The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

The laws, derived from the Bible, and finding their most demonstrably perfect form in the Constitution, assert not man’s perfection, but his imperfectibility, and, thus, the inevitability of conflict.

Our Judaeo-Christian teachings acknowledge conflict (between individuals, between them and the State, between them and God) and proceed to suggest (through narrative in the Old and through parable in the New Testament) mechanisms for its most peaceful resolution.

This tradition does not refer, overtly or by implication, to any possible perfect state of Man or of his associations, but, rather, acknowledges his weakness both before his imperfections and before that Power, however named, which gave him both a conscience, and the desire for law.

This power may be understood as metaphysical, and called God, or as a mere cosmic accident, gifting the human species with a unique formation of intellect impelling them to create Law as the most obviously utilitarian path toward effective civilization.

The Bible is an acknowledgment of human individuality. Human society has thrived, historically, as we see in our diverse society, because of the liberty to exploit a random distribution of talents, flaws, and proclivities.

Those States which have, in the name of productivity, racial purity, or, indeed, equality, attempted to limit human individuality have reverted from the civilization of the Judaeo-Christian state to savagery; for they have rejected the teachings of the Bible. One need not even say they died because they rejected God; they died because they rejected reason.

There is no secret knowledge. The Federal Government is merely the zoning board writ large.

One may find, in either place, able and even dedicated public servants, but there are no beneficent “experts.” For such an expert must be, essentially, but a skilled manipulator of people (the electorate or the legislature). He must be, therefore, a politician (that is, a perpetual candidate), bureaucrat, or demagogue; or he may be a lobbyist or a theoretician, skilled in manipulating or conspiring with the other named groups.

Our jury trial admits the testimony of experts. But the jury, faced with each side’s expert but opposed opinion, usually discards both, judging the experts suborned or misled by either their stipend or their theories. They then retire to their deliberations, realizing that, though each side’s evidence is presented as beyond the power of the common individual’s understanding, they, the jury, are going to have to figure it out for themselves.

So it is with the rest of our self-government. The problems facing us, faced by all mankind engaged in Democracy, may seem complex, or indeed insolvable, and we, in despair, may revert to a state of wish-fulfillment—a state of “belief” in the power of the various experts presenting themselves as a cure for our indecision. But this is a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Here, the captives, unable to bear the anxiety occasioned by their powerlessness, suppress it by identifying with their captors.

This is the essence of Leftist thought. It is a devolution from reason to “belief,” in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness. And if government is Good, it is a logical elaboration that more government power is Better. But the opposite is apparent both to anyone who has ever had to deal with Government, and, I think, to any dispassionate observer.

It is in sympathy with the first and in the hope of enlarging the second group that I have written this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My son asked me to explain the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal. I went on at some length. He thought for a while and said, “Then, basically, it’s the difference between the Heavenly Dream and the God-Awful Reality”—a succinct and accurate compression of those views which I have, at somewhat greater and, I hope, excusable length, endeavored to express here.

I had never knowingly talked with nor read the works of a Conservative before moving to Los Angeles, some eight years ago.

I am indebted to very patient friends and teachers I met here, who inspired me to seek some understanding of the political process.

I would particularly like to thank Endre Balogh and Rabbi Mordecai Finley. They introduced me to the works of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and, so, began my efforts at self-education; and to Jon Voight, who, among other acts of kindness, gave me Whittaker Chambers’s Witness.

As my reading broadened, I became aware of various nexuses of Conservative thought: I discovered that my radio had an AM band, and that the news and commentary on KCLA from Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and Glenn Beck made more sense to me than the bemused and sad paternalism which had previously filled my drivetime.

I am very grateful to my wife and children, for putting up with my virtual monomania as I wrestled with what had become, for me, a new way of considering human interaction; to Sloan Harris for his forbearance, encouragement, and championship of the project; and to my assistant Pam Susemiehl for her patience, good humor, and much appreciated suggestions during the writing of this book.

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INDEX

Aaron

Abihu

abortion

ACLU

affirmative action

Afghanistan War

Africa

African Americans

aid, foreign

Air Ministry

Airspeed Ltd.

Albright, Madeleine

Alinsky, Saul

Al Qaeda

American Buddhism

American Buffalo (Mamet)

American Casesar (Manchester)

anarchy

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

anti-Semitism see also Israel; Jews

Arabs

see also Palestinians

Aramaic

Aristotle

Arizona

Ashkenazi immigration

Asian Americans

Assange, Julian

atheism

autism

auto industry

aviation

bailouts

Bard, Mitchell Geoffrey

Batman

Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, Lord

Bettelheim, Bruno

Bible

birth control

Black Power

Black Sox (1919)

Boesky, Ivan

bottled water

Boy Scouts

B.P. Gulf oil leak

Brancker, Sefton

Brawley, Tawana

Brecht, Bertolt

Bridge on the River Kwai, The

British Empire

Broaddrick, Juanita

bumper stickers

bureaucracy

Bush, George W.

busing

Butler, Samuel

cabinet spiritualists

California

Campesinos

Camp Kawaga

capital

capitalism

Capone, Al

carbon dioxide

cargo cult

Carter, Jimmy

Castro, Fidel

Cavanaugh, Bernard

Cézanne

Chambers, Whittaker

“change”

Chasidic masters

Chicago, Ill.

China

Chomsky, Noam

Chopra, Deepak

Christianity

Christy, John R.

Chrysler

churches

Churchill, Winston

Civilian Conservation Corps

Civil Rights Act

Civil War, U.S.

Clinton, Bill

Clinton, Hillary

Code Pink

Coffee with Marilyn (McDonough)

cohabitation

Cold War

college

colonialism

comic books

communes

Communism

Communist International

computer

Congress, U.S.

and power to declare war

Conservatives

in election of 2008

Left’s misunderstanding of

see also tragic view of life

conspicuous consumption

Constitution, U.S.

constrained world-view

Consumer Safety Board

corporations

Corvair

counterculture

covetousness

Crash Course (Ingrassia)

Creekstone Farms

Cuba

cultural revolution

culture

“czars”

Daimler-Benz

Daley family

Darwin, Charles

Dayan, Jacob

Dead Aid (Moyo)

Death of a Gentleman (Hollis)

de Beauvoir, Simone

Debs, Eugene V.

Declaration of Independence

defense

democracy

Democrats:

as cultural inheritors of Judaism

and treatment of terrorists

Deuteronomy

Disney Corporation

Disraeli, Benjamin

“Distributive Justice”

diversity

divorce

Dred Scott decision

Dreiser, Theodore

Dreyfus, Alfred

Duck Variations, The (Mamet)

Duke’s Children, The (Trollope)

Dunne, Finley Peter

East Germany

Edison, Thomas

education

Liberal Arts

see also college

Ego

elections

of 2008

elitism

Emancipation Proclamation

Emanuel, Rahm

Engels, Friedrich

England

environmentalism

equality

Equal Opportunity Commission

Erewhon (Butler)

Ethical Culture

Ethnic America (Sowell)

exploitation

exploring

fairness

family

family values

famine

farm subsidies

fascism

Fatal Conceit, The: The Errors of Socialism (Hayek)

FDA

feminism

Feminist Studies

Fifteenth Amendment

financial crisis of 2008

Finley, Mordecai

firearms

Flowers, Gennifer

Fonda, Jane

Ford, Henry

Foreigners Aren’t Fools (Hollis)

Forgotten Man, The (Shlaes)

Forster, E. M.

