The End

The End:

Mark Steyn rang the bell, and there have been some interesting reactions. Lileks is one, and I think he hits his high note in criticizing what we used to call the counterculture, but which has become so important that we now call it by many other names: multiculturalism, trans-nationalism, and the like. Lileks joins Steyn in being astonished that these folks won't see, or talk about, the danger of radical Islam to the things they care most about:

If the Islamists were Christians, they’d be motivated. That threat they understand, because that threat sounds like Mom and Dad...

Doc Russia responded too, wondering if religion is an evolutionary requirement for long-term cultural survival. He posits that the demography will work out so that the American "Red States" overwhelm the "Blue States" by virtue of breeding -- which only may be true, depending on immigration policy. The problem Europe has is that it has been maintaining its population levels by importing people who, two and three generations in, remain alien and hostile to the base culture. Our immigration policy is wiser, which is not to say that it is wise; it just fares well by comparision. Still, it could be improved.

What I don't forsee is the giant culture clash that Steyn and Doc both wonder about. I don't think we'll ever have a single religion that overwhelms the world; even in the height of European colonization, for example, India remained mostly Hindu and Muslim rather than Christian. I do think, though, that Steyn is right to suggest that Europe is going to become far more Muslim in its outlook and law:

This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates? Even if one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria, it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting much store by "a woman's right to choose," in any sense.

At Doc's place, I commented along a similar line. This stuff is a problem for somebody, but I don't see why it should be a problem for Red State America.

Actually, in a lot of the world, I think we have more in common with Muslims than we do with anyone else. The Muslims of Xinjiang province, China, for example -- they're about as happy with Communist China as we are. I read Malaysian and Philippine newspapers regularly as part of my job (and so can you, if you want; Bernama, the state news wire, is on Google News, as is the Star of Malaysia and several others). I can't help but recognize a lot of North Georgia in the whole attitude expressed by a lot of Muslim provinces: "We're who we are, and we don't want your meddling in the way we do things, so leave us alone if you know what's good for you."

As far as I can tell, that applies to al Qaeda as much as to the US or their own central governments. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, for example, is happy to help hunt down bandits and Qaeda-linked groups in Mindanao province, Philippines, but will also fight the government army if it comes meddling. The rebels in Aceh, Indonesia, don't have any use for the Indonesian government or the US -- but they also don't like Qaeda-style meddlers, who want to shut down Achenese traditional culture and replace it with Taliban-style non-culture. Southern Thailand is about the same.

There's not a lot that a fellow raised in the American South is surprised to see. They're religious, and they have funny ideas about their religion, but they mostly just want to be left alone. They don't like meddlers, and mostly nobody suffers from their violence but them and people who stick their noses in their business.

It seems to me we could make allies out of people like that, under the right circumstances. After all, we don't give a damn what goes on in Aceh or Mindanao, as long as it doesn't involve people practicing to blow up US skyscrapers or Naval ships. While the rest of the world plots how to better meddle everywhere else -- China, Europe, our own leftists, NGOs, central governments everywhere -- we could get a long way on down the road we want to be on just by supporting these locals.

Anyone who grew up in the South can probably see what I mean. There is always the church down the road whose members think they're more moral than everyone else -- even the members of the other church down the road, which two years ago was the same church until they split up in a heated dispute over the interpretation of a line from one of the letters of St. Paul. These guys get hot over their particular understanding of the faith, and they will try to enact parts of it into law as the occasion arises. They have every right to do so; it's their country too.

If you can give them some room to do their thing -- say, a town council, or sometimes even just the church's managing board -- they'll confine themselves to that, and generally leave you alone. They don't really like you or approve of you, but they also don't really care about you. As long as you're not trying to change their town or their church, you can do what you like in your town over the hill. In fact, they kind of like that you do things differently -- it gives them something else to feel superior about.

River Tam was right. It's meddling that gets you in trouble. The best thing, if you're going to be a global leader, is to find a way to support people in doing what they want to do anyway. This is true whether you're trying to be a global leader in law and military power, or a global leader in the selling of computers or fashion products.

The great bulk of humanity, which would prefer to avoid politics anyway, will be entirely satisfied by this arrangement. That simplifies the problem: all that remains is to deal with that fraction of humanity that isn't happy unless they're telling everyone, everywhere what to do. That impulse lies behind not only al Qaeda's push for a universal Caliphate but also the United Nations' hand-waving about "unilateralism" and the various NGOs' constant attempts to bully nations into adopting vegetarianism, or banning guns, or whatever.

Anyone who comes selling a universal answer to a human problem is a danger. Not all of them will be terrorists, nor even violent at all, but all of them are selling something you'd be foolish to buy.

What does that mean for Europe? Nothing. Steyn is right; they're done. It does mean something for America, though, which is that we are likely to remain the leading global power for the forseeable future. We are the natural enemy of the "tell everyone what to do" crowd, whether they are Qaeda terrorists or NGO scolds who want to criminalize "hate speech" or fox hunting. But we're the natural ally of anyone, anywhere, who wants to do his own thing.

Indeed, it's the answer to Steyn and Lilek's question: people of the "tell everyone what to do" type see the US as the principle enemy of their natural impulses. With al Qaeda they differ only on the goals, and hopefully the acceptable methods. With the US, they differ on first principles. Al Qaeda's a competitor. We're the enemy.

Myers Again

Julie Myers Shuffles In:

Sovay, who knows how irritated I was with the Julie Myers nomination some months ago, mentioned tonight that Bush had appointed her by recess appointment. I realize the administration has a lot on its plate, and probably is only too happy to avoid any fights it can. Also, it's obviously true that the opposition in Congress is given over to both excessive rhetoric, and knee-jerk refusal of anything Bush asks. That has to be exhausting.

Still, the 'advice and consent' part of the Constitution is not meant to be an empty letter. Recess appointments made a lot of sense in 1787, when the Senate might be out of session for months in order for members to travel home and back again. These days, there isn't anywhere in the world that's more than about 24 hours away from Washington, if you're rich and powerful enough to command a private plane -- for example, if you're a Senator.

Why, then, make use of the provision? ThisNation provides a good writeup on the process, and also the remedies available to the Congress if a President seems to simply prefer to avoid debates on his nominees.

While this provision is fairly straightforward, it has produced several differences of opinion between the Congress and the President. How many days must the Senate fail to convene for it to lapse into a recess? Does a position have to become vacant during a Senate recess for a valid recess appointment to be made or does the position simply have to remain vacant during the recess? Instead of allowing the Court to settle these disputes, the Congress and the President have generally agreed to work together to solve them. This makes sense because neither side has a particularly clear interest in forcing the issue. If the President tries to force recess appointments on the Senate, thus circumventing the normal "advice and consent" process, the Congress can refuse to appropriate funds to pay the salaries of the appointees. The Senate might also take the extraordinary measure of blocking future nominations to "teach the President a lesson." Furthermore, if the Senate took a hostile approach to all recess appointments, it would essentially have to remain in session all of the time--an inefficient solution, to say the least.

Currently, the President and Congress generally adhere to a procedure for recess appointments that minimizes the potential for interbranch conflict. If the President wishes to make a recess appointment or appointments, he generally sends a list of persons to be appointed to members of the Senate shortly before or during a recess. If Senators express serious concerns about a nominee, the President will likely hold off on the appointment until the Senate is back in session and the normal procedure can be followed.

"Currently" obviously should be read "until recently." Myers has been subject to quite a lot of concern.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said on Friday that Ms. Myers "really was not qualified for the position." Mr. Lieberman said Congress had intended the position to be held by someone with at least five years' management experience.

"In my opinion, she lacks the management background," he said. "And one of her key responsibilities is to enforce immigration laws, and she has virtually no immigration experience."

Daniel K. Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii, echoed those concerns. "The head of I.C.E. should be an individual who has demonstrated extensive executive-level leadership and the ability to manage a budget through reorganizations and budget cycles," Mr. Akaka said. "Ms. Myers has not demonstrated this ability."

Lieberman, at least, isn't one of the knee-jerk enemies of the President, although he does vote with his party more often than not. The Times, which is one of the knee-jerks, digs up a couple of Republicans to say bad things about her, and also a National Review editorial. They didn't quote me, but I had one or two or three things to say about it also. So did Froggy, who served as a Customs Special Agent -- that is, one of the people whom Myers will now be commanding. This isn't a case of the political opposition stonewalling out of spite. It's a case of genuine, serious concerns raised by allies as well as opponents of the President -- and the President choosing to simply ignore those concerns, and those allies.

No wonder they want to avoid a debate. Here is the administration's defense against charges that Myers is an unqualified nepotism appointment:

"She's tried criminal cases and worked with customs agents on everything from drug smuggling to money laundering," Ms. Healy said. "So to say that Julie does not have the prerequisite experience to lead I.C.E., it simply ignores her extensive background working with law enforcement, immigration and customs."

