Rebane's Ruminations

Two Americas - A National Emergency on Steroids (Addended)

George Rebane

A couple of mornings ago NPR’s Morning Edition reported that the illegal entrant rate across our southern border has exceeded over a million per year, and that the border security and illegal alien handling facilities are overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed, the Border Patrol has now abrogated the role of the US Customs and Border Protection agency in turning the illegals loose into our society with minimal or no ability to track their identity, origin, or intentions.  All we know is that they will quickly disperse and emerge in ‘sanctuary’ communities where all manner of public doles to succor them await.

The national border crisis is daily attested by the reports from the border and testimony from homeland security and border control officials past and present.  Recently they were joined by several Obama era higher-ups including former Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson who testified that there is indeed a border crisis in progress.

In the face of this, the country’s anti-American political faction continues to celebrate, promote, and sustain this deluge of indigents, the human trafficked, criminals, diseased, and economic opportunists that are now pouring across our southern border.  They also communicate their welcoming message in the “shithole countries” of Central America, well-funded messages that induce desperate people and dubious opportunists to undertake the long and dangerous journey north through Mexico.  Our progressives don’t care for the migrants’ welfare or risk involved during the journey.  Their only objective is to maximize the number of illegals who successfully penetrate our border, who then become political fodder within a byzantine and broken immigration system.  Ultimately their presence and large numbers will serve anti-American ends one way or another.

Astoundingly, there are even many pro-American light thinkers who cannot understand the necessity for and cost-effectiveness of an improved and extended physical barrier to span critical sections of the border.  They swallow the argument of the anti-Americans that what we really need is to greatly expand and improve the welcoming facilities to house, feed, care for, and relocate the arriving hordes.  All such responses will do everything to increase the flow and nothing to stem it.  It is the analog of calling for more bailing buckets instead of patching the hole in a sinking boat.  There is no public awareness or discussion of the longer-term impact that these indigents and their now accelerating arrival rates will have on our institutions, economy, and citizens.  The existential goal of the anti-Americans is to simply keep the ingress rate high and increasing.  No one has asked, ‘How and when will this massive migration of illegal aliens stop?’

Responding to the Staid and Fearful

George Rebane

RR readers who comment on these pages have a record of discussing and debating the most critical and germane questions that face our country and society in these times of fracturing polarity (albeit not always in the most churchillian manner).  I am a declared conservetarian (q.v.), and over the years of this weblog I have outlined in detail my credo, my semantics, and my prescriptions for the orderly evolution of America’s governance in this ‘last great century of Man’.  In a recent comment stream, a reader again contends these prescriptions, not on their existential merits, but on their provenance which for him is qualified only to the degree that the proposed be limited to that practiced in the past.  Here I offer a short counter to such constraints and criticism.

The ability to see futures without exemplars from the past is admittedly and obviously a gift not shared by the many.  Most people, perhaps fortunately, can only see the future as reflections in their rearview mirrors – if it isn’t there to be seen, then there’s no such possibility of it yet to come.  Then there are those relatively few who live on the edge of the arts of the possible, and who traffic in ideas and enterprises that have neither been nor yet to be.  Both cohorts of Man serve needed functions which, when tempered, benefit and power the advancement of civilizations.

The former of the staid cohort function as brakes, shock absorbers, and even anchors to dampen, absorb, and integrate the possibly chaotic and non-coherent novelties that those of the latter, living on the bleeding edge, can see, build, and seek to introduce into the established orders.  Fate, the gods, and my parents assigned me to the bleeding edge cohort, of which long ago I became a credentialed, accomplished, privileged, punished, and blessed member.

So, when people of my ilk do their work, it is almost always in the untrammeled domains where few or none have trod, and where reward always lies behind a mountain of risk.  My life’s journey through this terrain is recorded by the scars on my back and the coins in my purse.

So when I have outlined the desiderata of governance from a conservetarian perspective, it is not an exercise of just ‘cut and paste’ of the elsewhere and from the elsewhen.  Seeing something strange and new, the question of the staid always belies their fearful admonition to never go where we have not been.  I neither hail from nor have I lived in such lands.  As a native Estonian, I take pride in the innovations in education, technology, and governance that that little nation has always had the courage to adopt and practice.  As a naturalized American, I continually bless the memory of our Founders’ dedication, intellect, foresight, and courage to bring forth a land then unknown to Man.  All Americans are daily blessed by our Founders not being deterred or stayed in their enterprise by those who asked them for proof of existence and success for such a new country they gathered together to bring into the world.

CA GOP RIP (soon)

George Rebane

Last week I attended a candidates’ luncheon put on by the NC Republican Women Federated, undeniably the most active and productive party organization in the county.  Featured were the four candidates running for State Senate from our district – Brian Dahle, Rex Hime, Kevin Kiley, Theodore Dziuba.  Each a fine gentleman, and each gave good account of themselves during their turn at the mic.  When Q&A time came, my card was one of those drawn for the candidates to answer – ‘What plan does the CA Republican Party have for its resurgence in the state?’

None of the four knew of any such plan, and each spent their time rehashing pabulum for the assembled that we must all work harder for the 2020 election to seat more Republicans – and this was right before the party’s big statewide convention this past weekend.  On a follow-up question I pointed out that statewide and local Dems were organized to a tee, demonstrating every issue at every opportunity, prominent in the media, harvesting voters at the grass roots level, and in general eating our lunch.  The candidates' individual responses could be summed by ‘Well yeah, we could do that also.’  Most attendees were a bit aghast at such a presentation by local party stalwarts.

The CA Democrats’ super-majorities in all things political has pretty much stunned the Republicans, and the malady seems to have spread statewide.  Edward Ring, co-founder of the California Policy Center, has posted ‘California’s GOP Plays It Safe, When Safe Equals Death’, which may be considered as a pre-post-mortem for the CA GOP.  (H/T to correspondent)

Longtime RR readers are aware of my litany of criticisms about how the CA Republican Party has been organizing the state’s conservatives and libertarians to stand up and promote their values and vision for America’s future and the revival of our Golden State. 

Scattershots – 25feb19 (updated 26feb19)

George Rebane

In ‘America’s Second Civil War’ by Dennis Prager, he makes the case of the Great Divide stating that, save for slavery, Americans are further apart in how they think about their country and in which direction should be its future, than during the “First Civil War” in the 19th century.  He writes in Townhall.com that “Liberalism -- which was anti-left, pro-American and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America; and which regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism -- is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don't call themselves conservative. … The left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism. … Like the left in every other country, the left in America essentially sees America as a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, warmongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.”  This has been a seminal part of Rebane Doctrine and the RR commentaries that have expanded on these points over the years.  This message will continue here as long as it is allowed to be published.

Gov Gavin Newsom is part of the leftwing clatch that supported CA’s bullet train to nowhere and blew billions in its abortive and aborted construction.  CA having violated literally every part of the agreement with the feds for getting dollars from Washington, Trump now has stopped further funding and wants to claw back what the state has fraudulently received.  Newsom unabashedly lies in stating that the state has complied, and is really not stopping the project, but merely reducing its scope to have it now go from nowhere to nowhere on the remaining funds. (more here)  Ultimately he’ll have to go back to CA voters for more money, and he’ll probably get it from a now-dominant Democrat electorate, most of whom don’t pay very much or any taxes.  To them it will all be OPM from the greedy rich.