Fourteenth Amendment

Framers

slavery and

France

Freedom Marchers

free love

free market

tragic view and

see also capitalism

free speech

Freud, Sigmund

Freudianism

Friedman, Milton

Frost, Robert

Gambia

Garvey, Marcus

Gates, Bill

Gemara Kiddushin 29A

General Motors

Germany

Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me (Jackson)

GI Bill

Girl Scouts

Glengarry Glen Ross (Mamet)

global warming

Goering, Hermann

Golden Rule

Good Hair

Gospels

government:

apologies by

fairness and

Left’s view of

legitimate roles of

reduction in size of

as ruinous

Grandin, Temple

Great Depression

Great Society

Greece

greed

green business

Greenpeace

Ground Zero

Guevara, Che

guilt

Guinness, Alec

Hanoi

Hansen, James

happiness

hate crimes

Hated Political Enemy, A (Chomsky)

Hayden, Tom

Hayek, Friedrich

Hazlitt, William

health care

Heaven and Earth (Plimer)

Hebrew Union College

Hefner, Hugh

Hemingway, Ernest

Hertzberg, Arthur

Herzl, Theodor

Hill, Anita

Hillel, Rabbi

Hilton, James

Hispanics

History of England, The (Macaulay)

Hitler, Adolf

Ho Chi Minh

Hoffer, Eric

Hoffman, Abbie

Hollander, Paul

Hollis, Christopher

Holocaust

Homeland Security

Homo Ludens (Huizinga)

homosexuality

“hope”

Hopkins, Harry

housing market

Howards End (Forster)

Huizinga, Johan

Humanism

humanitarianism

Hunger Project

Ibo

Id

identity politics

“If” (Kipling)

immigrants

Ashkenazi

India

Ingrassia, Paul

Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, The (Veblen)

Intellectuals and Society (Sowell)

International Committee on Climate Control

IPCC

Iran

Iraq

Iraq War

Ireland

Islam

Islamic Center

Islamic Fascism

Israel

free market in

intentions of

Left’s disdain for

Italy

Jackson, Bruce

Jacobins

Japan

Japanese internment

Jefferson, Thomas

Jenin

Jews

Ashkenazi

in NAACP

as slaves

as stateless

as trusted advisors

see also anti-Semitism

Jews in America, The (Hertzberg)

jihad

jiujitsu

Job, Steve

Jones, Paula

Joseph

Judaeo-Christian principles

Judah, Rabbi

judiciary

juries

Justice

Kane, Bob

Keats, John

Kent State: What Happened and Why (Michener)

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Kipling, Rudyard

Kissinger, Henry

Kopechne, Mary Jo

Korean War

Kraus, Karl

Kupcinet, Irv

Lal, Rattan

law of unintended consequences

League of Nations

Lee, Stan

legislature

Lenin, V. I.

Lewinsky, Monica

Lewis, Bernard

Liberal Arts

liberal education

Liberals, the Left

Conservatives misunderstood by

defense derided by

in election of 2008

essential fallacy of

“fairness” and

and fear of giving offense

government as viewed by

Israel disdained by

power worshipped by

work shunned by

world-view of

Lincoln, Abraham

Lincoln, Robert Todd

Listerine

Lombardi, Vince

Long March, The (de Beauvoir)

Lost Horizon (Hilton)

luftmensch

MacArthur, Arthur

MacArthur, Douglas

Macaulay, Thomas Babington

McCormick, Cyrus

McDonough, Yona Zeldis

McDougal, Susan

Mad Cow scare

Madoff, Bernie

Mailer, Norman

Malthus, Thomas

Mamet, David

childhood of

schooling of

in turn from Liberal to Conservative

Mamet, Henry

Mamet, Jack

Mamet, Noah

Manchester, William

Mao Zedong

Marie Antoinette

marriage

Marshall Plan

Marx, Karl

Marxism

media

merit pay

Michener, James

Milch, Erhard

military

Mill, J. S.

misogyny

money

monogamy

Monroe, Marilyn

Monty Hall problem

Moses

MoveOn.org

Moyo, Dambisa

Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen (Dunne)

Muhammad, Elijah

multiculturalism

Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Bard)

NAACP

Nadab

Nader, Ralph

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French

National Recovery Act (1933)

Native Americans

natural resources

Nazis

Neue Freie Presse

New Deal

New Economy

Nixon, Richard

Noble Savages

North Korea

November (Mamet)

nuclear power

Oakton Manor

Obama, Barack

apologies by

health care plan of

predatory lending denounced by

rhetoric of

on wealth

Obama, Michelle

Obamacare

offshore drilling

oil

One-Worldism

On Liberty (Mill)

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin)

OSHA

overpopulation

Pale of Settlement

Palestinians

Palin, Sarah

Palliser series

patriotism

pay

penicillin

personal computer

Phillips, Melanie

Phineas Farm (Trollope)

Playboy Building

Pledge of Allegiance

Plimer, Ian

pogroms

Poland

polar bears

Political Pilgrims (Hollander)

Potemkin villages

Potok, Noma

poverty

P.O.W. camps

Prager, Dennis

predatory lending

procreation

production

profligate son

property

Proverbs

psychoanalysis

Puritans

rabbis

racialism

racial tension

racism

Radford, R. A.

radio

“Rape of Jenin”

Rashi

Reform Judaism

religion

founding myths of

Religious Right

reparations

Republican Party

retirement plans

rights

roads

Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek)

Rock, Chris

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel

ROTC

Royal Air Force

Rubinstein, Helena

Rudd, Mark

Rules for Radicals (Alinsky)

Rumpelstiltskin

Russia

Rutan, Burt

salvation

same-sex marriage

San Francisco, Calif.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Sauk Indians

Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States

school boards

school shootings

school vouchers

SCLC

SDS

Secrets, Lies, and Democracy (Chom-sky)

Selma, Ala.

semantics

September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

sex education

Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Mamet)

sexual relations

Shakespeare, William

Sharks Don’t Get Cancer (Lane)

Sharpton, Al

Shlaes, Amity

Shuster, Joe

Shute, Nevil

Siegel, Jerry

Sierra Club

single motherhood

slavery

Founders and

Jews in

legacy of

Socialism and Leftism as

U.S. eradication of

Slide Rule (Shute)

snow removal

social Darwinism

social eugenicism

Socialism

in Europe

social justice

social oppression

social safety net

Social Security

Some Thoughts (Sontag)

Sontag, Susan

Sotomayor, Sonia

South Shore Country Club

Soviet Union

Sowell, Thomas

Spanish Prisoner

Stalin, Joseph

Statism

Steele, Shelby

Stein, Gertrude

Steinem, Gloria

stocks, stock market

Stranger, The (Kipling)

Streetcar Named Desire, A (Williams)

Styron, William

Superego

Superman

Supreme Court, U.S.

synagogues

Syria

Taliban

Talmud

Taney, Roger

taxes

Taylor, Mitchell

teachers unions

television

Ten Commandments

Tesla, Nikola

thalidomide

Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen)

Thomas, Clarence

Thomson, Lord

Tolstoy, Leo

Torah

totalitarianism

trade

tragic view of life

free market and

U.S. Constitution based on

Trilogy of Desire, The (Dreiser)

Trobriand Islanders

Trollope, Anthony

True Believer, The (Hoffer)

Truman, Harry S.

turkeys

unconstrained world-view

United Nations

urban planning

urban renewal

urban sprawl

utopias

Veblen, Thorstein

Vickers Ltd.