Here's a hint, in case you folks at the White House ever want to do this kind of thing again and there's not a handy recess. If you want to convince the public that your appointee is a highly qualified expert and not someone who is simply being promoted due to her political connections, don't have your spokeswoman call her by her first name. It says volumes that she's so close to the White House that they, reflexively and thoughtlessly, refer to her in the most familiar way.

Hard

A Hard-Hitting Town Hall:

Greyhawk has some more from the Murtha-Moran town hall meeting.

Hello Mr Moran I'm General Wagner. I'm here tonight, I decided to come at 7:30. And I'll tell you the reason I came at 7:30 is because I want an answer to a letter, to a friend of ours. She wrote this letter to Mr. Murtha, where she pointed out to him that he was causing the insurgents to bring more activity against the soldiers in Iraq, just as the traitors did during the Vietnam war. I was fighting in 1972 with the Vietnamese when people were cavorting with the North Vietnamese.

Her son was killed today.

I got the message at 7:30 tonight, and I'll tell you, I wasn't going to waste my time coming here because I knew the trash that was going to be put out. But I'm really mad. Because what is being put out is being used to incite the insurgents to continue this war, just as it incited General Giap to consider the Vietnam war.

He hasn't answered her letter, Mr Moran, but I want to read a paragraph to you...

And so he did. Moran's response, far from inspiring, was as off-balance as you would expect from someone who just got hit upside of the head with a sledgehammer.

Neverthess, he had to respond. The lady, may her grief be eased by time, has absolute moral authority to demand an answer.

Marine SOCOM

Marines @ SOCOM:

BlackFive has a post which started as speculation as to whether the new USMC SOCOM units would have a different name (e.g., "Marine Raiders" instead of just "Marines"). It's become something a bit more than that in the comments. Doc Russia and I have already engaged it, as has JarHeadDad. Some of the rest of you might like to jump in.

Idiots

Oh, This Is Going To Work Out Great:

One never knows if Drudge has been drinking before noon again (not that there's anything wrong with that), but if this report is accurate, it shows that the Democratic national party is cheerfully unwilling to change course in the face of the rocks in front of it, in spite of the experience of having hit those same rocks just recently.

Senate Democrats intend to zero in on Alito’s alleged enthusiastic membership to an organization, they will charge, that was sexist and racist!

Democrats hope to tie Alito to Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP). Alito will testify that he joined CAP as a protest over Princeton policy that would not allow the ROTC on campus.

THE DRUDGE REPORT has obtained a Summer 1982 article from CAP’s PROSPECT magazine titled “Smearing The Class Of 1957” that key Senate Democrats believe could thwart his nomination! In the article written by then PROSPECT editor Frederick Foote, Foote writes: “The facts show that, for whatever reasons, whites today are more intelligent than blacks.” Senate Democrats expect excerpts like this written by other Princeton graduates will be enough to torpedo the Alito nomination.

So, let's play this out.

DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN: Mr. Alito, you belonged to an organization that held that whites are more intelligent than blacks.

ALITO: I did?

DC: Yes. Your old organization, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, ran an article to that effect in its publication.

A: Really? Huh. I don't remember reading that.

DC: It ran in the Summer 1982 edition of their journal.

A: Could be. I don't remember reading it, though. I had other concerns in 1982. In fact, the reason I joined CAP was one of them: Princeton was trying to keep ROTC off campus.

DC: Don't change the subject. What about these racist writings?

A: Don't remember seeing them. But what I do remember is that Princeton was slandering our military, and doing its best to deny the military access to the campus. Our national defense depends on quality recruits, and...

See where this is going? Right. The same place we've been the last few elections. Republicans are running on the need to provide for a national defense in the face of violent enemies; Democrats are running on identity politics concerns that appeal, by definition, to narrow interests. The Democrats hope to build enough such interests together to make a coalition majority, but so far it just hasn't worked. Coalitions are hard to keep together: their interests are often at variance with each other.

The Republican message, by contrast, is a national unity message. The ROTC story speaks to every American. Not every American will be concerned at all with the question of whether, in 1982, this magazine published a story that could be construed as racist (indeed, I can't muster even idle interest myself); but every American has an opinion as to whether the military is a fine and noble organization, or a base one that should be banned from campuses.

Sadly, we do have a sizable minority of citizens who will hold the latter. That being said, the majority will and has stood with the former proposition.

Bush wins. Alito confirmed. Somewhat more than half of US citizens look in wonder upon the Democrats, who seem consistently willing to take positions that can be interpreted as anti-military. That's just not a competitive message among the swing voters who occupy middle America. Haven't ya'll watched any Superbowls lately?

Well, you'll have another chance soon. I'll bet there will be a few references to the military, designed by the best minds in corporate America to appeal to the broad mass of citizens. They know the right way to talk about the military in order to maximize profit.

Pay attention this time. You might learn something.

Froggy

Froggy Reviews "Navy SEALS":

It's worth having a look at his review of the movie about his service. My favorite part:

The interesting thing about watching the movie again this time was that the “team” commander (Biehn) contacted an American journalist with connections in Lebanon to gain information about the terrorists and the location of the missing missiles. In 2006 America, this is something of a quaint proposition.

Yeah.

ML

The Passing of a True Hero:

The Castle draws our attention, and rightly, to the story of Hugh Thompson, who has died at the age of sixty-two. Thompson was the helicopter pilot at My Lai, who on that terrible day put his ship in between US soldiers and fleeing noncombatants, and transported those he could to safety.

Correction

How A Blogger Makes A Correction:

For that matter, how a man does:

If there was another house just 20 meters away, too, I think we do have to look at whether the force used was proportional, under the old Jus in Bello doctrine we all had to learn during precommissioning training.

Much as I'd like to bring it to the bastards, I think an analysis in light of jus in bello and proportionality is entirely fair and should be constantly renewed.

And now, having written a post that sucks harder than an incontinent street whore with a plane to catch, I have to go commit sepuku in order to preserve my family's good name.

I'll leave it up for the record, but the post "A good strike" is hereby retracted. My heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones.

Well, except for their loved ones are moojies. Then to Hell with 'em.

True to the facts, true to himself. And in real time.

Blogger Sued

Hunting Bloggers:

This should be fun.

Lawyers who filed the suit say that Web logs and other new media should be held to the same standards of accountability as traditional media and journalism. Brodbkorb, a former operative for the Minnesota Republican Party, pledges to protect his source and to keep his website going.

The suit alleges that Brodkorb, citing an unnamed source, defamed the St. Paul-based public relations firm New School Communications when he posted a claim that New School had become publicly critical of the congressional campaign of Coleen Rowley only after Rowley rejected a contract with the firm.

Despite being told that New School does not perform political campaign work, Brodkorb, the suit says, continues to make the claim, even though his source "may, in fact, be a fabrication."

If you do some follow-up reading on the blog in question, you'll see that it appears that the claims he made have support from several traditional journalistic outlets. That's going to be a problem for the PR firm when they get to court. They could still win, if the get a sympathetic jury (everyone loves it when corporations attempt to sue the little guy, right?), but it makes it less likely.

What is more likely is that they'll lose their case, while getting enough media attention drawn to the blogger's claims as to convince the world that those claims are true. Thus, at best they might win damages the blogger probably can't pay (I'm sure we all have $50,000 in liquid assets sitting around, right?) while humiliating their client; more likely, they'll lose while humiliating their client.

But those would have been the options even if the likelihood of winning were reversed: even if victory were certain, the media attention from the case would train the spotlight on the blogger's charges. That suggests that the PR firm was not acting out of a desire to win the lawsuit, but a desire to use the suit to silence the blogger without a trial. The firm doubtless thought the blogger would fold, being unable to afford to mount a legal defense. This kind of rank intimidation is nothing but an attempt to use the simple weight of money to push people around.

Jeff Blanco suggests that the blogger has done all he ought to do by providing a comments section in which the PR firm can dispute his claim, and there is something to that argument. Just like here at Grim's Hall, commenters can post evidence and argument to prove that the blogger is wrong. I've been proven wrong just now and again by readers, at least two of whom -- Eric Blair and Captain Leggett -- are now co-bloggers here.

If I say something you think is flat wrong, or untrue, you're invited to prove it in real time and with the full attention of the readership. The ability to do that is something that makes blogs different from newspapers, say, where the best you can hope for is a correction, published someday, without fanfare, and hidden somewhere inside the paper instead of on the front page.

I don't know if that satisfies the legalities for libel, it surely must go a long way. I've always heard that truth is an absolute defense against a charge of libel, so "I have every reason to think this is true, and invite any evidence to the contrary to be published right here" isn't too far away from simple truth.

