Facts And Reason No Longer Work

For a long time I was astounded at the visceral reactions I provoke by making a reasoned argument, simply because the conclusion is one that people do not want to hear.  This mystified me because I do not feel threatened or upset at statements I disagree with; I am happy to debate further or to agree to disagree.  It never occurred to me, until fairly recently in my life, that most people are unwilling or unable to reason.  Instead, people rationalize the beliefs dictated by their emotions.  To such people an argument is not an attack on a particular proposition, but rather an attack on them personally.  And lacking the tools of reason, such people have no way to respond other than through hostility or avoidance -- which is why I no longer waste my time debating them.  It would be just as productive to debate a doorknob.

It's getting only worse, and it seals the fate of larger political discourse.  Because modern people are spoiled -- a subject I've discussed at length -- their aversion to hearing unpleasant things has grown so strong that they cannot see the Armageddon staring them in the face.  Like an addict, modern man is in denial and hates those who dare suggest he has a problem.  Instead, he runs to his supplier of good feelings.  An interesting article looks at how this suicidal dynamic likely guarantees Obama's re-election, which is fine with me because the remnant of real Americans needs to abandon hope of mainstream political salvation and become radicalized.  If argument doesn't work, a refusal to cooperate just might.      

Puritan Barbarians

I sometimes marvel at how Christianity ushered in a change from orthropraxy (public/overt displays of piety; salvation through good works) to orthodoxy (private/discreet piety; salvation through faith). That pendulum is clearly swinging back in the other direction, as present-day morality is defined almost exclusively by engaging in ritualistic behaviors that have little or no relationship to actual moral worth. What we are left with is a most curious species, the Puritan Barbarian.

For example, someone today can achieve a high level of esteem despite being profane, promiscuous, dishonest, and cruel in his private life -- all he has to do is engage in some or all of the following public rituals comprising the new and artificial "morality":

• Vote on a regular basis (and preferably sport a pin or a sticker announcing this fact);

• Fret about "global warming" and push everyone to adopt a "green" lifestyle (e.g., recycling, driving an overpriced and underperforming car, installing solar panels on one's home);

• Refrain from smoking (only tobacco -- other substances are fine);

• Advocate the use of violence vis-à-vis governmental policies to impose greater "fairness" on society and/or the world, usually by re-distributing private wealth but also by invading foreign countries to make them "free";

• Eat healthful or "organic" foods;

• Loudly and frequently bemoan the supposed sins of Western civilization (i.e., cultural Marxism);

• Perhaps most important of all, denounce anybody who questions these rituals as a heretic.

Notice how all of these center around the physical and the tangible. Having lost his soul, the Puritan Barbarian fetishizes the body -- either his own, the public's, or the planet's. In so doing, the Puritan Barbarian has seized the mantle of morality away from the quiet folk who strive for personal integrity. Therefore, in the modern calculus, Bill Clinton is more moral than Mother Theresa. Although Clinton may have borne false witness and committed adultery with a grin on his face, he let gays stay in the military and vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortion! Those deeds surely rank higher than a life of meek, chaste, and self-denying servitude.

And why is this happening? Why does orthopraxy again rule the day? The answer is simple: because it's easier. True integrity and purity require far too much effort from people weaned on self-gratification, so the adoption of herdlike rituals offers a cheap and easy path to salvation.

Unchecked Immigration As Another Federal Weapon To Undermine Community Identity

For so long have I been exploring my random thoughts that I neglected my discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment, that hunk of shrapnel still embedded in us from the War Between The States.

Apart from the violence done to American communities in the name of promoting the “due process clause” and the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal government has also taken advantage of the “citizenship clause” of that Amendment as a further means to pulverize not only communities’ self control, but their very sense of self. The “citizenship clause” is the very first portion of the Amendment and reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. . . .

Congress’s goal in drafting this language was to create a national standard of citizenship to avoid the possibility that States might deny citizenship to African-Americans. Of particular importance to this plan was the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which limited citizenship to children whose parents owed allegiance to the United States. Mere birth within the United States was not enough, since this would extend the privileges and immunities of citizenship even to the children of visiting diplomats or other persons having no kinship with our country. Senator Jacob Merritt Howard, who introduced the Amendment for debate, explained as follows:

This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

Another way of phrasing the function of the “citizenship clause” was provided by then-Senator Reverdy Johnson, who observed:

Now, all this amendment provides is, that all persons born in the United States and not subject to some foreign power – for that, no doubt, is the meaning of the committee who have brought the matter before us – shall be considered as citizens of the United States. . . .

The Supreme Court took note of the limited reach of the “citizenship clause” in its contemporaneous Slaughterhouse Cases decision, noting as follows:

The phrase, “subject to its jurisdiction” was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.