Victoria, Queen of England

Vietnam War

Village Voice

Voting Rights Act

Waiting for Godot (Beckett)

war

War and Peace (Tolstoy)

War on Poverty

War Powers Act

Washington, George

Washington Post

Water Engine (Mamet)

Watson, Paul Joseph

wealth, redistribution of

Weathermen

welfare

West Germany

“What Is the People” (Hazlitt)

What Went Wrong (Lewis)

White Guilt (Steele)

Whitman, Meg

“Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal” (Mamet)

Wikileaks

Wisconsin

Women-in-Jeopardy films

work

World Turned Upside Down, The (Phillips)

World War

Wright, Frank Lloyd

Wright brothers

xenophobia

Y2K scare

Yellowstone Park

Yiddish

youth

Zionist Conference

1

I do not think I am naïve. I have been supporting myself for quite a while, and, as a young man, took every job I could get. I was very glad to have them, but my happiness was neither gratitude toward my employers, nor insensitivity to the various slights, uncertainties, and thefts to which the unskilled, myself among them, were all subject. I was glad to have the money, and looked (and look) for any opportunity to earn more with less expenditure of effort and in more congenial circumstances. This attitude, I believe, is fairly widely shared, cutting across even the most deeply riven political lines.

2

See the educative outpouring of admiration, after September 11, for the police and firefighters, and the military—for those of our fellow Americans actually involved in the legitmate operation of Government. See also, per contra, Government’s affection for privatization—of the Chicago parking system, of various national prisons, of toll roads, of the care and feeding of troops. These among the few, legitimate enterprises of Government have in common a benefit to the citizenry greater through government oversight than would be delivered by the Free Market competition. Privatization is called “outsourcing,” but it is merely sale by incumbents of the property which is the people’s. Can anyone believe that any franchise has ever been sold by any government anywhere other than with the accrual of some personal benefit to the executives and legislators involved in the sale?

3

President Obama said, “The individual at some point, must be able to say, ‘I have enough money.’ ” But will Mr. Obama, out of office, say this of himself, and of the vast riches he will enjoy? One must doubt it.

4

The Right and the Left, I saw, differ not about programs, but about goals—the goal of the Left is a Government-run country and that of the Right the freedom of the individual from Government. These goals are difficult to reconcile, as the Left cannot be brought either to actually state its intentions, nor to honestly evaluate the results of its actions.

5

Compare Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, 1914: “For the basis of settled habit goes to sustain the institutional fabric of received sophistications, and these sophistications are bound in such a network of give-and-take that a disturbance of the fabric at any point will involve more or less of a derangement throughout. This body of habitual principle and preconceptions is at the same time the medium through which experience receives those elements of information and insight on which workmanship is able to draw in contriving ways and means and turning them to account for the uses of life.”

6

See also the grand visions of Urban Planning, which destroyed the Black Neighborhood, Welfare, which destroyed the Black Family, and Affirmative Action, which is destroying the Black Youth.

7

Consider the congruent phenomenon of the response to the inevitable failure of Government Programs. These Good Ideas—the Great Society, the War on Poverty, etc.—as above, upon inevitable failure, spawn increased governmental programs to “complete” their “work”—their failure being, inevitable again, ascribed to underfunding.

8

The mastery of skills is, more basically, essential, as inculcating the practical approach to problems: that is, “What am I trying to accomplish, is it worthwhile, what are its probable costs, where might I go for guidance, what tools do I require, how may I judge my progress?” These tools are the necessary precondition of any success in the world, whether in changing a tire or in supporting a family. As obvious as it is to state, the test, “How will I know when I am done?” seems to have escaped the voters on the Left. “When,” they might be asked, “will there be enough ‘Social Justice’? When will there be enough redistributing of wealth? When will there be enough ‘equality’?” This inability, in the electorate, to frame actual, practicable goals is exploited, first by the demagogue, and then by the dictator he may become or who replaces him; for, in the totalitarian state, nothing is enough, and, so the “Programs” must always continue.

9

Liberal Arts colleges have also traditionally sold their wares on the claim that such will allow the students to “discover themselves.” It is no accident that decades of such advertising have attracted and produced graduates who are unfitted for society, who can survive only through parental or institutional subvention, as intellectuals, as soi-disant “artists” or as “drifters.” Who does not know the thirty-year-old described by his parents as “still searching for himself?” By forty this person is, by his parents, generally not described at all, for to do so would be either to skirt or to employ the term “bum+.” It is not the purpose of the university to allow or to help students “find themselves,” but to fit them to take a place in and contribute to their society. How may endorsing and prolonging the impenetrable solipsism of adolescence do so? It cannot and it has not.

10

The intellectual may dismiss their importance (confirmation, baptism, Bar Mitzvah, marriage) but, in so doing, he does not obviate, but merely postpones and camouflages their appearance.

The contemporary youth, pampered in perpetual adolescence through college and graduate school, is spared, or, it may be said, is unaware of the necessity that self-sufficiency is a prerequisite for marriage.

He lives in a serial nonpledged monogamy, in ad-lib cohabitation. This is preceded by no awe-provoking exchange of oaths, or reminder of his (now legal) duties.

When he tires, and eventually marries, the ceremony will be understood as supererogatory—has he not engaged in cohabitation several times before? He knows how to live with a woman, he has done it many times.

The awesomeness of an oath, and the meaning of his signature on a legal document

committing him to various responsibilities, will occur to him—though only at the end of his marriage. They, in their totality are known as “divorce,” which has, in our day, replaced marriage as the culturally determined ritual signifying “leaving home.”

The ceremony of beginning one’s new home, of separating from one’s parents, originally ending in marriage, with desire and joy, has been replaced and is now attended by rancor and shock: the community has finally insisted upon its rights.

11

In 1998 Daimler-Benz, and the Chrysler Corporation, of the U.S. were engaged in prolonged negotiations regarding their proposed merger. A sign appeared on the shop floor at Chrysler: “Culture will beat organization every time.” (Paul Ingrassia, Crash Course)

A guest comes to your house. He mentions that he collects and enjoys rare scotch.

It happens that you have just received a bottle of rare scotch, and it sits, unopened, on your sideboard. “I’m not a big scotch drinker,” you say. “I wouldn’t know one from another, but I just received this as a gift. It’s just going to sit there; please, why don’t you take it?”

