Eternity Road - WAP Version

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Awww! Poor Baby!

Apparently, there are some Islamic clerics unhappy about the public image of Islam:

MECCA (Saudi Arabia): A top Saudi cleric told Muslim pilgrims marking the climax of Haj on Tuesday that the West was using the global phenomenon of terrorism to scare people away from Islam and discredit legitimate Muslim causes.

Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudeis, the state-appointed preacher at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, also called for stability in Iraq and said Islam was innocent of the charge of "terrorism".

"The campaign against Islam has become fierce and Muslims are being described in insulting terms to distort the image of Islam and scare people away from it," he told the 2.5 million pilgrims in a sermon to mark the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

He accused Western countries of hypocrisy in promoting freedom and democracy, citing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"When the oppressor Zionist enemy uses its war of smart bombs and tanks against our brothers in Palestine, violating our holy sites, that's not terrorism to their mind - but defending land, religion and honour is," Sudeis said....

"Islam is innocent of this grave phenomenon (of terrorism). The shedding of blood in this country and other Muslim countries is a forbidden criminal act," the cleric said, adding that fighting Islamic rulers was "foolish" and counterproductive.

"We should not forget our brothers in Iraq in the continuing spiral of injustice and murder, and (we should) act seriously to bring security, stability and unity to them," he said.

It's unlikely that this...person's rantings would persuade non-Muslims here in America. Any custardhead susceptible to such nonsense probably already does believe it. The sole questions of consequence are:

The answers to those questions have significant implications for American domestic and foreign policy, both.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/10 at 07:21 PM | (1) View Comments |

Tired Of The “Mainstream” Crap Yet?

Your Curmudgeon is a generally equable sort, disinclined to violence in word or deed except under truly extraordinary circumstances. Just now, though, he feels that if he hears the word "mainstream" even one more time, he's likely to take his sniper rifle and a fresh package of Oreo Double Stuffs to the top of a tall building and express his opinions with lead and nitrocellulose.

No one in this phenomenological continuum can give you a reason why the "mainstream" deserves respect or recognition of any sort. Indeed, it's entirely unclear to this observer of the human carnival that meaningful "mainstreams" exist -- that one could delimit an objectively verifiable "mainstream," on any topic of currency, that would apply to as much as a quarter of the country.

Try it! Pick a subject: political opinions, legal practice, entertainment, fashion, preferences in cuisine, preferences in cars, what have you. Do you really think you could articulate a comprehensive position, to which a majority of Americans would agree, on any of those things? If so, you might well be suffering from chronic statistical provincialism, otherwise known as "you don't get out enough." See your bartender at once.

But apart from that (as if that weren't quite enough), there's this: the opinions shared by the preponderance of persons at any given time, regardless of the subject, are more likely than not to be either trivial or fallacious. Most people are wrong about most things most of the time -- and for "most," read "90% to 99%."

Just now, the Alito confirmation hearings have this "mainstream / not mainstream" garbage coming out of everyone's ears. Even the Republicans, from whom the naive might have expected better, have been seized by it. "He's not a mainstream conservative." "Yes, he is." "Is not!" "Is so!" "Is not!" "Is so!" "Is not is not is not! Nyaah-nyaah-na-nyaah-nyaah!"

CUT IT THE BLEEP! OUT ALREADY!

Worse than anything else about this counterfeit calumny being hurled at an intelligent and accomplished jurist is this: In matters of law, opinion has no place. The written words of the law are its Alpha and Omega, or should be. "Mainstream" can't refer to anything but opinion; therefore, even if one could distill a "mainstream" opinion about what judges ought to think, say, and do, it would have no more weight in the scales of justice than Nick's reasons for cheating on Jessica or Jimmy the Greek's notions about black men's thighs.

It's rather a pity that the decisions of judges are termed "opinions;" the term clouds the whole matter of judicial decision making. Granted that a judge's decisions can be wrong. Indeed, they frequently are, which is why we have appeals courts. A good judge, whose decisions are worthy of respect, does not arrive at those decisions on the basis of his opinions! He reaches them by reading the appropriate laws, in the light of the relevant constitutions or charters. If there are gray zones to be navigated or ambiguities to be resolved, he's supposed to show deference to prior case law, and to recognize the line where his own discretion ends and the authority of the legislature begins.

Of course, that's not the way the Left's pet judges reach their decisions. Those are molded by opinion polls and speaking fees. But that's a subject for another screed. Your Curmudgeon's point for today is rather simpler.

Let's imagine for a moment that a long succession of federal judges, motivated by something other than the love of justice, were to explicitly contradict the express terms of the Constitution to reach some desired end. The topic could be anything you like. To make matters maximally dramatic, let's choose a really juicy one: Imagine that three generations of federal judges had unanimously claimed that the taxing power lies not in Congress's domain but in that of the courts.

Now, along comes Samuel Alito, who has dared in previous years to assert that Congress, not the courts, holds the taxing power, is nominated to the Supreme Court and must face the fearsome trio of Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer over it. Would we hear the following exchange?

Liberal Senator: Judge Alito, I have here a memo you wrote while you served in the Solicitor General's office, in which you state that you consider the taxing power to belong to Congress, not to the federal courts as seventy-five years of precedent have held.
Judge Alito: That's correct, Senator. I did and I do.

Liberal Senator: I fail to see how you could set your own opinion against the three generations of federal jurists who've definitively ruled on this subject. Doesn't that put you outside the judicial mainstream?
Judge Alito: Perhaps, Senator, but I have here a memo that predates the one you hold, the rulings of those three generations of judges, and anything else you might have to say on the subject. [Slaps a copy of the Constitution down on the table before him.] And it says clearly and specifically that the taxing power belongs to Congress.

This example is unusual only in its clarity.

The notion that "the mainstream" is somehow privileged to continue on its current course, simply because it is the current course and has the assent of some number of persons in position to make their views carry weight, is just a claim that "the mainstream" -- which translates to the loudest subsectors among us, independent of what they believe -- may be relied upon always to know better than our predecessors did. It's unearned self-acclamation.

