(Just edited with a 2008 ad with William Shatner proving the point I’m making here. Scroll down, watch the 1 minute film, then read the lesson.)
First, you need to read this “Justified Bloody Nose” piece from 2016. It’s about the natural law that kept societies together long before people began writing it all done into legal language. One of the great failings of “liberalism” even when it was honest and patriotic, beginning before the 1950s-60s, was the loss of cultural memory about the shoulders our legal institutions have always stood upon. Most of my Dark Alley themes are founded on the survival-enhancing elements of law before it is actually codified, and the things civilized Man has had to do before written law could settle the dust, as America has seen throughout its pioneer history…
…as well as what civilized Man must do to survive when those written laws begin to break down, as they eventually do.
Unlike the rest of the world, the United States has natural cures, or re-awakenings, baked into its original recipe, which allows us to correct our course, and which we have done several times. We possibly face our greatest test today, for much of what those things were have been erased from our cultural memory, now in its second generation.
And from that original process, if you don’t already know, that mission of restoring order always falls on the class of citizens who fall below the sainted professions of lawyers and bureaucrats, in part because, sadly, they rarely know anything about the redemptive qualities of getting their hands dirty, or their noses bloodied, neither of which comes from reading books, taking tests, or flattering professors.
This title is taken from the The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a New England writer who, when I was a student in school, was read by almost every girl student in English class. (We guys read Fenimore Cooper.) It was about a woman who’d had a baby out of wedlock in the 1640s, and being part of the Puritan community of Massachusetts was forced to wear a big scarlet letter “A” (for Adulterer”) on her dress so everyone in the community could appropriately sneer and generally show their displeasure. Even my mother would have said that was mean.
(art by Bri Hermanson, from a book cover)
And Hawthorne was not a fan of this “scarlet letter” practice, either…although many argue today that such a practice never really existed.
The Puritans were an insufferable religious community, making early Massachusetts inhospitable to other religious groups who came thru its port (Boston) in the 1600s. “Our way or the highway”. They especially disliked Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who quickly had to choose other ports of entry into the colonies just to avoid this tempest, a process that may well have saved America in its war with the British 70 years (3 generations) later.
But while not a society of “love thy neighbor” Christians, Puritans were masters of community control, and it only took a couple of hundred years to chuck God and Jesus from their masthead and take that majesterial attitude and become control-freak leftists, for all the things that defined the Puritan disposition toward people “not like themselves” perfectly fits the profile of the arrogant, condescending, down-the-nose, better-than-thou private school Leftie we’ve had to contend with, in growing numbers every generation since 1900. Rich, elite snobs.
But this is not to say that other communities in America approved of out-of-wedlock babies being born any more than the Puritans. But they just didn’t legislate its punishment or use it as an act of public humiliation…which, as common sense tells us, serves only to affirm the ego of the hater, and does nothing to encourage true penitence in the hearts of the sinner. Remember, even Norma McCorvey, the original “Roe” in Roe v Wade, took her baby to term and was glad for it.
In my part of the country, Appalachia, when many communities only had circuit-rider preachers, one of their principal duties was to marry young couples each Spring, often with the bride 6-mos pregnant, or the baby already in tow, and occasionally even with “Ol Pap standing to the side with a shotgun. The sarvis tree got its name from these events, as it was the first to bloom in the mountains, so was the only floral bouquet available for Lulu-belle to wear at her wedding “sarvis”, hence the name. (Didn’t know that, did you?)
The shame part of The Scarlet Letter made sense, but the type of punishment, and open public humiliation didn’t, for it had no deterrent effect and more healthy societies naturally rejected it without the help of textbooks or academic papers. And before Roe (1973), even in states that had legalized abortion but in which large Roman Catholic communities existed, quiet, discreet birth-and-infant adoption took place, often with nunneries becoming the middle-sisters to an unwanted baby’s early feeding and eventual placement. They were common throughout the Depression, and even in my day, many a young woman (I knew of a few in college) would simply drop out of school for a couple of semesters then return to work or school with most of the community none-the-wiser.
Killing babies was always about “population control” (Margaret Sanger) and culturally “inconvenience”, even “fashion” to the rising career-minded feminist (into their third generation now, no longer even considering moral or social consequences.
So, with this in mind, about that “Scarlet Limp”.
With the flurry of smash-and-grab videos about big national brand stores being robbed, not to mention smaller jewelry stores and bodegas, one can’t help but notice the sense of immunity the criminals feel these days. Even if caught, where in big brand stores police aren’t even summoned, and store employees are told to stand aside, pillagers know it will generally be a one-night in-and-out, with little more than an appearance bond, but also the comfort knowing that no police department will send officers around to arrest them.
This has been the general practice for over a decade (in the Obama years it was sanctified) and of course, has gotten out of hand since the rise of Antifa and BLM, who often use different types of soldiers, from different backgrounds.
Pillagers, in general, come from a different class than much of the front lines of Antifa, who are often drugged-out, spoiled rotten rich kids, just in it for the sport and status, sort of like a resume. They don’t need the money. But pillagers do. And while Antifa bratlings have never known bloody noses, or real pain, pillagers were accustomed to them by the time they were 10. So clearing that shelf at the CVS was for the money, for all the pillagers were part of a pipeline, actually several. A pretty good business I’m told, today even college professors have accepted the wisdom that these people are actually getting their just desserts, and many city halls now agree. Just don’t hurt them.
Now I’m not going to get into the weeds as to how one can inflict that “scarlet limp” that stands out like a sore thumb, but in the early 20th Century police used to to inflict them with impunity. That’s why Robert Peel invented the billy club in 1829 in London. Peelers, they were called, and it was damned effective. A version of it was used at the ’68 Democrat Party Convention in ’68, in Mayor Daley’s Chicago, (the same mayor who stole the election for JFK in ’60) and it worked quite well. Many of those college kids decided to get back to their studies.
Of course, I’ve argued for the return of the baton for a long time.
For a younger person, the effect of that limp, in short, is to advertise to the world that if he comes into a public business, with a limp and a cane, he is either 1) a veteran, 2) a victim of an accident, or 3) a former wounded pillager. Most people will not give him a second thought unless he is still dressed like a pillager he would be foolish to do, for that would draw eyes to him.
This is an absolute deterrent, then, as well as morality tale in the neighborhood to kids who might see him.
The best targets are the ankles and knees. Billy clubs and bats work. So do .22 pistols and rifles, or even a Bowie knife across the Achilles, and on impact, the idea is to simple put the kid down, then let the EMS and courts take care of the rest.
Having lost his standing as a pillager, the kid, won’t be so inclined to wear a hoodie next visit to a Target. By 40, he may even join the “Y” and start making new friends.
Use you common sense to see how a little well-directed pain can save a kid, as well serve as a neighborhood deterrent. Our Dark Alley lamp posts light several paths to change behavior. Give pain a chance.
