life issues

There is Always Censorship

Mark Noonan1 Comment

I have said many times in the past that all education is indoctrination and all law is the imposition of morality: it is just a debate over what dogmas and morality will be imposed. The Left and the Libertarians reject this with scorn and even most on the Right would be uncomfortable in saying it, but it is nevertheless true. Something will always be imparted to the rising generation. We can see this right before our eyes when we see polls showing something like 25% of youngsters say they are something other than straight. The idea that a fourth of humanity would not be biologically geared towards reproduction is both theologically and biologically absurd, but the kids say they are. And they say this because they’ve been told to say this. Like all young people, they want to know what to say and do in order to be accepted into society and the sure-fire pathway to acceptance these days is to be a weirdo…and so weirdo they are.

But there is a follow-on to both my assertions that I’ve only tangentially brought up before: and that is there is always censorship to defend the reigning dogma. I’ve hinted as this before when I’ve discussed things like the Inquisition and pointed out that it wasn’t set up to prevent thought and development, but to ensure that thought and development went in the right direction. Most people these days would condemn such an idea but such it was, and something like it is necessary in any society. These days the reigning orthodoxy is not defended by learned men backed up by the rack but, instead, is defended by ideological gatekeepers backed up by social ostracism. But it all works out the same: heresy is rooted out and those who transgress are punished. With today, in my view, being worse than the Inquisition because our current gatekeepers are not only determined to prevent thought and development but, indeed, to ensure that various obvious falsehoods are asserted by society. At least Torquemada was trying to defend something true; the modern Inquisitors are determined to defend something false. But the main point here is that there is always a mechanism in society to hound those who don’t conform to the reigning orthodoxy.

This is why when I see current debates about free speech I do believe that a lot of people are missing a crucial aspect of it. This is especially true on the Right which almost universally adheres to Voltaire’s “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. Perhaps Voltaire really would have (he was never put to the test), but most people won’t really. It is philosophical boilerplate. But the attitude underlying it has been used to push our civilization to the brink of extinction. Thinking it wise, we’ve allowed all manner of false, evil and downright anti-human speech to be made. And made by people who are bound and determined to exterminate everyone who disagrees with them. Most importantly, those who have imposed the current reigning orthodoxy don’t hold to Voltaire’s dictum for a minute – and they are now busily enforcing their speech codes on us.

There are, after all, things we already can’t say in public. Things we’ll only say in private, quietly and only around people we trust absolutely. And year by year the things we won’t say in public grow – because the new Inquisitors are always listening, always ready to destroy the next person who states a heresy. Don’t be too harsh with them on it. When our views dominated, to even say “damn” in a movie was a shock. Our civilization at its peak had a very strict set of rules of behavior and speech and they were enforced by a mixture of law and custom. We were told (or, actually, mostly told ourselves) that we could dispense, one by one, with these laws and customs and that we would somehow still retain our civilization. We have now found out how false that notion was…and our backs are against the wall as the ideas we let lose are getting ready to destroy us.

To be sure, those who wrote the First Amendment lived during the peak of our civilization. When they wrote those words “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” they weren’t stupid or naive. They just didn’t realize – couldn’t realize – that later generations would assume that the words meant there were no rules. These were educated, responsible men; they were sure that the First Amendment would only secure the right to say things within the rules. De Sade lived when the Constitution was being written and he was writing his vile works…I am absolutely confident that Madison would have led the charge against anyone advocating de Sade’s ideology. In the end, we allowed de Sade and his heirs free reign. How is that working out for us?

There are certain things which must be in order for a civilization to survive. For instance, the Albigensians of the 13th century held that physical reality is evil. This in stark contrast to the orthodox Christian view which asserts that God called His creation good and, of course, became incarnate. In our modern mind we would allow the Albigensians to propagate their ideas freely on grounds of who are we to say who is truly right? Those back in the 13th century didn’t and this is held as a sin against them. But the reason they exterminated the Albigensians wasn’t to stop people from thinking, but to prevent a monster from growing all powerful. A society based on the belief that matter is evil is a very different society than the Christian. It despises life and seeks only the end of all things. On balance, the people then preferred an explicable world ruled by God and eventually to be redeemed by Him.

Were they right? Well, lets take another case: Islam. Suppose it had totally triumphed instead of being fought tooth and nail for centuries. What then? Well, just take a look at the Muslim world in, say, 1823: no real advancement since it had emerged in the 7th century. Ancient nations of once-great prosperity reduced to poverty. A completely stagnant society; once the scourge of Christendom and now the plaything of European buccaneers. The Muslim worldview is different from the Christian. It is much more gloomy; deterministic and, because of this, greedily materialistic…but it is a greed only of taking and hoarding…not the materialistic greed of the Calvinists who at least asserted that one had to build.

The point here is that if you want what you have, you must defend it. If you don’t defend it, then it will be replaced by something else which will then exterminate what you have. It can’t freely compete with other world views; it must triumph, or die. As much freedom as you want, as much as you, personally, want to think and say what you want, there must be a limit. And an enforced limit. Some things that are just outside the pale and may not be openly advocated for in the public square. In short, no matter how much freedom you want, you’re going to need some censorship…just as you’ll have to use law and custom to ensure your dogmas are transmitted in the schools.

Do keep in mind that there is no correct answer. No Euclidean certainty. You’re dealing with human beings so things don’t work like that. What you will determine tolerable is a prudential judgement and may vary over time. But what must be is the hard and fast rules: what you cannot do, no matter what. To give an example: we know that Nazi ideology is evil and has no merit whatsoever. It should, then, be illegal to propagate it. If not in law, then in custom. And, of course, overt adherence to Nazism is banned in our society – you can almost ensure your social ostracism if you proclaim your adherence to Nazism. You might still have some Nazi friends, but forget a career in most avenues and be prepared for routine harassment. Do you see what I’m saying?

Just as the Nazis would arrest us all if they were given power so, too, will what we currently call the Left. The rising reigning orthodoxy. The thing which is already causing us to self-censor and now increasingly demands we overtly proclaim our support for. They don’t have any truck with the idea that speech should really be free. They believe you should only be free to say what they find acceptable. Spoiler: you aren’t acceptable. Eventually you will be squashed.

Unless you squash them, first.

This is what I mean when I talk of us using power to destroy the Left. It is an effort to place their ideas beyond the pale. When I say things like “confiscate their money” that is just a means to an end – a way to get them to stop saying things which undermine civilization. But do note that I go on to say things like, “use their money to educate the rising generation in our views.” I’m not just trying to switch my power for theirs – I’m really in the business of stamping out heresy. Of getting rid of those who assert things which are at defiance of what I consider basic, human decency.

As we brace ourselves for this battle for our civilization it is important that we start to think about things. To really determine who we are, what we believe and what we want at the end of the fight. Just opposing the Left isn’t good enough. It needs to be replaced. What will we replace it with? What will we do to prevent a repeat? What ideas will have a social and legal ban imposed?

And we must do this; because it is the only way we survive.

A Revelation

Mark Noonan28 Comments

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”
John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
John was clothed in camel’s hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.
And this is what he proclaimed:
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” – Mark 1: 1-8

That, of course, is today’s reading. You did go to Church, right? Even if you didn’t, if you are Christian you have heard it a thousand times. But today it struck home to me…rolling around in my head through the Homily and then, just before I took communion, it was a blast of light. The world is immersed in lies. All lies…and here was Truth, right before me.