The guest may accept or decline the gift. Should he accept he is likely to say: “Thank you, but only on the condition that you share it with me.” You open the bottle and the guest pours you both a shot, which you both enjoy with the appropriate comments. When the evening is over, it is not unlikely that the guest will leave without reference to the now-opened bottle. At this point you, the host, are likely to suggest that he take “his” bottle with him. He, again, may accept with thanks, or refuse gracefully. No social norms have been violated.

But consider a similar situation.

The guest arrives, and notes the rare bottle of scotch. You open it, and pour two drinks, and you both remark on its excellence. At the close of dinner you suggest that, as you are not a big scotch drinker, the guest should take the bottle home with him. This is now a gross breach of manners; the guest cannot accept without the taint of greed, he cannot decline without the risk of offense, and, indeed, he has been offended, for he has, now, not been offered a gift, but scraps from your table.

12

See the presumption of courts to award custody of small children to mothers; and California’s community property law, which, however much it presents itself as gender neutral, is, effectively, an acknowledgment that a woman’s period of nubility is limited and irreplaceable. In the above cases the cultural understanding that women and infants must be protected is so deep and ineradicable that even in a climate of supposed “gender neutrality” (see the absurdity of women paying alimony to men), the law assumes the coloration of gender-blindness in order to serve the underlying goal, which is the viability of the culture irrespective of those laws enacted for its supposed betterment.

13

Why is the MA in English literature, film, gender studies, and so on, bagging groceries? Because he is just too old to begin an apprenticeship. That door has closed, and his college career has ensured his fittedness only for the position it was advertised as obviating: a menial job.

14

Those on the Left, generally, do not understand that they are endorsing a position. They understand what, to the Right, would be arguable assumptions, as “beyond question,” or, to use a blunter but more accurate term, “taboo.”

15

Is it “a racist country,” because some television show was hawking as news a group of deranged skinheads posturing? Let’s note the fact that the broadcasters considered it a sufficient novelty to display it as newsworthy. And let us note further that there is no position closed to any African American because of his race. Our laws and our culture as a whole have conclusively rejected racism. Why does it delight the Left to claim the contrary?

16

The Liberal child, unexposed to the concept of self-support, is discouraged from, and indeed will not anticipate, the day of its necessity. And see the assumption underlying the Liberal’s consignment of his child to a wash in the gentle pool of doctrine: What is it? That “something will turn up”—he, as an adult participant in a sick economy, knows it will not—or that Society will take care of his child. Putting aside the question of “Why should it?” or “Who will pay?” let us ask “With what monies?” The third, unexamined, and, I fear, more prevalent method of dealing with the child’s economic future is not to. “Rabbi Judah said, ‘He who does not teach his son a craft teaches him brigandage.’ ” (Gemara Kiddushin 29A, with thanks to Rabbi Mordecai Finley.)

17

Note that these endeavors are easily mastered, in a short intensive course of study or of laying-on-of-hands. They are, in this, much like, and indeed are the progeny of, those leisure activities once known as Adult Education, and tagged generically, by wits at the time of its emergence just post-war, as “underwater basket weaving.” They are not learned but imbibed, either through the short-course indoctrination or through the individual’s magical discovery of his “gift.”

18

So much for the family.

19

“The wealthy and the powerful no longer have the monopoly of violence they had in the past, and it’s driving them up the wall.” (Noam Chomsky, A Hated Political Enemy.)

20

In the opinion of Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor.

21

The problem, at the end, is that there must be governments, as Moyo says, to pay for things everyone uses but no one wants to fund, like her lamppost. But governments, as they grow, grow corrupt, and aid, as it has corrupted Africa, has corrupted America. We call it taxes.

To make government responsible to the citizens it was originally designed to serve, its size must be reduced, for the invitation to corruption and waste, for personal gain, or from “good intentions” is so great as to be evidently insurmountable. Government must be reduced, not abolished, which is the all-purpose canard of the Left. “Do you then vote for anarchy or laissez faire?” But reduced to the point at which the harm it inevitably does can be controlled or reversed. This potentiality is the true worth of the system of free enterprise—the alternative being periodic revolution, where governments are overthrown; which is, as Moyo says, the problem with Africa. We elect the worst, on both sides, and then marvel that they steal, subvert, waffle, and do every last thing but obey their oath to defend the Constitution. They are not elected to “do well, “ or to “transform” but to serve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And we will only stand a chance of finding those actually dedicated to doing so when we take the money out of it—both theirs to spend and squander, and that accruing to them, on their golden retirement, for all the favors they have done.

22

“Our thinking and our behavior are always in anticipation of a response. It [sic] is therefore fear-based.” (Deepak Chopra) Is it too much to suggest that this quote contains the most basic prescription of Liberalism, “Stop thinking”?

23

In a conversation with a Liberal Friend, The International Committee on Climate Control had been found to be cooking the books on Global Warming, and its much vaunted “hockey stick” graph showing a marked abrupt increase in the world’s temperature incident with the consumption of fossil fuels was revealed as a sham. The Liberal said, yes, perhaps this was true, but would we want to scrap our efforts to control a situation as Serious as Global Warming simply because the phenomenon was proved to be an invention? His argument recalled to me Al Sharpton’s championship of Tawana Brawley, whose false accusations and perjury led to the persecution of innocent police officers and the disruption of their lives. When she recanted, and admitted perjury, Reverend Sharpton suggested that though perhaps the testimony was not all it could be in this case, nevertheless, he still supported her because of the systematic history, in similar cases, of supportable claims of abuse. He was, that is, not interested in the Truth.

24

“Of the thirteen populations of polar bears in Canada, eleven are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population (Davis Strait) may actually be over-abundant.” (Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist, Dept. of the Environment, Government of Nanavut, Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada.)

25

It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman’s right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism.

26

“Aristotle established a general principle of scientific enquiry: ‘First we must seek the fact, then seek to explain.’ The scientific method is now popularly conceptualised that the science on global warming is settled as a process where authorities balance volumes of opinions. That’s it. A phenomenon is now scientifically proven because various authorities and some scientists say so. Evidence now no longer matters.” (Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth)

27

And funded by the Marshall Plan, which is to say, by a surplus of American industrial wealth.

28

“The causes are the increased polarization of the society that’s been going on for the past twenty-five years . . . larger and larger segments of the population have no form of organization, and no constructive way of reacting, so they pursue the available options, which are often violent.” (Noam Chomsky, Secrets, Lies, and Democracy, 1994)

29

The poor man is poor because of “structural oppression”; the rich man rich because of “greed.”

30

“But there must be Laws,” the Liberal says. Who would deny it? But the alternative to Statism is not the Left’s scareword of anarchy but Democracy.

31

As per Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944.

32

Most Victorian novels featured the stock character of the profligate son. He was a gambler, and, having run through his inheritance, was constantly appealing to his father to pay his ever renewed gambling debts.

The father inevitably paid, “for the honor of the family.” And he paid wringing his hands and cursing his fate. And the son thanked the father, wept, swore to reform, and continued gambling.

Why not, as there was, to him, no cost?

He had been taught, by his father, that there was no penalty for losing.

What worse lesson for a gambler?

For, if losing is cost free, why bother either to (a) learn to gamble or (b) quit?