Edelman Intelligence conducted a recent poll which revealed that “53% of California residents are considering leaving the Golden State because of the high cost of living.” A higher share (62%) of “respondents said they believed the best days of California were in the past.” (more here and here)  This in the face of a continuing barrage of leftwing lies telling us that the state is in fine fettle with all the right-thinking people happy dancing in the streets.  As also witnessed on these pages, the progressives maintain that only the narrow-minded, ignorant conservatives are disgruntled because the Republican party has become irrelevant in Sacramento and major metropolitan areas.  People voting with their feet tell a different story.

Trump and the Ugly Fat Kid will meet again, this time in Vietnam, to continue talking about North Korea’s 'denuclearization', a concept yet to be defined by the parties.  And you can bet the ranch that their current definitions are not even close.  Here’s my take on Trump’s plan forward.  He knows the UFK cannot give up his nuclear program for the simple reason that he and his family will then be killed by the high level echelon of generals that surrounds him (because they and their families will also live only so long as the regime survives, otherwise they too will be dead meat).  So Trump will be satisfied to continue these talks, claiming progress as long as NK doesn’t resume missile flights and underground testing.  When he leaves office and a more weaker-looking Democrat (a la Obama) takes over, the UFK will immediately resume testing and threatening that will bring the world to the brink again, and also solidify his grip on his regime.  At that point Trump and the Repubs will point out that it was their clever foreign policy that kept the world safe, and now look what’s happening with the naïve Dem leadership in power.  This will be known as Trump’s Grand Ropadope to avoid war on the Korean peninsula for which no one seems to have a stomach.

[26feb19 update]  Henderson’s population surges past Reno’s as Californians arrive in droves to escape taxes, fees, regulations, and prices (especially for living units).  The numbers are truly amazing as again reported in ‘As California Loses People, a Las Vegas Suburb Grows’.  California’s small net population growth is made possible by an equally massive influx of immigrants and illegal aliens, and a high birthrate contributed by resident minorities.  Progressives are the only political segment of California’s population that is totally sanguine if not celebratory about this demographic dynamic.  The rest of us chickens continue wondering how long the state can carry on with an ever smaller cohort of highly taxed wealth generators.

Scattershots – 9feb19 (updated)

George Rebane

‘How a tiny country bordering Russia became one of the most tech-savvy societies in the world’ reports CNBC on Estonia’s eternal love affair with technology.  As the world’s leading country in its integration of the internet into literally every facet of Estonian life, the implementation of such cooperation between public and private sectors underpins the Rebane Doctrine commentaries on collectivization.  The bottom line has always been that the smaller and more culturally coherent a cooperating cohort, the better can collectivization be implemented in such a society.  While Estonia’s experience and those of other Scandinavian countries sing a siren song to our progressives, what they always overlook are the stark differences between a large, inhomogeneous, and culturally diverse America, and the small, culturally homogeneous countries that dot the globe.  The only way we can even attempt to replicate the idylls of small country harmonies is to create a hierarchy of ever smaller and distributed jurisdictions (as envisioned by our Founders) in our land which then can enjoy the benefits that derive from common cultures.  Sadly, our Left has taken us beyond the tipping point toward big government socialism (centrally controlled cohesion by the gun) and the tyrannies that inevitably lie beyond. (H/T to correspondent)

The current spate of cold winter weather has me tending daylong fires in our big front room fireplace.  Many RR readers know my longtime interest in the care and feeding of wood fires (here is a more complete treatment).  Getting the fire going this morning reminded me of an aspect that I have not emphasized enough – the form of the fire that you should attempt to maintain for the longest time possible.  Most people think that a robustly flaming fire provides the most heat to those sitting in front of the fireplace or around a campfire – wrong.  Bright cheery flames primarily heat the air which then convects vertically upward.  It’s the radiant heat that flows out sideways (and all other directions) that provides the desired warmth from such fires, the rest goes up the chimney.  And that radiant heat comes mainly from the red-hot coals.  So, the ideal fire is one that has finally generated enough coals, both on the coal grate and the sides of still burning wood, to provide a large red radiating area toward you and the room you are sitting in.  At this phase of the fire you want to minimize the burning rate, keep the flames sparse and small, and let the developing coals glow and radiate.  When you finally do have to add another piece of wood or two, try to add it so that large horizontal fire pockets (q.v.) remain visible from which radiation can still escape.  (Using a keeper chain is ideal for structuring such vertically 'open front' fires backed by a yule log.)  Here’s picture I took this morning of the fire having achieved its ideal heating phase.

[update]  George Kennan’s 22feb46 ‘Long Telegram’ to SecState George Marshall is one of the most prescient and useful intra-government communications in US history.  In it Kennan lays out the coming world order and the proper role of the US as hegemon to contain the already obvious post-WW2 spread of communism.  Bottom line, in order to avoid fighting WW3, be prepared to be the white hat global sheriff by always deploying small contingents of troops in critical locations all over the world, and to fight small ‘brushfire wars’ as they become necessary.  And prepare to do that indefinitely – with allies if possible, alone if necessary - as the cost of doing business to prevent the world from falling into a new age of global tyranny.  And with that Kennan nailed the foundation of our foreign policy for the last 70+ years.  I had to post this as the topic of our ongoing foreign policy came up at a recent dinner with friends.  (The original archival copy is here, with a more readable version here.)

Globalization, Globalism, Globalists, and Governance

George Rebane

RR commentaries have defined and used globalism and globalization interchangeably to mean the political and commercial progress toward a one-world government as long proposed by the United Nations and its proponents, and especially by those espousing the UN’s Agenda21 program (q.v.) promulgated by its worldwide network of ICLEIs (more here and here, and see also RR’s ‘Agenda 21’ category of commentaries).

In recent RR comment stream exchanges, a couple of our leftwing readers reminded me, correctly, that most of the public understands ‘globalization’ to refer to the trade and commerce aspect of companies rapidly expanding to do business across national borders.  Moreover, that this same cohort, which includes our commenters, doesn't connect ‘globalization’ with today’s concurrent efforts by the international collectivists to abrogate the Westphalian order of nation-states and unite humanity under a one-world government.  Merriam-Webster defines globalization as “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.”  Clearly the focus and intent here is in the fields of commerce and not unified governance.

Yet M-W and others define ‘globalism’ as “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence”, and “the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations”. Here we definitely overlap into the area of politics and governance.  And people who are ‘globalists’ are those who share such an “attitude”, now on the track to one-world governance.  This has been the sense in which RR commentaries have interchangeably used ‘globalization’ and ‘globalism’, along with ‘globalist’.

So, in the interest of continuing our tradition of precise definitions (which so vexes the Left), I will henceforth use the following definitions in my commentaries and comments –

Globalization - the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by businesses and commercial institutions in sovereign nation-states expanding their products and services across national boundaries in conducting free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.

Globalism – the ideology that treats the whole world as a unified sphere of political influence, and promotes institutions which place the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations, with the ultimate goal of achieving a one-world government.  A globalist is a person embracing such an ideology.

These definitions will be included in the next edition of RR’s Glossary & Semantics.

