Thursday, November 24, 2022

Lex Anteinternet: A Thankgiving Day pondering.

Lex Anteinternet: A Thankgiving Day pondering.

A Thankgiving Day pondering.

(Note, this is one of many post that was lingering in the draft section for years, and was only now posted).

Something has happened . . . some ground moving departure from reality in the West.  But was it a slow evolution, or a rapid one.  Has it always been occurring, and does that mean perhaps we're just on the crest of a big wave, and some future generations will look back and see this era as simply insane?




When you are in the midst of something, it's not really obvious that it's occurring until it's far advanced, whether that change is for good or ill.  I'm sure, for example, Neanderthals didn't appreciate that the arrival of Cro Magnons in the neighborhood signaled the end of their human line, as for the very first of them, it didn't. The first Shoshone to meet a European American probably didn't think; "well. .  better ask for a reservation bordering the Wind Rivers right now". . . that's not how human experience work.

But at some point, at least for the observant, that day does arrive when you can look out and say "this is really amiss", but that doesn't mean that you grasp how it went amiss.

Well, things are amiss.

That's been obvious to me for a long time, but not to the degree to which it currently is, and not with what seems to be the clarity which I think I have on it now.  But, suffice it to say, at some point we boarded the train to unnatural existence, and it's plaguing us now.  Getting back will not be easy, and while I think nature and providence always self correct, I won't live long enough to see that correction.

It's important to note, when you state such things, that a perfect past never existed.  Other people, who sense something is wrong and turn their gaze back, far too often imagine a perfect past in some distant era.  That was never the case.  There was never a Camelot.


And even if there might have been a real Arthur of some sort, and even if he was a chieftain of some type, it was still the case that for most people the world hasn't been prefect.

Being a Medieval lord, in other words, may have been grand, but eking out your existence on a handful of oats and barley every day as a bound serf. . . not so much.

And so with every era.  Being a Roman magistrate would have been nifty, probably. A Roman slave? Not.  Being an American in 1830 would seem cool to me. . . as long as I wasn't black or an Indian on the border of lands about to be consumed by the American nation.

You get my point.

But one thing that has occurred since those times, or at least since the late period of the Roman Empire, is that we, and by that I mean Western Society, and which by that I mean the force that seems to drag the entire world along with it, has slipped into some sort of perverse anti-natural state.

How did that happen?

And when did it start to occur?


Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XL. Panem et circenses.

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XL. Panem et circenses.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XL. Panem et circenses.

Yes, the "Big 4-0".

Roman numeral wise, that is.

Because we're not stoned enough already.

Poppies.  Poppy seeds were added to Italian bread in the middle ages by the poor, specifically to keep themsleves stoned most of the time.  This was because their lives were bad.  The German army passed out booze, and sometimes drugs, late in World War Two to "motivate" troops, or in other words stone them before they went into horrors.  Somehow, we're headed back into the Italian situation.

Headline from The Denver Post:

Gov. Polis tells Bill Maher he’s “excited” about medical ‘shrooms after voters pass psilocybin legalization

And also:

Colorado voters decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms

Colorado becomes the second state after Oregon to establish a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin.

Because Americans aren't stupid enough already, and Denver isn't enough of a giant doped up smelly dump.

Seriously, the march of intoxicants in this society ought to be an alarm bell going off. Something is really screwed up and the only thing a lot of people, and governments, can think to do is to keep people stoned.

A walk thought Denver's capitol city should show anyone, including Governor Polis, how messed up Colorado is as an example of this.  Truly, and I'm not a teetotaler, if there's one thing that could have been done to help keep the country from getting where it now is, that we could go back and do, not repealing prohibition would be it.

Panem et circenses?

It seems so.

Bias?

Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich is a registered member of the Mormon church, spokesman confirms

So what?

I note this as this does seem to be the sort of headline that imports next to no useful information but which reporters, because of a bias, believe it does. It's impossible not to read this and think that the suggestion is that Anderson Aldrich shot up a gay club because he's a Mormon.

I'm rather obviously not a Mormon, but I'm confident that the LDS church does not advocate this sort of thing in any sense.

This is, I'd note, just a stone's throw from suggesting that all members of any conservative religion that generally holds conservative social views is a menace to society, a suggestion I've seen in news articles more than once.

Bias confirmation

Most folks here no doubt don't follow it, but there's a thing called "Catholic Twitter", which is made up of Catholics, on Twitter.

The main thing about Twitter is the gross exaggeration of any one topic until it's at the screaming level.  Most of the people on Twitter don't take Twitter all that seriously to start with, and they shouldn't, and any one topic that's on it is not likely to be all that important or reflective of what is going on in the real world.

