might strike many a Gentle Reader as unnecessarily obscure. From one standpoint, it's entirely about promising the public tangible benefits in exchange for the surrender of part or all of its freedom. However, there's more in the stew than simply an offer to buy our rights from us today for a promise of jam tomorrow. The past success of America's Ruling Class at selling the public on its techno-fascist approach to governance demands that it be unpacked and examined all the way down to its lowest premises.
Your Curmudgeon's definition of techno-fascism from the previous essay:
A techno-fascist is one who holds that the regimentation of a human society is both possible and efficient, given the right knowledge and tools in the right hands.
What would make such a claim palatable to a private citizen?
- The belief that the techno-fascist possesses the required intelligence, knowledge, and insight;
- The belief that the necessary tools exist and are available at an acceptable cost;
- The belief that no moral constraints forbid the use of those tools;
- The belief that the techno-fascist can be trusted, both on his promises and with the requested degree of power;
- The belief that a sufficiently large fraction of the public will "get with the program" to make it successful.
When such a claim is made de novo, before Mankind has had experience with such things, everything depends on individuals' beliefs, and on their willingness to "make the trade." But once we've suffered a few techno-fascist regimes -- and up to this year of Our Lord 2010, there have been more than a few -- John Q. Public's willingness to dismiss the historical record and extend his trust as far as the techno-fascist requires becomes problematic. We simply must ask: Haven't we seen enough of this to know better?
The United States, which has enjoyed relative, de facto political freedom since its birth, has had only the mildest direct experience of fascistic governance: mainly the Wilson Administration during World War I and the New Deal. These "war fascisms" were largely accepted on the grounds of military exigency. We expected them to fade away after the wars were won. One did, or mostly so; the other has persisted to a very great degree, and has been "normalized" into our national routines. To the extent we accept fascistic governance today, it's with an "it's got nothing to do with me" judgment of irrelevance to one's personal concerns.
But when fascism moves into our immediate sphere -- when we perceive that it threatens our autonomy in a matter or matters of direct importance to us -- our first reaction is truculent resistance. If the aspiring fascist is to have what he wants, he must sell us on the benefits of what he proposes. He must persuade us to believe in the Five Pillars of Techno-Fascism enumerated above.
That's quite a sales job. So far, no great percentage of Americans has bought it, which raises the question of how we've been saddled with it even so.
As Angelo Codevilla notes in his American Spectator essay, our Ruling Class holds itself to be our intellectual and moral superiors. In and of itself, that needn't have been a problem for us. Many groups' members hold themselves to be superior to others by reason of their memberships in those groups. Now and then, such a claim is even partially substantiable.
The problem arises when a claim of superiority is used as a justification for seizing power.
In the case of the Wilson and FDR Administrations, the seizure of unhallowed power by the ruling junta was rationalized to the public as an emergency measure. But note that the premise of intellectual superiority had already been established by both regimes: Wilson by virtue of his academic credentials and record of publication; FDR through association with his "Brain Trust." The greater public extended its trust to those men, and accepted their yoke in confidence that things would return to the status quo ante when the emergency had passed.
That confidence proved to be misplaced. Even the resolutely limited-government Harding and Coolidge Administrations were unable to make a clean sweep of the usurped power; when Herbert "The Great Engineer" Hoover succeeded Coolidge to the Oval Office, the possibility of expunging Wilsonian fascism from Washington expired. The fascisms of the Roosevelt New Deal drove deep anchors into American government; the special interests that emerged in response to changed incentives could never thereafter be defeated.
For some time, Americans retained enough memory of those fascisms, and how they were fastened upon us, to be wary of further ones. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, were put over on us through gradualistic means; once we had permitted "the camel's nose under the tent," they proved impossible to undo. However, Richard Nixon's wage and price controls were swiftly ripped away, and Jimmy Carter's near-disastrous energy rationing proposals never made it to first base.
Whatever they might have thought of themselves, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter failed to persuade us that they were so smart, so knowledgeable, so moral, and possessed such potent and trustworthy tools of governance, that we could allow them free rein over our freedom.
The first harbinger of a fresh challenge to our resistance was the emergence of Bill Clinton as a national political figure. Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, could make a credible claim to being smarter than most of the rest of us.[1] His highly intelligent and articulate wife, as annoying as her pretensions were, provided support for his claim. But Clinton was also an astute politician. He had learned something about the palatability of fascist policy; he knew better than to talk it up before it had become inexorable. To the Clintons, speed was the name of the game.
Thus, immediately after Clinton's inauguration, he formed the infamous First-Lady-headed Health Care Task Force, closed its doors to public scrutiny, and urged it to rush forward with all possible speed. The five hundred members of that task force were almost unanimous in their acceptance of its core ethic -- that only they could be trusted to shape the health care industry and its insurers -- and surged forward in near-perfect compliance with Clinton's order of secrecy. Happily, public indignation over the task force, its composition, and its secretiveness rose high enough that it never even released final recommendations. In November 1994, the Second Republican Revolution, powered in large part by the excesses of the first two Clinton years, neutralized the young techno-fascist and kept Washington from running wild. From that point forward, the Clintons had to make do with prestige rather than actual power.
