World pays tribute to a pope who reached out to world | csmonitor.com

More Kind Words for John Paul:

The Christian Science Monitor has a roundup piece on tributes to the deceased Pope. One among those offering condolences is Hasyim Muzadi, leader of the single largest Muslim organization in the world -- Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama:

"We ... certainly feel sorrow for the passing away of the pope because he has dedicated himself all his life to humanitarian and peace efforts," said Hasyim Muzadi, a Muslim leader in the world's largest Muslim country, Indonesia.

Muzadi's own contributions to peace are notable. This very week, he has been on an extended trip to the nation of Thailand, experiencing a Muslim insurgency in its southern provinces. The trip is being spun by supporters of the insurgency against the Thai government, but in fact it was a show of support. The Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, notes that Muzadi blames the insurgency on evildoers, not on religion. Thaksin has been taking the advice he's gotten on avoiding a religious war to heart. Muzadi, in turn, has promised to provide regular counsel to the Prime Minister and the King of Thailand, and to lead outreach efforts designed to reconcile Thais and the Malay-speaking Muslim majority in their south.

Thaksin also had kind words for the Pope. Though he did not mention it, the royals of Thailand were raised and educated in Catholic schools. Buddhists themselves, they nevertheless demonstrate the strong intellectual ties that the Catholic church has nurtured throughout the world. It is worth reflecting on the contrast in these religious men. Al Qaeda and Jemmah Islamiyah work to tear Muslims apart from the rest of the world. But Buddhist, Muslim and Catholic can come together in Thailand, to work for a better world.

So goes the war among the oratores. I know which theology I expect to win that battle. It only remains for us bellatores to gain them the space, and the time.

The Pope of Popes - Online Specials - Times Online

On the Pope:

You will have read much about the Pope's life, and his expected passing. The one thing that I read that struck me most came toward the end of this article from the London Times:

In an Istanbul prison cell, Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish extremist who tried to assassinate the Pope in 1981, was praying for his "brother", according to his lawyer. The two men have long since made their peace.

It's an interesting story, one I'd not looked into before. M. Ali Agca presents himself as a madman -- claiming, among other things, to be Jesus Himself returned to earth, and to know the time of the end of the world. However, he operated successfully as an international smuggler and assassin during the period before his arrest, changing passports and names with ease.

Whether his prayers for the Pope are sincere, and whether he is simply praying to himself, is not known. It is clear that he wishes to be seen as a friend of the Pope's, though what good that would do him in a Turkish prison is not clear. It seems to me to be a high compliment to the Pope, that his assassin should wish to profess his love.

Grim's Hall

A Bad Day:

Some days just don't go right. This has sure been one of them.

Absolutely everything I've tried to do today has gone wrong. I planned to take the day off; there was a meeting scheduled at 11 AM, so by the time I was done with it most of the day was gone. I tried to use what was left of the day pleasantly, but rain moved in. I'd hoped to hike, but what was advertised as a "Civil War Trail" was really just a roadsign -- a fact I discovered after driving many, many miles to find it. The restaurant I'd hoped to eat in out there proved to be unfit for it. Also, though I'd memorized the map, I took a wrong turn and ended up quite a distance out of the way. During all this, my son has had an explosive temper all day (he is only two), which made most every minute grueling. What I'd hoped would be a fun outing has been an excursion in misery and exhaustion.

On top of which, my planned April Fool's Joke went awry, causing me to anger an old friend. I'll do my best to make it up to my friend, after enough time has passed. They have every right to be angry. I did check it out first -- I wasn't completely careless -- but apparently I missed a few things. I'd expected it might lead them on a wild goose chase of ten minutes or so -- if they didn't spot it for an April Fool's Day joke at once, given my sordid history with these things. Instead, it took two hours.

Nobody likes to hear that they've wasted two hours of a pleasant spring afternoon, and I feel terrible about it. If I were a better person, of course, I wouldn't play practical jokes -- not even on April Fool's Day -- but, of course, I'm not. Every year, I just can't resist. One year I created a fake webpage that appeared to be a Washington Post article on gold being discovered in Indiana, in my wife's hometown. She was so excited, and called her mother to ask about it. That one worked well, and it's always the one I think of when the day rolls around and I'm trying to think of an appropriate joke.

I haven't ever had one go bad like this before, but I see now that I've really hurt someone's feelings, and I never meant to. But it didn't go that way. Like everything else today, it went wrong and got worse as it continued. I haven't had such a downright miserable day in many months.

Maybe I'll just turn in early.

TigerHawk

Grand Strategy:

TigerHawk has a lengthy transcript of a lecture by professor Michael Doran of Princeton University.

Wretchard has some additional thoughts.

Winds of Change.NET: Defense Industry Highlights: 2005-04-01

Defense Industry News:

I apparently missed it, but Joe Katzman of Winds of Change -- who, as leader of the Pajamhadeen faction, was an ally of the Leatherneck Bloggers during the recent Spirit of America blogger challenge -- has another blog focused on the defense industry. Defense Industry Daily looks like an excellent source for inside news on the latest tech and contracts coming down the line.

Re-writing history. Sorta.

So. I watched a new National Geographic special last night about the "Lost Treasures of Afghanistan" which looks at the efforts to get archaeology going again in Afghanistan. Some may remember the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. And others may remember the "Bactrian Gold". The program talks about these things, all well and good.

What is not good, however, is a rather glaring omission.

The program mentions the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; The resistance of the Mujahadeen; the Soviet withdrawl, and the Civil War and the subsequent rise of the Taliban and how the Taliban instituted a very strict intrepretation of Islam, and what that meant for women, why art had to be hidden, the disappearance of the Bactrian Gold, the destruction of the Buddhas, etc...

All with pictures and news reel footage of Soviet soldiers, Afghan Mujahadeen, exploding statues, kikuris cutting up paintings, women being shot in the head...and so forth.

And then....the program sort of starts talking about what's going on now in Afghanistan, and the its rather obvious that the Taliban are no longer in charge, and they're referred to in the past tense, and absolutely no explanation of how that came about.

Not. A. Word.

Even the National Geographic's website manages to spare a sentence:

"The Taliban was forced from Kabul after the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan in late 2001."

I wasn't looking for a history of the campaign. But even that sentence is more than the program provides.

I am really getting tired of this. Chris Muir's satire got it so right. (Look at the cartoon for 3/23/2005.)

The Indepundit

An Exception to the Kindness Rule:

I have been to the Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial in Indianapolis, IN. It's down on the White River, a pleasant stroll on a summer's day, near the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. The pleasure of the stroll is touched with a note of sorrow, though, to look at the glass panels filled with the names of heroes. Most of them are dead, a loss to our nation.

Whoever smashed those panels, and defaced the site with spraypainted peace signs and anarchist symbols, is not due kindness. I don't know what to say. What kind of person could do such a thing? Not one with an ounce of understanding, nor respect, nor decency.

I still believe that we have to treat our neighbors kindly, and introduce them to the practice of the right to keep and bear arms in a way that will make them feel safe with us. The evidence supports us here -- citizens with CCPs commit any crime at a rate far lower than the general population. I honestly believe that most of the citizens on the other side simply haven't been around it, and can be won over with honorable behavior and some exposure.

But there are some, this shows, who cannot be. May posterity forget they were our countrymen.

Marine Corps Moms

To Bear Arms:

Marine Corps Moms has become the center of gravity for the MilBlog and veteran response to this story:

A picture of a Marine holding an assault rifle has sparked a wave of controversy at a Salem high school. The problem began when the Marine's sister brought the picture to McKay High School to post on a classroom bulletin board. The assignment was to show McKay graduates at work.

However, the principal of the school, Cynthia Richardson, would not allow the picture to go up because of the school's zero tolerance policy on weapons. "What message am I sending to my students if I post that picture?" she asked.

There are a number of heartfelt responses to that question at Marine Corps Moms, as well as to the reverse: "What message am I sending if I refuse to post it?"

The intended message is clear, however: weapons are bad.

All it takes is one look around the school to see that there may be a problem with that logic, considering that the school mascot is seen carrying a sword. "He has a sword. (That is) so true. We might have to revisit that," said Richardson when KATU News asked her about the mascot's imagery.

There's a photo of the mascot, himself a military man of the "Royal Scots." He is indeed bearing a sword, which the school will now presumably hide. Photos or paintings of servicemen are fine, so long as we make no reference to the arms they bear.

A few days ago, I linked to this piece by Mark Steyn:

[O]ur victim culture is now so advanced and universal that we prefer even our soldiers and police officers in that mould.... That week there were two stories involving the PPCLI: the four men killed in Afghanistan, whose deaths prompted an orgy of coast-to-coast mawkish ersatz grief-mongering that was a disgrace to a grown-up nation; and the five of their comrades who’d proved such lethal snipers that the Pentagon wished to accord them the rare honour, for foreign troops, of the Bronze Star.

