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See, earlier, by John Derbyshire: Why Our So-Called Judges Should Get TWICE As Much Criticism As Politicians
Looks like it’s time to restate Derbyshire’s First Law of Antisemitism. Quote from self, writing in 2001, quote:
One thing you learn, writing for the public, is that anything whatsoever that you say about the Jews will be seen as virulently antisemitic by somebody, somewhere.
(A friend told me he thought George Orwell had written something similar. I was ready to believe it; it does sound like Orwell; and Orwell made such an impression on me in my formative years, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to know I had quoted him unconsciously. However, when I went looking for it in the online Orwell library, I couldn’t find it … although I did enjoy re-reading Orwell’s 1945 essay on “Antisemitism in Britain,” which has quite a good joke at the end.)
This is of course in relation to the tiny fuss about us here at VDARE.com using the word “kritarch” to mean a judge who thinks he’s a legislator.
Last week someone in the Justice Department circulated a routine bulletin of news items about immigration. One of the items linked to, or referred to, a VDARE.com post by our own reporter “Federale.” That post uses the word “kritarch.” Some Justice Department bureaucrat took strong exception, quote:
The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic.
The grounds for “kritarch” being antisemitic are apparently that the Hebrew Bible — and, indeed, also the Christian Bible — includes in its historical section a Book of Judges, dealing with the two centuries between the Israelites’ re-entry into Canaan under Moses and Joshua and their turning to kingship under Saul, David, and Solomon. During those centuries the Israelites were led by judges.
“Judges” is a bit of a misnomer: the lead characters in the Book of Judges were tribal leaders combining military, political, and religious functions, with jurisprudence way down the priority list. Everybody’s favorite judge is Samson; although I happen to know that our James Fulford prefers Ehud in Chapter 3.
Quote from Paul Johnson’s 1987 History of the Jews, quote:
[The Book of Judges] illuminates the essentially democratic and meritocratic nature of Israelite society. It is a book of charismatic heroes, most of whom are low-born, obtaining advancement through their own energy and abilities, which are brought out by divine favour and nomination.
So why anyone should think the word “kritarch” is “deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic” is a bit baffling.
Of course, what suited the Israelites of the later Bronze Age isn’t necessarily good for 21st-century Americans, any more than the monarchy that the Israelites took up in their next phase of political development would suit us today.
We can frown at rule by judges just as we can frown at rule by kings and queens without either frown being antisemitic.
For the record, speaking as a firm anti-antisemite and well-wisher of Israel, after twenty years of associating with the VDARE.com people, I don’t recall anything I would call antisemitism. Scanning down our list of contributors, I see a fair proportion of Jewish names: Benjamin, Epstein, Gottfried, Horowitz, …
We are immigration-restrictionists, though; and it’s a plain fact that in America the other side of that argument — the side of open borders and immigration romanticism — is very disproportionately Jewish, for historical and psychological reasons. In several cases — Michael Bloomberg and Max Boot come to mind — American-Jewish immigration enthusiasm tips over into pro-immigration hysteria.
So we end up butting heads with a lot of influential Jews who are made angry, sometimes apoplectic, by the positions we take … and Derbyshire’s First Law inevitably kicks in. Hey ho.
I had this exchange today at Sailer, and was immediately called a Nazi.
I said large sections of Europe were inhabited by barbarian tribes at times during the Common Era
Knock it with this Common Era bullshit. None of us here feel the need to kiss the broad backside of Jewish sensitivities, presumptions and insecurities.
There are some people in the fake dissident right who I personally call “Alt-Boomers”: like younger people in the current Alt-Right, he despises dark-skinned non-whites (especially Blacks and Muslims) but he, like a typical boomer, is a fervent, proud Shabbos-Goy ( “a firm anti-antisemite and well-wisher of Israel” in his euphemistic, gay language).
Every time he has to write anything slightly offensive about the tribe he feels obliged to grovel and say how much he loves them. Sickening.
Man up, dude.
It’s kind of good VDare is getting this bit of publicity. Yes, I know that the ctrl-left tweeters don’t play fair and will not link to a single post or article on the site (such as the original Federale one that caused the virtual ruckus in the 1st place). Still, I hope they they get a lot of traffic from people just typing in Vdare.com and finding, then reading the articles.