Yes, yes, yes. Coming from the Democrats, that's never a surprise.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/10 at 07:02 PM | (3) View Comments |

Monday, January 09, 2006

The Only Issue That Matters To The Democrats And Their Allies…

...as regards Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is right out in front of God and everybody:

[Former Solicitor General Charles] Fried said that while he was solicitor general, he believed Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion, should have been overturned, but that since then the precedence established by the high court has forced him to change his mind. He said he believes Alito, who wrote in a memo and job application in the 1980s that Roe was wrongly decided, has also come to accept the ruling as law.

"He's obviously a conservative man but in disposition, not in some kind of ideological way," Fried, who now teaches at Harvard Law School, told FOXNews.com.

As a judge, Alito has shown deference to the court's precedence on abortion law, in 2000 striking down a New Jersey ban on late-term abortions. But those who support access to abortion say they will need more assurance than that.

"Replacing Sandra Day O'Connor with Samuel Alito would set women back decades, and would unravel O'Connor's legacy of moderation on the court," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

But though all Democrat politicians are rabidly pro-abortion, not all rabidly pro-abortion politicians are Democrats:

So Samuel Alito is facing a very public audition, and after 15 years as a judge and six years as a lawyer in the Reagan administration, he's left a long paper trail.

Two memos written 20 years ago show he thought that the Roe v Wade ruling, which allowed legal abortion, should be overturned.

He'll be questioned intensely about that by the Republican Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, who's pro-choice.

ARLEN SPECTER: I do not think that you can put aside the issue of a woman's right to choose. I think that that's still in the popular mind on day-to-day activities is still the bigger question.

It's difficult to believe that there's no one on the Democrats' strategy staff who understands how badly their "abortion uber alles" position resonates with ordinary Americans. There are some arguments for keeping abortion legal at the earliest stages of gestation; there are none for third-trimester and partial-birth abortions...yet that's the position on which the Democrats have made their win-or-die stand. No wonder the Republicans can foul up repeatedly and still command majority support.

By the way, about the Democrats' newborn concerns over "unbridled executive power": Don't believe a word of it. When that power lay in Bill Clinton's sweaty palms, they liked it just fine.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/09 at 05:56 PM | (2) View Comments |

The Other Looming Nuclear Threat

Just in case you thought they'd forgotten us, the North Koreans are still rattling their tin cup and threatening millions with incineration:

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea sees no point in returning to six-country nuclear talks because of U.S. sanctions, Pyongyang said on Monday, adding Washington would probably veto any deal to end the North's atomic ambitions anyway....

"Under the present situation it is illogical to discuss with the U.S., the assailant, the issue of dismantling the nuclear deterrent built up by the DPRK for self-defense," a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in answer to a question put by the official KCNA news agency....

"Even if any agreement is reached between the parties concerned, it is likely to be overturned by a person in high authority of the U.S.," the spokesman said.

Get that? "Self-defense." With a million men at arms and ten thousand artillery tubes aimed directly at Seoul, the Pyongyang Gang feels threatened -- by the 37,000 American troops poised as a tripwire on the south side of the 38th parallel.

There hasn't been much word out of Beijing lately. Time was, the Red Chinese were North Korea's staunchest backers. Do you suppose they've been considering their options? Thinking that maybe North Korea is a less useful ally than Vietnam, since the latter is so much closer to Taiwan?

2006 could be an interesting year. Israel is almost certain to strike Iran. Will we then move to settle the North Korean Stalinists' hash and liberate their longsuffering subjects? Just to be sociable, you understand.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/09 at 05:42 PM | (2) View Comments |

Others Talked About It; He Did It

Ariel Sharon might survive his cerebral hemorrhage, but his days as Israel's prime minister are almost certainly done. Most commentators are focused on who and what are likely to follow Sharon. Your Curmudgeon would prefer to take a moment to review what he accomplished.

Against substantial domestic and furious international opposition, Sharon pulled Israel out of the path of bloodletting -- the so-called "peace accords" and the even less promising "framework for peace" -- and undertook to heal the festering chancre of Palestinian irredentism. There was only one way to do it that wouldn't involve genocide, yet it, too, was opposed by all the nations of the world, including the United States:

He gave the Palestinians their own de facto autonomous state, walled off from direct contact with Israel.

It was what the Islamic world and the other anti-Israel forces least wanted to see: Palestinians compelled to organize themselves into a functioning society, without let or hindrance from Israel. It was plain to your Curmudgeon from the outset that they had nearly no chance. The events of the past year have confirmed that judgment.

Men of good will hoped against hope that the Palestinians would somehow discover civil peace. Sharon probably did, too. But it's clear from the course he steered that whether or not the Palestinians failed was far less important to him than stemming the tide of slaughter they'd inflicted upon Israel.

He did his duty by the people who chose him to lead them, and he did it nobly and completely. Few statesmen since Churchill can say as much.

Well done, Prime Minister.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/09 at 05:31 PM | (0) View Comments |

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: The Frenzy

Happy Epiphany, everyone. Today, Catholics celebrate the arrival of the Magi at Bethlehem, where they presented the child Jesus with appropriate gifts. This event was the origin of the Christmas gift-giving tradition, though we who receive Christmas gifts don't regard ourselves as on a par with the Son of God made flesh.

Well, most of us don't, anyway.

It's always a huge relief to put the Christmas season "to bed" for another year, even though the season is an enormous occasion for celebration, features endless merriment, and excuses the consumption of a myriad high-fat and high-carb foods. One can only take so much revelry, you know, especially one who rises at 4 AM seven days a week. All the same, with the three feast days -- Christmas, the Solemnity of Mary, and the Epiphany -- behind us, we head into the "main" portion of the liturgical year: the portion of the cycle that commemorates Christ's rising to maturity, His public ministry, and the terrible yet glorious events of Holy Week, culminating in His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Except for the very minor custom of colored Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, this part of the Christian liturgical cycle has not been secularized to a significant degree; it stands apart from our worldly customs.

If you're a practicing Christian, the liturgical cycle is already known to you. But have you reflected upon the rhythmic constancy of the thing? Apart from the slightly erratic way the date of Easter Sunday is determined, the cycle repeats unchanged from each year to the next. Of course, that's what "cycle" means, isn't it? And it stands to reason that a faith that holds that the Christian Covenant is eternal -- as in "For this is my blood of the new and eternal covenant" -- would be disinclined to invent new feasts and new liturgy over time.