The Real Issue That Divides Us (updated 27jan19)

George Rebane

Conservetarians believe in global diversity and national cohesion; progressives believe in global conformity and national diversity.  The former resists global autocracy, the latter sustains global autocracy.

Nationally prominent commentator and executive WSJ editor Gerald Seib recently wrote ‘The Wall Marks a Deep Cultural Divide’ (in the 21jan19 WSJ) a piece describing attributes which divide America that focused on “character differences”.  In his piece Seib said, “One question asked whether immigration adds to the character and strength of America by increasing its diversity and bringing in new talent, or detracts from American character by putting burdens on government services and creating language barriers”, and then cited the disparate responses of the Trump and resist-Trump supporters.

While I agreed with Seib’s subsequent analysis, I felt that he did not reach deep enough to a more basic, revelatory, and explanatory level (in the sense of being able to reliably predict derivative attitudes and behaviors).

I emailed Mr Seib a brief explanation of my critique: Mr Seib - Our divide goes much deeper than can be discovered with pabulum questions about “American character”.  If these surveys were structured and administered so as to discover what kind of future world order Americans would like to see the US being a part of (i.e. Westphalian sovereign nation-states vs a peerage of jurisdictional fiefs of a global government), then the answers would be more revealing (and reliably predictive) as to the respondents’ attitudes about border security, immigration policy, cultural diversity, paths to citizenship of illegal aliens, etc, since all these are dependent on how people value culturally cohesive (vs fragmented) nations, and whether/how such a community of nations should continue to organize the world’s peoples.

Scattershots – 10dec18 (updated 13dec18)

George Rebane

Laffer lives, tax rates do affect people’s behavior.  French president Macron and his government have discovered that over the last couple of weeks, and are now retreating from the attempt to wean their country from fossil fuels by boosting the price of such fuels for French consumers and workers.  The monetary losses already suffered in the country’s economy, and therefore tax revenues (France already has one of the world’s highest aggregate tax rates) have yet to be totaled, but the sum could easily be in the billions of dollars.  The bottom line is that no one any longer believes that their government’s tax increases will have any positive impact on global warming.  None of this is a lesson to or understood by America’s Left.

Schumer was for border security before he became a champion of open borders.  It’s hard to believe that Senator Chuck had such sentiments about illegal aliens, and told us all that “illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple.”  Today only a shrinking share of courageous Republicans can say the words which so forcefully came from the mouth of one of Democrats’ leading forked tongues in 2009.  You can see the senator’s Georgetown Law School two-minute summary of the topic here.  How come every voter in the US has not seen this little video?

Our local lefties are happy dancing in the streets celebrating Nevada County’s role in California’s recent Blue Wave, and ascribing all kinds of community bennies to the advent of coastal progressives moving into these foothills.  What’s astounding about that celebration is the celebrants’ claim that our county is therefore taking part in all the good things cultural and economic in which California is supposed to already lead the country.  None of these people are aware of the real stats on California’s decline culturally, commercially, and into criminality.  The exodus of middle-class workers, retirees, and businesses continues unabated, and unreported by the lamestream.  Kinda reminds one of the progress reports that always adorned the pages of Pravda in the old days of the USSR, and to a great extent still do under Putin.

George Boardman again lambasts LaMalfa (here).  Our favorite Union columnist and stalwart apologist for the Left on these pages singles out our congressman for his rice farm subsidies that the recent (dreadfully misnamed) ‘farm bill’ promises to continue.  The cleverly crafted conclusion that Mr Boardman bestows on his readers is that Doug LaMalfa somehow stands out as the leading leech of farm subsidies which are distributed far and wide across the land.  Moreover, our columnist again implies that it would be a simple matter for LaMalfa to decline his subsidies were he only made of stiffer stuff.  (I leave it to the reader to decide how much of this is fake news viz opinionated commentary, as also found on these pages.  For the record, RR has been and remains opposed to farm subsidies and corporatism.)  But nowhere does Boardman profit his audience by telling them that 85% of the farm bill is the carefully camouflaged food stamp welfare bill – that would mangle the carefully crafted message.  In fact, there are over 40M Americans on food stamps, more than the 37M population of Canada.

‘History Ended in 1945’, so argues James Dobbins, former assistant SecState who now holds the Distinguished Chair in Diplomacy at the RAND Corporation.  He maintains that “undoing the postwar order could produce global depressions and frequent wars.”  This has been a general theme of Rebane Doctrine, and has been debated here for years.  I found the following excerpt as a particularly strong endorsement for continuing capitalism, the Westphalian world order, and America as a global hegemon.

Yet in a larger sense, the “end of history” came in 1945. Since then there have been no wars between major powers and few between smaller states. The business cycle has been moderated if not eliminated. The subsequent seven decades saw almost continuous economic growth, lifting nearly half the world’s population into the middle class.

These accomplishments are based on two basic, widely accepted norms of international behavior: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s territory, and thou shall open thy markets to all equally. The norms were buttressed by numerous postwar institutions—the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the World Trade Organization. Equally important, the norms were backed by U.S. military and economic power and the attractiveness of the American political and economic model.

Trump’s NDA payoffs.  Quite often Non-Disclosure Agreements are part of quid pro quo contracts.  Why is Trump singled out for such a contract that involved alleged events before he became a candidate, and the effect of which on the election is debatable and yet to be demonstrated?  Didn’t Hillary also pay staff (possibly with government or campaign funds) to scrub servers of contents which definitely would have had an impact on her electability including potential criminality?  No one has made a peep about that.

[13dec18 update]  Apple to build $1B, 15K job facility in TX - “ choosing Austin as its marquee job-creation locale” - among other locations across the country.  Progressives (especially the looney local lefties) need to strap on yet another set of blinders in order to continue denying the Great California Exodus that is moving producers and the productive out of state. (more here)

Coming Apart and the Beltway Bubble (updated 4dec18)

George Rebane

SecDef Mattis was interviewed yesterday by FN’s Bret Baier at the Reagan National Defense Forum.  This is an annual get together of the country’s important people to talk about, well, national defense.  I’m a fan of Gen Mattis (even though he is a gyrene) and think he’s done a good job at the DoD.  But when the interview turned to how poorly Americans get along with each other today, and the Right/Left polarization, Mattis’ response left me slack-jawed.  I had to rewind the DVR and listen to his quote a couple more times to be sure I heard it right.

The general’s response was a version of Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we just all get along?’  He didn’t think that there lay any real barriers for the country reuniting into a functional form again because, after all, we are still all Americans, and as a country “we probably don’t have big differences about where we want to go ultimately.”  What??!!

Scattershots – 18oct18 (updated 20oct18)

George Rebane

All eligible should vote?!  In today’s (18oct18) Union ‘Hits & Misses’ we note the following – “HIT (from Editorial Board member Susan Rogers): To the massive turnout at the Miners Foundry for Indivisible Women of Nevada County's Get Out the Vote event. Even if you personally don't agree with the agenda of the group, any patriotic citizen should not have a problem with the concept of urging all eligible voters to vote.”  (emphasis mine)  Actually, many of us are not sanguine with that concept, so far as it involves voters ignorant of the issues on which they are asked to vote.  To do your country and community a favor, please don’t vote on matters you don’t understand.  As many have argued before, and we reinforce here, JUST being able to fog a mirror does not necessarily recommend your vote.  More on this important (nay, critical) notion is available from Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007), whose arguments are more valid today than ever, and are expanded here, here, and here.