I noticed the altar servers – two fine young men and one little lady. And I pondered that I had once been that young and then, when I got a little older, I was beset by lie after lie after lie and, God forgive me, I fell for a lot of them. I prayed that those youngsters would resist them. If there was one bit of advice I could give them it would be just this: keep going to Church. Never stop. Pray constantly. Yeah, a lot of your friends are going to say, “do this!”; “be cool!”; “come on, its just a bit of fun!”. Ignore them! Go to Church. Pray! Be the odd man out. Rely on it, forty years from now when you look back on it all, you’ll be much happier if you remained steadfast now. Make straight his paths.

Because that is what it means – the path to your heart. Make it straight so God can get on in there and keep you safe and bring you to salvation. I had honestly never looked at it that way before. But I do think that my recent yammering on about how bad lies are has been part of the process which reached its climax just this morning.

Because another part of it happened last night. I was scrolling through X and I came across a post from Jill Stein. You remember her – the Green Party candidate from 2016. I think she’s running again in 2024 because that’s what people like her do; that is, she’s going to save us, guys. Anyways, she had posted that because of our veto of the UN ceasefire resolution, the USA was now the sole obstacle to peace. Get it? It isn’t Hamas. Not the rape/death squads. Not the obvious fact that if Hamas is spared via a ceasefire they will just rebuild their forces and send out more rape/death squads. It is the USA. We’re at fault. We’re stopping peace. What sort of evil upon evil person thinks this way?

Turns out, its the sort of evil that was born of upper class Jewish parents in Chicago and then went on to graduate from Harvard medical. Rich, privileged and sheltered, Jill plied her very profitable trade as a doctor and then decided to “give back”. Not the money, of course. But give back in the form of taking up the standard of Progressive reform. If you look at her views, she checks off every last Progressive box. Her views on the Gaza war are just the latest thing; it is hip in Progressive circles to be for the river to the sea right now. That she’s Jewish makes no matter because Progressives are first and last Progressives…their nationality, ethnicity and religion takes the back seat at all times.

People like Jill are the very worst of the worst. The most evil people in the world. Even more evil than Hamas rape squads or Cartel hitmen. How can I say that??? She’s this nice, even-toned, educated woman who just wants peace, justice and equity! Yeah, whatever. I know what her words are…but her words are just mindless repetitions of lies she’s been told…and as a doctor she should damned well know better. She should investigate things and think about them. She doesn’t. She never has. She just accepts and then quite mindlessly promotes. And it is people like Jill who promote the Progressive policies which create, in turns, Hamas rape squads and Cartel hitmen.

Things don’t happen in a vacuum. On October 6th some Hamas guys didn’t just say, “hey, lets rape some girls” and have at it. No more than Mexican drug cartels just all of a sudden start beheading people. It all built up over time. Decades of time. Decades of time where Progressive ideology has been dominant in the West even when particular Western nations might have had an officially non-Progressive government. Essentially since World War One the Western world has done whatever Progressives told it to. There has been hardly any resistance to it. And it was all sold with the same level of intellectual validity as that guy in high school who urged you to smoke a joint: “come on, man; it’ll be cool!”.

Another passage in the Bible relates how those who lead others astray would be better off having a millstone tied ’round their necks and be tossed into the sea. Hamas and Cartel murderers will have much to atone for at Judgement Day, but people like Jill are those who are leading these little one’s astray and it’ll go a lot harder for them. It is especially incumbent upon those with wealth and power to do the right thing. Some poor SOB born into grinding poverty who gets suckered into a gang or movement is a lot more forgivable than the people who simply ought to know better.

Tolkien understood this and he put it in The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn complains a bit about how those dependent upon his protection scorned him…but he doesn’t grudge it. As he says, if simple people are free to be simple, then he’s done his duty. That is what nobility is for – what it is supposed to do: shield the common people. Instead, our nobility deliberately leads the people astray. They in turns encourage barbarism and then discourage fighting against it. They urge us into moral disintegration and call us racists when moral disintegration breaks down the social contract.

Make straight those paths, guys. We’re in for a long, dark night of suffering. It is coming. Only the very oldest among us are going to be able to skip out on it. But the world must be turned upside down. What is must be destroyed and a new society erected on the ruins. It is Fall of Rome II – and just like the first time, it will be those who have faith in God who will inherit the ruins.

We Live in a Progressive World: It Sucks

Mark Noonan55 Comments

You might have heard about Ryan Carson getting killed in New York – a Progressive activist, it appears he was killed by a random lunatic over nothing; the lunatic likely being high at the time. After reading the story my reaction was to post on X that I simply felt no sympathy. Trying to express it, I brought up that scene at the end of The Cowboys where the boys are standing around the bad guy pinned under his horse with a broken leg; my reaction is like that. Not hating. Not gloating. But not caring; the person on the ground chose this.

It ended up being one of the most engaged posts I’ve ever done on X. As of this moment, it has more than 155,000 views; 20 reposts and more than a thousand likes. And lots of comments. The basic Left comment is that I’m a horrific bastard; un-Christian (always amusing to get that comment from avowed Marxists!); evil; hate-filled. I shouldn’t cheer death. Which, of course, I didn’t. I merely pointed out that I had no sympathy. Most of the Left comments got no response from me (a huge numbers of comments were blocked). But I did engage some people who seemed to be trying to say something. Unfortunately, in the end, they had nothing to say and were just doing polite variations on “you bastard” that the less articulate went with.

I think the reaction all stems from the fact that the Left in general but also many people on the right don’t know what morality is. Basic right and wrong is very confused in their minds. You see – and this is especially true in a Republic – everyone bears responsibility. None of us ever get to stand aside. What we choose as individuals – both by action and omission – goes to make up the corporate decision of the whole body politic. We are not – at least in theory – ruled. If we were, then we could assign blame for many things to our rulers. Such is not the case; we are free (pro tempore). As such, we must ensure that as far as possible our choices tend towards furtherance of liberty, peace and prosperity. You woke up this morning and you decided not to get drunk. Because of this decision, you went to work instead of passing out on the floor. Because you went to work, your job got done which allowed other people to get their job done and so on. Just that one, small decision rattles on and on through our society for good or ill.

So, too, the bad decision. Had you decided to get drunk, your job doesn’t get done and so on. And there’s no excuse. Unless you are a minor incapable of reason or verily insane, you know very well what you are supposed to do and you also can understand, if you but put some effort into it (said effort you are morally bound to make), the likely results of your decisions. The drunk knows full well – or, if he doesn’t, he ought to know; he has an inescapable obligation to know – what bad things are likely to result from the choice to drink rather than go to work. This is why when the drunk loses his job and house and the Mrs leaves him we’re not terribly sympathetic, if at all, to his plight. What on Earth did he think was going to happen?

Well, it goes like that for every decision. One of Carson’s pet projects – one of the things he advocated for – was “safe” places for drug addicts to get high. From what I can determine, he asserted this as a merciful and kind service to drug addicts. Here’s where a lot of people will reject what I say: Carson was lying when he made that assertion. He knew full well that the only proper course of action to take with someone who gets high is to get them to stop. To be sure, none of us may be able to stop any particular person from getting high, but if we can’t actively stop it, we must certainly not abet it. Because we all know what happens when people get high; they ruin their lives and wreck destruction on the lives of everyone who comes into contact with them to a greater or lesser degree. There is no upside to drug addiction. It is all downside. Every person who gets high makes life for everyone else in society worse. If Carson were to be able to assert to my face this very day that he thought it was good to give a “safe” place to get high I would not take the coward’s way out and go, “well, your heart is in the right place”. His heart was not in the right place. It was in an evil, wicked place. I would call him a liar because as a mentally competent adult he knows you can’t properly help someone get high.