But as Ron Popeil likes to say, "Wait: there's more!" An immutable liturgical cycle isn't just the product of a fixed creed and fixed events to be commemorated. It also has profound psychological effects on those who follow it. It's a calming, reassuring thing. In its regularity, it reminds the communicant of the eternal realm, to which we are all destined to travel in the fullness of time. The constancy of eternity cannot be mirrored by any changeless temporal thing, since all things must sooner or later fall to dust. But a cycle of worship and thanksgiving, which embeds constancy in a rhythm taken up and perpetuated by generation after generation of Christians to the end of the world, can at least suggest the trustworthiness of God's love and His promise of eternal life.

Turns out it's good for you, too.

A few days ago, I received an E-mail that literally bowled me over. It was from a regular reader, whose privacy I'll preserve, offering me his thanks for having assisted in his conversion to Christianity. How had I done this mighty thing? According to my correspondent, merely by posting my thoughts on religious and spiritual matters here at Eternity Road. He cited one essay, "Not Because It's True," as having been particularly important to him:

I've struggled with Christianity my whole life. I've always found it to be beautiful, elegant, powerful, strong, simple and the primus of religions -- qualities any aspiring engineer should appreciate on their own, but be amazed by when all of these aspects are embodied in one belief. Even as awesome as I knew Christianity to be as a non-believer, I couldn't convert. I wasn't able to be anything more than a name Christian because I couldn't reconcile faith and God -- I always struggled to apply reason to them, and always ended up with no progress, more confusion and a headache. I've read Soren Kierkeegaard avidly since I was 15, and admired him for his elegant treatment of the problem of faith. He helped me immensely to overcome this block, but I could never understand what he talked about on faith on more than just an intellectual level, and you well know this is really no understanding at all. I knew that the agnostic position was the least tenable of all in faith, but I was convinced I needed proof of God to Believe in him. And I so desperately wanted to believe as well. This all changed when I read your essay Not Because It's True about a year ago.

I don't know exactly what it was, but something in your essay made faith just click for me. It so concisely and elegantly summed up the hundreds upon hundreds of pages I have read on the same subject, with many in exactly the same words. Immediately after finishing your essay, I found that faith I had struggled so hard to achieve. It became very easy for me. Well, faith is never easy, but when compared with trying to reconcile God with logic as I had tried since I achieved sentience and rudimentary understanding of religion some 15 years ago, it was and remains a cakewalk.

That is the highest compliment I've ever received. I'll never cherish another more highly. But it left me thinking in silence for a long time.

The point of the cited essay was that both utilitarian approaches to faith and attempts to prove the existence of a benevolent God are wrong turns. There are other wrong turns in the sphere of religion, of course; the indoctrination of the young and the use of force to compel others to mouth one's creed come to mind at once. But utility and rigorous proof are the most frequently encountered. My correspondent had taken the second one: he'd "heard the whisper inside" and had replied by saying, "Oh, really? Prove it."

Because the Christian mythos depends entirely upon events that occurred two thousand years ago, under circumstances that render them unverifiable today, Christian adherence requires acceptance without proof; indeed, acceptance without even concrete evidence. But consider: the Resurrection, the foundation of all Christian belief, was verifiable only by a very small group of persons who lived in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem during a forty-day period in 33 AD. To the rest of the human race, and for the rest of history, Christianity could be preached solely on a narrative basis. Its external appeal would derive from two sources:

Note: External appeal. But among the points often raised in the attempt to dismiss Christianity is this: Christ demanded very little of those who would follow Him. He Himself said so:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry. [The Gospel according to Matthew, 11:28-30]

Compared to all the faiths before and since, Christianity is supremely easy: Two Great Commandments, the Ten from Mount Sinai, and a general exhortation to benevolence. There's no proliferation of mandatory obeisances and renunciations, nor are there a multitude of fussy prescriptions, proscriptions, and regulations of all sorts of human conduct. Clearly, if one were to pick a creed according to the demands it makes of its adherents, Christianity would get the palm. Beyond that, it's been said, and truly, that the Earthly demands of Christianity can be deduced on a purely utilitarian basis, both from premises such as Lockean individual rights and from the observation of what happens to societies that ignore them. So who needs to believe in Christ, anyway?

Heh, heh, heh!

First, a disclaimer: Not every atheist or agnostic will have the problem I'm about to describe. To some, the necessary gift comes "without strings;" others are too dull to succumb to it. But untold millions of average men have grappled with it, and millions more will. A good many will be badly thrown by it, possibly to the ruination of their lives. Yet we seldom discuss it; it's too widespread, and too tightly tied to something of which we're embarrassed to speak.

Each man believes himself to be the center of the universe.

There's no odium in that; it's the way we're made. We cannot help but see everything around us as being around us, with our selves at the center. The logical concomitant of that attitude toward reality is to evaluate all things according to their influence on us, or ours on them.

But our minds are given to gauging the importance of things on a relative standard. This, too, is inescapable; all measurement is relative to some standard, whether it be a standard pound, a standard inch, or a standard second. When we measure ourselves, we do it by comparing ourselves, in one or more dimensions, to others, to ourselves as we were, and to ourselves as we aspire to be.

By implication, at some point our stature in our own eyes begins to decline. For a man reaches his peak of ability and substance long before he dies. From that point onward he struggles to hold on to as much as he can...an effort at which we are all doomed to fail.

Do you doubt it? We have our times of peak health, peak strength, peak fleetness and quickness, peak agility, peak endurance, peak sexual vigor, peak sensory acuity, and peak mental power. From their peaks, all those qualities decline. Some are more fortunate than others, but unless one dies by misadventure, he will deteriorate first: the ultimately humbling experience in the world of time.

Deterioration implies the dissipation of one's relevance to the universe; at least, to the slice of the universe upon which we've become accustomed to projecting our wills. The emotional implication is that all of existence is losing its point. The problem is insoluble by recourse to temporal supports. All such supports merely reinforce the sufferer's awareness of his decline. The love of his family and friends can be a comfort, but it cannot disguise the deterioration itself. To the individual consciousness, this is near to intolerable. What, then, must he do?

