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This is an extract from a book I wrote called The Unfallen. Today is Patriot’s Day, the birthday of Gwendolyn Jones, the leading lady in the novel. In this segment, Gwen discusses how women cheat themselves of their own sovereignty in the vain pursuit of romantic love.

“Do you know how much I enjoy watching you walk?” Devin asked.

Gwen smiled demurely and he knew it was a pose, because, while she was many different things, often many at once, she was never demure.

“When you walk, nothing above your hips moves, not if you don’t want it to. You walk with your feet and your knees and your thighs and your hips. You don’t swing your arms or sway your shoulders or bob your head. Your upper body is perfectly still.”

“Is that so unusual?”

“I think it is. When I first noticed it, I wanted to say you were languid. But languor is such an ugly kind of…”

“Lassitude?” She didn’t quite laugh at him.

“Precisely. You’re a vibrant snot, and there is nothing languid about you. And yet you move so gracefully, even at top speed, that you make everyone else look sloppy and frenetic and spastic.”

“Sometimes I wiggle my behind. Does that qualify me (more…)

Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian, from Less Than Words Can Say:

The invention of discursive prose liberated the mind of man from the limitations of the individual’s memory. We can now "know" not just what we can store in our heads, and, as often as not misplace among the memorabilia and used slogans. Nevertheless, that invention made concrete and permanent one of the less attractive facts of language. It called forth a new "mode" of language and provided yet another way in which to distinguish social classes from one another.

Fleeing the lost battle on the plain of Megiddo, General Sisera is said to have stopped off at the tent of Heber the Kenite. Heber himself was out, but his wife, Jael, was home and happy to offer the sweaty warrior a refreshing drink–"a bottle of milk" in fact, the Bible says. (That seems to find something in translation.) It was a kindly and generous gesture, especially since Sisera asked nothing more than a drink of water.

Having drunk his fill, the tired Sisera stretched out for a little nap and told Jael to keep careful watch, for he had good reason to expect that the Jews who had cut up his army that (more…)

It’s very easy to think of property rights only in terms of land and what is referred to as the “bundle of rights” that come with land ownership: Water rights, mineral rights, etc. So a landowner could hold the deed to the land, but sell the mineral rights to an oil company and it’s all covered under “property” rights.

But in the broader sense, property rights can also refer to things that are owned or created by you: Websites, writing, art, intellectual property including memes, trademarks and copyrights. But it also refers to your wealth, meager as it may be, it’s yours and no one has the right to it- it’s your property. If you are robbed, a crime has been committed, you have the right to seek recourse.

This is an extremely important concept to understand because if affects how and what the government is “entitled” to and is the underlying theme behind politics. The government is legally allowed to tax you (take you property) in part, (perhaps in theory?) because they offer you something in exchange- roads, police, fire are the few that are often used as examples.

An extraordinary post from Roger D. Luchs at American Thinker discusses the over-reaching (more…)

The short answer is, “It’s all of it.” Yes, literally, just as it reads: Every instance of ethics and morality is built wholly of the subjunctive, and nothing else.

What does this mean? Why is it true? That’s a slightly longer answer. First, one must understand what the subjunctive is. Here’s the definition, the only primary definition, from G & C Merriam’s Third New International Dictionary:

of, relating to, or constituting a verb form or set of verb forms that represents an attitude toward or concern with a denoted act or state not as fact, but as something entertained in thought as contingent or possible or viewed emotionally (as with doubt, desire, will)

Every instance of morality is built of a choice. Engaging a choice, or choosing, consists of judging one alternative as better or worse than another. This essay doesn’t concern itself with what IS better or worse, since that’s the purpose of this website generally. It deals rather with the nature of being better or worse in the first place.

The critical point is that this is an epistemological state. That is, it concerns existents of an abstract nature, that are found only (more…)

From an opinion piece I wrote in the North County Times. Any comments or suggestions about how to address the commenters is much appreciated.

The recession has taken its toll on every working American, from the entry-level employee to the entrepreneur. Millions of Americans, entering into voluntary economic agreements, are gaining prosperity as they adapt to the challenges that this new economy presents.

Public employee unions, however, are impeding the economic transformation these Americans are trying to effect. These unions are using the economic recession as political leverage to expand their compensation. They should be trimming their compensation so that it is more aligned with this nation’s private sector.

Certainly, labor unions have a right to organize in the private sector. Public employee unions, however, have an inherent conflict of interest with their “management.” Politicians make decisions based upon votes delivered. Public employee unions promise votes and money to candidates in exchange for compensation packages. Neither politicians nor public employee unions operate in a fiduciary capacity to the true stakeholders (taxpayers) when they negotiate.