The years of the George W. Bush Administration were too strongly flavored by war for American techno-fascists to make much headway. Bush II era policy missteps were exactly that: missteps, mistakes by a well-meaning president who believed his Congressional caucuses could and should compromise with their adversaries for the good of the nation. But the adverse effects of the resulting overspending cast a pall over Bush's tenure dark enough to eject the GOP from both the White House and Capitol Hill.
Today's techno-fascist Obama Administration rose to power by never, ever letting on what it intended to do once installed in office.
The Obamunist / Democrat campaigns of 2008 ran against the record of the Bush years. They claimed that the Bush Administration, and the Republican legislative majorities of 1994 through 2006, were both fatally inept and insensitive to civil liberties. They attacked Bush-era national-security policy and spending remorselessly, and criticized the handling of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan with a venom that implied war-crimes trials for the to-be-ejected president and his lieutenants.
It's in the nature of an "against" campaign that by filling the air with denunciations of its opponents, it strives to evade explicit statements about its intentions in power. Thus, the Obamunists were allowed, especially by the Old Media, to get away with non-specific statements about policy preferences. They were allowed to imply, mendaciously, that their intent was to reverse the damage done by Bush-era overspending and military half-measures. As we know today, nothing could have been further from the truth.
But what mattered most to the 2008 Obamunist / Democrat campaign was its successful projection of intellectual and moral preferability to its Republican opponents. Obama himself was presented to us as an intellectual of stature, despite the thinness of his resume, and a person of eminently trustworthy moral quality, despite his political origins and his unsavory associates. Those fabrications, coupled with popular disgust over Bush-era missteps and the two protracted wars, were enough to put our current crop of techno-fascists in power.
Here again, we see the application of lessons learned by our contemporary techno-fascists from the failures of their predecessors:
- Go fast;
- Go in secrecy.
Because the Obamunists succeeded in evading discussion of specifics during the campaign proper, they confronted an unprepared opposition and a befuddled populace when the keys to power were laid in their hands. All the same, in this age of the Internet, such advantages tend not to last long; they knew they had to act swiftly, and as stealthily as possible. And indeed, breakneck speed and complete, closed-doors secrecy have characterized every move of the young administration, from the "stimulus" bill through every other measure it's proposed.
The Obamunist techno-fascists might not have convinced us that they deserve the power to ride roughshod over us, but they've plainly convinced themselves. From January 20, 2009 to today, they've wielded unlimited power over us, with neither remorse nor relief.
Here's where we stand today:
- The ruling techno-fascist clique has displayed a complete lack of scruple about our rights, most especially the rights of private property.
- It dismisses all notions of Constitutional limitations on the federal government.
- It has committed a string of unethical, and in several cases illegal, acts to facilitate the passage of major legislation.
- It has disdained to allow its legislation into public view until it's been passed and signed.
- Its members believe themselves to be above the law -- indeed, that the law is what they say it is, rather than the black-letter words on the page, and may therefore be dispensed with at their option.
- It is supremely disdainful of adverse popular opinion, no matter how large it grows.
- It is willing to assail its opponents with slander and unsupported allegations.
- Above all:
- Either its members continue to believe themselves wise enough to run the country according to their notions, despite the disastrous results to date;
- Or the results to date are exactly what they intended.
And so we have the fusion of the self-glorifying attitude of techno-fascism with the ruthlessness of the power-obsessive: a clear demonstration of what Friedrich Hayek meant about "why the worst get on top."[2]
More anon.
NOTES:
1. Bill Clinton's IQ has been reported as being about 180. Though that doesn't qualify him for Certified Galactic Intellect status, it's six standard deviations higher than the American average.
2. Hayek, Friedrich A., The Road to Serfdom, University Of Chicago Press, 2007.
The leftist Prime Directive.
Nothing has been more integral to leftists’ intellectual work than their extraordinary effort to cover up the true nature of totalitarianism. These efforts occur because of a willful desire to conceal, a willful blindness to the truth, an insufficient intellectual ability, or mental illness.
Consider a New York Times reporter at the inception of one of the most monstrous regimes in human history and also what every anti-war activist scumbag in the United States refused even to contemplate as the inevitable outcome of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam—and the Congressional betrayal of the anticommunist cause:
Sydny Schanberg of the New York Times completely failed to apprehend the nature of the Khmer Rouge and his leftist compatriots baying for American withdrawal from Vietnam
In the New York Times, Sydney Schanberg reported from Cambodia that “it is difficult to imagine how [Cambodian] lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.” Mr. Schanberg added that “it would be tendentious to forecast [genocide] as a national policy under a Communist government once the war is over.”
