Grim's Hall

Sanity

Sanity:

That most pugnacious of liberals, Ed Koch, has endorsed Bush for re-election. His reason is exactly the same as my own, which spells doom, I think, for Dean. When a New York Democrat and a Georgia Democrat are thinking exactly the same thing, you can be sure there's an unusual alignment of the planets:

Nevertheless, I intend to vote in 2004 to reelect President Bush. I will do so despite the fact that I do not agree with him on any major domestic issue, from tax policy to the recently enacted prescription drug law. These issues, however, pale in importance beside the menace of international terrorism, which threatens our very survival as a nation. President Bush has earned my vote because he has shown the resolve and courage necessary to wage the war against terrorism.
The Democratic presidential contenders, unfortunately, inspire no such confidence. With the exception of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has no chance of winning, the Democrats have decided that in order to get their party's nomination, they must pander to its radical left wing. As a result, the Democratic candidates, even those who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, have attacked the Bush administration for its successful effort to remove a regime that was a sponsor of terrorism and a threat to world peace.
The Democrat now leading in the race, former governor Howard Dean, is a disgrace. His willingness to publicly entertain the slander that President Bush had advance warning of the September 11 attacks and his statement that America is no safer as a result of the capture of Saddam Hussein should have been sufficient to end his candidacy. But the radicals who dominate the primaries love the red meat that is thrown to them, even when it comes from a mad cow.

Meanwhile, The New Republic has endorsed Joe Lieberman. I myself--and, it sounds like, Koch--would be glad to rethink my endorsement of Bush if and only if Lieberman won the nomination. It's impossible, as Koch points out, but TNR is making a most honorable case:

Fundamentally, the Dean campaign equates Democratic support for the Iraq war with appeasement of President Bush. But the fight against Saddam Hussein falls within a hawkish liberal tradition that stretches through the Balkan wars, the Gulf war, and, indeed, the cold war itself. Lieberman is not the only candidate who stands in that tradition--Wesley Clark promoted it courageously in Kosovo, as did Richard Gephardt when he defied the polls to vote for $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. But Lieberman is its most steadfast advocate, not only in the current field but in the entire Democratic Party. In 1991, he broke with every other Northern Democrat in the Senate to support the Gulf war, then broke with George H.W. Bush when the former president allowed Saddam to slaughter tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia in the war's aftermath. In 1998, Lieberman joined with McCain to co-sponsor the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the United States to regime change in Baghdad. And, in the 2000 campaign, when the younger Bush was still peddling neo-isolationism, it was Gore and Lieberman who insisted that the United States be prepared to use force to stop genocide and promote democracy.

Reaction to TNR's endorsement from Dean supporters has been to cast TNR out of the left. This is somewhat like the passenger in a motorcycle car casting himself off from the motorcycle: he's freed himself, yes, but what he has freed himself from is the real engine of progress, and a wreck is certain. The Armed Liberal engaged this debate over who is "really" able to speak for the traditions of the Left, and is reminded of Communists who conducted purges of the impure: "We've been here before, of course. Remember POUM? And go read Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' to get a sense of what I'm talking about." One of his commenters makes a point on the topic:

The Democratic center has collapsed. Centerist Democrats have no candidates and they are repulsed by their choices in the General Election. This is a perscription [sic] for a large number of voters to check out of politics completely for several election cycles.
We also have with Dean a recognition that the organizational barrier to entry for creating a national party organization has falled [sic] radically.
This is the historical perscription [sic] for collapse of the Democrats and the creation of a new major American political party.

If it comes to that, I will start a new party myself--I think we will call ourselves the Jacksonian Party. I mean, of course, James Jackson, and therefore a Jeffersonian party; but people who like Andrew Jackson will be welcome too. It's a big tent for American Classical Liberals, and ought to be able to pull from Republicans as well as Democrats. It will be founded on the real, and honorable, left of American culture: Jefferson's vision, which James Jackson shared, and for which he fought so valiantly.

It is that left which does not merely idolize the poor, but upholds them and finds ways to make them powerful. The support of unions is one way. Another is by supporting their right to bear arms, so that they do not rely upon a distant and disinterested state for their personal security or that of their families. Even in the city, the state is distant when the bandit is already in your home. Furthermore, and more importantly, an armed citizen is not merely more independent of the state. He is personally capable of defending the state, the lawful order, and the common peace, wherever he goes. Whether it is felons or terrorists who threaten that order and that peace, he is ready. The disarmed citizen is a ward of the state. The Armed citizen is its guardian. The state is his to uphold.

Another matter: we need a renewed focus on the rights and duties of the citizen, so that the poor will understand the power they already have by statute, but have forgotten how to wield. Consider jury nullification. Special interests may write the laws, but we have every right to make exceptions. The powerful and the rich do not sit in judgement over us: we judge ourselves.

Another matter: the defense and support of small businesses, who are the "Yeoman Farmers" of the city. No man is freer than he who employs himself, whether it is the owner of his own land, or the owner of his own shop. If we are going to fiddle with tax policy, let's fiddle with it in a way that encourages and supports small businesses and farmers.

Another matter: education culture. Private-sector unions are a defense for the poor, but public-sector unions are the enemy of everyone outside themselves. Private-sector unions encourage profit sharing, but there is no profit in the public sector--there is only tax money, which must be drawn from the poor as from the rich, and which is drawn at the point of a gun. Restraining public spending is a civil rights issue. The less money you must send to the government, the more you can use to build your own personal capital, and pull yourself up from poverty.

On the same topic, educators should themselves be educated. This should be a real education on the topic they intend to teach, not an education in "educational theory." No one needs that. By the time they are prepared to teach, they have had the most practical education in educating--they have attended twelve years of public school, four years of college, and have at some point had the practical apprenticeship of being an teacher's aide and a student teacher. They have seen education done for more than a decade, have a number of working models in mind, and have practiced the art themselves. What they need is to know their subject matter. We need historians teaching History, and mathematicians teaching math. A large majority of the public is being educated by people whose knowledge of a given subject is no greater than the textbooks they have been assigned. They can't enlarge upon the text, and they can't tell the students when the text goes wrong.

In foreign policy: we should recognize that international terrorist organizations actually are subject to an existing international law: the law of the sea. Precisely like the roving bands of brigands and pirates of the 1600s and 1700s, they are organized against civilization, travel through multiple jurisdictions and through lawless areas alike. They are not combatants of any state, and are protected therefore by neither the Geneva Conventions nor the rules of war. Like pirates, they are subject to summary execution by the officers of any nation that comes into control of them; or by interrogation and some more merciful response, if we prefer and at our discretion. This brutality on the part of civilized men is justified for the exact reason it was justified of old: the threat these bands pose to the transportation infrastructure is a dagger at the heart of civilization. We cannot maintain our cities, our populations, our ability to combat disease or famine, or our relative freedom from total war over resources, without the massive but fragile transportation capacity we have developed.

This is not idle or of small importance. A small increase in transport costs kills at the margins--for example, aid to Africa is reduced as it is more expensive to transport, but resources are fixed. A large increase threatens civilization itself. Our cities do not contain enough food to feed the populace for more than about three days. That is no problem; more food is coming. But if the ability to transport that food is severely harmed--starvation, and in many regions of the world, disease. A serious disruption could unleash a resource war by nations that see mass starvation if they don't capture food, oil, and other needful things. Such a disruption is possible if these terror groups continue their infiltration of the West, and come into possession of WMD.

For that reason, the reform of terror-sponsor states is paramount. So is the reform of failed states that are not necessarily terror-sponsors, but where terrorists are able to travel freely due to bribes of local officials or through outright lawlessness. So long as we can do so while maintaining an all-volunteer force, the United States ought to feel free to act on these places one by one. This has the practical matter, for a Jacksonian party, of bringing liberty and strength to the poor and unfree abroad exactly as we wish to do at home.

There are other matters, but this is enough for now.

FreeSpeech.com: Comment on A Challenge to all Lefties

A Comment:

On FreeSpeech, I wrote this:

At the risk of being deleted by AW for being off topic--this isn't really about Bush lying--I'd like to ask you a question about your last post. What about leadership?

Consider the point made by your anonymous: "The US cannot go it alone, militarily or economically. The French, Germans, Canadians, et al are not any more greedy than we are."

Fair enough. But if America can't go it alone, neither can any of these. We need each other, yes. But that need is at least as strong on their side as ours--stronger, I should think.

If, as seems to be the case, the French &c. come around to our way of seeing things, what we have is not a rift but a momentary disagreement. If France and company chooses debt relief for Iraq, aid to NATO/Coalition missions abroad, and a stronger line toward Islamism (as, for example, a ban on the hijab such as France has undertaken); well, then, perhaps they have not been driven away from us, but awoken by us to a duty they have been ignoring. That duty--to preserve the Order of the West, with its unique vision of human liberty--is the real cause. It is the only cause. It has been America's cause from the Founding, even if individual Americans have lost sight of it.

Is it possible to fight in that cause without seeking the reform of terror-sponsor states? Was there a means to the real reform of Iraq short of regime change? I am open to evidence, as you know. I haven't seen anything to convince me that we have done wrong here. If it was wrong to dwell on WMD, it was wrong not because it played up an argument that was dubious. It was wrong because the WMD dance at the UN delayed the freedom of Iraqis. It extended the reign of terror by a year. If any innocent Iraqi blood is on our hands, it is that blood.

France will come around--indeed, has come around. If we had come around to them, would the world be better, or would tyranny still darken Mesopotamia?

Leadership is needed, for these are deadly times. I think I am an honest observer--as honest as any. I have seen nothing to suggest that anything other than the union of the West offers hope. But not just any such union.

Only this union: a union of the West devoted to fight for the cause of liberty on any front, in any fashion. If that can be inspired through rhetoric, so be it. If it can be inspired through action, as well. If it must be inspired through example, we ought to stand to the labor.

There are many Westerners who do not agree. There is no alternative but to convince them, and no means but leadership to do so. That leadership means taking them places they fear to tread, and it will for that reason necessarily cause resentment and wrath.

It must be done, nevertheless. They will turn to our side. They do so even now. It is what they were born for, though they fear it; it is what their proudest traditions sponsor. Even the French remember the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It is the cause, and the duty, of the West.

ScrappleFace: NARAL: Abortionist's 34-Year Assault Sentence 'Cruel'

Satire:

It used to be said that the Bards could produce a satire so cruel that it could wither a man. I always thought that was an exaggeration, until today. From ScrappleFace: NARAL: Abortionist's 34-Year Assault Sentence 'Cruel':

'This is cruel and unusual punishment,' said NARAL President Kate Michelman. 'Rather than confine this man behind bars with a bunch of brutal murderers where he cannot use his prodigious gifts and talents, Dr. Finkel should be returned to his practice to continue his service to the community.'

In two decades of service, Dr. Finkel performed some 30,000 abortions. His crimes consisted of kissing and fondling his abortion patients against their will.

'We cannot condone the disgusting things Dr. Finkel did to women who trusted him,' said Ms. Michelman, 'However, we must consider the greater good of the community. If he is returned to his professional work, then ultimately it will reduce the number of women who might be victims of sexual assault by reducing the actual births of boys and girls who grow up to be sexual assailants and victims.'

NARAL-funded studies show that unwanted fetuses, whose mothers fail to choose abortion, are more likely to become involved in sexual crimes as adults.

'If Dr. Finkel is able to prevent just one sexual assault by aborting the potential assailant or the victim,' she said. 'It will, in a sense, atone for his crimes against women.'

That must be the cruelest thing I have ever read, and perhaps one of the truest. Abortion is one of those things people believe must be morally OK, exactly because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. It makes one shudder.

Daily Kos || Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.

Samizdata

Samizdata:

We mentioned Samizdata yesterday. Today, we note with pleasure that they have agreed to exchange link-hospitality with Grim's Hall. You'll find them under "Other Halls," to the right and down.

One of our Own

One of our Own:

Bravery Needs No Translation.

David Yeagley's BadEagle.com

Bad Eagle:

Bad Eagle has some thoughts on empire, including a picture of Sherman's grave. May he... well, I am from Georgia, after all.

DoD News: Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing

Hallelujah:

May it always be thus:

Elsewhere in Baghdad, individuals inside a white Opel fired small arms at ICDC personnel at the Al-Amil gas station. The Civil Defense Corps soldiers returned fire, and Iraqi customers waiting for fuel also fired at the Opel. The assailants broke contact, and a search of the area met with negative results.

Emphasis added. Hat tip Samizdata, our brothers in England.

Grim's Hall

On War:

It is time to speak seriously about war.

I am brought to the topic by Kos, who approves of a line being taken by Howard Dean on the topic of the war in Iraq. Kos seems to think that this will prove to be a winning argument:

We've not paid attention to al-Qaida. We've spent $160 billion, lost over 400 servicemen, and wounded and permanently maimed over 2,000 people because we picked the wrong target.

First of all, it may be said that the claim that we've paid no attention to al Qaeda is wrong on its face. The same period has seen a USMC mission against Qaeda targets on the Horn of Africa; the capture of Khalid Shiek Mohammed; allied arrests and prosecutions; continued SOF operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere; and indeed, more "focus" on al Qaeda than can easily be rehearsed. But that is not what bothers me.

What bothers me is this gleeful counting of American war dead. Kos replies to Dean: "Checkmate. And that's beside the fact that we've lost 34 soldiers since Saddam was captured, not ten. (Someone update this guy's notes!)"

Here is my reply:

In this argument, you have drunk yourselves full from the cup of despair. If 400 dead soldiers--heroes and volunteers!--represents failure to you, then there can be no success. America fielded 150,000 troops in this war. In nine months it has lost less than five hundred--less, that is, than one in a hundred of those it deployed onto the field of war. If 99% survival is not acceptable to you, then war is not acceptable to you.

This is no small sacrifice to make. If you will not fight war, you give over to those who will. In a poem to one of the war dead, Lance Corporal Ian Malone--I am told it will be published soon in a volume called Eternal Voices or something like that--I wrote this:

What, one Irish fighting man
to free millions from cold chains?
Not noble words, not gracious plan
could make real such gains.
Or--Is our time so coy,
so wild and free a thing?
Not Harvey nor Kelly, boy
of Killarn, not the Brian King
Freedom bought at such a cost,
where glory's priced so steep:
Where the name of each good man lost
Can memory's Herald keep.

It is still true. Of old, men memorized epics: even the Iliad. Should our foes succeed in killing three times as many of our soldiers as they have done, so that 2,000 Coalition men lie dead in Iraq, yet one man who wished could remember their names. He could, if he devoted himself, remember their names, their ranks, and something of the history of their units. It lies within the power of the human mind.

And for this sacrifice, we have achieved something that passes human power to estimate. Three hundred thousand dead! And their widows and their children, and the fear in the night. It is gone, on the winds of morning. It is gone, forever.

Run against that? You fools, you cowards, you children of cold hearts. If this is a winning argument, we deserve destruction. We are no longer fit to bear the sword, for we have not the courage to lift it.

But it is not so. We do remember the strength of old steel.

De Oppresso Liber.

Primaries:

I have posted on occasion about the upcoming political race, although it is only now heating up enough to be worth a lot of attention. The big question looks to be Iowa. If Dean wins there, the nomination process can be all but closed, and we can proceed to the general election. If he loses, it's still an open game.

FundRace--which I've tended to follow instead of polling data--suggests that the race is very tight between Dean and Gephardt. Gephardt is interesting because he's run to the left of Dean on everything except the war. Dean's claims to being a member of the "Democratic wing" notwithstanding, the Gephardt attack site makes only liberal criticisms of Dean's policies, excepting Dean's desire to cut national defense funding. It speaks volumes that Dean and the fellow to his left are leading the pack in Iowa.

All of that makes Dean's latest ploy curious to me. A lot has been said about Dean's "grassroots army," although it is in fact substantially smaller than GWB's. Nevertheless, it's larger than the ones fielded by other Democratic candidates. Dean has enlisted them, I see, to write letters to the citizens of rural Iowa. These letters are supposed to "to make sure everyone in the state has heard about Howard Dean's positive vision for America." (One wonders if the letters mention that job #1 in the "positive vision" is raising taxes.)

Now, here's the part I'm curious about. Most of these letters--you can see by following the link above--are coming from California, New York, or Massachusetts. Coming from rural America myself, I can tell you exactly how such a letter would be received in my home. "Hello! I'm from New York, and I'd like to tell you how I think you should vote." Sorry, pal. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I would have expected Iowa to feel the same way, but given the fundraising, maybe they don't.

Or maybe they do. Check the fundraising by county, and you can see that both candidates have gotten nearly all their money from less than a third of the counties in the state. Meanwhile, checking the fundraising by-state, for all candidates, we see that Iowa trends slightly Republican. If the two candidates of the left-left are leading the Democratic fundraising, but the majority of the money is going to Bush, one suspects a lot of those letters are being written in vain.

Changes

Changes:

I am making some cosmetic changes to the site, mostly in terms of color scheme. More will follow, most likely.

UPDATE: Still to come: proper heraldry--for now I have only my shield's partition, but it is otherwise unblazon'd. I shall also try to make a place for reader comments--another occasionally requested feature--and a biography, since some of you want that. If you have other requests, email.

The Truth Laid Bear: The New Weblog Showcase

NBS:

This week I'm voting for The War Journal for political entry. The link appears to be messed up, so if you go, you'll have to dig around to find the good parts. The nonpolitical entries, er, don't really merit a vote.

Great lines in politics

Great Lines:

BBC Radio 4 has given us one of the great lines of political history:

It was trailed as a "unique chance to rewrite the law of the land". Listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.
But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.
Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.
"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

"The people have spoken... the bastards." I love it. Of course, our Mandarin friend was not done explaining his disdain for the electorate:

Having recovered his composure, Mr Pound told The Independent: "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4. I would have expected this result if there had been a poll in The Sun. Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"

"We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4." This, after he had recovered his composure. Can you imagine a Congressman saying, "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of NPR"?

As for the last part of the question, yes, that is what they really want. And rightly so. No one accidentally climbs into your house, and there are very limited circumstances under which someone doing so means anything but harm to you and your family.

The whole thing brings to mind another piece of British journalism which I mentioned here in August, Aidian Hartley's "How to Kill a Burglar" from the London Spectator. In any event, kudos to Mr. Pound for his keen wit, and shame on him for his "principles," which are both antidemocratic--respectable in a Lord, but absurd in a member of the House of Commons--and directly opposed to one of the fundamental rights of Men. The defense of those rights is the business of liberal government. Indeed, it is the whole business. Explaining morality to the people is neither part of the duty of government, nor a welcome addition.

The Current Royal Family > HM The Queen > Background

To the Queen:

I may be the only American citizen who led a toast to the Queen of England last night. It was the third, and last, of our New Years' toasts (conducted at Grim's Hall with sparkling, but nonalcoholic, apple cider. This is a kindness offered to Mrs. Grim, who doesn't care for alcohol's flavor).

It may seem the odder given that I am a Jacobite. But I have reason.

On September 13, 2001, 187 years after it was written, the reigning Queen of England ordered that "The Star Spangled Banner" be played at Buckingham Palace for the mid-day changing of the guard, as a memorial to the people killed in the terrorist attacks early that week in the U.S. On September 14, 187 years to the day after Francis Scott Key wrote the first draft of the song, the Queen asked that it be sung at the memorial service at St. Paul's Cathedral.

Not only did she ask that it be sung, she sang it. She had learned the words by heart.

Long live the Queen, and have a happy New Year.

A Bet:

I have placed a friendly wager with a young liberal of my association on the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election. I am offering her 2-1 on this proposition, which is probably still theft on my part, but is better than she asked.

Proposition: Howard Dean will be elected President of the United States in 2004.

Forfeit if the proposition is true: I will provide the girl in question a week's worth of Slurpees and nachos, and donate $60 US Dollars to the charity of her choice, i.e., AllBreed Pet Rescue. (An aside--these are good people who do good work, and I should be only too happy to donate to them in any case.)

Forfeit if the proposition is false: She will provide me with a week's worth of beer, and furthermore, she will donate $30 to the charity of my choice, i.e., The National Rifle Association.

We shall see how it plays out. As soon as the results are in, I'll post a note on the blog to let you know who's paying up.

RICHARD B. MYERS, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Holiday Message 2003

Holiday Message:

Holiday Message from the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff:

HOLIDAY GREETING 2003
For generations, US Service men and women and government civilians have spent the holiday season far from loved ones, so that all Americans can celebrate the peace, prosperity and liberty that our Armed Forces have fought to protect.
Today, you continue to keep steadfast watch across the globe, from bases on land, planes overhead, and aboard ships at sea; from distant, remote locations, and within our own borders.
During this holiday season, the United States is asking much of you -- and you are responding with a strong sense of duty, a willingness to give up personal comfort for the greater good, and the professionalism that has earned our military services honor and respect throughout the world. It is never easy to be away from home, but especially during the holiday season, the courage, patriotism and unconditional support of families and loved ones mean so very much.
Your service and the sacrifices of your families come at a crucial moment in our Nation's history. Your dedicated work is making the world a better, safer, and more peaceful place. I am inspired by your character and courage, and am extremely proud to serve with you. The Joint Chiefs of Staff join me in sending to you and your families our very warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season.
RICHARD B. MYERS
Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Message received. Happy New Year.

FT December 2003: Opinion: Johnny of the Cross

Johnny Cash:

Without doubt, the greatest American artist to die this year was Johnny Cash. Here find a moving elegy to him, "Johnny of the Cross". It may be the best thing I've ever read about the man.

On his final album, he was teaching us how to die. And in a culture that by and large loves death but does not know what to do with it--a culture simultaneously repulsed and attracted by i--Johnny's confrontation with his own imminent demise was largely misunderstood. The critics who complained that his voice was not what it used to be missed the point entirely. It is precisely because his voice was not what it used to be that the songs have such power. The beauty of the record lies in that very frailty, the tremolo in his voice that became more pronounced with each album. Even in his younger days, the inimitable strength and fortitude in his voice was mixed with the occasional moment of weakness, the odd quaver and show of vulnerability. In the last few years those moments became more frequent, and his voice became more diaphonous, disclosing more of the effects of illness.
Yet for that very reason, Cash's voice was all the more beautiful--it had a weakness stronger than others' strengths.

Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily.

FBI

FBI:

The FBI has released an unclassified, but redacted, version of its audit on intelligence sharing with other counterterrorist agencies (PDF warning):

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has established as its highest priority the prevention of terrorist attacks on the United States. The accomplishment of this critical national security mission requires the FBI to collect, analyze, and appropriately disseminate intelligence and other information needed to disrupt or defeat terrorist activities. However, in the past, Congressional inquiries concerning the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, reports of commissions examining terrorism before and since September 11, and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reports have suggested various weaknesses in the FBI's ability to effectively carry out the vital intelligence component of its counterterrorism program.
As a result, the OIG initiated this audit to review the FBI's progress in addressing deficiencies in the FBI's intelligence-sharing capabilities that the FBI, Congress, the OIG, and others identified subsequent to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

One of the big problems found? When they share information with local police, it ends up in the paper the next day. The local cops are so excited at getting a piece of highly important FBI information, they can't keep their lips together. Exhibit A seems to be those almanacs. What was perhaps a useful piece of intelligence is now being reported even in Pakistani newspapers.

The Feast of Stephen

The Feast of Stephen:

Another holiday tradition, this one not even two hundred years old, is the song "Good King Wenceslas":

Good King Wenceslas looked out, On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night,
though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight,
Gathering winter fuel.
Hither, page, and stand by me,
If though know'st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?"
Where and what his dwelling?
Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes' fountain."
Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither."
Page and monarch, forth they went,
Forth they went together;
Thro' the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather.
Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
Mark my footsteps, my good page;
Tread thou in them boldly;
Though shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."
In his master's steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possesing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourself find blessing.

The good reader will now ask, of course, who this King Wenceslas was. The particularly astute reader will wonder who St. Stephen was, that his Feast directly follows Christmas. Both questions are answered; follow the links, if you like.

Another Poem

Another Christmas Poem:

This one from Blackfive.

Waes Hael!

If you missed it yesterday, a Yuletide tradition explained.

Waes Hael! Drinc Hael! Merry Christmas, and a fine Yuletide to you all.

And Since We're Doing King Alfred:

From The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton:

Then Alfred laughed out suddenly,
Like thunder in the spring,
Till shook aloud the lintel-beams,
And the squirrels stirred in dusty dreams,
And the startled birds went up in streams,
For the laughter of the King.

And the beasts of the earth and the birds looked down,
In a wild solemnity,
On a stranger sight than a sylph or elf,
On one man laughing at himself
Under the greenwood tree--

The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;

Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning--
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.

A Christmas Poem

A Christmas Poem:

"The Knight Before Christmas"
by Robert L. Sheridan
(which I assume he won't mind me sharing, since he posted it on the internet)

'Twas the knight biforn Christmas, whan al thrugh the castle
Nat a creature was stirring, nat even a vassal;
The gauntlets were hung by the hearth with care,
In fear that the Saxons soon wouldst be ther;
The knights were nestled al snug in their bedst,
Whilst visions of battles dancest in their heeds;
And Guenevere in her silver wimple, and I in my helm,
Hadde joust settled adoun for a long winter's realm,
Whenst outen on the motte ther arose swich a clatter,
I sprang from the bedst to see what wast the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a turncoat,
Tore out the bars and threw them into the moat.
The moon on the breast of the fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to the serfs living below,
Whenst, what to my wandering eyes should appear - much to my chagrin,
But a battering ram, and eight mean lookyng Saxons,
With a leader, whose terror was so widespread,
I knew in a moment it must be King Alfred.
Moore rapid than boiling oil his soldiers they came,
And he yelled, and shouted, and called hem by nempne;
"Now Botolph! now, Clough!, now Fulke and Heaton!
Onst, Hurst! on Ockley! on Ramsden and Waldgrave!
To the edge of the moat! thurgh the moat!
Now bash away, bash away! bash away al!"
Ast Saxon's that er the winds fly,
Whan hem meetest with an obstacle, mounteth to the sly,
So up to the castle-gate the Saxon-mother's-sons they flewest,
With an assortment of weapons, and King Alfred tooest.
And tho, in a instant, I heard by the castle-gate, the horde
The chopping and hacking of each Saxon's sword.
As I drew my sword, and was trilling around,
Downed the castle-gate King Alfred came liketh a hound.
He was dressed all in chain mail, from his feete to his garrote,
And his chain mail was all rusted from coming thrugh the moat;
A sack of pilfered goodst he had flung on his back,
And he looketh lyk a smuggler joust closing his pack.
His eyes -- how they scowled! his warts how dreary!
His cheeks were lyk haymows, his nose lyk quiteth beery!
His troll lite mouth was drawn up like a crossbow,
And the beard of chin was the colour of soot on the snow;
The stump of a small tree he held tighteth in his teethe,
And the roots it hidde his face, it caused me to grief;
He had a rude face and a bigeth belly,
That shooketh, whenst he laughed atte me, lyk a bowlful of jelly,
He was grubby and quite a lump, a right grievous old elf,
And I laughed when I nicked him, in spite of myself;
In a blinketh of an eye, and a thwart of my deeds,
Anon gave me to knoweth I had been sullied;
He spoketh hou a word, but went bak to his thieving,
And took all the gauntlets; which caused me muche peeving,
And laying his sword aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, out the castle-gate he fled -- unopposed;
He sprang to his horse, to his soldiers gave a yell,
And soone they flew -- they covered the grounds well.
But I herde him calleth, ere he rode out of sight,
"Thonke you for the Yuletide Gifts -- you good-knight!"

Another

Another:

Another offers Christmas greetings--an Iraqi:

You see, Jesus (Issa in our language), is not only important to Christians, he (PBU) is also very important to us. Faith is a mystic experience: First there was Feeling, then was the Word and then was the World. In the Bible somewhere it says that Jesus said to his disciples that if they had even an atom of real faith they could move a mountain (Please help in locating the exact quote). This is the mystic essence of faith; anybody with sufficient faith can accomplish miracles. And true faith is a kind of ecstasy, a kind of elation; getting drunk with the heavenly wine.

The Pope

The Pope:

If you would like to read his homily, you can do so on the Vatican's official site. The closing verse includes this, which strikes me as magnificient:

O Holy Night, so long awaited, which has united God and man for ever! You rekindle our hope. You fill us with ecstatic wonder. You assure us of the triumph of love over hatred, of life over death.
For this reason we remain absorbed in prayer.

Reuters

Reuters:

Reuters is a famously biased news service. Tonight's example is from the Pope's Midnight Mass at the Vatican:

"You come to bring us peace. You are our peace," he said in a homily that was mostly of religious content, recalling the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

Mostly religious content, you say. On Christmas. From the Pope. Honestly.

Waes Hael!

We have been enjoying the Yuletide, but for many of us, the only real days of rest are Christmas itself, and perhaps the day after. For some of us, there are no days of rest. This year that is especially true for those defenders of our country, who in a desperate time guard against those who would murder our weakest. I salute my brothers in arms.

This is a time to renew our devotion to old traditions, both Christian and Heathen, as they together make up the Order of the West. Here are some thoughts on Pagan Yule traditions:

For the Vikings, the yule log was an integral part of their celebration of the solstice, the julfest; on the log they would carve runes representing unwanted traits (such as ill fortune or poor honor) that they wanted the gods to take from them.
Wassail comes from the Old English words waes hael, which means "be well," "be hale," or "good health." A strong, hot drink (usually a mixture of ale, honey, and spices) would be put in a large bowl, and the host would lift it and greet his companions with "waes hael," to which they would reply "drinc hael," which meant "drink and be well." Over the centuries some non-alcoholic versions of wassail evolved.

Waes Hael! We know the phrase thanks to Geoffrey of Monmoth's Historia Regum Britanniae. Geoffrey attributed it to the Anglo-Saxons Hengst, Horsa, and Hengst's beautiful daughter Rowen, who caught the eye of Vortigern. That Vortigern is the same one you may have heard about, who according to Arthurian legend invited the Saxons to Britian, and then lost it to them.

The connection of the phrase "Waes Hael!" to Arthur continued into the 19th century. This is odd in a way, as Arthur was the enemy of the Saxons, and spoke Cymric or Latin. Still, poets who had read Geoffrey of Monmouth in their education put "Waes Hael" with Arthur, and Arthur with England. Thus Robert S. Hawker's "KING ARTHUR'S WAES-HAEL" which begins:

Waes-hael for knight and dame!
O! merry be their dole;
Drink-hael! in Jesu's name
We fill the tawny bowl;
But cover down the curving crest,
Mould of the orient lady's breast.

The proper answer to "Waes Hael!" was "Drinc Hael!" Sir Walter Scott knew that, and used the device in Ivanhoe in the encounter between Friar Tuck and a disguised King Richard Lionheart:

The hermit only replied by a grin; and returning to the hutch, he
produced a leathern bottle, which might contain about four
quarts. He also brought forth two large drinking cups, made out
of the horn of the urus, and hooped with silver. Having made
this goodly provision for washing down the supper, he seemed to
think no farther ceremonious scruple necessary on his part; but
filling both cups, and saying, in the Saxon fashion, "'Waes
hael', Sir Sluggish Knight!" he emptied his own at a draught.
"'Drink hael', Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst!" answered the warrior,
and did his host reason in a similar brimmer.

"Waes Hael" became "wassail!" in the Middle English, and there were a number of wassailing ceremonies practiced by the English. The word also became associated with several kinds of festive drinks, often mulled wine or hot, spiced ale. I myself recommend a touch of nutmeg and ginger in a good ale as a suitable wassail. You may heat it if you like--I prefer mine cold. Hot, spiced cider is a good alternative.

Waes Hael! Drinc Hael! Merry Christmas, and a fine Yuletide to you all. Let us gather in our halls and drink like men, to celebrate love and kinship, warmth, and the company of the brave.

Mujahid-Dean

Mujahid-Dean:

From the glorious Allahpundit.

Oof!

From The Command Post, which I finally got around to adding to my blogroll:

Part of discussion over Iraq between U.S. Ambassador in Egypt David Welch and some Al-Ahram Weekly journalists, as reported via FrontPage Magazine :
Nevine Khalil: And what if there is democracy in the region and the people decide to elect governments that are not friendly to the US? What would you do about that?
Welch: You mean like France?

Some Help He Could Do Without

Help He Could Do Without:

A publication has stepped forward to defend Howard Dean from the attacks of the "mainstream" press. I'm sure he will be grateful to his new best friend: The World Socialist Web Site.

How does that go again? "Better Dead than Red?" Nothing says "I am too part of the mainstream!" like a few kind words from the World Socialist.

Change of Command

Change of Command:

USCENTCOM has appointed a new ground commander in Afghaninstan, Lt. General David Barno. Barno, who was inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame back in 1994, when he was a Lt. Colonel, seems like a good choice for the position and illustrates just how deep the talent pool is.

Gen. Barno says that his major effort is going to be improving security in the south and east, which includes Zabul province--readers of Grim's Hall have been following the situation in Zabul for months. It will be interesting to see what tactics he brings to the field. I wish him luck. We've had some successes there in the past, and I've been under the impression that we've been letting the Taliban gather in Zabul so we don't have to hunt them in Pakistan, destabilizing that state. However, the recent Operation Avelanche didn't meet with great success at all.

NBS

NBS:

For political, this week, "The Politics of the Lord of the Rings". For non-political, this piece.

Speaking of International Law

Speaking of International Law:

It's worth recognizing that there is more than one Law on offer:

Members of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, who concluded their seven-day deliberations in Makkah yesterday, emphasized the need to remove the conditions that breed terrorism and extremism by implementing Shariah.

Worldwide Sha'ria is certainly being advocated by quite a few fellows as a competing model to whatever the EU will finally settle upon, if indeed they ever can settle. In fact, Sha'ria is a stronger candiate, as it is already an established system of law. Would this count as a "fair trial under international supervision"? I don't see why not.

Of course, those of us who would prefer to continue being consulted about the laws that govern us can support neither option. Sha'ria can't be changed by mortal man; and "international law" EU style creates foreign arbiters to overrule you. The Classical Liberal must fight both systems with whatever weapons fall to hand.

UPDATE: Apparently the USS Clueless has been on this theme too. I should get over there more often.

Some Misconceptions

Some Misconceptions:

I think it's about time that we pointed out a few problems with the prevailing theory of international law. Consider this statement by Saddam's daughter:

"Of course I don't think he would receive a fair trial" under the current regime, she said. "The interim government is not recognised by anyone in the Arab world.

"I want a fair trial under international supervision... This is a legitimate right of any human being," she said.

That is flatly not true. No one anywhere has a right to a trial under international supervision--and they never have. From the dawn of human history, justice has been local. It may be that we will someday build a system in which "a fair trial under international supervision" is indeed a right, although from a US perspective, this would be a step backwards. The "international community" is noted for having far less fair trials than we have already; adding an observer from Zimbabwe, or even Denmark, would not improve the situation.

Regardless, it must be recognized by "international law" advocates that what they are demanding is new. It represents a massive cessation of national authority--indeed, in many cases, of local authority. Most crimes in the USA, for example, are prosecuted by state governments and not the Federal government. One simply cannot assert that there is a "human right" here, when no such right has ever belonged to any human. If you want to build this system, you must first build an actual argument for why we should desire it. So far, I've not seen anything that would convince me that it was a good idea.

Another misconception, thanks to Michael Moore:

Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get.

Again, this is flatly untrue. Saddam killed, at minimum, 300,000 Iraqis. Some put the number as high as a million.

Any American who wants a free dental exam can get it by killing just one American citizen. In fact, he can get free dental and health care, as well as free room and board, for his whole remaining life. So you see, Mr. Moore, Americans don't have to work nearly as hard as Saddam for these benefits; they can get them for an afternoon's work, rather than the work of three decades. Just lucky, I guess.

"Mr. Dean"

"Mr. Dean: Beyond the Mainstream":

I have never particularly liked the way that the top four or five US newspapers take it upon themselves to determine what constitutes "mainstream." The NY Times and the Washington Post are particularly frequent offenders. The reason it bothers me is this: All major newspapers are, for economic reasons, located in major cities. Major cities are, as we know from recent elections, the reform-liberal bastions of this country. The reason there are "blue states" at all is because of the cities located in the blue states. Attempting to gauge the "mainstream" from the heart of Washington, D.C., or Manhattan, is an act sure to fail.

However, for the above reason, it is almost always rightists who are declared Outside The Mainstream. Today, the Post made a declaration to the left. The same bias that causes centrist right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh to be put 'outside the mainstream' (which is laughable, given that his audience of American citizens far surpasses the Post's subscription base. You may not like him or agree with him, but by the clear evidence of his following he is at least as 'mainstream American' as the Post, and any argument to the contrary is self-delusion) suggests that anyone the Post finds out of the mainstream on the left is going to be pretty far left indeed.

So who is it? Why, Dr. Dean:

Yet there are important differences between the Democratic front-runner, Howard Dean, and the other five. In his speech Monday, Mr. Dean alone portrayed the recruiting of allies for Iraq as a means to "relieve the burden on the U.S." -- that is, to quickly draw down American forces. Only he omitted democracy from his goals for Iraq and the Middle East. And only Mr. Dean made the extraordinary argument that the capture of Saddam Hussein "has not made Americans safer."

Mr. Dean's carefully prepared speech was described as a move toward the center, but in key ways it shifted him farther from the mainstream. A year ago Mr. Dean told a television audience that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies," but last weekend he declared that "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States." Mr. Dean has at times argued that the United States must remain engaged to bring democracy to Iraq, yet the word is conspicuously omitted from the formula of "stable self-government" he now proposes. The former Vermont governor has compiled a disturbing record of misstatements and contradictions on foreign policy; maybe he will shift yet again, this time toward more responsible positions.

Mr. Dean's exceptionalism, however, is not limited to Iraq. It can be found in his support for limiting the overseas deployments of the National Guard -- a potentially radical change in the U.S. defense posture -- and in his readiness to yield to the demands of North Korea's brutal communist dictatorship, which, he told The Post's Glenn Kessler, "ought to be able to enter the community of nations." Mr. Dean says he would end all funding for missile defense, a program supported by the Clinton administration, and also has broken with Mr. Clinton's successful trade policies, embracing protectionism. Sadly, on trade his position is shared by every Democratic candidate except Mr. Lieberman (and Ms. Clinton).

It is Mr. Dean's position on Iraq, however, that would be hardest to defend in a general election campaign. Many will agree with the candidate that "the administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at unbelievable cost." But most Americans understand Saddam Hussein for what he was: a brutal dictator who stockpiled and used weapons of mass destruction, who plotted to seize oil supplies on which the United States depends, who hated the United States and once sought to assassinate a former president; whose continuing hold on power forced thousands of American troops to remain in the Persian Gulf region for a decade; who even in the months before his overthrow signed a deal to buy North Korean missiles he could have aimed at U.S. bases. The argument that this tyrant was not a danger to the United States is not just unfounded but ludicrous.

Mr. Dean may be arguing Saddam Hussein's insignificance in part because he is unwilling to make a commitment to Iraq's future.

If this is a radical position when viewed from the center-left, how is it when viewed from the center-right, i.e., from everywhere in America not in a major city? Remember that Dean has to win 70% of US states if he captures no Southern states, which it is likely that he will not. As I argued earlier, Dean actually looks less radical on domestic issues, and could be a real contender for the victory if this were not wartime. It is, though, and a very large number of Americans care about the war more than every other political issue put together.

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Documents Tie Saddam to 'Mohammed's Army'

One-Two, After All:

No news on whether the Atta memo is genuine or not, although it looks fuzzy. However, there is news on Saddam's terrorist connections. It's from FOX, so take it as you will.

Telegraph | News | Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam

A One-Two Punch?

The Iraqi Governing Council has apparently chosen today to release a statement that they have uncovered proof that 9/11 attacker Atta was trained by Iraqi agents.

Details of Atta's visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day "work programme" Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal's base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy".

That's very handy. Even handier:

The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

That's maybe too handy. If this document proves to be a forgery, well, it wouldn't surprise me. On the other hand, if it pans out, it's a kind Christmas gift from the IGC.

UPDATE: The Age has some additional details about the memo's physical properties. The news report is called "Atta linked to Baghdad in dubious document," which captures the sad fact that this is a shockingly neat package to get everything we wish we could know for certain about Iraq and al Qaeda: that the links were real and functional, that 9/11 involved direct training from the Iraqi Mukhabarat and Abu Nidal, and even that the Niger shipment was real and aided by Qaeda agents. It'd be really nice if all of this panned out--and I have always believed the first part, that the links were real and functional, and been open to evidence on the second part, about 9/11--but what are the odds of finding it all written up in one neat document?

Written in the neat, precise hand of Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and one of the few named in the US Government's pack of cards of most-wanted Iraqis not to have been apprehended, the personal memo to Saddam is signed by Habbush in distinctive green ink.

Well, good luck to the CIA analysts who will be sifting these details in the next little while--assuming this is news to them. It's always possible they've had this memo for quite a while.

Saddam Hussein Captured by U.S. Troops (washingtonpost.com)

Outstanding!

Saddam Hussein Captured by 4th ID and USSOCOM! And in Tikrit, too. I'll be taking that shipment of Italian wine, McKnight.

New Link

New Link:

Semper Fi to Mike the Marine, just added to the "Other Halls" link section. Always a pleasure to see a Teufel Hunden on the web. Mike, if you stop in, take a look to the right and you'll find, under "Philosophy and Ideas," a link to the USMC Doctrine page. Everybody should read WARFIGHTING, don't you agree?

Learn it, live it, love it. Ooh-rah.

Asia Times - News and analysis from Korea; North and South

Why, Yes, You Do Need To Explain This:

The Spanish government is demanding that the Bush administration please explain why a shipment of SCUDs and dangerous chemicals was allowed to proceed to Libya:

The episode began on December 5, 2002, when US intelligence services informed Madrid about the route of a freighter named So San, which they suspected of trafficking weapons and which was, at the time, crossing a zone under Spain's authority in the Indian Ocean. Four days later, a Spanish frigate and warship intercepted the So San after ordering the captain to halt and firing warning shots. The vessel was found to be sailing under the Cambodian flag.

The weapons and chemicals came from North Korea and did not appear on the ship's manifest, which showed only that the merchant vessel was carrying bags of cement. After intercepting the freighter, Spain then handed the ship over to the US Navy. Immediate official explanations out of Washington and Madrid said the missiles might have been headed for the al-Qaeda network, which the US government holds responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, just hours later, the US administration took Spain by surprise by turning the So San over to Yemen, explaining that the cargo was actually a legal shipment of weapons purchased from North Korea by the Yemini government.

The handover was preceded by a telephone conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. When that conversation was made public, the White House justified the move by calling Yemen a friendly nation. So what initially came off as a brilliant Spanish military operation to prevent illegal trade in weapons of mass destruction was reduced to a suspected manipulation directed from Washington, with Madrid in the role of receiving and carrying out orders that were not very clear in their purpose.

The NATO sources cited in El Mundo said that at the time the shipment was intercepted, the United States was secretly negotiating the possibility that Libya would accept Saddam Hussein, then still president of Iraq, in exile. And Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who played the role of go-between during the Gulf War in 1991 by assisting in Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, had hopes of gaining access to the weapons.

"Gaddafi wanted the missiles and Yemen acted as intermediary. In the context of gestures with Libya, it was decided to look the other way, given that there was no international regulation that impeded it," said the newspaper, citing sources from the Pentagon.

Ah, yes, "gestures." I always like to reward gestures from former terrorists by letting them have medium-range missiles and chemical weapons material. Especially when the North Koreans can profit too!

Someday we're going to wonder why we didn't take this war a lot more seriously. I'm wondering already.

Locke, or Demosthenes?

NBS:

My vote this week is for "The War will be a Success" from Anti-AntiWar. It's a fairly basic history lesson, and one worth keeping in mind. Sadly, there's a lot that can go wrong that this post doesn't cover. Still, the facts he mentions deserve consideration.

White House Aide Angers Pagans (washingtonpost.com)

Pagans Help the Poor:

Reader MB sends this story along and asks for some commentary. The story is of the director of the White House's "Faith Based" programs, who was asked if pagan groups could get Federal money for charity efforts. His reply was that he hadn't heard of any such groups:

I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.

It turns out there have been quite a few Pagans for the Poor:

In the past three years, Pagan Pride groups have collected 74,000 pounds of food and donated $51,000 to homeless shelters, interfaith food banks, the American Red Cross and other charities, according to the Indianapolis-based International Pagan Pride Project.
In Chicago, pagans support a battered women's shelter. In Massachusetts, they have given $20,000 for children with AIDS.

$51,000 is a pittance compared to what Christian groups donate to charity each year, it is true; but then again, the numbers of people who are professed pagans is quite small. The estimate in the Post story is 300,000, which is just about one tenth of one percent of the US population.

This, of course, points the way forward here. There's no reason to ban Pagan groups, as there aren't going to be very many of them because there aren't very many Pagans. There's no reason they shouldn't participate in charity, as long as they're held to the same standards as everyone else--a good one is the one cited, i.e., that the money can't go to promote ideology.

Of course, that's the problem with the Faith-based program anyway: no one trusts their neighbors not to preach while they feed the hungry and soothe the sick. The sick are still suffering, though, and the hungry are not fed. I should rather take the risk that some preaching might get done, than prefer that the ills should continue with no better treatment than that which the government can provide. If we have learned anything, it is that the government is the worst choice for caring for the poor. Anyone does it better.

Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus on National Review Online

Errata:

Blogger's been down for the last couple of days. As a result, I was unable to post anything in honor of Pearl Harbor Day. Just for the record, though, it was not forgotten.

Jay Nordlinger, writing today for the National Review, has this item on the use of language:

You'll be pleased to know that Murder, Inc., the rap-record company, has changed its name — to, simply, "The Inc." The company's founder told a press conference, "People have been focused on the negative energy of the word 'murder.'" You don't say? "Negative energy"?

This reminds me of something I once heard David Letterman say: "'The Washington Bullets' [a basketball team, I think] has decided to change its name to something less violent. From now on, they will just be called, 'The Bullets.'"

Heroic Epic Warfighting

Heroic Epic Warfighting:

Michael Ledeen argues that we need a new strategy to win in Iraq. I happen to agree with him that far, although I differ on the practicalities. Ledeen wants to widen the war to Iran and Syria. I want to change the form of the war in Iraq.

Consider this post from the Mesopotamian, addressed to President Bush:

The bones in the mass graves salute you, Avenger of the Bones.
Hail, Friend and Ally, Hail, Sheikh of Sheikhs, GWB; Descendant of the Noble Ancient Celt.

Islam is not, as it has become fashionable to call it, a religion of peace. Islam is a heroic epic. The core ideal of Islam is that the Muslim is joined in a great war to bring the whole world under the peace of rule, not according to fallible human rules, but according to the revealed design of God. That is an epic struggle, and the Muslim is encouraged to think of himself as a mujahid, one of the holy warriors in the fight.

It happens that this fits perfectly with tribal culture. The philosophy of the tribe is informal--that is, it is the natural philosophy of mankind. The bonds of family are to be defended; the power of the family, extended. Peace can finally be had only by destroying those outside the family, or by bringing them within the family. This is the mujahedeen's ethic. It is the ethic of jihad. This is why the tribal parts of the Islamic world have been a strong recruiting ground--Baluchistan, for example, and the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan.

It is also why Islamism is appealing to those radical young Muslims who have been educated in the West. In the Western philosophy, they see an abandonment of this older, traditional ethic, this natural ethic which feels so very right because it comes from our evolved nature. That is a core problem that needs to be fixed if we are to achieve a lasting peace.

The road forward, for the West, is to reinvigorate our own tradition of the Heroic Ethic. I have argued this before, in a piece suggesting the outlines of a new philosophy, one that would answer the Islamist writings of Qtub, on which al Qaeda's on arguments are based. The core of this argument is this: a man who has familiarized himself with the Beowulf, the Iliad, the Odyssey, or the Icelandic sagas, knows exactly what he needs to know to treat with Islamists, both tribal and modernist. A man who has learned all of these epics can not only treat with them, but give them better than they ask. He can convert them--not away from Islam, which there is no cause to do, but away from Islamism, and toward the West.

Let us return to the specific example of Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Iraq. What does it mean to be "Avenger of the Bones?" It seems little notice has been taken of it by the administration; they may think it is an honorific, that it means nothing at all. The opposite is true. It is a title, one that personalizes the American effort and brings it within the circle of the tribal ethic. 300,000 dead fill Iraq's mass graves. The tribal ethic of vengeance requires that the families of those dead take revenge as they can. The Avenger of the Bones is a formal, natural ally--a man to whom loyalty and gratitude are owed. If I were the President, I would be trumpeting that new title from the rooftops. It is one that every Iraqi will understand, and very many--the families of 300,000--will feel called, by their own culture, to respond to with alliance.

Consider the "humiliation" issue. We have heard from everyone that our acts are humiliating the Iraqis. It's humiliating to be searched; to have your house searched; to have your women and children searched; etc. All that may be true, but we have no option--the enemy has chosen to use women and children as bombs.

The way forward? Avenge the bones. The humiliation of the living can't be avoided. We can make up for it by showing honor to the dead. By making the identification of bones, and their return to their families, a priority of our operation in Iraq, we can show the dead a respect that we can't affort to show the living. Think on the positive effect it would have on US operations for us to stage ten public funerals every day, with military honors, for the bones of those dead and identified in Saddam's mass graves. For one thing, it would reduce recruitment for attacks on US convoys--you would not know which ones contained a funerary detachment that might be coming to your own home, to return a brother or a cousin. For another, showing the Iraqi dead the honor we show our own fallen heroes can overcome the humiliation issue. We can solidify our position as "Avenger of the Bones," a friend to the dead, an ally in the duty of vengeance.

Consider also hospitality, another heroic duty. What does it mean that there are many areas of tribal Iraq where Americans only travel in heavily armed convoys? CENTCOM ought to be arranging dinners with tribal chiefs. Go and take dinner with the chief of a tribe, in his home. Take your bodyguards as far as his door, but not into his house. Eat his food, and share his water. Then, make it a point to push this behavior down the chain: so that soldiers regularly accept invitations to dine, trusting in their hosts to protect them, and so that tribal figures are regularly asked to dine with Americans in our tents. Do this, and their honor will be concerned with protecting you. Hospitality will fight the war for you: their honor will demand it.

This is what I wrote about in the essay above, under the heading of "frith." There is an Islamic mirror. It is called the "Covenant of Security". This is how you build a state that even the Islamist must feel obliged to protect. Personal honor, and the heroic ethic, alone can do it. They can do it because the ethic is already native to the men and women of Iraq. Nothing need be changed, except on our end.

On our end, the change is easy. The U.S. military is the segment of American society best suited to undertake a renewal of the Western heroic ethic. Very many of them--particularly in the Marine Corps and SOCOM--already believe in it. Even outside of SOCOM and the USMC, the military is disproportionately Southern, and American Southerners believe in the old heroic ethic, and love it. All that is necessary is to explain the particulars: the general standards are present and accounted for.

The heroic ethic will take us forward to victory, in Iraq as elsewhere. It is the best kind of victory--not the one that destroys our opponents, but the one that brings us all within a family. Just as Saladin sent his personal physicians to treat Richard the Lionheart, as he had come to respect and love that man's courage and chivalry, so can we today win the hearts of our enemies. It is time to make right the opportunity missed between Saladin and Richard, who almost concluded a marriage pact that would have joined Islam and Christendom in friendship.

It was only between warriors that such a peace could be made. It is only between warriors that it can be made today.

Maryland

Maryland:

Several of you have written to ask me after the snow. The snow is quite deep--nine or ten total inches in the last few days, by my unscientific measurement. However, temperatures remain reasonably warm, and the community has made adequate provisions against such weather. As a result, roads are clear and there has been no trouble about basic services. There's nothing to worry about up here.

I did have to borrow a snowshovel, as every one commercially available has been bought up in the last few days. It took more than an hour to dig my truck out of the frozen ice sculpture created by the snowplows, which was three feet high and frozen to the frame of my vehicle. Still, mission accomplished: all is well.

It occurs to me that this would be a good place to issue a public apology to the state of Maryland. I've spoken and written slander about it on several occasions, most recently that there were only two things to like about it (number one being, the road out).

In fact, exactly the opposite is true. There are only two or three things to dislike about Maryland. They are important matters, and serious complaints. Nevertheless, in fairness, there is far more to like about the state than not. It is a pleasant place, full of pleasant people (except when they are driving, when they unaccountably become ill-tempered monsters. Not sure why that is). If one could but banish the government from existence, it would be as fine a place as Georgia, almost.

I certainly have enjoyed taking long runs through the Black Hills, where the deer are so docile that they aren't bothered by you unless you run right into their herd. If you are fleet of foot, and enduring, you can start a herd by running right into the middle of it, and run with it for quite a while. I've started deer in Georgia afoot many times in the mountains, but one rarely gets so close there.

So, there's much to be said for the state of Maryland. She's not as bad as I've said in the past. Actually, there are parts of her I like perfectly well. My apology for overstating the case.

Un celebration!

Une fete de la culture francaise:

So, I have a new song to sing while practicing my French: Chevaliers de la table ronde. Who can argue with these sentiments, which translate loosely as: "Knights of the round table, let us drink to see if the wine is good!" (You can tell it is a French tune originally, not only because the rhymes only work in French, but also because of the verse which translates "two feet up against the wall, and your head under the tap!")

Clark Attacks

Clark Attack:

The lads at Southern Appeal are reporting on Wesley Clark's newest campaign promises: to bring the troops home at once, to always consider military force the "last resort," and never again to attack anyone pre-emptively.

Drug discovery - biotech, pharmaceuticals, research, clinical trials, etc. In the pipeline - Corante

Anthrax:

The other big attack on America was the Anthrax attacks. It happens there's news about that too--or, at least, a new piece of investigative reporting. Needless to say, the FBI doesn't get off easy. They don't deserve to get off easy. The biggest question in the piece is, "could this stuff have been civilian-made?"

So Matsumoto concentrates on the processing of the spores: their particle size, and their possible coatings and treatments to make them disperse better. This is where the homebrew/high-tech distinction should be clear, and this is just where the available information has the most contradictions. Initially, reports were that the spore samples had very small, very uniform particle sizes, and may well have had additives to them to keep them from aggregating. Alan Zelicoff, of Sandia, was quotedat the time saying that whoever made the Senate anthrax had "the keys to the kingdom." (I remember reading that, and having a sudden, terrible vision of just what kingdom that was.) But you can now find leaks and reports that dispute both of these contentions, though. The difference is especially marked in statements the FBI has made in the last few months, which make the spores sound much less well-processed than their earlier reports. As Matsumoto puts it:
The reversal was so extreme that the former chief biological weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, Richard Spertzel, found it hard to accept. "No silica, big particles, manual milling," he says: "That's what they're saying now, and that radically contradicts everything we were told during the first year of this investigation."

Hat tip: LGF.

9/11 Questions

9/11 Question:

Many of you may not be aware of the yeo-woman work being done by Sovay McKnight on 9/11 questions. In spite of her liberal nature (and occasional editorializing), her penchant for fairness and complete research often puts her in the position of defending the administration against wild-eyed claims. There are a number of questions you've probably never heard about, if you haven't been following the business closely.

Here's a question I hope she'll look into sometime, from Dr. Dean himself: was Bush tipped to the attacks by the Saudis?

NBS

NBS:

This week I will be voting for, in the political category, "BarkBarkWoofWoof", whose entry compares Justice Moore with Sir Thomas More. In the nonpolitical category, I vote for Vegan Marshmellows Roasting over an Open Fire.

NASCAR

NASCAR:

It's official: NASCAR rules.

Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak:

So here is a left-liberal blog called Nasi Lemak attempting to slander George Bush, and Republicans generally, as racists. The occasion for doing so is what must be the least racist remark of recent political history, when GWB said that he and Dr. Rice had, while sneaking to their plane, looked "like a normal couple." How can this remark be turned into a vision of racism? Well, it's a little complicated:

1) Two conservative bloggers (OxBlog and the regrettable Andrew Sullivan) said they thought that GWB's remark was awfully nice, and a positive step.
2) Both of these two bloggers had quoted the Honorable Zell Miller at length on occasion.
3) Zell Miller worked for Lester Maddox, who was a racist, and...
4) ...also said some kind words at Maddox's funeral.
Therefore: Miller is a racist by association with Maddox, the conservative bloggers by association with Miller, and GWB (and conservatives generally) by association with the bloggers. Quod erat demonstrandum.

There's a small problem with the analysis (leaving aside the larger problem, which is that it is an ad hominem attack which is furthermore guilty of the fallacy of guilt-by-association, when the association is extremely tenuous). The small problem is this: Zell Miller is not a racist. Miller, in spite of being the most popular governor in Georgia history, very nearly lost his 1994 bid for re-election for one reason: he pushed with all his political capital to remove the Confederate battle-flag from the Georgia state flag. This was the least popular position any politician could undertake in Georgia. Support for the battleflag remains extraordinary. In fact, when it was finally removed from the state flag, it was done by a legislative trick that precluded debate or a public referendum. The governor who executed that trick was voted out at the next opportunity; his successor, who ran in part on restoring the flag, has instead pursued several tricks to prevent a public referendum. It is without doubt that, should there ever be a public referendum, the battleflag is going right back up on the state flagpole.

But Zell stood up for changing it. It almost cost him the election, and would have sunk any other politician. Yes, he ran against the Civil Rights Act in 1967--most Southerners were opposed to it, including very many black Southerners, as it promised radical change in a hurry in their states, which is always a frightful prospect. Yes, he worked for a racist--it was hard not to in Georgia, once. Yes, he said kind words over the grave of a dead man, as a gentleman ought.

When it counted, though, he put his weight in the right place. He did, and still does. He has earned the respect that we show him who hold high his opinion and counsel.

Just what we've been saying...

Communists:

Just what we've been saying all along, but now the Guardian agrees: the Commies have hijacked the peace march movements.

Say, How Much Does A "Uranium Enriching" Laser Cost?

It's a question worth pondering:

"Follow the money" is an old adage, and it means that economic interest will eventually explain much human behavior. That France opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein because he owed millions to French banks is proof of this. Less well known, but much more troubling, are key French financial links with other U.S. enemies. They raise the belief that the Franco-American conflict over Iraq was just one slice of the action. For France was not just Baathist Iraq's largest contributor of funds; French banks have financed other odious regimes....
In Castro's sizzling gulag, French banks plunked down $549 million in the first trimester this year, a third of all credit to Cuba. The figure for Saddam's Iraq is $415 million. But these pale in comparison with the $2.5 billion that French banks have lent Iran.

Not that this is a terrible surprise.

This is an Attack Site?

Dick Gephardt is running a website called DeanFacts. It's meant to show that Howard Dean is unsupportable for the Presidency by citing Dean's actual positions on issues. If I knew nothing else about Dean than what's here, though, I'd be half-inclined to vote for the boy. Dean on Medicare, Social Security, balancing the budget, and so forth and so on: it all sounds pretty good to me.

The only issue is that, even on this site, there's the constant invocation of the need to cut defense spending. That is, in the middle of a war, insane. And the war is, of course, why Dean can't win this upcoming election. There's simply no way that a majority of Americans will vote for the anti-war candidate, or for cuts in military spending at this juncture. The GWOT trumps everything right now, and rightly so.

Need more proof that Dean is doomed? Try FundRace, which has this handy money-map. Dean--or any other Democratic candidate for the Presidency--will need to split the South. It doesn't have to be a big split, if they do well everywhere else, but they will need to win at least one Southern state because, if they win no Southern states, they have to win fully 70% of the races in the rest of the country to get enough electoral votes. Donations are a good indicator of where the candidates are going to find solid support--people who send cash will support you at the polls, too. Select "Howard Dean" in the money mapper, and then compare with GWB. There are two things to notice:

1) Dean, at his darkest, is a full shade lighter in every area from Texas to the Carolinas. In most parts of these states, he doesn't register.
2) The only reason it's even that close is that the money-mapper uses different scales for different candidates. GWB has to raise $3.2 million from a county to get the darkest green; Dean only needs $1.4 million, less than half that. If you plotted it on the same scale, Dean would hardly register in the South at all, excepting a few urban areas like Dallas and Atlanta. Some of that will be because Dean is having to compete with the other Democrats for monetary support, whereas Bush is getting all the Republican money. Even factoring that in, though, it looks like a solid South again in 2004.

I think Dean could have won in a non-wartime election year. I don't think people will take him seriously as a wartime candidate. Excepting those who were always opposed to the war--if we're talking about the Iraq war instead of the GWOT, which is where anti-war sentiment was highest, that's about twenty percent--Dean's not going to draw a lot of support. He's certainly not going to win in the South.

UPDATE: I'm apparently not the only one who thinks this way. This is from the Seattle Times:

"Anybody could win," said Merle Black, political-science professor at Emory University. But "right now, with the economy improving as it is, if Howard Dean is the nominee, he'd have a very hard time winning any of the Southern states."

And more...

"There's a lot of money in Texas to be donated to both political parties, so Dean had to come drag the bag," said Court Koenning, executive director of the Harris County Republican Party. But "he's gonna get his clock cleaned in the general election. I'll run around naked and you can call me Sally if Bush loses Texas."

And then there's this, from the world's most trusted news source.

NBS:

This week I vote for Joe. It's a simple thought, but good enough.

My Endorsement:

The exclusion of Joe Lieberman from the recent presidential debates seems to have doomed his candidacy. Of the nine Democrats currently running, and the others who might consider running, he was the only one that I believe could have saved the party from electoral disaster.

The Honorable Senator Zell Miller endorsed George W. Bush in early November. Zell and I represent the same wing of the Democratic party--the James Jackson wing. Even so, I have held off following in the good Senator's footsteps, in the hope that the Democratic party might be saved.

I still hope it might be, but I do not think it will be in this election. It may be that, in the aftermath of the loss the Democratic party is racing toward, the survivors will finally be willing to listen to their Southern cousins when we say, "The party of the American people must love America with all depth and purity of heart; for the American people do. The party of the American people must trust the American people with their freedom and their money; for the American people trust themselves." Not this time, but perhaps the next.

I might have waited longer, but today a man did something brave, to warm the hearts of fighting men. Consider our President:

With the president out of sight, L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. civilian administrator, told the soldiers it was time to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation and that it was a task for the most senior official present.
"Is there anybody back there more senior than us?" he asked. That was the cue for Bush, who promptly stepped forward from behind a curtain, setting off pandemonium among the troops.
"I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere," Bush joked to some 600 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne Division, who were stunned by the appearance and applauded wildly while giving Bush a standing ovation.
"Thanks for inviting me. I can't think of finer folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with than you all."

That it was courageous to take Air Force One into Baghdad only a few days after the DHL flight was attacked goes without saying. That it was the right thing to do, to greet our fighters as they spent a lonely holiday on a distant front, goes likewise. What impresses me is not that; it is the humor. A brave but stern man can be terrible. A jolly coward is useless. A brave man with a laughing heart, though, is a man indeed.

In light of this act, I have now no more trouble than our Senator had in endorsing George W. Bush for re-election to the Presidency in 2004. Zell Miller was correct, as he usually is: Bush is the right man, at the right time.

Let us be thankful to have found him. Enjoy the holiday.

The Crusades:

Historian Thomas F. Madden speaks to the Crusades as wars of defense instead of wars of aggression:

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman�s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression�an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity�and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion�has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed�s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt�once the most heavily Christian areas in the world�quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne�er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders� expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

But were they worthwhile? In his summation, Madden gives two reasons that we should be grateful for the Crusades:

Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished.

There is more, if you like. Hat tip: LGF.

NASCAR:

John Derbyshire reports from Talladega. It was his first NASCAR race, and he provides a description with all the insight of a genuine newcomer. My favorite line comes from the part describing the appeal of the sport, which is in rooting for favorite drivers, he says:

A few [drivers] are widely disliked. Kurt Busch, a fast-rising young star known for . . . unorthodox driving tactics, is a villain to traditionalists, and to the kind of Southerner who believes in maintaining the exquisite manners of the region even when you are trying to kill someone.

Ah, yes. That kind of Southerner. It's a description that seems somewhat familiar to me, although I can't think just why.

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