Friday Night AMV
A State Alchemist has to be hardcore.
This series was interesting in that its' magic had a real cost.
This series was interesting in that its' magic had a real cost.
Motherhood is Service
In response to this foolishness about 'me-ternity leave,' I just want to link to a post from 2009. That's why we do it this way, and not some other way.
SFC Martland Update
Good to see the Army do the right thing by Green Beret Charles Martland. Spreading core American values like not raping children is well within the mission of the US Special Forces.
I say "core American values" rather than "universal human values" because, while you'd think this was the sort of thing people would just understand, Afghanistan proves that it isn't quite.
I say "core American values" rather than "universal human values" because, while you'd think this was the sort of thing people would just understand, Afghanistan proves that it isn't quite.
Boy Shoots Home Invader
A young man in Alabama, aged 11, shot a home intruder near Talladega. Something similar happened when I was growing up. I described the case eleven years ago.
In those days, Forsyth County was entirely rural. In the southern and eastern parts, it was cattle country, with green and rolling pastures being the main feature of the land. In the northwestern part of the county, it was timberland, and forestry was the main industry. A modestly large county, nevertheless there were often only two deputy sheriffs on duty at any shift. There was no other law, and not much need for any, but on the rare occasion that anything bad happened -- whether a fire or a car wreck or whatever -- they called out the volunteer Firemen to lend some extra, uniformed hands.Fifth graders are typically about eleven, I think.
So this one day, just about six miles from my own childhood house, a couple of fifth grade kids were returning from their afternoon's sport: shooting their .22 rifles. It was probably target shooting rather than squirrel hunting, but either was a common passtime. They came out of the backcountry and onto their red-dirt road, and started walking home.
Passing a neighbor's house, they saw a couple of men they didn't recognize taking things out of it and loading it into a strange car. The two boys -- fifth graders, now -- yelled at the strangers to demand an answer as to why they were taking their neighbors' stuff. One of the men pulled a gun, and shot at them.
Well, he missed. They didn't, returning the fire with their rifles and getting him through the stomach. He and his friend panicked, but found themselves cut off from their car by the fusilade. One of the boys ran down a powerline cut to get to a bigger road, to flag help. The other tried to keep the strangers pinned.
The two strangers managed to break into a truck that was at the house they were robbing, and they went barreling down the road. However, the kid who went for help found some, and soon the Volunteer Fire Department had cut off all the local roads. By the time the deputy got there, Volunteers were standing in the middle of the roads with shotguns. Nobody had to go get one -- they were in the truck gun rack, in case they were needed.
After the two men drove off in the stolen truck, meanwhile, the other kid went home and informed his family of the robbery. They, along with their other neighbors, got into their trucks and went hunting. They recognized the stolen truck easily -- it belonged to their neighbor, after all -- and ran it off the road. The wounded man gave in at once, but the other one tried to escape into the woods. They chased him down and beat him with sticks until he surrendered.
Eventually, word of this got back to the deputy, who headed over to collect the prisoners. He, poor fellow, missed all the excitement but still got to write the report.
I'm told that was the last robbery in that end of the county for quite a little while.
Just War and Polite Philosophy
A professor of philosophy from Brown University, one Nomy Arpaly, argues that philosophy justifies rudeness in much the same way that war justifies violence.
My experience is that polite philosophical discussion is not only possible, it's the case -- unless by "rudeness" you mean the odd thing she is framing as rude, the questioning of people's beliefs. Philosophy conferences are sometimes heated, but usually are extraordinarily polite. Philosophy conferences are also a great place to see things questioned all the way down to the ground. You will see people's entire belief systems destroyed in front of an audience, at times, but almost never in a way we would ordinarily describe as rude. It's only rude if you think it's improper to destroy ideas people care about. Sometimes, though, they're bad ideas.
Indeed, Arpaly's own work questions two of philosophy's most basic assumptions, the centrality of reason to morality and of deliberation to reason. Her opening example makes more sense if you read it in the context of that questioning.