BTW, Mr. Derbyshire, I read your article from long ago on your jumping out of a perfectly-good (NOT) C182 over Long Island. That was a great description of a first static-line skydive.
“Paleo Liberal” is a fairly reasonable guy, Daniel. I believe the BCE/CE thing is just more standard-issue, anti-religion PC. I have spent quite a bit of time crossing this stuff out with an ink pen when I get library books with this crap. How about just BC and AD, but Christian Era would be a good way to throw the PC back at them though.
I agree with all of your main points, however, VDare also has antisemitic authors in that long list. Just the ones I’ve heard of: Kevin MacDonald, Richard Spencer, Alex Kurturgic.
It is unfortunate that vdare mixes and thus undermines its generally high quality content with the occasional MacDonald Jew-baiting column. It means, as we saw in this episode, that a perfectly good article about immigration judges is interpreted uncharitably, and the site as a whole can be described as antisemitic. While I know and you know it isn’t, Buzzfeed can point to a few articles, probably representing 0.1% of total content, as evidence and run with it.
There is a daily “immigration policy” link roundup sent to immigration federal employees. Now, because of just a little bit of antisemitic poison, vdare will now be absent from those emails where it used to be featured regularly.
Derb wants it both ways. And he’s trying his aw shucks well-meaning best to get there.
Derb hopes that by flattering, deferring to, and joining forces with more-powerful Jews as an obsequious, pro-white advocate (who loves loves loves Israel!) that the World’s Most Important Victims will see themselves in Derb’s image.
What a fool and what a cuck he is.
The supremely ethnocentric Zionists (who routinely pretend to be ‘white’ so they can never be excluded from directing or defining what is in the best interest of European-derived peoples) do not need or enjoy Derb’s naive, brotherly love. Nor his blessings.
No thank you, racist creep.
Racial self-worship is reserved for God’s chosen people.
Generic ‘whites’ like Derb must accept their second-tier status.
And how dare he put white nationalism on the same plane as divinely-ordained Jewish nationalism?
How dare he!
To the chosen people, white advocacy is virulent Naziism, pure and simple.
Jews want us scattered, divided and weak. Never again!
When will Derb stop cucking and start leading?
Judges have long been out of control.
The GOP should have impeached hundreds of them decades ago.
Example of an unconstitutional decision:
Same sex marriage. Totally without any legal foundation.
It’s called a f*ucking “patriarch” and it’s supposed to be beyond the pale (LOL ANTISEMITIC TERM) nowadays, nuked on sight with blue-hair spray liberally applied over the smoking ruins.
But isn’t it simply more rational & normal than BC & AD, especially for Europeans who are not theists (even less so for those who despise Christianity as an imported Kebab)? In some European languages, native speakers have for decades been speaking of “new era”,and “before new era” (of course, with acronyms). And initials may mean, in English, “Christian era”.
I find them more useful, practical & rational, much more than BC & AD – irrespective of what Jews may think or feel.
Ah, Samson – a rather peculiar fantasy of partying hard, boinking schickses and murdering their fathers and brothers.
… which begs the kasche: Were ALL Israelites living in their Mames´basements?
And are they now watching Judge Dredd or what?
You can get away with ‘kritarchy’ being ‘rule by judges’ at any time in history. But the original article by Federale refers to ‘lugenpresse’. Got any reason for not using English there?
By the way, following the link to Derb’s text on Jews (“Jews and I”), I’m intrigued- why anyone still takes Paul Johnson’s “The History of the Jews” seriously? Of course, the book is well written & has not few illuminating passages, but it is basically an enlightened Christian historiosophical retelling of a myth (from Christian perspective, although not offensive). For instance, when writing on Einstein and Freud, Johnson speculates on these thinkers’ Jewish Weltanschauung origins. But -there is none. Einstein did say a few times something positive about Spinoza (essentially, praising his rebuttal of dualism), but his chief philosophical influences were Hume, Kant & Mach. There is no Spinozistic tradition in Judaism, although within Western cultural tradition some were influenced by him (Goethe, for instance, for wrong reasons). Also, Spinoza has roots in reaction to Rene Descartes’ dualism (there is a hidden Scholastic, even Platonic origin of Descartes’ thought rarely mentioned) & nothing peculiarly Jewish. Freud was, according to Johnson, following another Jewish line of thought, irrational introversion (I forgot who was the imaginary predecessor), but this too was a complete nonsense.