Anyhow, below is a part of a conservation that got rolling and rapidly morphed into "blind my eyes to the evidence".  How it got started I'm not sure, as it involves the now actually relatively old story of Catholic cleric's abusing some sexually.

It's worth noting that this story is horrific in general. But at the same time it was a minority of clerics, and most of this story is now really old. To the extent that it remains a real present story it is is because the Church has a lot of older leaders, much like American society in general, who haven't done a good job of confronting this, in part because they seem to have ignored it and don't quite get the story.

Anyhow, one Priest noted.

Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC
@FrMatthewLC
The majority of victims of clerical sex abuse were post-pubescent males who were still minors. Allowing men who were sexually attracted to post-pubescent male teens become priests likely had a part to do with the abuse (whatever name you give that).
Quote Tweet
Joshua McElwee
@joshjmac
Asked about prior comments that gay clergy were responsible for the Catholic clergy abuse crisis, new US Catholic bishop president Archbishop Broglio claims: "It's certainly an aspect of the sexual crisis that can't be denied." Academic studies have found no such relationship.
Twitter for Android

Fr. Schneider is correct.  Most of the abuse that occurred was male on male, and most of that was on post pubescent males who were legally minors.

Let's take a diversion here for a moment.

Just recently a French Cardinal publically confessed and condemned himself for what was translated as "an affair" with a 14-year-old female back many years ago when he was a priest, not a bishop.

That's horrific.

The headlines, however, rapidly went from "an affair" to "rape", or at least the Twitter ones did.

Here's the thing.  Under the applicable French law, she was over the age of consent and could do just that.  So the act was icky, gross, immoral, inexcusable, but not illegal.  It wasn't rape as the law of that land, at the time, defined it.

FWIW, as that surprised me, I looked it up. The age of consent in France is now 15.

I always think of the age of consent being 18, but by and large in most of Europe, Ireland I think aside, the age of consent is lower than 18, with ages in the mid-teens not uncommon.  I'm not going to post them all, but that's interesting in part because Europeans like to criticize the US for having legal pathways to "child marriage" while they have legal pathways to what we'd regard here as rape.

Anyhow, this is an example of following the evidence.

And the evidence generally is that most priest abusers were engaging in homosexual abuse, as legal line or not, "post pubescent" is a legal, not a physical, line.

Occam's Razor holds that the simplest answer is generally the best, because it's generally correct.  The simplest explanation here is that most of the abusers were homosexuals.

Indeed, they pretty clearly were.

No, that doesn't make all homosexual men abusers, but if you put anyone in a situation in which they have no legitimate means for an outlet, problems arise. The real question, therefore, is how did enough homosexual men end up in the priesthood (and in Boy Scout leadership positions) for this to be statistically observable.

I've posted on it before, but my view is, on the priesthood, that this occurred as it gave homosexual Catholic men a place to professionally hide.  That seems to be where the evidence leads. They weren't there because they were homosexuals per se, but because it gave them a socially acceptable excuse for not being married and, even more than that, not exhibiting any interest in women.

Well, of course, the Twitterverse couldn't accept that. The competing explanation, violating the principal of pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, was that the abuse was male on male only males were around, and therefore they were the only targets of opportunity.

That explanation leaves a lot lacking.  For one thing, males aren't the only humans around. The French example, which has become two examples, demonstrates that, and an example in our own diocese of many years ago demonstrates that as well.

And while all male environments do give rise to this, it's not quite in the same fashion.  Those examples tend to be instances in which not only are only males around, but their virtually cloistered for long periods of time.  Groups of straight conscripts, for example, don't start engaging in male on male sexual contact as there aren't women around.  Indeed, studies have shown that in areas where there are only males for long periods of time, what tends to happen is that their testosterone levels plummet on their own, and they're simply less interested.

But because we must maintain this fiction socially now, we can't entertain the possibility that the abusers were homosexuals.  We can't even really engage in the possibility that a small number of homosexuals are abusers.

The Zeitgeist.

What about the Boy Scouts?

I haven't researched it, but I'd guess that those abusers were attracted to those leadership roles specifically for the target of opportunity situation.  So that situation was different yet.  The difference, therefore, is that in the priest example I suspect homosexual men put themselves into that situation to avoid suspicion as to their inclinations, and then yielded in crossing a line which they should not have, and which in the US is illegal, but in the same country, at a time when pornification of child models was common, isn't surprising.  In the Boy Scout example, that was probably a group of men who were abusers in the first instance, but with homosexual inclinations.

And no, that doesn't mean all homosexuals are abusers.

Less government?

The State gave out $6,600,000 in rent relief, funded by the Federal Government, last month.