So, too, with a host of other Leftist nostrums: de-fund the police; ending cash bail; de-criminalizing looting; false accusations of racism. These are not the actions of people who have their heart in the right place. These are the actions of evil people who know full well they are doing evil. Their only way out of being wicked is to proclaim themselves simpletons and surrender their franchise. If they aren’t idiots, then they know you can’t do things like de-criminalize looting and expect anything other than more looting to occur. Looting is bad. There is never any justification for it. Society cannot function if the products of labor can be taken without compensation. Carson, from what I can tell, backed all of these Leftist programs. Given he is of the Left – and the way the Left enforces ideological conformity – we can with great certainty assume that every aspect of Leftist ideology was supported by Carson. And what this means – as small time as he was in the grand scheme of things – he was a willing, knowing participant in policies which are obviously evil. Policies which make life miserable – and especially for poor people who are not insulated from the results of Leftist policy.

So, when Carson was killed by a crazed person likely high, all I saw was a bit of poetic justice. Just like the bad guy in the movie now suffering…the bottom line is he was suffering because of what he tried to do. People like Carson – upper class, white, urban Progressives – have mostly been insulated from the effects of their policies. But that insulation crumbles as civilization at last crumbles under the Leftist assault. We’re now several generations in; the inculcating of barbarian ideals into the minds of people has taken its toll. Its why we see those videos of people getting into brawls over nothing or packs of feral children mercilessly beating a weaker person. This is what Leftists wanted. Heck, they told us it would be great – if we just got past our old, Christian hang-ups and embraced a society of free flowing drugs and sex everything would be wonderful. This world we live in is a Progressive world. It is what they wanted. We never approved of it. We warned repeatedly what would happen. We were ignored on the best days and viciously slandered on most. And, so, when a cog in that Progressive machine runs afoul of his own actions…sure, I’m going to watch impassively. I’m not going to shed a tear. Why should I? Should I shed a tear for the drunk who is killed driving his car into a telephone pole?

Sure it is bad that he’s dead. I’d rather he hadn’t died. I am going to do my best to build a world where such things don’t happen. But, guess what? In fighting for that world, I’ll have to battle through a host of people like Carson who will fight tooth and nail to keep the system which killed him. It is still what they want. They are still lying; still saying that if we just get more Progressive, it will at last get better. They know it won’t. They don’t care; no person with the least bit of humane feeling can be a Leftist. It is how they become Leftists; they kill genuine sympathy; they kill off anything resembling love. They come to view all people are entirely utilitarian…and that is why they can say, “hey, lets help junkies get high”. They don’t see a suffering soul who will spread suffering…they see a block of wood with appetite, just as they see themselves. And as their only measure is to feed their own appetites, so their only reaction to another person is to figure out how to feed their appetites. You want drugs? Here are some drugs. You want sex? Here is some sex. Never for a moment is there the thought of repenting because, indeed, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

So, thanks very much, I’ll save my sympathy for the real victims – the usually poor or middle class people who have been suckered by the Left and who are diligently ruining their lives because of it. They still have agency, of course; but at least they aren’t actively destroying society. So when one of them runs afoul of our dying Progressive society, I will shed a tear – I will express sympathy. But for one of the Leftist architects of destruction? Not a chance. They got what they wanted – that what they want sucks isn’t my problem.

As a side note; after more than a day of Leftists calling me an insensitive bastard for not expressing sympathy for Carson’s demise it came out that in his own X account he was free with advocating violence against his opponents and had gloated over the death of Rush Limbaugh. I did not know this at the time I wrote my post. It does not surprise me in the least. As I’ve said: the Left is wicked. They are not nice people with misguided programs to get to peace, freedom and prosperity. They are wicked people doing evil things to destroy society…and they do it because they are wicked. You really don’t have to explain it beyond that.

A Coming Dark Age

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Over on X yesterday a mutual noted that he was watching Band of Brothers for the umpteenth time and he was wondering – even though he was a combat vet, himself – if he could have done what those soldiers did. I think everyone does wonder when they watch that. And it gets you also thinking of the men who took Tarawa, who sailed the USS Johnston into certain death. Of all those who have done incredible feats of arms in our past.

It is good to point out here that courage is the strongest desire to live combined with a complete willingness to die. It is a paradox; you’re only way to safety is through death. A soldier pinned down in a murderous crossfire has the choice: try to hide and hope he gets missed (unlikely as time goes on) or charge at the enemy and stop him from shooting. Of course, you do present a much better target when you’re charging. But if it works, the danger is over. He who would lose his life shall save it. You remember suddenly the men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment who crossed the Waal river in canvas boats under murderous fire…and when they got ashore the Germans pretty much ran away, terrified at these demons who seemingly couldn’t be stopped. Do we have that any longer?

Well, another thing which crossed the time line was a report from 2014 that 41% of the newly commissioned Marine officers did not meet the minimum requirements – mental and physical – for being commissioned in World War Two. I can only assume it has gotten worse since then as Woke demands have further infested the military requiring an ever lowering of standards so that various demographic boxes can be checked off. Given this, it is almost a certainty that we do not have an officer like Julian Cook who led those men in the canvas boats…we don’t have officers who can take regular people and turn them into killers that battle-hardened Waffen-SS troops would run away from.

But it gets worse than just the fact that we’ve got substandard officers. There is such a thing as esprit de corps. This is the collective memory and ability of an organization. It isn’t dependent upon any single person but it is dependent upon the overall organism remaining true to itself. If you watched Band of Brothers you know that Captain Herbert Sobel comes off pretty poorly overall as an officer – and in truth he was roundly disliked by his men and appeared to lack combat leadership ability. On the other hand, he made Easy Company into what it became. The intensive training and stern discipline – which Sobel himself learned in officer training – turned civilians into tough as nails warriors who simply would not quit. After the war even some of the men who hated him as a CO acknowledged his part in making them into warriors. Sobel learned his trade from a man who learned his trade who in turn learned his trade and on and on back…and the men Sobel trained passed that corporate knowledge on down and they, in their turn, also passed it on and so the American military organism – in spite of individual failures – retained its ability to engage in combat effectively. But that chain has been cut; at some point fairly recently, the mental and physical requirements of being an infantry officer were dispensed with in favor of other criteria. It is gone; or, at best, almost gone. It is highly likely that our average company commander these days hasn’t the foggiest notion of what being a warrior is, nor how to impart that capability to subordinates. They might know the books; that is, they might know the mechanics of having a company assault a fixed position…but that technical knowledge is worthless if the officer can’t, with a scratch force, improvise an attack and be certain that the soldiers will carry it out.

