The PAO

The PAO Conversation:

Over at Mudville, I mentioned in the comments a sidebar conversation several of us had with the CENTCOM PAO who showed up to talk with us. For ease of reference, here's most of what I said:

Really two things: the degree to which MilBlogs should be embraced by the military leadership and ways in which they can be; and also some friendly advice on how PA and IO can and must be improved.

He came to talk to the first point, and got a bit blindsided by the degree to which we wanted to talk about the second. However, he was a good guy, and once he got out of his PAO "I need to turn this conversation back around to my talking points" mode and started to listen, which didn't take very long, he started climbing the learning curve fast.

My sense from several previous conversations is that we've got the guys in the field understanding what needs doing and how -- some of them are on the leading edge of developing these solutions. We've got the top level leadership, mostly, coming around -- Abizaid, Cartwright, Rumsfeld, and according to the PAO, Bush. We still have to move the hardest bunch, though, which is the middle level officers who are just removed enough from the war to be attached to regulations instead of effect, and just powerful enough to throw up bureaucratic walls that can stop things from happening even when the combatant commander wants it (e.g., "well, sir, the lawyers say..."). Once you can get that middle on board, you'll see things start moving fast in the right directions.

Our PAO also said the funding was finally coming on line, which I can believe. That will improve his capabilities -- so, if he also knows what to do with his newly funded capabilities, we can make things happen. One of the complaints I heard voiced was the degree to which MilBloggers have been "carrying the weight" of responding to charges, and it's true. If we can work together with PA, and especially if we can use their language resources to get these counterarguments pushed into the media space in the Muslim world (e.g., Malaysia, Indonesia, the Arabic world), we'll really be doing something to change the dynamic of the war.

C4 asked me to expand on this, but I don't have much more to say about the particulars of what we discussed. I would like to reiterate that the PAO was a good guy, and although he came with talking points, he came to work with us. He seemed genuinely surprised by how much we'd thought about how the relationship should work, and I think both sides learned a lot from each other.

What I would like to do, though, is describe the issues at work here and throw the floor open for comments. It's an area in which a wider degree of comment and involvement would be welcome -- not just by me, but according to the PAO, by Abizaid, Rumsfeld and Bush. They want to engage the MilBlogs, though they're still thinking about how to do it the right way. There are some legal and some ethical issues to work through, and a few practical ones also.

One issue at work is that there is a division in the military between two fields that overlap. There is a field called Public Affairs, and a field called Information Operations. These two fields are, as anyone who's dealt with bureaucracies will immediately understand, mutually hostile. This is precisely because their missions overlap at key points, and they are therefore constantly having to engage in turf battles for control over certain aspects of the operations, and the associated budgets.

Public Affairs has the mission of communicating with the public -- especially the American people. Their job is to explain the military's mission and perspective honestly and accurately, and objectively. They do this mainly by talking to the press, and therefore that's where their head is -- they spend their time thinking about how to remain credible with the press, how to build and maintain relationships with the press, and how to structure those relationships with the press (e.g., how to construct the embedding process).

Information Operations handles a wide variety of tasks some of which, like Public Affairs, deal with communicating messages from the military to a public audience. These missions are (in theory) distinct because they are designed not simply to explain what is going on, but to achieve some larger goal: PSYOPs are IOs, as is the tracking of mis- and disinformation. ("Misinformation," in military terms, is accidentally wrong information; "disinfo" is intentionally wrong information, that is being put out by hostile forces).

Whereas PA is "designed" only to convey accurate information, IO is "designed" to achieve some particular purpose. There are laws and rules governing military IO -- messages must be truthful, for example, and IO may not target Americans. As a result, there is a legal separation of IO and PA, as any messages that are meant to be communicated to the American public has to go through the PA stream. This often means messages that aren't designed for the American people, but which are likely to enter the global media stream and get back to Americans.

In a war against an enemy ideology, especially one that puts out anti-American propaganda, IO is cricital. It is also, increasingly, problematic.

Problem #1: All media is now global. An example: the IO whereby the Lincoln Group placed favorable (and true!) stories in the Iraqi press. Some of the stories got back to America, as did the larger story that they were doing it.

As a consequence, the sphere in which these kinds of IO can operate is increasingly small.

Problem #2: The interdepartmental infighting previously mentioned.

PA, for legal reasons, has to handle the coverage of messages that occur in the American media space. IO tracks mis/disinformation. A major thing that PA needs to be responding to is exactly that mis/disinfo: an example we talked about at the conference was the Willie Pete story. MilBlogs did a great job of responding to that in the English language media sphere. We can't do much in the wider European/Arabic/Southeast Asian sphere. Since so much of this deals with arguments that overlap into the American space, PA has to handle the response, either by pushing our messages out, or by pushing their own.

They need language experts for that, and they are competing for those language experts both with IO and with Military Intelligence.

Additionally, these responses need to understand the process of creating/pushing disinfo, as a lot of these messages are intentionally hostile. Responding to them, and predicting the next enemy message/counterpropaganda, is IO work. That's where the experts are in this field.

So, PA and IO really need to work in integrated closeness. Because they are legally required to be separate, however, the bureaucratic infighting destroys that cooperation and trust. This is a disaster.

Problem #3: Just as there is internal military competition, there are other agencies in the government that have similar missions. So, at the macro level, there's even more bureaucratic infighting. The CIA, State, and the NSC all have fingers in this pie. There is some overlap even though the missions are somewhat different (e.g., like military IO, the CIA can't target Americans; unlike either military IO or PA, the CIA can lie). The NSC is supposed to be coordinating between them, but... well, let's say there's room for improvement.

Problem #4: Because these kinds of IO are designed to manipulate the viewer -- although, again, only through honest messages -- they are instantly distrusted when they are revealed as such. PA wants the wall to remain up, not just because the law currently requires it, but because they think it adds to the credibility of messages coming from military PA.

Those are the problems, more or less.

Here are some thoughts of my own. I invite, and encourage, you to share your own in the comments.

A) The separation between PA and IO is counterproductive. Every PAO I've ever talked to has mentioned the benefit of having the wall; and yet every one has also allowed that all their messages are still taken as simple propaganda by the media, and to some degree by the public at large.

If that's true, there is no advantage to the military of having a split between the operations. There are serious disadvantages, but no advantages. If everything you write is assumed to be propaganda anyway, you may as well take advantage of having the propaganda / misinfo / PSYOP people on board to help you.

In addition, to a large degree the "wall" is an illusion. All group messages are designed to manipulate the receiver -- otherwise, there is no reason for an organization to convey a message. A man might tell a stranger something kind for no particular reason. A corporation will not. If a corporation says anything, there's a reason for it: to sell products, to improve public opinion of the company, to recruit talent, to lobby for desired changes of one kind or another. The military is in the same boat.

There is a strong public benefit -- as opposed to a military benefit -- from having strict rules about the type of manipulation that is acceptable. For example, we could say that we would approve honest messages from the military to manipulate American public opinion for the following reasons only:

1) To recruit or retain soldiers,

2) To defend the military in cases when there is mis/disinformation that would tend to slander it;

3) To defend the military's or the nation's honor (this differs from the above in that it isn't a question of the information being right or wrong; it might be a case where the military is countering an opinion from an antiwar or Communist organ. Such opinions may not be "wrong," but might still be unfair and in need of answer).;

4) To suppress enemy recruitment;

5) To explain a military operation, either in progress, completed, or about to get underway.

All such messages would have to be honest and truthful, but that is already the case. We might also wish to stipluate that the precise acceptable purpose be spelled out at the top of the press release/article (e.g., "The purpose of this article is to spur recruitment.") That would tend to increase credibility: instead of people suspecting that you were trying to manipulate them, they would know you were, and furthermore what you wanted. Understanding that up front, they could greet the message as an honest communication, rather than a suspect one.

There are other difficulties that would have to be overcome, but I don't see that the separation is helpful to our war efforts.

B) PA should be able to engage the blogosphere. Currently they are structured around the media, as mentioned -- it's what they have mostly done for decades, so that's where their heads are. Ask Bill Roggio what that means for a blogger who wants to embed, say, without being a credentialed "journalist."

By the same token, PA should be able to pass useful messages from the blogosphere (esp. MilBlogs) through to other populations. They would need to figure out whether to rewrite but attribute (e.g., issue a press release saying, "We are here responding to the following wrongful claim of war crimes. Much of the investigation was produced by the Mudville Gazette"), or to simply start translating and publishing a "best of the MilBlogs" paper (as many Muslim countries are not as wired as ours) in local languages. I like the second idea much better.

C) One suggestion I made to the PAO was that its press releases need to be longer. MilBlogs will carry them, even though the MSM mostly excerpts (and misunderstands, so badly excerpts) their contents.

A good press release meant to communicate with Americans needs to remember that the average American has no military background. The message should therefore explain the meanings of all military terms, and give a basic tactical/strategic context and explanation of the subject of the release. In that way, we can begin to educate Americans about the business of the military, as well as conduct some very necessary public education in military science and history.

An example is Operation Swarmer. The press release referred to 'the largest Air Assault since...' etc. Neither the media nor most Americans knew what an air assault was; and more to the point, they didn't know what it signified. They interpreted it as a sign of major hostilities, when in fact it was nothing of the sort.

We've got to educate Americans about basic strategy and tactics, and remember to explain the context of any current conflict. This is not only important for mantaining public morale. It's important because in a 4th Generation conflict such as this one, the odds are that the enemy will bring the war home to us from time to time. We don't just need to start developing a citizenry that is engaged in the war. We need to start developing a citizenry that knows how to think about war.