Then, Johnson retells OT chronology, which may be amusing, but in all likelihood Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses,… unlike David & Solomon – never existed. There was not a sojourn in Egypt. This is a sacred history as reliable as Tolkien or Romans’ Romulus & Remus.
And, Johnson did not say anything slightly “bad” about his chosen/Chosen topic. He writes not as a historian, but as an entertaining novelist-journalist who is clearly partial to his characters: he likes them. I don’t find anything wrong with this approach, as far as it is confined to a novel. But history- it is not.
Tho it became the oligarch-supported practice of the USA to make the judges ‘supreme’, this in fact is a violation of the US Constitution, which makes the Congress supreme, with unlimited discretionary power to remove any and all federal judges, including those on the Supreme Court
But the US Congress does not implement its Constitutional supremacy, its unlimited power to remove via impeachment the judges who are not engaged in “good behaviour”, e.g., not honouring the Constitution, twisting their interpretations of ‘law’ to fit agendas
Only a handful of US federal judges have been removed in USA history, despite large numbers of them having been various kinds of gangsters and abusive law-twisters … but the Constitution itself was a weak, flawed, destined-to-fail document, its biggest error not making the right of secession explicit, a sanction that could have made the other provisions more secure
I might join the Common Era crowd, but it’s much to common for me.
CE = Christian Era
BCE = Before the Christian Era.
Just read them that way whenever you get the chance. And I’m not even a Christian.
The right of secession should never have needed to be made explicit, since the people and the States were supposed to retain all rights not specifically circumscribed by the Constitution. It’s not like we only have those rights that are enumerated in the text. But you’re right, it is flawed, and it is looking more and more like a suicide pact with each passing day.
I’d guess that a competent justice can rule either way on any issue before the court.
CE, of course, stands for the age of Caucasian Eminence.
I don’t like getting pushed to using the PC language, but yeah, if you write this out (as, say a footnote, or legend for a map) that’s a great way to turn this around on them!
“It is unfortunate that vdare mixes and thus undermines its generally high quality content with the occasional MacDonald Jew-baiting column.”
LMAOL
Question: are you a Jew yourself or just a Shabbos-Goy, like Derbyshire himself?
I find it hilarious to see people who mock the shallowness and the dishonesty of the Left in cavalierly dismissing speech they don’t like as “RACISM!!!” then suddenly turn on dime and do EXACTLY THE SAME THING when it comes to speech they don’t like about (((the tribe))): “JEW-BATING!!!”
Kevin MacDonald is perhaps the most important living academic in the world and his works (unlike Derbyshire’s repetitive essays) will be read hundreds of years from now. If our camp wins and we manage to get rid of the (((parasites))) and their enablers in our midst there will be statutes built to him in the ethnostate(s).
Sucks to you.
AGREED!
VDare is not full of Constitutionalists by any means, but they lean this way. The post here was more about the way the use of this word Kritarchs (hell, I had to look up top to spell it just now) is purposefully erroneously being used to call VDare those bad names again. You are absolutely right about the Constitutional aspects of what VDare, and “Federale” in particular, was complaining about in the 1st place.
Our Founders left it pretty open ended, as to how disputes between the branches were to be resolved. It was never written that whatever the hell the SC or any judge said was Constitutional or not is some kind of final word. We needed another Andy Jackson (“let them enforce it!”), but instead we got an easily distracted ill-managing WIMP.
Is business world any better?
So, this is how CAPITALISM works.
REPORT: ONE OUT OF FIVE MANAGERS WON’T HIRE TRUMP SUPPORTERS
Trump offers huge tax cuts to the big boys who discriminate in hiring against his supporters.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/xVzXT4eondoz/
I couldn’t agree more.
Samson…………………the original Beastie Boy.
You gotta fight……………..for your right……………….to paaaaaaarty!
Or to put it another way: you are concerned that some federal employees might be exposed to the writings of Kevin MacDonald.
Because even though kritarch has no aunty-semitic overtones to most rational people, most Jews are not rational and as the chosen people and supreme beings on this earth it is they who ultimately decide what is and is not aunty-semitic hate speech and white soopremacist racist terror.