And it is not just the military. Every area of expertise has suffered a dumbing down. A lowering of requirements in order to make certain demographic boxes are checked off. Have you noticed it? When I went to a doctor with my bum knee the doctor pretty much had no idea what might be the problem even though I described clearly what had happened and offered my informed amateur opinion that it was likely soft tissue damage. Nope. She just went to her checklist – and I was sent to get an x ray even though it was obvious no bones were broken. And after that I get sent for physical therapy. Huge sigh. I mean, I’ll have to do it because that is the way it works these days but what isn’t happening here is an actual physician thinking about my problem and coming up with a likely solution (and there may be no solution; I might just have a bum knee). I’ve heard of people watching their doctors Google their stated symptoms to see what might come up.

We’re breaking the chain. That is, we’re severing ourselves from our collective knowledge because mastering that knowledge is a difficult task which not everyone is suited to perform. But the deal the modern Left offers is that you can be whatever you want. And once the chain is broken it can’t be restored. You have to forge an entirely new chain. That is what the Dark Ages were – it wasn’t that people got stupid; but the late Roman world simply stopped transmitting corporate knowledge to successor generations. Everyone got more concerned with the latest avant garde art, their position at court, the acquisition of money. This is why the Romans pretty much stopped building their famed aqueducts and bridges by the Third Century and when Constantine built his triumphal arch in Rome during the Fourth Century he had to steal parts from monuments built in the Second Century. The Romans had forgotten how to do things. Side note; they also forgot how to build and maintain an army and pretty much as soon as the barbarians worked up the courage they overthrew the form of Roman power which had long since vanished in actuality.

And then they had to start all over again. The barbarians admired the Roman world and were astonished at what they saw around them. But they didn’t know how to maintain it. Neither did the Romans. It all had to be learned again and it took a thousand years to do it. We’re heading right to that. We haven’t entirely lost the ability but those who really know how to do things are rapidly aging out. Before too long there will be no resource to turn to…and people won’t even look for the resource because they won’t know that they don’t know. It could get very bad very fast; and worse than last time because the population has not only lost their skills, but they’ve also been taught that lying and laziness are ok. At least the barbarians who took over Rome knew that you had to put some work in and at least try to tell the truth.

I do think we can arrest this development. I’ve mentioned how in the past – keeping in mind that to love means to will the best for the beloved, the primary way for us to love our neighbors right now is to start punishing – sometimes with exceptional violence – the lazy and the dishonest. They have to be forced to do the right thing. To work. To keep their word. To be brave. Of course they don’t want to. Right now in America you can be the definition of a lazy, cowardly liar and you’ll still get enough food to get fat…and still have your ample leisure time filled with the products of pop culture. But we can’t allow it to go on. It doesn’t work unless nearly everyone works. Nearly everyone is brave. Nearly everyone always tells the truth. The decent can survive deviancy, but a society of deviants will kill the decent.

Mercy: It Isn’t What You Think it Is

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Dan McLaughlin – a man of the Right but whom I often disagree with – posted a Tweet the other day saying we should have hung Jefferson Davis after the Civil War; this has sparked a bit of a debate with most people disagreeing with McLaughlin. I was one who supported the assertion. Not only Davis, but Lee; in fact, all elected officials of the Confederacy; all cabinet officials; all general and flag officers; all governors of seceded States; all elected officials of seceded States – all should have variously been hung or if mitigating circumstances were found, imprisoned for long terms, most for life. Additionally, all members of the Confederate States armed forces should have been permanently disenfranchised if no other punishment was warranted for actions during the war.

Harsh, huh?

But not really. For the longest time I went along with the agree-upon post-Civil War Narrative that Grant’s “let ’em up easy” terms were best as it was asserted it quickly restored national unity and ensured against a repeat. But upon long reflection, I have concluded that this Narrative is as much drivel as the former Confederate’s Lost Cause Narrative.

First off, there wasn’t going to be a repeat. The war was over. The South was utterly crushed. They had no means with which to wage war. The huge armies that the South managed to field in 1863 were gone and couldn’t be remade. It was more than a generation before the physical damage was repaired. The concept that the South – having just been wiped out – would resort to arms if we weren’t nice to the Confederates is just nonsense on stilts.

Secondly, the former Confederates weren’t in the least moved by mercy. Their sole purpose once we decided to let them go was to restore as far as possible the supremacy of the Planter Class which had engineered secession and lost the Civil War at massive cost to those Southerners who had no stake in the Planter Class. The Klan was formed six months after the last battle; and it’s purpose was to beat down any person, black or white, who might strive for a new direction in the South. Anyone who wanted blacks voting, getting educated, owning property was targeted. Yes, most of the direct violence was against black people…but plenty of white people felt the fury as well; to intimidate them into looking the other way when the Klan went out to murder. The only thing which prevented the former Confederates from reimposing slavery was the 13th Amendment – and with the Klan they imposed a system which was all but slavery.

Davis, Lee and a few other top people hanging from a gallows and you don’t get this. Disenfranchised Confederate soldiers means black Southerners united with those whites who resisted the Confederacy (and there were a lot of them) would control the future of the South. There would have been a real Reconstruction; a real re-integration of the South into the national political system…not this bastard, hybrid system we had from 1865 to 1965 where in parts of the country American citizens were routinely denied basic rights because of their skin color. There was more shame in Jim Crow than slavery, when you really think about it – we inherited slavery; we made Jim Crow…or if not made it, tolerated it. Looked the other way; pretended it wasn’t happening or wasn’t a problem. It was a poison injected into our society after the most glorious moment in our history – the end of slavery. And think of all the people who died or were brutalized because of Jim Crow. Set that against twenty or thirty people hung…people who had, no matter how you sliced it, levied war against the United States, and so were traitors by the strict definition of the Constitution.

Mercy, you see, isn’t softness. It isn’t a refusal to acknowledge what happened and demand an accounting – it is a decision to remit full punishment for transgression. In other words, you do not exact your pound of flesh. But this doesn’t mean you don’t take an ounce or two. After the Hungarian rebellion against Austrian rule in 1848, one of Bismarck’s friends bemoaned the repression the Austrians were dealing out to the defeated Hungarians. Bismarck asked in reply words to the effect of, “what about all the people who died in the rebellion? Doesn’t their blood cry out for justice?”. What Bismarck was hitting upon is that anyone who resorts to arms bears responsibility. To be certain – and Bismarck would agree – at times you can be in a position where resort to arms is the only way out. But even if you are fully justified in fighting, people are going to die…and it will be the most innocent who suffer the most because you decided to fight. The Hungarians felt they had to fight (I’ve thought about it and I don’t think they were justified; there were vitally necessary reforms but there was no reason to fight; given the nature of the world at the time, the Austrians weren’t being oppressive brutes and there was a great deal of willingness to reform in the government); fine – fight. But they lost. And now the instrument of government must exact a reckoning on those who resorted to arms. Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister (in effect) was alleged to have said, “certainly, there must be mercy. But first, some hanging.”. You can’t just start a war, lose it, and expect everyone to act as if nothing had happened. So there was some punishment – and some mercy. In the long stream of history, one of the Hungarians condemned to die for rebellion was eventually pardoned and rose to be Prime Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; but there still had to be the hanging.

We need to get back to an understanding that a price has to be paid. There is nothing free. And the more disruptive the action, the higher the price. We have turned mercy into mere mushiness; a sentimental unwillingness to make sure that those who dare greatly also understand that failure has its very high cost. Our latest iteration of this is the BLM/Antifa riots and the spate of store lootings. Everyone wants these things to stop – but I might well be the only person in the United States who understands that if you want to be merciful, then some people will have to pay, and perhaps with their lives for the most egregious. And keep in mind that I oppose the death penalty! On the whole, don’t use it…but if we identify, say, twenty people who organized the BLM/Antifa riots which led to so many devastated lives…then four or five of the worst offenders being hung is merciful…because the survivors would never risk a repeat of it, and so we won’t have thousands of people with ruined lives because someone wanted to make a violent political point.