The serious gambler learns young, and painfully, that he must control his impulses, that he must not pursue fantasy, neither wish for the cards to turn, but learn the odds and husband his resources for those times when the cards or dice do favor him.

There is a technical term for the gambler who can neither learn nor quit: he is called a sucker.

Our politicians, left and right, are, to belabor the metaphor, the wastrel son: they are free to spend, to chase fantasies, and to squander resources, for the resources are not theirs, and there is no penalty for their misuse or loss.

The wastrel son gambles, at no cost, for the thrill it provides; the wastrel politician does so in pursuit of fantasy (good works), or money. The money may be in direct support for his campaigns, or in free redecorating of his summer home; or it may be issued in the form of plaques recognizing his good works, which plaques, on his retirement from office, may be traded in for money.

33

In the late sixties I was driving a cab, and stopped for a cup of coffee at Mike’s Rainbow Café, the cabdriver’s all-night joint. I began talking to a fellow driver, a man around eighty, who, he told me, had in his youth driven for Robert Todd Lincoln.

34

Which is the essence of “Affirmative Action,” however else it may be described.

35

E.g., the U.S. Constitution.

36

Is this fanciful? Consider the case of Creekstone Farms of Kansas. During the Mad Cow scare of 2003, this beef producer developed and sold to the Japanese its own beef, raised, tested, and guaranteed to be absolutely free of the disease. The United States Government ruled that it was not free to do so. Why? Whom could this ruling possibly benefit, save those meat producers who did not choose so to raise their beef; and why in the world would legislators take up their ridiculously transparent and immoral cause if they were not suborned?

37

Compare Keeper of the Royal Bedchamber with the Hollywood studio title Director of Development. For the lay reader: No movie has ever been made from “development.”

38

As the Wrights did in their bicycle shop.

39

What, detractors might ask, does this prove? Does it mitigate against the “Crimes” and “Colonialism” of Israel, as popularized by the United Nations? I deny these crimes exist, and that Israel is an oppressive or colonialist power (to those interested I suggest the following books: The World Turned Upside Down, Melanie Phillips; What Went Wrong?, Bernard Lewis; and Myths and Facts:A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Mitchell Geoffrey Bard.)

But, let us assume you feel that Israel is neither a laudable precious democracy, nor an ordinary Western country neither good nor bad, but is guilty of all the horrors alleged of it—I assert that you would still fight with every force and argument at your command to get on the Israeli plane, you and every hard Leftist and every head-shaking misinformed One-Worlder and anti-Semite up to and including Jimmy Carter and Noam Chomsky, would, if the issue were his life, suspend his most cherished convictions of Israeli perfidy, and plead for the protection of that state he would then not only acknowledge but assert to be his ally, and further assert, as such, that their intercession in his fate was simple human decency toward their own kind—a member of a Western democracy.

There is nothing any reader of this book would not say or do to get himself and his family on the Israeli plane. Thus, delight in reviling the Jewish state reveals a certain inconsistency.

40

What is the Liberal’s dilemma? That he is forced to choose—to weigh rationally two positions, and base his choice upon an honest assessment of his own probable actions under similar circumstances. He is asked, finally, to be moral—the cost, however, of such action, is too high. It is his exclusion from the Group.

41

The Liberal West “enjoys” the Plight of the Palestinians much as it enjoys the purchase of “fair trade” coffee—it is a stimulant additive—self-righteousness being superadded to the morning’s newspaper and caffeine.

42

And the video that shows the now smiling child rise and remove his bandage when the still-photographers leave.

43

The Left’s hatred of the Right is based, as is most hatred, upon fear. The Left truly does not understand what the Right means—the principles of Conservatism are not merely foreign, and not even, primarily, objectionable, to the Left. They are incomprehensible, and so inspire the fear of the unknown. This fear is expressed as hatred of evil. What is the Conservative position the Left is absolutely incapable of understanding? That we have a choice.

44

“One aspect of social organization is to be found in economic activity, and this, along with the other manifestations of a group activity is to be found in a P.O.W. camp. . . . [T]hrough his economic activity, the exchange of goods and services, [the prisoner’s] standard of material comfort is considerably enhanced . . . he is not merely ‘playing at shops.’ [This is] a living example of a simple economy [and] its simplicity renders the demonstration of certain economic hypotheses both amusing and instructive. . . . But the essential interest lies in the universality and the spontaneity of this economic life; it came into existence not by conscious imitation but as a response to the immediate needs and circumstances.” (R. A. Radford, “The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp,” Economica vol. 12, 1945.) As does and as must any free economic organization.

45

“Perhaps the first thing a visitor to Cuba notices is the enormous energy level. It is still common, as it has been throughout the ten years of Revolution, for people to go without sleep—talking and working several nights a week . . . it seems sometimes as if the whole country is high on some beneficient kind of speed. And has been for ten years.”

“Cuban culture lacks any equivalent of the Protestant ethic to draw on; people must be inculcated about matters we take for granted.” (Emphasis added.)

“Our charge (AMERICAN RADICALS) is seen as not one of forming but of dismantling (emphasis in original) a consciousness . . . hence the anti-intellectualism of the brightest kids: their distrust of books, school.”

“The sense of community perceived in Cuba was not only nurtured by the political ideology of the system, but had its subterranean reservoirs and supports in the stereotype of the joyful, affirming attitude, attributed to the musically gifted song-and-dance loving natives, their natural and politically engendered vitality” From: Susan Sontag: “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts, April 1969.

There we have from a supposedly intelligent and observant human being, not only a recitation, but an unconscious confession of her immersion in a fantasy: The workers, though naturally happy, have not seen the potential increase in their joy brought about by continuous work without sleep; they must be inculcated in the new, political reality. American children, likewise, must discard books and schools and intuit their responsibility to dismantle their culture, reverting, thus, to the bliss of the song-loving natives off our coast.

46

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”—Rahm Emanuel

47

For a perfect dramatic representation of this crisis see Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. He has spent the whole film building a bridge for his enemies, the Japanese. It is only at the film’s end, as he is trying to stop its destruction by his own army that he realizes his crime and says, “What have I done?”

48

The Nazi swastika was a cross. The USSR’s hammer and sickle, just somewhat less identifiably, was one also.

49

Any theory put into practice may have its failure ascribed to underfunding, insufficient time for results, or the unfortunate, still insurmountable burdens placed upon it by a previous administration—this being the totality of the Obama administration’s explanation of its dismal performance.

50

Compare Marcus Garvey’s “Up, you Mighty Race, you Race of Kings. You can accomplish what you will.” (recorded 1921)

51

That the President only wants to cut taxes to those enterprises he deems politically productive is, of course, understandable. This is called “Politics.” It does not, however, synchronize his matter-of-fact admission that tax cuts create jobs with his, then, irrational insistence on helping the economy through raising taxes.

52

That the West is exploitative, destructive, racist, and finally, unworthy.

53

May they grow rich through misleading or defrauding the stockholders? Of course—if the first, let them be voted out, if the second, prosecuted.