Poverty, Transfer Payments, and GNI, oh my!

George Rebane

Abetted by progressive propaganda, the UN has found “shocking” evidence that 40M Americans live in “squalor and deprivation”, which comes to about 12.7% of our population.  The trouble with that piece of fiction is that none of the millions seeking entry into the US by hook or crook believe that bullcrap.  As we have pointed out before, our Census Bureau uses a complicated formula for computing the poverty threshold that uses factors such as income based on family size and composition, and totally ignores the $1.5T of government transfer payments along with the additional $500B of private charity benefits that our ‘poor’ receive annually.  Were only the government payments included in the calculation, our poverty rate would already be less than 3% which reflects realworld total household income data, consumer spending patterns, and the country’s immigration pressures.

But none of this would fit the vote buying and plantation maintenance narratives of our Left, now very busy moving the Democratic Party toward full scale socialism.  These elites need to play a hand that contains not only the poverty card, but also separate cards for inequality, racism, sexism, and more ‘phobics’ that emerge every day.  And the maintenance of this Big Lie is all made possible by their bought and paid for propaganda purveyors of the national media.  Were it not for the constant daily din of dunning news about how badly we are all doing because of President Trump and his 'illegitimate administration', people would forget what is drilled into their heads, go about their business and enjoy a real recovery from the last recession that’s finally worth its name.

Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post’s token conservative columnist, recounted the economic and public policy realities that we have enjoyed since Team Trump took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  In ‘Trump may be outside our norms. But he is succeeding for all of us.’ Hewitt recounts the impressive litany of this administration’s accomplishments including getting more people, especially of the minorities, working than anyone today can remember.  One of the tightly kept secrets by the lamestream media is the recent Rasmussen poll that shows a resurgence of blacks supporting the president more than doubling from one out of five to one out of three – that means people are beginning to notice where it counts, in their wallets.

Economists Phil Gramm and John Early in ‘Government Can’t Rescue the Poor’ provide the reader a snootful of pertinent stats about poverty in America, and conclude that with what our poor already receive in transfer payments and from charities, that there is no amount of money which will today motivate them to added efforts “to allow them to develop and use their capacities.” This was Lyndon Johnson selling his 'War on Poverty' in 1964, one of the historically least effective and most destructive programs ever devised by our government.  As supportive data, consider that in the twenty years since WW2, America’s poverty rate had steadily dropped from 32.1% to 14.7%.  And then in 1965 its descent stopped dead in its tracks by the advent of progressive give-aways, the only real measurable achievement of which was the destruction of African-American families.

Without the obligation of marriage to hold them back, black men impregnated willing black women who knew that each additional fatherless kid meant a bigger check from the feds.  The Census Bureau data confirms “how the War on Poverty produced an unprecedented decline in work effort among those who received benefits”, and over the years it “has been an abject failure, increasing dependency and largely severing the bottom fifth of earners from the rewards and responsibilities of work.”

Today the marriage, bastard children, educational achievement, and employment stats tell the story of how the Great Society has impacted America’s minorities.  But not to worry, as reported by Gramm and Early, the actual poverty rate of 3% is confirmed by the “Department of Energy Residential Consumption Survey, which finds consistently rising spending among poor families on cars, home electronics, cable, household appliances, smartphones and living space. The 3% poverty rate would fall even further if it accounted for transfers within families, some $500 billion of private charitable giving, and the multibillion-dollar informal economy, where income is unreported.”

This effect on the poor has been known for generations.  Even that great social engineer Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned us during the midst of his depression in 1935 that “The lessons of history show conclusively that continued dependency upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.”

So now we come to Guaranteed National Income, which is suggested by many, including me (here), as the only prophylactic that will keep blood out of the gutters.  The only concern that nags me is a tenet in my credo that acknowledges 'relevance' as being a fundamental human requirement for maintaining stable civil societies.  Without doing work that obviously contributes to the well-being of his family and community, people will become dissatisfied with the general scheme of things that surrounds them.  And they will respond by either attempting to become relevant in their established environment, or disrupt that environment for a new, perhaps simpler (more primitive?) one in which they again see themselves as relevant.

No matter our politics, these are the certainties that will shape our world as technology advances and governments seek to soothe us, first with gratuities then with guns.

An evening with Victor Davis Hanson (updated 10oct18)

George Rebane

Last Saturday evening we loaded some friends in the car and headed for the Grand Sheraton in Sacramento to attend a fundraiser for Congressman Tom McClintock.  We’ve known Tom for years and continue to support him in our neighboring congressional district.  The evening featured a talk and Q&A with Victor Davis Hanson.  Professor Hanson is “an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets.”  He is also an award-winning, endowed senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

I have been a student of VDH for many years, and along with our friends, we were not going to pass up this opportunity to hear him in person.  Well, the lavishly catered evening turned out even better than expected.  We got there early and ran into the congressman in the hall, and after greetings and conversation who should walk up but Prof Hanson.  Tom greeted him warmly, graciously introduced me, and then left the two of us to chat.  We had a wonderful one-on-one for almost thirty minutes as we and the gathering crowd waited for the ballroom doors to be opened.

McClintock called the event to order, gave one of the best introductions that I have heard from a politician at his own fundraiser – a concise but warm welcome, proper summary of his guest's vitae, and mercifully short thank-yous to the event’s sponsors.  The good professor took to the podium and delivered a 30-45 minute talk that framed today’s national politics from an historical perspective, and then detailed the events and political tactics that have so split the country into factions that share few social objectives and no longer effectively communicate with each other.  After that, he took questions for about an equal period of time.  No one felt rushed, and there was plenty of time to delve deeper into the issues - a wonderfully cordial and informative evening.

It was no surprise to me from our private conversation and his invited talk, that the good professor’s historical interpretations and political observations flew in fairly tight formation with the Rebane Doctrine tenets published in these pages.  (In other words, we are both “alt-right” birds of a feather according to the local lefties who disparage yet track every word in these pages.)  I’ll conclude this report with a selection of Dr Hanson’s observations and talking points.

1. Obama’s administration was the most scandalized administration in recent memory.
2. Judge Kavanaugh’s rebuttal of Judiciary Committee Dems was on the mark, and of better ‘temperament’ than shown by Justice Ginsburg viz the Trump election.
3. The right of the accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty has been thrown out by the Dems and the media with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
4. CA is now an Orwellian state in which the middle-class has the nation’s highest tax rate, 20% of Californians live in (official) poverty, with one-third of the nation’s poverty stricken taking up residence in CA.
5. “Those who rule in California are never subject to their own ideology.” (e.g. Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom, …)  “They can afford to be liberal at someone else’s expense.”
6. “Fences work and have always worked.” Examples – Israel today, Great Wall of China, Maginot Line, Zuckerberg’s private residence, … .  (Fences are militarily known as fixed field fortifications, they are cost-effective and work only to the extent that they are also manned.  They are NOT a ‘build and forget’ part of any defensive infrastructure.)
7. CA has the best natural water resources, and has had the best waterworks in the world, which began deteriorating and proving insufficient for California’s growth in 1983 when further expansion was halted.
8. President Trump has “restored the idea of deterrence” and put in place the best foreign policy and team in recent memory.
9. The US is becoming, or has already become a tribal nation.
10. The new “Socialist Democratic Party” has replaced the former Democratic Party.
11. There no longer exists any visible ‘common ground’ in the national debate between the global socialists and nationalistic capitalists – i.e. the Great Divide is already forming.
12. There is a very slim chance that our electorate will see the light in time to pull the nation out of its death spiral into global socialism.