One of the most common responses is frenzy.

Frenzy is provoked when one confronts a problem one has never seen before and cannot solve. Frenzy, in short, is the inability to change one's ways when only change will do. The frenzied man tries all the things he knows how to do, discovers that none of them improve matters...and then tries them all again, harder and faster. This self-reinforcing cycle of unanswerable challenge followed by pointless exhausting exertions builds to an overpowering sense of futility, and ultimately to despair and self-destruction.

The ways of youth are largely hedonistic. The young man matures, discovers love and sex, advances into and through a trade, builds a position in this world, and comes to enjoy all of it very, very much:

Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on Earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old. [C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]

What Lewis undoubtedly knew but didn't see fit to mention is that we resist the gradual losses of our powers and pleasures, from our peaks to the end of our lives, almost as fiercely as we resist death itself. This is a torment to the man who has passed his peak, and has become conscious that with each passing day he's a little less than he was...unless he possesses an emotional buttress that cannot be weakened by the recognition of his temporal decline.

Since all flesh is grass, and our coevals around us are deteriorating right along with us, there's no ultimate protection in family and friends. They, too, are headed toward the one-way door through which all must pass. (Apart from that, they have their own troubles and can't be bothered to help you carry yours; just ask them.)

An immovably staunch buttress against frenzy must be outside of time.

Allow me to assure you that I'm not just concocting one more utilitarian reason for Christian adherence. Yes, faith is a comfort in one's declining years. Yes, a man possessed of Christian faith is much better equipped to endure his decline than a man without. But there are questions above and apart from all of that:

Why do you suppose you ever felt like the crown of creation in the first place?

Maybe because...dare I say it?...you are?

It's not provable. An argumentative atheist would say it's merely an illusion of sentience, and while he can't prove his thesis any more than I can prove mine, I can't disprove it, either. But the original inclination to believe it is there in all of us. It takes a lot of effort to rip it out, nor do many succeed. So it can't be proved, and contrary assertions are impossible to disprove, but...what if it's true?

If you have a private experience that impels you to faith, why dismiss it out of hand? What makes it less trustworthy than the assertions of those who scream that ultimate answers aren't available to anyone?

If you hear a "still, small voice" that seems to issue from some deep place in your heart, whispering to you of a love beyond all temporal loves, and an acceptance to eternal glory that could be yours for no more than the asking, why reject the possibility? Why not try believing it instead?

If you open yourself to it ever so tentatively, and it blossoms without warning into something so grand and so beautiful that you feel yourself being swept away by it, why thrust it away? Why not rather embrace it, and allow it to embrace you?

What have you got to lose? Apart from decades of doubt and pain, that is.

I've allowed myself to be rather more evangelical today than I usually am, even on a Sunday. Chalk it up to joy from having been told that, among all the detritus of my fifty-three years, I've had some microscopic part in bringing another person to the peace of Christ. He will go through life confident that it means more than just what pleasures and treasures he can amass in his time on Earth. His soul is now armored against the frenzy.

I've achieved nothing of which I could possibly be prouder. Certainly there's nothing for which I could be more thankful.

May God bless and keep you all.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/08 at 12:49 PM | (2) View Comments |

Saturday, January 07, 2006

“Your Papers, Please.”

Apologies for the past two unblogged days. The “Dark Gods” essay (immediately below) wore your Curmudgeon out completely; he needed an interval in which to think and recharge his batteries.

Some time ago, your Curmudgeon addressed the question of who should be permitted to vote, and invited comments on the subject. The opinions submitted were many and varied. So he’s decided to open a similarly contentious topic for a similar exchange: whether the federal or state governments should issue identity cards, and what compulsions or prohibitions should apply to them.

Let “identity card” be shorthand for any extrinsic document or device used to certify that the possessor is the legitimate owner of all the rights and obligations pertaining to a particular identity. It need not be a flat piece of paper or plastic with printing on it. Indeed, it might well be a “dongle”: a device that interfaces to one’s body in some way, and which only the right body will satisfy. Its sole critical characteristic is that its verdict about whether some chosen person is or is not John Q. Smith of Anytown, USA is regarded as trustworthy and essentially final.

At the moment, the subject is roiling the United Kingdom:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl’s father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

“I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?”.

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

Now, there’s much chaff in the above. The notions of “new” kinds of “freedom” and “identity” are chief among them. But there are also some substantive points that ought not to be overlooked:

Would a mandatory identity card help in solving or mitigating any of the problems mentioned above? What losses of rights or other negative consequences would it occasion?

Your Curmudgeon can imagine several risks to be avoided:

Are there legislative or technological steps we could take that would reduce the above risks to a tolerable level?

One thought that comes to mind relates to the counterfeiting problem. The process by which Federal Reserve Notes are made is harder to replicate than one would imagine. The capital equipment used to make them costs millions of dollars, and its operating cost per unit of currency is a lot more than one might imagine; a lot more than it costs to print colored ink onto common paper. The intent is, of course, to make those notes hard to counterfeit at a profit. Now, Curmudgeon’s Third Law:

For every engineer, there is an equal but opposite engineer.

...definitely applies. There are persons of great ingenuity out there, constantly straining to reproduce Federal Reserve Notes at a profit, and some will undoubtedly succeed. But by combining constraints—unique serial numbers; multiple anti-counterfeiting features per note; maximum note value of $100; multi-layer printing onto very special paper stock; banking laws that require reporting of transactions in excess of a certain threshold—the problem has been held down to tolerable levels.

Is a similar approach to identity cards within our reach, in this age of ultra-low-power microelectronics and biometric assay?

The State, a coercive entity of parasitic nature, is tolerable only insofar as it averts still worse things. Today, it’s expected to cope with threats to individuals, and to the body politic, that are unprecedented in the history of free societies. If it sincerely cannot protect us from those threats without the identity card, is that a conclusive case against the State, or an argument that our traditions against the identity card have come to the end of their run?

Your Curmudgeon is aware that evaluations of this sort will necessarily be subjective, but if well thought through, they can be valuable all the same. So let’s have ‘em!