54

In my family, as in yours, someone regularly says, “Hey, you know what would be a good idea . . . ?” And then proceeds to outline some scheme for making money by providing a product or service the need for which has just occurred to him. He and the family fantasize about and discuss and elaborate this scheme. Inherent in this fantasy is the unstated but ever-present truth that, given sufficient capital and expertise or the access to the same, the scheme might actually be put into operation (as, indeed, constantly, throughout our history, such schemes have), bettering the lives of the masses and bringing wealth to their creators. Do you believe such conversations take place in Syria? In France?

55

This is the widely noted fallacy that “work” must contain a physical element of actual labor. That one who merely “writes things down,” or “plays with figures,” is not performing “work,” but is merely “a manipulator.”

But what of the man who sat on a rock, and came up with the idea of a wheel, or the idea of a bank, or the theory of relativity?

Is there an element of gambling in the stock market? Of course there is, and you and I participate in it either directly, or through choices and purchases we each make on the basis of our predictions of a likely rise or fall in prices.

But let us assume a worst case—that the manipulators, beyond aiding any beneficial transaction (buying and selling of futures in order to, potentially, regularize the cost of commodities), or indeed just gambling (buying and selling futures solely to make money from their fluctuations), are engaged solely in “rigging the market,” and other sharp practices.

“Do you not see abuses,” the Liberal says. “In fact, do you not see inherent abuses in: the money market, the insurance industry, and so on—should they be allowed to continue unchecked?”

And the Liberal is not wrong in his outrage. But what human agency cannot be abused, and abused to the point of outrage?

And might not the Liberal, given an ironclad tip on a stock, consider acting on it, whatever his disdain for the stock market’s “practices”?

The problem is that if Government can be invoked and employed to arbitrate over every outrage, it may be invoked constantly. For outrage is a feeling and its invocation and adjudication subject to no objective test. The job of the Government is only to make and administer Laws.

The Liberal, in his legitimate, or at least supportable, “outrage,” has, quite literally, had his feelings hurt.

But if the State is called upon to take more power in such a case—if no “outrage” is to continue unchecked, then, inevitably, Government will sooner or later check everything; it will (as we see) respond to all calls to intervene; not only to control the stock market and health care, but insurance, auto sales, secondhand smoke, and the labeling of the caloric content of food, and so on. Why? Because each intervention increases the power of the respondents.

Legislators and executives live, quite literally, by their ability to find a “pressing cause”—this buys them the airtime they require for reelection, and provokes the anxiety for which they offer themselves, to the voters, as the only cure. See “Global Warming,” which made Al Gore a billionaire, and the Global Initiative which have done the same for Bill Clinton.

The Liberal is not wrong to be concerned about malfeasance and sharp practice and misdirection. He is wrong to think that much of it can be controlled by that organization which is the prime exemplar and beneficiary of these methods.

The question, finally, is, what is the correct and effective and just use of Government power? And the answer is neither contained in nor indicated by the feelings of the affronted. It is the United States Constitution.

Is it not tragic that x or y has been harmed in such or such transaction?

Yes. And it is tragic that the blunt but effective tool for the pursuit of justice is as easily exploitable as any other power; and it is tragic that many cannot see it.

56

If the Government is to protect all citizens from every possible harm deriving from their choices, from every possible “bad” choice, it is not illogical, in addition to refunding money from legal investments gone bad, to refund the purchase price of most cosmetics. A friend of mine, long deceased, fled Nazi-occupied Poland with her family. She came to New York and was, for a while, supported by her fellow Polish Jew, Helena Rubinstein. One day she said, “Helena, how can you sell these inert white creams to the public, you are selling them nothing. Helena responded, “I am selling them the most valuable thing in the world: I am selling hope.” (In conversation with Noma Potok, ca. 1979)

If the Government were to debar before—and to compensate after the fact for any actions characterizeable as “foolish”—it would, at first examination, have prohibited both the electric light and the toupee.

57

Here is a sad story. I was due to return to this university, recently, to teach for a few days, but I came down with the flu, and at the last minute had to cancel my trip. Here is what I missed. The students referred to above had provoked or been provoked by a professor to file a complaint against me, for making “racially derogatory comments.” This complaint had been picked up by the school newspaper, which announced that a campus-wide “town hall meeting” was being convened to vote on whether or not I was to be barred from appearing on campus. That’s not funny.

58

We were told, as young literary students, that Robert Frost had a lover’s quarrel with the world. Better had he had an actual fight.

59

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too . . .”

60

Many anti-Zionist Jews feel “outrage” at Israeli “enormities.” That the identity and true nature of these supposed “enormities” vanishes upon investigation or contemplation is beside the point. The actual and truly disquieting enormity of Israel is, to them, its existence—because of which a largely anti-Semitic world forces them to choose. They, as opposed to non-Jews, are forced to have an opinion on a difficult and dangerous topic; and they would rather not. They are angered not at Israel nor at world anti-Semitism, but at “the Jews.”

61

The Jew feels dislocated as his lived life is different from that which he imagines he lives. He is indelibly a Jew, associates with his kind, and denies his essential nature, his heritage, and his co-religionaries in their distress. “To summarize, contrary to the claim that is constantly reiterated, Israel has no right to use force to defend itself against rockets from Gaza, even if they are regarded as terrorist crimes.” (Noam Chomsky, “ ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’: Gaza, 2009”) Of course Mr. Chomsky feels that all is not right with the world—his hobby is promoting the cause of people who want to kill him.

62

I do not hate women. I do not like that woman.

63

“So the life you describe—one of responsibility, looking after your family, contributing back to the community—that’s what we want to reward,” President Obama, to a working-class questioner at a town meeting, September 20, 2010.

A study of Black “Toasts,” that is, song-sagas, records a couple of ditchdiggers singing, while, above them, a folklorist makes notes on their quaint ways. The folklorist tires, takes out a pocketknife, and, absently, begins throwing it into the ground. One of the ditchdiggers interpolates, into the toast, “We’re down here, and we’re ’most dead. He’s up there playing mumblety-peg.” (Bruce Jackson, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me)

64

And note, Ms. Steinem, that it is not the job of an actor to “express her real self.” (Which of us knows what his real self is?) It was her job to entertain the audience. That was her job. And she did it as well as anyone who ever acted. What entertainment has ever come from your beloved solipsism? Would you go to see such a performance—an evening of someone “expressing her true self”?

65

Senator Clinton wrote that it takes a village to raise a child. But she, as the good mother she appears to be, would not consider having her daughter raised by a village, which she would, correctly, see as a dereliction of duty as the kid’s mom. A village neither can nor should raise a child. That, as the Senator knows, is the job of the Family. Further, where are these supposed villages the Senator would like to reconstitute as orphanages? We are no longer a rural population, and the small communities the Senator names as the village’s assigns have, in the main, been destroyed by Government good intentions.

66

The B.P. Gulf oil leak, that is, was bad. The leak of thousands of classified military documents by Julian Assange on Wikileaks was good. Why?

67

Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man; see also Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.

68

Which word’s most basic meaning is “awareness.”