[10oct18 update]  VDH has summarized the Kavanaugh confirmation affair that also gives lie to the charge that President Trump somehow dissed Dr Ford in his speech recounting the distressed lady's dreadfully fractured testimony to the Judiciary Committee.  His piece - 'One Ford Narrative Too Many' - examines the entire episode from a larger perspective and is worth a read.

American Retreat

George Rebane

Robert Kagan is a historian and political scientist with an endowed fellowship at the Brookings Institute.  He perches a bit left of center from where he has been a foreign policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents.  Dinesh D’Souza is a conservative political commentator, author, and filmmaker formerly associated with the Heritage Foundation, who continues as a lightning rod for critiques of rightwing ideology.  Not so surprisingly, these two intellectuals share many insights into America’s post-war role in the world and the state of the world were America to “retreat” from this role.

Of D’Souza’s many books, his America: Imagine a World Without Her (2014) contains assessments that tie closely with Kagan’s sentiments as expanded in a major essay ‘The Cost of American Retreat’ in the 8sep18 WSJ.  (Essay based on Kagan’s latest book, The Jungle Grows Back: America and our Imperiled World, that comes out later this month.)  My commentary on this highlights that the Rebane Doctrine on foreign policy espoused here over the years also ties closely with what these essayists have gleaned from their studies and experience.  I believe that, in these times, the tenets from both bear repeating emphatically and often.  (Graphic by Brian Stauffer)

Kagan points out how the period of liberalism under the hegemonic umbrella of the United States has given rise to a most unusual epoch of human history.  During this epoch “liberal ideals triumphed because, for the first time, they had power behind them.”  And all this, because “a new player arose on the international scene: the United States. It possessed a unique and advantageous geography, a large, productive population, unprecedented economic and military power, a national ideology based on liberal principles, and a willingness, after the war, to use its power to establish and sustain a global order roughly consistent with those principles. … That order - with its mutually reinforcing security, economic and political components - has created a geographical and geopolitical space in which liberalism has taken root, spread and evolved. But it was always artificial and tenuous, challenged from within and without by natural forces - the always potent antiliberal aspects of human nature and the competitive and anarchic tendencies of geopolitics.”

Mueller’s "Witch Hunt" Metric

George Rebane

According to Rebane Doctrine, there’s a definite way to hold Mueller accountable for an alleged witch hunt without affecting the current claim that his investigation needs to continue because he’s on to some developing evidence that could resolve the question he was commissioned to answer – Was there any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that was either illegal and/or affected the outcome of the 2016 election?

1. Mueller puts all the evidence to date into an ‘envelope’ that supports his contention that he is being prudent and professional in continuing an investigation that to date has claimed no culpable evidence, or evidence relevant to his charter.
2. The ‘envelope’ is sealed and entered into escrow with a reliable third party not privy to what is being escrowed, say, a specific federal court. The escrow instructions state that the contents of the ‘envelope’ be made public when the Mueller investigation is formally concluded.
3. Inspection of said contents at the conclusion of the investigation will then either support Mueller’s current contention that he has probable cause to continue the investigation, or show that he had nothing culpable to that date, and was simply proceeding on a ‘hail Mary’ basis with the hope that something significant might later turn up – i.e. confirming that at least up to the present he really is continuing to conduct a witch hunt.
4. Depending on how the investigation ends and what verbal assurances (under oath?) Mueller makes upon entering escrow, his reputation and fate will be determined either by the court of public opinion or a court of law. Mueller has no reasonable basis for refusing to enter into such an arrangement given that he has conducted the commissioned investigation, and is continuing it because it shows some promise of producing evidence of criminal Russian collusion.
5. In any event, with such information in escrow, the investigation can now proceed under the explicit expectation that Mueller has something that constitutes a reasonable basis for continuing the investigation without the need to release any supportive and/or compromising intermediate results.

The Liberal Mind Revealed – Example #439 (updated 11aug2018)

‘The beatings will stop when morale improves.’ – wall sign in forced labor camp

George Rebane

“Trained historian” Paul Moore’s piece in the 9aug18 Union argues that ‘Investigation is not done until you have all the evidence’.  I kid you not, this gentleman really has a mind that works out such logic.  And I can guarantee you that he also takes these cognitive powers into the voting booth.  Moreover, the saddest part is that Mr Moore is not some one-off in our community, nor in our beloved land.  There are millions like him out there with such neurological wiring, all working to fundamentally transform America.

Mr Moore starts out by taking Darrell Berkheimer’s 4aug18 column (here) to task for asking that Mueller conclude his investigation in a timely manner.  Our trained historian then lectures us that such investigations don’t and can’t have a natural or externally prescribed terminus.  Why?  Well, according to More, Mueller was tasked to dig up culpable evidence of Donald Trump’s criminal wrongdoings, so his logic inexorably leads him to to conclude that such evidence exists, and that the investigation’s natural conclusion should be when such evidence to impeach and indict President Trump is finally discovered.  In Mr More’s universe the probability is one (certainty) that Trump is guilty, the evidence of that guilt exists, and is yet to be discovered.

In that same universe there is no concept of investigations which continue to turn up negative results will also lower the likelihood that the sought for evidence actually exists.  Specifically, the Mores of the world don’t understand the notion that the longer an ongoing investigation comes up empty, the lower the chances that it will ultimately come up with the sought for evidence.  The converse of that is that the longer an investigation produces no evidence, the higher the probability that no such evidence exists.  In more reasonable worlds, such demonstrably barren investigations have been regularly terminated as a matter of course.  But today, people of Mr Moore’s ideologically constrained capacity can conclude only that the reason no such evidence has been found is that we haven’t yet looked long enough.  So it appears that Mueller’s people have landed in some very attractive federally paid sinecures, charged with conducting a nationally divisive, perennial investigation that can terminate only after having found “all the evidence” of a criminal or treasonous conspiracy required to indict and convict a sitting president.

[11aug18 update]  In the sense of full disclosure, I need to again remind readers (especially those of the leftward tilt) that I am a child, student, and defender of western civilization.  And when we talk of nationalism, I am a nationalist who conforms to Merriam-Webster’s definition.

Nationalism: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially: a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

Now the logic of the local lefties immediately extends those declarations to people who are therefore necessarily oppose non-western civilizations, and who actively and without cause suppress the interests of other nations.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As an occidentaphile, I become a defender only when western civilization is suppressed and/or attacked.  Else, as a conservetarian I promote diversity in the Westphalian sense, since such diversity underpins global decentralization of knowledge and control, and provides the world with multifarious ongoing experiments in governance so that all can see what works and what doesn’t.  (Also known historically among our several states as the Great Experiment.)