This program has stopped now, but its interesting in that there's been so much howling in the state about Federal money.  As other examples have shown, people can howl about the dangers of Federal money and take it at the same time.

Credit Cart Sales and Firearms

A recent headline read:

Guns bought through credit cards in the US will now be trackable

So what?

In the United States, you have a right to keep and bear arms. We all know this. But that really doesn't mean that private companies can't track it.

They're already tracking everything else.

If we really don't like this, what we ought to do is simply ban credit cars, which are inherently inflationary to start with.

Misplaced Complaints

A lot of people are complaining about Elon Musk buying Twitter and treating it like a toy.

Well, he's super rich and for him, it probably is a toy.  He's probably loving seeing people complain as they dance to his tune.  And that probably explains why he let Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene back on Twitters.

Just ignore it.

Twitter really doesn't matter.  I noted this all the other day here:

Much ado about Twitter.

Elon Musk has bought Twitter and is busy making changes to it internally. This, in turn, has resulted in a lots of righteous anger about his behavior.

Here's the real question.

Who cares?

We have a Twitter Feed.  You can see it on the bottom right-hand corner of this page. That doesn't stop the fact that Twitter is basically stupid.

A person can't say anything worth saying in as few of words as Twitter restricts you to.  All Twitter really is for us is redirection to this blog. Does it work? Who knows.  But as far as weighty conversation, not happening.

Indeed, the fact that people seem to think its weighty shows how dim the American intellect has become, as if there wasn't plenty of proof for that otherwise.

Now, I have some feeds that I follow I really like. Some do nothing other than what this one does, direct you to other things Some are basically photo feeds, much like Instagram.

But as far as news or anything worth reading, not going to happen.

Some people seem to think that Musk shouldn't be allowed to own Twitter or, if he does, he shouldn't be allowed to wreck it. Well, why not?  He owns it.  If you are uncomfortable with that, as many are, the real argument is that a person shouldn't be allowed to amass the size of fortune that Musk has.  Musk was born into a wealthy South African family, and he's made more money, showing I suppose that being born to a wealthy family is a good way to get richer. 

It also shows how screwed up American immigration laws are, as Musk apparently lives in Texas. Why was he allowed to immigrate here?  No good reason at all, and in a society whose immigration laws made sense he'd be back in South Africa, or perhaps someplace in what's left of the British Commonwealth.

His personal life also shows how Western morality has declined.  Musk has ten children by three women, the first six by his former wife Justine Musk, then two by Claire Elise Boucher, the Canadian singer who goes by the absurd stage name Grimes, and finally twins via Shivon Zilis.  If nothing else, this proves that vast amounts of money will get the male holder of the same money and sex, but it's not admirable and that this sort of conduct is no longer the type that is regarded as scandalous, although it should be.

None of which is a reason to get all in a twitter about Twitter.  If he wrecks it, well, he bought it.  

Who cares?

A bigger topic regarding Must, really, is should a just society allow one person to have so much of the planet's resources.

I risk sounding like Huey Long on this, but I really don't think so.  There shouldn't be billionaires at all.  Before you reach a billion in assets, indeed, before you reach $500,000,000, you simply ought to be taxed down to size.  And no, I don't believe that disincentivises a person from "developing the economy".  And if it does, well, I don't care.

We're now past the election, but speaking of that and I guess twitter, it's really time for John Barasso to stop coming on Twitter and complaining about the price of gasoline.

Here's how the price of gasoline works.

It's made from petroleum oil.

Petroleum oil is produced in certain spots of the globe and sold all over the planet before it's refined.

Most of the world, the United States included, uses more oil than it produces. This is true of the US even though its a major petroleum producer.

US petroleum is expensive to produce.  Normally, Mexican, Venezuelan, Arabian and Russian oil, are not.

If the price per gallon is low (West Texas is $79.19/bbl as I write this. . . low), a lot of North American oil becomes uneconomic to produce.  Just about $60.00/bbl is that point for the US.

If the price per gallon is high, it means that a lot of North American oil is economic to produce.

Wyoming only makes money on petroleum when the price is relatively high.

An unstable price doesn't benefit anyone.

Russia invaded Ukraine, and for a variety of reasons this has driven up the price of oil.  OPEC+, which includes Russia, has operated to try to keep the price high.

Want lower prices?

Lower demand or increase cheap supplies.

We have no cheap supplies in North America.

Joe Biden doesn't set the price of gasoline.

Scary

North Korean is rapidly becoming a frightening menace.

The question is what, if anything, can be done about this short of military action, and will we reach a point where this seems necessary to any administration other than a Trump administration, which probably wouldn't.

Last Prior Edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XXXIX. Pretending


Prior Related Threads:


Monday, November 21, 2022

Lex Anteinternet: Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, ...