Indeed, it's the closest thing to the scientific method that "journalism" (for this purpose, to include bloggers) has ever developed. The scientific method is of course the best way humanity has found to determine where uncertain truths can be found. As long as the method is administered honestly, commenters are allowed to post evidence and argument, and the blogger will admit if he is proven wrong on a point, I think the system must be judged as good as any newspaper correction from a legal standpoint. It is certainly better, from a practical one.

Pranks

Pranks:

Don't miss this story from the Economist (of all places). The writing is as stiff as you'd imagine, but it's worth clicking on it just for the picture.

None of you will be surprised to learn that I have had a hand in a prank or two myself. I take great pleasure in that kind of humor, which performs the absolutely necessary function of upending the social order so everyone can laugh at it for a moment. Not that I'm an enemy of social order -- just the opposite. Still, like everything, you have to know how to laugh at it. A certain amount of order frees us to live without fear. Too much becomes a prison, or a justification for evil and oppression. Laughter is often the thing that lets you break it off at just the right point.

On one occasion a companion and I "liberated" a desk from the school, and spirited it away for six months or so until the day before Spring Break. Then -- having painted the desk with the famous "Kilroy was Here!" symbol along with our class designation -- we returned it to the campus by hanging it thirty feet in the air from the branches of a giant tree. Getting it back down again proved a logistical challenge for the administration.

What we had not known, but what made the prank perfect, was that the park in which the tree was located was to enjoy its 100th anniversary that next morning. It had been designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. The occasion was one in which every dignitary in Atlanta came by to see it, up to and including the mayor himself. The challenge of removing the offending desk was too difficult to be accomplished before the ceremony, so...

That was a pretty good school prank, though it doesn't compare to the story from over the holidays about the Fire Department ghosts. Surely some of the rest of you have good stories as well.

SA Move

Southern Appeal:

The infamous blawg "Southern Appeal," often cited here at Grim's Hall, has a new address. Please make a note if you are interested.

t-storms

"In Despite of the Thunderstoms"

Bold words from a fellow on the way out the door, but they didn't prove out too well. I wrote that Monday morning, left just a bit after noon, got to the airport at two, got through the check-in line by three, through security by and to the gate by four. The flight was delayed half an hour; then two more hours; then cancelled entirely due to the storms and tornados. The backup of flights caused all manner of chaos.

As a result, I didn't leave on a flight until two in the morning, and that to a different regional airport. I spent yesterday getting back here from there. My wife and little boy couldn't get on that flight, so they won't be arriving until later this morning.

Even that was a serious improvement over what the airline intended for us; they said they'd reschedule all three of us to arrive sometime tomorrow.

I'll be a couple of days sorting things out from the mess.

RV

"Force Multipliers"

Russ Vaughn sends his latest, which I thought you might enjoy:

Force Multipliers
Wikipedia: force multiplier-a military term referring to a factor that dramatically increases (hence multiplies) the combat-effectiveness of a given military force.

In Iraq an IED explodes,
An American soldier dies,
But that blast will grow as the media blow
It up before our eyes.
And trumpet to the watching world,
These fifth column falsifiers,
Like sheep they bleat we face defeat,
Our foe’s force multipliers.

Osama and his minions know,
In combat they can’t beat us;
So they hope and pray will come a day,
Our own media will defeat us.
Ignoring all the good we’ve done,
Liberals focus on the gore,
On losses mounting and body counting,
To prove we’ve lost this war.

They disgraced us once in Vietnam,
So now these leftists feel,
That again they’ll win with media spin,
And make America kneel.
But defeatists aren’t the only ones,
Learned lessons from the past;
Back then we swore we’d lose no more,
This time we’re standing fast.

The Internet’s exposed them,
As elitist media liars;
They stand unclothed and widely loathed,
Our foe’s force multipliers.
Some day when all our troops return,
With Iraq on freedom’s path,
The liberal elite who sought defeat,
May face some Righteous wrath.

Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66

Alas

All Good Things:

I suppose I couldn't stay in the Great State of Georgia forever. It's time to head back to Virginia, and so I'll be taking wing out of ATL in despite of the thunderstorms.

For your reading pleasure in the meanwhile, here's a link that Eric Blair will love. I like the idea behind it myself. Education of this sort is important, and anyone who qualifies for this deserves to be shamed rather than honored.

Opinion Journal has an article about Islamic ideology, and how we can know which ones to support. It's written by Abdurraman Wahid, about whom the Journal says little. I'll tell you a bit more about him: in Indonesia, he's known by the nickname "Gus Dur." He is a "former president of Indonesia," as they say, but what they don't tell you is that he was impeached. They also don't tell you that he was the former leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Muslim organization in the world with forty million members.

Gus Dur almost split the organization last year in a political fight for control of it, which he lost. Even so, he remains highly popular with a large wing of it, which includes the quasi-militant Banser. Supposedly a "youth movement," the Banser are sort of "good" blackshirts -- they march and organize and channel angry young Muslim energy in the usual fascist ways, but so far they've been used only to good purpose. For example, they guarded Christian churches this Christmas, as they do every year. In 2000, they lost one of their members to a terrorist bombing set by a fellow Muslim, but they keep coming back.

Indonesia has a lot of genuine fascist organizations, including especially the FPI ("Islamic Defenders Front"). Gus Dur has used, and more often threatened to use, the Banser to keep the real fascists in line. So, when he writes to America today, he ought to be seen for what he is: a hard-hitting 'elder statesman' of Indonesia, ready and willing to use both political and actual force in pursuit of his goal. His goal is the success of a kind of moderate Islam, the sort we would like to see arising everywhere to combat anti-Western militants, but it contains the seeds of a fascist movement and that has often been dangerous in the past. Keep all that in mind while you read his letter.

The Hat

The Hat:

I forgot to explain the hat. About a week ago, I went to Sackett's up in Jasper, Georgia, where I had been told there was a gentleman who could clean a hat. I had my grandfather's old silverbelly Stetson with me, which has had an eventful life. It had oil stains from his days as a mechanic, burns from his days as a welder (and from my days using it to fan campfires into life), soot stains from the same, and so forth. I wanted to have a man clean it who really knew how.

I met the gentleman mentioned in the post below. Now eighty, he is one of only sixteen remaining independent hatmakers in the United States (indeed, I saw in Shoot magazine that another of them is getting out of the business. Then there were fifteen, I suppose). He took one look at me, and said, "That is an old hat you're wearing."

"Yes," I agreed, taking it off and handing it to him.

"Ninteen forties," he remarked after a moment. "Don't see this bash any more." 'Bash' refers to the way the hat is creased on the top. "It became popular in the 1930s, and people pretty much stopped making it by the end of the forties. Don't see this quality of leather in hatbands anymore either. Grand old hat."

He spent an hour cleaning it, while we talked about my grandfather and his grandfather, the days he'd spent as a boy learning to work hats with an old man who lived near their ranch, and his time in the army. At the end, he gave it back. I asked what I owed, but he refused to take even a dime. "It's just a pleasure to work on a fine old hat like that," he said.

So I went back this week and bought a hat from him -- he handles all hat sales from Sackett's -- and what he sold me was a Stetson. He said he thought I'd like this better than anything else he had in the store. "The newest thing," he said. "It's made from buffalo hide and fur felt. Whole thing is buffalo, including the leather hatband. It wears like iron. Took Stetson years to develop it."

When I bought it, the hat looked like this. "Tatanka" is Lakota for "buffalo." (I should also mention, in case any of you are wanting a hat and are planning to be down Georgia way, that he sold it to me for a whole lot less than the listed price. Sackett's is a good place to do business, if you're interested.) It's got a bash called a "cattleman's crease." This is pretty much the standard bash for "cowboy" hats these days, and I've frankly always hated it. I asked him if he'd be willing to lower the brim's "wings," and put a different bash in it.

"Glad to lower the brim," he said, and did, "but I can't change the bash. Once you put a cattleman's crease in, it never looks right with anything else. It's too tight a bash to undo. You'll cause the felt to crack if you try to undo it, which will ruin it."

Felt hats can be remade by the use of water, especially hot water, and best of all steam. You normally use the steam to heat the felt, making it pliant; it will keep whatever form it dries into. So, you heat it up, work it until it's what you want, and then let it cool and dry. It will set that way, like concrete.

Apparently the buffalo felt is a lot tougher than the usual beaver felt, or horsehair felt (the Australian Akubra hats use rabbit). He said that, to work it, you had to put it in a chemical bath.

Well, I thanked him and took it home. I hate to be told that something can't be done, though, so I gave it some thought. I figured some of those chemicals probably dried into the hat, so if I could get them lubricated again they ought to work. I put the hat in a bath of very hot water, and let it soak it up for an hour or so. Sure enough, it became pliant -- not very much so, still much stiffer than any other hat I've handled. Still, I gently worked out the cattleman's crease, and put in an open telescope bash. It worked beautifully.

Nothing makes a man happy better than doing something a master of the art said couldn't be done.