In the same sense I am an American nationalist when other countries, geo-political institutions, and/or those seeking an extra-constitutional transformation of our country seek to suppress, abbreviate, or attack American interests – the prime being its endurance on the American landmass as the sovereign constitutional republic which was bequeathed to us by our Founders, and which we have defended with our blood and treasure over the centuries.

Now, since I am white, which is an acknowledged ‘race’ by non-whites, am I automatically then a white nationalist?  Not necessarily, when we study its broadly accepted non-partisan definition.

White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism that holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity.  Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.  White nationalists say they seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white states. They hold that white people should maintain their majority in majority-white countries, maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their cultures should be foremost.

As my apologetics over the years attest, I am therefore not a white nationalist, since I don’t consider culture to be race-dependent as is obvious by the worldwide acceptance of the major tenets of western culture by people from all races and backgrounds.  By various kinds of ongoing intercourse, all cultures and races have evolved, homogenized, and will continue doing so as we trade and mate with each other.  All forms of ‘racial purity’ will be erased sooner or later, if that has not already happened.  What people (of all races) like me oppose are the rapid fundamental transformations of their cultures and nations implemented through fraud or force as dictated by ideological cohorts working to overturn the established (traditional?) order that is accepted by a free people.  And all such bets on tolerance are off when we encounter threatening tyrannies who unabashedly abolish the Bastiat Triangle of rights.

Trumporama – 30jul18 (updated 1aug18)

George Rebane

These thoughts are motivated by a letter2editor in today’s Union by Richard Van Steen.  There this gentleman, who has graduated from TDS to TAD, tells us that all Americans who don’t want President Trump immediately impeached are traitors, pure and simple – kinda like the stuff he has between his ears.

Lately I’ve been a bit hard on our president’s foot-in-mouth twitter feeds and his tariffs derby (now beginning show some promise), so as one consigned to the nation’s population of irredeemably deplorable traitors, I should at least weigh in my ‘stubborn ounces’ to list some of the benefits we are enjoying in the new era of Trump.

The Existential Abrogation of Sovereignty

George Rebane

Across this land we are debating the wrong thing.  There is no contention about separating kids from parents.  No one want to do that gratuitously.  But as a society, we do it when we must.  And we do it daily with American kids by the thousands when their parents are jailed or otherwise detained through legal proceedings.  We have done that for decades and today we keep hundreds of thousands of American kids in foster care separate from their parents.  But just focusing on the kids is not my point here.

America’s Left has found a new casus belli to attack the foundations of our republic.  Their goal, as stated here many times, is nothing less than the abrogation of America’s sovereignty as a nation-state (cf. Agenda21).  Let me start with some fundamental tenets of governance that I assign to Rebane Doctrine (continuing to collect these under this label and efficiently refer to them drives the local Left nuts; another benefit).

1. A nation-state is first and foremost sovereign only to the extent that it can determine and control the access of goods and people to its territory. Secure and non-porous borders through which ingress, including immigration, and egress are effectively controlled is an existential measure of its sovereignty.
2. Anti-American – a person who opposes American sovereignty 1) as an idea through impugnation, and/or 2) existentially by actively working to reduce/eliminate such sovereignty.
3. Anti-American sedition – activities intended to radically and/or rapidly change the existing character, make-up, and/or established order of America through extra-legal means.

Today the media is full of reports and interviews with progressive politicians unabashedly promoting open borders without (yet) daring to say it in those words.  What they volubly promote instead is a 1) catch, 2) keep the families together, and 3) then release policy for illegal aliens caught after surreptitiously crossing the border.  They are to be released on the basis of 1) having purposely violated US laws, and 2) on the fiction that all illegal aliens have a prima facie legitimate case for seeking asylum.

What gives lie to all this, and is known to our anti-American politicians is that only about 3% of the illegal entrants return for their asylum court hearings which would legitimize their stay in the US.  The other 97% know they have no leg to stand on, and that they would be taken into custody and deported were they to present themselves.  Their only hope for staying here is to remain a fugitive long enough until our anti-American Left (presuming the existence of a pro-American Left) can muster enough public opinion to force the federal government to designate them as the next 'DACAs' or 'Dreamers' or … in sufficient numbers so as to make their en masse deportation no longer feasible.  And voila! We have yet another new tranche of Democrat voters who have no love or understanding of the country into which they have infused.  Their loyalty is only to the globalist progressive cause and its visible political and opinion leaders who are bent on taking us to that new future.

Par Force in the Second Amendment

George Rebane

On the morning of 19 April 1775, the communities surrounding Boston were awakened by riders alerting the colonial Americans that a battalion of British were marching out of Boston toward Lexington and Concord.  They were coming to confiscate a cache of arms and ammunition that the colonials had collected for the anticipated mounting resistance to years of tyranny by the Crown in distant England.  Later in the day the British regulars would be met by an ad hoc militia who would drive them back toward Boston while taking heavy losses before the colonials, out of ammunition, had to withdraw.

Word of the successful armed resistance spread throughout the colonies like wildfire.  The demonstration of what armed citizens could accomplish against arguably the best army in the world was simply inspirational and communicated the very hopeful art of the possible.  The battle marked the beginning of our Revolutionary War, and was soon followed by equally inspirational pitched battles such as that on Bunker (Breed’s) Hill a few weeks later.  The revolution was on.

In the early part of the war, all citizens forming into militias were required to provide their own weapons, ammunition, and generally their entire kit for operations in the field.  They were required to respond to the call to arms “at a minute’s notice”, hence they became known as Minute Men.

Trump and the Ugly Fat Kid

George Rebane

There’s more to be said about President Trump’s anticipated meeting with NK’s Ugly Fat Kid (aka Kim Jong Un), the murderous dictator who today runs the world’s largest forced labor camp in the world.  That Trump got the UFK off the dime and issue an invitation is laudable in itself, and has really miffed all the professional diplomats who for over more than half century have gotten nowhere with that workers’ paradise.  Actually, it’s been even less of an accomplishment than that; the pros have gotten us into a situation where today the UFK’s about to get a deliverable nuclear weapon that can reach the continental US.

The big deal now in preparing for the meeting is how do we make sure that Trump doesn’t wind up circling that Bamboozle Barn one more time.  Trump’s unorthodox and straightforward approach should work for him in this regard.  The conduct of the meeting should be on an announced no-bullshit basis.  Everyone knows that America (and others?) want to have the UFK give up his nukes program, and that should be as a precondition for whatever else we are willing to give in return.  Rebane Doctrine calls for such negotiations to be done on an open declaration of interests basis (cf the Harvard Negotiation Project).

Our interests are known to the world, but the UFK’s not so much – in fact, he really can’t openly declare them for fear of getting a bullet through the back of his head or worse.  (Recall he fed an entire family of a feared high-level muktimuck to hungry dogs in an arena where the rest of the NK leadership was forced to watch.)  The UFK knows that he is the most despised human being on earth today, and he’s got a tiger by the tail.  He’s finally run into a US leader who may actually launch an attack of black helicopters preceded by a massive fleet of stealthies taking out his SAM installations, followed by a squadron of C-17s dropping MOABs on the artillery positions overlooking Seoul.  In any event, he won’t survive such a scenario because then he will more than likely fall in a quick coup led by his generals who will have nothing to lose and everything to gain with his sudden departure.  And that kind of thinking defines the UFK’s interests – his own and his family’s survival.