Comments are encouraged.

2006 MilBlogs

The MilBlogs Conference:

I'll post a fuller review of the First MilBlogs Conference later, but I will say a few things right up front:

Matty O'Blackfive is a prince of a fellow, and if you haven't heard his story about the wedding, you should make him tell you.

Uncle Jimbo is a really great guy.

Bill Roggio is heading back to Afghanistan (and Iraq, I gather), as you may know. It was good to meet up with Bill, as I've written at his site from time to time.

TC Override has excellent taste in music. He got to the jukebox at Finn Mac Cool's, which is right across from Eighth and Eye, and impressed the whole place.

I met Holly Aho, who is indeed a wonderful person just as you'd imagine; and also the Red Headed Infidel, whose paratrooper stories were almost as good as Matt's. By the way, Doc, I referred her to you for a second third opinion on a Kimber; she's apparently in your neighborhood.

Finally, the officers at Op-For asked me about our own Eric Blair. "Don't you have a guy called Eric Blair writing over there?"

"Yes I do," I said.

"Is he here?" they wanted to know.

As far as I know, he wasn't, so they asked me to pass on this message:

"He comes over and argues with us all the time, and @#$@#, he always knows better than we do. Ask him to say, just once, 'Good post, guys.' Please!"

Consider it done.

Political Economy and Justice

Political Economy and Justice:

In recent news, an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency has been fired for leaking classified information to the press. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.)

Before I learned anything about the material leaked (or the identity of the leaker), I remembered that I'd seen commentary about leaked information--both here at the Hall and elsewhere.

The complaint has always been that any low-level person who releases classified data to anyone faces stiff fines, imprisonment, and loss of security clearance. However, people who are politically well-connected are shielded from such problems when they leak.

In this particular case, a politically-connected leaker appears to have been brought down. (If we can trust the leak that told the NBC about this...)

This is indeed a sign of hope that sanity might return to the treatment of classified information.

Opposition to this possible return to sanity could be manifold, though. From my long-distance observation of life inside of the Capitol, an illicit economy exists with information playing the role of currency.

The commodity traded for is influence and prestige in the social structures of the Capitol. Thus, a high-level staffer (defined as someone who handles and sorts information that must be passed to the decision-makers in the department) has a lot of valuable currency on hand. Purchases of influence can be made by giving some of this currency--inside information--to a few other people who might have need of it. Reporters, Congressional staffers, and friends of friends of Cabinet members all fit the description of people who might need inside information. In return for valuable information, they become noticed as good sources. The other party to the transaction is encouraged to reckon it as debt, to be repaid with favors--information, budget decisions, influece on policy changes, and the like. This will keep the information flowing in the proper direction.

Reporters play a role in this economy--but they tender payment in terms of positive and negative spin, focus in a news story on events relating to the department/agency, and a tendency to ask for the "unofficially official position" on stories that relate to the leaker's department or agency.

Prosecution of leakers who deal in classified information is a good way to clamp down on these illicit transactions. Especially where the transaction produces costly repurcussions on the international stage.

Will this illicit economy ever be truly eliminated? That is something I won't hazard a guess about at the moment.

God Save the Queen

God Save the Queen:

Mark Steyn celebrates Queen Elizabeth II's 80th birthday. Allow me to extend my respects to the lady. Some may object that an American owes no deference to the Queen of England, and that is true; and I expect Joel may wish to remind me, again, of the affection of my family for the Jacobite cause. True, all true.

Yet I will never forget that this queen had the Coldstream Guards play "The Star Spangled Banner" at Buckingham Palace after 9/11; or that she sang it, herself and from memory, at a religious ceremony not long after. So long as she is the Queen, may God defend her; and so shall I, according to my own poor power.

9th circ 1st A bad viewpoint

The First Amendment Doesn't Protect You:

The Ninth Circuit rules that the First Amendment only protects approved points of view. Volokh points out that this is a far worse ruling for freedom of speech than previous restrictions:

Harper's speech is constitutionally unprotected, the Ninth Circuit just ruled today, in an opinion written by Judge Reinhardt and joined by Judge Thomas; Judge Kozinski dissented. According to the majority, "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students' minority status such as race, religion, and sexual orientation" -- which essentially means expressions of viewpoints that are hostile to certain races, religions, and sexual orientations -- are simply unprotected by the First Amendment in K-12 schools. Such speech, Judge Reinhardt said, violates "the rights of other students" by constituting a "verbal assault[] that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development."

This isn't limited to, say, threats, or even personalized insults aimed at individual student. Nor is there even a "severe or pervasive" requirement such as that requirement to make speech into "hostile environment harassment" (a theory that poses its own constitutional problems, but at least doesn't restrict individual statements).

The Ninth Circuit wasn't content to rule on the specific case, either. They are happy to provide examples of other sorts of speech that the First Amendment doesn't protect, so that future jurists and administrators can project a nice penumbra of forbidden speech.

Part of a school’s “basic
educational mission” is the inculcation of “fundamental values of habits and
manners of civility essential to a democratic society.” Fraser, 478 U.S. at 681
(internal quotation marks omitted). For this reason, public schools may permit,
and even encourage, discussions of tolerance, equality and democracy without
being required to provide equal time for student or other speech espousing
intolerance, bigotry or hatred. As we have explained, supra pp. 28-29, because a
school sponsors a “Day of Religious Tolerance,” it need not permit its students to
wear T-shirts reading, “Jews Are Christ-Killers” or “All Muslims Are Evil Doers.”
Such expressions would be “wholly inconsistent with the ‘fundamental values’ of
public school education.” Id. at 685-86. Similarly, a school that permits a “Day of
Racial Tolerance,” may restrict a student from displaying a swastika or a Confederate Flag.

Schools do indeed require discipline, and the school is in the right to remove hostile messages so that education can continue. I agree that far.

Yet the ruling is wrong in its assertion that a ban of this type leads to "fundamental values of habits and manners of civility essential to a democratic society." What would lead to those things is an open and respectful discussion of differences, in which one's right to think a certain way is protected -- as is the right of others to dissent. Stating that "discussions of tolerance [and] equality" are to be encouraged is fine and dandy, but this ruling does exactly the opposite of promoting tolerance and equality. It creates one point of view that is the official one, and one point of view that is totally banned from even symbolic representation. Not only can you not say it, you can't even wear a t-shirt with a symbol representing it.

That doesn't lead to an idea of tolerance or equality. It leads to an idea that ideas with which we do not agree must be silenced -- completely suppressed, so that not even their image offends our eyes.

Just as it does not lead to an idea of tolerance and equality, it doesn't lead to an actual situation of tolerance and equality. It's not only that the courts favor one viewpoint over another. It's that the people who have the disapproved points of view are forced to gather and express themselves outside of the public square. That leads to division within society, distrust between those "secretive" groups and people outside of them, the splitting of society into hostile factions.

How different if they been permitted to express their views in a respectful setting, in which their right to their views was protected but so also was the right to dissent! For one thing, that really would teach the habits of tolerance and respect necessary for a society in which people with competing interests and different upbringings have to live together and make space for each other. Also, in that situation, the "negative" views might be challenged and perhaps even changed. If they are wrong and you are right, what do you have to fear from the contest? You ought to welcome it.

As it stands, what we shall get is "discussions of tolerance" in which the opposing view is condemned without being presented. That will convince no one, because without an advocate for that view there is no chance of the view being presented fairly. If you don't speak to the actual point of view, or take time to understand what it is, you can't begin to persuade the people who hold it. It's like trying to push a rock when you don't know exactly where the rock is.

But don't we know everything we need to know about this rock? Why should we try to understand these points of view, which are -- so the Ninth Circuit tells us -- so wrong as to be outside the realm of protected speech?

Perhaps it is because our idea of them is incomplete. The purpose of education surely includes expanding our awareness of competing points of view. Should we not hear them?

I don't understand the particulars of this student's point of view well enough to advocate for him. He should speak for himself -- the very thing the court says he has no right to do. But I do understand the particulars of another one of the banned forms of speech, so I shall speak for it instead.

Consider the mention of "the Confederate flag" as a banned symbol. In the opinion of the court, it is the equivalent of the swastika. That seems to me like a point of view that ought to be fully argued, rather than simply asserted. To me, the Confederate flag is a positive symbol that represents nothing so much as the concept of home. It meant home to me, both physically and culturally, long before I'd ever heard of a Civil War or a place called the Confederacy. As I've argued recently, love of country -- of home -- is as natural to a man as love of father and mother. It's an honest and proper thing to love home and its symbols, and to feel inspired to defend them. Being asked to feel ashamed of your country is as likely to distort and deform the mind as being ashamed of your family.

That point of view, which is often summarized as "Heritage not Hate," is apparently not to be presented in a public school; while the point of view that the Confederate flag is the moral equivalent of the swastika is approved. The Confederate flag rarely gets a fair hearing, and is generally presented from a one-sided-negative point of view. That's the case even before this ruling.

I respect that there are people who have strongly negative views about it, just as I have strongly positive ones. I am willing to meet them halfway. They might be willing to meet me halfway, if they understood where I stand and why I stand there.

Now they shall not, because they will never have the argument presented to them. What they will have presented instead is an unfair version of the argument, a straw man stood up only for the purposes of tearing it apart.

Where we might have had tolerance and mutual respect, we will have suspicion and hostility. We might have had engagement and a finding of common ground. Now any ground in between shall be No Man's Land.