Human life – human civilization – is a precarious balance; everything has its mirror and it is in striking the balance between the two extremes that we find peace, freedom and safety. Tolerance balanced with intolerance. Order balanced with liberty. Justice balanced with mercy. But balanced. No element being allowed to run away with itself; everything kept in check by its opposite. We have lost that balance and so everything gets ever more insane. It is time to revive it.

Autonomy and Responsibility

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Been seeing some discussions lately regarding that Supreme Court ruling saying, essentially, that you don’t have to bake the cake. The complaints – mostly from the Left but a lot of Righties have problems with it – revolve around a belief that a civil society cannot have people refusing to serve except for the most narrow (on the Left, none, really) exceptions. But I find it curious that none of the people saying we must bake the cake insist that we must carry our weight. It is rather a one way street – I have to bake the cake, but the lazy a** collecting bogus disability payments doesn’t have to get a job.

Chesterton pointed out that learning philosophy is important even though it can be a bit of a bore. The reason for this is because we’re either going to live by thought that has been thought out, or thought that hasn’t been thought out. For at least the past century, its been living by un-thought-out thought. How’s that been working for us?

The dichotomy of Bake the Cake/Sit on Your Butt is the result of simply not thinking about it. It seems like it is unfair to not bake the cake, just like it seems like it is unfair to force the lazy to work. But once you sit down and think about it for a bit, the opposite becomes clearly true.

The problem with slavery isn’t that you have to work. Heck, it doesn’t even require any great cruelty…and some of the largest slave owners of the past treated their slaves pretty well; so well that at times people were able to unfavorably contrast the treatment of free labor in the North with slave labor in the South. No; even if the slave is well treated and given every comfort that free labor would provide, it would still be wrong – and it is wrong because it is compelling someone to do for another. It is the refusal to acknowledge that the slave is a person who can choose to do or not do that is the problem with slavery. The fields do have to get plowed. The house does have to be cleaned. If anyone agrees to plow those fields and clean that house, great; but the moment you can tell a person they must plow your fields and clean your house, you have done evil no matter how nicely you otherwise treat the person. And, of course, treating them with brutality merely multiplies the basic evil of compulsion.

So, too, with any action where someone is doing something for another. You can plow your field. You can hire someone to plow your field. But you must not be able to force someone to plow your field. Or bake you a cake. Or so much as pass the salt. That a person may in some situations even have a moral obligation to do for you – such as sees you drowning and being fully capable of assisting, refuses – this does not entail any legal obligation to do. It must never involve a legal obligation to act.

We got this wrong because in our very understandable and morally correct desire to end and correct the injustices of racism, we fell into the trap of saying that discrimination is wrong rather than correctly identifying the problem as unjust discrimination. Words really do matter a lot! We ridicule the notion of our ancestors fighting whole wars over the definition of a word but they fought because it is important: what words mean and how you use them determine what sort of people you’re going to be. Because we’re lazy and rather ignorant – and don’t think out our thoughts – we fell into a trap: Discrimination is wrong! And so we went out to slay the dragon called Discrimination. Except we didn’t. And we can’t. But we did create a new tyranny to replace the old.

You see, we can’t end Discrimination. It would be impossible to live without Discrimination. For instance, we very much discriminate against blind people who want to be airline pilots. We also discriminate against 5’2″ men who want to play center for the Lakers. When you make out your Thanksgiving guest list and don’t include the wino who lives behind 7/11, you just discriminated. To discriminate is just to choose – and wisdom dictates that your choices be based in reality.

But we still gave it the old try, now didn’t we? And so, unable to end what is necessary for living, we got into the absurdity of saying that to end Discrimination, you must bake the cake. The person demanding the cake discriminates all day but the moment someone denies the cake: Bigot!!!! Off to court we go you homophobe! This is just wrong. Just as a person can decide who to have over for Thanksgiving, so they can decide who to do something for. It must be this way. To be free at the end of the day is the freedom to refuse. To say, “no” without let or hindrance. Doesn’t matter why – good reason, bad reason, no reason: if a person doesn’t want to do it then that’s the end of it: they don’t want to do it. No power on Earth should be able to compel a person to do anything for another.

But what about that bum, Mark? You said early on that we can’t allow people to sit on their butts: aren’t you saying that we can’t compel action? Huh? Explain that!

I will: here goes.

We do have our autonomy. Our ability to choose and our bedrock right to refuse. But we also do live in a society and doing so places certain obligations upon us. First is that we do no harm to the society. Obviously don’t break, steal or kill. We have no right to destroy or take what belongs to others – or to society collectively, like a bridge or a nature park – and we must not kill other people. But beyond these rather bare-bones requirements, we also have an obligation to not unduly burden our fellows. The difference can be illustrated by your neighbor asking you for a ride because his car broke down and your neighbor demanding you chauffeur him around. We, as a people, do carry a price of civilization around with us, and that price is to be reasonable. Someone needs a little help and you can provide it, it is morally incumbent upon you to do so. Not a legal obligation, but if you coldly refuse aid you could render at no significant cost to yourself, you have busted the societal deal. But it is all of us carrying the price of civilization. A man who does demand you chauffeur him around is breaking the deal as badly – maybe more badly – than the person refusing aid.

The pragmatic facts of life are that anyone who is physically fit refusing to work is breaking the deal. Anyone who is begging for money so they can get high or drunk is breaking the deal. Anyone working the system for unearned money (and this from welfare cheats to people using personal injury attorneys for bogus claims) is breaking the deal. Without getting into forcing these people to do for others, we are within our rights to force them to stop being a burden. That is, we can use compulsion to get the bum to go to work, to get the druggy to quit, to get the grifter to pay back what he’s stolen. I can’t order the bum to get a job, but I can set up a situation where he’s either going to get sober and get a job, or be sent some place where in return for being housed and fed – rather than living on the streets high – he will work. Of course even in such a place he can refuse to work…but we will adhered to the Biblical command of if a man will not work, let him not eat. We can and must enforce the deal – you can’t be a bum, you can’t be a drug addict, you can’t be a thief. We will give you every opportunity to become a responsible member of society but when push comes to shove you are either going to do your duty or you will find yourself without the means to live.

Now, this might seem a bit like a paradox but that is only because it is. You see, human life isn’t something that fits into neat, little boxes. Humanity isn’t a series of blocks of wood to be shaped and kept in line. The same society which diligently protects the right to refuse will refuse to allow people to take advantage of others in the name of a right to refuse. You don’t have to remain sober. You don’t have to work. But if you are a lazy drunk we won’t feed you after you spent a night sleeping on the streets in a puddle of your own urine. We will strike a balance, which is how all human society exists; the general rule and then one or more exceptions to it; applied with such wisdom as we can muster, but never allowing ourselves to be suckers.

The Triumph of the Anti-Human

Mark Noonan43 Comments

I had mentioned a few days ago the fracas over the LA Dodgers inviting, un-inviting and then re-inviting the anti-Catholic “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to their Pride Night. There has been some developments in that and it has brought a realization to me.