Lex Anteinternet: Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, ...

Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, sometimes, 50/50 anyway) Conservative.


This comes, I'd note, at a time at which it's clear that much of the Wyoming GOP got to the station on the Trump Train, went into the station and had a few drinks, and re-boarded on Crazy Train, where it stumbled to the club car, and is now decrying the moral state of the country to the bar maid, who has ear buds in and is listening to Taylor Swift and hoping these guys leave a big tip, while knowing that they won't.

Witness:

Wyoming GOP Wants Investigation of Gov. Gordon’s Ties To Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett

That is, quite frankly, and the only way it can be described, "batshit crazy".   This is going to reveal nothing, and it won't happen for that matter, but the fact that the GOP Central Committee endorses it is scary.

And hence the problem. At the same time that across the country a lot of Republican conservatives voted and said "whoooeeee, what's that smell in here. . . " and then marked the ballot for Democrats, the Wyoming GOP, listening only to the right wing edge of the party, has voted itself into total isolation. Right now, the state's party is about as aware of reality as close affiliates of Kim Jong-un are.

Somehow, it just figures.

And for that reason, they're going to take the state into political isolation, spouting nonsense, while one Senator proclaims that Joe Biden personally sets the price of gas every day, another tries to figure out which GOP Presidential hopeful stands the best chance of giving her a cabinet slot, and a freshman Congressman rails against whatever Kevin McCarthy says is a good thing to rail against today.

In four years we'll have so little say in the nation's politics that our even being a state will be utterly pointless, and beyond that, the Conservative "movement", if it can still be called that, will be about as relevant to the nation as the post World War Two Sicilian movement to make that island the 49th state.

You didn't know there had been one, did you?

Hence, my point.

So, as I am a conservative, of a sort anyhow, and feel that generally my sort of conservatism is correct, some unsolicited advice and commentary for conservatives.

With the first being, what is a conservative, anyhow?

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation . . . the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not . . . express themselves in ideas but only . . . in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Lionell Trilling, 1950. 

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

William F. Buckley.

Defining Conservatism.

The blue flag of Conservatism.  Blue is the traditional color, globally, for conservatism, but for some reason in the American political imagry its been substituted for red, which is the color of socialism. Perhaps this makes sense, however, as populism is really a left wing ideology, and as the national conservative party becomes more populist, it is in fact less conservative.

Defining conservatism isn't all that easy to do, and we'd submit, it's so frequently done clouded by either a liberal tradidtiion or a reactionary impulse, that its done incorrectly.

Take, for instance.

We, as young conservatives, believe:

  • That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
  • That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
  • That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
  • That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
  • That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government; and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
  • That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: Does it serve the just interests of the United States?
The Sharon Statement, 1960, drafted in part by M. Stanton Evans. Is it correct?

One of the real problems modern conservatives face is that they don't know what conservatism is, even if most vaguely have a grasp of it.  As a result of this, they've adopted a lot of libertarianism, which isn't conservatism by any means, and a fair amount, recently, of fascism, which actually originated in the radical left.1

Without some sort of existential understanding of what it is, conservatism isn't really anything at all. And indeed, if you look at the current GOP, it is indeed a "big tent", but that tents a real mishmash of people with widely varying ideologies, or no ideologies at all.

The irony of the recent race in Wyoming is that one of the far fight candidates campaigned on the platform of "less government, more freedom". That's not conservative, that's libertarianism.  The same candidate has billboards up opposing abortion, which is a conservative position, and one I support, which has roots in theology, philosophy, and natural law, but which doesn't really square with the "less government, more freedom" platform.  A guy who is for less government, and more freedom, ought to take the position that you can pretty much do whatever you freakin' want to, which of course he really doesn't.

You can get to being pro life and be a libertarian, I'd note, but its harder.

Shoot, why not legalize dueling?  Less government. . . more freedom.

And that defines why the current crop of conservatives make nearly no sense.

I'd propose that Conservatism is this; it's a political/philosophical view that human beings are flawed and in some serious ways, de minimis.  We're a creature of some external force, that force being nature, and for those who are believers, nature's God.  What we are and how we should behave is defined by that, and as we are imperfect, we should always be extremely careful about departing from something we have conserved, i.e,. tradition, as by and large, tradition and traditional views are highly refined from experience and probably correct. Something we come up with in our own era stands a good chance of being wrong.  Because we are imperfect, we can find out that we are wrong on things, and we do over time, but we ought to never assume we've figured it out in our own era.  Added to that, as history is conserved knowledge, the past is nearly as alive as the present, and we should consider it and its voices constantly.

Now, going from there.

All reality is governed by, well, reality.


