I’ve never been a believer in supplements. The reason is I’m a natural skeptic and the claims always set of my BS detector. The other reason is I know a bit about nutrition and science. Humans have evolved as omnivores. We can get the nutrition we need from a wide range of sources. In modern times, with so much food available to us, the odds of missing something important are close to zero. It’s why no one calls in sick because their rickets or scurvy is acting up. We have more than enough food.

All of those fat people waddling in and out of Walmart are not lacking in essential vitamins or minerals. Similarly, the health benefits of these things are dubious. It is rare that you see real science backing a claim. Even in cases where there is some correlation between a supplement and a positive life outcome, the benefits are weak. Take a vitamin may help in some small way, but not enough to worry about not taking one. That said, most of it is harmless so taking a multivitamin every day is not going to kill you.

At least that’s what I used to think. I read stuff like this and wonder how many people have been harmed by this crap. Whenever I watch TV, I see ambulance chasers looking for victims of one drug or another. Often, the causes of the alleged injury is something I heard marketed just the year before. Maybe it is just another scam, but some portion are legitimate. Given that these companies appear to be jamming whatever they can find into gelcaps and selling it to the public, I suspect a lot more harm is being done than we know.

Among their findings were bottles of echinacea supplements, used by millions of Americans to prevent and treat colds, that contained ground up bitter weed, Parthenium hysterophorus, an invasive plant found in India and Australia that has been linked to rashes, nausea and flatulence.

Two bottles labeled as St. John’s wort, which studies have shown may treat mild depression, contained none of the medicinal herb. Instead, the pills in one bottle were made of nothing but rice, and another bottle contained only Alexandrian senna, an Egyptian yellow shrub that is a powerful laxative. Gingko biloba supplements, promoted as memory enhancers, were mixed with fillers and black walnut, a potentially deadly hazard for people with nut allergies.

I suppose a terrible farting spell is not the end of the world, but it is not something you should expect from a pill being sold in America. We have this massive regulatory state and yet they allow crooks to sell fart pills to the public without any consequences. Giving people a “powerful laxative” when they are hoping for a little help with their depression is downright monstrous. Unless what is bringing you low is a lack of fiber, and that seems highly unlikely, giving depressed person the runs sounds quite cruel.

All of this is fraud and is easily policed. The trouble is we have a government that is no longer interested in this basic functions. These require effort and risk by the bureaucrats within the custodial state. These companies have money and lawyers. They can fight back. Crimes like fraud are allowed to go on because the state has no desire to enforce these laws. Yet, someone with a real drug that can help real people will be faced with the wall of regulation promulgated by the state.

Over at Marginal Revolution, there is a long thread on the callous indifference of liberals to the damage they have caused with ObamaCare. I called out an someone calling himself Michael Foody for his arrogance. What’s remarkable about the exchange is that he and his supporters are incapable of mustering empathy for the people that have been harmed by this ridiculous program. It’s as if they are enjoying the suffering of others.

A striking feature of modern liberalism is the bizarre pleasure they take in the suffering of people they consider inferior. In my youth, they put a lot of effort into claiming they were motivated by compassion for the little guy. The poor, afflicted and oppressed were turned into posters they could wave around to close off debate. It was never sincere, of course, as appealing to the masses is a common tactic of authoritarians, be they of the fascist variety of the communist type. Hitler and Stalin were men of the people.

Modern liberals have abandoned much of this. They still have their imaginary victims and imaginary bogeymen, but all of their empathy, if we can call it that, is directed to people in their own class. Progressivism is the religion of the managerial class, the new class, that sees itself as apart from the rest of us. In fact, it appears the identity of these people is defined by their hostility to the rest of us.

If you read the MR thread, you see quite a few commentators who appear to delight in the suffering of their fellow citizens. The Brookings Institute guy comes off like a Soviet Commissar when asked about the number of Ukranians they have starved. You can just imagine the guy muttering, “A single death a tragedy.A million deaths a statistic” as he dismisses the complaints of those screwed over by this law.

It is increasingly clear that the appeal of this program, and maybe the entire Obama administration, is that they think white middle class people hate it. In other words, the Obama presidency is just a long act of spite. If middle class white people started warming up to Islam, the Left would swing over to the neocon position and demand endless wars in the Middle East. That’s the central truth of the cult of modern liberalism. They are defined by a deep hatred of those they see as their natural enemies.

Southern whites, the religious and the middle class are the enemy. A harmless old woman like Paula Deen is savaged because she is popular with Southern Whites. The governor of Texas is mocked and ridiculed because he is publicly religious. Sarah Palin is the devil because she is 100% middle American. Normal people have seen her type at the PTA meeting, the soccer field and the grocery store. That’s why the Left loathed her so deeply and instinctively. She was the typical American mom.

As ObamaCare rolls out, it is becoming obvious that the bill was written to cause maximum damage to middle class institutions. They have rules that force the religious to pay for abortion and birth control. There are rules that make it difficult for small business to offer health coverage. There are rules that punish families. Now we are seeing that the new policies that are offered up as a replacement are two and three times as expensive as the old policies, while covering less.