The assumption that such rationally derived rules should govern these interactions is just what she is questioning: sometimes, instead of favoring rationally derived rules, we should listen to our desires. She is proposing a system for doing that and suggesting we would be better off, at least sometimes, if we followed our hearts. Thus the question: what if my heart leads me to violence? Doesn't allowing desires to override rationally-derived rules weaken protections against violence, especially in cases where her proposed system seems to justify substituting desires for the rules derived in rational deliberation?
It's a good question. The fact that she wants to analogize the situation to Just War only makes it a better question. It seems as if a model like hers is going to need very strong rules to prevent licensing violence -- and, by extension, many other kinds of passionate behavior. Otherwise she will have to accept being slapped by someone who really has a desire to do it that is grounded in the right way for her system. Presumably, she is not willing to be slapped. Indeed, she finds even the pantomime of a slapping so objectionable that she's remembered it for years as a clear example of something offensive in philosophy. She is writing a piece specifically to call us not to do such things. To say that another way, she is proposing rules governing desired behavior, to be applied to situations like 'philosophical discussion' in general.
If it does need such rules, though, doesn't that undermine her whole model? Such rules are rational, and are being derived at a deliberative distance. Moral behavior ends up primarily involving containing such desires according to rationally-derived rules that come from deliberation. She just wants different rules, presumably ones that allow for the indulging of desires she approves of more often than is permitted by the rules we have now.
The fact that we can see that comes from the question. It suggests that her basic model is flawed, all the way to the ground. It's an insightful point. I wonder if she has a response, beyond the objection that it was rude.
It is a big part of moral behavior in ordinary situations not to kill people. Yet the morally healthy inhibition against killing people has to be lost, of necessity, in war—even in a morally justified war. It is a big part of politeness—not in the sense of using the right fork, but in the sense of civility—in ordinary situations not to tell another person that she is wrong and misguided about something she cares a lot about, or that she cares about being right about. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say it’s a big part of politeness or civility not to correct people. Yet the civilized inhibition against correcting people has to be lost, of necessity, in a philosophical argument.The way she frames this is in terms of 'inhibition loss,' whereby one 'loses' the usual inhibition against killing/rudeness, and thus is in danger of losing other inhibitions along the way. She thinks the position of women in philosophy can be substantially improved simply by limiting the amount of rudeness in the discussion to 'no more than what is necessary,' in much the same way that Just War prohibitions against indiscriminate killing are helpful in preventing wars from being worse than they must be.
My experience is that polite philosophical discussion is not only possible, it's the case -- unless by "rudeness" you mean the odd thing she is framing as rude, the questioning of people's beliefs. Philosophy conferences are sometimes heated, but usually are extraordinarily polite. Philosophy conferences are also a great place to see things questioned all the way down to the ground. You will see people's entire belief systems destroyed in front of an audience, at times, but almost never in a way we would ordinarily describe as rude. It's only rude if you think it's improper to destroy ideas people care about. Sometimes, though, they're bad ideas.
Indeed, Arpaly's own work questions two of philosophy's most basic assumptions, the centrality of reason to morality and of deliberation to reason. Her opening example makes more sense if you read it in the context of that questioning.
I’ll never forget the old guy who asked me, at an APA interview: “suppose I wanted to slap you, and suppose I wanted to slap you because I thought you were giving us really bad answers, and I mistakenly believed that by slapping you I’ll bring out the best in you. Am I blameworthy?”.This turns out to be a highly relevant question, if desire ought to override reason in the way she is arguing it sometimes should. The prohibitions against violence (including all the ones in Just War theory) are rational principles. They arise not in the heat of the moment, but from abstracting away from the real situations of war to try to find ways in which these situations are alike. Those ways in which many different situations are alike are called "universals" by most philosophers -- I often say they are, properly speaking, analogies -- and the universals are rational objects. The reason we can craft general rules governing very different wars in different times and places is because of rational deliberation of this kind.