And what we know of reality is ultimately governed by nature.  

We can know nature, and know a lot of it by observation.  But we cannot redefine it.

Modern "ology" fields, outside of the hard sciences, have tried mightily, and indeed enormously succeeded, in shoving out vast piles of crap on our natures for well over a century. Sooner or later, the last crap starts to stink up everything and be revealed as crap, but not before many lives have been destroyed in the process.  

Psychology, sociology, sexolgy, all are hugely guilty of this.

Biology, geology, orthodox theology, and physics, are not.

If things aren't grounded in nature, as revealed by the real, i.e., hard, sciences, they are probably wrong.

Now, science doesn't have an explanation for everything, but it has the explanation for a lot.  And where it does, it must be listened to. And an awful lot about us can readily and easily be explained by evolutionary biology, which should not be confused with cultural anthropology, another one of the "ology" fields that tends to be in the category of "the self-explanatory flavor of the day rationalizing my own behavior".

The lesson of the hard sciences, like orthodox Christinaity, tend to make lot of people hugely uncomfortable, in part because starting with the, yes conservative, Reagan Administration the Federal Government gutted the funding for them.  Prior to that we had enlisted the hard sciences in the war effort against the Axis and then later against the Soviet Union.  At that point we really needed to know what science, often in the form of engineering (which is applied physics) had to say about things.

By the mid 1970s "Conservatives" had regrown uncomfortable with some things science had to say, particularly in the environmental fields, which I'll address below.2 So they gutted it, and int he process they've managed to make modern Americans woefully poorly educated in the sciences.  There's no excuse for it.  Here's a good example:

Nobody remembers  this as in reality we treated viruses with a massively publicly funded health system and mandatory vaccinations.  Treating things with soup and Vitamin C is a trip to the cemetery.

But we're now so freakin' dense that this actually showed up on a recent candidates' website.

Reality, you smart mammal, is defined by nature and evolution.  You are formed existentially by external forces, and that is what you are existentially.  You, and we, don't get to change that.

Our own appetites don't define right or wrong.


But people sure seem to think that.

You would think this would be self-evident, but in this era of massive wealth, the concept of restraining your own conduct in any fashion is regarded as passé.

Among the things we are, we are broken. The standards are clear, but we don't always individually orient ourselves to them. That doesn't mean our disorientation should be given license.  

Indeed, we don't even know where to draw the line on this.  For eons human beings accepted, for example, the norm that sex should be contained within marriage, and that it was between male and female. The only real global divergence on how this worked had to do with whether polygamy was okay or not. That's about it. 

This isn't the only example, by any means, but it does show how conservatism isn't libertarianism or progressivism.  Progressives would require you to believe that the latest social "ology" items are real legally.  You may not assert, for example, that transgenderism isn't real, as that's not socially acceptable.  Libertarians don't care if you believe it or not, but they wouldn't have the structure of the state accept the scientific realities that it's far from proven, and up until it is, it's not a state matter to force, and because it's also contrary to long human experience, and frankly science, the burden of proof on it is very high.

Our own economic well-being doesn't define true or false.

Avarice, 1590.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.

1 Timothy.

Somewhere along the path of things, conservatives started believing that capitalism is the natural order of things.  And beyond that, somehow conservatism began to equate itself with a worship of mammon.

Southerners justified slavery, which was in their perceived economic self-interest, on the basis that the Bible said it was okay, which it does not.  The Germans justified invading the Soviet Union on the "ology" basis that the Germans were a master race, and they therefore were entitled to the Slavic breadbaskets of Europe.

Think this doesn't apply to this argument?

Well, right now the GOP in Wyoming, which claims to be conservative, wants the state to investigate Gov. Gordon’s Ties To Bill Gates, George Soros, and Warren Buffett. Why?  Well somebody's economic ox is being gored as these men don't have the same view of the economic future as the Central Committee does.

Indeed, among those who are involved in economics and science, it's really clear that the Republican Party in Wyoming has literally walked up to a dead mule and put it in harness on the basis that the mule made us rich in the past, and he better now.  That's not how these things work.

Things do change, and you don't have a right to insist that they do not.  Railroad crews couldn't demand that the switch from steam to diesel not be made on the basis that steam engines employed a larger crew.  Sail mariners couldn't demand that the age of sail not yield to that of coal.  But that's what a lot of people in the "conservative" moment are doing right now.

Truth be known, we can learn that our own occupations are not sacrosanct, even though the lesson is hard.  Nobody argues, for example, that "I'm a tobacco farmer, and therefore cancer is a fib" anymore, but people did at one time.  We hear economic arguments of that type made in conservative circles all the time, however.

