Section 1. National Emergency. As President of the United States, my highest duty is ensuring the national and economic security of the country and its citizens.I have declared a national emergency arising from conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, which have grown by over 40 percent in the past 5 years alone, reaching $1.2 trillion in 2024. This trade deficit reflects...
A National Emergency
Why Philosophy?
That's some mole
A Spring Vista
Gotta Give Him This One
Chris Louis was arrested on March 22 after leaving his three kids, including a 1-year old, 6-year old and a 10-year old, unattended at a McDonald’s (which had a playplace, by the way) while he went to a job interview.Louis reportedly dropped the kids off after walking them to McDonald’s from his apartment, and returned to check on them before leaving again. He then returned to find police waiting for him, and was arrested for deprivation of a minor.But the internet is rallying behind the father of 3, arguing that he was forced to make a tough decision while simply trying to get a job to provide for his kids.As many of the comments pointed out, he left them in a place with air conditioner, a bathroom, and adults nearby who could help in case of an emergency, as opposed to simply leaving them alone at his apartment. And while some people were uneasy with the idea of leaving the 1-year old behind, they pointed out that he was forced to make a tough decision in order to try to get a job, and that the 10-year old was old enough to take care of the infant for a short period of time.
It's definitely not ideal, but a crime? The story points out that the 10-year-old was born when the man was 14, just a boy, and here he is ten years later still trying to support his kids.
Sometimes 'as good as it gets' has to be good enough. It's a hard world.
Requiescat in Pace Val Kilmer
Blindness
"Museums, monuments, and public institutions should be spaces where these stories are held with care, not suppressed for political convenience."A lot easier to do, when so many of the monuments you don't like have already been torn down.
Yes, exactly. So much of this stuff that is arguably wrong from first principles is being done because those principles were already violated by the other side. Somehow they can't see that they did it first, emphatically and regularly.
That doesn't make it right. There's a sense in which it is fair, because 'turnabout is fair play.' Getting them to at least recognize that they started the ball rolling might help, but how do you do that?
Democracy
No Third Terms
A Magic Sword
Bluegrass and the Byrds
…and Dylan. I assume Earl Scruggs is known to everyone here, but if not meet him now.
Gee, I wonder why schools are a mess?
I'm sure if either parents or teachers made any attempt to turn off the phones, even during class, they'd be brought up on hate crime charges.
My verdict: for decades now the schools have been in the control of crazy people, and kids need to get sprung out of them. It would be bad enough if all that was happening was mission creep, so the eternally and rapidly ballooning budget was only eaten up by all the non-education goals, such as adult employment programs, babysitting, and political indoctrination of captive audiences. But increasingly the kids not only don't get an education, and not only have their time wasted and their intellectual dignity assaulted, but they also are lucky to survive without serious injury.
Brewing in Iran
Just a Little Red Tape
Reflections
Hercules
Manual steering on that monster. It'll be fun pushing it around these mountain roads.
Hasn't even been started for years and years. Got it going today. Needs brake pads.
Sin
Fire Season
Ever since the hurricane blew down millions upon millions of trees in Western North Carolina, we've known that the drying wood would create substantial wildfire hazard. Much of it is in inaccessible regions, and there aren't adequate resources even to clean up populated regions -- there's been very limited government response, both state and federal, though the locals have done yeoman work. Wildfire is going to happen sooner or later, unless we get a very wet few years that eventually reduces it to rotting wood.
A Quick Word on Signal
Library Security
A public library is not secure almost by definition. It is open to the public, meaning that anyone at all can expect to enter and remain more or less as long as he or she likes. It can have rules, and it can call the police to remove people who blatantly defy those rules, but it generally won't have police on the premises nor have gates or metal detectors -- certainly not out in the countryside where Sylva, NC happens to be.
“We had an incident last week, the police were called, somebody found what they thought was a gun in the restroom at the library,” Smith said. “When the deputies got there, and examined it, it was an airsoft gun. It wasn’t operable, but still that brings the question, could it have been a real gun?... What’s the danger if it had been a real gun?” Smith said. “I don’t know what kind of signage we have; I’m not saying signage would stop it.”
I happen to know the answers to each of those questions. We all know what the dangers of real guns are, but few would leave one hidden in a public restroom for long because they are valuable. The library has signs that clearly state that no firearms nor any other weapons are permitted. Those signs can't stop anything.
“The other issue is the cleaning crew, they clean some while the library’s open, but they clean past the time where the library’s open and they’ve had some instances where people have come out that had been hiding in the library after the library closed,” Smith said. “That presents a danger to the cleaning crew, and I think that opens up the county for lawsuits, especially if they’re our employees.”
Commissioner Jenny Hooper said “it’s suspected that a lot of that is homeless because they are doing hair dye in the sinks. I don’t think it’s easter eggs.”