That story was reported nowhere except in the National Post. The Canadian government had nixed the award, officially on some nitpicky procedural ground, but unofficially because they were a bit queasy about letting it be known that our "forces" (we don’t say "armed forces" any more) still occasionally--what’s the phrase?--kill the enemy. In the spirit of that unarmed "peacekeeper" on the $5 bill, we’d rather see our soldiers as victims than warriors.

What do we do with people like this? How do we move forward when there is such a clear horror among so many people at the reality, the existence of weapons? Even among policemen and soldiers? How to address this unreasonable fear of weaponry, which can't admit the distinction between weapons that harm, and weapons that defend?

With many people, reasoning will be enough. Those who do not feel this unreasonable fear themselves, but merely have accepted the "logic" of Zero Tolerence, may be able to see the distinction once it has been raised and explained. I think Marine Corps Moms is doing a fine job of collecting and publishing thoughtful replies on that order.

But we must also address the people who do experience this unreasoning fear. I suspect that the only way to do so successfully is by building positive experiences with people who bear arms. It is necessary that they should see guns, knives, and swords in a fashion that doesn't involve threats or violence. Many of them have encountered weapons only on the news, in stories about violent death; or on the belts of policemen who, even when acting with utter professionalism, may be intimidating to timid souls as they issue orders, summons, or tickets.

For this reason, I advocate wearing arms openly where it is legal to do so.

You should abide by all of the laws of your locality, of course. In addition, and a matter just as important, you should abide by these guidelines:

1) When wearing arms, go out of your way to be polite and courteous. It is not for no reason that Miss Manners is listed in the "Admired Voices" section here, along with Mark Steyn and Bill Whittle. The fear of weapons often makes the fearful person say things that will make you feel like you're being accused of being a beast, a threat, an evil creature. Hate of weapons can make people express hate for the bearer of weapons. It would be easy to respond in kind.

You should not. If you have enough responsibility to bear arms to protect the weak from physical harm, you have enough responsibility to restrain your feelings to protect the weak from feeling the sharp edge of your tongue. Courtesy is the brother of chivalry, and the timid will have a much easier time accepting the latter if it is in the company of the former. Meeting an armed citizen may be intimidating, but we have the opportunity to make it a positive experience. Preserving liberty is what bearing arms is about, and that cause is advanced more by kindness than by hard words.

2) Start off with less intimidating weapons. Once your neighbors and the people you meet daily have adjusted to the tactical folding knife on your belt, carry a sheath knife. Once they've seen you with that a few times, carry an older revolver in a leather holster. Yes, this is irrational -- there's no reason to fear a semiautomatic more than a revolver. But the fear you're trying to ease is irrational. You'll achieve the end faster and more smoothly if you are sensitive to that. It won't be long before people are used to seeing you wearing your pistol or knife, and it won't bother them at all because they know you and have always found you to be upstanding.

3) You may find it helpful to carry to one side of the small of your back. In this way, you will frequently meet and begin talking to people before they notice the weapon. At that point, they will already have had the positive experience of dealing with a courteous person -- almost all of the intimidation that they may feel will be gone.

4) Be especially kind to the elderly, the disabled, animals and children. This is the right thing to do in any case. If chivalry and courtesy are to be defended, they must be lived.

5) Step your openly carried weapon down a level (or two) if you are going somewhere where there will be few other men, and lots of young mothers with their children. In this circumstance, you must do whatever you can to be a reassuring rather than an intimidating presence. As the law allows, you may still of course carry whatever you like concealed.

I have carried weapons openly for about a decade, varying them as appropriate to the circumstances. You can generally wear higher order weapons openly in rural areas, while scaling them back somewhat in cities or areas in which there is a cultural fear of weapons. Even when in the District of Columbia, I habitually wear a Gerber Applegate-Fairbairn Combat Folder on my belt without incident. No one has seemed put off by it, in spite of the fact that the sheath says "COMBAT" in big gold letters.

My experience is that people adjust quickly to the idea. I've had a number of conversations in the District with people who come from this group that has been raised to be fearful of weapons. After a few months of getting to know you, they will realize that the weapon on your belt is no more a threat to them than the birds in the sky. Because they trust you, and know they need not fear you, the weapon is just there. It holds no terror at all.

That is, of course, the important lesson: that it is not the weapon, but the man, who is the danger. The Marines, the Royal Scots, the man who upholds the old code of chivalry and courtesy, these are not enemies even though they may bear swords and rifles. The cruel and the murderous are deadly foes even when they bear only box cutters.

Be kind to your neighbors. Bear arms in the honest performance of your duty to the common peace. There are many examples before you in American history of men who did both these things at once. Be one of them.

Kim du Toit - Daily Rant

America's Worst Blogger Speaks:

On Reconciliation. Kim du Toit, who was sent to jail for protesting aparthaid in his native South Africa, has some thoughts on recent movies, old novels, South Africa, and modern day Iraq. All readers should consider giving his questions a moment of your time.

If this is the worst blogger in America, by Thunder, we've got a good thing going here.

Harper's

Thinking Things Through,
Journalism Edition:

SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse has a small complaint to register against Harper's magazine. They recently did a story on desertion in the American military (a friendly story, in fact: it was called, "AWOL in America: When Desertion is the Only Option.")

Not only did they do a story, it was the cover story! So, naturally they need a cover photograph.

So who did they pick? Our friend the paratrooper in Canada? The guy who skipped out on his ship just before it left port to go help the stricken in Indonesia?

No. Marine Corps Recruits, actively engaged in serving their country:

Marine recruits so new that their hair hasn't been cut don't sound like the best models for a story about soldiers going AWOL - particularly since none in the group is a deserter....

The cover photo, taken at Parris Island, S.C., shows seven Marines lined up in their T-shirts, shorts and socks. They are not identified in photo credits or in the article. In fact, Harper's says the Marines are not meant to depict people in the article.

"We are decorating pages," said Giulia Melucci, the magazine's vice president for public relations. "We are not saying the soldiers are AWOL. Our covers are not necessarily representative."

Ah, yes. Nonrepresentational art. That's a dying movement even in the art world, though; I hadn't heard it had spread to cover photographs of national magazines.

Besides which, the excuse is absurd on its face. It was a cover photograph. Of course it was meant to represent the point of the article. Otherwise, you could just put a color splotch on the cover. Or some attractive paisley pattern.

There's a line in the movie Unforgiven in which Clint Eastwood's character is chastized for having shot an unarmed tavern owner, because the owner had placed the body of a fellow gunfighter in an open casket on the tavern's porch. "He should have armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend," Eastwood replied.

Harper's should have armed itself with a better excuse before it decided to decorate its pages with our friends. It wouldn't have cost them much to hire actors to play recruits for a quick photoshoot. Instead, they decided to use the photos of brave young men to represent cowards and oathbreakers.

Shame.

Kim

Virtue Ethics & Kim du Toit:

Mr. Barlow of Crooked Timber nominates Kim du Toit as America's Worst Blogger, based largely on the essay linked under his name. I have a few things to say about this.

First, this whole business of "worst blogger" is nothing but a publicity stunt. The rules of the contest require that any blog nominated be "commonly read and referred to." The idea appears to me to be this: loudly slam someone who has worked hard and built up a large, successful blog. Hopefully, they'll notice and reply or defend themselves. In doing so, they'll link to you, and...

But that's beside the point. There is a substance to the charge, which ought to be examined.

Barlow cites what he considers to be a thorough rebuttal of Kim's essay, which you can read here. The thing that comes across most strongly in the rebuttal is summed up in two places. One of them is the opening sentence: "I’m torn about Kim du Toit’s essay about, as I’ll put it, avoiding his gratuitous crudity, the wimpification of the Western male." The other is in this line: "I want to make it clear that I actually agree with a certain idea buried in du Toit’s screed: certain parts of our culture undervalue virtues traditionally thought of as masculine[.]"

In addition, Barlow cites several other things Kim has written, which share the same common thread. The objection to Kim is that he is gratuitously crude. The underlying ideas may have merit, but the expression is ugly. The objection, in other words, is aesthetic.

I don't say that to dismiss the objection. Aesthetics is a division of ethics, and has been since the time of Aristotle. An examination of what we find ugly, or beautiful, says a lot about what we value and who we are. Creating a thing is an exercise in aesthetics, and no number of "conceptual artists" have ever been able to change that.

You make something beautiful, or you make something ugly, and you choose which depending on your purpose. You make a flute if your purpose is to soothe. You make a siren if your purpose is to alarm.

Early this month, four Royal Canadian Mounties were killed by one man in a remote corner of Canada. I never saw it in the American news, but I have a friend from Canada who owns a shop nearby, and when I went to talk to him one day he told me all about it in a tone of hushed awe. The RCMP is still revered in Canada; it is a storied unit. That is why Mark Steyn is so angry about what has become of it. And in explaining his wrath, he touches on all the same themes as du Toit.

