The Secret Knowledge (25 page)

“Family Values” is, unfortunately, a vacuous term, implying an affinity of understanding. This affinity actually exists (on the Right), but renders the term dismissible (or, indeed, risible) to the Left. A more universal term might, simply, be: “family.” To learn the rules of a family is the first essential step toward learning the rules of a community.
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We are hovering over spheres of thought barely accessible either to psychology or to philosophy. Such questions as these plumb the depth of our consciousness. Ritual is seriousness at its highest and holiest. Can it nevertheless be play?

—Johan Huizinga,
Homo Ludens
, 1950

 

 

Children on a playground are perfectly adept at designing a fair game. They collaborate on its design not only
though,
but
so that
, they may compete when the design is finished.

It is the sine qua non of the design that the game's rules be simple, and apply universally, for, without this, there may be triumph, but there will be no sport.

The game is a special case (as per
Homo Ludens
), it is, in effect, a sacred observance, where peace means not
stasis,
but
fairness.

The rules of all sport evolve toward fairness, and the current hoopla about performance-enhancing drugs is due not to their immorality
,
but to the disruption of the spectators' ability to root intelligently if drugs are involved.

The job of the referee, like that of the courts, is to ensure that the rules have been obeyed. If he rules, in a close case, sentimentally, he defrauds not only one of the two teams, but, more importantly, the spectators. The spectators are funding the match. As much as they enthuse over their favorite team, their enthusiasm is limited to that team's victory
as per the mutually understood rules.
(Who in Chicago exulted over the triumph of the 1919 Black Sox?)

The product for which the spectators are paying is a
fair contest,
played out according to mutually understood and agreed-to rules. For though it seems they are paying to see success, they are actually paying for the ability to exercise permitted desire, and so are cheated, even should their team win, if the game is fixed. To fix the game for money is called corruption, to fix the game from sentiment is called Liberalism.

Let us note that the referee, in a close call, may be wrong—but this is also a part of the game. No referee is other than human, and our catcalls are part of the pleasure of the thing. He may also be corrupted, which is a profound betrayal of both the laws and the unwritten precepts of sport; or he may (having, to his mind, miscalled a previous close decision), warp his judgment in a
current
case, in an attempt to rectify his previous error (Liberalism; see: Affirmative Action). In such a case, however, to whom is he being fair? He is merely abrogating to himself a supralegal ability to act in the name of an abstract concept: justice, and in contravention of the only possible device for its implementation, law.

The good ref, then, would be aware not only of all the rules of the game, but of his own capacity for sentiment. He would consider his pay, in part, a reward not only for his scrupulousness over the rules, but over his own good intentions.
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Both children agree: one gets to cut the cake, the other gets first choice. They have worked out the knotty problem, for they have foreseen that though the statue pictures Justice as blindfolded, her hands are filled, one with a scale and one with a sword, to prevent her from pulling the blindfold down.

And what of the boy–or girlfriend?

This institution, like baseball, is evolved from the unwritten law. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon and relationship, bearing, to the common understanding, more justice, rectitude, and force than the marriage contract.

Marriage contains a built-in mechanism for dissolution. But how do a boyfriend and girlfriend become divorced? They have no recourse to lawyers, or legalisms. They must, simply, tell each other the truth, or suffer the remorse of betrayal and betrayer. Many, I have observed, get married, because they don't know how, otherwise, to break up.

In the boyfriend–girlfriend, or the institution of the best friend, we see most forcefully the operation of the unwritten law. It has been noted that one might say, “My husband hit me,” but one never hears, “My best friend hit me.” This is a covenantal relationship, like that of the boyfriend and girlfriend, and it is understood as such, and, so, as
unmodifiable.

Note, the marriage may be modified by a prenuptial agreement, by usage (an “open marriage”), by divorce or separation, or any number of mutually agreed upon or fought-out amendments. The relationship of the Best Friend is unmodifiable, because it's based upon the unspoken understanding of complete loyalty.

The boy–or girlfriend, similarly, is a sort of best friend with the added component of sexuality. Many might cheat on their spouse, but to cheat on your girlfriend raises the question, not only to the perpetrator, but to any with whom he might share his transgression, “Why?” The covenantal bond here is stronger than the legal.