And that is not real conservatism. That's reactionary.  A real conservatism would realize that economics isn't the same as conserving core human relationships.

Conservatism sometimes has to aim to restore or recall what was already lost.


One of the common failings of conservatives, which opens them up to criticism all the time, is that they are often working at conserving either what is right now, or what was just very recently.

A good example of this is another economic one.  Conservatives constantly claim to be preserving capitalism. That isn't conservative at all.  Capitalism itself is a government made economic liberal construct designed to promote certain type of business activities.

Capitalism can be argued to be good or bad, and in varying degrees, in its own right, but the fact of the matter is that its contrary to nature in recognizing what would otherwise be a type of partnership as a "person", giving it a huge economic advantage against real people.  If conservatives truly sought to conserve, they'd look back and realize that the corporate innovation has evolved massively and to the detriment of the natural social and economic order.  In other words, they'd restrict the use of the corporate business form, which itself would go back to an earlier era.

None of this is radical, it's purely conservative, but because it understands the nature of how this works, and looks back prior to December 31, 1600, it doesn't seem that way.

Another example is in the area of men, women, sex and marriage.  Conservatives in our current era are full of horror about the recent developments in the area of sexual attraction, and they should be. But addressing this by taking it back to the pre Dobbs status quote actually isn't all that conservative. Taking things back to when the heart balm statutes still predominated would be.

"But, didn't William F. Buckley say. . .?" 

Yeah, so what.  He was wrong here.

We're all fallen, but nobody has the right to engage in open hypocrisy.

Strom Thurmond, the Southern Democrat and "Dixiecrat" senator who opposed desegregation for most of his career but whom also fathered a child by his 16 year old black maid, that child being his oldest offspring.

Oddly enough, this story was sort of hi lighted by a development that occurred after Cynthia Lummis went up on the decks of the SS Political Fortunes, looked at the weather gauge, and determined that it had shifted, probably resulting in her vote on Dobbs.  I've dealt with that extensively here.

What does that statute really say? The Respect For Marriage Act, what it says, what it means, what it means behind what it means, and the reaction to Lummis voting for it.

There's almost no way to deal with this topic without being somewhat crude, but suffice it to say if you are on the current Super Conservative Special, you really can't be proclaiming what people who have unusual attractions are doing if you are shacked up with somebody, or bed hopping, or the like. Quite frankly, you probably can't say anything about family values if you are divorced and don't have a really good explanation or if you are married but childless and seemingly in a well paying career.  You can't say that "those people aren't acting" naturally, if you aren't either.

And yes, this harkens back to an age with children out of wedlock was regarded as conveying shame, and being a serial polygamist was frowned upon.  But hence the point.  This sort of topic is broad, not narrow, and you can't take your social programs off the shelf like cans of pinto beans, and leave the lima beans up there.  You are getting a sack of beans, and they're all in there.

"Freedom" may not be just having nothing left to lose, but it's not a defining feature of our beings either.  Nor is "liberty".

Freedom and liberty are the two most misused words in the political lexicon.

Conservatives, if they grasp it, do have a better claim on these words than liberals do, but freedom isn't an absolute and liberty doesn't equate with being a libertine.  

In Catholic social thought freedom is often noted as being a true positive but only when a true understanding of things is derived.  I.e., the framework of the Church doesn't impose shackles on my freedom so much as guardrails, so I don't fall off and lose it.  This is true of properly understood social conservatism as well.  And that's one of the things that distinguishes conservatism from libertarianism.

Looking at things from a point of view of nature, it becomes clear what things have to be provided with guard rails and which do not.  For example, recently, the Obergefell decision opened up same sex unions all over the country.  A frequent argument was that this meant you were "free" to marry whom you wanted. 

Marriage, however, is simply a natural institution for the protection of children created by male/female interactions.  It has nothing whatsoever, as a social institution, to do with "love".  The guard rails here are for the protection of kids, and then widows.  Nothing else.  They've been massively removed over the years to the detriment of society, which hasn't made people "free", but careless and miserable.

Another instance is the massive decriminalization of drugs in American society. Drugs don't make people free, they enslave people to them. The guard rails kept people free by helping them to preserve themselves against self-destructive impulses.  Frankly, Prohibition, in this context, was very much pro freedom and liberty.  Opening up the weed laws and, in Colorado's case, opening up the shrooms, is pro slavery (as well as worshiping money).

Most conservatives instinctively get this, but don't know why they do. People haven't thought out what this ultimately means. And what it means is that sometimes the expression of the people, legislative bodies, have to enact restrictions, rather than open things up.

This includes restraining some kinds of businesses, and not just those mentioned here.  Getting back to what is clearly a distributist bent, restraining some sorts of economic activities promotes freedom, including the right to make a living, but finding a conservative who realizes that isn't always an easy thing to do.