When he said “suppose I wanted to slap you”, his butt actually left his chair for a moment and his hand was mimicking a slap in the air.
The assumption that such rationally derived rules should govern these interactions is just what she is questioning: sometimes, instead of favoring rationally derived rules, we should listen to our desires. She is proposing a system for doing that and suggesting we would be better off, at least sometimes, if we followed our hearts. Thus the question: what if my heart leads me to violence? Doesn't allowing desires to override rationally-derived rules weaken protections against violence, especially in cases where her proposed system seems to justify substituting desires for the rules derived in rational deliberation?
It's a good question. The fact that she wants to analogize the situation to Just War only makes it a better question. It seems as if a model like hers is going to need very strong rules to prevent licensing violence -- and, by extension, many other kinds of passionate behavior. Otherwise she will have to accept being slapped by someone who really has a desire to do it that is grounded in the right way for her system. Presumably, she is not willing to be slapped. Indeed, she finds even the pantomime of a slapping so objectionable that she's remembered it for years as a clear example of something offensive in philosophy. She is writing a piece specifically to call us not to do such things. To say that another way, she is proposing rules governing desired behavior, to be applied to situations like 'philosophical discussion' in general.
If it does need such rules, though, doesn't that undermine her whole model? Such rules are rational, and are being derived at a deliberative distance. Moral behavior ends up primarily involving containing such desires according to rationally-derived rules that come from deliberation. She just wants different rules, presumably ones that allow for the indulging of desires she approves of more often than is permitted by the rules we have now.
The fact that we can see that comes from the question. It suggests that her basic model is flawed, all the way to the ground. It's an insightful point. I wonder if she has a response, beyond the objection that it was rude.
Another Ancient CAS Plane That Is Better Than The F-35
The real competitor to the A-10 is not the F-35, but the fifty-year-old Vietnam-era OV-10 Bronco.
It lacks the A-10's survivability, but it does have a lot more flexibility. Boeing has been thinking about restarting production anyway, as it's cheap enough that lots of countries can afford it. As the initial article points out, it only costs $1,000 an hour to operate, compared with $40,000 for an F-15 (another fighter commonly bought by Third World American allies). For sake of comparison, the A-10 comes in at $11,500, and the F-35 at $39,000 an hour (well, or so they say -- when they get them working, we'll see what the cost really is). So the OV-10 is even cheaper to operate than a Predator drone.
To test whether the more than 50-year-old plane still had some fight in it, US Central Command (CENTCOM) sent two OV-10s to Iraq, where they flew 120 combat missions as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, with a 99% success rate.... Capable of carrying 3,000 pounds of ordinance, the Bronco can carry an overwhelming assortment of firepower for it’s small size, including either four 7.62mm machine guns, four .50 caliber machine guns, or a pair of 20mm cannons in addition to a loadout of rockets, missiles, and bombs as needed for the day’s mission...Quite a bit of video at the link.
One more fun trick the OV-10 does it drop a 5-man Special Forces ODA out the back.
It lacks the A-10's survivability, but it does have a lot more flexibility. Boeing has been thinking about restarting production anyway, as it's cheap enough that lots of countries can afford it. As the initial article points out, it only costs $1,000 an hour to operate, compared with $40,000 for an F-15 (another fighter commonly bought by Third World American allies). For sake of comparison, the A-10 comes in at $11,500, and the F-35 at $39,000 an hour (well, or so they say -- when they get them working, we'll see what the cost really is). So the OV-10 is even cheaper to operate than a Predator drone.
Kelpies
Sculptures on the Hebrides, or "he-brides," as they are sometimes mockingly named at Scottish Highland Games.
Of Course Spanking Works
The problem with this study making the rounds is that it assumes that spanking is supposed to generate obedience. Who wants to raise children who are obedient? What we want to raise is children who are self-sufficient and who don't cause us problems. They are children who learn to deal with power structures and pursue their own interests accordingly.