The developments were Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw organizing a Christian Faith and Family Day with the Dodgers and, more directly, Nats pitcher Trevor Williams explicitly condemning the “Sisters” due to the anti-Catholic nature of the group. It was, naturally, Williams’ statement which caused the most ire as it was a direct challenge to the reigning orthodoxy in America.

I fully expected Williams’ statement to cause a lot of blowback (so did everyone else) and the Left didn’t disappoint. As Williams is devoutly Catholic, a lot of the comments harped upon the usual anti-Catholic tropes old and new but what struck me about it was that the people condemning Williams and the Church are the people most committed to transitioning minors and allowing them to be groomed for sexual abuse. Think about that: these people are in favor of deliberately and maliciously destroying lives and their attack on Williams was based upon their claim that Williams condemnation of the “Sisters” was destructive.

Supposing it was destructive, so what? All you have to do is do a bit of searching of the “Sisters” and the pics and video will be all the argument you need to convince any sane person that the “Sisters” are wicked people. I do strongly advise against such a search – you won’t be able to unsee the images and they are uniformly disgusting. Of course, Williams’ statement wasn’t destructive. It wasn’t even a call for any action against the “Sisters”…it was just a statement saying that we must not tolerate the intolerant. Williams would have condemned just as readily someone inviting the Klan. If the battle is to end hate, then why have a group committed to hatred? The “Sisters” are committed to anti-Catholic hatred. We’re not supposed to hate based on race, color, gender, orientation or religion, right?

Right.

But, wrong. The Left doesn’t mean that at all.

The whole purpose of “tolerance” and “inclusion” wasn’t to get us old fashioned Christians to make nice in the public square…it was for the anti-Christians to seize the public square and then exclude us. It was from the start a war against religion…against truth…against decency…against humanity.

They are the anti-humans. They don’t like family, faith or property. They see a neat and tidy community and their blood boils. A woman choosing to be a stay at home mom drives them nuts. They despise a man who stands up for the weak. They don’t want us traveling. Drinking. Smoking. Eating meat. Air conditioning our homes. Grilling in our backyards. They don’t want us to be friends with or marry people of different skin colors. They don’t want cross-cultural social exchanges. They hate our heroes. They loath our history. They, in short, hate everything which makes humanity human.

To be sure, they do have an idea that once they have destroyed all human attachments and desires they’ll be able to rebuild us into something better. They even still give a bit of lip service to that ideal. But I doubt any of them really believe it. They just want us to suffer. Not them, of course; they’re too smart to suffer. Also, they know what’s best for you, so they’ll need their lavish lifestyle to help them build us into something better. But, you? You’re pretty much hopeless…so eat your bug paste and shut up.

But whether they believe it or not, we know it is a pipe dream. Humans are human; they want a bit of a place they can call their own. They want a family of mom, dad and the kids, not some random collection of weirdos pretending to be a family. They want to take that trip to Hawaii and have a steak off the grill. Have a drink. Smoke that cigar. Be human. And any attempt to turn us into a hive of social units living off credits provided based on our social credit score is doomed to failure.

But they are still going to try and right now they stand triumphant. I fully expect quite a lot of pressure on Williams to recant his heresy. We’ll see how strong he is – but if he caves don’t be too ready to condemn him. A lot of pressure will be forthcoming. They will seek to destroy anyone who questions their worldview…all the while holding up as heroes those who are expressly rejecting human sanity. It is deliberate and it is malicious: it is designed to destroy.

What we must do – aside from pray, hope and don’t worry – is work for the power to remove these people from power. I’m not talking about just winning an election and replacing Tweedledee with a slightly conservative Tweedledum…I’m talking about forcing them out of all institutions. Taking away all their money. Reducing them to complete social, economic and political impotence. Here’s the thing – the more we push back, the less social territory they control, the more they’ll be exposed as ultimately a tiny minority of kooks who just happened to get control of the institutions. Even most Left voters don’t fully understand what is being done in their name…so just a few small cracks in the edifice which allows people to stand up against it and very rapidly it will all fall apart.

And then we can just be human, again.

Perhaps We’ve Just Been Living Wrong?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Scott Presler opines that for the GOP to have long term success, it is going to have to become the natalist party – that is, the party in favor of family formation. This is true. Attentive readers of the Mirrors series have probably figured out that Queen Caelestine is pro-natalist; always trying to get people married and wanting everyone making babies at a rapid clip. This is, of course, a bit of my philosophy being inserted in a small way to the narrative. But I don’t think we’ve really thought much about how this would come about.

It seems to me that our problem here stems from our too-long adolescence and too-long education.

Remember that back in the day, a girl and a boy getting married at 16 or 17 wasn’t at all unusual…with the young couple then either working on the family farm/business or striking out on their own. It is a bit of a shock to the modern mind to think of that – in fact, we probably think of it as tragic. But the bottom line is that we become physically capable of bearing children at a pretty young age: and if one wishes to argue against biology, that is fine – but the reality is that our physical being is ready for childbearing a lot younger than we find acceptable in the modern world.

Right after I read Presler’s Tweet the Rush song Subdivisions came on the playlist and the refrain just leaped out at me:

Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

All of us, I think, can remember back to our middle and high school years and remember how out of sorts and out of place we felt. That sensation is what Neil Peart was writing about in the song. But what, really, was the problem? That we were 16 or 17 years old and felt we had no proper place in the world. That we didn’t know what our lives were for or what we would do. By that time we had already been in school ten or eleven years, had at least a year or two left to go…and then the prospect, pushed massively by society, that we would do at least four more years of school after that and then start our career…and don’t get married! You’re “too young”. You’ve got plenty of time for that! Get your education. Get your job! And, hey, the old morals are gone so just find someone to have sex with…its ok. Nobody will judge you.

Except yourself, of course. The mind rebels against what is wrong even if that mind can’t articulate it.

I conclude – and this literally just flashed in my head earlier today – that the increasing alienation of youth since, say, World War Two is based upon this lifestyle of 12-16 years of education followed by career and then marriage and children if convenient. The final result of this is kids who are saying they are non-binary or what have you: we’re so long down this path of essentially denying biology – denying our own humanity – that the latest generation is rejecting the very idea of biology and what it means to be a human being – what it means to be male or female. We’re getting here – and it is likely to get much worse – because we have tried to craft a lifestyle which is not adjusted to humanity. We’re trying to be cool so we aren’t cast out…but what we’re not trying to be is human. And even the adults who get through this to become functional members of society are still awash in divorce, anti-depressants and pathetically going to fertility clinics at 35 in a desperate bid to push out a kid before the clock expires.

We forgot that the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath. We’ve been going about it backwards – trying to rework humanity to fit a certain sort of society when sanity lies in making society conform to human needs.

Laying aside the animal need for food, water, shelter and clothing, the primary thing a human needs is community. We are a social species. We literally cannot survive as a species without others of our kind around…and even individual survival is gravely threatened when we are on our own (break your leg on a hike with friends and you’ll probably make it – break your leg hiking alone and there’s a good chance you’re going to die). Biology commands – and we Believers hold that God also commands – that we engage in sexual relations. Anyone who remembers being 15 knows this – the urge was persistent and insistent. It was so strong that all of us did wonder for a bit just why there was a moral code against rampant sexual activity. But especially as we aged, we understood the wisdom of confining sex to a committed relationship. But I think we get it wrong – backwards – when we say, “hold off on that urge until you’re 25! Gotta get that education and career, first!”. We’re also kinda stupid – the sex urge will not be repressed for that long. I do believe that if we really want to fix what is wrong, we’re going to have to really think about what we want.