The thing about compassion is there is a limit. You can only give so much. Cruelty, on the other hand, never has a limit. You can always find some new way to be monstrous to people you hate. When it is a contest to see who can be the most intolerant of the dispossessed whites, the process spirals out of control. That’s what the future holds for us as the Left competes with itself to find even more creative ways to attack the enemies of the state. This will be an age of intolerant cruelty.

In his last podcast, John Derbyshire mentions Sam Francis with regards to the Tea Party movement and similar spasms of Middle Americans Radicalism. Francis was a brilliant observer of America and first rate political thinker. The reason he is largely forgotten now is he ran afoul of the ruling elite. More specifically, he was a blasphemer on the issue of race, which can never be tolerated. Anti-racism is how the elite define themselves, so they see anything that can be described as racist to be a personal insult.

There should always be a wide space between what the culture rules out of bounds and that which the elites would like to silence. Elites will always want to silence critics, but in an open society this must be tolerated. The elites can point and sputter, but they should not be willing or able to condemn their critics, outside of extreme cases. If the ruling class becomes the arbiter of what is tolerable on moral grounds, the result will be something closer to a theocracy, rather than liberal democracy.

That said, it’s not wrong to say that guys like Sam Francis harmed themselves by deliberately violating public morality. Public discourse should be raucous and rude, but you have to know when to pull your punches too. You’re not getting very far by offending people, especially when you seem to enjoy being offensive. It makes the target sympathetic. When that target is the elite, that means they have license to swing the hammer at you. In other words, you’re asking for it.

Despite being a fan of John Derbyshire, I would say he had it coming when he was un-personed over this column. He was intentionally provocative. He could have pulled his punches a bit and made all the same point, but he wanted to provoke a response and he got his wish. To his great credit, he has never complained about it, so he did what he did fully prepared to take his medicine. There’s a place for that, for sure, but there is a place for those willing to use esoteric language and euphemisms too.

Anyway, the reason for this post is that Derb’s mention of Francis got me to re-read some old old Sam Francis essays. The man was not only brilliant, but he was right about a lot of things. In fact, the paleocons were right about an amazing number of things. Pat Buchanan was right about immigration, trade and the economy. Joe Sobran was mostly right about the culture and capitalism. John Derbyshire has been right about things like immigration, the culture war and the human sciences.

I could go on, but the point is, they were all mainstream voices in their day. They were contrarians, for sure, but no one thought of them has crazy or dangerous. Eventually, they were all driven from the stage. Those that have died have been erased from the collective memory. Those still alive have been forced to live in their shed, brought out once in a while for a struggle session. In other words, they were punished just as much for being right as for being at odds with public morality on the issues of race and culture.

Mark Steyn coined the term I’m using as a title. The elites of America are feverishly insulating themselves from reality. It is perfectly sensible for elites to insulate themselves from the physical reality of life. The King knew the peasants lived in filth. he did not have to see it every day. That’s not what is happening in modern America. Our royalty is walling themselves off from reality and demanding the rest of us accept their imaginary world as our reality. We have to play make believe with them.

The obvious question that arises from this is how long can such a condition go on before reality simply refuses to stay out of sight? At some point the differences is human potential have to be accepted. Are we really going to try and run and army with girls in combat units and transvestites in the command staff? Are we going to fill Congress with the quality of people we see on the Baltimore city council? Even if this is possible, how long could it endure? What happens when even the elites learn it is impossible?

The boys and girls over at the flagship of Conservative Inc. have their panties in a bunch over the increasingly hostile relationship between them and the rank and file of the conservative movement. Well, what’s left of the conservative movement. Decades of broken promises and outright lying from public figures claiming to be conservative leaders has the hoi polloi looking for other options. Normal conservatives, which means middle-class white people, for the most part, are feeling betrayed.

Part of it is due to the awakening of the base to certain realities of party politics. One of those realities is that most of the people in charge are just in it for the money. These are career men who have wives and kids and mortgages. They are risk adverse. It is why they are quick to plead for a deal to end the bickering over policy. It is why they are willing to trade everything for stability. Great change means great tumult and tumultuous times are bad times for the mediocrities that are party functionaries.

Normal people look at this and think they are being taken for a ride. After all, what’s the point of voting for conservative candidates and supporting conservative causes, if the people running these things are willing to sellout for personal gain? These people are always ready to tell you about the need to compromise, but they never lecture the other side this way. That’s what is driving the general discontent with conservatives. David French has a post on it here and Goldberg has his say here.

Jonah Goldberg is the king of straw man arguments. His preferred method of dismissing criticism is to call the critics “populists” and then claim that populism is crypto-leftism or the precursor to fascism. Once he has anathematized the messengers he then moves on to explain why it is dangerous to listen to these bomb throwers. What he is doing is something the Left likes and that is creating an immoral straw man and then associating it with the arguments or facts they want to dismiss. It’s a form of scapegoating.