Which is exactly what the study says spanked children are like. They are capable of wielding deception, they are capable of wielding violence in their own interests, and they are capable of pretending to go-along-and-get-along when they aren't in positions of power.
They're Odysseus, in other words.
This is the matter of Plato's Hippias Minor, which treats the question of whether Odysseus or Achilles was the greater hero. The usual position of historians and philosophers is that this is a very unimportant dialogue, with a silly argument, that we might even doubt was Platonic except that Aristotle confirms that Plato wrote it.
That's not right at all. The point is that Plato was teaching the Athens that killed him that Socrates was a kind of Odysseus. Aristotle takes the 'simple' reductio argument of this dialogue seriously enough that he responds to it in the Nicomachean Ethics. This is very serious stuff.
What kind of a child are you trying to raise? An obedient one? Or Odysseus?
Which is exactly what the study says spanked children are like. They are capable of wielding deception, they are capable of wielding violence in their own interests, and they are capable of pretending to go-along-and-get-along when they aren't in positions of power.
They're Odysseus, in other words.
This is the matter of Plato's Hippias Minor, which treats the question of whether Odysseus or Achilles was the greater hero. The usual position of historians and philosophers is that this is a very unimportant dialogue, with a silly argument, that we might even doubt was Platonic except that Aristotle confirms that Plato wrote it.
That's not right at all. The point is that Plato was teaching the Athens that killed him that Socrates was a kind of Odysseus. Aristotle takes the 'simple' reductio argument of this dialogue seriously enough that he responds to it in the Nicomachean Ethics. This is very serious stuff.
What kind of a child are you trying to raise? An obedient one? Or Odysseus?
Cruz/Fiorina
A ticket we talked about back in March has become a reality today. Good, I suppose. Certainly the best thing left out there.
High-Speed Dalai Lama
He operates, bro.
Apparently he really did say the thing about how it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Everything else is just internet awesomeness.
Some appropriate music. And by 'appropriate,' I mean appropriate for this. NSFW.
Apparently he really did say the thing about how it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Everything else is just internet awesomeness.
Some appropriate music. And by 'appropriate,' I mean appropriate for this. NSFW.
Another Example of Tex's Kind of "Lesson"
The Pentagon has decided to test the A-10 against the F-35 in the role of close air support, to see which platform really serves the needs of forces on the ground best. Hot Air reports:
First, though, the Pentagon has to get its F-35s working properly. Tritten notes that the latest in a long series of “glitches” involves its radar system, which randomly stops functioning and requires rebooting in flight. That could complicate comparative war-gaming — as well as potentially put pilots and ground personnel at greater risk. It’s hard to run a test between an operational and well-known system and a mock-up.No, it isn't. Far from 'complicating' the test, I think it simplifies it a great deal.
Something Worth Celebrating: Speaker Hastert Goes to Prison
If only we were as good as holding powerful members of the Executive's party to the law. If only it were as good at enforcing the law on well-connected major donors.
Still, it's not nothing to see a former Speaker of the House brought to heel for serious violations of the law.
Still, it's not nothing to see a former Speaker of the House brought to heel for serious violations of the law.
More Fun With Physics
My wife was driving and I was passengering on our way back
from the store. As we came over an
overpass, the speed limit changed sharply from 50mph to 35mph, with effect
directly at the bottom of the hill that was the overpass. My wife commented that it's hard to
decelerate that much on a downhill run of that distance. I suggested that she not decelerate.
Her response was that there might be a cop with a radar
gun, and then came the fun with physics.
I suggested that she accelerate instead of decelerate;
after all, once she achieves a certain speed, she'd get past the cop's radar
gun before it could trigger. In fact,
the task would be a bit simpler since the cop's radar gun's photons would have
to make a round trip over the same distance my wife and I would need to cover
only once.