Today, public sector employee compensation is 25 to 40 percent higher than their private sector counterparts. There is something wrong when employees of wealth consumers (government) earn more than (more…)

I’m totally digging the contretemps in Wisconsin. My take is that a lot of formerly-innocent Americans are seeing the naked grasping of Rotarian Socialism in a new way. Even without 2008, I think most people got it that business and government lived hand-in-pocket with each other. But the holy aura of the union hid a lot of ugliness — which is not to say that many people were looking all that closely, anyway. But a few of the schoolteachers of Wisconsin and a passel of imported ideologues have managed to illustrate undeniably a very potent idea:

They see themselves as your owners and you as their slave.

That’s worth knowing, just by itself, just as a general guide to understanding a lot of what it going on right now in America — and all over the world. Is it plausible to more people tonight than it was last night that the ruling class of the United States might launch an air assault — as Libya is said to have done today — to put down a rebellion?

Here’s what’s worse: You are their slave. So am I. So is everyone. The Tea Party — writ large — is a slave rebellion. Not even a (more…)

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“It’s important to remember. That public service. Is a great sacrifice.”

“Good… Good…” Manny Kant said that.

“Most of the government employees I know. Are at their desks. As early as ten every morning. And few of them ever make it home. Before three in the afternoon.”

“Yeah… That’s not so good.”

“I myself. Have given my whole life. To public service. So I know just how much. Sacrifice is required.”

Manny Kant could swear profusely with his eyes, but what he actually said out loud was nothing.

“On any given day. The typical public employee may not know. If the man he has just met. Is a peaceful villager. Or a Taliban irregular.”

“No! Madison, Wisconsin, not Afghanistan.”

“That public employee. Could lose a limb. At the slip. Of. A simple chainsaw.”

“Schoolteachers! Not lumberjacks.”

“That public employee. May have to work. In searing. Heat. For hours on end.”

“Yeah,” said Manny, well beyond frustrated. “That guy works in a foundry.” To me he said, “You wondered about the teleprompter?”

Brainstorming session to script a reaction to the schoolteacher sick-out in Wisconsin. And don’t even ask how I got there. I’ve been a lot of places with Manny Kant, but I think it was Bubba who got me (more…)

I want to be the man she sees when she looks at me.

That’s a country song, ain’t it? It’s the first line of the hook. That’s fun for me, and everything like that is fun for me, but it’s more fun because it’s so painfully real.

In love more than anything, and in my marriage to Cathleen more than once, I have seen myself at my worst, much to my shame. Those are good words — I have seen my self at my worst — the kind of words that, the more you worry them over, the more you find yourself thinking the way I think.

But: Being eloquent about bad behavior is ever the poet’s absolution, and I absolve myself nothing. I know I have done badly by Cathleen, because I have seen myself doing it. And because, having done it, by impetus of memory I can never stop seeing myself doing it.

And yet, when she looks at me, she almost never sees anyone but the man I could and should always have been.

I want to be that man.

I want to be good, I want to be good, I want to be good — I’ve always wanted to be good, and I’ve (more…)

Here’s the political issue that matters: Government is crime.

When your local City Hall tells you which trees you must plant in your yard, that’s a crime against you.

When your state taxes your income in order to give your money to people who did not earn it, that’s a crime against you.

When the federal government dictates the specifications of the products you can buy and the tariffs you must pay to obtain products you want still more, that’s a crime against you.

We are not a family composed of 300 million strangers, we are each one of us individual human beings, each with our own minds, our own lives, our own families, our own hopes, dreams, wishes and plans. When the government impedes your life in any way — that’s a crime against you.

We don’t need to reduce this or reform that, we need to rid our civilization of this systemic criminality.

That is the message we should be hearing from the newly-elected presumptive friends of human liberty. If the new Congress is not committed to individual rights, then it’s just more Collectivism-on-the-Cheap: All the intrusiveness but even less satisfying!

Nobody is going to change anything overnight, nor very dramatically very soon. But if we (more…)

Here’s what the Republicans won last night, most probably: The opportunity to be left holding the bag if the whole creaking kleptocracy crashes.

Here’s what they mostly can’t do, at least not right away: Cut spending or taxes. A huge and growing portion of the budgets at all levels of government are entitlement payments — a subsistence dole under various labels. We have taken a once-free people and turned it half-predator, half-prey — often with both halves living under one scalp, amazingly enough.

So what can Republicans actually do, right now, to deliver on their promises?

They can eliminate every form of business regulation, at all levels of government.

Civil court has always been more than adequate to deal with actual injury. Not coincidentally, statutory regulation is always anti-economic nonsense: Banning competitors (as with the real estate licensing laws), government make-work, monkey-see-monkey-do, superstition, ossified tradition, power lust, etc. If no one is getting hurt, what is being regulated out of existence is this: Human intelligence.

That’s significant for two reasons: We need for business people to get to work and to take a bunch of us along with them. If we decriminalize human intelligence, at least partially, it’s reasonable to expect to see more of it (more…)