I do think we spend too much time on education. Don’t know about you, but high school was mostly pointless for me. They weren’t teaching me anything new – and in the things I was actually interested, I was rapidly far in advance of what the school was teaching. It might very well be that adding high school to the education mix for 90 percent of us is a waste of time. And if high school is pointless for most of us, college even more so.

Plus when we take a kid of 14 and say, “hey, just 8 more years and you’re done with school”, we’re telling someone who wants to get rolling on life right now that they’ll have to wait. That they have to stay in leading strings for years longer and then, if the behave, they’ll be allowed to start doing the Adult things.

I’m not saying there isn’t a need for higher education – but what I am saying is that almost nobody needs it and, in truth, it has long become counter-productive. First off, on account of it being dumbed down. In order to keep up the fiction of Education – Career – Marriage we’ve routinely lowered the standards for higher education to the point that a mediocre 12 year old from a century ago knew more than doctoral students at Ivy League universities today. You can only keep the fiction going, after all, if it is for everyone. But, of course, everyone isn’t suited to higher education – and nor should they be. A healthy society has a certain number of artists and thinkers…but usually less than 1 percent. And they are only able to create art and thought because almost everyone else is busy making things happen.

And after community, the next thing a human needs is to be needed. We are built to contribute – to do something useful for ourselves and our community. It is, as I’ve noted, the only way we can survive. Except for short periods and baring physically debilitating accidents, we can’t even feed ourselves without the assistance of others.

How useful does a 20 year old in college feel? And there’s your answer to why the purple hair, nose ring and a sudden assertion that they are a different gender. They are doing nothing. They aren’t really learning anything – save for spoon-fed Marxist drivel. Small wonder they get a little kooky…like a junior league Nero or Caligula…the real difference being that Rome in ancient days could only carry the freight on a few of them at a time…while our overly wealthy society affords millions nominating their horse to the Senate. And here’s the real kicker – almost all 20 year olds in college are incapable of higher education. It is supposed to be for the 1 percent – maybe the top 5 percent if you’re being really generous in giving out passing grades. These poor kids are uselessly doing something they are entirely unsuited for. Lunacy does result. BLM/Antifa riots, as well – not for nothing did fascists, Communists and Nazis find their most ardent spirits among 20th century college students…a collection of increasingly mis-educated kids unsuited for higher thought but who were also being quit useless…and here comes The Cause to give their existence a point.

As Chesterton pointed out, we have to begin all over again at the start. If a house is built so that it knocks a man’s head off as he comes through the door, it is built wrong. You can’t reform it – you have to tear it down and build it again. Properly.

There was a little joke meme I saw the other day which went along the lines of “me who had my kids at 18 and 20 watching from the beach as my 40 year old career-first friend deals with her 4 year old”. Lot of truth in that. It really comes down to how we will spend the best years of lives.

Do you remember being 20? My goodness, the energy. As I was in the Navy at the time this manifested itself in my ability to spend weeks at sea in a four hours on, four hours off rotation, hit the beach in a liberty port, party with the shipmates for 24 hours straight and then immediately go back to sea. We all had it. We were inexhaustible and indestructible. We could eat and drink all we wanted and it just fueled our ability to do more and more and more.

Do you remember being 35? You had stayed out until just a shade after midnight the night before and had that third drink and now, bleary eyed and exhausted, you faced the grim task of going to work and, dang it, why does my back hurt?

Question: which you was better suited to chasing around after a rambunctious 2 year old? Which of you could better deal with screaming kids, household chores and putting in a 50 hour week at work without complete mental and physical collapse?

Life is for youth, boys and girls. And we’ve been doing it all wrong. What we should have been doing is giving our kids 8 years of basic education, siphoning off the cream of the crop for higher education and sending the rest to trade school while positively encouraging early marriage and children. This is much more in line with human needs than our current model – and given our advances in production and medicine, it doesn’t preclude anything. Suppose at 45 you decide to move off from the construction job that paid for your house and raised your kids, now moved out, and take a stab at a college degree? You can do it. Nothing to stop you. And zero chance of regrets – you’ve already done the most important part of living. You took a man or woman’s place in the world. You already proved who and what you are.

I am open to dispute here – I don’t know if I’m completely right. I only know for certain that we’ve been doing it wrong. And if we want a healthy society, we are going to have to change how we’re doing it.

Never Tolerate the Intolerant

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Alexander Kerensky could have had Lenin shot.

In the history books, there is a certain inevitability about Lenin but when the situation on the ground is examined closely, it is clear that right up until Lenin’s coup he could easily had been disposed of. The Bolsheviks were, indeed, gaining support in Russia after Lenin’s return from exile but that support was concentrated in St Petersburg and Moscow and even in those two power centers their power didn’t amount to majority power. Lenin was not some all-powerful person.

And Kerensky, last head of Russia’s Provisional Government knew what Lenin was up to and, indeed, was urged by people from Right to Left to move against Lenin. But Kerensky was not a ruthless man. His politics, in spite of his later association with the Conservative Hoover Institute, were Left. And he was a true believer! While not himself a Marxist he, like most Left people, had bought the Marxist notion that the ills of society are due to the leadership of the society – that the bad isn’t just part of human nature but is created and fostered by wicked people in power. Kerensky was absolutely convinced that once Tsarism was swept away the natural goodness of the people would shine forth and a just social order would emerge.

And, so, he was simply not a man who believed that he could or should shoot someone. All glory to him for standing by his convictions – but his failure to shoot one, single man, Lenin, ensured the overthrow of Kerensky’s government and the start of a system in Russia which eventually murdered tens of millions. The October Revolution wasn’t a revolution – it was a coup where Lenin and a small number of his followers shoved Kerensky and his people out of their offices in St Petersburg and started to govern. It succeeded because Kerensky’s lack of ruthlessness against the Bolsheviks convinced everyone from Left to Right and he wasn’t the man to stand against the Bolsheviks when they made their move. A bullet in September, a hero’s funeral for Lenin, and the Bolsheviks then fade into history as they squabble endlessly over what to do.

It really is a pity that it came out that way.

And I bring this up because it shows that while tolerance is a good thing – a necessary thing in any free society – as in all things human there are limits. Specifically, one must not tolerate the intolerant.

Lenin was saying from the get-go that his goal was total power for himself and his Bolsheviks and that once they got power they were going to smash everyone else. Hitler said the same sort of things. Mao as well. It has been dogma on the Right that we must extend tolerance to people expressing any idea because if we want to be free we must tolerate everything. This, as it turns out, has been incorrect – and it is wrong on both moral and practical grounds.

On the practical side of it, tolerance of the intolerant merely allowed people like Lenin and Hitler to plot and plan their takeover. It is like allowing an enemy army to arm and train itself in plain sight while you make no effort to hinder it. Just amazingly stupid and I’m rather surprised that we all bought it to one degree or another. But on the moral side of it, it is also wrong to tolerate the intolerant. Look at the mountains of corpses which resulted from people not killing Lenin, Hitler and Mao. Sure, we saved three bullets, but we lost more than a hundred million lives. That book doesn’t balance out.