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/07 at 10:59 AM | (7) View Comments |

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Dark Gods

Fran here. In pondering the huge list of things I had in mind for this piece, which started life as a modest tangent from Mark Steyn's "It's The Demography, Stupid!" tour de force, I realized that there were issues even deeper than the ones Steyn has addressed. Those issues are prior and superior to all what's-the-problem and what-then-must-we-do inquiries, as important as those other things are. They're the things I most want to talk about, today and every day.

In a way, Steyn's focus is broader than mine, for he concerns himself with the whole of the developed world. My concern is for America. In another way, Steyn's focus is narrower than mine, for he concerns himself with visible threats to our present age. My concern is with the prospects for freedom and justice down the centuries to come.

1. Us And Them.

Political conflict is collective conflict. It obliges us to think in terms of opposed camps, facing one another over a more-or-less clearly defined line of conflict. Our entire approach to politics is founded on this attitude; indeed, it's impossible to talk about political matters in a political framework without it.

But the attitude has certain unexamined assumptions built into it:

  1. Each camp is essentially unified on those matters that constitute the field of battle.
  2. Those contentious matters are important enough to regard the other camp as the enemy, whose defeat eclipses all other political considerations.
  3. Compromise, even if it were possible, would be immoral and therefore unacceptable, or sufficiently less desirable than victory to make battle obligatory.

This makes political conflict sound a lot like war. As long as the assumptions go unchallenged, they compel us to hurl ourselves at the foe, and to accept no final outcome but definitive victory or undeniable defeat. But politics is not war; the shots fired are rhetorical, not metallic; no one dies from the contest itself; and no combatant ever accepts that he has been defeated for good. What does this do to the relations among men who opt for political engagement? In particular, what does it do to relations between a member of Us and a member of Them?

The answer depends critically on the ideological differences between Us and Them:

  1. Do we differ about about ultimate aims?
  2. Do we differ about the means to be used to achieve our aims?
  3. Do we differ about moral constraints?
  4. Do we differ about priorities?

Each of these gives rise to a different kind of conflict.

2. Meet The New Boss...Same As The Old Boss.

American political malaise at this time is rooted in a pathology of priorities. The Republicans have power; the Democrats want it back. Eleven years ago, the parties exchanged those positions, in the sort of electoral reversal to which a democratic republic is prone. Such reversals had happened before, of course. But I must note, sadly, that as our nation has aged, those reversals have had a steadily diminishing effect on public policy. Yet there are few substantive reasons to prefer one to the other.

At this time, prominent Democrats condemn the Bush Administration at every opportunity...for doing more or less what those Democrats would do in the Administration's place. The public wouldn't permit anything greatly different, given the events of the past five years. The anti-terror campaign might be conducted somewhat differently, but it would be there, and probably about as serious as it is today. There'd be a perceptible difference in the philosophies of the men nominated to the federal bench. The Old Media would be far more supportive of a Democratic administration. We'd be hearing a lot more about how it's all "for the children." But federal spending would be pretty much what it is, the alphabet agencies would behave pretty much as they have, and so on. In terms of day-to-day domestic governance and international dealing, the cone of popular preference that confines Washington's actions would make no greater allowances for Democrats than it does for Republicans.

These are not words of exculpation or praise. Our public officials should be able to do what's right rather than what's politically palatable and expedient. They should be able to tell us the uncomfortable truths we always refuse to hear. They should be able to refuse us when we demand that which is not rightfully ours, or that which would bring the Republic crashing down around our ears. But they are above us only in the power they wield; as men, they are an accurate representation of us -- in particular, of the weaknesses to which we of the year of Our Lord 2006 are prone.

Steyn's essay skewers those weaknesses with irresistible power:

...in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the west are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society—government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith, and, most basic of all, reproductive activity—“Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare....

The commanding heights of the culture have behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But, if it were just a problem with the elites, it wouldn’t be that serious: the mob could rise up and hang ’em from lampposts—a scenario that’s not unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life—child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents—has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point—I would say socialized health care is a good marker—you cross a line, and it’s very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back.

So why do the parties so furiously rage together?

The answer is unpleasant, but unavoidable. Their difference is a difference over priorities. The Democrats' top priority is power for the Democrats, and the Republicans' top priority is power for the Republicans. This diagnosis applies to just about every public official from either party, at least to some degree. Even President Bush, of whom I've often spoken admiringly, has from time to time conceded the priority of GOP power, for example when he threw his support behind Arlen Specter over the more reliably conservative Pat Toomey.

Ultimately, we are the reason for all of it. We've become demanding, petulant, querulous. We want our freebies and we want them now. Our descent into political venality has persuaded the best of men, the men of unshakable convictions, immaculate morality, and stainless honor, to remain out of the field. Those who've flowed into the vacuum are, to be kind, not the best of men. But they know how to pander to us.

3. iPod Opinions.

The great Mark Twain once had a character say, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." Twain had accurately gauged the priority of individual interest over the common good in the minds of men. Alexander Hamilton put it somewhat less colorfully but no less accurately when he said: "Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will." But subsistence is no longer much of an issue in American society; luxury is.

Many will take issue with the following statement:

There is no one within the borders of the United States today who involuntarily lacks food, clothing, shelter, or health care.

Nevertheless, it is true. Unless you're a mountaineer at the top of Mount McKinley, these things are conveniently within your reach. If you lack the price, there are others -- many, many others -- who will purchase them for you, out of the goodness of their hearts. You can be separated from the necessities of life only by ignorance or willful intransigence.

What's that you say? The cuisine at the soup kitchens might not be to your taste? The clothes at the thrift center might be less than stylish? The shelter might be home to persons who snore? Ah, then what you want is not sustenance but your choice of sustenance. You want it your way. My sympathies, though fervent, are limited. Free gifts are given at the discretion of the giver, not the recipient. This is as it must be.

Having said that, I recognize that the demands persist. Millions of voices clamor for "free" this or "universal" that, meaning "I want someone else to pay for it." That's at the heart of calls for "socialized" anything, as conservatives and libertarians are aware. By traditional standards of right and wrong, the willingness to join in such calls indicates a moral deficit. But in an age of moral relativism, how does one refute such calls? Particularly when the relativism is so far reaching that it proclaims resistance to the demands to be the true crime?