New Year

Happy New Year:

All the best to all of you. New Year's Eve has never been one of my favorite holidays. It's really a bureaucrat's holiday, marking nothing but a change in the keeping of records. May as well celebrate the due-date for the year's taxes, seems to me. But whatever; people seem to like it, so good on you.

This has been a most interesting trip down Georgia way. I forget, when I'm elsewhere, how fine a state Georgia is. Nowhere else I've ever been has the same potential for adventure and joy. Partially it's the terrain: the misty mountains in the north, the alligator-haunted swamps in the south, the crisp sea islands with their wild horses, Savannah with her Spanish moss. Partially it's the people, and not just the Southerners. The clash of cultures between transplanted "Sunbelters" and traditional Southerners keeps things interesting.

Of particular moment are the folks from New York. I encountered one of these new transplants and his wife. It was an older fellow with silver white hair, a black leather jacket, a black foreign luxury car, and a New York accent. "Hey, look at this!" he called to his wife, who was warming herself in a fine fur coat. He pointed at me and my hat. "I didn't see anybody who looked like this when I was down in Texas!"

"Mister," I said quietly, for I was walking past him, "I'm from right here." I pointed at the ground.

"Really?" his wife asked.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Fifteen years ago, where you're standing was a cattle pasture; and this hat belonged to my grandfather."

I tipped it to her, and left the two of them standing quietly in what must have been a complete departure from their normal condition. Honestly: to move down to Roswell, Georgia, twenty-five miles from where I grew up, and make fun of my grandfather's hat.

Well, that fellow got off easy. I'm a nice guy, as you all know. I was talking to a man I admire greatly -- a tall, thin gentleman of eighty years, and a master of the craft of making hats. He learned the craft as a youth from another hatter, who died while this gentleman was in the army overseas. I bought a hat from him, in fact, but we'll get to that.

I told him about my troubles down in Roswell, and he agreed that the whole city has become a wasteland. I relate his comments as I recall them:

"I was down in Roswell recently," he said. "Fellow got behind me, blowing his horn and waving his fist. I pulled over at a gas station and he hopped out, so I got out. He came running up cursing me in his Yankee accent, said I'd cut him off back there. 'Mister,' I said, 'I sure do apologize if I did, but I never saw you.'

"He said, 'I ought to beat you half to death. I just wish I'd brought my gun so I could shoot you.'

"Well," the old gentleman continued, "I said he really should have brought it, as I'd certainly brought mine. I opened my coat. At that, the fellow turned white, ran back to his car, and raced off."

When I was a boy, the road signs on the way into the state read: "Welcome to Georgia -- State of Adventure!" They were only telling the plain truth.

Dinner

Time Again:

I would like to recall your attention to this post, in which I proposed a complete reconsideration of the justice system.

Last night I had dinner with an old teacher, one of the most logical and thoughtful men I've ever known. He is also, as it happens, a genuine socialist -- and was once among the early members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in the days before it decided that the cause of anti-segregation would best be served by purging all of its white members (that way it could speak, apparently some believed, with more complete moral authority -- all the members being black, they'd all be victims, and being a victim gave them that authority. This irony naturally foreshadowed the course of the Civil Rights Movement, which went from a righteous and clarion call for men to be judged on the content of their characters, to a demand for affirmative action based on the color of their skin).

In any event, he and I had a long discussion on the topic of the need for such a reform. As you would expect, we both began from completely different first principles, and yet we both agreed that the existing system serves none of the purposes of justice as well as almost any alternative -- and at a staggering cost, if you consider what the price is for maintaining a nationwide prison system. This is true whether "life without parole," or a twenty-year court procedure for death penalties, is the standard top punishment. Almost any system would be cheaper than this.

That leaves out the cost to society of a system that fails at everything except warehousing men, so that they are released in ten or fifteen years with fewer honest prospects, more organized criminal contacts, and a greater awareness of criminal procedures than when they went in.

It's a big topic, so it's wise that we should take time to think about it. You've all had a little while to ponder it, at least in the backs of your minds. Please take a look over the original post again if you'd like, and let's talk about it. What are we trying to accomplish? What should we be trying to accomplish? How can we best get there?

More Secrecy

More Problems of Secrecy:

The Washington Post has two big headlines today in its online edition, and both are about secret wings of the GWOT. The second is more interesting than the first: "Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor." It holds that:

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

Well, that is the idea behind the whole classification system. And yet, we have learned a substantial amount about the program:

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe.

Emphasis added. It's of course the case that "some lawyers" will be willing to stake out any legal position -- that's why neither the ACLU nor their opponent of the week ever has trouble finding a lawyer. There are lawyers with opinions on all sides of every issue in the law.

Therein lies the problem with the debate the Post wants us to have over these programs -- a problem that poses a real puzzle for the citizen who is interested in doing his duty as a thinker and a voter. Before we join the 'rising furor,' we really ought to know what we're raising a furor about.

Yet the program is secret. Details are available only to those directly involved. We know some several details due to leaks of the sort that the Post's first article is about. Just like the case with "some lawyers," however, any government agency has dissenters. It doesn't say anything bad about you that you are a dissenter -- I've argued at length that maintaining internal dissent is a critical national security issue. What becomes a problem is when the dissenters decide to take their case to the public, in violation of their oath.

It's a problem because they are putting forward only one point of view, from a perspective that is limited. They know the details of their own part of the program; they don't know what the rest of the CIA is doing. They have their own particular reading of the details and events. They are dissenters, so we can reasonably assume that their interpretation is a minority reading at CIA.

Because of the secrecy oaths, however, we can't get a balanced view. There is no opportunity for a response from the other side. Consider Bill Roggio's response to another story in the Washington Post, one about him. It asserted that he was there doing Information Operations for the US military. Bill pointed out that this was entirely incorrect -- a reading of the facts that was flat wrong.

Almost certainly there's a response of the same type lurking in the minds of many a CIA officer. "What the #@$@#?" they are doubtless saying this morning -- just as I've found myself saying it on the occasions when I've seen press reports on topics about which I knew the truth. This has happened a time or two, and the media gets the details so badly wrong that I wonder what on earth they were thinking.

Yet the other officers at CIA can not reply. Their oath forbids it, and even if it did not, national security interests forbid disclosing the rest of the details or the alternative interpretations of the details that are available. The debate -- the "furor" -- must be carried out in public on the basis only of the information provided by the dissenters, usually without rebuttal.

The solution to this problem is the republican one -- the small "r" is intentional -- which is to elect representatives who can review the information and report to us that things are, or are not, as they ought to be. Thus the problem of secrecy is worsened by the reckless political culture lurking in D.C. these days.

Repairing that culture by replacing the currently worthless run of Congressmen is our only option, however. We cannot strip away the secrecy from the most critical programs; and we ought not to pretend to be conducting honest reasoning into these programs with only a limited, one-sided view available to us as data. To do so would be to do exactly what Bush is accused of doing by those who disagree with him: to reason within a bubble of single-minded opinion.

Culture & The South

The South & "High" Culture:

Apparently Matt Yglesias of The American Prospect is involved in a blogger's dispute with The Corner. The part that concerns me turns on this argument:

The most recent change occurred in 1964, when its center of gravity shifted to the South and the Sunbelt, now the solid base of "Republicanism." The consequences of that profound shift are evident, especially with respect to prudence, education, intellect and high culture.

The Corner apparently feels rather defensive. Jonah Goldberg says that "I don't think you can dispute" that Yglesias is right to say that "the vast majority of America's premiere institutions of education and high culture are located in the 'blue' areas." Ramesh Ponnuru offers a mild defense of the South, but then asserts that his argument turns on "the Sunbelt," what we used to call the New South. He thereby writes off most of, and indeed the best parts of, the South.

I shall gladly dispute what Yglesias attempts as his main point. When asserting that "high culture" is a blue-state thing, he says, "That's not to say the South is some kind of total wasteland -- I visited the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum earlier this year and it's first-rate, albeit a bit small -- but on the whole this stuff is primarily in the Northeast and to a lesser extent on the Pacific coast."

Well, now. If "high culture" means modern art, you've got a point.

On the other hand, if modernism is precisely the rejection of the classic high culture of the West -- as practitioners of modernism have often argued, and as has likewise been argued by those who reject modernism since at least the time of G. K. Chesterton -- then the location of modern art museums is not particularly telling. Rather than an absence of "high culture," the South is almost the last bastion of traditional Western high culture, both in its intellectual and its cultural foundations.

In the 19th century, Harvard produced Francis Parkman, who wrote the following on the proper education:

[I]f any pale student glued to his desk here seek an apology for a way of life whose natural fruit is that pallid and emasculate scholarship, of which New England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.