‘Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems?’

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” John Stuart Mill

George Rebane

This is the title of a recent major essay by Dr Amy Wax that initially appeared (here) in the January 2018 issue of the Imprimis, and was also featured in the 17feb18 issue of WSJ.  I bring it to our attention because it asks and answers a question of great moment in today’s America, and it also totally reflects the Rebane Doctrine that I have promoted for years in these pages.  Her vitae abstract reads –

Amy L. Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she has received the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. She has a B.S. from Yale College, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She is a former assistant to the United States Solicitor General, and her most recent book is Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century.

Dr Wax sets the stage with – “Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries.”

On Immigration and ‘S#!thole Countries’ (updated 13jan18)

George Rebane

No matter what he actually said in that White House meeting on immigration policy, President Trump has again focused a policy discussion on a crux of the matter instead of continuing the same ol’ same ol’ circling of the barn.  I don’t want to debate whether he actually said “shithole country” as the press is attributing, but I hope he did if it gets us off the dime in deciding who should be let in to serve America’s interests as a sovereign and sustainable nation-state.

Because this is a family-oriented blog (hah!), and in the ensuing discussion we will want to continue using that colorful descriptor without gratuitously sprinkling dirty words all over these pages, I will use the three-letter acronym SHC in the sequel for both expedience and, perhaps, collateral decorum.  Nevertheless, the meaning of that appellation will be made and should remain clear.

Instead of working on a more polished commentary, I decided to quickly anchor my contribution to the topic in a structured list of propositions that I believe are also embraced more or less by other conservetarians.  If they are also Bayesians like me, then their beliefs of the following will range from near zero (impossible) to near unity (certain), and in the process never saying never for either extreme.

America’s Checkpoints

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 January 2018.]

Before we get into the more serious part of the commentary, I want to wish all KVMR listeners a healthy and prosperous 2018.  We all know it will be another extraordinary year no matter what your political outlook and hopes.

Last Sunday, New Year’s Eve, Jo Ann and I were preparing for a quiet and intimate evening with friends to enjoy a dinner in front of the fireplace, listen to some laid-back jazz, and play our favorite game of cards while keeping an eye on the happenings in Time Square with the TV on mute.  The Christmas decorations were still up, and the décor extended the festive mood from what turned out to be an entire month of holiday celebrations at our house.  And then I was suddenly reminded of what we saw on the news before our guests arrived.

The afternoon’s major coverage was about how secure the New Year’s celebrations were going to be across the country, starting of course with Times Square.  There we were shown long lines of would be revelers all lined up at checkpoints manned by police and other serious looking people with submachine guns at the ready, keeping their trained eyes on our east coast neighbors waiting to be allowed in and start celebrating.  We were assured by the newscaster and various officials that there would be, not one, but two cordons of security checkpoints that everyone would have go through before being granted ‘admission’ to one of the most public, open, and historically accessible spaces in the nation.  These scenes brought back many memories and a moist eye, because I was looking at what my country had become in a few short years.

Scattershots – 21dec17 (updated 23dec17)

George Rebane

Shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere) – winter solstice, a time for all kinds of alternative belief systems to hold ceremonies honoring their deities, ancestors, dark spirits, …, and, of course, Gaia.  Here in Nevada County (lat 39.13 degrees) the sun will climb to only 27.37 degrees above the southern horizon because today the earth’s axis is tilted its full 23.5 degrees away from the sun.  (For you artillerymen who remember your hand calibrations, that’s about a stack of three fist widths at your arm’s length.)  The earth’s axis actually wobbles between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees over about a 40,000 year cycle.  That also contributes to climate change, the migration of the magnetic poles, and the wandering of Polaris, the pole star approximately at the North Pole’s zenith.

The Seattle train wreck.  How in hell does a train engineer drive his train into a 30mph curve at 80 mph??!  The engineering solutions to prevent or avoid these recurring dumbass disasters are too many to count.  But to answer the question, one need only begin with the most obvious and telling factor – this was a government-run (Amtrak) train.  And when we combine Friar Occam’s dictum for the simplest explanation with Rebane Doctrine’s ‘When something goes wrong, assume the government is the culprit until proven innocent.’, then these explain everything from the qualification of Amtrak’s train operators to the deficits of its various management levels who design and oversee planning and operations.  Bottom line – it’s no way to run a railroad.

Red China uses latest technology to keep tabs on its citizens.  George Orwell had nothing on what the Chinese communists are doing to nip opposition and dissent in the bud.  The newest citizen monitoring and tracking systems are being tested in Xinjiang province populated by the mostly Muslim Uighurs.  Using everything from AI-driven automated facial recognition, retinal scans, directional mike arrays, smartphone monitoring/tracking, combined with uncounted police checkpoints where IDs are required to pass from one part of town or jurisdiction to another, the authoritarian government is quickly perfecting the ‘compleat surveillance state’. (more here and here)  Much of the technology is already installed and in use in other major Chinese urban areas, and you can bet the ranch that our security apparatchiks are not far behind.  Oh, how the security vs freedom see-saw tilts.  But in the end, when the usual bad guys are eliminated, then from whose comprehensive embrace do we need to feel secure?  Not to worry, that can never happen in Amerika.

[22dec17 update] – A refreshing Trumpian Tornado has blown into our foreign policy dealings.  Our president told the world that under his administration the US was also going to start acting in its own best interests, just like the rest of the world’s nations are doing.  And those who aren’t doing that, President Trump advised them to start doing it.  This flies in tight formation with Rebane Doctrine’s foreign policy advisories in these pages.  To wit, ‘On the world stage the United States will unabashedly act in all matters to promote its own best interests.  We have made and continue to make those interests known to all.  We invite other countries to work with us in maximizing our mutually shared interests, and will support those with whom we are successful in doing that.  We will not support countries that oppose our interests, instead, we will actively counter such opposition wherever and whenever it arises.’  (For more on diplomacy, I encourage reading Hillsdale College President Dr Larry Arnn's 'Three Lessons of Statesmanship' wherein he goes over the serious challenges faced by Churchill both at the beginning and ending of WW2.)

UN ambassador Nikki Haley gave strong voice to that policy as she responded to the resolution condemning the US for announcing its embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Taking no prisoners, the lady told the assembled, “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation, … We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations.”  Then she got up and walked out of what Prime Minister Netanyahu called “the theater of the absurd.”

More still moving out of Kalifornia, than moving in, according to the AP.  This has been widely known for some time now by just about everyone save the local leftwing intelligentsia, who are merely doing their duty to discombobulate the lightly read and pre-educated.  The state that already houses more than one third of the nation’s welfare recipients within 12% of its population (more here) just added 300K more people last year, overwhelmingly contributed by our more fecund neighbors.  “More people moved out of California than in from other US states, but foreign immigration made up the difference.  Total net migration added 80K people.”  Anyone want to bet whether the state’s share of welfare recipients went up or down?