Reflect for a moment on how far we've come. Two centuries ago, men who could not pay their obligations were imprisoned for it; today, innumerable agencies, public and private, rush into the gap to support them and theirs in something approaching luxury. The children of welfare families sport designer sneakers, gold chains, and the latest iPods. Their freedom from care doesn't prevent their parents, and their parents' political mouthpieces, from demanding ever more: "affordable" housing titled to them, unlimited free health care, unlimited free broadband Internet access, guaranteed access to college regardless of demonstrated academic merit, and so on...all at someone else's expense.

How could we doubt that the beneficiaries of such largesse would enthusiastically support the system that had pampered them? How could we doubt that they would demand its extension to the uttermost limits of human greed? How could we doubt that they would castigate in the harshest of terms those who opposed their demands?

I'm not talking solely about the objects of public assistance, either. An awful lot of folks live rather luxuriously at public expense while nominally "employed." Mostly they languish in government sinecures, from which they can only be removed by death or an offense so egregious that a century ago they'd have been hanged for it, possibly without the luxury of a trial.

As Robert A. Heinlein put it, the Makers -- we who keep the nation running by actual productive effort -- are being swarmed under by the Takers and the Fakers. These latter groups show no sign that they're learning either gratitude or moderation. Where's the percentage in that, after all? Why change a winning strategy, when strident-if-baseless demands have worked so well so far?

Were barbarians to batter down America's gates, would they take up arms and fight for her, or would they demand that the Makers do it for them?

Take a good close look at them. Whether they're conscious of it or not, they're the enemies of civilization; indeed, the enemies of Man himself. Then take a good close look in the nearest mirror and assure yourself that you're not one of them. Promise yourself that you'll never become one of them.

They don't examine themselves as you have done. They don't dare. They would see the face of a god upon whose visage they dare not look.

4. Cthulhu's Cadre.

It's true that some of the types mentioned above operate from a cerebral vacuum -- that they lack the capacity to understand what they're doing to the nation at whose teats they nurse. But others understand full well. Theirs is a mentality and morality qualitatively indistinguishable from that of the criminal. They differ only in their unwillingness to soil their own hands with gunpowder or blood.

The criminal, unless he's consciously consumed by the desire to destroy, is moved by avarice. He wants; therefore he takes. Ayn Rand correctly diagnosed this as a short-range mentality. For he who does not produce must perforce consume. Therefore, if observed categorically, their approach to life dooms all men to ultimate starvation, and the end of Man himself.

Tragically, this is the logical conclusion of a certain kind of individualism.

Eternity Road readers know me as a champion of individualism as a philosophy of rights, by which governments are properly constrained. But there are other kinds. There's the individualism that sees only oneself as real; this is called solipsism. There's the individualism that sees others solely as means to one's own ends; this is called sociopathy. And there's the individualism that blends solipsism and sociopathy with the dark pleasures of destruction. This has no name. Perhaps it's too fearsome to be allowed one.

The most memorable fictions of the immortal Howard Phillips Lovecraft were founded on a mythos of "elder gods:" entities of immense power, that knew no moral constraints and delighted in destruction. The most vividly depicted of these was Cthulhu, whose aim was literally to consume all that lives, if possible with the connivance and cooperation of men.

Cthulhu possessed human acolytes who strove to persuade others that true freedom is most manifest in the act of murder: the deliberate consumption of another's life. By that standard, to kill was the highest of all individual actions, the deed most true to the vision of oneself as unique in existence. If Cthulhu had a gospel, it would have been exactly that of the Thuggee:

"And now, my brothers, rise and kill. Kill for the love of killing! Kill for the love of Kali! Kill, kill, KILL!"

To Cthulhu's acolytes, killing was merely the supreme act of consumption. Qualitatively, there is nothing to separate them from those among us who demand that all they desire be provided to them at others' expense.

5. The Armies Of Allah.

There's a dark god in motion in our world other than him of the maw that can never be filled.

Hearken to one of the few questionable snippets of the Steyn essay:

I’m a conservative -- I’m not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I’m with Mullah Omar on that one.

There are two problems with this assertion:

  1. Britney Spears does not dress like a slut; sluts dress like Britney Spears.
  2. Mullah Omar would behead Britney Spears. Mark Steyn would merely scold her, and perhaps send her to her room to change.

A common reaction, even among nominally tolerant persons, to "excesses" in individual behavior is to exclaim "there ought to be a law" or "if I were king," et sequelae. Indeed, there are some manifestations of disdain for others' sensibilities that are sufficiently offensive or dangerous that laws curbing them in public places are justifiable, though that slope has always been coated with a thick layer of Vaseline. (Public intoxication nearly always eventuates in harm to someone, if only the street cleaners; public fornication frightens the Buicks.) But the vast majority of "there ought to be a law" ejaculations should be answered by "no, you ought to learn to keep your nose out of others' business." Unfortunately, in this era there are far too many of the former and far too few of the latter.

The most visible representatives of the former camp are the followers of Allah.

Allah stands at the extreme opposite end of the theo-ideological spectrum from Cthulhu. He demands utter submission and absolute obedience in all things; he offers no freedom and punishes the slightest deviation from His decrees with an eternity of torment. Worse, he demands that his followers enforce his decrees in this world as well, with the full and humorless power of a totalitarian State.

Worst, our tendency to think with our wishes instead of our heads leads many to believe that Allah's sort of world is the only alternative to Cthulhu's.

This dichotomy seldom becomes conscious in the minds of those who hew to it. The typical there-ought-to-be-a-law type simply assumes that law and (temporal) punishment are just and effective ways of promoting what he likes and curbing what he dislikes. Though the impulse has been banished from Christian churches, it was once found there. In its most extreme manifestation, it produced the Calvinist "Christian police state" of seventeenth-century Switzerland, in which religious dictates and secular law were unified. And obviously, the mindset is still virulently alive in the Islamic world.

Life under a regime of such rigidity is joyless; it's hardly worth living at all. Even Islam's public figures have admitted this. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said on more than one occasion that "There is no room for play in Islam. Islam is deadly serious...about everything." The lesson, unfortunately, tends to be lost on those inclined to enforce their preferences upon others at gunpoint.