If you follow that link, you'll find also a bit of scoffing from today's Harvard over the fact that MIT recognizes riflery as a "varsity sport." "Hey!" says a living Harvard graduate. "I was on the Harvard varsity rifle team," once upon a time:

In fact, MIT claims to have 42 varsity sports, one more than even Harvard. Of course, Harvard scoffed snootily, "Hearing that MIT was claiming 42 varsity teams, officials at Harvard, which has 41, chafed. They point to MIT's varsity pistol and rifle teams as evidence of MIT's skewed vision of varsity sports."

Hey, wait a minute! I was ON the Harvard Rifle Team in 1973! The team capitan, a member of my "freak fraternity" and now owner of a software company in Houston, had the key to the Harvard rifle range and we would go down there in the wee hours under the effects of whatnot and invent weird games like hanging tootsie roll pops from shoelaces tied to the mechanized target holders. When we rolled 'em back down the range, the lollypops swung around wildly and were wicked hard to hit. Or even see, for that matter.

We lost all 12 matches that season. Most of the guys we were shooting against were steely-eyed vets with thousand-yard stares just back form Nam and trying to finish college on Uncle Sam, while we were just a bunch of Ivy freaks who liked to play with guns.

The problem is that, rather than being a bastion of high culture, Harvard etc. has abandoned the traditional conception of a complete education. From the time of Plato we have seen that conception expressed as a need to educate the whole man, both mind and body, so that he possesses a complete understanding of virtue and also the capacity and will to enact it and defend it in the world. One of the earliest of Plato's dialogues, according to the usual methods of determining their age, is the Laches, which treats the importance of developing courage and the question of whether or not it can be developed by practicing fighting in armor. The union of philosophy and valor is so important that, even in his most developed writings, Plato considered it central to his conception of the soul and the best kind of society. He suggested that society be divided into "golden" Guardians who would be philosophers first, their "silver" auxiliaries who would be warriors first, and the rest of mankind who would be workers first. But this only mirrored his conception of the soul, with philosophy and valor separate from and superior to the rest of the human nature.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, the first virtue Aristotle treats is bravery. The whole point of Aristotle's ethics is to develop the right kind of fighting, thinking citizen. Like Plato, he felt that correct politics grew out of that ethics: the city should mirror the man, as he explains in his Politics.

That philosophy has served as the foundation of the Western understanding. Indeed, we date the rise and fall of the West by the rise and fall of that philosophy: when it perishes, and the rational fall beneath the unthinking, we call it the Dark Ages or the "Low" Middle Ages in spite of the fact that communities of thinkers and monks survived and even flourished. When it arises, so that Medieval society is cleanly divided between Oratores, Bellatores, et Laboratores, we call it the "High" Middle Ages. When capitalism causes a rising middle class to blur the lines again, we call it the Late Middle Ages.

That, gentlemen, is the high culture of the West. In the South, foremost, is it preserved. In the South, alone, do its institutions flourish. The three American military academies are maintained elsewhere, but only the South has native ones of similar prestige: VMI and the Citadel. While the great institutions of the northeast and California maintain instruction in philosophy, they have cast aside the role of educating men who are bellatores as well as oratores: that is, men who know how to fight as well as to pray -- or, as is more and more commonly the case, simply to orate.

Thus we have institutions like Harvard, which once scoffed at the pale 'emasculate scholar,' and now seeks to produce him above all. These are institutions that -- not to put too fine a point on it -- prefer to reject military recruiters out of preference for another cause. Institutions that once instructed men in riflery as well as philosophy now scoff at riflery.

Yet the division of society was always meant -- in Aristotle, in Plato, in the Middle Ages, and now -- to mirror the division of the individual soul. Western high culture envisions a man who is a thinker first, a fighter second, and everything else third. He must be all of these things, or he is not a Man of the West. The Medieval nobleman was meant to be educated as well as a fighter; he was to know tactics and the art of heraldry, at least; and as the High Middle Ages progressed, became expected to know poetry and the rules of courtly behavior. The monk was expected to be a soldier against the devil's cause, if he was not a solider in fact -- as were many priests in the Church Militant.

Do not tell me that the blue states are the seat of Western high culture. By and large, they have rejected it.

Compare those statistics above with these, which break down recruiting by geographic region of the United States. The South is far and away the leader in recruitment, although it is the poorest region of the United States. The wealthiest region, the Northeast, trails in recruitment.

That suggests that the media picture is even less accurate. The military maintains these levels of representation in the richest and second-richest quintiles, while drawing 40% of the force from the poorest region in the country and only fifteen percent from the richest region.

That suggests that military recruitment is heavily disproportionate among the upper and upper-middle class everywhere but the Northeast...

No, gentlemen, the seat of high culture is not the blue states. It is the solid South.

Canada export

Canada Exports Its Whining to US:

The Prime Minister of Canada has a complaint for you. He says the US is corrupting his culture, and turning Canada into violent, evil America:

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller warned that Canada could become like the United States after gunfire erupted Monday on a busy street filled with holiday shoppers, killing a 15-year-old girl and wounding six bystanders -- the latest victims in a record surge in gun violence in Toronto.

Yep, sounds just like America to me. I think we can all easily recall a time when we were out on a busy street, shopping with our families, and gunfire erupted all around us.

What?

Well, OK, maybe not. But we can at least recall a time when it happened to someone we knew, and...

No?

Well, I'm sure we can recall a time when we read about it happening somewhere in the US?

No?

All right, fine, neither can I. For some reason, we don't see a lot of gunfights in crowded American shopping districts. But we do get the occasional story about violence in shops, even if it's not as colorful as a gunfight on a crowded street:

Joe Phillips just wanted to help a friend fix her car, but police say that when he entered an auto parts store, an armed robber forced him to change his plans. According to a police report, a 21-year-old man brought a gas can into the store and began to fuel a small motorcycle that was on display. When a clerk told him to stop, the suspect pulled a gun, pointed it at the worker and announced he was robbing the place. It was then that Phillips drew his own gun and told the young man to drop his firearm. The two exchanged gunfire and the would-be robber was shot. He was recovering at a hospital and was expected to be arrested after his release. “That’s exactly like Joe,” said Karl Phillips, Joe’s brother. “Joe’s a good Samaritan, always has been. Joe wouldn’t have gotten involved if he didn’t think it was a matter of life and death.” A clerk was also injured, but is expected to recover. (The News Tribune, Tacoma WA, 09/30/05)

There, you see? Exactly like Canada. Well, there is that one difference: the good guys are armed here, too, and able to stop the crime in its tracks.

I ran the word "shopping" through The Armed Citizen archives. It doesn't come up much, and mostly in terms of people who had either just finished shopping and come home, or who were on their way to do some shopping. Criminals in America, even the gun-and-knife toting set, are kind of on the run here. We keep them to the shadows.

Here's the closest thing I could find, from ten years ago:

American Rifleman Issue: 8/1/1995
"He's the only reason why they didn't empty the entire store. What he did was outstanding," said one police officer about an unidentified man who single-handedly put an end to looting at an Atlanta, Georgia, shopping mall. When hundreds of young revelers-turned-hoodlums ran wild and began ransacking and looting businesses, the man jumped from his car with a shotgun, firing three shots into the air. The thieves scattered and fled as the citizen knocked stolen merchandise from some of their hands and held one young crook for arriving police officers.

Maybe the problem isn't that America is exporting violence to Canada. Maybe the problem is that Canada has stopped its own citizens from having the tools to perform their individual duty to uphold and defend the common peace.

Someone Worth Reading

Howdy All,

Popping in to suggest a blogger for the sidebar: Chris Roach's man-sized target.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to meet Chris while at a blog get-together with Chester (Adventures of Chester) and learned of his blog. Since then, he's been a daily read; it speaks ill of me for not suggesting him sooner-- but hey, I got to it before the end of the year.

FCVFD

More Fire Department Fun:

Today I went with my father to take the antique ladder truck on a run, which is necessary to keeping it in good working order. It's a beautiful 1930s model with mahogany ladders that are probably worth more than the truck itself. We drove it over to a local park where my son Beowulf was playing, and then the boy got to ride around on the old ladder truck. What a lucky, happy boy.

I was driving the pickup trailing the thing, to keep people from getting too close to it. My father was driving the ladder truck. When we got to the park, there was a guy there flying a remote-control airplane, which was buzzing merrily around the park's airspace.

A 1930's firetruck will turn heads, and it did indeed turn the head of the "pilot" running his airplane. As we pulled around the circumference of the park, he watched the old truck with such devotion that he forgot all about his little airplane.

That wee plane slammed right into one of the big light-poles used to illuminate one of the baseball fields. Wham! It flew apart into three pieces.

The guy quickly ran over and collected the pieces, threw them in his truck, and drove away rapidly. I saw the park workers over there a bit later, and I wonder if they'll now have to replace any of the big lights that were up on that pole.

Well, these things happen.

Camp Kat

Camp Katrina Knocks a Homer:

Yep, the Specialist is absolutely correct about this:

From a recent AP article highlighting the escalating wars over illegal downloading:

It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court....