Not long thereafter, in 1884 the Supreme Court re-affirmed this holding in Elk v. Wilkins by denying citizenship to a Native-American who, although born within the United States, was not subject to its jurisdiction at that time:*

Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the Indiana tribes (an alien, though dependent, power) although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more ‘born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ within the meaning of the first section of the fourteenth amendment, than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign nations.

Despite these unmistakable indications of the meaning of the “citizenship clause,” the federal government has adopted and enforced a policy that children of illegal aliens are citizens of the United States at the moment of birth. This contravenes the Fourteenth Amendment’s aim of withholding citizenship from persons whose parents owe allegiance to a foreign power, and it has also provided them an anchor with which to squat here in violation of the law indefinitely. Although the Supreme Court has avoided scrutinizing this blatantly illegal policy, the Court has tacitly approved of it by forcing us all to subsidize such families and, by extension, illegal immigration itself.**

The dam broke in 1982, when the Court prohibited the State of Texas from denying public schooling to the children of illegal aliens:

Nor is education a fundamental right; a State need not justify by compelling necessity every variation in the manner in which education is provided to its population. . . . But more is involved in these cases than the abstract question whether [the Texas law] discriminates against a suspect class, or whether education is a fundamental right. [The Texas law] imposes a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status. The stigma of illiteracy will mark them for the rest of their lives. By denying these children a basic education, we deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation. 

Hence the bizarre result that States, although having no obligation to provide taxpayer-financed education even to full-fledged citizens, must provide such education to non-citizens who are here illegally. So again the Court ignored the Constitution and made a policy choice concerning children’s educational needs, and a muddled one at that: absence of taxpayer-financed education is not absence of education per se, and a child forgoing public schooling will hardly end up “disabled” or “illiterate” (quite the reverse, most likely).

Communities have ever since waged a losing battle to protect their budgets from illegal immigrants and their federal enablers. Whether it’s public education, welfare, medical care, or even incarceration, we have been compelled to expend incredible amounts of money and resources on people who broke the law to enter our midst, leaving us less capable of meeting our needs. A case in point is California, now bleeding roughly $10 billion per year to support this invasion and whose voters in 1994 enacted Proposition 187 to stop the hemorrhaging. California’s act of legitimate self-preservation was nullified by a federal district court, which took its cue from the Supreme Court’s 1982 decision and thereby disregarded the people’s express will to have a say in how to spend their tax money. A similar fate could easily befall Arizona, whose voters recently approved the modest Proposition 200 requiring proof of legal status as a condition of receiving public benefits.

Other burdens of illegal immigration include the depression of wages, the spiraling cost of housing, overpopulation, urban sprawl, and the drain of money that illegal aliens send to their families in their countries of origin. Outweighing even these problems is the erosion of our cultural identity, a process that has overwhelmed some communities and made severe inroads into many more. America was designed to accommodate a patchwork of diverse communities, with our Constitution reserving the majority of political power at the state and local level so that these communities could pursue their unique way of life. What is currently taking shape, however, is a ubiquitous and chaotic stew of customs, mannerisms, and tongues that annihilates a sense of community anywhere. “Assimilation” has become a dirty word, since aliens no longer need to be embraced by the communities where they reside in order to prosper. Aliens now have a federal policy at their backs that coerces communities to support them no matter their legal status or their persistence of alien ways of life. In cities such as Miami and Los Angeles, many Americans find that not only are they compelled to subsidize the alien presence surrounding them, but also that they must learn a second language to survive in it.***

Illegal immigration also represents a potential threat to national security that our political leadership shows little serious intention of curtailing. In spite of September 11th and the “war on terror,” the federal government refuses to tackle one of the few duties that it is indeed charged with, as described in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion . . . . 

But the opposite has occurred, with the federal government maintaining procedural guarantees for those few illegal aliens who have actually been identified and apprehended, which allows them to forever postpone their deportation and which also appeases the legions of lawyers who earn a living processing these invaders. Opinion polls reveal that most Americans consider illegal immigration a problem in need of fixing, and that even legal immigration should be decreased or suspended. Elite opinion rejects this viewpoint and remains indifferent to the dismal state of affairs. Any responsible, or even sane, government attempting to protect its territory would obey the Constitution’s command and stem the near 500,000 undocumented persons who infiltrate our land each year, and whose numbers are now estimated at 10.5 million.

All we hear from the political class and their high-powered business lobbies is that these illegal aliens are vital to the economy; that they take the unpleasant jobs that no one else will; and that anyone who seeks their exclusion or expulsion is a racist xenophobe. These scripted responses betray an utter lack of respect for our laws, implicitly decreeing that if something is considered “necessary” then the law no longer matters. If open borders are truly essential for national survival and prosperity, then we can simply pass a law ordaining it. Of course the American people would never do this, so the political class imposes its own will by circumventing ours (mirroring their modus operandi for destroying the Constitution by ignoring the amendment process).