The homeless are a problem for all public spaces for which we generally lack good answers. Public libraries usually accept part of the burden of providing for the homeless, e.g., providing them with free public restrooms they can use. Relatively pleasant much of the year, the mountain regions of this state have lots of homeless in the cities -- Asheville was overwhelmed with them until the police there relatively recently decided to crack down, and the hurricane washed away the larger camps (and many of the homeless).
Sylva, a mountain town with a nearby university that adds a strong progressive political element, has been struggling with what to do about the homeless for a while. There have been talks about adopting no-begging rules, but those have faced stiff opposition. I don't think they have any real answers to these problems.
A Clockwork Orange
Absolute chaos struck a quiet residential street in Elm Park last night as a gang of youths believed to be armed with knives entered a primary school and began to attack other youths....Youths were seen running from the premises in fear as the gang arrived.
One local resident saw the youths leave the school and run down the streets of Maylands Avenue. He told the Havering Daily: “It was total chaos. We saw between 40-50 youths, running through the streets. We think they had knives as they were seen dropping weapons in people’s drive ways and running away. They were attacking the police and there were so many of them that the police had to just disperse them.
”Youths,” you say? No other distinguishing characteristics, neither for the attackers nor the victims? Codpieces and bowler hats, maybe?
Youth gangs with knives wouldn’t be a problem if a certain number of responsible adults had firearms. Disarming the citizens leaves them vulnerable.
Old Crow Medicine Show
Venison Adovada
Adovada is an ancient way of preserving meat with chilies. I found some that I’d made a while ago and then frozen after we’d eaten on it for a few days. It was made with pork, but I decided to cook venison in it instead. This was a fantastic decision: the spicy broth is an excellent companion to big game. I cooked it in the pressure cooker, ensuring great tenderness.
A Brief Lesson in Logic
Traditionally, the Aristotelian relations of contradiction, contrariety, and subalternation are supplemented with an additional relation of subcontrariety, so called because the subcontraries are located under the contraries. As the contradictories of the two contraries, the subcontraries (e.g., Some pleasure is good, Some pleasure is not good) can both be true, but cannot both be false. For Aristotle, this was therefore not a true opposition, since subcontraries are “merely verbally opposed” (Prior Analytics 63b21–30). Within pragmatic theory, the assertion of one subcontrary (Some men are bald) is not only compatible with, but actually conversationally implicates, the other (Some men are not bald), given Grice’s Maxim of Quantity (“Make your contribution as informative as is required”; see the entries on Paul Grice, pragmatics, and implicature).
Sentimental & Homicidal II
Up the Militia
You’d never know it from watching television, but civilians stop more active shooters than police and do so with fewer mistakes, according to new research from the Crime Prevention Research Center, where I serve as president. In non-gun-free zones, where civilians are legally able to carry guns, concealed carry permit holders stopped 51.5 percent of active shootings, compared to 44.6 percent stopped by police, CPRC found in a deep dive into active shooter scenarios between 2014 and 2023.Not only do permit holders succeed in stopping active shooters at a higher rate, but law enforcement officers face significantly greater risks when intervening. Our research found police were nearly six times more likely to be killed and 17 percent more likely to be wounded than armed civilians.
They do it for free, too. Voluntarily.
The Sentimental and the Homicidal
The poshlost* comes in the form of poetry, too. One Palestinian poet writes:With clean hands,he gently sifts the flour,and adds a handful of yeast.He pours the warm waterfor the yeast particles to live,then rolls and kneads and rollsand kneads the dough.He lets the soft mass rest.With firm but gentle hands,he rounds it into balls,flattens them into shape,and handles each onedelicately into the oven.Soon, perhaps in half an hour,the bread rolls are born fresh,healthy and browned.The newborn breads breathe,yet dust chokes the air,searing gases penetratetheir thin, fragile crusts.On the day of their birth, a missile,a bakery, a scatteringof zaatar, flesh, and blood.
The sentimentalism here portrays the baker as gentle and loving, nurturing: "He pours the warm water for the yeast particles to live," the poet says. He lets it rest. He is delicate in his handling. Well, yes; I make bread too. I also feed the yeast, usually with honey but sometimes with blackstrap molasses.
A poet is allowed license, but it strikes me -- as a frequent baker -- that it would be just as legitimate to describe the act as monstrous. The yeast's whole life is enslaved to the production of gases to make the bread rise; all the nurturing is just to get the yeast to eat and excrete so that the dough will be fluffy. Meanwhile, not the missile but the oven killed the yeast: the 'newborn breads' are actually newly killed, the yeast slaughtered in its millions in the bald service of the baker's naked interest in eating leavened bread.
Because the frame chosen is the loving, nurturing one, it masks the horror done by the same hands.
The novelist Milan Kundera, who well knew the horrors of totalitarian rule, has nicely skewered false sentimentality: “Two tears flow in quick succession. The first tear says: how nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: how nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.” Put another way, “sentimentality is that peculiarly human vice which consists in directing your emotions toward your own emotions, so as to be the subject of a story told by yourself,” as the English philosopher Roger Scruton noted in his autobiography.
The sentimentalists are playing a double game: They are dispensing, and attracting, warm feelings and approbation for themselves and their kind, while at the same time providing cover for totalitarians and terrorists.
That is correct, as far as it goes, and we see it again and again. I have grown sadly accustomed to seeing the endorsement of murder and assassination -- against that healthcare CEO by "Luigi," against Musk, against Trump or his supporters -- by the very people I know most inclined to sentimentalist broadcasts. They would never go so far as to say "I wish someone would kill him," but they will definitely go as far as to say that it would be just, that it would be deserved, that it would be understandable. After all, those men provoke such bad feelings in their sentimental hearts.
* Poshlost is explained in the article's beginning, and is an interesting Russian word. Zaatar is a spice/herb mix that is common in the Levant.
News from 1948
1. The Alien Enemies Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.
Honor & The Quiet Man
More Spam Comments
Welcome Home, Wayfarers
PFC Ira Hayes, USMC
Giving Unto Caesar
Later, they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to catch Jesus in His words. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that You are honest and seek favor from no one. Indeed, You are impartial and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or not?”But Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and said, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to inspect.” So they brought it, and He asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”“Caesar’s,” they answered.Then Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”And they marveled at Him.
That last line is important. It's translated sometimes as them being "amazed," or that they "greatly marveled." The answer in other words is not meant to be simple, but amazing or marvelous. Which, by the way, refutes the quip made by one side to the Twitter discussion: "Whenever someone writes five paragraphs to try to avoid the very plain meaning of a verse I know I've won the argument." Hardly. You haven't even begun to understand the argument.
The discussion is among Jews of a particularly philosophical and religious bent. In that context, what does it mean to say "whose image is this?"
One answer is the one they give: It's Caesar's image, so perhaps it belongs to Caesar.
Another answer in the tradition, however, is that all men are made in God's image. So whose image is it really?
It's possible to go further than that. Because this object is currency, its value is partially (sub)created by Rome. Like Job's brave horse, men did something to bring out or perfect a quality that was only potential in the natural. The denarius was a silver coin, but because it was stamped by Rome it could be traded freely without anyone bothering to measure its weight. That convenience made it more valuable than, say, Viking hacksilver.
The silver was not made by Rome, though. Its nature and value arise from God's work: all its properties, but also all of our properties that make silver's properties valuable to us, those are things we did not make.
Ultimately the only part of the coin that Caesar might reasonably claim is this idea that the coin is worth something. That's the thing that you should give back to Rome, maybe. Give them back the idea that they've added anything, or that their money or the order they represent is worth something to you. The rest belongs to God.
To God, and not to you: certainly not to the state. Jesus' quite challenging teaching is that you should give up all these physical things. They aren't important, he says over and over. A man might even leave his dead father unburied, give away all his family wealth, and instead devote his life to God. That teaching is far more challenging than "Pay your taxes."
Three-hour tour
Readying for Better Weather
Canadian Freedom
Anabasis XXV: Conclusion
Despite the traditional secrecy fostered by the Spartiates, the reign of Agesilaus is particularly well-known thanks to the works of his friend Xenophon, who wrote a large history of Greece (the Hellenica) covering the years 411 to 362 BC, therefore extensively dealing with Agesilaus' rule. Xenophon furthermore composed a panegyric biography of his friend, perhaps to clean his memory from the criticisms voiced against him. Another historical tradition—much more hostile to Agesilaus than Xenophon's writings—has been preserved in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, and later continued by Diodorus of Sicily. Moreover, Plutarch wrote a biography of Agesilaus in his Parallel Lives, which contains many elements deliberately omitted by Xenophon.
Like the typical Peloponnesian gentleman, he looked to Sparta as the inspiration of the good life, and sent his sons there for the best education that he deemed Greece could offer; he visited the city at its chief festivals; he was entertained by Agesilaus, meeting in his company along with other aristocratic clients.... At the Olympic festival, he was well placed to return hospitality, and we may picture him and his guests nodding sage approval of the Panhellenic speeches.... Altogether it was a time of happiness, and of leisure to reflect and to begin to write. [Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, trans. Rex Wagner (London & New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 15.]