6. The Last Battle.

It's possible that you, Gentle Reader, have been asking yourself, "What on Earth does all this drivel have to do with Steyn's points about cultural confidence and demographic decline?" I grant that you'd have some reason. Bear with me.

Classical conceptions of the culmination of history -- these are usually called eschatologies -- involve an outright battle between the forces of good and those of evil, with the loser cast down forever and the winner taking title to all that exists. The Christian eschatology is called Armageddon. The Norse called their eschatology Ragnarok. The Germans call theirs Gotterdammerung. The Hindus call theirs the death of Brahma. In their most important particulars, they're very similar. The most important one is this: the good side is clearly good, and the bad side is clearly bad.

None of these is a good fit to a struggle for the world between Cthulhu and Allah. Whichever were to win, the rest of us would lose. The world would either be destroyed, or would be locked into the most confining totalitarianism imaginable. If these are the sides that will duke it out on the Last Day, there'll be no one a good man could root for.

The most popular ideologies in the world today are the Western ideology of moral and cultural relativism -- Cthulhu's -- and the Eastern ideology of utter submission to a totalitarian god -- Allah's. The former delights in the self-destruction of the world by the incitement of the worst impulses of Man. The latter demands Man's increase, but under conditions so confining and unpleasant that death would be preferable. At present, the former has access to more temporal tools, but the speed at which the latter is multiplying suggests that it won't be long before its numbers allow it to swarm over all barricades erected against it. But in any case, if the West should continue its descent into moral and cultural relativism, it will disarm itself precisely as Islam rises to strike it dead.

7. The Search For An Alternative.

Cthulhu and Allah are not real; they are fantasies. They're the icons of evil best suited to the purposes of this essay. They serve the same function Darth Vader serves in the Star Wars movies: they transform the antagonist from an ideology to a person, they give the hero someone specific to battle, and they give the audience someone specific to fear and hate.

Reflect on that mechanism for a moment. So much of contemporary politics is oriented toward hating some iconic figure on "the other side!" So little energy goes into addressing the explanations for political difference! Can't we see here the schematic for political misdirection? If we're busy reviling some artificial devil-figure, like Winston Smith during the Two Minutes' Hate in 1984, how much time or energy will we have left for serious thought about the supposedly serious differences between the major parties? How likely is it that we'll give sober consideration to any of the contentions of "the other side?" How easily will we be marshaled into supporting men whose only attraction of any sort is that "they're our sons-a-bitches" rather than "theirs" -- ?

How likely is it that we'll fail to see the blade of our true enemies swinging for our heads?

The ideologies I've associated with Cthulhu and Allah are neither effective defenses against any threat nor practical approaches to living well; they're guides to self-immolation. Yet their devotees press us from all sides. Where are we to find protection from either or both?

The question is non-trivial. The unthinking reaction to relativism is rigidity, which leads straight to Allah's camp. The unthinking reaction to totalitarianism is anarchy, which leads to the maw of Cthulhu. Clearly, we must find a middle way.

Fortunately, there is a middle way. It doesn't involve compulsory breeding. It doesn't involve compulsory worship. It doesn't involve collectivization of any sort, whether in the name of political correctness or State-enforced virtue. It rejects demonization of the advocates of "the other side" as counterproductive.

We followed that way for about a century and a half. It derives, as Steyn put it, from "eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go."

8. The New Olympus.

Combat is never a agreeable prospect. Even ideological combat, conducted entirely with words and ideas, has an unpleasant edge. For a good man to take up arms in the conflict that rages today will require as much courage as it ever did. Our enemies, though many of their number strive to wear a friendly face, are implacable.

Europe is probably lost. Russia is probably lost. Japan may be lost. Steyn's fertility rate figures are compelling indicators of a deep disease, and one does not resuscitate a dying culture by exhorting it to breed for the sake of its nonexistent progeny. But that approach would wag the dog by its tail in any case. The low levels of fertility that characterize the developed world, including the United States, are not a primary but a resultant. Large families characterize a milieu where physical labor is the principal source of wealth -- where one needs eight or ten children to work the family farm. As capitalism and technology advance, labor ceases to be the dominant factor in economic gain. Children slowly cease to be a source of labor and a form of retirement security, and become more of a luxury good. Low birth rates mostly indicate that a people has become rich enough not to exploit its children's labor. In America's case, due to our outstanding productivity, that's easily tolerable. In other lands, hagridden by much more developed, much more rapacious welfare states, it foretells the triumph of the Takers over the Makers, and the demise of both.

We cannot save the future by appealing to the future good. We can only mobilize the present for its own priorities. The adjustment of American priorities away from secondary impulses toward matters of immediate survival and the defense of the ideals that sustain American civilization is the problem to be solved.

But how may we do this, when the atomization of society appears all but complete? Riches, whether earned or merely received, cause the typical man to turn his attentions inward. His impulse is to leave others to their own troubles, and to see even the darkness creeping toward him and his own as someone else's responsibility to dispel. He resists the notion that there are some causes to whose defense his own contribution is indispensable.

The influence historically most effective at raising a man fron his knees -- or his back -- is a vision of himself as a model of courage in a noble cause: a hero.

Heroes stand foursquare for justice. They don't linger over their comforts when the alarums sound. They don't quail before opposition, however formidable it looks. And they don't accept any outcome but victory.

Self-respecting, other-respecting individualism -- American individualism -- is a hero's creed. The American individualist takes on himself the responsibility for his own well-being. He swears to raise his hand against no other man, save only in defense of himself and his own. And he pledges himself to the defense of those ideals against all enemies, foreign or domestic. They who uphold such a regime are the highest and best representatives of our kind; others emulate them as automatically as flowers turn their faces toward the Sun.

For nearly two centuries, America was seen as Olympus come to Earth: the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. For a century it was a nation of heroes, envied by all the other peoples of the world, upon which they automatically called in their darkest hours. That's an image of ourselves that should rouse all but the terminally comatose from their torpor.

