Eye of the Beholder
Nidal Hasan's death sentence is as richly deserved as anyone's easily could be, but it apparently won't be televised.
"Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people," Trump posted to Truth Social earlier today."That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE!" he concluded.You can read Trump's entire post here, where he also noted that "With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die."
The Washington Post account reads it as a rebuke of Sec. Hegseth, but that's pure and unsupported interpretation on their part. More likely in my opinion it is that the lawyers pointed out that such a livestream was likely a violation of Federal law as well as military regulations. The fact that Hasan has since become infirm may have diminished the value of the spectacle in any case.
Philosophically, the question of exemplary punishment is one we have discussed here occasionally since at least 2015.
Rational punishment does not look to the past but to the future, Protagoras says. Indeed, since we cannot change the past, the only reason -- that is, the only kind of purpose to which rationality even might apply itself -- for punishment must be an eye toward the future. Deterrence is rational. Rehabilitation is rational. Mere retribution is bestial, so he argues.I think that the opposite is true. It is the beast who is most likely to forgo retribution. They will act not to revenge past harms, but to avoid fresh ones. They might kill you if they think you are still dangerous and sense a momentary advantage. They might just as readily avoid you to keep from presenting you with a chance to hurt them again. They will not feel any duty of honor to avenge themselves, or their families, nor to repay you for the wrongs you have done.Retribution is a higher, not a lower quality. This is orthodox, is it not? Vengeance is the divine quality, not a bestial one. Human beings are urged to mercy and kindness toward their enemies not because it is irrational or animal to punish past wrongs, but because they are not high enough to do it well and justly. Be patient, return kindness for cruelty, and you will heap hot coals on their heads.How fitting, then, that it was a Vicar who provided the author cited at the top of this post with his reasons. But this is not a purely Judeo-Christian view. The Ancient Greeks thought this too, those of them who were poets instead of philosophers. They also thought that vengeance and retribution were divine. Hesiod even tells you her name.
Fall Color: Still Early
It's coming in, and the yellows especially are vibrant when the sun gets low in the afternoon. Still a lot of green out there yet.
The Most Beautiful Time of the Year
The autumn color is creeping in, but the days are warm and delightful (when there isn't a hurricane). For the next little while, things will be very beautiful in my part of the world. I'll try to get some photos to share with all of you.
Ride Down Easy
As I was telling Mr. Hines in the comments below, there's a bit left but so far we seem to have gotten down easy. All the same I believe in the Havamal: "Praise the day at evening." Let's hope the last part goes down easy.
Hurricane Planning
I've been through some several hurricanes in my life but none like Helene two years ago. Hopefully this one won't go too badly; we are due perhaps seven inches of rain instead of 17, everything isn't already sodden from weeks of rain beforehand, and the wind locally is only expected to gust to 60. There is some flash flooding predicted but nothing like the mass destruction of Helene or even the quite deadly Tropical Storm Fred, the flooding of which topped 23 inches at nearby Lake Toxaway and swept more than thirty people away never to be found just over the ridge down the Pigeon River valley. Still, with the recent memories somewhat fresh we are all giving a little attention to preparation.
I evacuated from one with my family, one other time sent them on and myself stayed behind to ride herd on things at home -- that time I caught the last train and then the last bus out of DC before the storm hit. Otherwise I have mostly slept through them. Since it's not really in my hands anyway, I always figure we'll just have to see how it turns out.
New York City?!
I had a brief flashback to this old commercial when I saw this from the NYT today for a slow-cooker chili recipe. Now you can make chili in a slow cooker, if you must, and with proper care (scroll to 'braise' and then ff.) it will only be a little less good than something made in a cast iron Dutch oven. However, the old commercial continued to rear its head as I read on:
A great chili should be richly spiced, with layers of deep, savory flavor. Here, that big flavor comes from the usual contenders, but also from the unexpected additions of unsweetened cocoa, soy sauce and Worcestershire....
I can see the cocoa, which might do something like it does in some Mexican moles; but I'm not sure I need English Sauce in my chili, nor soy sauce either.
Maybe for April Fool's Day.
Hunter S. Thompson and the Cornell Case
I'm not going to join in the Cornell festival of blame, about which I know nothing that is not in the newspaper. However, I was reminded very strongly of the Hunter Thompson book I reviewed recently. The reason is that this sort of subject matter getting sensational newspaper stories and big press conferences by policemen and prosecutors was what, Hunter argued, turned the Hells Angels from around a hundred guys in California into what it became after.