Furthermore, having achieved that certain speed, she'd
likely get abeam the cop's radar gun before she'd left the overpass
hilltop. From that, any causality
problems ensuing from the cop choosing to trigger his radar gun anyway would be
on the cop—textbook police brutality.
As my wife put it, #photonlivesmatter.
Eric Hines
The Candidate For Those Who Respect Women
Headline: "Hillary supporters take down Bernie FB pages in coordinated porn attack."
From the article:
From the article:
According to eyewitness reports, the pages were flooded with pornographic images in coordinated fashion and then flagged for obscene content, prompting Facebook to remove them.Kiddie porn. How is it that Hillary Clinton's supporters even have kiddie porn to use as a weapon? It's illegal even to possess (and rightly so).
"We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today,” said Sanders supporter Erica Libenow, according to Heavy.com. "I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”
At least one Facebook user linked to the pro-Hillary Clinton group Bros 4 Hillary was reported to have participated in the attacks.
The Devil You Say
John F. Kerry and his wife have millions in off-shore tax havens? That's the least surprising news story of the year.
Vietnam Marines Reuinte to Recreate Surfing Photo
It's kind of a fun photo, even.
It would be two years they would spend together, both in training in combat. Subjected to horrific conditions and intense combat two of them earned Purple Hearts- all of them carried the scars of war.It's been fifty years, and they look pretty good all things considered.
“We had the tools. We had the training,” DeVenezia said. “But nothing trains you for your first combat. Nothing. Zero.”
Following the end of their 13 month tours, the all went their separate ways and fell out of touch.
On the Perils of Civilian Control of the Military
We all know what the advantages are. They have been drilled into us, and into the professional military, so thoroughly that -- as this author points out -- none of the flag officers have resigned in protest over Secretary Ray Mabus' savaging of the Navy and Marine Corps. The weakness created by Mabus' leadership has proven provocative, as American weakness often does:
In recent days, Russian fighter-bombers have done barrel rolls within ca. 30 feet of our planes and ships inside international waters. Such reckless behavior (no doubt part of Putin's plan to ratchet up the level of intimidation) leaves little to no room for error and focuses one's mind on the possibility of a tragic international incident, even war. But as the Army chief-of-staff testified recently before the Senate Armed Services Committee, if it ever came to war with Putin's Russia, we'd most likely get the short end of the stick.It would be ironic if we fell into war with Russia just because of civilian control of the military -- if the fact that the particular civilians given control understood and appreciated the Navy's culture so little turned out to be the thing that brought the war. It would be a bitter irony indeed.
Such is the state of America's armed forces under Barack Obama and Ray Mabus.
Bright Flash of Light
It is possible to reason to an understanding of when life begins.
In case you need a hint, though, it turns out that nature provides a big one.
In case you need a hint, though, it turns out that nature provides a big one.
Fantasy economics
A college loses its shirt playing around with expensive, subsidized green energy initiatives. One administrator commented, "They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.” I disagree.
Status quo
Here's what Europeans say about why all the business innovation seems to be coming from the U.S. The article concludes with the interesting observation that, even in the U.S., the innovation comes disproportionately from first-generation offspring of immigrants.
When Should Felons Have Voting Rights Restored?
Hot Air has a poll on the subject. It's an interesting question, I suppose.
If laws are just, then obedience to the law is an important part of one's duty. Where laws are unjust, disobedience of the law is often obedience to duty. Any violation of the law can be said to be a felony by whoever makes the law; and in a corrupt system, they are likely to make more felonious the most virtuous violations. There will still be thieves and robbers in the worst society, but political prisoners will pay a higher price the worse the corruption becomes.
So, when should felons be allowed to vote? There's no single answer, is there? It depends on whether what they did was a crime that would be universally recognized, or a crime against the politics of the corrupt. They may be morally unfit to ever vote. They may also be your best guides.