“This is my wife” conveys less information than “This is my girlfriend”; for the first may, but the second absolutely does inform the community of the speaker's state of mind, intention, and expectations and demands for community performance. Here the two, having entered into a covenantal relationship, inform the community of their expectations of respect of the new member, such expectations being nonnegotiable.

Marriage, though sanctified through millennia of usage, is a codification of this primordial, prelegal urge to monogamy; just as the rules of sport are all an elaboration of the school yard wisdom of the pie: the (momentarily) better team has scored the touchdown, it must then kick off to the (momentarily) lesser team, which now will have the benefit of possession.

James Michener writes (in
Kent State: What Happened and Why
):

What did the SDS fear? The tendency of a person in a covenantal relationship to think rationally, thus, morally. They, like all radical groups, sought to subvert the conscience.

How to turn the nice middle-class boys and girls of my generation into the Killers of the Weathermen? They begin by exhorting each other to betray the one covenantal relationship they knew and respected—to sell out their sweethearts.

After that, everything is moot, for the betrayer has chosen his new community and they all must now abide by the same laws or suffer the shame of a degraded conscience.
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The first rule of tinkering is, of course, “save all the parts.”

But in dismantling the social fabric, the parts cannot all be saved, for one of them is
time.
Time, we were told, is a river flowing endlessly through the universe and one cannot step into the same river twice. Not only can we not undo actions taken in haste and in fear (the Japanese Internment), but those taken from the best of reasons, but that have proved destructive (affirmative action); the essential mechanism of societal preservation is not inspiration, but restraint.

The two children with the pie
will
work it out, their only alternative is calling in an adjudicator, a parent. But the adult can only call in Government, control of whose
own
desires merely moves the problem to a less manageable level. For this new entity has to be provided for in some way, and it, or its assigns, either through good intentions, through corruption, or through the world's favorite process of elaboration, will eventually get
all
the pie.

Countries, like any organism, come into being, and mature, decay, and die. Any successful life form attracts: adherents, exploiters, imitators, sycophants, and parasites, as life can only live on life.

Bernard Cavanaugh was a mountebank in 1841. He claimed the ability to exist on no nourishment other than pure air. At his request he was imprisoned in a cell, and survived there, ostensibly without food, for a period of several months, after which he emerged healthy and having actually gained weight.

The effect, contemporary magicians tell us, is not difficult. Food may be secreted in or around the body, in clothing or actually woven into the cloth from which the clothing is made. It may be formed into the bricks, paint, plaster or bars of the cell, or passed by a confederate.

The only difficulty in the effect's performance is the secretion and disposal of excrement.

The Socialist vision, similarly, is a trick. Man cannot live on air. He must live on food, and the other goods and necessities of life produced through the physical effort and thought of him and his contemporaries.

As civilization progresses and population grows, new and more productive methods must be developed to deal with both foreseeable scarcities and unforeseeable disasters and progressions.

Each of these new methods is, originally, the inspiration of one or a small group of individuals who think differently from their fellows.

Not all of these inspired visions are effective or effectible, so the various visions must compete—no government organization is wise enough to determine in advance which of a number of equally strange visions will succeed.

In order to compete, these visions need private funding.
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As many of these inspirations originally seem impossible to accomplish, or, indeed, insane (the airplane, the radio, television, the automobile, the computer), the funding must come from those with sufficient disposable wealth to engage in what is, in effect, gambling. The competition between these competing visions eventually benefits all—if unfettered it will eventually discover new foods and methods of cultivation, of travel, new fuels—as it has throughout the history of free enterprise. For the potential reward of success is enormous—this incentive is the engine of progress, and its absence or stifling leads to stagnation and decay.

The Government can neither invent the automobile, nor, indeed, actually oversee its effective and economic production. It has bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, and this subvention will be seen to be not only an abrogation of the rule of law (the cancellation of obligations), but a vast waste of funds; for just as the camel is a horse put together by a committee, actual “government cars”,—should we devolve to that—cars put together under the supervision of a board of majority government appointees, will be neither fish nor fowl, nor sufficiently safe, efficient, attractive, affordable, durable, or fun. How could they be? They won't be made by automakers—that is, by those in love with either cars, gain, or a combination of the two, but by apparatchiks. Who would buy such cars?
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