So let me get this straight: it's perfectly alright for the music recording industry to peek inside a computer without a warrant to look for downloaded songs, but it's a federal crime for President Bush to monitor phone calls to try to save American lives?

That seems to be the position some are adopting. I don't see how the RIAA can't be admitting to something equivalent to breaking-and-entering in this business. How can we say that the government, where we have representation, is bound in this area -- but it's perfectly all right for a hostile corporate concern to charge right in? Nothing against corporations, but the government works for me, at least in theory. The RIAA doesn't, not even in theory.

IO

IO:

Greyhawk explains information operations:

I have a gun. You have a gun. I can talk you into setting that gun down, or I can shoot you.

I say we give peace a chance.

That's about the size of it. Meanwhile, Bill Roggio explains why what he's doing isn't IO, and why al Qaeda's efforts to influence the debate aren't equivalent to military IO anyway. Hint: they're mostly doing it by killing people, rather than placing stories.

Mao

The Chairman:

On the campus of Zhejiang University, there is a giant golden statue of Chairman Mao, his arm raised as if in benediction over China's budding young scholars. I remember looking at it in astonishment; but of course it has to exist. China is not ready to deal with the truth about the man.

MilBlogger GI Korea quotes an article from the University of California at Berkeley, which considers the 112th birthday of the Chairman.

“He is written in the constitution as the guiding force for China,” she says, “and it is also illegal to oppose Mao.” She says because Beijing withholds the truth about Mao, younger generations who did not live under him have no other choice than to accept a distorted view of the leader. “The regime is determined to perpetuate the myth of Mao,” Chang says.

Simon's rebuttal, cited above under "the truth," points out that the benefits China now enjoys come exclusively from those areas in which it has been undoing Mao's work. It also includes an editorial comment on which I'd like to further comment:

Leaders like President Hu Jintao copied Mao, he said, travelling to villages in the countryside [Where else would villages be? - Ed.], and emphasised MAo's achievements in making China strong"

"Countryside" is a word I actually had a lot of trouble conveying in China. I worked hard with my students to give them an understanding that I was not from a city. "Then you are from a village," they said. "No, not from a village," I said. "I lived out away from any villages or towns or cities, in the land that was being used for raising cattle and timber." We went around on this for quite a while until they finally decided on the appropriate word in Mandarin to describe the setup. Then, they all nodded with understanding and went on their way.

I checked the word against my Chinese-English dictionary when I got home. It translated as, "Wasteland." In a sense, this neatly captures the Chinese worldview. The city is the center of the landscape, with villages existing to support it. The countryside which is not used to support the city is wasted.

In the larger scale, that same view holds China as properly the center of the world, with tributary states existing to support it. What is not part of that system is also wasted: barbarian.

Xinhua has a roundup from within China of appropriately devout pieces. This includes a reader comments section of a sort: unlike on a Western blog, it is plainly only selected reader comments. Still, this one got through:

Whoever enables the Chinese people to have enough to eat, people will remember him.

In Mao's "Great Leap Forward," as this sympathetic treatment recounts, some twenty-five million people starved. Even the authors of that piece must conclude that:

After the death of Mao and the start of Chinese economic reform under Deng Xiaoping the tendency within the Chinese government was to see the Great Leap Forward as a major economic disaster and to attribute it to the cult of personality under Mao Zedong and to regard it as one of the serious errors he made after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

One hopes the commenting "netizen" is aware of this history, and his "praise" is therefore ironic.

ACLU/Reasonable

Reasonable Men:

Southern Appeal considers analysis of a decision that came out of the Sixth Circuit court. It's another "Ten Commandments" case, and the language is both unusual and rather harsh:

In an interesting decision from the 6th Circuit, the Court did not accept the ACLU's argument that the First Amendment requires separation of Church and State. Specifically, the Court affirmed the posting of the Ten Commandments in the Mercer County Court house. Some quotes of interest:

"Our concern is that of the reasonable person. And the ACLU, an organization whose mission is 'to ensure that . . . the government [is kept] out of the religion business,' does not embody the reasonable person."

"We will not presume endorsement from the mere display of the Ten Commandments. If the reasonable observer perceived all government references to the Deity as endorsements, then many of our Nation's cherished traditions would be unconstitutional, including the Declaration of Independence and the national motto. Fortunately, the reasonable person is not a hyper-sensitive plaintiff."

I think that's right, not only from a legal but from a historical perspective. The ACLU is advocating a position that belonged, properly, to Jefferson and a few others -- which is to say, it is an honorable position deeply rooted in American history. On the other hand, it was a minority position among the Founders, many of whom were deeply religious and felt a need to be guided by and to express their faith in their work.

The reading of the First Amendment as requiring the separation of church and state doesn't come from the intention of the First Amendment, which was written to prevent the establishment of an official state church to which one would have to swear oaths, such as existed in England and Ireland. It's reasonably clear from a historical perspective that "the Founders," if they could be summoned from the grave and asked to rule on the matter, would not ratify a "separation of church and state" reading. Jefferson would advocate it, as he did advocate it (at least, presuming that nothing in the next world had changed his opinion on the subject). Most of his contemporaries, including Washington, would not (again, presuming the same thing).

I don't think the ACLU is unreasonable to advocate for Jefferson's position. While they may not be acting as "reasonable observers" of history or public opinion, they are certainly reasonably reading the existing precedents.

However, the alternative reading is also not unreasonable -- far from it. A reasonable observer would have to read the history of the First as expressing very strong support for this position. Consider the weight of history, and the continuance of public opinion in support of that reading from the Founding to the present day. It seems right to say that such a broad and ancient current will but naturally cut a channel: a line of thinking so broad and old will find a way to express itself. I suspect the law will make room for it, sooner or later.

Christmas Humor

Christmas Humor:

A surprising piece of Christmas-related humor can be found at Captain's Quarters.

It's an excellent example of understated, tongue-in-cheek humor.

Ghost stories

Ghost Stories:

Christmas isn't usually the time for ghost stories, excepting of course the one called Spiritus Sancti in the Latin. Nevertheless, I'll beg your indulgence to convey a story my father just told me which is -- in its important parts -- entirely true.

Many years ago, a pair of young boys were killed here in Forsyth County. It was a terrible murder, the details of which I will not relate. In those days, there was a great deal of overlap between the Sheriff's department and the Volunteer Fire Department, both in terms of work and in terms of the men who did the work. Both always showed up at car wrecks, for example, and fires, and a lot of the deputies were also volunteers. For that reason, they didn't always keep clear lines of separation between what was technically "Fire Department" property, and what was property of the sheriff. This is how the records of the investigation of the murder ended up in the attic of Station #4.

We fast forward here to the current day. There's a young fireman who shall remain nameless here, who while brave enough to fight fires nevertheless has a thing about ghosts. Station #4 is now a manned station with paid firemen, not just the volunteers of thirty years ago. These guys have a lot of time on their hands, and that includes time to prowl through the attic and find the records. They young fireman begins to get creeped out that the gruesome records and photos are in the building where he sleeps while on shift.

Well, naturally the older firemen begin to relate -- that is to say, invent -- tales of the ghosts of these two young boys, who are supposedly in the attic. And then, having that time on their hands, they start thinking of ways to make it worse for the kid than just telling him stories. One of them rigs the drop-ceiling panels with a line, so that he can pull on it in a hidden location and cause the ceiling tiles to jump around when the kid is alone in a room. Naturally, he freaks out; and naturally, 'no one believes him' when he conveys the story.

The day before the next night when he's due to sleep over on shift, these same guys go and get some of that fire-hydrant paint that glows in the dark. They put a light coat around certain parts of the roof and attic entrances. During the day, it blends in fine with the regular paint, but after the lights are turned off, there's an eerie glow about the entry to the attic...

Oh, my. I haven't laughed so hard in months. All I can say is, I hope their good deeds as firemen make up for what they're doing to that poor kid.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

We come together
  once a year
Family and friends
  gather to hear
The story of a
  child's birth.

Born to a teenage
  woman in an
Ancient town. Her
  new husband a man
Gone there to enroll
  for tax-census.

A busy inn, no place
  of privacy for
The business of birth.
  no place? after
A moment's thought,
  they enter the stable.

The travails and joys
  of birth have been
Told thousands of times
  by thousands of women.
Yet this birth was fraught
  with secret import.

Tales of angels, tales
  of special signs
In the heavens. strange
  visitors with fine
Gifts in this little
  hamlet of Judea.

A surprising life and a
  shocking death await
This little baby boy.
  this day we meet,
To honor the baby who
  changed the world.

JMB salaries

No Christmas Bonus, I Guess:

The Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh pays monthly salaries, according to this report from the Independent of Bangladesh. That's pretty good for a banned organization that is allegedly being hunted high and low by the authorities. You'd think they'd divide spoils when they could.