If laws are just, then obedience to the law is an important part of one's duty. Where laws are unjust, disobedience of the law is often obedience to duty. Any violation of the law can be said to be a felony by whoever makes the law; and in a corrupt system, they are likely to make more felonious the most virtuous violations. There will still be thieves and robbers in the worst society, but political prisoners will pay a higher price the worse the corruption becomes.
So, when should felons be allowed to vote? There's no single answer, is there? It depends on whether what they did was a crime that would be universally recognized, or a crime against the politics of the corrupt. They may be morally unfit to ever vote. They may also be your best guides.
Alphas
The Art of Manliness has a post on the subject of alpha wolves. It's insightful.
Go to the Wild and you find the truth. You might die, of course. But you'll learn something.
Popular culture soon took this conception of the alpha wolf, along with the whole alpha vs beta distinction, and applied it to humans — especially men. Hence, the idea that to be an alpha male, you’ve got to take no prisoners, f*** s*** up each and every day, take what’s yours, and never say sorry.I don't know why this wasn't obvious from the beginning, but it should have been. Something about the 20th century really let people buy into some strange notions about the world and how it works. Urbanization? The rise of psychology, with its assumption that our real motivations are hidden and mysterious?
There’s just one problem with this idea.
The research it’s based on turned out to be hugely flawed....
For most of the 20th century, researchers believed that gray wolf packs formed each winter among independent and unrelated wolves that lived near each other. They had reached this conclusion from observing groups of wolves that had been taken from various zoos and thrown together in captivity.
Under these circumstances, researchers observed that wolves would organize the pack hierarchy based on physical aggression and dominance. The alpha male wolf, indeed, was the wolf that kicked ass and took names....
Instead of forming packs of unrelated individuals, in which alphas compete to rise to the top, researchers discovered that wild wolf packs actually consist of little nuclear wolf families. Wolves are in fact a generally monogamous species, in which males and females pair off and mate for life.... by virtue of being parents, and leading their “subordinate” children, the mates represent a pair of “alphas.” The alpha male, or papa wolf, sits at the top of the male hierarchy in the family and the alpha female, or mamma wolf, sits atop the female hierarchy in the family.
In other words, male alpha wolves don’t gain their status through aggression and the dominance of other males, but because the other wolves in the pack are his mate and kiddos. He’s the pack patriarch. The Pater Familias. Dear Old Dad.
And like any good family man, a male alpha wolf protects his family and treats them with kindness, generosity, and love.
Go to the Wild and you find the truth. You might die, of course. But you'll learn something.
What Did She Say?
During a Thursday discussion in Connecticut on gun violence, Hillary Clinton agreed with an audience member that “joining a gang is like having a family.” Then she suggested an alternative: “positive gangs.”You mean like a militia?
The Suicide of a Nation
It is not like Vesuvius destroying Pompeii, writes Joel D. Hirst.
No, national suicide is a much longer process – not product of any one moment. But instead one bad idea, upon another, upon another and another and another and another and the wheels that move the country began to grind slower and slower; rust covering their once shiny facades. Revolution – cold and angry. Hate, as a political strategy. Law, used to divide and conquer. Regulation used to punish. Elections used to cement dictatorship. Corruption bleeding out the lifeblood in drips, filling the buckets of a successive line of bureaucrats before they are destroyed, only to be replaced time and again....Which nation do you think he means? Read the rest.
In my defense – weak though it may be – I tried to fight the suicide the whole time; in one way or another. I suppose I still do, my writing as a last line of resistance. But like Dagny Taggert I found there was nothing to push against – it was all a gooey mess of resentment and excuses. “You shouldn’t do that.” I have said. And again, “That law will not work,” and “this election will bring no freedom,” while also, “what you plan will not bring prosperity – and the only equality you will find will be in the bread line.” And I was not alone; an army of people smarter than me pointed out publically in journals and discussion forums and on the televisions screens and community meetings and in political campaigns that the result would only be collective national suicide. Nobody was listening.