The sensationalist stories spilled purple prose and raised all sorts of accusations; however, on inquiry Hunter found that the charges were generally dropped or not upheld if prosecuted, and anyway it always seemed like the club had no need to go out looking for girls to assault because lots of girls were looking for them. The girls sought out the club, a fact that amused Hunter quite a bit -- not just girls, though lots of girls, but also lots of other ordinary middle class people. The media sold a story that the run to Bass Lake one year was going to be an orgy of destruction, but what all that newspaper ink accomplished was to bring out lots of tourists who wanted to see the show. In spite of some small tension, Hunter's editor had a rather disappointing story after the affair of people mostly getting along and camping out. A lot of beer was drunk, including by visiting girls.
A lot of sex may also have been had during the drinking and camping on the beach. At least some of the stories in the book are reported as rather enthusiastic seeking-out of the club just for the drinking and very wild sex. That was what brought them out.
I suspect fraternities and sororities can be a milder version of this. I'm not saying that is what happened here, but I do notice the parallel between the wild, hair-on-fire print accounts and then the emerging details that come later on.
The grandstanding public figures also have strong parallels in both sets of cases. I predict that this grandstanding will end up doing actual harm to the cause they claim to be interested in defending. Hunter is quite vocal in defending the idea that rape is extremely serious and deserves to be punished, though he takes care to be a good journalist and paint a fair picture of what he actually learned about the cases he mentioned. I was struck by the irony that it was not the governors or the police chiefs or the New York Times who went to the trouble to get the facts right, but the gonzo journalist.
Rhyming is Important
I might share a couple of my opinions with you; but I'm not going to share them because I think they're smart, I'm going to share them with you because they rhyme... I ain't traveling around trying to change nobody's mind.
Liberation and the Firearm
Reason magazine notes that women are better-armed than ever. American women, anyway -- but without much division other than that.
They add that the big surge in women's gun ownership has occurred since 2018 and, almost without exception, is seen across the board without regard to race, age, income, party identification, or education.... "Ownership is demographically diverse: 45.7% of validated gun owners are female, 25.6% do not identify as White (alone), and the gap in ownership rates between White Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points," Georgetown University's William English wrote last month, of numbers from the National Firearms Survey....Smart and Morral add that women with children have been especially quick to acquire guns. The shift "has been driven almost entirely by single (not cohabitating) mothers, a group that may have been particularly affected by changing attitudes toward personal empowerment and safety concerns during a period of rising violence." Women mostly own handguns, which are closely identified with self-defense.
I've taught several women to shoot myself.
Sophistry, V
By the ~25m mark, Fr. Ripperger is onto a topic he is ascribing to sophistry where he actually disagrees with Aristotle completely. This is a point where I also disagree with Aristotle, so I don't say that as a criticism of the position he is advocating, just again his ascribing that position to "sophistry."
The particular point he is describing as sophistry (which it isn't) and a violation of natural law (which it is) is the controlling of education by the state rather than the family. He has quite a lot to say about this, so feel free to watch that part of the video directly; I don't think anyone who is a regular here will much disagree with his position.
Aristotle, however, does disagree with it. In Rhetoric I he is clear that, because the state is made up of families to which we are naturally attached, the law needs to settle "as many points as possible" so that very little judgment is left even to magistrates where their natural ties might incline them to favoritism. In Politics VIII.1-2 he speaks to the law and education in a way that clarifies that education of the youth is particularly a state matter, not a family matter:
None will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives.... [S]ince the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole. In this particular as in some others the Lacedaemonians are to be praised, for they take the greatest pains about their children, and make education the business of the state.
...That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of this public education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there is disagreement about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life.
That could hardly be clearer. It is directly opposed as a view to the one Fr. Ripperger is (rightly, in my opinion) advocating, but it is nevertheless not a sophistic position but Aristotle's own. Likewise, to say as the good father does that this is a post-Protestant position is clearly disproven by the citation; it is in fact the ancient position of Aristotle and the Aristotelians.
The medieval Aristotelian position, which is to say especially St. Thomas Aquinas' position, is less clear. Aquinas follows Aristotle very, very closely in the Summa Theologiae but he is mostly following Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Physics, and Metaphysics. Aquinas wrote a commentary on the first two books of the Politics only. Insofar as we can piece it together, Aquinas seems to have agreed that the family and not the state had jurisdiction over the education of the young -- but, perhaps like the Church's general endorsement of monarchy during the middle ages, this might partly be because that was the only live option.
I talk a lot about Aristotle here because I think he is of continuing value, and could in many respects restore the habit of thinking things through of which Fr. Ripperger is really also lamenting the loss. Even Aristotle wasn't right about everything; on this point, as well as a few others, he was in my opinion quite wrong.
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