69

If the distribution of benefits according to a person’s genes is wrong, if absolute renunciation of such is a hallmark of a just society, then affirmative action must be as injust as chattel slavery. Is it less pernicious? For the moment, yes; is it less unjust? No. It is a distortion of law, which is to say, of conscience, in the name of sympathy—it is the sin of Nadab and Abihu.

70

How could it be otherwise? There is only so much money, and the government cannot provide “aid” to everyone. Whose claim, then, will be smiled upon? Only that which enhances the power of its administrators. What human being, in office, would do otherwise? He who is pure-of-heart? How in the world would he have been elected?

71

These laws are the great possession of the American people, and they change as the ethos of the time changes, the fugitive slave law being superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment, for example.

72

No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”

73

As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.

74

As have all stateless people. See Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America, his examples including the overseas Chinese, the Indian population of Africa, the Ibo, et cetera.

75

I challenge the reader to supply any other example in history of such behavior. Were the perennial returns acts of altruism? No. They were undertaken at the insistence of the United States and the United Nations. But this merely begs the question: Why was Israel, uniquely in Modern History, held by the world to possess its legal State only as an act of sufferance, and, attacked, required to surrender land it had won from its attackers?

76

This genre, the Superhero who must hide his “everyday” identity, is a creation of and the fantasy of the Jews. Superman (Siegel and Shuster), Batman (Bob Kane, né Kahn), and the Marvel Superheroes, created by Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber), were the fantasies of the outsider who was accepted, indeed revered, only when he was saving society, that is, doing that from which someone else benefitted; otherwise, he was ignored—a nonentity. Clark Kent couldn’t even get a date.

77

What Conservative has not had the experience of concluding a discourse with a Liberal friend in which the Liberal acceded to all the Conservative’s points but on being asked, “Well, then why do you vote Democratic?” replied, “I’m a Democrat.”?

78

“The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize–winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. . . . Dr. Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furor over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.” (David Rose, The Daily Mail, January 24, 2010) “Climate scientists allied with the IPCC have been caught citing fake data to make the case that global warming is accelerating, a shocking example of mass public deception that could spell the beginning of the end for the acceptance of man-made climate change theories. On Monday, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr. James Hansen, announced that last month was the hottest October on record. ‘This is startling,’ reports the London Telegraph. ‘Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its ‘worst snowstorm ever.’ ” Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet.com.

“Similarly, the Washington Post announced in July 2001 that Peruvian glaciers were rapidly retreating because of global warming. Their expert? . . . Benjamin Morales, ‘the dean of Peru’s glaciologists.’ Morales said, ‘The temperature was rising very slowly until 1980, and then’–he swept his arm up at a steep angle. However, had Morales looked at the climate records of surface temperature or satellite-measured air temperatures (at elevations where glaciers reside), he would have discovered that since 1979 Peru had been experiencing a cooling trend.” John R. Christy, “The Global Warming Fiasco.” Christy is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville whose chief interests are satellite remote sensing of global climate and global climate change.

79

Fear of Global Warming was, in the seventies, and as propounded by many of the same scientists, a fear of Global Cooling. See also Malthus’s early-nineteenth-century assurance that as population outstripped agricultural production, Humanity must soon and inescapably starve. See also the Y2K scare, antinuclear hysteria, and the yearly assurance that some new influenza is going to devastate the population.

80

“So the life you describe . . . that’s what we want to reward.” (President Obama, September 20, 2010; emphasis added) Can one imagine a statement more chilling from the elected leader of a Democracy?

81

Here is an example: Family members may hurt each other; it is impossible, in the intimacy of the family, not to transgress feelings, and, indeed, not to break laws. Family members might steal from each other, and the victim might feel anger, rage, disappointment, and similarly imaginable feelings. But that a disgruntled family member might denounce another to the IRS is beyond anathema.

We all understand the difference. Yet where is it written? The written law proceeds from the unwritten law. The unwritten law is worked out over millennia, through actual human interactions. It is learned through immersion in the unit-in-question: the country, the city, the profession, and, first and most importantly, the family.

This is why the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, is the story of a family, and how the lessons learned therein extend horizontally and vertically and construct the society. All dictators work first to destroy the family; the Liberal State, in its insistence upon secularization, globalism, “diversity,” and so on, apes this operation of a dictatorship.

82

Else we, the spectators (the electorate) are paying not to see how the teams progress, but how the ref feels on that particular day (legal activism).

83

See the Nazis’ insistence on involving as many as possible in the murder of the European Jews. Those who complied had burned their boats, inextricably wedding themselves to the Nazi cause, as to be conquered meant to risk execution as murderers.

84

Is the Government capable of funding actual innovation? It is disposed to fund only that which benefits the current officeholders. I tax the readers to supply instances to the contrary, and remind them that, for years, the Government has funded only that “science” which supports the fiction that the earth is warming, that it has marginalized or debunked information to the contrary, and that it has called this process, “research.”

85

See Government Healthcase (Obamacare). on the verge of bankrupting the country, and so attractive to the individual buyer that his failure to avail himself of it will be a Federal Crime.

86

Thomas Sowell cites the severe housing shortage in wartime San Francisco. At the conclusion of the war, the government restrictions on housing were lifted, and the housing shortage disappeared immediately, in spite of the influx of the returning servicemen.

87

The terrible danger of these formulations lies in the excision of the subject—“the Government shall take from each according to his ability,” and “the Government shall give to each . . .” etc.

88

The newscaster.

89

As they were once widely used to pay eugenicists—those “social scientists” who advised upon which classes of citizens should be sterilized in order to ensure a healthier population.

90

Note that however Marxist one may be, he, if he possesses the funds, is going to take his severely ill loved one to the best doctor he can find, putting aside, for the moment, the question of global inequality in compensation.

91

California has, for quite some time, had the highest taxes in the nation. Yet our schools are broke, and the citizenry has put on the ballot an initiative calling for a surtax to fund education. Where did all the previous money go?

92

Is this impossible? It is inevitable. If all medicine is under Government control, the good surgeon, unable to exercise the panache, initiative, intuition, and liberty which may have led him into the profession in the first place, will have no incentive to investigate further than the bad—his desire to spend more time with or use more facilities on a patient will be thwarted by the rules which the Government—in order to control costs—must install. To work harder, longer, and, so better than the less accomplished or inspired surgeon will not only be contrary to the terms of his employment, but may, should he persist, cost him his job. Should this seem outlandish, consider the horror tales of doctors not only dismissed but blacklisted by the HMOs which employed them. It is not that the inferior surgeon will be paid as much as the accomplished, but that the wages of the accomplished will be reduced to parity with his lesser colleague—and, as the wages are reduced, so will be the quality, inevitably, of his work, for he will be told that in spending more time he is wasting the Government’s money.

But what, you might ask, of that surgeon so inspired that he, irrespective of the strictures placed upon him by that Government which has, effectively, reduced him to the status of a medical clerk or technician, what if he, in the age-old spirit of the Hippocratic oath, “bootlegs,” his own time, and expends his own resources to bring a patient to health according to his best lights? Q. Is this not the essence of the Spirit of Medicine? A. It has been down through the ages, but the tradition, for the reasons above, must cease with Government control. Q. But what if the courageous surgeon, true to his creed, insists in this traditional dedication, in excess of that which the Government prescribes? A. Well, then, shouldn’t he be paid more?