In this case a commissar named Ashley Tabbador of the the National Association of Immigration Judges received the DOJ e-mail briefing and took umbrage about the use of the term and reference to the militant white supremacist tear-err VDARE article claiming that it was a breach of DOJ ethics. If I had to guess I’m betting Mz. Tabbador is tribe member:
https://forward.com/fast-forward/430169/what-is-a-kritarch-the-term-used-by-a-white-nationalist-website-linked-to/
Oi Vey! Tabbador shrieked ……kritarchy was used as an “aunty-semitic trope” of Jews seeking power and control. Where’s the cheka when you need them??
Should have, but couldn’t. It had been forced into a permanent second tier party in the US by (if nothing else) the sheer amount of money the US had after WW II, money that the Democrats could use to capture votes. The Republicans we reduced to defending a very few of the laws/customs that their patrons needed to stay in business. Think of it as their version of patronage jobs.
However, things are changing. The Democrats have been forced to use low level judges to block Trump. Trump’s overcoming these blocks adversely affects Judicial Branch prestige, and is a starting point for effecting the impeachment process that you propose.
Counterinsurgency
Sorry to see you haven’t by this incident been “woke” to the true nature of your reality.
What’s so rational about rejecting a system that was widely used and had the inconsistencies worked out with something brand new? Or, if the name change was only cosmetic, why bother? Strikes me as being about as rational as re-naming Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City. it simply shows who controls the territory now: now it’s Marxist, they’ve changed all the street signs.
Counterinsurgency
Praise the Lord! Those places tend to be real death traps for anybody not an SJW.
Counterinsurgency
Those who criticize Israel’s land grabs (for example, its racist theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank) get labeled as “anti-Semitic.” The rank hypocrisy is breathtaking!
And anything you say about Jews that isn’t virulently antisemitic will be seen as abject cuckery by most of the Unz commentariat.
How do msm presstitutes do a prison documentary in Cuckstain & give the Normie’s the impression that prison isn’t mostly turd world darkies?
Set the prime time doc on the only jail on the Isle of Mann!!!
No, they already are heavy exposed to it because the MSM relentlessly promotes Dork Right antisemitism as a way to discredit immigration restriction. It is an effective strategy. Heck, Richard Spencer has interviews published at the Atlantic, the Guardian, NYT, and CNN!
The question is why vdare is cooperating with this strategy.
By the way- Orwell was not (unlike pope, of course) infallible. He writes on Jews in England during & after the war:
I don’t have empirical data on WW 2 England, but anyone who has come into contact with Israeli newspapers can attest that all claim one thing: Israelis (Jews in Israel) do not have much respect for traffic regulation, try to push others (in this case other Jews) & are not what one would term civilized citizens. Rude, pushy, obnoxious in dealing with others when it comes to public transportation (this complaint comes almost exclusively from Jews who migrated to Israel from ordered Western societies like UK, US, France, Netherlands,..).
And, Orwell was fundamentally wrong about nationalism. He seems to think that nationalism is a sort of disease. Well, let’s see: Orwell continually affirmed that national individuality is something perfectly normal (and perhaps desirable); only that jingoistic nationalism is wrong & delusional & has caused many misfortunes.
But, as non-analytical as he had been, he failed to notice that nationalism, i.e. national identity going to extremes is as ineradicable as the national identity per se, because it arises when conflicting national inspirations come into proximity or contact. Having in mind that Jews are a separate people with collective interests sometimes (or even frequently) in conflict with those of peoples among whom they dwell – it is inevitable that antisemitism will appear, sooner or later, not because of “bad” habits of one or another, but because such a conflict is completely natural, as is national identity or laws of motion in classical mechanics.
That is why Arthur Koestler, Orwell’s pal, was right when he said that Jews better either emigrate to Israel (those who want to remain Jews) or completely assimilate, not just acculturate, in other home Western countries, i.e. cease to exist as corpus separatum.
Mostly agree with your post, and agree 100% about the part of Derbyshire being a Shabbos-goy.
Why are you are afraid to be seen as “virulently antisemitic” John? Have you internalized the commands of your oppressors?
