The Secret Knowledge

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

23

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

24

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

25

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

26

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

27

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

28

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

29

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

30

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

31

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

32

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

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

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

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

What worse lesson for a gambler?

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

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

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

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

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

33

In the late sixties I was driving a cab, and stopped for a cup of coffee at Mike’s Rainbow Cafe, the cabdriver’s