Many aliens undeniably have a need to come here, but a truth must be shouted from the rooftops if we have any hope of recovering from the disease that wracks the immigration debate specifically and the rule of law generally: needs are not rights. There is no right to enter a country against that country’s will. The true right at issue is that of the American people to select who may come here versus who may not. In 1924, Americans chose to restrict immigration almost completely. In 1965, Americans chose to open the doors to almost everyone from around the world, provided that they follow a specific process for gaining entry. Today Americans are fed up with the massive circumvention of those procedures and all the problems associated with it, but the federal judicial and political authorities have eviscerated our right to implement our wishes. Righteous outrage belongs to us, not to those who demand entry into our company against our will.

 _______________________________________________________________________

* A little later, the Supreme Court in 1898 issued a ridiculous and unfounded opinion in United States v. Wong Kim Ark holding that the children of legal immigrants were entitled to automatic citizenship.  Fifth columnists have seized on the gelatinous language of this opinion while doggedly ignoring that it does not concern children of illegal immigrants or otherwise repeal the citizenship dictates of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

**It may be only a matter of time until the Court finalizes its destruction of the citizenship clause and openly holds that the Fourteenth Amendment entitles the children of illegal immigrants to automatic citizenship at birth (a ruling that is most likely to appear if the U.S. Congress ever grows enough of a spine to deny such citizenship by way of legislation, since a federal lawsuit will follow with nauseatingly predictable speed). 

*** Some people wonder why I am troubled by the proliferation of Spanish in this country when I speak it fluently.  Indeed, I gain quite a bit from my abilities with Spanish, but my beliefs are not driven by my personal interests.  There is a such thing as the national interest that does not necessarily match my own.  It's a radical concept that, if tried more often, would eliminate many of our collective problems.

Romney Was Right, Up To A Point

A large number of people are offended that Romney would criticize forty-seven percent of Americans who depend on government assistance, who view such assistance as a legitimate government function, and who are thus hopeless supporters of Obama.

I'm offended at the forty-seven percent.  Where do you get off reaching into my pocket and living off my toil?  It is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and nowhere to be found in any serious moral philosophy.  Charity is voluntary; government handouts are compulsory and the antithesis of charity, for government has nothing of its own to give.  That some of you portray this plunder as a "right" is sickening and equivalent to slavery, i.e., the assertion of entitlement to the sweat of another's brow.  This reinforces my conclusion that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest slavemaster of them all, for he founded the political apparatus that makes slaves of more people than the South ever dreamed of shackling.  Your needs are not rights, and they do not entitle you to commit wrongs.  You are not victims, but perpetrators. 

Back when Americans were lovers of liberty, they criticized politicians for indulging in plunder.  Now they criticize politicians for daring to express qualms about it.  Do not misunderstand me, for I have no intention of voting for Romney or any other candidate for federal office.  Romney is a hypocrite who conveniently forgets that banks, insurance companies, and auto manufacturers are gluttonous consumers of government handouts as well.  So he was right up to a point, but virtually everyone is on the dole and we have passed the point of no return. 

Organic Food Hysteria

I just listened to a hilarious podcast from NPR discussing a recent study from Stanford University that has the "organic" crowd all in a lather.  Apparently, shelling out extra money for the sacred experience of consuming organic food yields no discernible health benefits.  A cohort of cultural orphans demanded to know what evil corporation had tarnished their golden calf, but alas, the study was funded internally by the university (which means it was greased with government dollars, adding insult to injury -- public money is pure!). 

One discerning listener pointed out that organic crops require pesticides just as non-organic crops do in order to flourish unmolested.  The NPR hosts rushed to downplay this poignant observation by asserting that organic farmers used "natural" pesticides, whereas non-organic farmers used "synthetic" ones.  Once again we witness the paradox of environmentalism, which says on the one hand that we are all just the products of evolution and have no superior claim over the Earth, yet on the other hand that we are somehow unnatural and taint everything we touch.  This also provides a glimpse into leftism's dark heart: self-hatred. 

On Boredom

I never get bored, regardless of whether I'm driving cross country or am stuck in the waiting room of the doctor's office. Though I harbor no wish to find out, I'll wager that boredom couldn't touch me even if I were placed into solitary confinement. (For a funny portrayal of that predicament, watch the scene in Stir Crazy where Gene Wilder emerges from several days in a prison oven only to declare, "Please, just one more day . . . I was just getting into myself.")

People who get bored easily have always struck me as the most shallow, and it was the great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who offered an explanation for why this is so: the vast majority of people use their intellect as a mere tool to satisfy the will's urges, so whenever the will lacks a tangible target, the intellect flounces around aimlessly. For those of us who enjoy using the intellect for its own sake -- and not as a means to an immediate end -- the intellect truly comes alive when mundane activity ceases. It's precisely when everyone else is getting bored that I'm getting happier, since I can finally indulge in introspection, reflection, and good old-fashioned daydreaming.