Of course, it is a ploy to avoid the elephant in the room. The Right lose every fight. They lose the PR wars. They lose the negotiations. They lose elections against weak candidates. They conceded ground to the Left before the debate gets going. Just on practical terms, the Right has been a near total failure for almost two decades. Whatever the defects of the critics, the people in charge of conservatism have failed at every turn, but have suffered no consequences.  In fact, they have grown quite rich.

The David French piece deserves special recognition for its mendacity. Every loser who wants to avoid the consequences of being a loser tries to play the victim card. They always claim to have received death threats. French claims to have received threatening calls at home. If he does not have a police report, then he is a liar. It is a serious crime to call someone and threaten them. Calls are easily traceable and the police take these things seriously. If true, he should file the report and post it.

In many ways, David French is emblematic of what is wrong with the so-called conservative movement. They think politics is a buffet line where all they need to do is put a few things on the tray and proclaim their fidelity to those with similar tastes. Put another way, they have reduced conservatism down to a handful of policy positions that just happen to be popular with their corporate and wealthy donors. Instead of maintaining an intellectual tradition, they are a public relations firm for the highest bidder.

Today it is hard to lie in public. Liberal politicians from normal states have been learning this the hard way. They used to get away with lying at home as no one called them on it in the press as long as they voted liberal. Now they get exposed quickly. The so-called conservatives are struggling with the problem now. Years of watching the so-called Right promise and fail, only to lecture their base about making unreasonable demands has most conservatives wonder if it as not always a scam.

What comes next, as conservatives wake up to the reality of demographic change and the emerging identity politics, is a big civil war on the Right. On one side will be the kept men of Conservative Inc., defending their perks and positions. On the other side will be a new Right, one more in tune with today’s realities and much less concerned with upsetting the feelings of the Left. It will be more populist and probably more racially aware. Most likely, the old Buckley crowd ends up on the Left, if the Left will have them.

The ancient Greeks would on occasion pass a law forbidding any further debate on some issue that had been decided. The reason for this was to prevent critics from undermining the policy, by endlessly debating the issue after a course of action has been agreed upon by the people. For example, a decision to go to war with another polos would be decided and no further debate permitted. If someone tried to revive the debate, they would be killed or expelled from the city. It was not a matter taken lightly.

It was a clever way to prevent second guessing and indecision, but it is also a way to lock in bad policy. The rule becomes a suicide pact. An example is how Massachusetts recently passed a gas tax that is pegged to the CPI. That means the tax goes up every year without any action by the legislature. Another example is how the US Congress has their pay automatically increase along with all federal salaries. The whole point is they don’t have to answer for their votes every election.

In theory, no legislature can bind a future legislature. The reason people say this is whatever is passed this year by the legislature, can be reversed by subsequent legislatures. For example, if the Congress passes a law promising to pay you a fixed amount of money every year, this can be reversed in the next Congress. That said, as with the Greek example, a legislature can make it really hard for future legislatures to undo their work. The American welfare state is the most obvious example.

Congress is poised to do soemthing that will be close to impossible to unwind. They are seeking to have the debt limit increase automatically every year, unless Congress passes a bill forbidding it. Further, if a future Congress tried to halt the debt ceiling hike, the president could veto the bill. This, in effect, give the executive power of the purse, as the government can always borrow, even if Congress refuses to tax. It turns on its head the political  relationship between Congress and the executive.

The reason for this change, of course, is to prevent the minority in Congress from putting the brakes on the excesses of the majority. The handful of spending hawks left in Congress made life unpleasant for the establishment every time they have to raise the det ceiling, so the establishment is taking that lever away from them. Leadership will not have to be embarrassed when they are out lying to the public about how much they care about the deficit and the spending. Borrowing is now on autopilot.

In popular government, the power of the purse is in the hands of the parliament. Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, is known as the Taxing and Spending Clause. It explicitly gives the power to tax to Congress. “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The power to borrow, as we see, also lies with Congress. They authorize all debt. After all, government borrowing in popular government is a form of taxation. The legislature is making a promise to pay on behalf of the people, a promise to pay with interest. This is an indirect tax. Similarly, government borrowing raises the cost of private borrowing. That’s also a tax on the people. For Congress to have the debt limit automatically rise, without Congressional oversight, is handing tax power to the executive.

This is one of those small things historians will look back on as evidence of the decay in the American political class. The House is the most democratic body and it is the most populist body. In theory, at least. As the House slowly abandons its authority to the executive, the people slowly lose influence over government. The executive requires an ever expanding army of bureaucrats to administer the state. The people become subjects, ruled over by that permanent bureaucracy of overseers tasked with keeping control.

History is full of examples of this. There’s something natural about the how democracy slowly gives way to some form of authoritarianism.  It suggests people, over time, prefer to be subjects rather than citizens. America will be just one more example. The question is whether it is first a bureaucratic authoritarianism or some collection of interests, like a combination of the security state and Big tech, just seizes power. Maybe we end up with a strong man put in power by global corporate interests.

Either way, it will not end well.