There is a great deal at stake in the courts right now. There remains much to do.

Test Pilot

A Test Pilot:

JHD sends an obit for a test pilot of forty years' experience, who died recently in the crash of a single-engine private plane. It's a good story, the kind of story we hope our lives will leave behind us when we die. Thanks to Scott Crossfield and the men like him, whose courage is written across the sky.

EMP Iran

On Iran:

I imagine some heavy-duty "what if?" planning is going on in corners of the military establishment, trying to develop a military option for Iran. It's not that we desire to attack Iran; it's that, given Iran's history and ideology, we can't afford for them to become a nuclear weapons power. They would probably use it, either to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) designed to wipe out the United States' continental electronic grid, or to simply wipe out Israel (something they seem very eager to talk about in front of microphones).

However, there are reasons not to invade, and traditional military war games have turned out badly in the past. InstaPundit says he thinks the EMP threat from Iran may be overrated, citing a Federation of American Scientists report that a credible EMP weapon requires a megaton device.

So here's a little concept I've been working on: Iran may not be able to produce an EMP, but we can. Why isn't that an option for us? I can't think of much that would throw a bigger monkey-wrench into your nuclear weapons building than having to stop and replace your entire power grid. Unlike other military options, the death toll would be small -- the greatest threat would be to those who depend on the infrastructure for food and medicine, but we could provide such aid via airdrops, or allow nations that wished to do so to go in on the ground and do it.

It would create a clear example. It would, of course, inflame much of the world -- but any attack on Iran will inflame much of the world. Because it would involve the use of a nuclear device, it would infuriate the transnationalist crowd, which argues that the US must not be arrogant and behave as if it weren't subject to the same rules as other nations. Nevertheless, as a practical matter, the US is different from other nations, and must behave differently as a result -- the idea that we're no different from France or India is laughable. The world has come to, and indeed has decided to, depend on us to provide worldwide security. It can gripe about how we do it, but you don't see anyone else (except China) stepping up to do it differently.

As an additional practical benefit, the FAS article notes that we have a problem devising EMP-resistant hardware because we have very little data on EMPS. We haven't conducted a high altitude nuclear test since 1963, when we didn't really understand very well what we should be examining. This would be an occasion to get fresh data with modern instruments, that would help us prepare against some future possible use of an EMP against the United States.

Sounds to me like a military option.

Shaving

A Close Shave:

This is outstanding. It's an article on shaving by Andy Crouch of Christianity Today, and it is everything I want an article on any topic to be. This is the right way to approach life, in large things and in small. You'll understand once you've read it.

Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily.

Press Right, Bush Wrong

Press Right, Bush Wrong:

The BBC has a story today on North Korean counterfeiting of US $100 bills. It's an interesting story on a serious problem, but it begins with a little jab at the US government:

The US is cracking down on what it terms North Korea's criminal activities.

The BBC is quite right. North Korea is not engaging in "criminal activities," because there is -- as Al Gore put it -- no controlling legal authority. There is, to put it plainly, no such thing as international law. There are treaties and obligations, but there is no law in the sense that law exists for individuals. States can't be criminals.

No, counterfeiting of a state's currency by another state is not a crime.

It is an act of war.

A Good Idea

A Good Idea, Shot Down:

Via Southern Appeal and Orin Kerr, I see this excellent, if poorly written, motion:

COMES NOW counsel for Defendant...

Shaun Donovan and John Conner have consistently maintained that it was perfectly right, legal and moral for the stronger Matt Palagi to beat up Demetrius Joslin. They have maintained that Joslin did not have to worry [about suffering grave injury or death] because Matt's drunk and stoned friends would jump in and protect Joslin.

The defense team disagrees but would love to give Donovan and Conner a chance to stand up for the principle.... Therefore, the defense moves that... there be a fist fight with one side being Mr. Coroner and Mr. Donovan and the otehr side being Kirk Krutill and Bill Buzzel. For further insurances, that Coroner and Donovan don't get beat up to bad, an group of defense attorney's drunk and stoned friends will be there to assure Conner's and Donovan's safety.

All errors same in citation. The judge is not amused.

While counsel for the State are confident they could acquit themselves respectably if it were necessary to settle any part of this matter by means of a physical contest, ancient methods of trial by fire, water and the like no longer have any place in our system of justice.

As a historian, I'd have to chide the judge in turn for failing to understand that "trial by fire, water and the like," properly known as trial by ordeal, were an entirely separate business from trial by combat. Leaving aside the point, however, the fistfight might really be clarifying -- particularly if the counsel for the State were given knives, and asked to judge what a proper amount of force really is.

The problem is that a stabbing knife -- which the facts suggest is what was used here -- is a poor weapon for self-defense. Oh, it will kill a man just fine: a single stab to a major artery or organ can be fatal. The problem is that, when you are defending yoruself, the point isn't that the other man die -- it's that the other man stop what he's doing that justifies the act of self-defense. If he dies, fine. If he lives, fine. But he's got to stop.

A stab wound is likely to be fatal, but it's a death that takes a while. The wound relies on bleeding, and mostly internal bleeding, to drop blood pressure or induce shock to the point that the attacker will stop. However, as Daniel points out, the body undergoes two changes in a fight that make it harder for such a wound to act on you: it shrinks the surface blood vessels ("vasal constriction"), and it dumps adrenaline into the body. Thus, you really have to hit a major organ or artery to kill, and even then, you have to wait until blood pressure really drops -- which can take seconds, or minutes, depending on the severity of the wound.

During those seconds or minutes, the other guy is still pounding on you. Yes, you've dealt him a lethal wound. He just doesn't know it yet. He's bigger than you, and his friends have you surrounded. What do you do?

Stab him again, since all you've got is the knife. Stab him again until he drops. Maybe the pain will finally get through to him, or maybe the extra wounds will speed the point at which the blood pressure drop hits him. Either way, if you were justified in stabbing the first time, you're justified for keeping it up until he stops what he was doing.

This is a point that the State is either trying to obscure, or doesn't understand. The fist fight motion should have been granted, if only for the purposes of education.

From a personal point of view -- and with an eye toward the recent post on Flight 93, and our potential duty to put ourselves in the breach to stop a terrorist -- we also have a lesson to learn. The lesson is: bring the right tool for the job. You want a knife that will slash, so you can attack tendons and make long cuts, rather than stab wounds, in nerves and major blood vessels. That is far more likely to stop an attacker quickly than a stab wound, even though it is less likely to kill him. The best choice is a proper Bowie knife, or a Randall Mk I style combat knife.

I continue to recommend Bowie & Big Knife Fighting System as an entry point into the study of knife fighting. As it shows, these are excellent choices for a fighting man -- at the kind of ranges in which self-defense combat is most likely according to FBI statistics, as good or better than any handgun if you have the strength and the skill.

If you don't, a large-caliber handgun is also a good choice. Again, you aren't worried about killing so much as stopping the foe -- a bullet that will break bones and joints, or reach through the body to the central nervous system, is what you need. A .38 Special will kill a man just fine, sooner or later. If it comes to it, you need something that will stop him regardless of whether it kills him -- and stop him now.

And, of course, for home defense or to keep in the truck, a good rifle or shotgun. Pretty much any rifle will do.

So, the motion proves to be educational even though the fistfight didn't happen. Pity it didn't, though. A little trial by combat would probably improve the system. The current "modern enlightened" system is certainly not impressing me much with its ability to rehabilitate, after all.

Some Poetry

Some Poetry:

It's been a little while since Grim mentioned it--I've been meaning to write something of my wn about G.K. Chesterton, and The Ballad of the White Horse. (The poem can be found online here. I originally found it as a part of this collection of Chesterton's writing.)

Chesterton wrote this piece of epic poetry to celebrate the victory of King Alfred over a band of Danish invaders. The struggle is as much a religious struggle as a military one: King Alfred is a Christian, as are his people. The invaders are pagans who worship strange, warlike gods. Chesterton's openly admits that he isn't writing precise history; he is writing about a historical man who cast a legendary shadow across the ages.

The central character in the story is Alfred, a Saxon king in Wessex. He is a king without a kingdom, it seems--his armies have been crushed, invaders roam the countryside, and his authority only holds in a small area.

The tale of the Battle of White Horse Vale is told as a microcosm of Alfred's long fight with the Danes. It is also told as a microcosm of the religious struggle of the time: the attitudes and ideas of Christians as opposed to the Danish beliefs and practices.

One of the strength of Chesterton's poem is the way it introduces people, cultures, and events. Short vignettes pepper the story; each vignette describes the subject in a way that is memorable.

The Vikings are introduced thus:

The Northmen came about our land
A Christless chivalry:
Who knew not of the arch or pen,
Great, beautiful half-witted men
From the sunrise and the sea.
...
Their gods were sadder than the sea,
Gods of a wandering will,
Who cried for blood like beasts at night,
Sadly, from hill to hill.

When king Alfred prays to the Blessed Virgin; he worries about the death of a culture and the end of a kingdom:

"When our last bow is broken, Queen,
And our last javelin cast,
Under some sad, green evening sky,
Holding a ruined cross on high,
Under warm westland grass to lie,
Shall we come home at last?"

The response to this prayer isn't a promise that all will go well.

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"

It is this mention of the hope that underlies Christian faith that galvanizes Alfred's resolve. He gets no promise of the survival of Christian culture in England--or of his throne in Wessex. But he is reminded that the Christian culture he supports cares little for the fate of kingdoms; but this attitude paradoxically makes the Christian culture more resilient.

One of the legendary tales that the poem draws on is one of Alfred entering the Danish camp alone, and singing at one of their campfires. One Danish prince mocks the Christian culture and the remnants of Rome in this way:

"Doubtless your sires were sword-swingers
When they waded fresh from foam,
Before they were turned to women
By the god of the nails from Rome;

"But since you bent to the shaven men,
Who neither lust nor smite,
Thunder of Thor, we hunt you
A hare on the mountain height."

Other princes sing tales of the sadness of the earliest gods of the Vikings, and of the futility of struggle for dominance in a world where all are brought equal by death.

Alfred responds to these songs with the joy and hope that seem baseless to non-believers. He holds that the Christian culture had more heart to run than the Danish culture had to pursue; he holds that the followers of Christ were more fullfilled with their fasts and hardships than the Danes were with their feasting and wealth.

Lastly, he reminds them that "only Christian men guard even Heathen things."

The battle of the White Horse Vale is told as if to follow this outline. Several epic encounters are described. The mighty men of both armies fight well. However, the leaders of Alfred's armies are killed and their men are beaten back. But Alfred rallies them in the forest, and manages to set upon the Danes who have become disordered and unwatchful in their celebration of victory.

The tale ends with Alfred as an old king,ordering his people to keep the chalk outline of the White Horse visible in the hill that overlooks the White Horse Vale. Many victories are hinted at; battles that stretched far beyond that first victory near Wessex. Alfred is said to warn about days when the enemies of faith will come as men of learning, rather than as men of war.

The poem captures the drama of the struggle between the Vikings and the Saxons for the control of England. It also describes contributions of Gaelic and Roman culture to the survival of Christian culture in England.

As Grim mentioned, the poem can also be used to describe the current struggle between the Men of the West and the Islamists who wish to remake the world after their vision of perfect Islamic culture. Their culture appears strong, but it has denied itself access to outside sources of culture and philosophy. It has forgotten the cultural sources tha came from outside of itself. It is weakened in its ability to learn from other cultures.

The culture of the West openly deals with outside sources at its deepest levels. Greek philsophical thinking and the Judaic roots of Christianity are both remembered and referenced in the West. These sources--and the conflicts that they engendered during the long development of Western culture--give the Western world its distinct strength.

Paradoxically, this strength looks like a weakness to the non-Western world.

We would do well to remember this strength. We would also do well to remember that cultures are neither created, destroyed, or fundamentally altered in a day. As Chesterton said in his introduction, the long struggle between Christian culture and the nihilism of the destructive invaders was the work of centuries. The characters he drew stand as symbols for the various forces at work over those centuries.

This is the lesson that I read in the Ballad of the White Horse. Strength may appear to be weak; weakness may appear to be strength. Clashes between cultures and civilizations may take a century to reach a conclusion. And the battle to preserve the Western world is not to be abadoned, even when hope seems foolish.

Steve Dillard's Speech

Feddie On "The Most Dangerous Branch"

Feddie of Southern Appeal has sent along a video of his speech to the Federalist Society of Mississippi College. The introductory remarks cease at 2:10.

It's a good speech. On April 15th, it can be hard to focus your attention away from the Congress / IRS as the "most dangerous branch" due to the confiscatory taxation schemes you'll be encountering (about which more later). Still, when your blood pressure drops enough to consider an argument about the continuing Constitutional imbalance "emanating," as it were, from the Supreme Court.

93 Transcript

Echoes of the General Militia of Flight 93:

Via The Geek, we can now see the Flight 93 recorder transcript. It's amazing to reflect that we have not seen it before.

We should have seen it before. We should have seen the hijackers speaking before now. This is what they said, while the American men of Flight 93 came for them:

They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold.

There are some guys. All those guys.

There is nothing. When they all come, we finish it off. There is nothing.

May the enemy ever find us thus: every hand a sword, every sword risen against them. It is in this capacity, our individual capacity as free men to stand up for the right and the common order, that we have our best defense against both terror and tyranny. Wherever they go, whenever they come, let them find us ready, and able, to rush them.

If you are not ready, prepare. You do not know when you may be called to your duty.

What's happening here?

Howdy All,

Being a Texan... I've had my head in the sand, excluding near everything to concentrate on this immigration travesty. Anyone have the scoop on this?

thievery

Thievery:

I'm afraid I'm quite ill, having contracted something unpleasant while at a two-day conference on Thailand. That's cut into my energy for blogging, and also my capacity for thinking, so I'm just going to steal from some good bloggers I know. If you haven't read these links, you ought to do so anyway.

If you don't read Geek w/A .45, you might have missed Publicoa's "Culture." It's a good piece, and Joel Legget will like it particularly because of the invocation of the Webb book Born Fighting.

If you haven't read InstaPundit -- I know, it seems unlikely, but a couple of you have told me you don't -- you might want to look into the UC Santa Cruz situation.

You'll also want to read Cassandra's take on it. This is one of those situations that can make even mild-mannered men like me call for viol... er, well, I suppose we've seen a few of those situations lately. Still, I'm mild mannered by my community standards, I assure you.

BlackFive examines the new book Cobra II, in which a retired General officer is harshly critical of the Iraq war. B5 collects several top milblogger responses, also.

And finally, Doc is having too much fun at the expense of the nurses.

Home Run

Straight Out of the Park:

A home run from Cox & Forkum, with a good editorial for background.

Malay goes green

"Malaysia Goes 'Green'"

An article in TODAY Online examines the sharp turn in Malaysia. "Green" in this case doesn't mean a turn towards environmental politics, but a turn towards radical Islam:

No one jokes about such matters in Kuala Lumpur any more. Last week, students Ooi Keang Thong and Siow Ai Wei were charged with disorderly behaviour for allegedly kissing at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre Park. If convicted, they could face a year in jail.

By itself, the incident might have passed without debate, but it came after a series of developments that have left Malaysians wondering which way their country is headed.

Last year, Mount Everest climber M Moorthy was buried as a Muslim. His wife protested, but her pleas went unheard after the High Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the Syariah Court's ruling that Moorthy had indeed converted to Islam.

Early last month, Malaysia's Inspector-General of Police Bakri Omar made it compulsory for all policewomen attending official functions to wear the traditional tudung headdress, regardless of race or religion.

Non-Muslims have started protesting. But even for them, the boundaries have been spelt out. Two weeks back, Minister in the Prime Ministers Department Nazri Abdul Aziz said that non-Muslims making provocative remarks on Islamic affairs could be charged with sedition.

And these are the moderate Muslims who run the government of Malaysia. The relatively conservative Muslims belong to the Islamic political party, the Parti Islam seMalaysia (PAS); or to one of the radical movements, such as Hizb-ut Tahrir.

I think it puts an interesting spin on this piece of predictive fiction (hat tip to Subsunk at BlackFive). Malaysia is one of the best examples out there of a Muslim country making progress -- but sometimes steps forward are met with steps back.

Firefighters

Heroes & Volunteers:

I think I have mentioned that I spent a good part of my youth in the company of volunteer Firemen, thanks to my father who was one. Indeed, in due course he became a Captain among them, and the President of their association, the first office of which entitled him to wear a red instead of a black helmet. He almost always refused, on the grounds that the purpose of the red helmet was to ease identification of officers on the ground in the chaos, and his Captaincy was related to the fire-safety division of the VFD. Thus, while he was the equal of the Captain of the firefighting section, he didn't want to be stand on ceremony when it could cause confusion. When fighting fires, he wore a black helmet like everybody else.

If, like me, you have cause to love firefighters, read this. I am indebted, again, to the indispensible Arts & Letters Daily.

What in the hell DHS

Just What Is Going On Over There?

Captain's Quarters wonders after the recent arrest of Bryan Doyle. Specifically, they wonder how it was that he got the job at the Department of Homeland Security in the first place. He was arrested for using the internet in trying to get a 14-year-old girl to, ah, meet him offline. CQ points out that he'd had a disciplinary action at his previous job for using pornography at work:

One would hope that the revelation that an applicant used computers at work to download pornography would have at least called his judgment into question. Either it got missed entirely, which doesn't speak well at all for the investigators, or it didn't make a difference to the people who hired him, which doesn't speak well for management at TSA and DHS.

It's possibly the latter. Using adult pornography is not illegal. Indeed, there's a raging debate about whether it's even immoral; or immoral, but healthy in a naughty way (like the occasional cigar or poker night); or in fact healthy and moral.

A public porn habit could be troublesome for a political appointee because of the embarrassment to the administration. However, in an America that permits the Howard Stern show to be broadcast on basic cable, the consumption of porn in public has to be regarded as acceptable to a substantial minority of Americans.

As to the acceptability of porn in private to Americans in general, I can only offer two pieces of anecdotal evidence: this article from Forbes examining the size of the industry in America (short version: the lowball estimate $2.6 billion); and a couple of pieces from Cassandra's site (here and here) citing pornography as a major influence on popular forms of cosmetic surgery. That would suggest it was, at least, a fairly mainstream private practice among those with the kind of money to spend on such things as elective surgery.

The point being, security clearances deal with sexuality (as I understand the process) basically only if the practice under consideration is unusual enough that it could be used to blackmail someone, or if it calls their judgment into serious question. If it's not unusual, but instead something that one encounters among a sizable percentage of Americans, it's not a reason to deny the clearance -- the question of whether it's moral entirely aside. Some people find it so, some not -- I myself, as Dad29 and I discussed at length (in the comments to a post I couldn't find -- Dad, if you find it, could you put the link in the comments here?), think it's best to leave in the private realm of morality and sin, rather than the public realm of crime and prison.

Now, this current business -- soliciting a minor -- is plainly a crime, and rightly so. Still, I can see how even a "vetting" process might have let this guy off.

On the other hand, Ms. Malkin has a post demonstraing what really should strike us as a pattern of poor judgment. How, precisely, did DHS end up with so many losers at the top?

She suggests that the problem is with the CIS, but I honestly don't think it is. I've been undergoing a security background check with DHS for months now, and it's been very thorough. I have only good things to say about everyone involved. The fact that they're working on timetables is only because they're trying to hire massive numbers of people, and the people who have been involved are getting worn down by it. So, in classic "market discipline" fashion, DHS has wisely instituted incentives for keeping up a high rate of completed work.

Does that encourage them to overlook things and "complete" background checks they shouldn't? I doubt it. For one thing, as I said, my own experience is that they've been extremely thorough. For another, it's not as if there is a dearth of applications. If you run into a problem with one, all you have to do is kick it back for more questions to the appropriate field office / contractor, then move on to the next application. The field investigators I've dealt with are retired Federal criminal investigators, who have been brought back on as contractors to help handle the massive workload. They're long-time pros, with a full career behind them, not new trainees.

No, I suspect the real problem is cronyism. All of Malkin's examples are people with close ties to the Bush administration or key Senators. DHS should be promoting from within -- in fact, cross-promoting from within. Experts from the various different cultures that the combined agencies brought could be sometimes promoted to some of the top positions in their agencies, and sometimes to some of the top positions in other agencies. That would help fix a lot of the problems DHS is encountering in terms of merging its cultures, ensure expertise, and eliminate a lot of these problems of bad (or unqualified) people getting top jobs.

It should be about the security of the country.

Pecan

For What It's Worth:

Not to get in between Mark Steyn and John Derbyshire, but... where I come from, it's pronounced "p'KAHN," just like Hank did it.

I never heard any alternative until I was a full grown man. My mother in law, who is from Indiana, once suggested that the next time I was in Savannah I might get her some pralines. I wasn't sure what a praline was, not having had a lot of fancy candy as a kid, so I asked her. She said it was made of "PEE-kans," which didn't improve my understanding at all. I did finally locate some, though, and once I saw the nuts embedded in it I knew what she'd been trying to say.

Lies

Lies:

The famous historian Howard Zinn (hat tip Arts & Letters Daily) demonstrates why the Left will never capture America's heart. The Democratic party is constantly having to fight against the perception that its leaders are not patriots and do not love their country. It has to do that because its leaders read, and cite approvingly, people like Howard Zinn.

For example, he seems to believe that this principle:

If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there—the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be “checks and balances”—do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth.

...leads naturally to this one:

And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” announcing that we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” There is also the unofficial national anthem “God Bless America,” and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation—just 5 percent of the world’s population—for his or her blessing.

The first principle is that we ought to understand that politicians, as a rule, are liars and scoundrels who do not have our best interests at heart. That far, he is entirely correct.

The second principle is that we ought not, therefore, to love our nation or believe that she enjoys a special mission in the world. That is wrong.

In a sense, everyone ought to love his nation regardless of where he is born. This is because it is as natural to love your country as it is natural to love your mother. It arises in the soul reliably and properly. That is another way of saying that the failure to love your country is an unnatural corruption.

What you do when you find that your beloved nation is in the wrong, as she sometimes will be -- or usually will be, if we are speaking of a nation like South Africa instead of America -- is desire, and work for, her correction. You must not stop loving her; you must love her the more fiercely. You are fighting demons for her soul. Demons can only be driven back by faith, hope and love.

Chesterton explained patriotism in this way:

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

The patriot, like Zinn, can also say that Congress is filled with worthless scum -- but once Davy Crockett was there. He can say that Washington remains a stinking swamp in spite of more than two centuries' attempts at draining it -- and yet remember that it was named for Washington. He can further remember that Washington was a slave-holder -- and yet look with awe on his politics, his ethics, and his magnificent life.

The error of not loving what you chastise leads you to chastise far more harshly than is warranted. Zinn is guilty of this at every level, and it corrupts his scholarship and his work. Because he can point to a material interest apart from the claimed reason for a war -- say, the interest of United Fruit in Cuba in 1898 -- he believes that the claimed reason was a simple pretense. United Fruit did not raise the Rough Riders, and had no power to do so. It could not summon cowboy from Montana and student from Harvard and Yale, old friends from Scotland, policemen from New York, miners and prospectors, and such men as Theodore Roosevelt described:

The temptation is great to go on enumerating man after man who stood pre-eminent, whether as a killer of game, a tamer of horses, or a queller of disorder among his people, or who, mayhap, stood out with a more evil prominence as himself a dangerous man—one given to the taking of life on small provocation, or one who was ready to earn his living outside the law if the occasion demanded it. There was tall Proffit, the sharp-shooter, from North Carolina—sinewy, saturnine, fearless; Smith, the bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, the Arizona book-keeper, who had begun life as a buffalo-hunter. There was Crockett, the Georgian, who had been an Internal Revenue officer, and had waged perilous war on the rifle-bearing "moonshiners." There were Darnell and Wood, of New Mexico, who could literally ride any horses alive. There were Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong the ranger, crack shots with rifle or revolver. There was many a skilled packer who had led and guarded his trains of laden mules through the Indian-haunted country surrounding some out-post of civilization. There were men who had won fame as Rocky Mountain stage-drivers, or who had spent endless days in guiding the slow wagon-trains across the grassy plains. There were miners who knew every camp from the Yukon to Leadville, and cow-punchers in whose memories were stored the brands carried by the herds from Chihuahua to Assiniboia. There were men who had roped wild steers in the mesquite brush of the Nueces, and who, year in and year out, had driven the trail herds northward over desolate wastes and across the fords of shrunken rivers to the fattening grounds of the Powder and the Yellowstone. They were hardened to the scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry plains and pine-clad mountains. They were accustomed to sleep in the open, while the picketed horses grazed beside them near some shallow, reedy pool. They had wandered hither and thither across the vast desolation of the wilderness, alone or with comrades.

Such a body did not come together for United Fruit. How, then?

They came for America, and for Roosevelt. Well they might come for Roosevelt! To the New York policeman, he was their former commander; to the men of Harvard and Yale, a fellow student; to the British, an old friend; to the hunters, one of the pre-eminent of their class; the cowboys knew of his youth spent in the West, where he exposed himself to every hardship of the labor as well as any of them, and hunted rustlers by the rivers. No one doubted his love or his respect for them, their country, or their cause.

Theodore Roosevelt was able to do what can never be done by Zinn nor any of Zinn's students. He was able to enact genuine, progressive reforms on a huge scale. He could do this because he was able to win the loyalty and open admiration of the men of the nation. He could do that because he was himself a natural and heroic man.

Zinn would have you believe that the Rough Riders were -- as he feels that you are -- dupes of liars in politics owned by manipulating corporations. All those strong men who had survived the terrible wilderness, those tamers of horses, policemen and college men and noblemen alike: he feels they were fools, and fooled. He must feel this way, because he has no room in his heart for that natural and motivating love of country that a good man must feel. He cannot understand it, and therefore it cannot factor in his calculations.

Yet he has hope, if only people can be awakened to the fact that politicians lie. His hope is this: he imagines a weaker America, and he is glad to imagine it.

It is only Zinn and his ilk who are weakened by his arguments. He has no loyalty to the ideals and love that motivate true-hearted men, and therefore he can neither understand them nor move them to action. Not one man who follows him will ever inspire the loyalty of the people as Roosevelt did, because none of Zinn's students will offer loyalty or love in return. They do not love the men, and they do not love the nation.

Zinn can scorn America, but he cannot praise her, and therefore he cannot change her. Roosevelt could not merely praise her, but correct her. That is the power that comes of love, even to strive with demons.

TYLR Commen

Things You Learn Reading Comments:

At Dr. Helen's place, on this occasion. I see that comment #14 is one of some interest to us here at Grim's Hall.

I knew it was an alias, but now I know why.

Death to Trojans

Death to Trojans:

I have just spent the last eight hours un-wrecking my computer from an encounter with a particularly well-designed piece of Trojan malware. I hereby propose a new Constitutional amendment: anyone caught and convicted of writing one of these things shall be first horsewhipped and then hanged, and neither shall be construed as cruel or unusual punishment.

Alternatively, we could change the law so that shooting a Trojan writer resulted in a reward of ten thousand dollars and no criminal charges. While the first option expresses a proper social unity in condeming these people, the second might do something to spur the economy. Either will do.

Tartan Day

Tartan Day:

Welcome to Tartan Day, 2006! We celebrate this annually at Grim's Hall, although I have been too busy to get myself on the Gathering of the Blogs list this year. If you'd like to see what I can muster on a year when I'm not so busy, try the 2004 celebration, or last year's.

This year, we're a bit pressed for time at the Hall. I did mention it to my wife as she sprinted out the door today to get a letter in the mail, still wearing her plaid pajamas. "I'll just tell the neighbors it's Scottish Day!" she said. "As it happens, it is," I remembered aloud. She laughed. "Really?"

Indeed. I'm caught so off guard that I have no Scotch in the house, and no Scottish beer either. However, I do have a can of haggis that I'll take for lunch, with mashed potatoes and such lesser beer that I have to hand.

Good day to you all. By the way, Cassidy has a huge post on the topic at her place, if you'd like. BlackFive, who proves a clansman of mine, also has a series of posts. Enjoy.

Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul:

He is interviewed in Literary Review, hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily. I have a (very) slight connection to the great Indian, in that he once wrote about my home. Indeed, he wrote about the Sheriff of Forsyth County, who ruled over the place the whole time I was a boy.

...not the [jail] of 1912, but still as flat and basic-looking as a sheriff's office in a Western film; assertively labeled (as in a film) FORSYTH COUNTY JAIL... [S]oon I was called into his office, where, on an old-fashioned hat-rack, at the very top, was a black cowboy hat with a sheriff badge....

He was impressive, Sheriff Walraven. He was an elected official, and he saw himself representing the will of the American people -- who had turned their face against violence. And though he wasn't willing to play up this side of things, he was also doing his Christian duty, Christianity being a religion that taught love and peace.... There was to be no violence; it was his duty to see that there was none.

Did he see a situation where that might change?

He thought for a while and said, "If the system falls down." But then almost immediately he added, "The system can't fall down. Individuals might fall down."

He's retired now, Sheriff Walraven. Now and then you'll see him out tending his garden as you drive down the country road. He is still an impressive man, or was the last time I encountered him.

The system can't fall down. It was his duty, and is now ours.

Songs

Songs of Freedom:

I was listening to some old songs tonight. Songs like this one:

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
With an eye like an eagle
And as tall as a mountain was he!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
He was brave, he was fearless
And as tough as a mighty oak tree!

From the coonskin cap on the top of ol' Dan
To the heel of his rawhide shoe;
The rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man
The frontier ever knew!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
And he fought for America
To make all Americans free!

Here's another, so you can see where I'm going with this:

I'll tell you a story
A real true life story
A tale of the Western frontier

The West it was lawless
But one man was flawless
And his is the story you'll hear.

Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp, brave courageous and bold.
Long live his fame and long live his glory
And long may his story be told.

If you've never heard the above song, you should. It's sung in a form that exists nowhere else, except in a church hymnal.

Just one more, since we were talking about the Alamo:

Fought single handed through the Injun war,
Till the Creeks was whipped and peace was restored.
And while he was handling this risky chore,
Made himself a legend, forevermore.

Davy, Davy Crockett the man who don't know fear.

He went of to Congress and served a spell
Fixin' up the government and laws as well.
Took over Washington, I heard tell,
And patched up the crack in the Liberty Bell.

What do these songs have in common? Three things: they treat the American frontier; they portray the lives of their characters in over-the-top idealism; and they do so without a hint of irony.

We usually see this kind of idealism only in children. Watching children play, you'll see that their toy guns never miss -- and the guns of the imagined enemy always do. They're always faster, cleverer, and in the right.

Yet the audience for these songs, and the television shows or movies that went with them, was not children. They were grown men, and not just any men. They were the adult men of the 1950s and 1960s, who had been the young men and older teenagers in the days of World War II. These were, as Reagan said, the boys of Point du Hoc.

So many today look back on the culture of the 1950s with smugness, as if our generations were so much more clever, so much more insightful than they. How blind they were, how childlike their ideas! Yet they had seen terror and fire close at hand.

I submit that -- maybe -- if they believed in these things, it's because these are things worth believing in.

Dunphy

A Great Opening, A Serious Problem:

"Jack Dunphy" has an article today in National Review Online. It begins:

Are you looking for a job with low pay? Does the idea of working miserable hours appeal to you? How about working weekends and holidays? Is the daily risk to life and limb on your checklist of must-haves for your next job? If so, the New York Police Department has a job for you.

The ending is pretty good too, actually.

No one comes into police work for the money. All we ask for is a decent living and to be treated fairly when things get dicey. Sadly, cops and potential cops are discovering this is too much to ask. Can higher crime be far behind?

Now, as someone who has occasionally chided the cops -- for example, the Fairfax SWAT team that shot and killed my eye-doctor -- I recognize that he's got a point. You can look at the Cynthia McKinney case for a clarifying example, if an example is needed. The guy was doing his job, trying to protect her and her colleagues, and look what it got him: punched, shouted at, called a racist, and now she says she'll sue him.

Hopefully the US Attorney will show some of that "fair treatment" Dunphy requests.

Illegals from China

US To Ship Illegal Immigrants Back Home:

To China. Mexican immigrants are still a hot topic, but Chertoff got an agreement to send every single Chinese illegal immigrant right back to the Communists.

"If we start to show progress in the short term, one of the messages that will be sent to those who are thinking of illegally migrating is that when they get caught in the U.S. they will be going back home," said Chertoff. "They will not be getting released into the United States. We can have a huge effect on this by starting to establish deterrents, which we have not been able to do up to now."

There are, of course, three little differences between Chinese illegal immigration and Mexican illegal immigration:

1) The government of Mexico seems to be encouraging illegal immigration. China, on the other hand, regards these people as criminals to be punished on their return.

2) The trip from Mexico is life-threatening; but it's a walk in the park compared to getting here secretly from China. As a result, there's no demographic tipping point to worry about, as there aren't that many Chinese illegals (39,000 is the estimate).

3) We don't share a border with China, and they don't claim any of our land.

What does all that mean? Well, that depends on how you see the issue. If you think that the issue is purely one of law enforcement -- the right of America to make and enforce its own laws -- none of it makes any difference. They broke the law, and the law says to send them home.

If your concern isn't about the rule of law, but the stability of the culture -- this is my concern and position, just to be clear -- the Mexican immigrants represent a serious problem and danger that needs to be managed; whereas the Chinese immigrants, who will never muster the numbers to destabilize a community or lay claim to American land, are not a danger of that type. We might be free to consider other questions, such as what their fate will be if they return.

On the other hand, we have also to consider that an asylum-centric policy would encourage more people to take the risks of the sea and the evils of human smugglers. Surely that is no good thing.

I'm told that this is a simple issue, and indeed it can be. "The law must be enforced" simplifies things greatly.

Yet America has always held that juries were meant to be involved in the enforcement of the law; or, in courts martial, fellow military men. The idea has never been that the law should be applied without consideration of the individual case, including the question of whether -- this time -- we should make an exception.

The police have a simple job: catch the criminals; arrest them; bring them to a magistrate. From there, though, justice has never been simple. Trying to make it so may improve the efficiency of the courts, but I'm not convinced it will improve the quality of justice delivered. I like the idea of having a jury of Americans look over the case, and give a ruling tailored to the individual facts.

In the case of Mexico, stronger measures and greater efficiency may be needed. The crisis is larger, and it is backed by sections of the Mexican government and organized groups in the United States. If the concern is the letter of the law, then it's the same problem, China and Mexico. But if the concern is assimilation and the American mission of freedom, the Chinese situation is notably different from the Mexican one.

Bush Was Right

OOH-RAH!

Any song that sings the praises of Zell Miller is all right with me. I wonder if he ever thought he'd live to be idolized by a rock and roll band?

Cowboy story

A Cowboy Story:

On the way home from the District of Columbia tonight, I ran into a massive thunderstorm out Manassas way. I cut off the highway and stopped in at a "Grill & Bar" for dinner. Since I was alone, I didn't ask for a table, but went in to dine at the bar.

I was wearing my grandfather's Stetson -- the finest thing ever invented for a T-storm is a beaver-felt hat. There was no place to set the hat, so I just left it propped on my head while I climbed on the stool. Although it was early in the evening, three fellows arranged at the end of the bar had obviously gotten there well ahead of me. They were, in a word, drunk.

So I sat down, picked up a copy of the Washington Post, and put in my order. Just a moment later, the drunk in the middle shouted down the bar:

"Hey! That hat needs a bullet hole through it! That'd be great!"

I just ignored him, and kept reading. Another shout:

"Hey, buddy! I said your hat needs a bullet hole through it! Har, har!"

Not the first drunk I ever met, so I kept reading.

"Hey, bartender, gimme yer pistol! I'm gonna shoot a hole in that fella's hat!"

At this point I glanced over to the end of the bar, took the fellow's eye, and said:

"This hat belonged to my grandfather. I'll thank you if you don't shoot at it."

And I went back to my paper. It got a lot quieter at that end of the bar. I heard the fellow mutter something about his grandfather, but I'm not sure what.

A moment later, the closest of the men came down to me.

"Listen, sir," he said, "we're just having some fun with that other guy. He's a Cowboy's fan, and this is Redskins country. He didn't mean any disrespect to the hat."

He honestly said that. I told him it was fine, and he thanked me, and went on back to what they were doing. Fellows seemed to be having a good time, and good for them.

Never had a man apologize to my hat before. They seemed like good guys, though.

GOOD FOREIGN POLICY LESSON FROM THE ALAMO.

GOOD FOREIGN POLICY LESSON FROM THE ALAMO.

There are many good lessons and wise observations in John Wayne’s The Alamo. However, there is one scene in particular that has always resonated with me every time I thought about Saddam Hussein and the arguments surrounding our invasion of Iraq. The scene takes place in a local cantina after Davy Crockett and his Tennesseans has just arrived in Texas. They are discussing whether or not they should stay and fight with the Texans when one member of the group asks,” I own no part of this here Texas and none of these here Texicans are related to me so why should I fight for them?” Immediately afterwards another member states, “Right, it aint our ox getting gored.

Davy Crockett responds with a classic line that many of our more appeasement minded countrymen would do well to reflect on. He responds by stating, “Talking about whose ox gets gored- figure this, fellow gets in the habit of goring oxes, wets his appetite. He may come up north and gore yours.”