The mind of a Shabbos goy like Derbyshire, to paraphrase Churchill, is made up of little matzah balls of contradictions thrown into one big confusing pot of Jewish chicken soup.
On the one hand, he is offended at the thought of having to kowtow before a Mongoloid from the far east (he hates the PRC). But, on the other hand, he will not think twice to strip naked and bend over for the Turkic Khazars from the near east (he loves the “Jews”).
Nay, Derbyshire is no proud Anglo-saxon from the true northwest.
Yes, of course, because free speech can never be allowed. If the authors of these particular articles write something that is factually incorrect, all that’s needed is to point out the error and move on. Restricting free speech because some sensitive flower feels his ethnicity has been insulted is the height of ridiculousness. But that’s where we are, and that’s what will help destroy us.
Favorite Biblical judge: Sampson or Soloman?
I linked to this comment on my blog: https://theshitlordhub.blogspot.com/2019/08/blog-post_26.html
PS: I’m L.D., not L.A. Typo.
You and PrissFactor are the best commenters on the site.
No, the MSM never actually repeats what anybody on the alt-right says. They just hold them up for pointing and sputtering. They’ll occasionally talk about them, but never in such a way that they get a hearing. As you are doing here. And you are conflating MacDonald and Spencer. MacDonald is no dork. And most normies have never heard of him.
Your objections are disingenuous, but I am not surprised.
Federal Judge Alcee Hastings was impeached and removed from the bench in 1989 for bribery and perjury. Three years later African-Americans in a gerrymandered district elected him to Congress where he remains to this day.
“And you are conflating MacDonald and Spencer.”
Do their views differ on any issue?
Thank you! And I agree that PrissFactor is a very interesting commentator.
“For the record, speaking as a firm anti-antisemite and well-wisher of Israel” i.e. a stark, raving lunatic judging by the Taki article link which portrays a Derbysemite who’s far more of a white-washer of Israel than a well-wisher.
The estimable Prof. Stephen Walt is hardly ‘paleo-Right’; & Pat Buchanan & Ron Paul wear the sobriquet honorably. Steve Sailer’s sneer about the Mavi Mamara incident under discussion in this bizarre 2010 article was not as Derbysemite suggested “the most defensible” but a left-handed approval of the infamous attack; but even that is far too little for Derbyshill’s raging Israel-philia. After waxing pseudo-poetically about banal concepts of “overlapping chains of diminishing concentric circles”(for real, he actually said this!) he’s brought to the point of lapping Israel’s jack boots. And after making the only rational statement in the whole delirious essay:” I believe I can imagine fairly well what life is like under barbarism. I don’t want any part of it”; he soon after avers that, “It remains the case that any fair-minded person must be an Israel sympathizer.”[!]
This same “fair minded” Israeli sympathizer with the well-developed imagination is however, apparently for some unexplained reason, unable to imagine what ‘life’ is like under the unspeakable barbarism of Israel’s indefensible Occupation. After repeating a few hoary Israeli talking points he concludes with, “The Congo is nothing to me. Israel is something to me. It’s an outpost of my civilization, organized on principles I agree with [e.g. occupation, apartheid, torture, state-terrorism, etc,.etc]…” “There’s an affinity. In some tenuous sense, they are me, and I am them. The Gazans? I’ll care about them right after I start caring about the Congo.” Nothing like a coxcomb with principles!
Wopner.
Yes, they do. Have you ever read or listened to either of them to know?
They are just proscribed bad-thinkers to you, and you wish them to remain so for everyone else too.
Just stick with AD and BC. Doing otherwise is using he-who-must-not-be-named terminology. Nor does CE really make sense. 1 AD wasn’t in the Christian Era, for example. Christ was dead well before anyone was called Christian.
Funny that Christians don’t feel the need to rename the months or the days of the week even though most of them are named for retired deities.
Kevin MacDonald’s sole transgression was to dissect organized Jewry. There was no fuss when he looked at the Chinese.
Like MacDonald, Eugene Michael Jones, has also been labeled anti-Semitic by the ADL for linking Jews to the sexual revolution yet this view is collaborated by Australian-born convert to Judaism and gossip columnist Luke Ford who has documented disproportionate Jewish involvement in pornography in a country founded by English Puritans.
Derb or Derbs is either afraid or prone to the Stockholm Syndrome.