A year later, Mr. Schanberg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, though not for tendentiousness.
All in all, America’s withdrawal from Southeast Asia resulted in the killing of an estimated 165,000 South Vietnamese in so-called re-education camps; the mass exodus of one million boat people, a quarter of whom died at sea; the mass murder, estimated at 100,000, of Laos’s Hmong people; and the killing of somewhere between one million and two million Cambodians.
I contemplate the history of the 20th century merely up to 1945 and conclude that no sane, decent person can do otherwise than entertain complete skepticism when claims are made for the benign nature of government power. The burden of proof is massively on any advocate of greater government power to show that the benefit to be achieved is worth the danger to life and liberty involved.
But the left is indifferent to the warnings derived from the last century. What matters to the leftist is whether or not some marginal Good Thing will result from the proposed increase in government control. In short, what matters to the left is expediency.
No doubt the left was amazed by what happened in Cambodia. “How could this be?!”
But here is the definition of a liberal—A liberal is someone who is always surprised when he finds chewing gum under the seat.
”Surely man is different from this stark evidence before me of indifference and contempt! No. I will only believe what my eyes tell me here if my investigations unearth 10,000 instances of this behavior.”
See the AP photograph in Mr. Stephens’s article. Even what you see there isn’t enough to open leftists eyes.
It never is.
No.
What the left proposes never has a downside. Leftist pipe dreams are safe at any speed.
”From WikiLeaks to the Killing Fields. Liberals contemplate withdrawal from Afghanistan, heedless of the consequences.” By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 7/27/10 (edits by Mr. Stephens).
Monday, July 26, 2010
Bastions And Batteries: A Coda To Codevilla
Thank you, Gentle Reader, for being patient while your Curmudgeon took a few days to rest, reorient, and rearm. It was a necessary retreat to silence in a life normally too full of words, in which intervals suitable for quiet reflection have become ever scarcer. But you didn't come here this fine July morning to read an old crank's apologia pro sua persona, so on to the main event.
This compendious article by American Spectator's Angelo M. Codevilla has already attracted quite a bit of attention in the DextroSphere. Though none of its insights are original -- indeed, much of it is prefigured in Thomas Sowell's 1995 The Vision Of The Anointed -- it's a highly useful condensation of all the key aspects of contemporary American politics and the influences that drive it. Perhaps the most useful thing about it is that it puts forward a conclusion that, though well supported by the evidence, few of us in the Right have been willing to accept:
Even to speak plainly of a "ruling class" has been difficult for American conservatives and libertarians...until now; impermeable classes are anathema to the American mind. The reign of the Obamunists, so plainly marked by disdain for the opinions and preferences of the common run of Americans, has made it not merely possible but obligatory. But beyond that, the marked attitudinal cleavage between the Ruling Class and common Americans -- the elite's intra-class acceptance and admission of its low regard for the rest of us -- compels us to abandon a hope stoutly maintained for many decades: that they who hold high office are as well-intentioned as any of us, merely misguided about what works and what doesn't.
They are not well-intentioned; they are villains, would-be dictators and slavemasters.
Their techno-fascist[1] policies are not wrong...by their lights.
The media figures who promote, support, and defend them are aware of their villainy, share their attitudes toward common Americans, and aspire to join them in the corridors of power.
It is no longer possible, even for the blindest and most wishful among us, to believe otherwise.
Codevilla makes several observations about the formative influences that produced our Ruling Class. In particular, he notes that the great majority of them are graduates of elite Ivy League universities. An aspirant to high office who doesn't sport an ivy-covered diploma has become an extraordinary rarity. But we have known for quite some time that the road to political power passes through the Ivies, especially such training centers for techno-fascists as Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Such schools, as ridiculous as the "educations" they offer have become, are a principal Ruling Class bastion.
America's universities in general are a bastion of the "progressive," corporate-social-fascist Left. The Ivies are merely the pinnacle of the pyramid; schools outside the hallowed seven all strive to be called "the Harvard of the Midwest," or something of that sort. Every university faculty, and the faculties of many humbler colleges and technical institutes, has been taken over by the Ruling Class. That fruit of the "long march through the institutions"[2] has largely made it possible for our elitists to pre-screen and pick their successors.
Upon graduation from his selected Ivy, an aspirant to Ruling Class inclusion, whom we shall call Smith, faces three questions of direction:
- Where shall I live?
- At what shall I work?
- With whom shall I socialize?
The correct answers are:
- In a large coastal city, preferably New York or Washington, D.C.
- In a government bureaucracy, at a non-profit organization closely coupled to government and public-policy formation, or in the left-wing media.
- Like-minded persons with similar credentials and aspirations.
The passing score on this quiz is 100%; there's no partial credit.
