This tale of Modern Inquisition needs to be read in full, so that at least we might understand whither we are tending as the slow dreary night falls on prosperity. Go ahead: read it. I have only the time for another bare and vulgar sketch of how it fits in with other matters of importance.
When prudent and honest men cannot invent, market, and distribute products, for fear that lawless bureaucrats, impelled first by idle folly of inertia, and next by vindictive inquisition, might undertake successfully to ruin them; we can surely say that free enterprise is being replaced by anarcho-tyranny.
Set this lawless vendetta-style stuff against the coddling of the financial and the cronyism of agricultural sector, and what you get is plutocracy. The small owner is trussed and the distant landlord liberated; the entrepreneur is harassed, the established crony upheld. For small businessmen there is naught but pretty words concatenated by oily politicians; for the legacy proprietor and the connected financier, there may be idle verbal rebukes, but there is always the oily handshake promising future favors.
Nor should we neglect all the many thousands and tens of thousands of principled enterprises whose prospect is darkened by the machinations of the Sexual Inquisitors. For there is no Puritanism like that of the Libertine.
Already a state supreme court has brought legal coercion to bear on the artistic decisions of a photographer: the art, where it is sold in a business transaction, must of necessity celebrate fashionable innovations in human sexual couplings, or it will be regarded as criminal activity. California is on the verge of removing the tax-exempt status of the Boy Scouts, Little League, Pop Warner Football, the 4-H Clubs, and many other stalwarts of American civic organization; and in the logic of the proponents of this bill, there is no reason why these organizations should not be proscribed.
The Inquisitors in California, in other words, are prepared to blacklist historic American civil society. Conformity to their orthodoxy on sexual matters requires nothing less than a proscription list of traditional civic institutions.
Those who hope for compromise and reconciliation with the Inquisition should reflect on the profound sanctimony that animates it. The governments and bureaucracies of this land are crawling with little Nanny Bloomberg clones, each imbued with a crusading spirit. Their self-righteousness is unyielding.
It was over ten years ago that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, reasoning from premises now much more brazen and implacable, adjudged a belief in traditional marriage to be nothing but “invidious discrimination.”
Meanwhile, it’s been over five years since the Great Bailout of the usurers commenced. I believe we are just ten days short of the five year anniversary of Hank Paulson’s legendary meeting with the nation’s leading financiers, when the US federal government socialized the losses of Finance Capitalism.
After all, the Inquisition must be financed somehow.
[I should have added from the beginning that most of the included links come via @TheTransom the newsletter of the illustrious Ben Domenech.]
Comments (14)
If you haven't done so yet now's the time for a read of Kalb's The Tyranny of Liberalism.
Posted by Nice Marmot | September 4, 2013 9:40 AM
Yes.
Here is Kalb's most recent treatment of the subject: http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2013/07/25/out-of-the-antiworld/
Posted by Paul J Cella | September 4, 2013 10:00 AM
Even if gay rights activism posed no conflict with natural law we would be compelled by a respect for liberty to oppose them because they're the truest, purest expression of a totalitarian political movement on US soil.
Posted by Mike T | September 4, 2013 1:32 PM
Mike T, preach it good and loud to the libertarians, man, if you can only get them to hear. I was recently involved in a Facebook thread with various comments coming in. Someone else's "wall." Here was one self-styled libertarian expressing qualified support for the homosexual rights agenda while allegedly deploring government intervention (!) and another guy chortling over the homosexuals who recently succeeded in putting some bakers out of business for not baking a "wedding" cake. Finally I told Person A to start listening to Person B.
Posted by Lydia | September 4, 2013 6:57 PM
"After all, the Inquisition must be financed somehow."
Have inquisitions ever been met historically with staunch, sometimes even physically violent, resistance?
If so, what are the wise guy's odds of that happening in America in the short to very near future?
Posted by Truth Unites... and Divides | September 4, 2013 7:05 PM
Truth...Divides, the only plausible way I see that happening that makes any sense is a state governor using the state militia to back him up when he tells a federal court to go to hell. Say, just as an example, the state of Arizona giving the finger to a federal judge over the "you can't enforce immigration law, you have to leave it to the feds even though the feds officially don't give a damn about the law" stupidity. So far, the only issue that seems to have even been a sort-of test is the western states that legalized pot in defiance of fed law, and the feds just ignored it.
Posted by Tony | September 5, 2013 7:00 AM
Do go and read the first link Paul puts in the main posts. It's just incredible. Obviously vindictive behavior against an individual entrepreneur on the part of a bureaucracy. Sickening and angering.
Posted by Lydia | September 5, 2013 9:39 AM
Most of DC and the bureaucracy is leftist, so defying federal law will generally be more successful with "leftist" causes like legalizing marijuana. Scare quotes because legalization of marijuana is only a leftist cause due to circumstance. I'm not much of a leftist and I voted for it here in WA.
Granted, even if you're on the side of the angels you may not get away with it, but right-wingers have basically no chance here.
Posted by Matt | September 5, 2013 9:49 AM
Don't forget the plutocrat/progressive link evinced by the pro-homosexual cultural activities of the entertainment and advertising industries, not to mention the role of the numerous companies that pride themselves on being "gay friendly." Politics will follow the culture, and it's pretty obvious which way the culture's going: it's being led by what it sees and hears in the media.
In other words, while the state is definitely an opponent here, corporate America hasn't exactly planted itself in our corner.
Posted by Nice Marmot | September 5, 2013 10:28 AM
It would be interesting to see McDonnell go to the state legislature and ask them to fund a surge in size of the VDF from 1,000 troops to its full statutory limit of 7,800 soldiers. Funny thing about states like Virginia that maintain their own Article I-approved standing armies... those standing armies are statutorally outside of the President's authority to muster under the terms of federal law :)
Posted by Mike T | September 5, 2013 12:50 PM
Mike, we will have more chance of it if Cucinnelli can get elected.
Posted by Tony | September 5, 2013 3:10 PM
Interesting post.
Funny parody of Next Great (Politically Correct) Inquisition:
http://alternativeright.com/blog/2013/9/4/first-they-came-for-the-holocaust-deniers
Posted by The original Thomas T. | September 5, 2013 3:24 PM
o "After all, the Inquisition must be financed somehow."
o "Truth...Divides, the only plausible way I see that happening that makes any sense is a state governor using the state militia to back him up when he tells a federal court to go to hell."
I don't see any state governor doing that; it's extremely implausible, so taxpayers will continue to fund and finance the growing Liberal Inquisition.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Posted by Truth Unites... and Divides | September 5, 2013 8:19 PM
Posted by Ilíon | September 8, 2013 10:23 AM