But his purpose is to sway you, and his anger is not out front. He cites a poem, just the opening lines. You may know it, or not. Perhaps you'll look it up. Perhaps you'll reflect on it, and it will draw you into his argument.

Kim has another purpose. He is trying to harden hearts. He thinks it is important, and he may be right.

Many of you, should you choose to read the essay, will likewise find it ugly. Remember this: The essay's title, which so offends the Philosoraptor that he won't give voice to it, is not there by accident, or from an absence of thought. And the essay itself, though frequently provocative, was designed to force you to be offended. That's part of the point. If the argument is that society is too soft, why couch it in gentle terms? And what better proof is there of the argument than if rough language is enough to cause people to reject the argument outright?

What remains for the reader with a hardened heart is this:

I want men everywhere to going back to being Real Men. To open doors for women, to drive fast cars, to smoke cigars after a meal, to get drunk occasionally and, in the words of Col. Jeff Cooper, one of the last of the Real Men: “to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth.”

I have read much of Kim's hospitality, from bloggers who have visited him. Hospitality is one of the few universal virtues, an older part of ethics even than aesthetics. Without exception, these writers have explained Kim du Toit to be as generous as a lord. They speak of how ready he has been with his time, in his offers not just of food but feasts, and in sharing his knowledge and property with people he knows only from the internet.

Not every road is beautiful. If this is where it leads, however, it may be a road worth taking once in a while.

Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion

Utah:

The Salt Lake Tribune has an excellent opinion piece on the recent school shooting. Utah is, the piece points out, one of the only places in the nation in which a qualified adult can carry a concealed firearm on school property. Defending yourself and the student body in other places is legal, but the tools which make it practical for the average school-teacher are not.

The author points out that there are not many options left for addressing the issue of school shootings. The conditions which existed for this last one were:

* No guns allowed per Minnesota and tribal law.
* A guard and metal detectors present at entrance.
* The shooter was on home study, barred from school grounds.
* He was too young to own, let alone possess, firearms, per state and tribal law.
* The firearms were not obtained from a gun show.
* The firearms were legally registered and came from the home of a law enforcement officer.

What additional laws would have prevented this?

It is difficult to use the law to constrain someone who has decided to die in the course of a violent act. Other tools than law are needed at those times.

Gang will target Minuteman vigil on Mexico border - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - March 28, 2005

Bad Clouds:

The other day, Doc Russia had a post on the Minuteman Project. He noted that both the ACLU and MS-13 had decided to destroy them if possible, and offered this reasoning: "The ACLU, MS-13, weak foreign leaders who cannot care for their own citizens, and government bureaucracies and administrations who do not want to see their power evaporate in the Arizona desert. With enemies like that, you should not be ashamed of what you stand for."

No, indeed. Actually, this will be an excellent initiative if it lives up to its claims. Assuming it remains scrupulously law abiding, and restricts itself to gathering information and passing it to the authorities, this is a perfect example of citizens doing their duty to uphold the law.

But the report about MS-13 augurs badly. This is not a threat to blow off, and I hope the Minutemen are making better plans in private than in public:

"We're not worried because half of our recruits are retired trained combat soldiers," Mr. Gilchrist said. "And those guys are just a bunch of punks...."

Many of the Minuteman volunteers are expected to be armed, although organizers of the border vigil have prohibited them from carrying rifles. Only those people with a license to carry a handgun will be allowed to do so, Mr. Gilchrist said.

The backstory on MS-13 should concern you:

Because of their ties to [El Salvador], they have access to sophisticated military weapons, thus making firearms trafficking one of their main criminal enterprises.

There's a certain amount of unwisdom going on here, on all sides. The Minutemen mean well by restricting their members to concealed, legally-carried handguns. On the other hand, it's perfectly legal to carry a rifle in Texas.

My suspicion is that the Minutemen are trying to address the concerns of the ACLU and others, by demonstrating that they are not attempting to intimidate or harrass, but only to defend themselves in the last extremity. That was fine, before this threat; but in the face of it, rethinking is in order. There is nothing to be gained by making yourself vunerable in this way, when possession of the tools with which you could defend yourself is both lawful and available.

MS-13, being a collective of undereducated thugs, has almost certainly not considered the ramifications of crossing the border in force and gunning down a bunch of middle-class American citizens. I doubt they have considered the response that would occur should they adopt the less confrontational policy of violent intimidation -- attacks on the families and children of Minutemen, for example. The first will be read as an invasion similar to, and needing the same type of response as, Pancho Villa; the second will be read as terrorism, and met with all available weight.

America tolerates a certain level of violence and disorder among its underclasses, mostly because we haven't sorted out a good way to stop it without trampling on the liberty that the Republic was founded to protect. More police? Less freedom for everyone. More laws? Less freedom for everyone. Laws targeting only the underclass? Generally unconstitutional because they trample civil rights and the principle of equal protection of the law. Curfews? More prisons? More government programs to track their movements and keep a registry of their activi... er, that is, "help" them? All of these things threaten American liberty more than the underclass and its violence; and so we have become tolerant.

MS-13 has been able to dwell in those regions, unstopped by America. I imagine they think America honestly cannot stop them. The recent raids on their national network can't have seemed very threatening, since the penalty is simple deportation, to nations even less likely to control them.

The rules are very different, however, when you begin killing Americans outside of the underclass. A criminal enterprise that decides to contend openly with America's civilian population will be destroyed in short order. The tragedy is that we may see them first kill law-abiding volunteers trying to do their duty to help their country. The Minutemen would be wise to reconsider their no-rifle policy, and arm themselves as the law and the Second Amendment allows. It was just this type of movement the Second intended to protect, after all: they may as well avail themselves of its benefits.

The UN: lost cause or a last chance? - Tony Parkinson - www.theage.com.au

The UN, Seen From Oz:

The folks down under are much bigger UN boosters than Americans, with UN critics still usually being supporters. Take Tony Parkinson:

Not even the proudest supporters of the lofty ideals of the UN can deny its organisational culture is in urgent need of an overhaul.

At headquarters in New York, ponderous and repetitive posturing passes for debate, while votes on the floor are too often predetermined by squalid and sometimes corrupt deal-making. The General Assembly is dysfunctional, the Security Council anachronistic and, in debates on peace and security, ideology and self-interest trump idealism every time.

In Geneva, the UN's Human Rights Commission has become a theatre of the absurd, in which serial abusers such as China, Cuba and Sudan stack committees, deny scrutiny of their own conduct, and issue ritualistic critiques of the racism and inequality of the West.

The past three years have brought unparalleled upheaval and scandal. Shaken by Security Council divisions over the US-led invasion of Iraq, the organisation has been further demoralised by reports of widespread sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers and explosive revelations about high-level corruption in the oil-for-food program in Iraq.

Not to mention policy paralysis over ongoing massacres in Darfur.

But other than that, hey, look at those lofty ideals!

Ostara

Ostara:

The half-heathen Angles, Saxons and Danes celebrated many old holidays even as Christianity was growing up among the elite of their nations.

According to the historian Bede the Venerable (673?-735), writing in chapter 13 of his De temporum ratione, the heathen Anglo-Saxons called the third and fourth months "Rhedmonath" and "Esturmonath" after their goddesses Rheda and Eostra respectively. Rheda, except for the brief citation above, has been forgotten. Eostra (Ostara) has fared somewhat better, although there is little direct evidence of her and her followers.

The story of Easter in the Anglosphere is remarkable in several respects. The first is that we should call it by the name of an ancient heathen goddess. This is not the case in most of Christendom. To return to the first cited source:

The English and German words for "Easter" derive from the name "Ostara," the Germanic Goddess of Springtime. All other European words for "Easter" derive from the Hebrew word "pasah," to pass over, thus reflecting the Christian holiday's Biblical connection with the Jewish Passover.

There are several examples, including Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic, all having some variation of "Pask" as their root. This seems to have been the preference of the Church of Rome, and her paladins who took the Cross to their people.

But Germany was Christianized by invasion, at the hand of Charlemagne, and the survival of some of the old forms was perhaps a popular reaction to the imposition. England was another matter.

In England, the great Christian kingdoms that survived the fall of the Roman Empire came under assault by the sea kings. They mastered the land, though their numbers were not great:

To answer the question 'how did the small number of invaders come to master the larger part of Britain?' John Davies gives us part of the answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had been most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political and military self-help were at their weakest.

Unwilling and unable to defend themselves, man for man, they fell to those who were still warriors. Not always by the sword! Tradition holds that the British king Vortigern invited two such kings to come and protect his land: Hengst and Horsa. They are said to have invitied their kin to follow them, and disposed of Vortigern once their warriors were in place.

It is from this time that the legendary realm of Arthur is supposed to have existed. You are probably familiar with much of the thinking on where, and when, such a kingdom would have been.

But Christianity returned to Britain. It was not, quite, the Christianity of Rome. It came instead from Ireland, where St. Patrick had converted the great Irish kings, but which had been largely cut off from Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Irish monasteries sent teachers and preachers into Britain through what is now Scotland, but was at the time the home of the last Christian Kingdoms: Dal Riada, the Gaelic kingdom that was already in the process of absorbing the Picts, and the Cymirc lands that produced Y Gododdin.

With secure bases in those lands, the Celtic missionaries passed south into the English states. They converted the kings of the Angles and Saxons, Jutes and Danes, among them St. Edwin of Northumbria. Like St. Edwin, the converted kings brought along their people. There was little pressure felt in England to abandon the old languages. The Celtic monks were glad to absorb the old forms, putting them to new uses. What had been a fertility festival, celebrating the coming of Spring and new life in this world became -- not instead, but in addition -- a celebration of life in a world beyond.

Therefore it is that we in the English-speaking world, along with the Germans, are alone in calling Easter by a heathen name. Nothing is thereby lost, and much that was great of old is thereby preserved.

I wish you a Happy Easter, you Christians, you Heathens, and those halfway in between.

The human flaw - signandsight

An Old Song:

Sign And Sight is the online magazine that translates European, and particularly German, intellectual writing into English so that it will be available to all Europeans. The experience is new, but the thinking is not always new or exciting. Consider this article on beauty:

According to ancient Tao wisdom, it is in movement that a person attains beauty, in Tai-Chi for example. The Chinese syllable 'mei' (literally: fat sheep) means beauty. It is used to describe good food, a sense of well-being, a pleasant bodily feeling. And, ironically enough, also the United States (literally: beautiful land). So it is possible to have beauty without burdening it with ideals of physical self-improvement and abstinence. Why not just enjoy life?

The argument is not different from ten thousand pieces of multiculturalist inquiry. The West suffers from some pathology, usually caused by capitalism (in this case, the piece attacks both the modelling industry and the competition encouraged by the larger museums). By comparison with the purer cultures, less corrupted by evil capitalism, one can return to the enlightened state of consciousness destroyed by modern society. By comparison, however, "globalization" is rapidly destroying those purer, better states of consciousness by corrupting these innocent societies with the evils of the West:

What Schiller really meant - and what the Chinese believe today - has largely been forgotten: superior intellect, wise politics, expert craftmanship, human prowess. For the Chinese, only what is true and good is also beautiful, says Jullien. Essayist Dave Hickey goes a step further. In his book "The Invisible Dragon", he describes how this "classical" stance is about to be driven out of the Chinese. They too are subject to the influence of academies, museums and universities. As in Europe, these institutions search for beauty in constructs and systems. But the Chinese no more believe in concepts than they do in making sacrifices to achieve an end. Their traditional view of beauty is a celebration of change, eternal circulation and transformation. And according to Hickey, this is precisely the opposite of everything rigid and statutory embodied by institutions.

But this culture of the transformative is in retreat, and it is disappearing faster than people are aware of. As Chinese choreographer Jin Xing puts it: "Chinese bodies look weak in comparison with beautiful African bodies. And the Chinese don't have the overriding sense of envy and justice that makes bodies hard and people rich in the West."

Let us summarize before we rebut. "Classical" Chinese attitudes toward beauty are under attack by the corrupting influence of Western "institutionalism," i.e., universities, academies, museums, etc. Those attitudes, far healthier than our own, hold that only "superior intellect, wise politics, expert craftsmanship, human prowess" are beautiful, things that are "true and good." But this is being lost, lost, as Western influence and globalization destroy the ancient Chinese wisdoms.

Now to rebut.

1) Institutionalism is not new to China. Far from it. Modern Western culture, however, driven by "institutionalism," does not approach the Chinese love for the corporate and social construct. There is no institution in the West like the Chinese Communist Party, and the CCP embraces all aspects of life.

2) It is not true that the Chinese embrace only "what is true and good." In fact, the Chinese relationship to truth is this: social harmony is more important than truth. The truth is always to be avoided when it would create social discord. This, in personal relationships as in State affairs, is considered polite and proper, and is why I could never find out just when my next paycheck was coming when I lived there.

3) As for the beauty of "human prowess" and "excellent craftsmanship," academics are referred to the practice of foot-binding. "Fat sheep," indeed: both plump and helpless.

As always, I'll make my home and take my stand in the West.

New York City: Man Tries to Steal Gun to 'Rescue Schiavo'

On Thinking Things Through

The headline reads, "Man Tries to Steal Gun to 'Rescue Schiavo.'"

A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.

I thought the National Guard thing was the limit of the madness that was going to erupt around this. Just what did this guy think he was going to do, having stolen a gun and captured the hospital room? Re-insert the tube himself? Even if he could, where was the water and food going to come from? And what threat was going to keep the police at bay? You can't hold as hostage someone the government has already decided should die.

Not that good planning seems to be the fellow's strong suit. There's an old saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight, but this guy didn't even bring a knife:

Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.... [The store owner] said he then pointed his own gun at Mitchell and ordered him to lie on the ground. But Mitchell fled out the store's back door before police arrived, he said.

One wonders if he'd have thought to steal any ammunition.

Davids Medienkritik: Stern's Gallery of Stereotypes: USA: The Divided Land

America, As Seen From Germany:

Kim du Toit has a link to this story, which sorts German sterotypes of Americans by how evil they think we are. "Gun-Toting Southerners" don't fare well in the German press, apparently. "Conservative Cowboy" is also not well liked by the German press. But the "Anarchist Vagabonds..."

Duty, shirking thereof.

I saw at this and immediately thought: "Ok, send him back so he can be shot." AND, I suppose that's glib. But I have no patience with this sort of behavior whatsoever.

He volunteered. He took an oath. He volunteered again to be airborne.

At least the Canadian immigration authorities recognize as much:

'Hinzman also testified he had been willing to fulfill his full four-year obligation to the Army, but not to participate in combat.

"I find Mr. Hinzman's position to be inherently contradictory," Goodman said in the ruling. "Surely an intelligent young man like Mr. Hinzman, who believes the
war in Iraq to be illegal, unjust and waged for economic reasons, would be
unwilling to participate in any capacity, whether as combatant or noncombatant."

I really hope the Army doesn't let him off easy.

New Scientist 13 things that do not make sense - Features

Wow, Indeed:

It's a banner day for Southern Appeal, which is also the source of this link. From The New Scientist, it's called "13 things that do not make sense."

Read it and marvel.

Serenity

Serenity:

We have a tradition in my family of naming vehicles, in the same way that you would name a ship or a horse. I recently came to own a 4x4 Chevrolet Blazer (which is twelve years old, making it the oldest new car I've ever had). I decided to name her "Serenity."

Why? If you haven't previously been aware of the movie Serenity, which is due out in September, allow me to introduce you.

This is going to be one of those movies that comes from a television series, Firefly. Those with highspeed connections who want a sample can download episodes here, apparently with the approval of the studio. Watch one or two, and see if you don't go buy the DVDs so that you can see them without the wait, and in a full-size form. I assume that's why the studio has been letting them post these things.

Firefly was a Western set in space. It's not the first of that ilk (I remember watching as a teenager Sean Connery's Outland, which was just a remake of High Noon, this time set on a space station). They're usually not very good.

This one was. I think it's because it isn't a genre piece. It's a space western, but it didn't have to be. These characters are very close to real, which means they could have fit in anywhere. They just happen to be on a spaceship, in the way that I happen to be in Virginia.

I'm not the only one of the Nation of Riflemen who thinks highly of it. I have seen people suggesting it over at Kim's place in the forums, and at Doc's place in his comments. But it isn't just gunfighters and Red Americans who like it. The thing was introduced to me by arch-liberal Sovay, who adores it, and has a whole host of friends who do likewise.

Give it a try. Start with the pilot, also called "Serenity," which is listed as 1x00 parts 1 and 2 on the download page.

See if it doesn't grab you. I'll bet it will.

Southern Appeal

What About Federalism?

There's been a lot of talk about this whole Congressional intervention. I was rather surprised by it, but assumed it was Constitutional and legal under the 14th Amendment's guarantee of federal review of civil rights cases, plus Congress' Constitutional authority to define court jurisdiction. Now, longtime readers know I am one of those, trained in the discipline of history, who point to the fact that the 14th was never properly ratified. In theory, then, this was only the latest in a long series of abuses by the Federal gov't, and one that was at least kindly intentioned and explicitly limited against providing legal precedent.

William over at Southern Appeal has an excellent post explaining why I was wrong about the bill's place in American constitutional law. His post is short and clear, and lays out some background issues that he understands as a lawyer but which I did not, not having any formal legal training. I believe that it is important that we who are not lawyers, policemen, judges or the like, still yet take time and trouble to understand the law. The law is too important to leave to lawyers, and so pieces like William's -- which inform the general public of the issues and traditions at stake -- are greatly valuable. Thank you, William, for taking the trouble.

t r u t h o u t - Niall Ferguson | Sinking Globalization

Ok, I'll Bite:

Niall Ferguson asks, "Could Globalization Collapse?"

It may seem unlikely today. Yet despite many warnings, people were shocked the last time globalization crumbled, with the onslaught of World War I.

Long time Grim's Hall source The Agonist has thoughts, and links to others by Brad DeLong. Sean Paul has this to say (and in the original, there are links to all these assertions):

China is aggresively trying to secure energy supplies. They are also making kissy-kissy with the Iranians. They were engaged in a crash course for an aircraft carrier but seem to have settled on rapidly ramping up their ASW capacity (anti-submarine warfare) for now. (I wonder who the target is?) They forked over several billion dollars to help the Putin steal Yukos. And they're going to hold joint-exercises with the Russkis. (My wife still can't believe this!)

Throw in the Taiwanese and you have an explosive mix.

Yeah, that's all true. Many of us believed before 9/11 -- I lived in China in 2000 -- that China would be the next big war. We've had a break since then, as China's been letting us spend our resources while building its own.

I'm with Sean Paul on this one. China absolutely will go to war over Taiwan if it feels it has to do so. He saw it from Taiwan, but I saw it from China. Even people who were otherwise skeptical of "Marxist" tendencies in their gov't were sure of their nationalist right to Taiwan.

That's not to say we can't win. But with the need to contain the DPRK nuclear programs from becoming a feeder to terrorists and other groups, we need China. It's a delicate situation, to say the least. The best bet is to let Japan take the forward position, if they will, and they may -- the next Prime Minister in Japan is expected to be Shinzo Abe, a rough and ready fighter by Japanese standards.

But even that presents dangers. China is spoiling for a fight with Japan for historic reasons. World War II is generally understood by Chinese students, in my experience teaching them, as 'the war of Japanese aggression.' They are only vaguely aware that any part of the rest of the world was involved.

All this explains the talks between Dr. Rice and China this week, in which she offered major concessions on the DPRK (calling it a "sovereign state" for the first time). All attention remains on Iraq. The game is afoot, however, in Asia.

Question

A Question for Soldiers:

On the train home tonight, I saw but did not have a chance to talk with a Major of the Special Operations Command. He was in his BDUs, with both the "AIRBORNE" shoulder sleeve insignia and wings. But he was wearing a black beret.

Now, I don't claim to understand this whole "beret" thing you guys do anyway (though I do get the Smokey Bear, A.K.A. the "Campaign Cover," A.K.A. a "Montana Bash" hat), but I thought I knew that Airborne soldiers wore maroon berets. I didn't see a Ranger or SF tab on the guy's uniform, but I thought he would still get the Airborne beret. Or are these things issued only to units designated as Airborne (e.g., 18th Airborne Corps, 101st Airborne Div), without regard to the individual soldier's accomplishments?

I ask because heraldry is a hobby of mine; and I remember the furor when they went to issuing black berets, which had been the symbol of the Rangers before. Now I'm wondering if even Special Operators are being told to wear the "standard" beret, or if I just don't understand the rules the Army plays by with regard to its headgear.

BLACKFIVE

Training:

BlackFive has a story to tell about a fellow soldier who died right in front of him. He's also got some links.

Training is dangerous. There have been years in which we have lost no fighting men to hostile fire, but I doubt there's ever been a year that we haven't lost people to training accidents. Marches are conducted in the heat. "Confidence" courses involve obstacles that are sometimes genuinely dangerous. I remember very clearly the first time I negotiated one such: I was eighteen, a great distance from the ground, without a rope or harness, and leaping into the air to catch the next rung of a giant-sized "ladder" that went up into nothing. Get to the top, climb over the top rung, climb back down. You could have died; you didn't, and you never forget that you managed to do something that seemed outrageous.

Training in jujitsu with a Marine named Ken Caton -- who was a genuine master of the art, but it's a contact sport -- I was nearly hurt, and was rendered unconscious for (I'm told) quite a while. The geography of the hold he was applying at the time is hard to put into words, but it was a leglock around my neck, with him in such a position that neither he nor the witnesses could see my precise reaction, or be sure of how tight the hold was. I lost consciousness before I could tap out, and he held on thinking I might be bluffing.

(Actually, I have a clear memory of tapping out, but all the witnesses agree that I never did. The mind plays tricks when there's no oxygen left.)

Was all this stuff dangerous? You bet.

However, we were young men, full of fire. The stuff we did when we weren't under "adult supervision" was way more dangerous. A lot of training accidents involve machinery -- helicopters, APCs. These are being handled by professionals in a professional, if high-speed and precision, manner.

When we weren't being watched, we were handling other machines (say, automobiles) in a high-speed and precision manner that wasn't the least bit professional. I can remember one little drag race on I-575 (coming back from running the O-course at NAS Atlanta/Dobbins AFB, in fact) where we passed a guy in the emergency lane at a speed I won't bother to record, returning to the road in time to miss the concrete pillars of a bridge that rose out of said emergency lane. By, maybe, six inches.

And that wasn't the worst thing I can remember doing. Not at all. I remember my father telling me many times as a boy that he could never understand how he hadn't gotten himself killed when he was younger. I never understood -- he was always so upright, so responsible! -- until I got to be about twenty-eight. It was only then that the fire faded enough that I could look back on the train wreck of youth with clear, amazed eyes.

The military involves training and honing that natural madness. It is put to a positive rather than a destructive use, to protect the Republic, her citizens and traditions. Just remember that when you read about these things. Sometimes young men get killed doing this stuff... but some of them would have gotten themselves killed anyway, maybe faster, and with less chance of any good coming out of it.

That's what it's like to be a young man. One of any account, at least.

TheStar.com - Spreading the message

Come On, Dean:

You've got to be kidding:

'Keep it simple' is the key to the White House, failed Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told members of his party from around the world last night.

One major reason his party lost the 2004 race to the 'brain-dead' Republicans is that it has a 'tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail,' Dean told the semi-annual meeting of Democrats Abroad, which brought about 150 members from Canada and 30 other countries to the Toronto for two days.

He really said that? On the day that the nation is wrapped up watching Congress, the courts, and so forth and so on fight over the life of Mrs. Schiavo, he said Republicans represent the "brain-dead"?

Well, he did say this, too...

The Vermont's former governor cut short a campaign swing on Friday to return home after his son was picked up by police along with a group of his friends.... Dean was asked how he would win support of Democratic Party leaders given his frequent criticism of them and he responded that the leaders would come around once they got to know him.

"It is a bit of a club down there," he said. "The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club."

On Monday, Dean winced when he heard his own words.

"That was an incredibly unfortunate phrase," he said.

"Why do I say these things?" Dean asked a press aide.

What really makes this latest comment so awful, though, is the fact that it doesn't contribute anything to the debate. The "country club" remark at least presents a coherent image that is accurate as far as it goes. It's only the timing that was unfortunate. The "brain dead" remark adds nothing, though, even if there were no such timing issues: calling your opponents "brain dead" is juvenile and unhelpful even if there are no external events that make the remarks seem so ghoulish.

Dean's not an idiot; he just sometimes plays one on TV. I recall he had some good ideas about Social Security reform. Maybe he should be talking about that. Go ahead: take an hour or two and tell us what you think. If these are your best soundbites, "keeping it simple" is just going to make it worse.

News & Features | Vice in a vise (continued)

On Vice:

It's not every day you see an article in a serious publication approvingly cite Modern Drunkard magazine:

When you look back at history, all the major movers and shakers, these artists, these writers, they were all heavy drinkers. And they were totally fine. They were fully functional drunks! Look at Churchill! Look at FDR! They freed the world from tyranny, and they were drunk all the time.

Well, indeed they were, though there were a few other people involved who were perfectly sober. Not as many as you might think, as European armies of the day got liquor rations. The US Navy & Marine Corps were early adopters of Prohibition. Though they had provided a daily liquor ration from the 1700s, in 1899 they put on the breaks, and by 1914 consuption was banned totally. By 1918, federal law banned alcohol within five miles of a naval station. The situation was similar in the Army during WWI, and so it was the case that our military fought the first two World Wars officially sober.

Officially, but under protest. As Bill Mauldin's Up Front reminds us in several of his collected cartoons, the first "strategic" target on liberating any French village was often the wine cellars. One I remember shows a hogshead that was broken up by the Germans before they retreated. The GIs coming in are shocked. "Them rats! Them dirty, cold-blooded, sore-headed, stinkin' Huns! Them atrocity-committin' skunks..." Another buries his face in his hands. Mr. Mauldin had a long bit of writing on the topic, as well. If any of you out there still haven't read Up Front, you should.

If drinking was an acceptable part of life in the European armies, it was a plain vice in the American forces. Yet, as Bill Mauldin and Modern Drunkard point out, the pursuit of vice didn't preclude the pursuit of virtue. It just helped to fill the long, cold spaces in between.

Blogger

Blogger:

Both Blogger and HaloScan are acting up. As soon as I can force them to let me, I'll have more.

Bolton

Bolton and the UN:

Joe Conason has a piece this week called "Bolton's Nomination an Insult to the U.N.: Latest in Bush Pattern of Appointing People Who Hate The Institutions They Are To Serve."

Not quite.

Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration's ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who'd just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. 'No,' Schultz would say, 'this is your country' -- and point to the United States. Nobody would expect a US ambassador to the Soviet Union to be a big booster for the Soviets. And, given that in a unipolar world the most plausible challenger to the US is transnationalism, these days the Schultz test is even more pertinent for the UN ambassador: his country is the United States, not the ersatz jurisdiction of Kofi Annan's embryo world government.

Bolton's nomination is an affront to the UN, but it's not an insult. The UN has no dignity to insult.

Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam's Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or...

The challenge posed by Bolton may be bracing, or it may destroy the organization. I'm rooting for the latter, myself. The world would be better off without the United Nations. I join with The New Republic in holding that the UN "performs the magic of evil."

The destruction of the UN isn't the point, however. The point is this: Bolton understands what Conason does not. The ambassador's job is to serve the US, not the UN. This is his country. It's permitted for an ambassador to be of service to his host if it does not interfere with the interests of his country. It is not permitted to go native.

The Background of Edsall Road

On the 17th of March:

I went by my favorite pub north of Savannah, Molly's of Warrenton, for a pint or two today. Edsall Road was playing from two o'clock, and I stayed until the crowd got too loud to hear them -- which was about four. I therefore went home well before sunset.

I'm a semi-regular at Molly's; nobody there knows my name, but they all know my two-year-old son's name, and everybody asks me after him when I stop in. The sign they put out front today promised I'd have my ID checked both at the door and at the bar, but in fact nobody asked at all. While other folks were having their credit cards taken up before they'd see a pint, my credit was assumed valid the moment I sat down. It's a nice way to live.

Normally it's a quiet place. In fact, they've quit opening before four on most days, having run into the Southern gentleman's general prohibition against drinking before five (or at least one, if it's a very bad day, or you just really want to). St. Patrick's Day is an exception, though, as all the amateurs come out.

I don't quite know what to do with these folks.

The worst of them consort around Boston, Chicago and Savannah, Georgia. Savannah contains America's greatest Irish pub, and a large contingent of Irish citizens. St. Patrick's Day in these cities -- I've been in Chicago and Savannah on them, and assume it's not different in Boston -- is like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The city becomes unlivable. One-day Irishmen riot through the place. Sane people stay hell and gone from what are otherwise very nice places.

Well, fun's fun. Good luck to the crazies. Everyone deserves their day, I suppose.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to the rest of you. For those of you who believe in saints, Southern Appeal has a prayer.

Samizdata.net

Matters Abroad:

Our honorable brethren across the sea, Samizdata, have two interesting posts today. One is on what they call a "counterrevolution" in British constitutionalism, which is worth considering in light of Scalia's comments on US constitutionalism. That can be read here.

The other is about the current Blair government's attempts to impose global gun control. In this matter, the government in the UK has its principles all wrong. The UN, also cited in the piece, knows exactly what it is doing: it is using its pseudo-democratic mechanisms to pursue the defense of human tyranny, like always.

My wife and I were discussing gun control principles the other day. She began with the assertion that gun control was foolish because it wasn't practical; since it wasn't possible to really remove guns from the hands of criminals (as the British surely ought to understand by now), it was unwise to remove them from the hands of good citizens. People should be allowed to protect themselves.

I'm glad to say that I convinced her completely to reconsider this principle. Firearms, and particularly handguns, represent a positive good in society. The small, handy, concealable firearm is unique in that it makes equals of thuggish brutes and the elderly; or the brutes and young women, who may have children or their own bodies to protect. A rifle makes it practical for such a person to defend their home. In those places where roving gangs control the streets -- say, the Congo or Philadelphia -- that can make all the difference.

If gun control were practical, we would be thrown back into a situation in which the strong had more force to bear than the weak, and crime would simply be easier for the brutal.

We've seen this in Rwanda, as Samizdata mentions, but also the Congo. I assume you saw the piece about African victims cooked on spits and boiled alive? Didn't need guns for that -- just strong men of no character, fire and oil. Didn't need guns for the raping or mutilations either -- nature provided the necessities for the one, and a machete works fine for the other.

A firearm would have been useful for the mother wanting to protect those children. Life would be better if the villagers of the Congo kept rifles handy, instead of merely the "militias." It is a slander to use that word, as the above article does; these are merely gangs of thugs. If there were real militias, militias of the people that trained together and could rise to protect their common peace against these thugs, Africa would be a happier place.

Those are the principles we ought to use when considering the issue.

Scalia

Scalia Is Right:

I had time this afternoon to read this transcript of Scalia's remarks. I think he's right, from first to last.

The "Living Constitution" points to the end of Constitutionalism. It is not the only trend in that direction. Consider the question of Declarations of War, which are now done by simple Congressional votes that aren't, in fact, a Declaration of War. Thus you get what we had in the last election: a Congress that had "authorized military force" but not declared war, and thus a Presidential candidate who had voted 'to authorize force' but claimed to be an antiwar candidate. If Congress were keeping up its Constitutional duties, there would be no such wiggle room: Your Senator would be on record, for or against.

The Supreme Court's abandonment of genuine Constitutionalism is even more dangerous, because the USSC is unacountable, and because the USSC has become the "final word" on what the Constitution is and says. If Congress does something unConstitutional, you can turn to the court; but the USSC claims authority to be the last word.

You don't have to agree with Scalia on any particular case to find his reasoning compelling. He points to some real problems with the system. Unlike many who do that, he has a solution. We need more like him on the Court.

Sharp Knife

Heroism's Alternative:

Noel picks up on an interesting fact:

In 1996, when Canadians were asked to name both the greatest living and the all-time greatest Canadian, 76 percent said "no one comes to mind."

Americans, asked the same question, would have a knock-down, drag-out fight over who belonged on the list -- and who was a Nazi/Socialist/Commie who ought to just be shot. We wouldn't have a shortage of candidates, though, either for hero or scoundrel.

Yeah, I like it that way too.

The Ides of March

Today was my grandfather's birthday. Had he not died at the age of eighty, he would have been ninety-three today. I will shortly raise a glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in his honor -- it was his favorite.

He was a welder, and eventually the owner of a body shop and service station catering to long-haul trucks down in Knoxville. He was the kind of man who would, and more than once did, disarm a man of a knife or a gun with his own bare hands. Oh, he had a gun -- never until he was very old was he without one. He just didn't feel the need to resort to it.

His given names were "Jackson Theodore," which tells you enough to know that my politics are honestly inherited. He didn't go by that mouthful. The world knew him as "Jack T." My father, even when he was fifty years old, still called him "Daddy" when he talked about him. He called him "Sir" when he talked to him.

You all know by now that I wear his Stetson a great deal of the time. It's a big old thing, in a color called "Silver belly" by the folks at JB Stetson Hats. [UPDATE: Yeah, that hat.] Almost everything I know about being a man I learned from him. Much of that was filtered through the stories of my father.

It's a fine day, the ides of March. Once it saw the end of a tyrant; once, the birth of a brave, free man. I hear a few other things have happened too: but surely that is enough for any day.

Grim's Hall

Notice:

While pondering Joel's comments to the TR post this morning, I decided to switch the comments section to "oldest to most recent" form. Newer comments will be located at the bottom instead of the top, as is the standard for blogs.

When I first started blogging, there wasn't a standard yet, and I liked the other way better. However, I bow to the common wisdom, and hopefully will cease confusing new readers.

Southern Gentleman, Marine, Germanic Tribalist -- A Different Point of View

March, Texas!

Daniel, who offers monthly posts on tactics here at Grim's Hall, has a post on the month of March in Texas history.

One example: the battle of the Alamo ended on March sixth, after "thirteen days of glory." Daniel ends with a quote on the great Jim Bowie:

By Hercules, the man was greater than Caesar or Cromwell- nay, nearly equal to Odin and Thor. The Texans ought to build him an altar.

Hear, hear!

BLACKFIVE

Thank You, Greyhawk:

BlackFive points out that Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette is now a twenty-year man. B5 says all that needs to be said, but I'll repeat it: thank you, Hawk, and Mrs. Hawk.

Grim's Hall

On Manly Virtue:

A few days back, speaking of a former President, I wrote: "Courtesy and chivalry are important components of the manly virtue of honor[.]" I see today that the New Criterion has a piece on Theodore Roosevelt. The author frets -- that is the only word for it -- that Rooseveltian manliness is gone from the national character.

"Somehow America in the twentieth century went from the explosion of assertive manliness that was TR to the sensitive males of our time who shall be and deserve to be nameless," he says at the beginning of the piece; at the end, "And Teddy Roosevelt was more a philosopher than he knew. His advocacy of manliness reflects the difficulties of pragmatism and tells us something about our situation today. We have abandoned—not reason for manliness like the pragmatists, nor manliness for reason like their tender-minded opponents—but both reason and manliness. We want progress without a rational justification and without the manliness needed to supply the lack of a justification."

It seems to me he misses an obvious parallel with a more modern President:

A New Yorker by birth, he went to the Wild West, and became a Westerner by deliberate intent, or sheer will-power. He became a cowboy by impressing the other cowboys....

Surely that reminds you of someone of more recent vintage?

The argument examines the philosophy of Roosevelt, the author attempting to explain it and then to seek contradictions within it. First, the explanation:

Roosevelt had his own, brazenly exclusive moralism; he liked being "in cowboy land" because it enabled him to "get into the mind and soul of the average American of the right type." His democracy satisfies not merely the average American but one of the right type. “Life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.”

I suspect a lot of this fretting comes from the author's position as a professor at Harvard. We've talked about this recently, but there are other things to say.

So much of this arises from the reaction of the upper classes to the First World War. Almost everyone knows the poem Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. But the words, from Horace, that he called "The Old Lie" are engraved in stone at Arlington. And not only there.

Today I stopped in Lexington, Virginia, passing through on the way back here. We passed by the Virginia Military Institute, which is one of the finest military colleges in the world, along with West Point, Annapolis, and The Citadel. We stopped, by chance, just in front of Washington and Lee College. There is a memorial there, constructed to honor the students who had died in the First World War. And on a great arch above the memorial, engraved in stone, is the same line.

Is it an old lie, or is it a grim and terrible truth? Through the arch at Washington and Lee is visible the tomb of Robert E. Lee. That tomb lies beneath a chapel named for him but dedicated, as he was, to higher service. It is through such devotion -- only through it -- that what good there is in this world can arise. That was Roosevelt's insight as well.

Roosevelt's explosive devotion was, as the piece explains, the moving force behind a great wave of Progressivism that outweighs anything attempted or envisioned today precisely because there is no similar motivating force. Roosevelt rejected talk of rights, and spoke instead of duties -- another regular theme at Grim's Hall. Modern liberalism talks a great deal about rights, but has little enough concept of duty. We have surely reached the high water mark of this tide with the current movement to restore voting rights to felons, "who have paid their debt to society." No, indeed they have not; that is only a saying.

The debt owed is far greater and more demanding than that, having done wrong, you should endure your sentence. The debt is owed by all citizens. The true debt owed is this: to love and to improve the civilization into which you are born; to defend and sustain the common peace; to preserve the Republic and its freedoms; to suppress rather than to become the unjust; and to uphold the weak.

Roosevelt understood this, and it animated him in great labors to protect the poor, to preserve the land, and to raise the Republic and her principles. A Democrat today, had he the thundering voice of TR, could hammer the Republicans on this question. This recent bankruptcy reform bill is a perfect example. Exploiting people with proven incapacity to handle easy credit is immoral, like selling whiskey to the homeless. We who are not weak have a duty to protect, in at least a minimal fashion, those who are. The government has let down this duty, and allowed immoral behavior to become even more profitable than it was before. And, as with the whiskey to the homeless, this "profit" will create costs for the Republic as well as for the homeless man.

But there is no vocabulary for discussing this among the powerful of the Democratic party. The first error lies here: It wants to speak of the rights of the poor rather than their duties, and so it is incapable of adequately condemning the weakness of those who cannot handle easy credit. It will not do to make assertions that people are poor, and can't be expected to pay their bills. That sounds like an invitation to higher taxes and welfare payouts, rather than a call to restore order so that credit companies do business fairly. The first will not move the heart of much of America; the second would.

This first error gives rise to the second error: they cannot speak of the duties of the rich with any authority if they do not address the unfulfilled duties of the poor, and so they do not do that either. Instead, they appeal to guilt: that you, doing relatively well, ought to feel bad for doing so well while these others are doing badly. But you, presumably, are doing your duty to the Republic, to your family and friends. You are the only actor in this transaction who is doing his part: the debtor is not, the creditor is not, and the politicians certainly are not. You, alone, have no reason to feel bad about this. The appeal to guilt also collapses.

Therefore there are expanding Republican majorities, with the Left scratching its head as to why these common American people don't 'vote their pocketbooks.' There is a one word answer: duty. There is a seven word answer: They feel their duty to the Republic. Roosevelt, understanding that, living it, worked wonders for the Progressives.

So very much comes back to the words: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria... We think of these words, and the feelings they inspire, usually only when pondering the great national questions. They touch them all, however, from the largest to the smallest. The divide in our nation is between those who feel that the words are "the Old Lie," and those who engrave them in stone.

Indiana Printing & Publishing Co.

Welcome Home:

I'm home. This weekend marks the first time I've ever been snowed off the road. About the time we reached the southern gap of the George Washington National Forest, the weather got so bad that there was no point in trying to continue. We ended up spending a late night at a hotel in West Virginia. The roads were clearer this morning, however, and we made the passage across the Alleghenys this morning. More on that later.

There are other homecomings this week, and while heading out I encountered one of them. I flew out with three soldiers returning from Iraq. I got to talking with them because our flight was delayed for an hour. Two were Sergeants, and the other was a Specialist.

The conversation started because I asked the older of the two sergeants about his unit heraldry. I knew the 1st Cav insignia, but not the subordinate unit insignia. I haven't been able to locate it at the Institute of Heraldry, but it is very similar to the Indiana STARC. It's apparently attached to the 1st Cav, providing aviation support. They were on a long trip home, with many stops: but this was the last.

The other sergeant came over when he saw me with his companion, and he brought a great big cardboard box with him. He nodded to my hat, and said, "Let me show you my Stetson." He had lovingly packaged the thing in plastic, built the hatbox for it, and carried it to Iraq and back separate from the rest of his gear.

You can always tell a real American man because of the love he shows for his John B. Stetson hat.

We finally got underway. Because the US Army is so very generous, these fellows were seated all the way in the back for their flight home. As a consequence, I got off the plane in Indiana before they did. I knew that the old Sarge would have family waiting, because he'd had a teddy bear tied to the outside of his bag, but they had more family than I expected.

Their whole unit, from their Major down, had come out to greet them at the airport.

We're getting close to the 17th of March, when I expect that a number of you will be out somewhere hoisting a pint or two. Most likely, there will be a band playing traditional Irish music. If they're taking requests, have them play "Gary Owen." Drink one of those pints to the good lads of 1st Cavalry, who take care of their own.

On the High Road

I'm going to be travelling for the next few days. I'm not sure how much access to a computer I will have, as I'll be enjoying the beautiful (frigid, icy and snow-bound) scenery of our nation's highways. Fortunately, I'll have my 4x4, my faithful wife and a firearm, so with any luck we'll be back in good order by the end of the weekend.

In the meantime, visit some of the links on the sidebar. And maybe Eric and Daniel will take it upon themselves to keep you entertained while I'm gone.

And don't forget Eat An Animal for PETA Day. For the first one, I invented a dish called "PETA Pie," which goes something like this:

2 squirrels, skinned and butchered
1 pound ground wild turkey breast
Venison sausage to taste
3 strips bacon
1 double-crust pie shell (either frozen or, preferably, fresh-made with cracked Red wheat flour.)

Fry bacon; crumble and reserve grease. Brown all other meats; drain. Fill pie crust with meats, crumbled bacon & bacon grease. Spice to taste, including vegetables if you must. Cover with pie crust top; crimp and brush with any remaining bacon grease. Cut three slits in the top of the pie for steam. Bake at 425 degrees until contents are bubbling through the slits at the top.

Enjoy!

MSNBC - Interview: 'People Are More Hopeful'

On Courtesy:

I'm sure you all saw this interview with former President Bush, since Drudge linked to it. The same thing that interested him interests me:

I'll give you one example of the courtesy he showed me. There is one bedroom on that plane -- a government 757. There's a kind of VIP bedroom with its own bathroom. Then the next room has two tables and eight seats. He decided ahead of time that we want President Bush to have the front room, which was heaven for me, because if I don't stretch out, lie flat, I really hurt my body these days -- spoiled -- so anyway, he was going to have the other room. Well, he got in there and he wanted to play cards at night, and the next morning I got up and stuck my head in and I found him sound asleep on the floor of the plane. We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me. That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me.

I have very strong, negative opinions about some most of the policies the Clintons pursued while in office. When they were in office, I had very strong negative opinions about them, too.

With time to reflect, though, I have to say that Bill Clinton was a far better man than I thought he was. I retain a perfectly negative opinion of much of his staff, especially Ms. Reno. I know, too, that many of my readers retain a wholly negative opinion of Clinton himself.

Still, I can't help but feel a certain kinship with a poker-playing Southerner who feels it is important to give up the bed to an older gentleman, and who would never think of waking that gentleman out of his sleep halfway through the night in order to improve his own comfort. It is even more impressive when remembering that Clinton is himself a heart patient who nearly died only months ago.

Courtesy and chivalry are important components of the manly virtue of honor, and they impress me when I see them. The fact that there is so much to disagree about, the fact that I was sometimes horrified by certain actions the man took as President, the unfair and tenditious speeches he gave in favor of the recent Democratic presidential candidate, these things remain.

I think we must, though, remember the new facts too: his boldly pro-American words when speaking abroad to anti-American audiences; this kindness to an old gentleman. I salute the man for what he has done well. It is the sort of thing that means a great deal to me, too.

Michael Ledeen on Peter Malchin on National Review Online

Eulogy for the Invisible Man:

Zvika, as he was known. Ledeen isn't a big influence of mine, but I thought this was a well-written and insightful portrayal of one of the 20th century's master spies.

The Spectator.co.uk

A Companion Piece:

Once you've read Doc Russia's piece, below, you might try Mark Steyn's latest:

I hope if ever I find myself one of the unfortunate subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship, that it's Bush and the Republicans who take up my cause rather than the Left.

The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan FREE TIBET. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the FREE TIBET stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way...

If Rumsfeld were to say, "Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday," the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast. But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that's not how it works. FREE AFGHANISTAN? Done. FREE IRAQ? Done.

Cuba Libre. It's not just a cocktail.

bloodletting.blog-city.com

"The Death Throes of Hope"

Doc Russia has a post you really ought to read. Brace yourself, first.

"Big Dwarf Rodeo": Reverend Horton Heat: Compilation Albums: Where In The Hell Did You Go With My Toothbrush?

Blues:

The mother-in-law is sick, so the wife and boy are off visiting them this last little while. As I was telling Sovay yesterday, when I happened to have a chance to talk to her for a few minutes, the experience has been enlightening.

As a youngster, I always thought I was a loner by nature. Turns out, that's not quite true. I don't have much use for people, and am happy going whole days without speaking to anyone or seeing anyone -- except my family, which extends to my closest friends. So, turns out I'm not a loner but a family man. I just want to locate my family way out away from the rest of humanity.

In the meantime, life around here is a bit like the Rev. Horton Heat song, "Where In The H*** Did You Go With My Toothbrush?" The house seems suddenly and surprisingly empty, but the unpaid bills keep turning up in the mail.

No reason any of you should care about that. Still, since there's nobody else around to listen to my stories, you're stuck with it.

Belmont Club

Indonesia at the Belmont Club

Wretchard has a thorough piece on reactions to the Bashir sentence. Those interested in the Southeast Asian front will find it worth reading.

TODAYonline

More Fun From PACOM

I'll bet Admiral Fargo is glad to be retiring:

Tensions in the Sulawesi Sea rose a notch yesterday when three Indonesian warships moved into the waters to bolster Jakarta's claim to the potentially-oil-rich area over which they are in dispute with Malaysia.

Meanwhile, across Indonesia, students and workers protested against diesel fuel price hikes in massive street rallies, describing the move to raise prices a mark of government arrogance. Their anger rose further when plans for transport fare increases were announced in Jakarta.

All too soon, it seemed, the goodwill generated by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's recent visit to Malaysia, where Malaysian Prime Minster Abdullah Badawi warmly feted him, was fast evaporating.

Well, what's three little warships? Or four, or...

The warships were now patrolling the disputed area off the coast of Malaysia's Sabah state and the Indonesia's East Kalimantan province, Navy spokesman First Admiral Abdul Maliki Yusuf told AFP.

A fourth ship was on its way, Adm Yusuf said, adding that the navy was also considering sending a submarine to the area.

Two Nomad maritime aircraft to conduct reconnaissance for possible incursions into Indonesian territory, including airspace violations by foreign aircraft, had also been deployed, Lt Col Guntur Wahyudi, a spokesman for Indonesia's Eastern Fleet told dpa.

Then there's a little excursion into some reporting on oil prices, which news you probably saw on today's Drudge. The one marked OPEC: Prices Could Hit $80. That's the kind of thing that will inconvenience a lot of Americans, but it can drive poorer states to the brink of resource war.

MC WWII

Leathernecks:

I had occasion last night to play poker with a World War II Marine.

There isn't much to say about it, even thought I thought it was a remarkable experience. The fellow is now nearly eighty, and still a good poker player though he had a bad night. As a consequence, I also had a bad night -- I was damned if I was going to leave the table having made money off a World War II Marine. I ended up playing to lose until he left for the evening. I won my stake back on the last few hands, but I barely came out better than even for the evening.

I asked if he was a Marine because he was, nearly sixty years after having left the Corps, still wearing a cap with the USMC emblem on it. He allowed that he was, and said nothing more about it. Others at the table filled me in on his record with enthusiasm, but he only growled about it and insisted that somebody cut the #$@!ing cards.

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

It made me remember that it was time to change the charity linked behind the Leatherneck Tartan at the top right of the blog. I've set it to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. Those of you in a giving mood, etc.

The Courier-Mail: Cleric Bashir gets 2� years [03mar05]

Bakar Bashir:

Well, he didn't walk. Not exactly. The death-penalty prosecution, in the most important terror trial in Asia, did manage to find a charge that pinned 2 1/2 years on the fellow. He was, however, cleared of most of the charges.

The trial is telling. At the end, supporters from the Indonesian Holy Warrior's Council (Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia) cried aloud, dominating the courtroom and the streets beyond. "Allah Akbar!

The judges, meanwhile, immediately vacated the court, and vanished behind the protection of the state.

signandsight

Sign & Sight

That is the name of a new website, devoted to European thinking. It is to be published in English, which Arts & Letters Daily describes as 'the only pan-European language.'

Curiously, S&S has an article on just that topic: Manifesto. It begins with the death of a famous French writer, who hated the French press, but loved the German one. So, he stipulated that his final work could only be published in France after it had been published in Germany:

What happened was nothing. Several months after Bourdieu's death, Suhrkamp published "Esquisse pour une auto-analyse" as a slim volume. Utter silence. The German media failed to understand this as a scoop, a text that was awaited elsewhere, a gift from Bourdieu to what he considered a qualified German public. Months later the press published a few obligatory reviews. The French didn't bat an eyelid. While a small excerpt had provoked a scandal only a few months before, the full text went unnoticed. No one in the French media reads the German papers thoroughly, and no scouts are keeping track of cultural trends in Germany. Only when the volume was published in France did the usual brouhaha begin.

The author of this piece asks, "Is there a Europe beyond milk quotas?" If the cultures are that disconnected and disinterested, to what degree is there a Europe at all? Not only are the cultures disconnected, but their understanding of core symbols is often reversed:

The Bourdieu effect is not uncommon. When Jürgen Habermas launched his "Core Europe" initiative, no one joined the debate. Who outside the Netherlands had heard of Theo van Gogh before he was murdered? And when everybody in Paris was celebrating the 60th anniversary of the city's liberation in August last year, no one was aware of what was happening in Warsaw at the same time. While a few streets in Paris were being named after members of the communist resistance, whose valour is indisputable, Warsaw was fixated on the enduring memory of Stalin's icy smile as he watched Hitler bomb the Polish resistance into the ground. The end of liberation.

The piece then turns to the case for, and against, English; and by extension, for and against America. It's an interesting read, but it finishes with this conclusion: "Let's talk European!"

By which they mean English.

Mudville Gazette

Chains:

The Mudville Gazette has a photo essay on the breaking of chains. De Oppresso Liber.

Al Basrah.net invites US military men to break their own chains:

If you are united states military personnel and a conscientious objector to the war in Iraq, don’t wait any longer! As soon as you get back to America, pack your bags and head north.

You can go to the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. for more information however, in order to make a clean escape, it is recommended that you tell as few people as possible of your plans and just make a break for the boarder.

When you arrive in Canada, head for the first government building you see, and tell them that you are in the united states military and that you would like to seek asylum in Canada.

What are the advantages of desertion? There's a list:

CANADA IS THE CLEAR CHOICE AND THIS IS WHY:

CANADA OFFERS:

* HIGH QUALITY OF LIFE. YOUR LIFE IN CANADA WILL BE JUST AS FUN AND EXCITING AS IT IS IN THE UNITED STATES; WITHOUT ALL THE HEADACHE!

* CANADIAN COLLEGES ARE TOP NOTCH AND THEY ARE FREE! NO INFLATED COST OF TUITION OR BOOKS - LIKE IN THE UNITED STATES.

* HEALTH CARE IN CANADA IS FREE! NO MORE HAVING TO PUT YOUR LIFE IN DANGER TO HAVE MEDICAL COVERAGE!

* THE PEOPLE IN CANADA ARE NICE - NOT VICIOUS LIKE THE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES!

ONCE YOU MOVE TO CANADA, YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO GO ANYWHERE ELSE AGAIN.

So really, we're all on the same side here. We just want to free people. Just some of us are vicious about it.