93

See the Wisconsin union teachers calling in sick (lying) and employing their stolen treasure picketing the state capital for greater “rights.” Many wore T-shirts reading PROUD TO BE AN EDUCATOR.

94

Some will doubtless cavil that the above is merely a restatement of the Victorian canard that “every man should be happy in the place to which it has pleased God to call him.” To the contrary, it is the assertion that he be allowed the freedom to improve himself, the judge of his accomplishments or “worth” to be not the State, but those individuals, his fellow citizens, whom he has pleased with his goods and services. This may or may not be “fair,” but it is the basis of a just society.

95

Note that even if all elected officials were wise, patient, and capable of all discernment—if they were not the power-mad vote-mad corrupt or corruptible individuals all human history has shown them, in the main, to be—if these officials were actually able to determine solutions to the ancient and heretofore ineradicable problems of unfairness, poverty, greed, and envy—if they were sufficiently capable to supplant the rule of law with their own intuitions, and to codify these intuitions into plans, the plans would still be administered by the same functionaries we see today in Government jobs, with whom we have to deal, pleading, begging, asking, stunned, for justice, and for fairness in the application of the laws (which is to say, for that result we desire).

96

Is it not evident that any organization believing itself “too big to fail,” will more likely, indeed, inevitably, make disastrous decisions? Why should it not—it is Too Big to Fail. But the first rule of any healthy concern is prudence.

97

Thomas Sowell replies, to the canard of the Left, “Yes, but what would you replace it with?” “When a fire is extinguished, what do you replace it with?”

98

Statism must devolve into totalitarianism, as, the state’s power growing, political antagonists will find more commonality with each other than with those not invited to the party (the voters).

99

Correspondence from a friend: “I remember, as a student at Columbia, Mark Rudd and his ilk would storm the Dean’s office and burn our transcripts. Of course he never bothered to ask whether we wanted them burned or not.” (R.T., 2010) But it was change.

100

“Things change. The world’s best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, and France is accusing Israel of Colonialism.”—Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel to the United States

101

“Multiculturalism” and “diversity”—now insisted upon as a basic tenet of education, is, of course, directed at Whites. What Black or Hispanic enclave or group insists upon the presence of Whites? Why should they? Why, then, is the White population devoted to this show-and-tell? It is the essential counterweight to affirmative action—the postmodern version of busing. The enormity of these programs is less that they, fatuously, endorse the exposure of whites to People of Color, but that they operationally support the inverse, the idea that these People of Color benefit from White condescension. As such, “diversity” is the stalking horse of affirmative action—it is a happy proclamation of Black inferiority.

102

As Thomas Sowell said, one might complain that this or that activity “ruins his neighborhood”; but that one does not own his neighborhood—he merely owns his house. The attempt to have governmental bodies enforce zoning (and environmental) rules for the benefit of incumbents is a misuse of the power of the State.

103

“The sense of community perceived in Cuba was not only nurtured by the political designs and ideology of the system, but had its subterranean reservoirs and supports in the stereotype of the joyful, life affirming attitude, attributed to the musically gifted song-and-dance loving natives, their natural and politically engendered vitality.” Susan Sontag wrote, “The Cubans know a lot about spontaneity, gaiety, sensuality, and freaking out. They are not linear, desiccated creatures of print culture.’ ” (Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims, quoting Susan Sontag’s Some Thoughts)

104

In his book Political Pilgrims, Paul Hollander quotes Simone de Beauvoir on her visit in the 1950s, to China: “. . . not a model prison; it was simply the only one in the city area . . . what a difference between this and the American system. (Here) they have a field for sports at their disposal, a big courtyard with a theatre where a movie is shown or a play presented every week. The day I was there they were rehearsing a play of their own. There is also a reading room stocked with books and periodicals where they can sit and relax.” Quoted from de Beauvoir, The Long March.

Please note “the day I was there . . .” the coincidence between de Beauvoir’s visit, and the “happenstance” of the staging of the play. Was this woman a complete fool, or just criminally deluded? And, finally, to those who suffered under Mao, and to those on the Left inspired to deny their sufferings, by her recitation, what is the difference?

105

The Obama administration (on April 6, 2010) announced a new directive regarding our Nuclear Arms—that they will never be employed against a Non Nuclear Power. Such a power, now, is free to use biological warfare, germ warfare, poison gas, and so on, free from worry about response from our superior technology. Whom, in the name of God, does this directive benefit save our enemies?

106

(Whittaker Chambers, Witness, 1952)

107

President Obama, in a radio interview at a ballpark, was asked if he, as a Chicagoan, preferred the Sox or the Cubs. He claimed he was a Sox fan, twice mispronounced the name of Comiskey Park, twice referred to the umpire as “the judge,” and, asked for his favorite White Sox, past or present, could not come up with one name. Sigh.

108

Note that, to a parent, most fatuous of pronouncements, that of the childless upon child rearing, which begins, “my niece . . . ”

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter 1 - THE POLITICAL IMPULSE

Chapter 2 - THE AMERICAN REALITY

Chapter 3 - CULTURE, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, THE AUDIENCE, AND THE ELEVATOR

Chapter 4 - ALCATRAZ

Chapter 5 - LOST HORIZON

Chapter 6 - THE MUSIC MAN

Chapter 7 - CHOICE

Chapter 8 - THE RED SEA

Chapter 9 - CHICAGO

Chapter 10 - MILTON FRIEDMAN EXPLAINED

Chapter 11 - WHAT IS “DIVERSITY”?

Chapter 12 - THE MONTY HALL PROBLEM AND THE CONTRACTOR

Chapter 13 - MAXWELL STREET

Chapter 14 - R100

Chapter 15 - THE INTELLIGENT PERSON’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

Chapter 16 - THE VICTIM

Chapter 17 - PURITANS

Chapter 18 - THE NOBLE SAVAGE

Chapter 19 - ADVENTURE SLUMMING

Chapter 20 - CABINET SPIRITUALISM AND THE CAR CZAR

Chapter 21 - RUMPELSTILTSKIN

Chapter 22 - MY FATHER, AL SHARPTON, AND THE DESIGNATED CRIMINAL

Chapter 23 - GREED

Chapter 24 - ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 25 - OAKTON MANOR AND CAMP KAWAGA

Chapter 26 - FEMINISM

Chapter 27 - THE ASHKENAZIS

Chapter 28 - SOME PERSONAL HISTORY

Chapter 29 - THE FAMILY

Chapter 30 - NATURALLY EVOLVED INSTITUTIONS

Chapter 31 - BREATHARIAN

Chapter 32 - THE STREET SWEEPER AND THE SURGEON, OR MARXISM EXAMINED

Chapter 33 - SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH

Chapter 34 - HOPE AND CHANGE

Chapter 35 - THE SMALL REFRIGERATOR

Chapter 36 - BUMPER STICKERS

Chapter 37 - LATE REVELATIONS

Chapter 38 - WHO DOES ONE THINK HE IS?

Chapter 39 - THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE

Acknowledgements

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX