Good Boy

An interesting account of a duel in the Jacob Burns Law Library:

In 1400, the last trial by combat (judicial duel) of note was fought in France. This contest pitted man against dog. The dog’s master, Montdidier, had been murdered by an ill-meaning friend, the Chevalier Maquer. Maquer buried the body and departed. The dog, masterless and hungry, journeyed to Paris and sought out the Chevalier Ardilliers, a friend of his master Montdidier, and led him back to his master’s grave. This loyal dog scratched the dirt covering the grave until Ardilliers dug up the corpse of Montdidier. Later the dog spied Maquer, his master’s killer, and attacked him viciously. The dog renewed his attacks at each encounter with Maquer, soon arousing suspicion since heretofore his nature had been gentle. Friends recalled that Maquer had shown hostility to Montdidier, and reported this situation to the king. The king ordered trial by combat between Maquer and the dog to uncover Maquer’s guilt or innocence.

At combat, Maquer was unable to contain the frenzied attack of the dog, who focused on Maquer’s throat. Maquer, undone by the dog’s fervor and tenacity, confessed to his crime and was duly hanged. Alas, we have no word regarding the fate of Montdidier’s faithful greyhound, nor even his name.

Wikipedia says the story is related in a letter from much later, so quite possibly not true. But it's a good story.

Birthday Weekend Camping

Just a man and his faithful steed this weekend. 

US 64 through the forest near Winding Stair Gap

Nantahala National Forest above Franklin

Walhalla

Mike G mentioned in the comments to the Helen post that Walhalla's Oktoberfest was this weekend. It's actually not: it's next weekend, the same weekend as my Strongman competition. I can't promise I'll make it, though I was planning to go if it had been tomorrow morning. As the name suggests, Walhalla is a real German town by heritage. 

There's an outside chance I'll make it on Sunday the 19th, but no promises. 

A Little Vigorous Discussion

A man from Atlanta -- the report says "Georgia man," but let's be clear, he's an Atlanta man -- came up here to enjoy a little time on the beautiful Tuckasegee river. He was, however, incensed to discover that a paddle shop owner was a Trump supporter.

A Georgia man accused of tearing down a pro-Trump banner at a rafting business before exchanging gunfire with the business owner has been extradited to Swain County.

Benjamin Michael Campbell, of Atlanta, is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury, discharging a firearm within an enclosure to incite fear, and willful and wanton injury to personal property.... Mark Thomas, the owner of the Paddle Inn Rafting Company, told News 13 he was watching his CCTV cameras when he saw the driver of a Jeep slam on the brakes, exit the vehicle, walk across the road, and tear down a Donald Trump banner. Thomas said he took his rifle to his porch and fired two shots into the air. In response, he said, the man in the Jeep fired back several rounds from the road.

It might be an interesting trial, if the guy doesn't plea to a lesser version of the charges (which is how almost all 'trials' end these days). He was fired upon first, after all. A good lawyer might argue that he was in legitimate fear of his life from deadly force as he didn't realize that the rifle was pointed 'in the air.' 

An appropriate aside: 'shooting in the air' or 'warning shots' are generally unwise practices that all of my dear readers should avoid. Either lethal force is rational and appropriate, in which case it should be used without warning or apology, or it is not. If it is not, gunfire should be avoided; even pointing a gun at someone when lethal force is not authorized can result in 'brandishing' charges or, as in this case, return fire.

When I first saw this headline I assumed the guy was at least a customer of the paddle shop who took exception to the owner's politics, perhaps after a discussion turning into an argument. But no, he was just some guy traveling down the highway when he saw a Trump flag and decided he should tear into the place and rip it down. 

To get here from Atlanta he would have had to have passed at least two and probably three of the local flagpole-mounted Confederate flags that are prominently displayed on the highways. That might have been an early indication of the 'diversity of opinion' in the area he was visiting; I'm not sure why the Trump flag was the bridge-too-far for him.

Unamerican Foolishness in Virginia

A lot of ink has been spilled on the Jay Jones controversy in Virginia, where a would-be Attorney General wished his political opponents' wife should have her children killed and die in her arms in order to 'create movement on policy' in favor of gun control. I'm not going to add to the weight of that ink, which focuses on the evilness of the wish or the character of the man, or of the fundamental disconnect between rhetorically opposing 'gun violence' or 'political violence' while endorsing this hope.

What I want to say, however, is how un-American this thinking is. 

America has a mythology, as all civilizations worth the name do. The American mythology has considered the question of "What should an American do if his loved ones are murdered by violent people?" many, many times. We have a vast literature on the subject, both in the form of novels and television shows, and especially in the form of the Western movie. 

What never happens in any of these stories is that the American is chastened by being subjected to violence, becomes a pacifist, and yields up all means of self-defense while crawling to Authority to beg for protection.

You know what happens? Of course you do.

Who are these people? Not any one of us.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.8

We are about halfway through Book VIII, after which there are two more books. Presumably this is good for you, those of who who are reading through all of it. Dad29 once told me that sitting through the bad church music that has become commonplace is a way of reducing your time in Purgatory, front-loading it as it were; perhaps this is something similar, except hopefully by increasing one's understanding of and ability to actualize virtue.

Most people seem, owing to ambition, to wish to be loved rather than to love; which is why most men love flattery; for the flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, or pretends to be such and to love more than he is loved... 

Most of us would say that a flatterer is not a true friend, rather than a 'friend in an inferior position'; the dishonesty involved sets the relationship on different ground than any sort of real friendship.  

...and being loved seems to be akin to being honoured, and this is what most people aim at. But it seems to be not for its own sake that people choose honour, but incidentally. For most people enjoy being honoured by those in positions of authority because of their hopes (for they think that if they want anything they will get it from them; and therefore they delight in honour as a token of favour to come); while those who desire honour from good men, and men who know, are aiming at confirming their own opinion of themselves; they delight in honour, therefore, because they believe in their own goodness on the strength of the judgement of those who speak about them. In being loved, on the other hand, people delight for its own sake; whence it would seem to be better [to be loved] than being honoured, and friendship to be desirable in itself.

Here we see again the now-familiar distinction between 'what is worthy of honor' and 'concern with being honored.' The former is a reliable guide to best action (IV.3-4), as it allows us to identify what is exceedingly virtuous, and it is virtue that is worthy of honor. The latter was dismissed from the outset of the EN (I.5) as a proper end for ethics, as it surrenders one's own judgment about what is right and places the end of one's own ethics in the hands of others. This is unworthy. 

But [the best thing] seems to lie in loving rather than in being loved, as is indicated by the delight mothers take in loving; for some mothers hand over their children to be brought up, and so long as they know their fate they love them and do not seek to be loved in return (if they cannot have both), but seem to be satisfied if they see them prospering; and they themselves love their children even if these owing to their ignorance give them nothing of a mother's due. Now since friendship depends more on loving, and it is those who love their friends that are praised, loving seems to be the characteristic virtue of friends, so that it is only those in whom this is found in due measure that are lasting friends, and only their friendship that endures.

It is noteworthy that Aristotle resorts to 'a mother's love' as the proof of the superiority of loving rather than receiving love. The purity of this, when it occurs, has been universally moving across the millennia. We have in our own era serious reasons to doubt that a mother's love is something that is reliable or even fully natural; the frequency of abortion in our culture suggests that many mothers don't love their children, or even want them enough to endure the difficulties of parenthood. Yet the example remains moving when it does occur, for when it does it is a kind of love that is especially pure and selfless. 

It is in this way [i.e. giving love to the other] more than any other that even unequals can be friends; they can be equalized. Now equality and likeness are friendship, and especially the likeness of those who are like in virtue; for being steadfast in themselves they hold fast to each other, and neither ask nor give base services, but (one may say) even prevent them; for it is characteristic of good men neither to go wrong themselves nor to let their friends do so. But wicked men have no steadfastness (for they do not remain even like to themselves), but become friends for a short time because they delight in each other's wickedness.

The claim that the wicked do not have steadfastness because they don't remain 'like to themselves' is striking. Virtue and vice are both habits that become habitual states of character; thus, we ought to expect the wicked (being vicious) to have a habitual character that is in its way just as steadfast a set of habits as the virtuous. What distinguishes the virtuous from the vicious isn't the having of habits, but the goodness of the habits -- a goodness that is empirically testable against their ability to reliably create good outcomes in the world (I.3). 

What I do think of when I reflect on this is the regret that the wicked sometimes suffer, in what the Pulp Fiction assassin Jules refers to as "a moment of clarity." The alcoholic has periods of hangover in which he may swear he will never drink again, knowing that of course he will; the gambler may sob piteously at the knowledge that he has lost everything he ever worked for, but will be gambling again when he has scraped up a new stake. The virtuous rarely has these moments of regret for his character -- rarely, I say, because as Aristotle points out in I.3 sometimes even courage leads to death, and even riches can lead to ruin. Chance and fortune play a role, so that even the virtues are not fully proof against harm; but their reliability means that regret for one's character will come up less often. Even when a brave man dies of his courage, those who mourn him can feel pride in having known a man of such character.

Friends who are useful or pleasant last longer; i.e. as long as they provide each other with enjoyments or advantages. Friendship for utility's sake seems to be that which most easily exists between contraries, e.g. between poor and rich, between ignorant and learned; for what a man actually lacks he aims at, and one gives something else in return.

Capitalism has made 'friends' of the utility model out of many men who might otherwise have despised one another; but the workman needs the wealthy man's coin, and the wealthy man comes to respect the quality of the workmanship.  In the spirit of showing analogs with the other historical traditions, this has two New Testament analogs, Lk. 10:7 and 1Tim 5:18. (There are Old Testament verses about not withholding pay from laborers too, but they do not imply friendship or a sense that the workman is worthy, just needful of the pay to survive, e.g. Deut 24:14-15 and Lev 19:13.)

But under this head, too, might bring lover and beloved, beautiful and ugly. This is why lovers sometimes seem ridiculous, when they demand to be loved as they love; if they are equally lovable their claim can perhaps be justified, but when they have nothing lovable about them it is ridiculous. Perhaps, however, contrary does not even aim at contrary by its own nature, but only incidentally, the desire being for what is intermediate; for that is what is good, e.g. it is good for the dry not to become wet but to come to the intermediate state, and similarly with the hot and in all other cases. These subjects we may dismiss; for they are indeed somewhat foreign to our inquiry.

This passage seems strange to contemporary readers, but Aristotle is talking about the sort of homoerotic love common in his day between a young man (and presumably 'beautiful'  in the manner of youth) and an older, uglier man. The older man would provide benefits such as social introduction or access to wealth or station to the younger man, taking the younger under his wing and guiding him towards greater success (and, allegedly, virtue); the younger man would provide access to himself and his beauty to the elder. Socrates and Alcibiades playfully mock this in the Symposium, for example, Socrates being notoriously (and rather proudly) ugly. 

Aristotle's criticism of homosexuality doesn't occur in the ethics; he rejects it as irrational and a lifting of pleasure over reason's capacity to see what the sexual function is actually for on biological rather than ethical grounds. His criticism makes up the root of the Western rejection of the homoerotic for centuries, though it is also reinforced by Biblical authority after Christianization. It is curious that he doesn't really take it to be an ethical concern, however, but a concern based on his understanding of science and reason: ironic, too, given that our own Supreme Court rejected all laws based on this tradition as being fundamentally lacking a rational basis. 

Some Local News from the Bondi Hearing

Apparently during the long Bondi hearing, the more scurrilous of my Senators had some things to say about my neighbors the Eastern Band of Cherokee. (That link is to a marijuana-focused newspaper, which I don't mean to suggest is objective; I'm merely citing it because it's the only place I've been able to find an extended quotation of his remarks rather than a characterization of them by the media.)

The Eastern Band put out a statement on the subject, since he didn't bother to talk to them about it.

I don't know if I agree that the Senator "knows full well" anything at all except how to line his pockets with corporate donations. His point in calling them an "island" is that they have some degree of sovereign control over their boundary lands here in Western North Carolina, where they are good neighbors and provide a welcoming place to travelers should you drop in to visit them. They even welcome bikers, sometimes.

The EBCI have decided to sell marijuana for consumption, even recreational consumption, on their own land. I've never used marijuana and can't attest to the quality of it or indeed anything about it except its popularity: to my great amusement I find tribal police are used to direct traffic at their dispensary rather than busting people for using the stuff as the police might be doing anywhere else. I like to tease the deputies I know, for whom busting people for drugs remains a major part of their day, that they'll probably soon be re-tasked in the same manner and ought to start getting used to the idea.

The EBCI are following what has become an established business model of catering to what people want; they run their casinos on money trucked in from outside themselves, and they sell marijuana mostly to people who come visiting to buy it. You can play with their system here; it seems to allow you to place an online order so that you can skip the line when you come to pick it up locally, at which time I'd imagine they check your ID if they are supposed to do so. It doesn't seem to have a delivery option at all, which Tillis might have known if he'd bothered to check (or to just ask them).

Tillis went on: "We’ve got to get it solved at the federal level. We’ve got to capture revenue,” he said. “That revenue needs to go back to federal law enforcement, and we need to have a lot more focus on what I think are unsafe and inconsistent practices across the state." With all due respect, which is none, 'capturing revenue' is his job and not hers; if he wants to raise taxes even higher, that's Congress' department. Giving that money to Federal law enforcement is almost certainly a bad use of it; he might instead do something to pay down the gigantic debts he and his ilk have consistently produced through their so-called governance. Or, better yet, he might turn his attention to cutting spending rather than finding new sources of 'revenue' for him to spend.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.7

We continue to explore equality and inequality in friendships in today's chapter.

But there is another kind of friendship, viz. that which involves an inequality between the parties, e.g. that of father to son and in general of elder to younger, that of man to wife and in general that of ruler to subject. And these friendships differ also from each other; for it is not the same that exists between parents and children and between rulers and subjects, nor is even that of father to son the same as that of son to father, nor that of husband to wife the same as that of wife to husband. For the virtue and the function of each of these is different, and so are the reasons for which they love; the love and the friendship are therefore different also.

It's commonplace today to hear feminist objections to this passage as demonstrating the inequality of men and women in Ancient Greece, which was never in doubt; what is rarely noticed is the demonstration that Aristotle expected a husband and wife to be friends. 

The society of even the Greek city-states had some noteworthy inequalities, some of which we have come to consider manifestly unjust. Chief among these is slavery. It's noteworthy that there's nothing here suggesting that a slave and his master should be friends; there's nothing to suggest that a wife should be friends with the female slaves who kept her house. All the relations that are designated here are ones that Aristotle would have considered not to be shameful relationships to be in: everyone is a child first and a parent, if at all, only later; most citizens of this era are never rulers, only subjects. The inclusion of husband and wife in these honorable relationships, relationships in which friendship is to be expected as the normal and just condition, ought to be important.

The point Aristotle is making about inequality here is the inverse of the one he was making about the equality of unequals in VIII.6. There the uenqual friends were equals 'in a way' because they were getting the same things from each other. Here, the unequals are not getting the same things from each other: a father's friendship to his son gives the son different things entirely than the father receives in return. Presumably something analogous is true of rulers and citizens, wives and husbands: the relationship is a sort of friendship, but it is not a friendship based on equality, neither of condition nor of things received. (It is also not 'proportionate equality' of the sort we considered in Book V).

Each party, then, neither gets the same from the other, nor ought to seek it; but when children render to parents what they ought to render to those who brought them into the world, and parents render what they should to their children, the friendship of such persons will be abiding and excellent.

Since Aristotle intends this remark to apply of all of these analogous cases, I have bolded the universal language. He expects that, when these kinds of people do right by each other, these friendships will be "abiding and excellent." Indeed, those who have successfully had good friendships with their parents or with their spouses might consider those relationships as some of the very best friendships of their lives. 

In all friendships implying inequality the love also should be proportional, i.e. the better should be more loved than he loves, and so should the more useful, and similarly in each of the other cases; for when the love is in proportion to the merit of the parties, then in a sense arises equality, which is certainly held to be characteristic of friendship.

Here "in a sense arises equality" merely means that each is giving the other their due, and so both are treating each other 'in the same way' by each doing so for the other. 

Equality talk can be confusing under the best of circumstances; even in our era, as it almost never actually means "equality" in a strict mathematical sense. From Aristotle's perspective, 'equality' in ethics or politics only ever means mathematical equality when dealing with restitution for crimes or harms. Yet we have inherited from the Greeks a notion that we should seek some sort of 'equality' even when the people involved are manifestly, even rightly, unequals (as for example when a citizen who became an astronaut is compared with another citizen who is a drug addict). 

This is not an inheritance shared by civilizations not influenced by Ancient Athens to the same degree; there is no 'equality' expected in Confucian civilization, for example, especially not between parents and children (that is indeed their model for why inequality is right and proper in society). There is no equality between Muslim and non-Muslim in Islamic civilization: non-Muslims may be allowed to pay a tax in order to become protectorates of the Muslims, but the non-Muslims may never be armed nor capable of self-defense against the Islamic society, and as such they are not considered dignified human beings. The Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd, better known in the West as Averroes, did inherit Plato's ideas about equality between men and women: but even he had to interpret those within the context of Islamic law, so that he could suggest that women deserved to have an 'equivalent' to a right to divorce such as their husbands have, or a equal right to participate in jihad (if they were able) in order to obtain non-Muslim slaves and to please God. For similar scholars who didn't read Plato's Republic, or weren't as convinced by it, even those 'sort-of equalities' aren't important or extant.

Aristotle is going to reinforce the point, now, that this expectation of friendship implies a closeness in condition. He uses 'equality' language again, which confuses the point he is trying to make.

But equality does not seem to take the same form in acts of justice and in friendship; for in acts of justice what is equal in the primary sense is that which is in proportion to merit, while quantitative equality is secondary, but in friendship quantitative equality is primary and proportion to merit secondary. This becomes clear if there is a great interval in respect of virtue or vice or wealth or anything else between the parties; for then they are no longer friends, and do not even expect to be so. And this is most manifest in the case of the gods; for they surpass us most decisively in all good things. But it is clear also in the case of kings; for with them, too, men who are much their inferiors do not expect to be friends; nor do men of no account expect to be friends with the best or wisest men. In such cases it is not possible to define exactly up to what point friends can remain friends; for much can be taken away and friendship remain, but when one party is removed to a great distance, as God is, the possibility of friendship ceases.

For the purpose of the question of the relations between husband and wife, then, this shows that Aristotle conceives them as being sufficiently close in virtue, vice, wealth, "or anything else" as to be fit for friendships; so too parents and children, and ordinary rulers and citizens. Kings and princes may be too far removed, as we have already discussed. They may have to seek their friendship from the gods, who are too far for us ordinary mortals. 

This is a remarkable point of dissonance with Christianity, which expects to receive and pursues friendship with God, and especially with Jesus; but I think this was also true of northern European pagan faiths, which invited the gods into their homes and sought to have an older-relation-to-younger-relation relationship of friendship; Odin is frequently claimed as an ancestor, and the Rígsþula claims that all men are descended from Heimdall. 

This is in fact the origin of the question whether friends really wish for their friends the greatest goods, e.g. that of being gods; since in that case their friends will no longer be friends to them, and therefore will not be good things for them (for friends are good things). The answer is that if we were right in saying that friend wishes good to friend for his sake, his friend must remain the sort of being he is, whatever that may be; therefore it is for him oily so long as he remains a man that he will wish the greatest goods. But perhaps not all the greatest goods; for it is for himself most of all that each man wishes what is good.

Ancient Greek religion did posit that men could become gods in a process called the apotheosis. This is another point of dissonance. Aristotle intends that discussion seriously and unironically. 

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.6

Today's chapter builds on the discussion of the previous one.

Between sour and elderly people friendship arises less readily, inasmuch as they are less good-tempered and enjoy companionship less; for these are thou to be the greatest marks of friendship productive of it. This is why, while men become friends quickly, old men do not; it is because men do not become friends with those in whom they do not delight; and similarly sour people do not quickly make friends either. 

One expects that the elderly of Aristotle's day were indeed much less "good-tempered" than currently, given the absence of any pain relief other than wine or pharmakon so primitive that there was no distinction made between 'medicine' and 'poison.' I don't think it's necessarily a comment on the elderly in general; I don't find older folk to be especially akin to sour people as a rule -- some are, and some aren't. 

But such men may bear goodwill to each other; for they wish one another well and aid one another in need; but they are hardly friends because they do not spend their days together nor delight in each other, and these are thought the greatest marks of friendship.

Certainly sour people don't seem to delight in much. The elderly may here as above be in a happier case in our generations; they are more mobile, for one thing, given the advent of cars and other sorts of mobility technology. 

One cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them, just as one cannot be in love with many people at once (for love is a sort of excess of feeling, and it is the nature of such only to be felt towards one person); and it is not easy for many people at the same time to please the same person very greatly, or perhaps even to be good in his eyes. One must, too, acquire some experience of the other person and become familiar with him, and that is very hard. But with a view to utility or pleasure it is possible that many people should please one; for many people are useful or pleasant, and these services take little time.

There are two important points being made here, one of which is more debatable than the other. True friendship is time intensive, and it's also attention intensive. You can't have many very deep friendships just because of the mutual investment that is required. 

The more debatable point is how many. Is it really possible to love only one person at a time? Not obviously given that we tend to have wives and also children, parents and extended family and a close friend or two or three as well. It can't be many for the reasons spelled out above, but it isn't obvious that he's right that 'it is the nature of such to be felt only towards one person.' He's making a close analogy between love and friendship, and clearly intends for the 'only one' to apply to love per se, but the analogy is so close -- that is, the point of disanalogy comes so very late in the comparison -- that it's not clear that love and friendship really differ here. 

Of these two kinds that which is for the sake of pleasure is the more like [true] friendship, when both parties get the same things from each other and delight in each other or in the things, as in the friendships of the young; for generosity is more found in such friendships.

Generosity and openness to it is important partly because it overcomes the inequalities that friends may find between themselves, as discussed in VIII.5. If a richer friend is very generous, and the poorer friend is very open to being treated that way without feeling indebted by it, the two can exist as functional equals in a way that would otherwise be more difficult. They can dine together more often, go on trips together, even live together (likely in our time only if they are either young enough to be roommates, or if older have come to a point in their lives in which a roommate arrangement makes sense). 

Friendship based on utility is for the commercially minded.

Indeed business relationships can be friendly without being true friendships; this is not at all uncommon, and may even be desirable. After all, we have to spend time with these people in any case; why spend time with people who don't like you? Cultivating at leas a sort of friendship is common sense.

People who are supremely happy, too, have no need of useful friends, but do need pleasant friends; for they wish to live with some one and, though they can endure for a short time what is painful, no one could put up with it continuously, nor even with the Good itself if it were painful to him; this is why they look out for friends who are pleasant. Perhaps they should look out for friends who, being pleasant, are also good, and good for them too; for so they will have all the characteristics that friends should have.

Yes, true friendship has all the good qualities.

We now begin to discuss something I warned yesterday was coming: what about friendships with, or for, those in power? 

People in positions of authority seem to have friends who fall into distinct classes; some people are useful to them and others are pleasant, but the same people are rarely both; for they seek neither those whose pleasantness is accompanied by virtue nor those whose utility is with a view to noble objects, but in their desire for pleasure they seek for ready-witted people, and their other friends they choose as being clever at doing what they are told, and these characteristics are rarely combined. Now we have said that the good man is at the same time pleasant and useful; but such a man does not become the friend of one who surpasses him in station, unless he is surpassed also in virtue; if this is not so, he does not establish equality by being proportionally exceeded in both respects. But people who surpass him in both respects are not so easy to find.

A man in authority would do well to have friends who are better than him both in power and virtue; and indeed, we can readily see how that would be beneficial to him. How it 'establishes equality' to be surpassed in both areas is not as evident. Aristotle goes on to explain what he means:

However that may be, the aforesaid friendships involve equality; for the friends get the same things from one another and wish the same things for one another, or exchange one thing for another, e.g. pleasure for utility; we have said, however, that they are both less truly friendships and less permanent.

So there is a kind of equality even given the clear inequalities: the equality of 'getting pleasure' or 'getting utility' or 'getting good' from each other, and likewise an equality of wishing these goods for each other.  

But it is from their likeness and their unlikeness to the same thing that they are thought both to be and not to be friendships. It is by their likeness to the friendship of virtue that they seem to be friendships (for one of them involves pleasure and the other utility, and these characteristics belong to the friendship of virtue as well); while it is because the friendship of virtue is proof against slander and permanent, while these quickly change (besides differing from the former in many other respects), that they appear not to be friendships; i.e. it is because of their unlikeness to the friendship of virtue.

We talked about the slander issue already. Those in authority are particularly likely to become targets of slander, as tearing down their reputations is a way for competitors to move in on their position. Having friends who have the right qualities to test them and find the goodness in the authority allows them at least someone whom they can trust, and who won't believe the lies about them. 

Yet the people in authority are unlikely to have true friends in the unrestricted sense due to the rarity of candidates. More, the greater their authority the fewer the potential friends: if the best case is someone who surpasses you in both station and virtue, those at the highest positions will find no human beings whatsoever who can surpass them in both. If they want to find a friend who surpasses them in station, they must turn to the divine (who presumably also surpasses them in virtue!). 

Just as Aristotle has argued that having friends makes people better because it brings out goodness in them that they wish to bestow on the other, so too having a dearth of friends -- or no friends -- makes one worse. Thus, as power insulates the powerful it also strips them of one of the chief factors that can improve one's character in quality and nobility. We are aware that power corrupts; it also isolates, and removes that which might have kept such a person better than he or she turns out to be without such good influences. 

Seems Like a Long Time

I fear this is just a negotiating tactic: just as we didn't see mass firings at SECWAR's event, I doubt they are really sincere about the major cuts to the government that we need to see.

“How many permanent jobs are you talking about eliminating?” a reporter asked Trump.

“I’ll be able to tell you that in four or five days. If this keeps going on, it’ll be substantial, and a lot of those jobs will never come back,” Trump responded. “You’re going to have a lot closer to a balanced budget.”

The government has been "closed" for a week. Have you noticed? If not, how much do you really need them back?

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.5

We can do a second chapter today because the next one is very short.

As in regard to the virtues some men are called good in respect of a state of character, others in respect of an activity...

That is to say that some people "are" good, and others sometimes "do" good. Of course the virtues are habits that become one's habitual character; but you don't develop a habit the first time out. 

...so too in the case of friendship; for those who live together delight in each other and confer benefits on each other, but those who are asleep or locally separated are not performing, but are disposed to perform, the activities of friendship; distance does not break off the friendship absolutely, but only the activity of it. But if the absence is lasting, it seems actually to make men forget their friendship; hence the saying 'out of sight, out of mind'.

I have occasionally noted the similarities between these Ancient Greek notions and the Havamal, which provides us with advice that informs the Germanic/Norse tradition. Here the reference is verse 44: "If you find a friend you fully trust and wish for his good-will, exchange thoughts, exchange gifts, go often to his house." The frequent points of similarity shows how much of this is pragmatic, human ethics proven solid in many times and places.

Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them, and no one can spend his days with one whose company is painful, or not pleasant, since nature seems above all to avoid the painful and to aim at the pleasant. Those, however, who approve of each other but do not live together seem to be well-disposed rather than actual friends. For there is nothing so characteristic of friends as living together (since while it people who are in need that desire benefits, even those who are supremely happy desire to spend their days together; for solitude suits such people least of all); but people cannot live together if they are not pleasant and do not enjoy the same things, as friends who are companions seem to do.

As mentioned in the commentary on VIII.1, what Aristotle means by "living together" is quite broad; he considers politics a sort of friendship, as the will to live together in the same city or community is for him a species of friendship. Then we share not the same roof, but common festivals and feasts, civic organizations to which we may both belong, rules and laws and customs.

The truest friendship, then, is that of the good, as we have frequently said; for that which is without qualification good or pleasant seems to be lovable and desirable, and for each person that which is good or pleasant to him; and the good man is lovable and desirable to the good man for both these reasons.

It might be interesting to try to think of a counterexample. Can you think of two genuinely good men who knew but hated one another? We can think of examples of such men who were not in perfect agreement, as Tolkien and Lewis were at odds about Catholicism for example. We can think of men who are greatly praised but not yet fully good: Churchill had some infamous barbs for those in his social circle, but he also some real vices.  

Well, as Aristotle himself said, "such men are rare." Still, feel free to comment with any counterexample that you happen to think of as you reflect on it. 

Now it looks as if love were a feeling, friendship a state of character; for love may be felt just as much towards lifeless things, but mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state of character; and men wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a state of character. And in loving a friend men love what is good for themselves; for the good man in becoming a friend becomes a good to his friend. Each, then, both loves what is good for himself, and makes an equal return in goodwill and in pleasantness; for friendship is said to be equality, and both of these are found most in the friendship of the good.

That's going to become important later when Aristotle talks about the friendship of social unequals, especially the case of the friendship of princes. Princes need friends too! But they have no equals, not among the people with whom they share a state or a polity; nor can they treat their unequals as equals without creating political tension due to the favoritism. 

It is a problem for the rest of us, too. Perhaps you've had a friend who was much richer than yourself, or much poorer. This requires care, to minimize the appearance of inequalities and to address them practically as much as one can without drawing attention to them. We have friends who are older or more established, or younger and less experienced. Friendship does imply a sort-of equality, but not the same kind of equalities we talked about in Book V when the issue was justice. It's going to be yet another human equality, and one of a very different sort than the others. 

Yet when we speak of politics as a sort-of friendship, the proportionate equalities from Book V will become obviously relevant anew. 

What Happens in California

...isn't strictly my business, but this logic is striking.

The point of collective bargaining was, you might recall, that it would increase worker salaries. Here we see the governor denying firefighters a raise so that their union can try to get them a raise. He clearly thinks binding them to the union process will keep them on the reservation; if he cared about their salary,  which was the whole point of collective bargaining to begin with, he'd just give them the raise that the legislature had already approved.

"Class" in America

AVI linked this essay on class, which is a little difficult to decipher; the markers have become so obfuscated that it's hard to say who is in what class now. They try really hard anyway, but it probably just comes down to how you make your money (much more than how much money you make). All the cultural stuff doesn't really work any more, as they admit at one point:

Anyways, back to taste, the striking thing to me is that these distinctions are all collapsing, as increasingly large numbers of Americans all listen to the same music, watch the same YouTube shorts, and read the same tweets. Fussell was already tuned into this back in his era, and called it “prole drift”: the tendency in the United States for all classes to drift downwards over time. Perhaps we can explain it via the barber-pole theory of fashionability spinning in reverse, with the highest classes emulating prole tastes to shock the middles, who eventually can’t help themselves in aping what they now perceive to be high. I think you see something like that process in many places, here’s a concrete example: underclass thugs like NWA invent gangster rap → very posh kids shouting rap lyrics ironically → midwits embracing rap-inflected cultural products like Hamilton and Beyoncé completely sincerely. 

The problem with that example is that it happened across several decades, which is the timeframe in which these sorts of things can fall aside anyway.

In contrast, the new generation are, as Helen Andrews once memorably put it, “pretty dumb”:

I mean that the majority of meritocrats are, on their own chosen scale of intelligence, pretty dumb. Grade inflation first hit the Ivies in the late 1960s for a reason. Yale professor David Gelernter has noticed it in his students: “They are so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are. It’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, conversable, interested, doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Looking back at the history of the twentieth century, just sees a fog.” Camille Paglia once assigned the spiritual “Go Down, Moses” to an English seminar, only to discover to her horror that “of a class of twenty-five students, only two seemed to recognize the name ‘Moses’.… They did not know who he was.”

“Dumb” is the wrong word here, what she really means is "ignorant." But ignorant of what exactly? Why does it matter that you know who Beethoven is (and that you be able to recognize even his lesser-known works from audio alone)? ...

Jane: The former top culture has certainly failed to perpetuate its specific markers, but that’s nothing new. Once upon a time it used to be really important to be able to dance, bow, and even walk “correctly” — who cares about that stuff now? 

It's interesting to me how much attention people pay to this; as they point out, books and movies are made about it all the time. I figured out around 2004 that, while it was nice to have more money, what I really liked was the stuff on the "lowbrow" side of the graphic. Old Army clothes? Beer? Jukeboxes? Pulp fiction like "Conan"? Western movies? Absolutely.

At some point you can just be who you want to be, and stop worrying about what class people think you're in. You still have to make a living; you don't have to tell people what you do to make it. I've had people ask me if I'm retired because I never talk about work. Sadly, no! I still have to work for a living. We just don't have to make conversation about it. 

Home with the Armadillo

The newest range report is out.

That puts us in the "established (breeding)" population region. I guess it's officially an armadillo home range these days. Jerry Jeff would have been proud of us.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.4

More on the friendships of good versus bad men. Ugly men are not considered. 

This kind of friendship [i.e. the best kind], then, is perfect both in respect of duration and in all other respects, and in it each gets from each in all respects the same as, or something like what, he gives; which is what ought to happen between friends. Friendship for the sake of pleasure bears a resemblance to this [best] kind; for good people too are pleasant to each other. So too does friendship for the sake of utility; for the good are also useful to each other.

This restates the point from VIII.3: the best sort of friendship also captures the goods of the lesser sorts, but not vice-versa. 

Among men of these inferior sorts too, friendships are most permanent when the friends get the same thing from each other (e.g. pleasure), and not only that but also from the same source, as happens between ready-witted people, not as happens between lover and beloved. For these [i.e. lovers] do not take pleasure in the same things, but the one in seeing the beloved and the other in receiving attentions from his lover; and when the bloom of youth is passing the friendship sometimes passes too (for the one finds no pleasure in the sight of the other, and the other gets no attentions from the first); but many lovers on the other hand are constant, if familiarity has led them to love each other's characters, these being alike. But those who exchange not pleasure but utility in their amour are both less truly friends and less constant. Those who are friends for the sake of utility part when the advantage is at an end; for they were lovers not of each other but of profit.

That seems to be true; if you were dating someone because that person could buy you expensive dinners, you'll find your 'friend' less useful in unemployment. If you were dating because you found the person fun to be around, you might still find the fun. 

For the sake of pleasure or utility, then, even bad men may be friends of each other, or good men of bad, or one who is neither good nor bad may be a friend to any sort of person, but for their own sake clearly only good men can be friends; for bad men do not delight in each other unless some advantage come of the relation.

The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against slander...

Irwin translates that line as "Moreover, it is only the friendship of the good that is immune to slander." I think that's clearer than this translation. 

...for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that trust and the feeling that 'he would never wrong me' and all the other things that are demanded in true friendship are found.

In other words, when two good people are friends, they won't believe bad things about the other even when people say bad things about them. They've tested and known each other, and found one another to be good and reliable people.  

In the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to prevent these evils arising. For men apply the name of friends even to those whose motive is utility, in which sense states are said to be friendly (for the alliances of states seem to aim at advantage), and to those who love each other for the sake of pleasure, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore we too ought perhaps to call such people friends, and say that there are several kinds of friendship-firstly and in the proper sense that of good men qua good, and by analogy the other kinds; for it is in virtue of something good and something akin to what is found in true friendship that they are friends, since even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure. But these two kinds of friendship are not often united, nor do the same people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure; for things that are only incidentally connected are not often coupled together.

Friendship being divided into these kinds, bad men will be friends for the sake of pleasure or of utility, being in this respect like each other, but good men will be friends for their own sake, i.e. in virtue of their goodness. These, then, are friends without qualification; the others are friends incidentally and through a resemblance to these.

That seems clear enough: only the best sort of friendship is true friendship, and the others are called 'friendship' only by analogy. 

"The Hardest Government Program to Reform"

It's the VA.

U.S. servicemembers who sustain injuries while putting their lives on the line for our country deserve generous treatment from the government. No veteran with a legitimate service-related injury should ever struggle to get care.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people are gaming the Veterans Affairs system to extract payments for health issues that have nothing to do with their service. Such behavior has created a backlog and made it harder for other veterans to receive compensation they deserve. It’s also fiscally unsustainable...

This is why universal socialized medicine will never work in the United States. The VA is as good a public healthcare system as we can do. It has every advantage, including unfailing political support because almost every American backs the idea that our combat veterans deserve to have their health taken care of after their time of service.

Even so, we still can't do it. Maybe other countries can; we can't. This is as good as it gets, and it's 'the hardest to reform.' 

The 2026 NC 11 Race Expands

There are a couple of veterans who have entered the race in my Congressional district. Democrat Moe Davis is back in, a retired USAF colonel who has run before. Nothing against Moe, but no Democrat is going to win NC 11, a heavily gerrymandered district partly designed to keep Asheville from having a Congressman. 

Of greater interest, former Special Forces operator Adam Smith is challenging the sitting Republican congressman for that party's nomination.

Adam Smith says it’s time for a change and that he’s ready to stand up for Western North Carolina in ways incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards hasn’t — particularly, in Hurricane Helene recovery.

“I think the only time I saw Chuck during the disaster was when President Trump showed up [in Swannanoa, last October],” Smith said. “Why did it take a visit by the President in order for the congressional representative to show up? While my team, volunteers, myself and a multitude of other nonprofits on the ground were actively working in disaster relief and rescue to provide supplies, I never saw him until the president showed up. Then I saw him for 15 minutes. Then I didn't see him again.”

Trump commended Smith for his relief work at the Oct. 21, 2024, Swannanoa event, less than a month after Helene.

“One of the patriots who stepped forward to help was Adam Smith, a former Green Beret,” Trump said, with Edwards looking on from the background. “Adam transformed the parking lot of a Harley Davidson dealership into a makeshift airbase to help distribute supplies, did an incredible job. Adam, what an amazing act of citizenship and service.”

That story was also covered here at the time, as it was too in Reason magazine's article "The Remarkable Redneck Airforce of Asheville." (It doesn't alliterate as well, but the proper pejorative for Appalachian Highlanders is "hillbilly"; the rednecks are from the lowlands.) 

I might have to change party affiliation to vote for Smith. Those of us who came through the hurricane together ought to stick together, and I know he's for real after what all he's done. The story is 100% true; I've been to that Harley dealer and talked with them about it to verify the details. His organization was the one they mentioned by name to me.

The Cost of Not Speaking to Women

The NYT has an article today about an artist I've never heard of before: "She Didn’t Speak to Other Women for 28 Years. What Did It Cost Her? When it came to using her life in her work, the artist Lee Lozano went about as far as a person can go."

The article doesn't answer the question it asks; if it cost her anything at all, it's not evident in the text. In fact the matter is really only discussed in one paragraph of a longer piece.

In August 1971, eight months after the opening of her Whitney show, she undertook another, even more audacious project, “Decide to Boycott Women,” stating her intention to stop speaking to other women. In her notes on the piece, she suggested it would be temporary — an experiment that would go on for about a month and “after that ‘communication will be better than ever.’” But it ended up being a practice she continued throughout the rest of her life, mostly, though not entirely, avoiding women (even allegedly once refusing to be helped by a female clerk at a grocery store). The blunt hostility of this piece struck many of her friends and, later, art critics and historians as an act of self-destruction. The curator Helen Molesworth called it “consummately pathological.” Lozano’s friend the artist David Reed said it was “masochistic.”

Maybe it didn't cost her anything. Perhaps she enjoyed the relative quiet, given that she expanded the project voluntarily from "about a month" to 28 years.  

BORTAC to Chicago

Following a dramatic but nonlethal ambush of Homeland Security agents in Chicago, DHS is sending what they describe as "special operations" personnel to Chicago. This seems to be BORTAC, the Border Patrol's tactical unit. 

Pace the ACLU, these are not "special-forces style" personnel. They're like a SWAT team; their closest military analog is probably the 75th Rangers, but this is a police rather than a military function. The Border Patrol (which is providing the "BOR-" here) also has a search and rescue unit called BORSTAR in their Special Operations command, which presumably is not being deployed since neither searching nor rescuing is needed in this case.

If you're going to fight the Federal government, you have to expect to face this sort of thing. Eventually you have to expect to face the actual Rangers and Special Forces, in fact; escalation into actual insurrection is only going to loosen the limits on the Federales in terms of what kind of force they can bring to bear. I don't know that Chicago is ready for what they're asking for by encouraging this level of resistance -- the mayor issuing a statement against the Feds, and the Chicago Police Department refusing aid to Federales under attack. Maybe they think the voting public will be turned off by it and hand their party back some power to put the brakes on it, but that's more than a year and a half away in the best case. 

Fighting the Feds can be the right thing to do under extreme circumstances; the Declaration of Independence sets permanent terms for when it is right or even morally mandatory to resist any government. No American government, deriving their legitimacy entirely from the revolution successfully fought under those terms, can deny the validity of the Declaration's arguments. 

Thus, at least sometimes such resistance is moral and proper; and to some degree it remains a matter of individual judgment when those terms are satisfied. I won't say, therefore, that such resistance is categorically wrong; but you'd better be sure.

Nicomachean Ethics VIII.3

In this chapter, Aristotle gives his case for an ideal friendship. 

Now these reasons differ from each other in kind; so, therefore, do the corresponding forms of love and friendship. There are therefore three kinds of friendship, equal in number to the things that are lovable; for with respect to each there is a mutual and recognized love, and those who love each other wish well to each other in that respect in which they love one another.

This is a good point to mention that Ancient Greek has several words that are all translated as "love," just as we have already seen that Ancient Greek had a number of different words that are translated as "knowledge." Here as there, it is important to know which word is being used and what the deeper sense of that word happens to be.

When Americans say that two people are "lovers," we almost always mean "love" in the sense that the Greeks would call eros, ἔρως, clearly the root of our word "erotic." That is not the word being used in these passages.

The word being used here is philo/philia, φιλία, which is the root of philosophy ("love of wisdom," philo - sophia) or of Tolkien's passion of philology (love of words, philo - logos). It can be a very deep love, as we will be exploring, but not an erotic love: a love appropriate to deep personal passions or affection between friends, especially as we shall see the closest and deepest friendships of all. One might say that good marriages proceed from eros to philia as the couple age and develop these deep connections and mutual feeling for each other as a people; perhaps the very best manage to retain both.

Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. So too with those who love for the sake of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant. Therefore those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves, and those who love for the sake of pleasure do so for the sake of what is pleasant to themselves, and not in so far as the other is the person loved but in so far as he is useful or pleasant. And thus these friendships are only incidental; for it is not as being the man he is that the loved person is loved, but as providing some good or pleasure. Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him.

In the last chapter, I mentioned that neither the useful nor the pleasant would turn out to be a real candidate for what was worthy of love. You can see here a new reason for that conclusion: what a person loves, insofar as they have friends who are useful or pleasant to be around, is something of that first person's own. It's not really something about the other, but something the first person hopes to gain from them: either something valuable (useful) or something pleasing (pleasure).

Now the useful is not permanent but is always changing. Thus when the motive of the friendship is done away, the friendship is dissolved, inasmuch as it existed only for the ends in question. This kind of friendship seems to exist chiefly between old people (for at that age people pursue not the pleasant but the useful) and, of those who are in their prime or young, between those who pursue utility. And such people do not live much with each other either; for sometimes they do not even find each other pleasant; therefore they do not need such companionship unless they are useful to each other; for they are pleasant to each other only in so far as they rouse in each other hopes of something good to come. Among such friendships people also class the friendship of a host and guest.

I don't know if it is still true that old people pursue friendships chiefly for utility, as we have social structures that take care of a lot of the needs of the elderly. You can see how it was likely to be true in Aristotle's time that the elderly would seek others who could still do some of the things they could no longer do for themselves, and perhaps in return offer what they could still do that their 'friend' could not. Perhaps one was blind(er), and the other more deafened by age; or one could walk about more easily, and the other still had clearer thoughts.  

On the other hand the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly. Young people are amorous too...

Here the word being given as "amorous" is in fact a version of eros, ἐρωτικόςof.

...for the greater part of the friendship of love depends on emotion and aims at pleasure; this is why they fall in love and quickly fall out of love, changing often within a single day. But these people do wish to spend their days and lives together; for it is thus that they attain the purpose of their friendship.

So much for the lesser species of things we call "friendship." 

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their [i.e. the friend's own] sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing.

Here we see the connection between at least true friendship and virtue. True friends are "alike in virtue," meaning that they are not necessarily perfectly virtuous, but are fitted together by their similarity in virtue. Yet they are definitely at least somewhat virtuous because they are "men who are good," and that means that they possess virtue. 

The best -- i.e. the magnanimous -- will have very deep and meaningful friendships with each other, because they are gracious and good to each other in the most honorable ways. Those who are 'equitable' in Aristotle's sense will have deep friendships because they will go beyond what mere fairness requires to bestow on the other what their friendship really deserves. Those who are merely just will still have good friendships because their virtue will compel them to treat each other fairly, and thus they will not slight one another. 

Only those who have no virtue to speak of will be unable to know this sort of friendship, but only the sort that comes from finding someone pleasant or useful. Yet the true friends will not miss out on either pleasure or utility, because we shall see that those things come into the bargain with true friendship:

And each [true friend] is good without qualification and to his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most and in their best form between such men.

Back to philos as the root here, both for love (φιλέω) and friendship (φίλιος).

But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.

Reflecting on this, you can provide your own examples from your lives of the best and truest friends you have had.  

Smells Like Calculus

 A little silliness as Monday hits ...

Valhalla

It was interesting to note this line from SECWAR Hegseth's speech, given the recent invocation of Valhalla by FBI Director Kash Patel.

If you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.

We don't have a military full of Nordic pagans. 

Not full of them, no, but it is a recognized religion in the service. The VA offers Thor's Hammer headstones, number 55 on this list, and to my knowledge at least two servicemembers are buried under them.  

Naturally I support accommodation for genuine religious traditions in the service, which in the case of beards also means the Sikh. (They also have an approved headstone: number 36). In general the desire to restrict religious expression is baleful, and if it were to be invoked for any reason one might think of another religion -- sometimes but not always associated with beards -- that would be the most obvious candidate. It wouldn't be because of the beards. 

The usual reason military (and fire) services discriminate against beards is because of an alleged difficulty getting a proper seal with protective breathing equipment. This is a misconception; I've used the stuff and it works fine. Hair is dead skin like skin, and with adequate pressure protective masks mate down just as well over hair as over flesh. Bearded men also uses equipment like CPAPs without difficulty. 

Patel, meanwhile, looked rather foolish invoking what is usually a military phrase -- The Hill cites the Navy and Marine Corps, but I've also heard it used for the same Green Berets Hegseth is willing to grant beards -- as Kash is a Hindu-raised man who was praising a devout Protestant Evangelical Christian. Not, however, as foolish as the idiots who decided to treat "See you in Valhalla" as neo-Nazi code. Those people are desperately trying to wish into existence an opponent they would rather have instead of the ones that they do.

The Great Smoky Mountains is Open

In spite of the Federal Government shutdown, the most popular park is fully funded and wide open.

📣BREAKING NEWS!!! 📣 Beginning tomorrow (Oct 4), the entire Great Smoky Mountains National Park will reopen, despite the Federal government shutdown!!! In anticipation of the shutdown, Sevier County, the cities of Gatlinburg, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Pittman Center, Blount County, Cocke County, the State of Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, Friends of the Smokies, along with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, began working together on a plan to provide financial support to keep the national park fully operational in the event of a shutdown.