Blood Moon
Free Speech Arguments
Anabasis XXIV
When they had reached the villages, Seuthes, with about thirty troopers, rode up, exclaiming: "Well, Xenophon, this is just what you said! the fellows are caught, but now look here. My cavalry have gone off unsupported; they are scattered in pursuit, one here, one there, and upon my word, I am more than half afraid the enemy will collect somewhere and do them a mischief. Some of us must remain in the villages, for they are swarming with human beings." "Well then," said Xenophon, "I will seize the heights with the men I have with me, and do you bid Cleanor extend his line along the level beside the villages." When they had done so, there were enclosed--of captives for the slave market, one thousand; of cattle, two thousand; and of other small cattle, ten thousand.
Requiescat in Pace “Patch”
Christianity and Foreign Affairs
“Involvement does not mean military,” contended Perkins. “I don’t believe we should be sending our troops everywhere. But, as you pointed out, there are other means.”“I would be in the front line of arguing that the neoliberal interventionism that had so possessed the United States over the course of the last 40 or 50 years — it has proved itself to be unworkable,” Mohler granted. “Our massive investments of blood and treasure all over the world, in causes that we declared won, only to have them lost again, are a grave warning against believing that we can just make our will [happen] wherever we want it around the world.”
Sadly -- tragically -- accurate as a pragmatic assessment of the last decades.
Anabasis XXIII
Black Danes & White Danes
Social Workers and Police
Likewise, Chief David Adams said he was initially skeptical about having a social worker responding to calls when the conversation hit the mainstream in 2020; however, he admitted that he’s been “pleasantly surprised.” Despite his initial apprehension, Adams called the Sylva police chief to see how the program was working over there. When he heard how well things were going, he became intrigued and got onboard.Now, not only is [social worker Kasey] Curcio viewed as a valuable asset for the department, another social work intern from WCU, Tom Hines, is doing his internship with WPD and is also excelling.
By All Means Raise Chickens
The reason is that my wife decided to take up raising chickens as a hobby. I was unsure about this but, as usual when my uncertainty conflicts with her determination, she got her way. For a long time I really didn't love the chickens, especially the screaming roosters (which I took satisfaction in killing and eating). However, the eggs have really won me over. I now regard at least the hens as welcome additions to our little enclave on the mountain. Even the current rooster isn't so bad, because I know he produces more hens to replace the old ones as they stop laying.
“How do we solve for something like this?” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asked on Fox News. “People are sort of looking around and thinking, ‘Wow, maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard,’ and it’s awesome.”In no universe does it make economic sense for every American household — many of whom live in urban areas or even suburbs where it’s illegal to keep live poultry — to start farming their own food. The fact that we humans don’t have to spend all our time growing our own sustenance, and can instead specialize in other fields where we’re more productive, is a tremendous victory for our species.Our post-agrarian society has allowed Americans to lead richer, healthier, longer, more leisure-filled lives. There’s a reason politicians a century ago promised “a chicken in every pot,” not a “chicken in every yard.”...
It actually makes perfect sense for as many Americans as practical to begin raising some of their own food. In World War II we called that "Victory Gardens." In fact, we had one here during COVID that was quite large.
Our farming efforts have shrunk a bit since then, but it was a perfectly sound idea and even a very defensible public policy. It's a surge capacity Americans have used frequently in the past to get through hard times.
“Homesteading influencer” content might be trendy on social media, but surely the way to Make America Great Again does not involve having everyone raise their own livestock, log their own forests and galvanize their own steel wire. But that is, perhaps, the logical conclusion of Trump’s lifelong fixation with autarky, the idea that an economy should not engage in trade and instead be self-sufficient.If countries should be economically self-supporting, why not states? If states, why not neighborhoods? If neighborhoods, why not every man, woman and child for themselves? Between bird flu and measles and other contagions, adopting the trad-wife/prepper lifestyle might sound pretty attractive right now.
I do in fact cut my own firewood to heat my own house, grow many of the vegetables we eat in warmer weather, can sauces made from tomatoes for use in colder weather, kill my own deer and butcher it too. It's hardly subsistence farming to do that, because it's coupled with a career of the sort she's talking about. It's just a way of being a little healthier, and a little more in control of my life, and a little closer to nature.
In fact if she reflected on it, she'd probably recognize this scheme from a source she might like better: Karl Marx.
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
It turns out the communist society was not a necessary condition for this sort of life after all. I let the chickens out in the morning, split wood in the spring afternoon, hunt in the autumn, can in the summer, write commentaries on philosophical works in the cold winters. I'm not a professional hunter, maker of sauces, or livestock man of any kind. Occasionally I've written a book or a poem or two, but I don't make my living by it. What I do professionally is something else entirely.
Raising chickens may or may not make sense for you, but don't let them talk you out of it if you want to -- no more than my wife let me talk her out of it! She was right about this one.