Here we see more bastions of the techno-fascist Ruling Class. You won't see a credible candidate for national office emerge from a startup technology company in Pocatello, Idaho or a "smokestack" business in Peoria, Illinois. Commercial activity's demands for customer orientation, sustained effort, and consistent results would rasp away his veneer of superior wisdom. Nor will he spend his free time bowling with the boys from the local Pontiac dealership, nor playing bocce with other parishioners of Our Lady of the Pines. Those are contaminated zones, where he's too likely to have his pretensions laughed away by more sensible Americans.
However, after several years of immersion in the "right" environments and among the "right" sort of people, his attitudes will be set firmly enough to allow him to present himself to the larger public: shake a few hands, emit a few high-sounding phrases, and posture as a "reformer." He'll have established his bona fides among those whose approval and support he must have to get elected or appointed to a high office. He'll have absorbed from his older confreres the cunning and tactics required to have a shot at deceiving the hoi polloi.
He'll know "us" from "them," and he'll know whose interests are conformant with his desire for prestige and power.
The Ruling Class's bastions are both offensive and defensive in nature. The offensive aspect is fairly plain: persons in government, in the Old Media, and in the large non-profit foundations wield immense power, with which they've done great damage to the fortunes and public images of those they dislike. The defensive aspect is a bit subtler; it largely involves the suppression of damaging information -- damaging to the Ruling Class, that is -- and misdirection of the attention of persons outside the circles of power and influence.
Anyone who's been paying attention to the behavior of the Old Media as the Obamunist scandals have piled up will already understand the importance of suppression to the Ruling Class's cause. For a newspaper to lionize the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia, without a single mention of his years as a high official in the Ku Klux Klan, is routine. The same treatment is applied without alteration to the life of Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts: only the "good parts" appeared in the obituaries of the "liberal lion of the Senate." The contrast such treatment makes with the treatment of conservative figures in and out of politics, including Ronald Reagan, Tom Delay, Rick Santorum, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul II, speaks more eloquently of Old Media "journalists'" alignments and tactical priorities than any other aspect of their reportage.
Among Old Media pundits and editorialists, we see a more blatant form of the Old Media's alignment. There's hardly a conservative viewpoint to be found in the pages of any regional daily. When the New York Times replaced William Safire, one of the most eloquent conservative voices of his day, with center-left David Brooks, it became clear that there would be no further thought spared for those who diverge from the Times's techno-fascist preferences in American politics. The same pattern holds true for every broadcast television network. Sincerely felt, clearly expressed conservative views are denied to those who get their commentary from the Old Media.
The New Media of talk radio and the Internet are "the enemy" to the mandarins of the Old. They spare neither effort nor expense in their delegitimizations of that enemy. FOX News, perhaps the most important development in unidirectional journalism in the past century, comes in for unceasing abuse -- a campaign that has even enlisted persons in the Obama White House. Conservative Internet news organs are treated as inherently illegitimate even when they're the source of verifiable facts reported nowhere else. The Drudge Report, one of the best known rightist news sources on the Web, is endlessly reviled by Old Media figures, specifically because of the damage its factual reportage did to Bill Clinton. As for the DextroSphere, comment is hardly required.
In the recent, well publicized JournoList scandal, we have several examples of Ruling Class offensive tactics, most notably the coordinated efforts of the membership to smear prominent conservatives as racists and to deride GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Heath Palin. In the concurrent NAACP / Shirley Sherrod scandal, the Old Media have been tireless in defensively averting attention from the NAACP members' blase acceptance of Miss Sherrod's admission that she had relegated a white farmer to lesser status, deserving of lesser help than a black petitioner. The points made here are simple ones, but you may be sure that they'll receive no respect from the Ezra Kleins, the Spencer Ackermans, the Keith Olbermanns, the David Gregories and the James Wolcotts of the Old Media bastion. It's critical that they conserve their bandwidth for vilifications of conservatives as racists.
But the above is essentially prefatory. The core question is what freedom-minded Americans ought to do about it.
Your Curmudgeon, a military thinker by education and long habit, regards the key to effective counter-action as getting our attitude right. If we persist in regarding our Ruling Class as "well-intentioned but misguided or misinformed," we will continue to emphasize persuasion. This amounts to self-defeat via self-deception, for your enemy cannot be persuaded. He must be defeated, which requires an entirely different mindset.
Once the enemy has been identified, the effective commander looks for his weak points. He pits his offensive forces against those points; he opposes defensive, holding-action forces to the enemy's strengths. Where his offensive forces penetrate, he reinforces his attack; where they fail, he withdraws and seeks other uses for them. Where his defensive forces fail to hold, he must regretfully abandon the target, if only to conserve his powers for more defensible positions.
Political combat isn't a perfect analogue to warfare, but it possesses enough parallels to it to help us illuminate what's good and bad about conservatives' strategy and tactics.