Our modern world offers an endless variety of ways to avoid boredom by engaging the senses in some tangible activity or other. While this sheds light on who all the shallow people are -- the ones desperately texting, chattering, or gaming -- it unfortunately has the side-effect of creating shallow people whose fledgling minds are drowned under the cacophony during childhood.

More Movies

Chariots Of Fire

This is probably my favorite movie ever, likely because I feel whisked back in time whenever I watch it. Here we catch a glimpse of Western civilization before it had collapsed, and we witness several refreshing things there: men who act like gentlemen; women who act like ladies; young people who respect their elders; literate speech; a sense of decorum; undergraduates who seek truth, not just a job; a pervasive feeling of the transcendent; and most important of all, we witness the relentless pursuit of excellence.

This pursuit is portrayed in two competing runners: Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell. Even though they are as different as night and day, I identify with them both. Abrahams feels like an outsider because he is a Jew in the midst of an Anglo-Saxon society that does not accept him, so he uses his running as a weapon to force that society to recognize his excellence and his status as a full Englishman. I identify with Abrahams' alienation because I am, after all, an anachronism who feels out of place in the society I inhabit. Like Abrahams, I cannot pretend to be like everyone around me, but I still can "run them off their feet" as he puts it. On the flipside, Eric Liddell is a devout Christian and very much a part of the society that Abrahams is at war with, and Liddell runs to please God rather than to achieve a worldly goal. Once again, I can identify with Liddell because the key aspect of his personality -- a focus on the transcendent rather than the immediate -- resonates with me as well. (Not to mention the fact that Liddell is a fellow Presbyterian Scotsman who, though soft-spoken, sticks to his guns and can pull the trigger when his righteous anger is provoked.)

Somewhere In Time

Anyone who thinks I dismiss all romantic movies out of hand is sorely mistaken, because this gem of a film is one romance that always has moved me. As with Chariots Of Fire, a major reason for this is how the viewer is whisked back in time to see Western civilization before the madness of the twentieth century had done its work. To drive the point home, scenes at the Grand Hotel from the past are starkly juxtaposed to scenes from the present -- where the grounds surrounding the hotel once featured men in suits carrying canes, women in dresses carrying parasols, and horse-drawn carriages, we find in the present a shabby landscape littered with trash.

Unlike Chariots Of Fire, the main character (Christopher Reeve) quite literally travels back in time.  A young playwright in the doldrums after having broken up with his girlfriend (i.e., he was dumped), the protagonist gets in his car and drives out of the city with no destination in mind.  He happens upon the historic Grand Hotel and, intrigued by its charm, decides to spend the evening there.  While touring the hotel's collection of historical artifacts, he suddenly becomes captivated by an image from those days of yore: a lovely woman who smiles at him across the decades from her portrait. He resolves to find her and himself even if it means breaking the laws of physics. This is, in full measure, a quest for something and someone that cannot be found in the diminished present we inhabit, and there is no more compelling message for someone like me. When the protagonist arrives in that past and finds this woman, he courts her and falls in love with her, only to lose her when he is sucked back into our era -- a fate worse than death, as the protagonist himself concludes.  The added sense of tragedy makes the film profound, and I truly wonder how the script survived Hollywood's green eyeshades.

An additional reason I admire this movie is that it gets time travel right, specifically by demonstrating how any changes in the timeline already exist prior to the time traveler's awareness of having made those changes. Too many movies and television shows chafe against this dynamic by showing the protagonist gleefully re-arrange the universe to suit his personal preferences, consistent with modern man's abhorrence of personal constraints and the concept of destiny. Not this movie -- the protagonist is destined to find his true love, just as he is destined to lose her, and despite his exercise of free will every step of the way. This dynamic reigned over Oedipus Rex and Macbeth, so it's refreshing to find that it persists.

Why Profanity Degrades

I've mentioned before how I dislike people who curse freely in mixed company, a phenomenon that has grown so widespread as to transform much of civil society into a barracks. Just the other day I was sitting in a restaurant and heard two young "men" carry on a profanity-laced conversation within earshot of women and children.  So what is it, exactly, that disturbs me about this? The very need to provide an intellectual explanation speaks volumes about where we are today -- healthy cultures do not feel a need to rationalize their taboos or totems, rather they display a shared emotion of what is noble versus what is vile.

If I had to explain it, I would remind everyone that mankind possesses a dual nature of the animalistic and the godlike. Yes, we are animals in that we defecate, urinate, and procreate. But we are also godlike in that we have the unique capacity for reason, justice, charity, and mercy. Civilization depends on elevating our godlike qualities while keeping the animalistic qualities within narrow boundaries (e.g., procreation within marriage; defecation and urination in private). Language evoking our animalistic qualities mocks and rebukes our noble characteristics, painting humanity as on par with the senseless beasts of the jungle. (Perhaps this is why the story of Genesis has Adam and Eve clothe themselves upon obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, since the exposure of their animalistic traits diminishes their true, and much more profound, natures.)

