God bless Dr. Charlton.  If he did not exist, we would have to invent him (but would be unable to).

Our starting point should be that the basic inescapable features of life are meant and have a point and a meaning in the divine plan.  Things like breathing, eating, talking, sleep, and elimination. (more…)

And now I have to touch upon a very sad matter. There are in the modern world an admirable class of persons who do long for the old feasts and formalities of the childhood of the world.  William Morris and his followers shoed how much brighter were the dark ages than the age of Manchester.  Mr. W.B. Yeats frames his steps in prehistoric dances, but no man knows and joins his voice to the forgotten choruses that no one but he can hear.  Mr. George Moore collects every fragment of Irish paganism that the forgetfulness of the Catholic Church has left or possibly her wisdom preserved.  There are innumerable persons with eye-glasses and green garments who pray for the return of the maypole or the Olympian games.  There there is about these people a haunting and alarming something which suggests that it is just possible that they do not keep Christmas.

It is painful to regard human nature in such a light, but it seems somehow possible that Mr. George Moore does not wave his spoon and shout when the pudding is set alight.  It is even possible that Mr. W.B. Yeats never pulls crackers.

If so, where is the sense of all their dreams of festive traditions?  Here is a solid and ancient festive tradition still plying a roaring trade in the streets, and they think it vulgar.  If this is so, let them be very certain of this, that they are the kind of people who in the time of the maypole would have thought the maypole vulgar; who in the time of the Canterbury pilgrimage would have thought the Canterbury pilgrimage vulgar; who in the time of the Olympian games would have thought the Olympian games vulgar.  Nor can there be an reasonable doubt that they were vulgar.

-thus G.K. Chesterton

The problem with “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” is the “for tomorrow we die.”It is the justification.  Seizing a last few defiant gasps of happiness before the great dark is a lie.  Rejoicing now in anticipation of greater rejoicing later is the true rule of the universe.

The illegal alien who murdered Kate Steinle got off.  Because he was an illegal alien; because she was so obviously a core American; because he murdered her for no real reason other than that she was a core American, and he was not; because his murdering was an inconvenient fact.

Justice was done.  Social justice was done.  He murdered her, but he did not social justice murder her.  So he is guilty, but he is not social justice guilty.  He walks free on all those charges.*

He has more rights in my country than I do. He has more rights in this country than you do.  We would not walk free.  We only have the right to  justice.  He has the right to social justice.

Who, whom.

We are the whom.

That is the definition of social justice.

America’s 200-year vacation from history is over.  It doesn’t matter if you agree or not.  Reality doesn’t need your consent.

Classical liberal regimes die this way.  The Right in Weimar Germany.  Both Right and Left in Republican Spain.  First their wacko fringes kill and go unpunished  Then the killings get organized.  Ultimately they get official.

*But not completely free, because hilariously the California jury couldn’t forgive the ritual impurity of handling a firearm.

I read that rich people are having fun playing survivalist.

And why not?  No harm in it, and just like our years’ supplies, they may do some good during those horrible catastrophes that history tells us are inevitable but that our daily experience conditions us to believe can never be.  There are black swans–course changing events that we could not have predicted–and there are white swans–course changing events that we could have predicted but sure didn’t.

All the same, most plans for real catastrophe are silly.

Like Taleb’s black swan investment strategy they mostly assume the continuity of the government and current Overton windows.

Or else they are fundamentally nihilistic.  Live in a luxury-stocked bunker somewhere eating down your luxuries waiting or hoping that someone else puts civilization back together, comforting yourself until you die.  There is no future in that vision.

The rich guys who buy farm land are at least thinking a little, though not very much at all.

Here is what a rich guy who thought it through would do. (more…)