What are the Ruling Class's weak points? Are they being addressed adequately? On those fronts where we're making inroads, do we have a way to reinforce the attack -- to sharpen the spear as it penetrates, and do even more damage? On those fronts where we've been fighting a holding action, which ones have proved indefensible in practice? Ought we to abandon them and redirect their defenders to more useful sectors?
Codevilla opines thus:
The ruling class's appetite for deference, power, and perks grows. The country class disrespects its rulers, wants to curtail their power and reduce their perks. The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class [i.e., the freedom-minded, conservatively inclined private citizenry] is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance. The clash between the two is about which side's vision of itself and of the other is right and which is wrong. Because each side -- especially the ruling class -- embodies its views on the issues, concessions by one side to another on any issue tend to discredit that side's view of itself. One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.In this clash, the ruling class holds most of the cards: because it has established itself as the fount of authority, its primacy is based on habits of deference. Breaking them, establishing other founts of authority, other ways of doing things, would involve far more than electoral politics. Though the country class had long argued along with Edmund Burke against making revolutionary changes, it faces the uncomfortable question common to all who have had revolutionary changes imposed on them: are we now to accept what was done to us just because it was done? Sweeping away a half century's accretions of bad habits -- taking care to preserve the good among them -- is hard enough. Establishing, even reestablishing, a set of better institutions and habits is much harder, especially as the country class wholly lacks organization. By contrast, the ruling class holds strong defensive positions and is well represented by the Democratic Party. But a two to one numerical disadvantage augurs defeat, while victory would leave it in control of a people whose confidence it cannot regain....
Consider: The ruling class denies its opponents' legitimacy. Seldom does a Democratic official or member of the ruling class speak on public affairs without reiterating the litany of his class's claim to authority, contrasting it with opponents who are either uninformed, stupid, racist, shills for business, violent, fundamentalist, or all of the above. They do this in the hope that opponents, hearing no other characterizations of themselves and no authoritative voice discrediting the ruling class, will be dispirited. For the country class seriously to contend for self-governance, the political party that represents it will have to discredit not just such patent frauds as ethanol mandates, the pretense that taxes can control "climate change," and the outrage of banning God from public life. More important, such a serious party would have to attack the ruling class's fundamental claims to its superior intellect and morality in ways that dispirit the target and hearten one's own. The Democrats having set the rules of modern politics, opponents who want electoral success are obliged to follow them.
This could be summarized as attack on principle. The Ruling Class's principle, of course, is that "we know best." If that principle is the Ruling Class's weak point -- and we have reason to believe that principles have moved to the forefront of our political discourse -- then this is the correct focus. But a principle is inherently a premise. One cannot argue premises; one can only address the consequences that have flowed from them. That makes it imperative that the delegitimization of the Ruling Class be founded on what their rule has done and is doing to America, its economy, its social cohesion, and its standing in the world.
One who really possesses "superior intellect and morality" would display certain behaviors in practice. He would admit to his limitations and his areas of ignorance. He would concede his failures and strive to correct his mistakes. He would recoil from policy directions that have caused or are causing harm to the innocent. Above all, he would be morally humble. That is, he would not preen himself on his "morality" or his "compassion;" he would allow his deeds to speak for themselves.
The destruction of the Ruling Class's claim to power must proceed from that sort of analysis. Only persons already aligned with the principles of freedom would accept that our elite is ipso facto illegitimate on principle. They who reflexively support the Ruling Class must be regarded as currently unreachable, to be persuaded only by defeat and the emergence of an alternative with superior performance.
It remains true that "you can't beat something with nothing." Thus, the delegitimization of the Ruling Class cannot be the sole end of the freedom movement. The "alternative with superior performance" must be visible from the beginning of our attack.
The freedom-minded's principle, which is innately opposed to that of the Ruling Class, is that "we have a right to be left alone." The opposition from what Codevilla calls the "country class," which is friendly to American conservatism though not necessarily explicit about it, proceeds from that principle without articulating it. The lack of articulation is our weak point, nor may we abandon it as indefensible.
Freedom has a stirring sort of sound. No one ever uses "Slavery!" as a slogan with which to rally the troops; you won't see it on any placards or protest banners. But freedom is an abstraction; worse, it's a negation. Freedom is what you have when coercion, constraint, and intimidation have been excluded from your decision-making.
To argue for freedom, one must be prepared to discuss its record in practice, and how it compares to the record of the techno-fascist Ruling Class. As Dostoyevsky has told us, men will swiftly and happily sacrifice freedom for a credible promise of security and comfort. The one thing the freedom advocate cannot do is promise. He can point to Constitutional constraints on the State and guarantees of individuals' rights at every opportunity. He can cite the birth certificate of the nation:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
...as often and as passionately as he likes. Yet he must nevertheless be ready for the rejoinders: "But what about my subsidies? What about my income tax deductions? What if I can't afford to send my children to college? What if I fall into a well and can't afford medical care?"