For this reason, profanity tends to surface in those areas of life where animal passions are at their highest, such as when soldiers resolve to fight and maybe die together; when we square off against a dangerous enemy; or when we are in the throes of sexual ecstasy. No problem there, but when profanity seeps out from these nooks and crannies to the point that it floods even the most public milieu, it indicates the degradation of people who are losing their capacity for nobility -- along with all the virtues necessary for sustaining civilization.

Rethinking The Civil War

The other day I thumbed through a short book dealing with the Civil War that had been checked out from an elementary-school library.  Unsurprisingly, it set forth the cartoon version of events of how the North was good, the South was evil, and how saint Abraham Lincoln accomplished his holy mission of freeing the slaves.  For a long time I subscribed to this narrative as well; it's hard not to when your young brain is bombarded with it every time the subject comes up.  The good news is that it's never too late to use your mind and rethink what most everyone else regards as self-evident.  This is what I did about ten years ago when I decided to think more seriously about America's existential crisis, which can be directly attributed to the Civil War and its outcome.

The "root" of the problem that first germinated with the Civil War is this: the federal government became the final arbiter of its own powers.  Once that radical notion materialized into blood-soaked fact, it was only a matter of time before federal power ballooned to the obscene extent it has now and transformed a federal system into a unitary, nationalistic one.  It is fair to say from this perspective that Abraham Lincoln was America's Otto von Bismarck.  Quite defensibly, I do not view Abraham Lincoln as a champion of human freedom.

"But he ended slavery!" somebody's howling right about now.  No, he ended one form of slavery and replaced it with another, much worse one.  In antebellum America some were slaves and others were free, yet we're all slaves now, and there is no manumission from a state that claims the right to kill you for trying to secede and regards its own powers as boundless. At least the chattel could dream of being released by his master; we cannot, at least not without trying really hard to suspend our disbelief.  (Granted, there are those who get a kick out of being slaves, but I must work off the assumption that most sane people do not.) 

Let's assume you're unswayed by this because you actually regard yourself as free, perhaps because you have the privilege of voting for the oligarchic sock puppets who plunder you and regulate every move you make.  That still does not make the Civil War or Abraham Lincoln noble for ending chattel slavery.  Slavery was recognized by the Constitution and had the full force of a Supreme Court decision behind it.  Lincoln knew this and even stated in his first inaugural address that he had no legal authority to end slavery where it existed.  During the war years, he admitted in a letter to Horace Greeley that his goal was to preserve the Union regardless of whether that meant ending slavery or keeping it.  Let us not forget that Lincoln was very much a racist who saw African-Americans as inferior and believed that ending slavery required re-colonizing them to Africa.  So Lincoln most certainly was not motivated by ideals.  Even if he had been, to argue that a president may disregard the Constitution in the pursuit of idealism -- even for something as idealistic as ending slavery -- shreds the rule of law and once again converts us all into slaves who exist at the mercy of other men.  It is nonsensical and paradoxical to say that destroying the rule of law sets us free.  Moreover, the Civil War saw the deaths of over 650,000 men and untold injuries to others, when every other society in the modern era managed to end slavery peacefully.  If ending slavery was truly the objective, mass slaughter was not necessary to achieve it.  Slavery was dying out economically as it was, so patience and proper observance of the Constitution would have yielded real freedom in short order, and without slaughter.  But the unspoken objective was to forge a single nation out of what was designed as a federal republic, and Lincoln knew that required blood -- there was no idealism at work.

As an aside, America owes nobody an apology for slavery.  Slavery was a widespread institution dating from the dawn of recorded history, and it was Western civilization (i.e., Christendom) that first voiced serious objections to it.  Africans had no compunction about slavery and sold each other to Europeans and Americans alike.  There were also white slaves who served Muslim masters, but nobody remembers that.  If anything, America and other Western nations should be thanked for even having a debate over an institution that everyone else simply took for granted.  Slavery persists to this very day in parts of Africa.  Would African-Americans honestly prefer that the United States never had dabbled in slavery and thus never imported their ancestors?  America already has gone far beyond the call of duty to them and to all humanity.

If not slavery, what about secession?  Didn't Lincoln have to take radical measures to preserve the Union?  But there's the rub -- Lincoln did not preserve the Union; he destroyed it.  The modern argument presumes that pinning the Union geographically together with bayonets represents saving it, illustrating again the abject materialism of the modern mind.  In spirit the Union was a voluntary association of "free and independent states" (to quote the Declaration of Independence), and secession is a healthy part of our heritage.  We seceded from Great Britain.  Nine states seceded from the Articles of Confederation to create the Constitution, and the remaining four states made a sovereign choice to join the compact.  It was understood that this association was voluntary and that the federal government had only those few powers the states -- who retained their sovereignty -- delegated to it. It was well understood that the states could take their marbles and walk away if they grew weary of the compact.  To deny this is to suggest that marriages may never end in divorce; that contracts may never be breached; or that the United States today may not depart from the United Nations.  Here is a particularly apt quotation from Thomas Jefferson:

If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation . . . to a continuance in union . . . I have no hesitation in saying, “let us separate.”