To be part of a pluralist society the first requirement must be that you pledge to never end pluralism. That there is no individual, race or class which you say is a problem that needs to be destroyed. The assertion must be that everyone who is willing to tolerate is tolerated – but anyone who says that a person, class or race is evil, that person has to go. The Communist saying the Capitalists are evil must be destroyed. The Nazis saying the Jews. The Klansman saying the blacks…the CRT professor saying that white people are inherently racist.

“But Mark (you may say), aren’t you, by saying we must destroy the intolerant, becoming a person who says that an individual, class or race must be destroyed?”

No, I am not. I am not Hitler brooding in his Vienna flophouse about how the Jews kept him out of art school. I am not Lenin raving in Switzerland that he, and he alone, knows what to do and so everyone else must obey or be destroyed. I don’t care what anyone believes – but when a mad dog makes a dash for my trousers, I shoot it.

If we allow these people to live in our society then we are continually at risk of their gaining power and starting to kill their targets. To me, it is not worth the risk. I do believe that the bullet for Lenin is justified. And all anyone has to do to avoid the bullet is say, “hey, I don’t like that group, but as long as they leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone”. We’re not talking a very high bar here for participation in our society – you just can’t be a bloodthirsty maniac raving that if just this one group is destroyed, everything will be great.

It is very important that we learn philosophy and thus develop our theories about why things should be and what we should do. This sort of thing is invaluable in making certain that our actions are based upon thought as far as possible. But we must remember that outside the hard sciences, what we theorize isn’t always a hard and fast rule. In general I as a male will never hit a woman – this is because even though I’m not a particularly large man, I am still a lot stronger physically than almost all women and so it would be simply unfair and cruel for me to hit someone who can’t effectively hit back. On the other hand, if a girl is coming at me with a baseball bat, I’m clocking her.

Our philosophy of freedom places a premium on not censoring thought and speech. We have learned over time that in order to possibly get a good result, people must be able to think and say what they wish because in the free exchange of ideas and facts, we are more likely to find the correct solution – or at least the less bad solution – than when we carefully control thought and speech with a mind towards obtaining a pre-determined choice. That is our theory and, most of the time, it is applicable. But our theory must not interfere with our practical choices. Our theory that the police should try to de-escalate a situation falls flat on its face when there’s a knife-wielding maniac loose.

So, too, with our politics. Broadly tolerant – right up to the time when we find someone who is saying that some person, class or race must be restricted or destroyed in order for good things to happen. That person should be shot at the earliest opportunity…and without even a twinge of guilt that we in some way violated our principal of tolerance. We didn’t – we enforced it in the most efficient manner possible.

As we all know, we’re rather backs to the wall at the moment in politics – mostly because we tolerated the intolerant and, as per usual, now that these intolerant people have gained power, they are seeking to destroy their enemies. But as we seek to gain the power we need to reform our nation back to a sane Republic, we must not lose sight of the necessity of intolerance of the intolerant. We must, that is, do the things necessary to ensure that those who hate individuals, classes and races, are removed permanently from any ability to influence our society.

Our Grim New World

Mark Noonan25 Comments

So, it turns out the bald guy in a dress that Team Pudding Brain hired to look after nuclear waste is a weirdo who steals women’s luggage.

Who could have guessed!?!?!?!?

Saw an ad for a clothing store or maker – didn’t look to closely at that aspect of it – which was lauding assisted suicide in Canada. It is really bad up there – basically, if you’re a depressed teenager or a soldier suffering from PTSD, killing yourself is offered early on. Part of this is driven by bureaucratic cost-saving: each dollar spent on treatment is one less dollar in the health budge for pay and benefits, after all. But it is also the Culture of Death writ large – and they are trying very hard to bring this to the United States. It is, of course, already here in various States and localities…but if we ever get single-payer, offing yourself will quickly become part of the basic plan.

It must be kept in mind that forgetting about God doesn’t make you a happy pagan doing blow off a hooker’s a**…it makes you eventually into a miserable, greedy, narcissist who hates everyone who can’t bring immediate comfort. That is the thing about God. Or, more accurately, what God cannot be – He cannot be your salvation in sin. Only your salvation out of sin. If you live in sin – and I mean really wallow in it, like our Leftists do – then you find that all you have is sin. God is good – He is Joy, Hope, Charity, Courage…all that. If you reject God then you reject what God has to give…and what’s left? Sorrow. Despair. Greed. Cowardice.

I know that various Saints have told us they have seen visions of Hell and most of them accord with the popular vision of fiery pits and, of course, Our Lord used words about burning to describe Hell. But I think it may be a bit different front that. The damned will, indeed, burn. But they’ll also freeze. They won’t be able to move. Or see. Or remember joyful things. All these things are good and all good things come from God…and if you are completely absent from God, you can’t possibly have the least good thing. All those who have completely separated themselves from God have is what God isn’t – hate, fear, loneliness, crushing cold, burning fire. It is very sad to contemplate – and more sad to contemplate those who are still alive and day by day are separating themselves from God. Damnation isn’t easy to obtain – salvation is easy, damnation is hard. You just have to ask for salvation, but you’ve got to work at being damned. And all these people with their assisted suicide, abortion, tolerance of objective evil, their thievery and lies…day by day building hell for themselves.

But that need not concern us directly: as far as salvation or damnation, each person is ultimately on their own: you will ask God for it, or you won’t. But it seems to me that we do approach a breaking point. Another thing I saw recently was this head of marketing for some fancy clothing line and the images this person uses are clearly of a sexually abusive nature towards children. It has caused some controversy…but not a lot of people dropping their contracts with the clothes maker. Lets not get silly here, right? Sure, Nike (or whatever) had to drop Kanye like a bad habit…but he said Bad Words. How can you compare that to gross images of abused children? Kidding aside, we’re seeing our Ruling Class clearly out to normalize sexual activities with minors. Partially this is to get ahead of possible indictments…but it is mostly, in my view, the final progression from the Sexual Revolution. Once disconnect sex from marriage and children – once, that is, stop having it for what it is – and you’ve pretty much removed any argument against any sort of sex. One commentator asserted that in ten years Disney will have a movie featuring and adult-chlld relationship and I won’t bet against that. The only taboo left is against forcible sex…and that will be a high hill to climb, but the Left will gamely do so…because its the last step in normalizing adult-child relationships. Remember, they don’t have to square the circle: they’ll just assert that normal male to female sex even with consent is always rape but anything else, consensual or otherwise, is just part of a person’s sexual identity. Think I’m kidding? They’re already on the assertion that you can’t have free speech if people are able to speak freely.

Depressing, huh? But I’m really not depressed. Concerned! Very much so. But mostly because I know that the collapse and reaction on such things tend to be exceptionally violent. I’d rather we didn’t have that – but with Congressional GOP getting ready to sell us out on amnesty and Ukraine aid, I don’t think we have in place a mechanism to even put the breaks on the Culture War at the federal level. Betting is that the weirdo luggage thief won’t see jail time – probably won’t even have security clearance pulled. The Ruling Class can’t risk having their first non-binary (or whatever) in that position come a cropper, right? Desantis fights against it. Abbott a bit, as well…but this is hardly enough to really turn the tide. And we’re running out of time to turn it!

On the plus side, I am starting to see even a few on the Left realize that it has all gone too far – San Francisco is ok in its place, but when you try to shove it into Omaha, it can get very dicey. We’ll see, I guess!