Death On A Pale Horse

The Racetrack AKA Death On A Pale Horse by Albert Pinkham Ryder

I was over at Ace 'o Spades, and I'll bet you were too (or at least wish you were) spectating the spectacle of his Aceness's little tiff with the boys over at Reason magazine. Seems he's been taking the Libertarians to task over their non-defense of liberty, in the thunderdome of (yet another) ginned-up garriage kerfuffle. Go figure.

In the course of things he's also slugging it out with Bill Quick. There's no rest for the weary.

So, Ace: You okay with Muslim owned businesses refusing to serve women not “properly” covered -- ie., bagged in a burkha, because Religious Liberty?

Yes.
By the way, I could end the post here, because he will now yammer on for a few hundred words assuming that my answer must be "no," and why that's terrible.
But the answer is "Yes."
This is an easy one. What the f**k do I care? A shop owner has the right to set a dress code. Especially if this were a store geared towards Islamic identity -- an Islamic bookstore, say, or a restaurant -- this one isn't even a question.
But even absent that-- what should I care what the dress code is here, or whom he wants his clientele to be? He doesn't want to serve me, and get this -- I don't wish to be served by him.

(asterisks mine--as per rule N° whatever)
There's some entertaining reading going on here. I'll just add that control kills, and ironically, the quest for control breeds chaos. Totalitarian groupthink whether it comes from the right or the left is death. Death on a Pale Horse.

Siegfried scoping out those Rhine Maidens

But that's not what drove me to put fingers to keyboard, rather, scrolling down the page my gaze met Albert Pinkham Ryder's Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens and a large, unwelcome chunk of memory dropped into my cerebral cortex the way a meteor drops into your den while you're trying to watch the game. Hey, keep it down over there!

I was sitting in the overheated library at RISD after an all-nighter, trying desperately to keep from nodding off but the dry heat and otherworldly quiet made that an unwinnable war. Had a paper due or something, I don't recall, but I do remember leafing through a large, nicely bound and well illustrated book (the place was full of them!) on Ryder when I fell under his ominous thrall. There was something dark and threatening in his work and, I'm ashamed to say, his reclusive lifestyle seduced me--understandably perhaps since it fit so well with life in Providence, RI, home of Lovecraft's brooding evil. Wikipedia has the lowdown:

Visitors to Ryder's home were struck by his slovenly habits—he never cleaned, and his floor was covered with trash, plates with old food, and a thick layer of dust, and he would have to clear space for visitors to stand or sit. He was shy and did not seek the company of others...

This was also the time I started reading Chandler's Philip Marlow detective stories, another loner living and working in near squalor, barely scraping by, but bound by some sense of honor to do the right thing, no matter how much the right thing kept grinding his face into the pavement of Tinseltown. Always with the smart banter and the cracking wise, through it all.  How romantic!

I see now, in retrospect and with the wisdom of age, exactly when and where I started to go wrong.