Although it has nothing to do with foreign policy, I enjoyed comment from one of the Tennesseans when another member of the group states that he has been concerned about Crockett’s behavior; “Being in Congress has ruined many a good man.”

How true!

GHMC: Alamo

Grim's Hall Movie Club: The Alamo

Since we've all watched it, I won't post a review at length. There are a couple of things I'd like to talk about, though. Any of you with author's accounts are welcome to start a post of your own if different aspects of the movie interest you; or just add to the comments, as you prefer.

I. Honor v. Authority

The movie has three leading roles: Col. Travis, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie. It's hard to manage that coherently, but each of the three walked so largely in life that they cannot be downplayed in the story.

The writers decided to steal adapt a strategy from the poem that lies at the very root of our civilization. Theodore Roosevelt's history of the Alamo begins with a comparison of the Alamo to Thermopylae, but this retelling reaches back father still. It takes the form from the Iliad, and points to the clash between honor and authority. A hero is a tremendous asset to an army; wars cannot be won without them, and men follow them gladly. Yet the hero's own sense of right and wrong, honor and virture, lead them to argue for what they think is right rather than what they are told. Because men follow them gladly, the very act of fighting for what they think is right splits armies and disrupts the chain of command.

The Iliad remains the most important poem in our culture, even as the Bible remains -- in spite of all that has been written -- the most important book. Even today, we find this to be one of the hardest lessons of leadership -- and one of the hardest things to learn when we are called not to lead but to follow and take commands, for a common goal.

(If you have not read the Iliad, or if you were introduced to a bad, boring or incomprehensible version of it, let me offer a suggestion: Do not read it. Rather, listen to it. It was composed to be heard, and it should be. Get a copy of an audiobook of the Fitzgerald translation from a library or a bookstore, which is by far the best in the English language. I cannot recommend this strongly enough -- if you come by Grim's Hall regularly, you will never regret the time you spend with it.)

Just as in the Iliad, the tension between the three characters is between a man who is willing to set aside mens' honor for victory; a hero whose devotion to honor makes him clash with that first man; and a wiser, older hero who has come to understand both authority and honor, and make them work together. In the Iliad, these heroes are Agamemnon, Achillles, and Odysseus. In the Alamo, they are Col. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett.

Travis asserts his authority through military discipline, and right of command. He is willing to speak insultingly to Jim Bowie to shut down challenges to his orders ('You were drunk at the last officer's call, and I do not wish to discuss my plans until the next'). He is willing to publicly slur the credibility of friendly Mexican caballeros who bring him word, because he's afraid the word they bring might panic the men and cause desertions. He is gallant to those who are doing what he wants -- as when he shows honor to the arriving Tenneseans -- but cares nothing for the honor of men who disagree with him. Rather than resolving the clash with Bowie, it makes it worse and worse, until Bowie is ready to take his men and depart.

Bowie and his men (like Achilles' Myrmidons) are volunteers, and can leave when they wish. Travis needs them to hold until aid can arrive. He also needs the help of another body of volunteers who arrive under the command of another hero, Davy Crockett.

Crockett appears less of a hero to Travis than his reputation would suggest. Travis is not happy to find his Crockett and his men brawling and drinking, and he refers to Crockett's usual manner of speech as a 'bumpkin act.' Yet when he hears Crockett's speech about the Republic, he is taken aback. So it was said of Odysseus:

One might have taken him for a mere churl or simpleton; but when he raised his voice, and the words came driving from his deep chest like winter snow before the wind, then there was none to touch him.

Crockett understands the balance between honor and authority: both Travis and Bowie trust him, and he is able to mediate between the two. Yet he has this flaw, as Odysseus had it: he uses that ability to understand both worlds, and gain trust in both, to manipulate. He manipulates Travis by appealing to him calmly and with respectful words, as he does after Travis has already dismissed Bowie following the destruction of the great cannon. He manipulates Bowie by playing on his sense of honor and shame, as he does when he introduces him to the kid, tells the kid to ask him 'about that Sandbar fight,' and then says that Bowie is leaving. Of course, Bowie cannot shame himself by admitting he was planning to leave, and so ends up staying.

Yet at last Crockett's manipulations can't hold the army together. What keeps them there to fight and die is this: the moment when Travis decides to let them go, and speaks glowingly of what they have accomplished so far. When Travis takes up the language of honor, and calls them brave and noble soldiers, neither Bowie nor any other will leave him.

That is the lesson, then: for Travis, to honor his soldiers as heroes, as well as to command them as men; for Bowie, to set aside his pride and follow. So he does, and dies for it, and thereby wins the honor he so craved:

The fort that was a mission
Be an everlasting shrine!
Once they fought to give us freedom,
That is all we need to know
Of the thirteen days of glory
At the siege of Alamo.

II. Santa Anna

Perhaps it is also because they drew so heavily on the Iliad, but the treatment of Santa Anna is remarkable. We are used to seeing him "on a horse that was black as the night," a cruel and vicious killer of brave men. One of the unusual qualities of the Iliad is that it shows sympathy to everyone in it: though it is a poem composed in Greek, by Greeks who saw themselves as descendants of the Greek heroes of the poem, it never treats the Trojans as anything less than their own heroes.

That is almost unheard of in heroic literature, where one may fight greater things -- demons, dragons -- or lesser ones -- witness Conan slaughter endless numbers of nameless, purposeless men! We are so used to seeing enemies demonized that we expect it. Even political campaigns now almost always descend to it.

That makes it all the more astonishing to see what great lengths the film goes to in order to portray Santa Anna as a noble and heroic man. Indeed, he is painted as being better than he really was: no real comment is made on his decision to offer no quarter, and everyone is portrayed as dying in combat rather than in later executions.

Yet it is not just that the film elides over his harsher parts. It actively shows him as good and noble. He offers a chance for the men guarding the Alamo to retreat. After they refuse and he has attacked the mission, he discovers the presence of noncombatants and allows them safe passage. There is no suggestion in the film that he attempted to take the families of the men inside as hostages, or did anything but honor his word that they would be safe. Indeed, there is never a suggestion that the men inside the Alamo ever suspect that he would.

The two high notes of this theme come after the battles. After the first battle, some of the volunteers watch from the walls of the Alamo as families of the slain Mexican soldiers look over the dead in search of their kin. The grief of these family members is shown just as strongly as the grief of the Texans later; and in fact, the Mexican women watching the Texan lady leave the Alamo cross themselves in sympathy with her.

Meanwhile, the volunteers muse about the heroism of the men they have killed. "I was proud of them. Even as I was killing them, I was proud of them," one says. 'It speaks well of a man that so many aren't afraid to die, being sure they are right. It speaks well.' Of course it is military discipline that sent them forward in reality; but in the film, it was love and trust in their commander.

At the last scene in the movie, the lady of Texas is allowed to go free from the Alamo, and given a burro for her child to ride. Santa Anna arranges his army so that she will pass them where they are in full dress uniform. As she passes, he summons the men to present arms in salute. He does not meet her eye, but removes his hat in a display of honor for her.

How odd to see a foe allowed to be so noble! And yet, it makes Jim Bowie, and Crockett and Travis seem all the bolder and better. They lost; but they lost to a noble hero, inheritor of the best traditions of Europe. We know that Houston, inheritor of the best traditions of America, will soon meet him and best him. We finish feeling not simple satisfaction at the end of a villian, but awe and pride that such a man, and such an army, could be overcome by a ragged pack of heroes and volunteers.

The music swells, and invokes the protection of God on the souls who guarded the mission. We are sure that somehow, that is right. Yet the movie does not put Santa Anna on the side of the devils. It is content to view him as another flawed hero, as we all are flawed heroes.

Last Straw

The Last Straw:

I'm a pretty patient and understanding fellow, really. I try to live by the injunction against juding others' sins -- as opposed to their crimes, which I feel entirely competent to judge. I try not to condemn people for doing things I might well do myself, and I try to understand that some others have other moral structures that might -- in some circumstances -- be right even though I don't agree with them.

So we saw all those Mexican flags at the big marches, and it bugs me like it bugs a lot of people. But I think to myself: "Well, and what if it were the Confederate flag? A lot of people don't want to see that anywhere, but it means different things to me than it does to others. Maybe that's what's going on here; and Kaus said it was pleasant and happy, so maybe that's all it is."

Then, we saw the Mexican flag flown OVER the American flag, inverted. I thought: "That's really pushing it, bud -- and I would feel that way even if it were the Confederate flag. On the other hand, we did just have a big thing about the importance of free speech, even offensive free speech, with those Muhammad cartoons. So, if I'm going to be true to the principles at hand, I have to permit this -- even if it is a desecration."

Now, we see the American flag banned at American schools.

I know there's been some chaos, particularly last week's flag burnings, in which Mexican flags were destroyed after they were raised above the US flag. I realize that schools have to maintain discipline.

Nevertheless, we've reached the end of my tolerance.

This is America, and a lot of Americans have fought for that flag. Our kids ought to be able to fly it. The school's place is not to ban the display, but to teach it, and to require the proper forms, as recorded in the United States Marine Corps Flag Manual. When I was a boy, we were taught to raise and lower, and correctly fold, the flag. Particularly good students were honored by being allowed to do it for the school, one week out of their career.

If school discipline is being troubled by the presence of flags, the solution is to enforce those proper forms:

When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. When the President directs that the flag be flown at half-staff at military facilities and naval vessels and stations abroad, it will be so flown whether or not the flag of another nation is flown full-staff alongside the flag of the United States of America. The national flag, if required, will be displayed, on the right (the flag's own right) of all others. The national flags of other nations shall be displayed, right to left, in the alphabetical order of the names of the nations in the English language.