We ought to be honest, and occasionally blunt, but smart.

But at the same time, we ought to be knowledgeable.

We ought to say what we mean, but know why we mean it.

A recent populist Interim Secretary of State had, on his failed campaign platform material, that the United States Constitution was ordained by God.  He didn't say it that way, but was pretty close.  I'd have to look it back up.

That's not a conservative position, that a theocratic one, and it tends to indicate membership in one of several minority religions.  I note this, however, as I hear people relate their political views loosely to God all the time and often in a poorly thought out way.

I don't think the United States Constitution was ordained by God, and I also think that God loves Russians and Ukrainians every bit as much as Americans.  Americans may be exceptional, and right now we're not exceptional in ways that aren't universally positive, but simple unthinking citations such as this don't cut the mustard.

If your conservatism is founded in religious beliefs, fine, you ought to say so. But you probably need to go a bit further and really explain it in a thinking fashion.

Likewise, conservatives constatly spout "less government, more freedom" now days. What does that mean?  The logical conclusion to "less government" is no government, which is called anarchy of course, and which isn't very conservative.

What people who say that probably really mean is that the best government is the government that governs the least, a phrase attributed to Thoreau and to Jefferson, but which in reality nobody knows the author of. The Thoreau quote is as follows:

I heartily accept the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Thoreau, it might be noted, was in fact an anarchist, and was arguing for that.

Of course, Henry David Thoreau lived in an era in which you could wonder off in the woods and hang around there pretty much unimpeded, if you were a European American.  The prior occupants of the same territory had been forcibly removed by the government.  Those aboriginal occupants, it might be further noted, had their own form of government.

Given all of this, we can say, for instance, that stating phrases like "less government" and the like sound really nifty until you realize that a lot of them are bankrupt and always have been, if not explored more completely.  Less government?  Is that conservative, or is it simply anarchic?

Let's look again at the Sharon Statement:

  • That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
That certainly makes sense, but it probably makes sense to liberals as well.

And being free from arbitrary force concedes that some force isn't arbitrary. That often seems quite missed.
  • That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
That also makes sense, and is a basic tenant of conservatism, but one that's poorly implemented and understood. True economic freedom would require an economic leveling that modern conservatives seem to abhor. That is, some will do better than others, and all should be allowed to compete, but a guy wanting to start an appliance store really can't effectively do that if giant corporations, with shareholders protected from liability and personal loss, are running a mega store in the area, now can he?
  • That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
Conservatives, truly, can agree with that.
  • That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
American conservatives, at least, can agree with that, but  recently they don't seem to be doing universally on all of its tenants.
  • That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government; and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
This is true, but conservatives weren't really arguing for this to be logically implemented at the time, and they still aren't.

Indeed, to some degree what conservatives seem to think is that they're fighting against "socialism". True socialism was knocked out in the fifth round and has been removed from the building. Today, conservatives are arguing against any sort of revival of The American System, but only to the degree they don't personally benefit from it.
  • That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: Does it serve the just interests of the United States?

Every nation's foreign policy should be so dictated, but with the understanding that the United States isn't its own planet.  Like it or not, advances in travel, technology and the conservative insistence on the globalization of trade now mean that actions anywhere impact people everywhere, and we're all in this together.  In other words, have bat soup one day in China and the next thing you know, people are sick and Rome and Sacramento.

There are a lot more examples of how that works, but what the drafters of the Sharon statement were really after, at the time, was the Democratic inclination to intervene in foreign wars.  Conservatives of the 1950s had never really gotten over the US entering World War Two, which they didn't fully approve of but which thanks to the Japanese Navy they had no choice but to agree to. They weren't keen on the Korean War and they weren't all keen on the Vietnam War.  There was an odd conservative sense at the time that we could let the world slide into the Red Menace but protect ourselves through B-36s and B-52, not realizing that in the modern world Harley Davidson was about to get a run for the money from Honda.

All of which gets back to this.  Yes, maximum personal liberty is a conservative principle, but not up to the point of self-destruction.  The basic ethos is that we can provide a societal and cultural structure and hope that people succeed, and try to help them when they fall.  Pretending that we're the first person on virgin soil, however, isn't reality, and it in fact it never was.

Probably another way to put this is this.  Liberty can only travel with subsidiarity.  Freedom only travels with responsibility.  Success travels with duty.  And conserving means existential conservation, not reaction.

We don't really have fellow travelers.


Politics is the art of compromise, but the right/left divide in American politics blurs the lines on the nature of movements.  The Wyoming GOP is a good example of this, although the national Republican Party is as well.