It makes one wonder if there's anything to the statements of the opposition parties, led by the Awami League, that JMB is in league with the government. Two of the three parties involved in the coalition are Islamic. On the other hand, the Awami League are communists. Based on my experience looking over such things, I'd have to say that it's hard to choose whether to prefer the word of an Islamic political party, or a communist political party. The most likely condition is that both are outright deceiving you.

Fortunately, our own political parties adhere to far higher standards... well, at least, some of their members do. Some of them, even most of the time.

Christmas

Merry Christmas:

Time for a long winter's nap for me, it being just about midnight. To be the shortest days of the year, these have been some lengthy days for me, which explains the light posting. I hope you're all enjoying your Yuletide.

Breath

America Holds Her Breath:

It seems that way, on Christmas Eve. This has been a most eventful trip. I've had work to do, plenty of it -- more even than usual, when "usual" is plenty. In addition to that, which I've tried to get done by morning and night, there's been family and visiting and many adventures. I mentioned the adventure of the crossbow, but not the wizard of broad brimmed hats (a gentleman of eighty, one of the last sixteen independent hatmakers in America; he cleaned and repaired my grandfather's Stetson and dated it to the mid-1940s based on the bash and the leather in the hatband). Nor did I mention rescuing the maiden (a young lady of five winters' age, who had managed to lodge herself knees-under-chin in a metal trash can. No, I don't know how). There have been other things too, which have filled both day and night.

I hope you're all having a wonderful time. Good luck to you all, and all you hold dear.

Xbow

Life Gets Worse:

Uncle Steve just dropped by on his way down to Florida, and gave the boy an early Christmas gift: a crossbow. As a consequence, I have learned today that a German Shepherd dog can jump sideways if called upon to do so.

Patriot Wall

I Agree With Jimbo:

These guys are doing great work. This is just what we needed to deal with Fred Phelps et al -- a group of patriotic bikers to act as a shield.

Furn

At Last:

A furniture design after my own heart. I assumed at first that the "safe bedside table" would be a bedside table with a built-in safe, which would also be cool for the same purpose.

Post for Wife

A Post for my Wife:

The next time you get around to reading the blog, I think you'll enjoy this link.

Mother

A Belle's Weather:

It's been a while since I mentioned my mother. The last time was in regard to the 2004 election, when I was very surprised to learn that she was going to be a Bush voter: a self-described liberal feminist and deeply anti-war by sentiment, the sort of person who openly worries that America has become the great tyrant of the world, nevertheless she understood that John Kerry could not be trusted on national defense. I posited at the time that, if Kerry had lost my mother, he had lost a lot of people who ought to have been Democrat voters in 2004. Indeed, I remain sure that a Democrat who could be taken seriously on defense -- Lieberman, perhaps, since Zell wouldn't run -- would have easily won.

I talked to her last night about the NSA spying business. What's it about? It's about the NSA spying, without warrants, on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists. "That's what I want the President to do!" she said, quite emphatically.

Since she says so, I must hold that the matter is settled as a political question. If you've lost my mother, you cannot win on this ground.

Iraq Election Results

Iraq Election Results:

InstaPundit has several links to some early hand-wringing over the Iraqi Election results. I'm disinclined to it myself. Publius in particular feels that a worsened civil war is likely.

Well, perhaps it is. It seems more likely to me, however, that Iraq's tribal factions will prefer an alternative to war if one can be found. The early American process seemed to teeter at all times on the brink of collapse, and yet managed time and again to achieve breakthrough compromises at the last minute. In the second American Constitutional process, which we normally call Reconstruction, again there were rejectionists and people who threatened violence at every turn. Eventually, the constitutional process absorbed them -- and through it, they won enough concessions to satisfy them. I have long felt that Reconstruction was the best model for understanding the situation in Iraq, and I still think so.

I suspect that we will see a similar process at work here, the hot rhetoric notwithstanding: anyone who has ever watched haggling in the traditional fashion knows that the rhetoric can get very hot indeed, and yet both parties know from the start of the transaction that the one fellow is going to buy what the other is selling.

The Sunnis will bargain hard for the things they want and can't get through simple votes, because they are a minority. Yet they have been bargaining all along, using violence and insurgency. The political process, though turbulent, is nevertheless an improvement.

Indeed, the fact that the religious parties did well is a good sign even though it is worrying some observers. It means that they have a stake in the process, and even the biggest stake. While pushing for changes to the Iraqi constitution, they yet now must be defenders of the basic constitutional order. This is particularly true for the Sunnis, who have heretofore been the chief insurgents. As a political faction, they can wield the power of a protected minority in order to win compromises from the central government. The local control of their tribal homelands is assured, so what they are bargaining for is "extras" they would like. Like the Redemptionists of the American South, that local control is their main desire. They wish to protect their way of life as they see it.

If they abandon the constitution and go back to insurgency as a primary means, they could easily end up losing that control. Just as the South of 1878 had no desire to return to military occupation, so the Sunnis will not wish to see a return of major counterinsurgency operations in their cities. It cannot serve them; they will not wish to see Iraqi Army units, commanded by a Shi'ite government, occupying their cities. They know that the Marines were very gentle by comparison. Thus they will pull back from the brink. However hot the rhetoric gets, and in spite of the occasional "night riding," they will stand behind the shield the political process offers them. Therefore that process will take hold, in spite of and because of the suspicions and aspirations of the factions.

Christmas Presents

Christmas Presents:

For five years, ever since we moved to China, from time to time my wife would look frantic and go searching through all our things. We left a lot of stuff behind us when we left, donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. We left in a bit of a hurry, what with graduate examinations and final papers. There was a lot of confusion. I'm still not sure exactly what we left behind, except that it included a fifth of Jameson Irish Whiskey, as a gift to the charity workers who came to take it away. They deserve gifts too -- perhaps more than most.

These last few years, though, every six months or so she'd tear through everything we owned as if looking one more time would change things. Her Girl Scout patch jacket was what she missed the most; and her father's jacket that he'd given her, which he'd worn in World War II. Her cashmire scarf, which was her grandmother's. All lost. Looking again never changed anything, and I never knew why she did. It just meant two days in tears for her, every time.

Tonight I went up into my father's attic, to gather up the Christmas decorations and bring them down again. He'd have done it himself, but recently he decided he couldn't make the climb on the ladder. No matter. I was here to do it.

Up in one distant, dusty corner I found two bags marked "Jackets." My wife is crying again tonight, but it's OK this time.

Merry Christmas.

Travel

Holiday Travel:

Yesterday, I spent more than eleven hours making a trip from Virginia to Georgia. The actual flight from the one place to the other was smooth and easy, and took an hour and a half. The rest of the time? It was spent fighting traffic to the airport, fighting traffic from the airport, getting through security, and standing in lines. It takes almost ten times as long to get to and from the flight as to take the flight.

The TSA guys were great, don't get me wrong. The operation is really shaping up -- which it should be, since it's been four years since 9/11 increased security procedures. Still, they deserve credit. They did their best to get people through quickly, they were polite, and several of them spent some time making faces and laughing with little Beowulf. I really appreciate their professionalism and good cheer.

I'll be down in Georgia for two weeks (the traditional Yuletide of Twelve Days, plus travel). I'm still working my regular job, of course, because operations never stop. Still, if any of you are passing through North Georgia, let me know.

Martial Arts

MCMAP:

The Washington Times has an article today on the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. It's a good read, but like most articles about the martial arts written for the general public, it raises but then doesn't get its head around the "character" issues of the martial arts. There are really two sets of these: a personal set, and a social set.

I talked about the social function of the martial arts about a year and a half ago. Briefly, for those who don't want to follow the link: almost all violence comes from young men. Violence can be protective, however, as well as predatory; and young men are the ones who perform both functions. The problem is making them into protectors rather than predators. As we were discussing in the prison post below, such "rehabilitation" has to be chosen -- it cannot be forced on men. The martial arts provide a means for making them choose it. They create a class of older, wiser men who are dangerous enough to win the respect of the predatory youth on the only grounds they understand.

Those older men can then insist on character reformation as part of the price for teaching these young men the arts. A wise teacher teaches only the parts that the student is ready to learn. Progress can be fast or slow, depending on the student.

That points us to the second set of goals. The martial arts are about learning to wield force in a trained and disciplined fashion. Quickly it becomes clear to the student that the primary force isn't strength, but spirit. In order to master the physical sword, you have to master the spirtual one: the one you use against yourself.

This spiritual sword is used to cleave away the parts of yourself that weaken your spirit, so that you are more easily dominated. As it happens, those are the same parts that we tend to think of as being vices. What remains are the parts we think of as virtues. You must learn to strike down the desire for ease, and train instead. You must learn to strike down the desire for excess food, so that you can manage your weight. You must learn to strike down the desire to be thought correct and wise, and instead listen to teachers who know more. You must strike down the fear that keeps you from trying something that seems dangerous. Instead, you must learn to act without thought, trusting in your instructors and, eventually, yourself.