There are several lessons encoded in that paragraph. The American flag has precedence here. The English language has precedence here. The honor of our flag cannot be harmed by being displayed below another flag, provided that it has been properly ordered: for mourning the glorious dead adds to, rather than detracts from, the honor of a man or a nation.

Every American student ought to learn those lessons. They are the forms endorsed by our military, chief defender of our nation's honor and her traditions. These limits are not limits, but liberations: for they establish the forms with which anyone, of any nation, may come here and become fully and completely an American. Do but these little things, and we will embrace you as a brother in a way that no other nation on earth ever will. Do them not, and you will forever remain an alien.

Winchester

The Winchester:

Kim du Toit has a piece on the closure of the Winchester plant, and the end of an American era. It is an ode to one of the great symbols, a piece of technology that captured something at the heart of the culture: the miracle of technology, coupled with a vision of fearless human freedom.

The funniest thing about the Winchester lever-action rifle is how American it looks. Its directness speaks to the honest greed of westward expansion, its reliability to the honest hunger of its manufacturers for the big houses it bought them, its toughness to the honest brutality by which it was employed in various arroyos and dry gulches. It lacks subterfuge, subtlety, pretension, airs. It’s like the cowboy himself, elegant in its total lack of self-awareness. It’s beyond irony or stylization. It’s cool because it doesn’t care what you or anybody thinks.

Now open it; shove the lever—that oblong loop affixed to the trigger guard—forward. Feel it slide-clack through a four-inch range of motion and watch the drama as the gun undergoes changes: the breech, which contains the firing pin, glides backward, ratcheting the hammer back. At that moment you can tilt it a little and peer into the opened slot in the roof of the receiver.

You see before you the gun’s most private parts: the chamber, the slightly bulged space in the barrel where the cartridge is encapsulated when it fires; the follower, a little spring-powered tray that lifts a cartridge (which has just been popped aboard by the pressure of the magazine tube spring) up to the chamber; the breechface with its tiny hole out of which will pop, whack-a-mole style, the firing pin when the trigger is pulled and the hammer falls.

You see: trays, pins, holes, steel walls. You see a miracle of timing by which all these elements have been choreographed to mesh in a brilliantly syncopated sequence. But you’re also looking back into the 19th century and to what it was that made this country great. For what you’re seeing is a solution—elegant as any poem, efficient as any mousetrap, smooth as any crooner—to a set of problems that might be enumerated as follows: How do you package chemical energy of roughly 3,000 foot-pounds safely in metal that is at the same time light enough to be carried, strong enough to be operated and simple enough to be manufactured?

These things are not going away quickly, not after six million were made. I have one in my closet. The old Winchester will be with us a long time, even if this marks the beginning of the end.

And when those old rifles start to wear out, and only a few remain servicable? Perhaps we will move on to something else. Or perhaps we will see another miracle.

In 1941, Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army revolver, which must be one of the two most famous handguns ever made -- the other also being a Colt. Yet by 1956, they were re-tooled and began producing "Second Generation" Colt revolvers. The culture, you see, had changed: reinvigorated by Westerns on television, Americans had a sharp appetite for single action revolvers. Ruger had been offering one, and Colt found that it wanted back in to the game it had so long led. This second generation became the Third Generation, was licensed out as the Colt Cowboy, and now is back again at Colt as the Western undergoes another rebirth. The Single Action Shooting Society has a deal where members can get custom Colts -- hideously expensive ones, that Colt never imagined making when it thought it was done with the revolver in 1941.

Rebirths are possible, and often it is only when something is gone that you realize how much you needed it. That was the case with the Colt; and it is the case with the Frontier that the Colt and the Winchester symbolize, says Doc Russia.

We see young men behaving in a manner inconsistent with manhood. Men are not, as Jeff Cooper illustrated, learning to ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth. They are instead learning to bum around, play Xbox, and engage in droll sophistry. Look at today's metrosexual. You have a male who primps himself like a girl, and instead of behaving in a manly manner, he uses a woman's charms of emotional embellishment, and "snesitivity," which are attributes not best exemplified by men.

While I believe that part of this is due to enabling by women who want a man that is "non-threatening" and "a good listener," I think that there is a far bleaker emptiness that is at play here in the dearth of manhood.

Where, I ask, are the frontiers?

It was not so long ago in this very country when a young man could go out into the great vastness of America, and carve for himself a future in remote or undeveloped lands where there were no real rules yet. I look at my own childhood, and in retrospect, myself and my friends all had a certain restlessness in our hearts. Some have called it Wanderlust, the desire to go out and wander. Some call it cabin fever. I do not know what to call it, but I know that it is real. Unfortunately, there were no frontiers for us to venture off into at that time. No, we had nowhere to explore, aqnd found ourselves bored very quickly by the terribly humdrum existence that passes for life as a teenager today. So, we did like so many did, and tried to make things "exciting." What followed was a fairly quick series of events and mishaps that made for wonderful stories that I still tell sometimes. Unfortunately, these stories are laced thoroughly with terms like "overdosed on" "drunk and passed out," "cops showed up and cuffed"...

The military offers a road out here for many young men. As we watch the chaos on our borders increase, and the situation in Iran worsen, we may find the Frontier closer than we expect all too soon. Will we be ready? Doc says that the teenagers of America already are, if only they knew it:

[E]very teenager has felt this urge. This urge to just get up, flick the cigarrette away, smash the bottle on the floor, and stride out. Yes, I have many times sat in a party, surrounded by a few friends and a lot of strangers, listening to them all say the same damned thing as everyone else does, and wearing the same damned things like a bunch of cookie cutter angst-riddled teenagers, and felt this great, almost paralyzing fear as a single horrific thought overwhelmed me.

What if this is all there is?

And then the urge would strike, and I would want to get up and leave. No explanations, no diatribes, no monologues. Just get up and leave. Just get out and get away to somewhere that is more real, and more meaningful. Somewhere I am unfettered.

This longing is echoed in the very piece on the Winchester rifle with which we began. It too looks to the Frontier the Winchester symbolized, and mourns:

A famous ad that most boy baby boomers will recall from Boys’ Life, the old scouting magazine of the ‘50s, showed a happy lad, carrot-topped and freckly like any number of Peck’s Bad Boys, his teeth haphazardly arrayed within his wide, gleeful mouth under eyes wide as pie platters as he exclaimed on Christmas morn, "Gee, Dad . . . A Winchester!"

All gone, all gone, all gone. The gun as family totem, the implied trust between generations, the implicit idea that marksmanship followed by hunting were a way of life to be pursued through the decades, the sense of tradition, respect, self-discipline and bright confidence that Winchester and the American kinship group would march forward to a happy tomorrow—gone if not with the wind, then with the tide of inner-city and nutcase killings [.]

The Boy Scouts still exist, and still serve the young man who longs for adventure. They still offer chances to explore. Not just the Frontier, though also that, but other adventures also: so-called "Explorer Scouts" can end up attached to police units, firefighters, and other places where the modern world still needs a man's spirit. We do need that spirit, and we may find soon that we need it as much as we ever did.

Doc Russia says the heart of the young man from whom we will need that spirit longs for it. It looks around and asks, "Is this all there is?" It wants so much for the answer to be, "No -- and we need you for what is to come."

I remember that feeling he describes. All my life, it never seemed to go away. And then one morning, my wife woke me out of slumber and said, "Darling, it's time." We went to a hospital and passed through fire, and on the other side was a new world.

To all you young men out there wondering, I will tell you: you have never known adventure until you've held your living son.

Yesterday my wife and I took my son, almost four, to the gun range for the first time. I bought him ear protection made to fit a little head. He was perfectly behaved. He sat on the bench behind the range and watched with wonder that miracle of timing: the meeting of steel and springs and clay, that sent a whirling orange disk sailing through the air. A man on the range, his father, raises a stick to his shoulder. There is a sound like thunder, and that little disk -- so far away you can barely see it -- breaks apart with a shock.

We had to drag him bodily back to the truck, the boy grinning from earmuff to earmuff. I bought him a water gun on the way home, and this morning we hiked out to a lake nearby. He stood on the shore and shot at the geese paddling by. They would honk gently when he hit them, but did not seem to mind.

In time he'll have a Winchester, mine or one of his own. It may be that they will make them again one day.

I suspect they will, when we are ready for them. When we have restored the trust between generations: when we have taught our youths how to be men, and our men to love their sons. All good things follow from that, rebirth and a greater world.

McK 2

"Just a Victim of Being in Congress"

Can we all agree that, once you get yourself elected to a Constitutional office in the Federal government, you have to stop playing the victim card? Congressmen, like Presidents and Supreme Court Justices, occupy the highest levels of our society. One of the two major political parties has an interest in coming to your defense -- whatever you do. You get to make the law, interpret the law, or create regulations with the force of law. If you're one of them, you can't suggest that you're being oppressed. American society has not been unfair to you.

There is, apparently, footage of the incident "which will not be released," we are told. Now, what are the odds on that, as a gambler: that the footage establishes the guilt of the cop, and the Capitol Police are covering up for him in the face of all the power of almost half the Congress -- the organization that determines their budget and pay raises, among other things? Or that the footage proves the Congresswoman is guilty, and political power is being deployed by Congress against the Capitol Police to prevent it showing up on the evening news?

I wouldn't dream of giving odds on a fool bet like that.