We cannot promise a particular outcome. We can -- indeed, we must -- admit that in a free society, there will be some who suffer. There will be some whose troubles are not of their own making. Some of these will "fall through the cracks." As David Bergland likes to put it, "Utopia is not one of the options."
Such admissions are part of what we must steel ourselves to doing. Similarly, we must be ready with the record of freedom, and how it compares to the Ruling Class's record. We must be relentless about spotlighting the promises the elite have made, and how they've compared to what was actually delivered.
The last and most terrible of all considerations is what we would have to do if all our peaceable efforts were to fail. The Ruling Class will maintain its grip on power by whatever means are available to it. Already, Democrats have succeeded in stealing governorships (Washington) and positions in the United States Senate (Minnesota and Missouri). Developments such as the Secretary of State Project are already apace throughout the country. These, combined with other methods of vote fraud and voter intimidation, could turn Barack Hussein Obama into a replay of Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez. Inasmuch as Boards of Election all over America are preponderantly staffed by Democrats, and the Left has no moral scruple that would prevent it from stealing any election it could steal, this is a possibility we must address.
If things turn out too badly, we might have to lock and load.
The protection of our right to our weapons is the most important of all our near-term undertakings. Fortunately, recent Supreme Court decisions appear to have reinforced this control on the actions of the State, but the right must be exercised to be meaningful. Just as one must know whence the threat approaches, one must be prepared to meet it with all the force one can command. If our political masters are so desirous of retaining their power and prestige that they invalidate our elections, whether by fraud or by decree, we must be prepared to march, and bleed, and die.
If confronted by that requirement, many vocally ardent freedom advocates will accept fetters and subjugation in preference.
It's time to hear your thoughts, Gentle Readers.
NOTES:
1. A techno-fascist is one who holds that the regimentation of a human society is both possible and efficient, given the right knowledge and tools in the right hands. Despite the differences in rationale, the outcome is indistinguishable from Marxian socialism or Hitlerian / Mussolinian national socialism. A recent example of a more or less open techno-fascist would be Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts.
2. Though not alone in this, Gramsci is the best known early Marxist theorist to advocate as a strategy the infiltration and subversion of a society's lines of communication and education. The Fabian Socialists of early 20th century Great Britain made use of this technique to great advantage. Their success attracted the emulation of our domestic socialists.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Life and liberty
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, currently charged with the demanding task of using the office of Speaker of the House to betray the people, was asked by a reporter to cite the Constitutional authority for a far-reaching bill, to which she answered, "Are you serious? Are you serious?", either as if struck by the curious irrelevance of the concept, or as if she were being challenged for a victory speech in which she assured her supporters of the bill's compatibility with the Constitution's mission regarding life and liberty, a proposition so dubious that followup questions all but asked themselves.
The incident demonstrated once again that there are those in government who believe life and liberty are unequal and negotiable, that they are assignable, that formerly equal guarantees can be preferentially distributed in service of a value system. It is here, with this notion of a latter day nobility, that the legitimacy of the central government ends.
Recent regimes have imposed a value system that largely places the citizenry outside the protection of the Constitution. By doing so they have placed themselves above the law, and those who are above the law have no confidence in their own protections under the law, rightly, for they have demonstrated its malleability by their own success.
Their successes are tactical, not fundamental. To the extent that Constitutional guarantees of life and liberty are reduced for the citizenry, so too are they reduced for their representatives, when they are diminished for one, that is the extent to which they are diminished for the other, for in these things the security of the citizenry is the measure security itself.
Clever opportunists within government may betray the people for a while, and their successes may invite the appearance of victories and approval, but the advantages they have gained cannot support themselves, true prices cannot be known until credit balances debits, and the debits are large and growing, although here we speak of legitimacy and illegitimacy and the disparity is substantial, perhaps to the point of disaster.
Life and liberty are the blue chips of our individual and national life, legitimately in play only when our existence is threatened. They're too large a coin to be anteed in service of any lesser agenda. The price for losing is life and liberty itself. And it isn't the dealer who pays.
On Class Warfare and “Getting Things Done”
A lot of things have been going on in my mind lately, readers. A few weeks ago, I came across a stunning article by Angelo Codevilla in the American Spectator. Stunning, in that it put into clear, concrete words what many of us have been coming to grasp over the last several years: that there is now a massive, and perhaps irreparable, divide between “Main Street” Americans and the ruling class that controls the levers of power. Given that America has historically been free of that most venerable and noxious of European traditions - the ruling class - I believe its emergence here signals a far more direct threat to our republic than any one economic crisis or piece of bad legislation.
Since reading that article, I have noticed increasing discussion in the blogosphere on the ruling class, its views and beliefs, and its implications for the future of this great nation. Whether that discussion has been sparked by the above article or if I am just now noticing a debate that has been going on for quite some time, I do not know. It is true that Rasmussen has been publishing polls on the divergence of opinion between the Mainstream and the Political Class, but I believe for awhile these were treated mostly as a novelty by consumers of polling data. Now, people are taking notice.