And another:

I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power. Take together the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of the constitutional compact acted on by the legislature of the federal branch, and it is but too evident, that the three ruling branches of that department are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic. Under the power to regulate commerce, they assume indefinitely that also over agriculture and manufactures, and call it regulation to take the earnings of one of these branches of industry, and that too the most depressed, and put them into the pockets of the other, the most flourishing of all. Under the authority to establish post roads, they claim that of cutting down mountains for the construction of roads, of digging canals, and aided by a little sophistry on the words “general welfare,” a right to do, not only the acts to effect that, which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think, or pretend will be for the general welfare. And what is our resource for the preservation of the [C]onstitution? Reason and argument? You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns encircling them.

"But wait, but wait!" somebody must be shouting, "the South fired upon the Union at Fort Sumter!"  There was not a single casualty in that incident, an incident that Lincoln did his level best to provoke.  Lincoln had refused for some time to talk to the Confederate government and chose war, since he refused to countenance the notion that the South could walk away from the Union.  War was not foisted on him or on the untold numbers of people whose lives he destroyed.  Once again, all this had nothing to do with his (non-existent) fervor to end slavery, but his desire to create a national government and keep tariff money flowing into the Treasury.  He made this clear in his first inaugural, almost in the same breath as his admission that he had no power to end slavery -- he went on to say that he fully intended to enforce tariff collections everywhere, even in the South.  He thus refused to abandon the garrison at Ft. Sumter and ignored every ultimatum that was given, almost certainly cheering the news of the bloodless barrage.

The horrific violence and oppression that Lincoln unleashed were unnecessary and unforgivable. It is impossible for me to recite the multiple examples here, but I can mention at least some of them.  War was made against Southern civilians; rape, pillage, and plunder enjoyed free rein.  On the few occasions when the South invaded the North (e.g., Antietam and Gettysburg), no such violence was directed against civilians, contrasting starkly yesterday's gentlemen warriors with today's amoral barbarians.  Lincoln imprisoned the Maryland legislature for fear that it would vote to secede; he threw people in jail for merely uttering opposition to the war; and he even blessed secession when it served his purposes, specifically when West Virginia tore itself away from Virginia.  (It's worth noting how that act of secession indeed was illegal because it violated Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution barring a new state from being created out of the territory of an existing one, and yet it is the only act of secession treated as legitimate today.)  If you want a thorough review of the terrible things Lincoln did, I recommend The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. 

      

And I do lament the destruction of the South.  For all its faults -- yes, slavery was one of them -- the South retained a sense of chivalry and honor that has gone entirely extinct.  Instead of the gentleman we now have homo economicus, a creature who judges and is judged solely by his utility rather than his character.  It must be recalled that most Northerners were not animated by abolitionism.  Northerners engaged in the slave trade long after the constitutional ban of 1808.  Northerners were hostile to African-Americans and regarded them at best as cheap labor who drove down wages, so it's no accident that Northerners wanted to keep all the territory gained in the Mexican War lily white.  Many Northerners deserted the army upon learning of the Emancipation Proclamation.  In more recent times, some of the most vigorous opposition to de-segregation occurred in Northern cities such as Boston, Massachusetts and Wilmington, Delaware.  The mantle of moral superiority is something the North does not deserve to wear, especially when considering the violence and bloodshed the North perpetrated.  A typical Southerner was not fighting to preserve slavery any more than a typical Northerner was fighting to end it.  Southerners fought to defend their homes from an armed invasion, and they did so against a foe that had overwhelming advantages in terms of men and materiel.  They were heroes, and we have every right to honor them.       

Come to think of it, the very name "Civil War" arrogantly presumes the outcome achieved thereby, i.e., that we are a single nation whose disputes are forever internal, and that attempted departure is treason.  These presumptions are diametrically opposed to the American founding and spirit.  From here on out, I will refer to this conflict as either the War Between The States or the War For Southern Independence. 

In the final analysis, I regard America of yesteryear as freer than America of today, even when chattel slavery persisted.  Government left people alone for the most part, stepping in only when necessary to enforce the outer boundaries of civil order.  Today's mega-state is not something ordained by the Constitution; it is not something my ancestors fought for; and it is certainly not something I thank Abraham Lincoln for giving us.  His civic sainthood will last only so long as the mega-state does, and by all accounts its days are numbered.  Thank goodness.