Look at how Tribe Inc. has trashed his homeland.
The days’ names in English are the Norse counterparts to the Roman equivalents of the Greek deities. Confused?
Few languages in Christendom have Christian day names. Portuguese is a notable exception. Quakers tried to apply this to English, but it didn’t catch on.
Sunday in Russian is “resurrection”. That’s a good start.
Think about it– our minutes and hours are Babylonian, our days Norse, our weeks Hebrew, our months Roman, and our years Christian. Where are the Greeks?
Funny, he doesn’t look Irish:
https://i1.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/article-1289515952741-0c05a7b6000005dc-839403_636x433.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=540%2C367
Is there any Asian country where this is not the case? Even in Japan they hire burly men to shove commuters into trains.
Yeah, Reg, you’d better keep a sharp eye on YOUR homeland, Minnegadishu, Minnesota. See A Taste of Somalia (part 2). Who’s doing the trashing of your homeland? I’d put it mostly on the idiotic clueless snowflakes up there (they come in all shapes and sizes). OTOH, all this stuff has been influenced by the media, even since the time of unmarried, long-legged newsperson Mary Richards.
No, I think it’s different in Japan (too many people etc.). Most east Asian citizens are civilized & respectful in ordinary, no-hussle life situations. In Israel it is, at least that’s what I’ve been told, that bazaar-like & Gypsy-like behavior (cut in the cue; “I’m in hurry, my mother is dying, let me go first” type of tricks) simply irritates most Western-born Israelis who are not accustomed to such type of “manners” that are prevalent from India via Mid East to Africa.
It’s manners, after all.
Don’t go just by what you’ve been told, Mr. Kaldian. Take a visit to China (you need a visa, don’t forget, and Hong Kong doesn’t count). You are somewhat right in that the Chinese are very respectful in terms of not starting trouble with each other as they live in close quarters all over.
Their behavior as far as pushiness goes is pretty hard-core. They don’t get the concept of waiting in line. I’ve got one quick story in Part 2 of Peak Stupidity’s series of healthcare in China. From that post:
I was getting off an airliner at 10 PM, and while getting my bag down from the bin, people started squeezing behind me to get off. There were no connections to be made at 10 PM. “What’s wrong with you pe0ple?!” I said. Luckily, they mostly don’t know any English.
Manners vary, I guess.
True, but Somalis are somewhat down the list of Twin Cities headaches, after Chicago blacks, scruffy Latins, substance-abusing aboriginals, Indochinese hill people, and pushy fairies.
Oh, and worst of all, smug white progs in restored bungalows. Though they’re good at running eateries.
I don’t have any actual data on this, but I would think that African refugees, on average, would be better behaved than American-born blacks. They’re here because they want to be, not because their ancestors were shipped here in chains. They presumably haven’t been told all their lives that their problems are caused by the white man and the legacy of slavery.
“But isn’t it simply more rational & normal than BC & AD,“
No, because “Common Era” is a meaningless term; in what way is it common and how does the start date of this supposedly secular chronology just so happen to line up with the traditional birth of Jesus and the Christian calendar?
It’s just PC. Renaming things to pretend history is something other than what it was, because the truth hurts the egos of history’s losers. Nothing rational about it whatsoever.
It is an extraordinary article, with Orwell writing …
demonstrating that even he would believe prima facie absurdities if received from on high. The rest of the article is some kind of half-assed attempt to explain antisemitism as a neurosis …
A terrible essay coming from one of my heroes.
Except of course that a pact from which any member can withdraw at discretion is by definition the opposite of “secure.”
Your argument is roughly the same as saying that the legal and social acceptance of divorce at will by either party has made marriage and families more secure.
You can make, if you like, an argument that this increased insecurity is a price we should be willing to pay, but not, I think, that the price doesn’t exist.
The days’ names in English are the Norse counterparts to the Roman equivalents of the Greek deities.
Only four of them.
Sunday is obvious.
Monday is moon-day.
Saturday is named after a Roman god directly.
What he said was that an explicit right of secession could have made the other provisions more secure (emphasis mine). In other words, the Federal government might be less likely to overstep its Constitutional authority if states could react to that by seceding. I don’t know if that would actually be the case, but it’s certainly plausible.