Conservatives aren't populists.  Indeed, to some degree the old charge against conservatives as being elitists, a charge made against liberals as well, is true.  So what? 

Populism works just as well for left-wing mobs as right-wing ones, and in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the American Populist Party was a liberal party that American conservatives fought against. Thomas Jefferson, who was a conservative, feared the day when populists would arise in the US, which he felt inevitable, as it meant the end of democracy.  He may well have been correct.

Given this, why are conservatives sitting in the corner of the club car holding their tongues but watching the populists hit on the bar maid?  They shouldn't be.

They are, of course, for the same reason that right wing German political parties held their nose and went along with the Nazi Party in the early 30s. They had a place they wanted to go, and they thought the Nazis would bet them there.  They didn't.  The populists won't get the conservatives get there either, and the populists have no desire to do so. Their nearly open declaration of war in Wyoming against conservatives, and the six-year campaign that they are "RINO's" should be lesson enough on this point.

Conservatives should be guided by Kipling (a conservative) on this point and take from The Winners, although it certainly isn't true on everything.

What is the moral ? Who rides may read.

  When the night is thick and the tracks are blind,

A friend at a pinch is a friend indeed;

  But a fool to wait for the laggard behind

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.


White hands cling to the tightened rein,

  Slipping the spur from the booted heel,

Tenderest voices cry, "Turn again,"

  Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,

High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone

He travels the fastest who travels alone.


One may fall, but he falls by himself

  Falls by himself, with himself to blame;

One may attain, and to him is the pelf,

  Loot of the city in Gold or Fame

Plunder of earth shall be all his own

Who travels the fastest, and travels alone.


Stayed by a friend in the hour of toil,

  Sing the heretical song I have made

  His be the labour, and yours be the spoil.

Win by his aid, and the aid disown

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Conservatism isn't a man and can't be reduced to worshiping a human being.


I've already mentioned a fellow here who was a conservative, Thomas Jefferson.  

He was a great man.

He also kept slaves, one of whom he was bedding, and he kept the kids born of that union enslaved. That's creepy and reprehensible.

A person we quote here frequently and whom we admire is G. W. Chesterton. He was a polymath and great thinker. A great man.

He was also anti-Semitic.

Ideas aren't people, and once the two are confused, you are in real trouble.

Some parties evolve towards cults of personality, and at that point, they're always on the verge of failure.  Once the party is defined by Il Duce's poster, it's pretty pointless.

Donald Trump is one man, and if a person strives to find what cogent philosophical positions he's held on anything, you'll be striving all day and night, for months, and fail to find them.  In truth, love him or hate hm, Trump was a mere vessel for those with certain hopes, many of whom he failed, rather than the originator of anything brilliant himself.  Trump didn't dream up the list of conservative names for the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society did.  Economically, we had good times, but how much of that was Trump, and how much of it was his staffers who came in with him as he declared himself to be a conservative.

Now, you can take this too far. No doubt there were ideas that originated with Trump, some good, and some bad, but he certainly wasn't an overarching intellectual titan that defined a movement.  No, rather, a series of movements, some very poorly defined, simply saw him as their vehicle.

That's been seemingly forgotten.

"Heroes" almost never meet their hype.  Political heroes exist, but where they do, they should be intellects that have contributed real thought. And even when they arise, they can't be the definition of a movement.

Theodore Roosevelt, a great liberal President came to define Liberal "Progressive" Republicans after he left office and a cult of personality developed around him. That lead to the Republican Party splitting and Woodrow Wilson entering office. After that, as a heroic figure, Roosevelt did the right thing.  He reentered the GOP and was pretty quiet.

By Di (they-them) - This SVG flag includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this flag:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114863039

Footnotes

1. This is, I'd note, a debatable point.  I'd start off, however, noting that Mussolini had been a Socialist.  A Russian refugee of friend of Whitaker Chambers, as another example, who had been a Soviet general felt Communism was a species of fascism.  The Nazi Party had been a radical socialist party very early on, but once Hitler entered the picture its socialism rapidly waned.

2.  I've said "regrown" as the first real instances of conservatives becoming uncomfortable with science seems to have occured with Protestants becoming uncomfortable with the theory of evolution when it was first introduced. While evolution, as a scientific theory, is so well demonstrated it is clearly fact, some are still uncomfortable with it as this late date and occasionally there are efforts to preclude it from schools.  Apostolic Christians tend to be baffled by this, unless they've been heavily protestantized, as many in the US have been, as there really is nothing contrary to the Faith as they conceive of it in regard to evolution.  However, like going down a rabbit hole, rejecting evolution tends to end up as a rejection of all sorts of other science and, in the end, make Christianity weaker by making it look contrary to science, which it need not be.

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