EDIT:

I should have mentioned that a new movie about Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis is coming out in November.  I'm a fan of Day-Lewis and think he should have won the Oscar for Best Actor for Gangs Of New York.  However, I understand that this new film is based on the work of Doris Kearns-Goodwin, who is a pure Lincoln hagiographer (and a plagiarist) rather than historian. My guess is that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will be a more accurate portrayal of the events surrounding the War For Southern Independence.

SECOND EDIT:

I stumbled on a column by none other than Thomas DiLorenzo in which he takes Kearns-Goodwin to the woodshed and explains her function as a "court historian" and myth-maker for the state.  This dovetails nicely with my own explanation of how "the best and the brightest" are middlebrows.  

More Annoyances

People who write my name at the start of an email, even though we already know each other quite well.  It's the equivalent of finger-pointing.

Motorists who unnecessarily yield the right of way.  You're not being charitable; you're being presumptuous and bossy, and you're disrupting the steady flow of traffic.  This is particularly bad on multi-lane roads -- how in the hell am I supposed to know whether the traffic next to you (which I can barely see) will stop for me as well?  Keep moving, Gandhi.

When I'm on a long road trip and have my cruise control set, but I keep passing and then being passed by the same idiot who can't pick a speed.  Usually I punch it and risk being cited for speeding just to get the parasite out of my rear-view mirror. 

People who criticize other people's parenting in front of their children.  Mind your own business and stop disrupting the social hierarchy.  There is one exception:  when parents allow their children to run wild through restaurants, hotels, exercise facilities, airports, or anywhere else adults congregate.  Criticism is appropriate in these situations because the parents already have allowed the social hierarchy to collapse.  I personally wouldn't criticize them in this situation because they would probably get all offended and belligerent.  If they spent half as much energy instructing their kids, the world would be a better place.

The fact that it's impossible to have an intense or interesting conversation in a restaurant without being constantly interrupted by waitstaff.  It's not really their fault, since the vast majority of customers don't have interesting conversations and demand slavish service.

Anyone who puts ketchup on steak or eggs.

Airline passengers who are too cheap to check their bags and insist on cramming their fifty-plus pounds of crap into the overhead bin.

Airline passengers who ask me to switch seats.  Shop smarter next time.

Not being able to walk down the street without seeing someone with stretched earlobes, pierced lips, or a bone through his nose.

The fact that people who live off government money have the ability to vote.  The franchise once was restricted to those who could use it responsibly and didn't suffer such an obvious conflict of interest.  But that was when we were still a republic.  We're a democracy now -- at least nominally, since we're truly an oligarchy with a democratic facade -- and democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for dinner.  

On The Nominating Conventions

When I think back to Patrick Henry shouting "give me liberty or give me death"; to Benjamin Franklin observing that people who trade security for liberty deserve neither; to Thomas Jefferson telling the greatest empire on Earth to go screw itself; to those brilliant men who hunkered down in Philadelphia to outline a federal government of limited powers . . . and then I watch the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, I want to throw up.

Neither assembly of trolls (these are not men) calls into doubt the illicit mega-state that is invading the world, regulating every move we make, drowning us under waves of debt, and refusing to police the borders against foreign invasion.  Running throughout both sides' proceedings is the mistaken and un-American presumption that government should curtail liberty to preserve security and prosperity.  The parties differ over details but stand united on their totalitarian premises.  Republicans are noxious because they tout themselves as the party of personal responsibility and limited government, while simultaneously championing military aggression abroad and the Panopticon police state at home.  Democrats are honest, I will grant them that, but I have never seen a bigger collection of losers and misfits except in a prison (and let us recall that Democrats staunchly favor allowing felons to vote, so the similarity is no coincidence).  To the modern Democrat victimhood is heroism; virtue is vice; vice is virtue; government handouts are "rights"; tax cuts that allow us to keep more of our own money are "giveaways"; and government is synonymous with America, echoing Mussolini's dictum "everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

If this sorry spectacle resonates with most Americans, then they are anything but.  Real Americans are turning away from it because we know this is not what made America great, and it's certainly not what will preserve America for the future.  A growing number of us refuse to vote and thus bestow legitimacy on unlawful and immoral activity, while many others will vote third party.  Dissent, disobedience, and resistance are healthy American traditions that have not died out just yet, and for that I am thankful.

I Was Wrong, And Feminism Was Right

Nobody likes to admit mistakes, I least of all.  For too long I have opposed feminism because of my antiquated belief that men and women are fundamentally different and cannot be made equal under any objective criteria.  However, upon serious soul-searching -- largely motivated by criticism from my enlightened peers -- I have taken another look at this issue and concluded that equality between the sexes is not only possible, but imperative.  For example:

• Women now outnumber men in universities by a ratio of almost 60 to 40.  This is intolerable, and our past experience with Title IX should blaze a path here.  Just as men's athletic programs are slashed to create parity between male and female athletes on paper, let us slash the rolls of female students to achieve academic parity here as well.  Destroying the aspirations of male athletes and female students is a paltry consideration next to numerical equality, after all.   