[23dec17 update]  California wildfires are the latest human-augmented natural calamity that needs to be used for political purposes by the state’s command and control team led by our governor.  As argued in the WSJ (‘California’s Political Fires’), the decision comes down to spending billions on the bullet train, or properly managing the state’s forests, overgrown with underbrush and littered with millions of beetle-killed dead trees.  The state has become expert in the bait-and-switch tax/fee schemes in which it promises to dedicate these impounded funds for fire safety and management, and instead uses the monies to “backfill the budget” and spend on “high-speed rail, public housing and transit and electric-car subsidies.”  Of course, the Left’s constituencies have been well prepared for such arguments and sleights of hand, having neither the critical thinking skills nor knowledge base to conceive of anything beyond what they are told by California’s ensconced Democrats.

Definitions Derby

Hold to nothing too violently.  Every fool stands convinced: and everyone convinced is a fool; and the faultier a man's judgment, the firmer his conviction; even with the proof on your side, it is well to make concession; for your reasons are known and your gentlemanliness is recognized; ... .  Gracian #183

George Rebane

In these pages we have sought, so far with limited success, to make our discussions and debates semantically crisper by using well-defined terms, and editing these definitions as necessary to capture the more nuanced meanings intended.  For example, many keyboards have been pounded over the years debating the definitions and the subsequent uses of socio-political labels such as socialist, communist, capitalist, liberal, progressive, conservative, conservetarian, etc.  The resulting definition derbies seem always to revolve around how attribute comprehensive should the labeled thing be before its assigned label is accepted.

Most people will accept a label such as ‘socialist’ or ‘conservative’ if the person, program, or policy can claim some sufficient number of attributes to unambiguously indicate its membership in the labeled class.  As an example, a policy can safely be called socialist if it expands state’s control of the means of production or mandates market-blind distribution of goods, wealth, etc.  Such common usage doesn’t call for implementing all (i.e. the comprehensive set) of the attributes of socialism.  In short, a useful discourse can be had if the parties either understand each other’s use of a label, or accept a working principle that doesn’t make ‘comprehensive’ the enemy of ‘sufficient’.

Debating definitions can also serve agendas, especially if you determine that your ideology must be sold carefully to broader audiences (e.g. your lightly-read constituencies).  In such cases you don’t want to reveal the complete picture too soon because your audience will then balk.  In these times such has been the case when collectivists of various shades want to hide behind easy-to-embrace social give-aways without going into the details of what it will take to sustain such transfer payments, or if sustainability is even possible.

So, when you believe in a future in which the state controls more than less of our property and behaviors, a future where markets are greatly curtailed or completely eliminated by state mandated distribution policies, then you don’t want to advertise that too early, even if you believe that such a system will ultimately provide the greatest good to the greatest number.  In that case you will decry the socialist label being prematurely attached to policies that are at best camouflaged in half-way houses on the road to socialism.  You then will argue in favor of the comprehensive definition, and dismiss any sufficient characterization of socialism that doesn’t check off all the dictionary items listed under socialism – ‘my policy doesn’t call for the elimination of all markets, therefore it is not socialism.’

With comprehensive definitions suppressing the merely sufficient, the debate’s progress will be successfully stifled until the destination is achieved at which time it will be revealed when all of its features or attributes are in place.  In such a forum, one is not allowed to identify himself, say, as a conservative unless he can check off somebody’s complete list of requirements for a conservative.  The same for a ‘free market’ which is then defined as one that is not allowed to have even a smidgen of regulations under which it must operate.  Or the obverse, mandating the ‘free market’ label when a massively regulated market still has a bit of wiggle room left.  It all depends on your agenda.

Quite often definitions are given in terms of an overarching concept that can stand on its own, but can be expanded to have one or more appended categorical components.  We recently ran into one such term – ‘collusion’ – that is much in the news these days, and forms the crux of an enlarged debate that is attended by participants all wearing ideologically colored glasses.  To illustrate, for the Right ‘collusion’ is seen simply as two or more parties proceeding in confidence to accomplish some end, be it innocent or evil.  The latter being the addended categorical component.  To pursue its current agenda, the Left can only view ‘collusion’ in terms of its categorical component of ‘evil’ firmly clamped to the overarching definition, with the attendant logic that colluding secretly or in confidence must always and necessarily be evil – no further proof is needed. (more here)

Unfortunately, such definition derbies often lap over to embrace countless faulty logics so prevalent in the comment streams of most blogs including RR’s.  The preceding semantical gymnastics are usually part of a drill that starts by characterizing everything in black/white or binary terms.  If you don’t explicitly condemn/embrace something, then the clear conclusion is that you must love/hate that same thing.  This is the most common and ham-brained way of rejecting the cautionary wisdom that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Related to this is the so-called ‘argument from ignorance’, so popular today, wherein one ‘asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false’.  Both appeal to the same logical fallacy.

In my experience, also confirmed in these pages, it is overwhelmingly the folks on the Left who don’t want to be explicit about what they actually believe (i.e. the tenets of their credo), and consequently in a debate they sail under false colors as long as possible, and then simply quit the field when such colors no longer serve.  I have yet to meet a person of the Right who, when asked, hesitates to declare the underlying tenet of his credo that gives basis for his argument on an issue.  Perhaps others have had the same experience.

(Readers may always examine my credo and glossary of terms so as to correct or confirm that my own apologetics conform to my previously stated beliefs.)

 

Texas Massacre and Gun Control (updated 11nov17)

George Rebane

When some dysfunction or disaster occurs in our land, first look to government as the cause or guilty party until proven innocent.

In various forms this aphorism has been a Rebane Doctrine tenet in these pages and the recent Texas killings by a deranged military outcast is again the latest case in point.  The killer bought his semi-auto rifle and fifteen 30-round magazines very recently as he was planning the murder and mayhem within which he intended to shoot his in-laws.  Had the Air Force followed regulations in a timely manner, and placed his name in the national database intended to stop such people from arming themselves, he would not have had the firepower to kill 26 and wound 20 more in the brief interval of time it took.

After the attack was in progress it required the heroic actions of a neighbor to quickly take his own rifle, put himself in harm’s way, wound the killer, and bring an end to the carnage, thereby saving untold additional lives among worshiping congregants.  As is often the case, it was fortunate that a legally armed neighbor was there when seconds counted and the police were minutes away.  After being hit twice by the NRA-trained civilian, the killer fled only to be pursued until he crashed and took his own life, thereby ending the rampage.

The Left’s gun confiscatory cohorts predictably rolled into action across the land, again prescribing additional laws constructively rolling back the Second Amendment, laws that would only limit the legal possession and use of guns.  The actions of the armed neighbor are of the kind replicated in uncounted occasions daily during which legal guns prevent murder, mayhem, and lesser crimes, often before the acts are even attempted.  And this also in countless and unreported times where the perpetrator is deterred by the strong likelihood that he will be confronted by a legally armed citizen – intended victim or bystander.

While the news media (most certainly its lamestream component) overlooks or purposely ignores these occurrences, the NRA documents some of these in their monthly American Rifleman column titled ‘The Armed Citizen’.  For an additional commentary on this tragic incident that addresses the above, please read ‘A Plumber With a Rifle’.

[11nov17 update] ... and had the existing gun laws been enforced, the 'Current Gun Laws Should Have Made it Impossible for Texas to Buy Gun'.  Such considerations make no impact on those whose agenda includes a disarmed America, and can also serve as a litmus test for reliably identifying gun banners.