The Co-Conspirators here come from a variety of backgrounds. Some, like Duyen, scraped their way from nothing to achieve what used to be known as the American Dream. Others are from solidly working class backgrounds. It is no surprise that Eternity Road postings strongly oppose the views of the Political Class, who are united by their belief in government power as well as their societal privilege.
Without presuming to speak for anyone, it is probably your humble correspondent whose background most closely fits the bill for a member of a political class. I grew up in a wealthy family, I attended the “right schools” (Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix, Arizona and then the University of Chicago), and in my social science degree program was instructed in all the correct ways of thinking on topics ranging from racial preferences to party affiliation. Especially in college, all of my peers were either part of, or aspired to join, the elite (the most sought after jobs after college for my class were either investment banking or government positions). Militant liberalism and atheism were the only ethos in town.
Yet here I am, writing for a decidedly non-chic website, railing against the privilege I could have so easily obtained for myself. Indeed, it is easier than ever to obtain this privilege, provided you are willing to do a few things:
Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters—speaking the “in” language—serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
This is an elite formed not by wealth (the Rockefellers) or ancestral achievement (the Kennedy’s), but by allegiance to a particular ideological program and committed subservience to the government Leviathan. Is it any wonder Mainstream America believes its politicians and bureaucrats are bumbling idiots? At least in the elite’s previous incarnations it could be assumed they got there by their own smarts or good genes and hence could mostly be trusted to make sound decisions. These days all it takes is a Democratic Party registration card and an aversion to productive private sector labor. The education at “elite institutions” has been so diluted even the degree doesn’t signal much anymore. After all, they have produced such committed intellectual mediocrities as John Kerry, Al Gore, Ted Stevens, and yes, Barack Obama, all of whom have gone on to positions at the highest levels of political power.
With this elite firmly in control of the government, the media, and many big businesses, it seems hopeless, right?
Yet, the hour is upon us when the elite is experiencing a crisis of confidence. The second half of this post’s title refers to the paradox vexing many in the elite media these days - namely, why has the public turned against the Democrats when they have “accomplished” so much? After all, they’ve passed huge health care, spending, and financial reform bills to prove they can “get things done.” Why doesn’t the public care? Worse, why are the troglodytes nominating cave trolls like Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rand Paul and Sharron Angle to spoil the party?
It is here that disconnection between the Political Class’s and the Mainstream’s view of politics is foundering. For the Political Class, expansions of government authority are de facto solutions to all problems and partisan “wins” are what drives voters to return them to power. For the Mainstream, government is supposed to make decisions that materially improve problems and are in line with the public’s thinking on the issues. Who has the more common sense view here? Isn’t it quite sad that the elites ramrodded unpopular legislation through the national Congress and are now wondering why such an act would make them more unpopular?
The coming battles will divide on class lines as none in American history has done. The elite have the advantage of authority, and the ruled have the advantage of numbers. This is how it has always been. Less than 4 months from now, the American people will most likely deliver a historic rebuke to the elites and the party that represents them. What follows after that rebuke will be an interesting sign of things to come. Will the defeated members of the ruling class slink off, or try to railroad the American people one last time in the lame duck session?
More importantly, will the representatives sent by the people to replace the rulers begin to destroy the old system, or will they be corrupted by it in their turn? On that question, many things will turn.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Fear
Hello, everyone. I just dropped by to see what's been happening since I absconded, and you've all frightened me more than I can say.
Fran's Making Amends series reads as ominously as anything I've ever seen from him. The comments on that first essay have a sound like a shotgun pump being worked.
Remus, Col. Bunny, and Rachel have been "filling in the corners" around that series of essays. You really sound as if you're preparing a survival bunker -- and what the hell are Matt and I doing in suburban Southern California, if you are?
(Yes, Matt has completed RCIA, with some reservations, and has been confirmed. And yes, we've gotten married. And yes, we have a lovely home in the Valley. And yes, Matt has found a job at a gun shop in the Mojave -- it's a brutal commute, but he says he doesn't mind -- and I've rebuilt my consulting business. Satisfied?)
I need to know if Eternity Road's Co-Conspirators are serious about this impending-collapse-of-American-society-and-the-world-economy stuff. Matt has been urging me to take it seriously. He thinks we ought to have a place to run to, and be ready to run at any moment. And I keep telling myself that he thinks electric toothbrushes are the visible tip of a vast conspiracy.
You guys are my pole stars. I respect you and your thinking more than I've ever respected anyone. If you're sincere about what you foresee, please, be unambiguous about it! I mean, what if I never got the chance to wear these:
I only just bought them!