So I wandered off. I helped Uganda recover after a 25 year civil war – emptying out the camps and getting people back living again. I helped return democracy to Mali, and cemented a national peace process. I wrote three novels. I moved, and moved, and moved again. I loved my wife; we took vacations. We visited Marrakesh, and Cairo, and Zanzibar and Portugal and the Grand Canyon. We had surgeries. I had a son. We taught our son to sit up, to crawl, to walk and to run; to sing and scream and say words like “chlorophyll” and “photosynthesis”. To name the planets one by one, to write his name.
All the while the agonizingly slow suicide continued.
Enter the Gladiators
Paglia again:
[College students today have] no sense of the great patterns of world history, the rise and fall of civilisations like Babylon and Rome that became very sexually tolerant, and then fell. If you’ve had no exposure to that, you can honestly believe that ‘There is progress all around us and we are moving to an ideal state of culture, where we all hold hands and everyone is accepted for what they are … and the environment will be pure…’ – a magical utopian view that we are marching to perfection. And the sign of this progress is toleration – of the educated class – for homosexuality, or for changing gender, or whatever.As if to further advance the similarity between ourselves and the fall of the Roman Republic, gladiatorial games are set to resume.
“To me it’s a sign of the opposite, it’s symptomatic of a civilisation just before it falls: ‘we’ are very tolerant, not passionate, but there are bands of vandals and destroyers circling around the edge of our civilisation who will bring it down.”
Webb on Jackson
A defense of a President recently treated as indefensible:
A product of the Scots-Irish migration from war-torn Ulster into the Appalachian Mountains, his father died before he was born. His mother and both brothers died in the Revolutionary War, where he himself became a wounded combat veteran by age 13.... like other plantation owners such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, owned slaves...Once again, I'm sorry to see that Webb didn't do better in the primary. This willingness to stand up for those normally told to shut up and sit down is refreshing.
As president, Jackson ordered the removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. This approach, supported by a string of presidents, including Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, was a disaster, resulting in the Trail of Tears where thousands died. But was its motivation genocidal? Robert Remini, Jackson’s most prominent biographer, wrote that his intent was to end the increasingly bloody Indian Wars and to protect the Indians from certain annihilation at the hands of an ever-expanding frontier population. Indeed, it would be difficult to call someone genocidal when years before, after one bloody fight, he brought an orphaned Native American baby from the battlefield to his home in Tennessee and raised him as his son.
Today’s schoolchildren should know and appreciate that Jackson’s July 1832 veto of legislation renewing the charter of the monopolistic Second National Bank prevented the creation of a permanent aristocracy in our country... Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Vernon Louis Parrington called this veto “perhaps the most courageous act in our political history.”
Just as significantly, in November 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union. Jackson put a strong military force in position... Wisely, South Carolina did not call Jackson’s bluff, and civil war was averted for another 28 years.
Trump the End of Conservatism?
I've said before I'll vote for Trump if he's the nominee in order to stop Hillary. Ben Shapiro disagrees with my position.
He goes on to make the case that by allying ourselves with Trump, we will be complicit in his distortions of the Conservative ethos and the hollowing out of the Conservative movement, which would do more damage than a Hillary presidency.
I don't know if Shapiro's right, or my instinct to oppose Hillary is right, or what. I'm hoping for a contested convention, but I question that as well. Shouldn't the guy with the most votes get the nomination? Do I support the kind of backroom deals I have strongly opposed in the past just to get my preferred result of someone besides Trump?
As the political season grows long, the one thing I am increasingly sure of is that this is possibly the most absurd position we could have found ourselves in.
Write-in campaign for Conan, anyone?
There is an argument to be made for supporting Trump to stop Hillary. ... Hillary will be a guaranteed horror show, but she’ll be a typical corrupt leftist Democrat we can fight from the outside, not a wild-eyed tyrant with whom we must be forced into alliance. As Alexander Hamilton – you know, the guy from the musical! – once said, “If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.”
He goes on to make the case that by allying ourselves with Trump, we will be complicit in his distortions of the Conservative ethos and the hollowing out of the Conservative movement, which would do more damage than a Hillary presidency.