In this way, the parts of the spirit that lead to weakness are knocked down. What remains expands to fill the space that used to be occupied with weakness. A vibrant person remains: honest, fearless, and strong.

That is not quite all of the story. These weaknesses are part of the human character. They always attempt to return, no matter how diligent your practice. The martial artist must become devoted to being aware of the enemies within, even as he is always vigilant against enemies without. In this way, he comes to know only too well how flawed his character is, and remains, in spite of all he does.

That way lies humility, and a capacity for love and forgiveness. These things, along with the strength and power to enact them into the world, are the final goal of the arts.

Strange News

While the American press is doing its best to ignore the elections in Iraq, and try to figure out under what authority the President can order wiretaps, a surprising event may have happened in Iran.

So far, I have only found one news story (and at least one blog post) concerning this event. The facts given are thin.

It appears that a bodyguard and driver in the motorcade of Iran's President Ahmadinejad have died. Both men are said to have been in the lead vehicle, which fell under attack while the Iranian President's convoy approached the town of Zabul in a southeastern province of Iran.

Supporting detail is given, but it is detail which I have no way of verifying. Reputedly, the region has a troublesome minority (the Baluchi) who have long been at odds with the ruling SunniShia majority in Iran. [Thanks to the commenter who pointed out my mistake.]

I am assuming from the outset that the Iranian President was the target of the attack.

No mention is given of the perpetrators of the attack. However, given that no mention is given of destroyed vehicles, I would guess that they had a supply of rifles and ammunition, but no significant explosives. I suspect that if they had RPG's, many more deaths would have occured.

I also notice that the President's location during the attack is left unknown. He was probably not in the lead car in the procession, but that really can't be known.

The facts of the case don't lead me to believe that the attackers had outside suppliers. I infer this from my thoughts about the weapons used. I do wonder if they had outside training to help them set up an ambush. However, the ambush doesn't seem to have been set up by someone with the ability to seriously threaten the life of the Iranian President. They don't appear to have had the tools or planning in place to do that.

In the background of this story are the Baluchi, the embittered minority who desire autonomy.

I get the impression that the Baluchi in Iran are in the position that the Kurds of Iraq were a decade or two ago. They want autonomy from the leaders of Iran. The United States might gain from troubles that they cause for their ruling government. However, the US has little cause to directly aid the Baluchi, and much reason to deal carefully with the Iranian government.

In that one factor, Iran stands in a different position than Iraq did even a few years ago. We know that the Iranian government has an active nuclear program, while we could not dependably verify the status of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.

Which again leads me to believe that outside help wasn't at work in this attack. If any support that could be traced back to the US is found, we're suddenly in hot water for attempted assassination.

However, it is interesting news that the President of Iran has come under attack. This is a country that has been eclipsed in international headlines by Iraq, despite Iran's efforts to build a nuclear bomb and their connections to terrorism around the globe.

More Post

More From The Post:

As of this morning, I see the "Experts Cautious" story is still about the fourth story, rather below the story about the perils of icy roads in the D.C. area. And then there is this story, which for some reason they think is worth a headline: "Four... Vikings Charged in Boat Incident." Well, what did you expect?

They also have a link to an opinion piece which link states that "The struggle for Mideast democracy will be a human triumph if it succeeds -- but not, by itself, a victory for American national security." Emphasis added.

The Post's link is more negative than the article itself, which is the point. The editors are playing up the negatives. The author, Susan E. Rice, is raising the still-unresolved question of whether liberty is enough:

As the joyous display of purple fingers in Iraq again attests, the national struggle for democracy is a moral good and, if it succeeds, a human triumph. But it is not by itself a victory for American national security. We need a policy based on the recognition that democracy in the Middle East and beyond is definitely desirable, maybe necessary but hardly sufficient to secure our future.

The terms "necessary condition" and "sufficient condition" are from the discipline of logic. Let's say that you want to have a fire. In order to do so, you need oxygen. The presence of oxygen is a "necessary condition" because you can not have fire without it.

It is not a sufficient condition, however, because the presence of oxygen doesn't guarantee fire. Rice says that the presence of a successful democracy in Iraq and the Middle East doesn't guarantee American security. That remains to be seen (even Rice says that "the jury remains out"), but let's grant the point.

If it is still a necessary condition, then there is no point in arguing over it. Even if it isn't enough, we still have to have it. We can't give up on the oxygen. It's necessary.

Her suggestions are "flawed in another way," as she says about Bush's policy:

From Mali to Tanzania, from Bangladesh to Indonesia, poverty hobbles many nascent democracies, which cannot prevent terrorists from operating on their territory or contain outbreaks of disease. To strengthen weak states, we must do more than promote democracy. We must join with others to build state capacity, in substantial part by helping to alleviate poverty.

Of course Ms. Rice will have noticed this year's efforts to "build state capacity" in the wake of the tsunami. But, being a senior fellow of the Brookings institute, she must also know that the U.S. leads the world in real dollar donations of foreign aid.

The charge against the U.S. on foreign aid is that it doesn't donate as large a percentage of its GNP as other nations. If you follow that link, you'll find two bar graphs, one that shows real dollar amounts, and the other that shows percentages. The U.S. donates about 0.15% of its GNP in foreign aid, much less than Norway. Yet the U.S. donates $18,999,000,000 in real dollars. If you combine the next two top countries (Japan and France), you don't get that much. Norway, however generous their government may be as a percentage, donates less than 1/8th as much.

Where else do we see this situation? A situation where a lower rate of donations actually leads to far higher real numbers? Why, right here: in the U.S. tax system, which is also condemned because it doesn't demand 'a large enough percentage of the incomes of the richest.'

Again, a chart: the percentage is down, the receipts are up. This is not a coincidence. It's an economic law. People who complain about the "rate" of giving apparently believe that we can raise the "rate" of giving without negative impact on the total production. It's not so. Take fuel out of the economy, and it produces less.

The U.S. could raise its taxes, or spend less on internal improvements and more on gifts to the world. But if it did, it would have negative consequences for our economy. In spite of the improved percentage of foreign aid, the real dollar amounts would drop.

Whatever. If the most serious charge against Iraq that can be raised now is that we must give more aid in addition to achieving victory, I'll call that a win.

Gotta Kidding

You've Got To Be Kidding:

OK, so I saw the reports that leftist bloggers weren't talking much about the elections in Iraq. Fine -- they're open partisans, they've got their agenda and they don't hide it. No problem.

So here are the headlines from The Washington Post at this hour:

Top headline: Bush Allowed Domestic Spying in 2002 Order
(No kidding. We were just talking about that yesterday. Now, what might have happened just prior to that 2002 order which could have inspired him to do such a thing?)

Second headline: Sen. McCain Takes the Lead
(Ah, torture. Yeah, great of Senator McCain to stand up on the moral high ground, by granting the US Military the right to define torture. So now the Army can define torture by editing its field manual. Instead of, you know, Congress passing a law. That's called "Delegation of Constitutional Legislative Authority," and until the FDR administration it was considered unconstitutional.)

Third Headline: Stem Cell Fakery Admitted
(Yay.)

Fourth Headline: Experts Cautious on Iraq Vote
Subheadline: ...not a turning point...

Good Lord. If I were the man I was ten years ago...

Iraq Elections

A Great Day:

The main body of Iraq voting is now underway. Pajamas Media has Omar and Mohammed of Iraq the Model, plus reports from contacts around Iraq. Threatswatch has a report from Bill Roggio, and The Mudville Gazette has the usual impressive collection of reports from around the MilBlogs, as well as a few other things.

I'm afraid that today is going to be a very busy day for me at my "real" job, so you probably won't hear much more from Grim until tomorrow or the next day. The PJM site looks good here, though -- I think they've got a good lineup, so if you're looking for something interesting that you won't see in the newspaper, drop by.

All the best to Iraq and her people.

SPC VT

Camp Katrina and the AP:

Specialist Van Treuren is annoyed with the AP on Rush Limbaugh's behalf. He compares how Rush's drug problems are treated compared to a Hollywood star -- at least, the Specialist says he's a star. I've never heard of him, but I rarely get out to movies these days.

Well, Rush can probably take care of himself; and, also, the AP system is a little different from a traditional newspaper in terms of how it purchases news stories from journalists. You can't expect the same editorial consistency from a wire service that you get from the LA Times, say (which, given the quality of the Times, has to be marked down as a plus for the wire services).

What would be a really useful comparison would be to look at a collection of articles about each of these two cases; and then also to collect on a third case, some poor jerk who also got addicted to pain meds following back surgery but who didn't have any important friends. It would be interesting to have a "nobody" to use as a control for the experiment. Would the "nobody" be treated worse than both, thus proving that fame and fortune exempt you from bad treatment? Or would he be treated better than Rush but worse than the Hollywood star?

If anyone feels inclined, go for it and good luck.