•  "Women and children first."  Not anymore.

• It is well known that women outlive men.  Once again, this is unequal and hence intolerable.  Public policy should immediately be geared toward extending male longevity, and failing that, shortening female lifespans.

• In line with the previous initiative, I have learned that breast cancer receives far more public funding than prostate cancer does, even though the latter is the most common.  This is disproportionate; greater incidences of a given cancer surely require a greater amount of money, so it's high time to re-order our priorities here.

• Only men must register for Selective Service.  Time to get every able-bodied male and female signed up at the age of eighteen, pronto. 

• Women file 70% of divorces (and believe me, they also seek divorces that are later filed by the man), yet they also win custody of children roughly 90% of the time.  Equality demands that this be straightened out right now.  

• Advertising, employment practices, and television programming are heavily tilted in favor of women and designed to accommodate their proclivities and prejudices.  Instead of the saintly female and the idiotic male motifs -- which are everywhere on television and undeniable -- let's have some burlesque portrayals of women in sitcoms and commercials to balance things out.  How about a few storylines showing women who can't parallel park, read a map, stay faithful for more than four years, or do advanced mathematics?  What's good for the gander is good for the goose.

• There is of course the eternal double standard when it comes to marital infidelity.  A man who cheats is a scumbag and deserves only scorn.  A woman who cheats, however, was driven to it by her scumbag husband who didn't do enough to make her "happy," so he's still worthy of scorn.  Here's a radical suggestion: a man or a woman who cheats on a spouse is a scumbag worthy of scorn.  Fixed it for you. 

What's that you say?  All this is horrible and contemptible?  Perhaps you're not as much a fan of equality as you like to think.

Whither The Love Of Learning?

School is starting again, as both children and young adults dapple the landscape here in Missoula and appear ready to absorb another year's worth of knowledge.  How many of them, I wonder, actually want to learn?  Probably not many.  There were precious few when I was still in school, and the advent of imagination-killing technology has thinned the herd even more. The modern theory of pedagogy more closely resembles training than education; the former is designed to convey skills, while the latter is designed to convey the capacity for independent and critical thought.  So many people are eager to load up on skills and procure a lucrative livelihood, but some of us view learning as rewarding in its own right and the key to something far greater.

The pure joy of comprehending the world and the universe far outstrips any paycheck.  I remember when I first learned how to move the chess pieces at the late age of fifteen and threw myself into studying theory and strategy, checking every book out of the school library and spending many nights reading about the lives and games of the famous grandmasters.  One summer I spent hours almost every day reading and re-reading my American-history textbook until I knew it cover to cover, simply because I found it fascinating (the book is called The American Pageant, and I still have my old edition that is far superior to the PC version floating around today).  I later took the AP course in American History and aced it -- scoring a perfect 5 on the AP exam -- without having to study even once.  And then there was Spanish.  In my free time I constantly worked to review the grammar rules and expand my vocabulary, puzzling out the language's internal logic.  Once again, I aced the AP exam while having fun doing it.  In college I was asked to be a guinea pig for the upcoming AP exam; I killed it and thus caused the drafters to make it even harder (I pity the students who took that one).  By the time I did study abroad in Venezuela people would ask me where I was from, since I spoke Spanish just fine but not with a Venezuelan accent; they refused to believe that I was from the United States or that everyone else in my family spoke only English.  I remember taking an astronomy course in college and, the night before the final exam, reaching a point where I reviewed the entire course in my head -- I stood outside the library and stared up at the stars as if to proclaim, "I know you!" Of course there was law school, where I devoured my casebooks and scribbled furiously in the margins when a wrongheaded decision was rendered.  When I later wrote my books on the Constitution and international law, I barely had to perform any research; I consulted sources merely to make sure that everything was footnoted and endnoted.

What has all this gotten me?  It didn't make me wealthy.  There were times when it was downright disadvantageous, such as when my professor of constitutional law gave me a low grade even though I killed his exam -- he didn't like the fact that in response to a question asking us to re-write any Supreme Court decision, I undid a landmark school-busing decision because it represented the worst of judicial tyranny and social engineering.  But it has given me joy and freedom.  As I mentioned previously, the joy of learning and understanding is so great that I pity those who will never know it.  I am also free because I know what is true and what is false. I can also ascertain truth for myself where it is unclear; I am not a slave to fashionable modes of thought.  Leftism is today's fashionable mode of thought, and those who fall in line with it are either 1) unreflective, or 2) dishonest and overeager for acceptance among the elite (for whom leftism is most profitable).  Perhaps that is the greatest gift the love of learning has given me -- integrity.  If a man depends on his peers to tell him what is true, he can never be true to himself.  Integrity is like so much sand in the gears of the modern world, which prizes efficiency and conformity above all else.  I relish the role of dissenter and do not fear what it may bring, for as Socrates observed, it is impossible for a better man to be harmed by a worse.