Bugout bags
Is a bugout bag ever done? Well, there will come a day when it is, perforce, but until then they're a work in progress. When Remus says bugout bag, he doesn't mean those bags (plural) you throw into your vehicle when the Big Evil happens, stuff that will sustain you and yours for an extended stay away from home. Those are provisions for an involuntary camping trip in a moderately sketchy environment. It has scented wet wipes for mi'lady, compact little games for the kids and zero degree sleeping bags all 'round. Provisions are carefully chosen for variety and eye appeal, the first aid kit is heavy on bug bite lotions and the tent gets rave reviews for comfort and style.
Then there is the more interesting bugout bag. The real bugout bag. The one you have for bugging out the back door when one Mau Mau or another are crashing through the front door. This bugout bag exists within a universe of stories familiar to all who nurse an internal doomsday dialogue, you know, the one with the I told you so motif wrapped around a Robinson Crusoe adventure, except with deciduous trees and centerfire cartridges. The story where Rule One applies: this game is no game. Background music by Wagner and special effects by FEMA.
This is the bag we lavish our attention on. It's a guy thing, a behind enemy lines thing, a new moon and Marine crawl thing. Everything's camouflaged or stainless steel or mindful of infrared. The FFI would have killed for our kit, the CIA would rewrite their manuals if they only knew. That's the bugout bag we're talking about here. Even the straps have straps. The carabiners are in matte no-glare, maybe even Woodland. Somewhere we have a picture of it with the contents laid out, inventory style. The picture is a month old and mostly out of date. Late at night we wonder if there's room for a thermos-size cold fusion generator. If we had a thermos-size cold fusion generator. That bag.
The ideal bugout bag would weigh exactly nothing, less if it could be managed. Therefore, actual bugout bags are a compromise, but a quantifiable compromise. They should weigh about one tenth your body weight, half again that if you're really fit. Y'gotta be honest with yourself. And so it is we favor vacuum-packed freeze-dried food in mylar packaging that serves as its own rehydration container. In fact, combination everythings are favored. For instance, a machete with a sawback serves as knife, ax and wood saw, the downside being that it's an unhandy knife, a third-rate ax and a barely adequate woodsaw. Sort of like the flying cars thing. Yet we imagine our acute embarrassment at being caught without, say, just the right tool for those quirky vending machine fasteners—people might think we didn't know.
We agonize over each item. How to start a fire, for instance. It had better work in the rain natch, but can we use it with one benumbed hand if we've just pulled ourself out from under the ice, does it have a shelf-life, and on and on. How much is another thing. Is thirty feet of paracord enough? A hundred? How about if we wrap every handle with paracord and use braided paracord as keepers? Each cubic inch of one thing is that much less for something else. Then there's first aid. Do we put up a kit suitable for routine cuts and punctures, maybe also a square of moleskin and some naproxin sodium, or do we outfit ourselves with a mini-EMT kit and teach ourselves heart bypass surgery.
Then there's the bag itself. One marketing maxim says you'll never go broke selling Americans things to get organized. It's as if we were constantly training for submarine duty. Nowhere else in the world will you find customers for shoe compartments that slip under the bed. So we see bags with a maze of internal dividers and zippered pockets, but those weigh up all by themselves, especially if (inexplicably) lined for waterproofing. And worse, compartments pre-allocate the space available for individual components. If they were offered on a bespoke basis this would make sense, otherwise no.
Premium bags marketed to serious hikers are, unfortunately, offered in color schemes that make circus advertising look restrained, as if they should be topped off with a rotating light and a kazoo. And they assume the user will install personal hydration plumbing just short of intravenous, so valuable real estate is devoted to that, um, need. For the record, Remus favors rollups and ziplocks in a bag finished with one of the mossy oak patterns. He adores simplicity so his hydration system is a canteen. That's it. No schematic required, no bite-valves included. Just fill and take a gravity-assisted pull as needed. Tested and approved by generations of Boy Scouts and GIs.
Bugout bags can't help but express the druthers of their owners, their assumptions about the prevailing environment, their expected obstacles and threats. Some will emphasize shelter, others arms or food or tools. Some will have considerable communications gear, others won't have so much as a transister radio. It's a form of poverty, of studied minimalism, of knowing where to be more self-reliant than elsewhere, of providing means and equipment at the expense of deep resources, a balance of durables and consumables based on anticipated prospects for resupply, and of our weaknesses and our strengths and our fears.
A bugout bag infers its purpose, namely: to safely make it to a better location, perhaps to pre-positioned supplies, maybe somewhere that also offers resources for long term habitability, or perhaps to an established enclave or a prearranged meeting place. Bugout bags are for the interim, that debatable space and time between where you are and where you're going. In anticipation it's the stuff of adventure, man on the run, outsmarting or evading danger where it can't be overcome. In fact it would probably be a rerun of the refugee experience throughout time, one of deprivation and anxiety and insecurity, easily becoming one of terror and desperation and agony. So it is we calculate our real bugout bag with care and cheerful optimism. It's our edge, our ace in the hole, our hand up to ourselves.
(This is a condensed version of an article posted at Woodpile Report)