The present generation of Americans may be only half-salvageable. Cravenness is dispelled only under unforeseen trial. Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance. The forces that call for surrender to the intolerable, that march under the banner of relativism and accommodation, are mighty. From their perches in academe and the media, they've done gruesome damage to the history and self-regard of our nation. But that's no reason to despair. It's certainly no reason not to raise our own banners and march.

We must put away venality and rediscover our just pride.
We must proclaim a gospel of responsible individual liberty, and hold strictly to it.
We must demand absolute fidelity to promises from our public officials.
We must purge our laws, our language, and our thoughts of much nonsense that entangles them.
We must cease to grant any respect to the demands of the Fakers and Takers; they must be recognized once more as parasites and objects of charity.
We must learn to discriminate between the unconscious and the conscious followers of Cthulhu and Allah. The former must be either enlightened or neutralized; the latter must be defeated by any means expedient. In no case may they be accommodated.

These are the weapons with which we can defeat Cthulhu, Allah, and the seemingly irresistible tides of demography, and reclaim our heroism.

There will be costs. We will sometimes be compelled to do terrible things. We will sometimes have to harden our hearts in unprecedented ways. Who could deny that a rigidly enforced quarantine of the Islamic world would exclude from our company many who deserve better? Who could deny that confronting and contradicting the apostles of relativism will occasion some nasty scenes? Who could deny that the disassembly of the welfare state and its replacement with an ethic of private, voluntary community will cause rough times for some who objectively deserve better? No ideological transition has ever been free of casualties or pain. Shall we insist that, until we find a way that keeps us safe and sated, and brings us all we desire at no cost, we will refuse to move at all?

The revolutionaries of our Founding Era knew what they believed. Their passion for it inspired them to reject British rule, though it might cost "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." They set out on a course never before taken in human history. Despite several missteps, they preserved their ideals intact. They never doubted that they were worth fighting for.

A man who knows what he's fighting for, and is wholeheartedly proud of himself and it, will do what he must to preserve it. There is no other path, unless one surrenders to Cthulhu or Allah.

9. Specifics.

I've proclaimed the necessity of an ideological revolution. The essentials to any revolution, including an ideological one, are education, communications, and weaponry.

Education is obvious. Our young are being miseducated as we speak. We must snatch their minds back from those who would infuse them with the relativistic, nonjudgmental creed and introduce them to the principles of the Founding. Equally as urgent, we must induce them to acquire strength and skill, the only sound foundation for pride. A man who can catch and cook his own dinner is unlikely to bow before any other man, nor will he accede to self-immolation at the behest of any god.

Communications is equally obvious. Americans who see the necessities outlined here must be able to find one another, pool information, exchange ideas, and offer mutual support. When we are isolated, we're easy targets: easy to silence and safe to ignore. When we know we're not alone, that there are others willing and able to support us, we have the strength of ten.

Weaponry is fundamental, yet its full impact is almost always overlooked. It's been said that the Second Amendment is the sole guarantor of the First, and truly. But what's less apparent is that an armed and confident man is a model for other men. He draws admiration for much the same reason as does an articulate, educated man: he can do things others can't. Therefore, be armed, and be conspicuously armed. Shoot often. Make it a family activity. Invite your friends and neighbors to join you, and to bring their children, too. When the opportunity arises, add to the simple pleasures of sport shooting a measure of history: stories of the great men of arms, whose valor brought them honor, and their nations victory.

American birth rates are at replacement rates, true. If our numbers are not to increase, our strength and our confidence will have to suffice. But if history is any guide, they will.

10. Concluding Thoughts.

To one who cherishes freedom and hopes for the destruction of its enemies, Steyn's case that those enemies are outbreeding us appears ominous:

Since the President unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine -- the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world -- innumerable “progressives” have routinely asserted that there’s no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that’s true, it’s a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia -- in the United Kingdom. If a population “at odds with the modern world” is the fastest-breeding group on the planet -- if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions -- how safe a bet is the survival of the “modern world”?

...but this is a double-edged blade. The Islamic world is characterized by deficiencies so severe that on its own it could never approach the stature of the Western world. Intellectually, it's on the edge of retardation; thanks to the constraints of Islam, it knows almost no innovation of any sort. Muslims compelled to live with one another, deprived of infusions of Western capital and ideas, always turn on one another as the Palestinians have done. This is natural among persons who abjure reason and promote a pseudo-religion of totalitarianism in its place.

Imagine the world's 1.2 billion Muslims under conditions of strict geographic quarantine, compelled to make it on their own or not make it at all. Is it possible to imagine that without the opportunity to steal our aircraft and our weapons to use against us, that they would be any kind of threat?

As for the promulgators of relativism and American self-abasement: these are even less to be feared. Were they not granted unearned support by public institutions and foundations with more money than sense, and unearned respect for ideas they cannot defend in open debate, they would shrivel to nothing. Do they denounce you as a dangerous reactionary? Laugh. Do they raise campaigns of calumny against you as an enemy of the common weal? Trust your neighbors to know you better than that. There's nothing less potent than the derision of those in whom nothing wholesome resides.

To the dark gods who seek to drag us to their altars, whether to be chained there lifelong or to be sacrificed upon them, let us oppose the God of Light, Who set us free in time and gave us our power of reason, our sense for right and wrong, and our urge to community. Let us think as He would have us think: clearly, soberly, and without fear.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. -- Bertrand Russell

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/04 at 07:28 PM | (11) View Comments |

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Just Because I Feel Like It

An old favorite quote:

"I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer." -- Brendan Behan, playwright

As a philosophy of government, this has much to recommend it.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/03 at 06:42 PM | (1) View Comments |

This One Will Take Some Time

Mark Steyn's stunning essay "It's The Demography, Stupid!" is getting wide and richly deserved attention all 'round the Web. Your Curmudgeon has something to say about the thesis, too -- a coda that applies economic and strategic principles to Steyn's observations about the West's demographic implosion -- but it's taking a little time to jell, so he begs your indulgence until the morrow -- or the day after. In the meantime, please read Steyn's essay. Reflect on the vast sweep of his concerns. Ponder what might be done to offset the asymmetrical trends he depicts. And be afraid. Be very afraid.

Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 01/03 at 05:53 PM | (6) View Comments |

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