I don't know if Shapiro's right, or my instinct to oppose Hillary is right, or what. I'm hoping for a contested convention, but I question that as well. Shouldn't the guy with the most votes get the nomination? Do I support the kind of backroom deals I have strongly opposed in the past just to get my preferred result of someone besides Trump?
As the political season grows long, the one thing I am increasingly sure of is that this is possibly the most absurd position we could have found ourselves in.
Write-in campaign for Conan, anyone?
Common Ground for Conservatives
The Intercollegiate Review recently republished Frank S. Meyer's "What All Conservatives Can Agree On". This is from an analysis of the 1964 book What Is Conservatism? which is a collection of essays by Conservative thinkers and which Meyer edited.
He lists the following, though he goes into much more detail in the article:
1. An objective moral order
2. The human person as the center of political and social thought
3. A distaste for the use of state power to enforce ideological patterns upon human beings
4. A rejection of social engineering, or the "planned" society
5. The spirit of the Constitution of the United States as originally conceived, especially the division of powers between state and federal governments and between the three branches of the federal government
6. A devotion to Western civilization and an awareness of the need to defend it
Meyer claims the differences within Conservatism are primarily matters of emphasis. This does seem a good summary to me. Any thoughts?
He lists the following, though he goes into much more detail in the article:
1. An objective moral order
2. The human person as the center of political and social thought
3. A distaste for the use of state power to enforce ideological patterns upon human beings
4. A rejection of social engineering, or the "planned" society
5. The spirit of the Constitution of the United States as originally conceived, especially the division of powers between state and federal governments and between the three branches of the federal government
6. A devotion to Western civilization and an awareness of the need to defend it
Meyer claims the differences within Conservatism are primarily matters of emphasis. This does seem a good summary to me. Any thoughts?
On Literature
Dana Gioia (pronounced joy-uh), former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and award-winning poet, was interviewed on the Federalist Radio Hour recently. If you are interested in what has happened to the arts in the US over the last 30 years, it's an interesting interview.
Gioia is a bit of a rebel. He has criticized modern poetry as being written by professional poets for professional poets instead of for the culture. In turn, many modern poets have criticized him. He is part of a movement which tends to use traditional rhyme and meter and write to appeal to the average person, in the vein of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.
On a related note, Stephanie Cohen at Acculturated writes about schools, teachers, and others who are trying to turn back the tide of eliminating serious literature from the K-12 curriculum.
As Breitbart was fond of saying, politics is downstream from culture.
Gioia is a bit of a rebel. He has criticized modern poetry as being written by professional poets for professional poets instead of for the culture. In turn, many modern poets have criticized him. He is part of a movement which tends to use traditional rhyme and meter and write to appeal to the average person, in the vein of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.
On a related note, Stephanie Cohen at Acculturated writes about schools, teachers, and others who are trying to turn back the tide of eliminating serious literature from the K-12 curriculum.
In the late 1890s, American high school English curricula regularly listed works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alexander Pope, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Daniel Webster, John Milton, William Bryant and Geoffrey Chaucer. Such authors were not just for those headed off to college. Students destined for workrooms—such as those who attended a manual training high school in Denver, Colorado—were still tasked with a similar English curriculum.Sunday is the Ace of Spades book club day. A number of published authors read AoS, and here they are at the Book Horde. AoS has their own page at Good Reads as well, where you can see what they are currently reading (The Abolition of Man), see the votes for their next book, and, if you join, check out their bookshelf, discussions, etc.
As Breitbart was fond of saying, politics is downstream from culture.
Mattis Rejects Presidential Run, Reminds Us Why We Wanted Him
An excellent address on foreign policy, which shows a clear grasp of the issues entirely absent from the current administration. The man is tempered, serious, rational, and avoids insulting those with whom he disagrees because it isn't necessary. He's right, and they're wrong, and he knows it.
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