Republican Platform

A Republican Platform:

Armed Liberal at Winds of Change wrote a hypothetical Democratic nominee acceptance speech, to show where he thinks the Democratic Party should go. I undertook to argue with him about it at some length, as did one David Blue, a sharp fellow I've debated in the past. AL responded by suggesting that we jointly compose a Republican platform.

I thought that was hilarious, since I'm a Southern Democrat, and David Blue is an Australian. On reflection, however, I decided that the Republicans seem to be in need of any help they can get. David agreed, so we hammered something out.

Since it fell into the comments at WoC, I figured I'd get it into one place.

AL's original post is here.

My main rebuttal is here. I'll quote it in full b/c it's important to the later platform.

I'd like to note that you have not addressed either of the two most serious problems for the liberal tradition in America. Social Security is the first; and the Federal pension/healthcare programs are the second. The costs of these are estimated to be fifty-nine trillion in hidden debt, not currently budgeted.

The government's response when asked about it was to oppose changes in accounting policies to account for those debts. Why? "The White House and the Congressional Budget Office oppose the change, arguing that the programs are not true liabilities because government can cancel or cut them."

So here's the stark truth as I see it: the government is stating baldly that it has no intention of paying those liabilities -- but intends, and indeed will have, to "cancel or cut them."

That will create massive problems for our country when it starts to occur. It will also be the dead end for the Reform Liberal tradition. No one is going to trust the government to handle their pension or Social Security or healthcare after the depth of their deceit becomes unavoidably clear.

Nor should they trust them now. It is already plain, and being articulated by the government itself, that these promises will not be honored. We need to begin privitizing American society now, so that the shock of the collapse of these promises -- and, indeed, the collapse of any remaining faith in the government -- will do less damage to the nation. The private sphere will survive when the government collapses -- for who will work in its bureaucracies when they see how the promises made to their ancestors are kept?

If the reality is a much smaller government, refocused on the actual Constitutional business of government, it may be worth the price. But we should start preparing for that world, because it's coming whether you want it or not.

Now: A general critique:

I have to admit I wouldn't feel good about voting for a politician who promised to "work damn hard" on "solutions" that "would never solve" the problems. What I want out of government is a lot less meddling, not a lot more -- especially in areas where we don't fully understand the problems yet, or the kinds of problems don't lend themselves to government-led solutions.

That's a general critique. I don't object (as do Libertarians or some conservatives) to using the government to influence the nature of the economy, for example, in order to create a society we would prefer to the one the market will create. For example, I think a policy designed to boost individual ownership of small business and family farms would be of great social value to America. Nothing against corporations; it's just that people are freer, as Jefferson noted in praising 'yeomen farmers,' when they own their own means of production.

But if we can't actually solve a problem, let's leave it alone. No meddling in the affairs of the People unless we can both name a specific policy we want to enact, and show that it has a reasonable chance of success for resolving the actual problem it addresses -- and won't create nasty unintended effects.

The desire to "fix" things that can't be fixed, or that we don't really know how to fix, is the single worst impulse of liberal politicians today. It creates an endless nest of binding rules and regulations, laws and agencies, taxes and tape, until whole areas of human freedom are lost -- and the problem never got fixed anyway.

More specific critiques:

Good points on the DPRK and Iran. Concurr.

Re: Palestine and Israel, see above on the subject of impossible problems and the unsuitability of US gov't meddling in them. For God's sake, let's not involve ourselves any further in this business. Israel's government may have to involve itself with this particular problem-without-solution, but we don't. "The United States has tried to make good faith efforts in the past to help negotiate a solution," we should say, "but we must admit that they have failed. It is time for Israel and Palestine to resolve their differences between themselves, or using such other moderators as they agree to prefer. While we will not stand by for an invasion of either territory by a third party, this dispute must be resolved by the involved parties alone."

As for military restructuring, I think I've written enough about that in the past to avoid needing to speak to it further here.

Now, your big economic question: "How do me make the basics of the American dream - a white picket fence and a better future for our kids - available to people who don't have advanced degrees or trust funds?"

I said above that I think the #1 thing we need to do is encourage the development of small business and family farms. That means a wholesale restructuring of farm aid policies; it also means rethinking government contracting, and perhaps accepting paying more for services and goods rather than going for lowest bidder status. Economies of scale aren't always available to small businesses, but we'd prefer a nation with more of them anyway.

There are other things of this type we can do. We can subsidize education for useful trades (more at the state than the federal level, as states have different needs and are not well served by a one-size-fits-all policy). We can create tax benefits for small businesses v. larger corporations; heck, we could simply forgo taxing small businesses and family farms at all, at least at first.

The number one thing we need to do is dramatically cut back on the regulation of such businesses. We need to make it easy to set one up, so you don't need a lawyer and an accountant to make and sell furniture out of your wood shop.

We need to exempt small businesses from some ADA regulations, so that you can open a restaurant out of your kitchen without having to rebuild your house to accomodate wheelchairs. I knew a nice Korean couple in China who had a business whereby you could come by at supper, and eat what they were cooking for a small price. Or, for more, they'd make something special for you. That's the sort of thing anyone can do -- some extra income for a retired couple, perhaps -- except for the regulations out the ear.

Etc.

Another thing we could do (which speaks to your desire to build America in copper, steel, etc) is reestablish the CCC. Public improvements can be made by young people who are learning a trade at the same time. They have to subject themselves to orders and contracts (one of the CCC's things was that you didn't get the money you earned -- it went to your family. We might have to set up a 'trust fund' type account that you pay into, but can't draw out of except for education until you're 35). In return, they learn how to do something very well, for free; and they get the satisfaction of building something impressive (ever driven the Blue Ridge Parkway?).

Education will benefit most from being privatized. We need to start ending public education. It can't be done all at once, but we can start shifting a percentage of our expenses every year to helping establish new private schools (another small business!) and establishing voucher programs. We should aim to eliminate public schools, with their attendant bureaucracies and public-sector unions, within fifteen years.

You want your mother making $30,000 to have a shot at Harvard? I'd suggest you aim higher, myself, but if that's what you want... let her pick the school that is right for child and his particular talents. Harvard already doesn't require families making under $60,000 to pay tuition, so if we can handle educating the individual child to his best advantage, he should have a pretty good shot.

Or he could go to a real school, like West Point. The service academies are exempted from the critique of public education, as they are better than any other public education. They are better because they train the whole man (or woman): they train the mind and they strengthen the body, they improve his personal willpower and discipline so that he can excel, but also inculcate a sense of the debt that we owe to our nation and its traditions. This is what American education should want to produce.

As for your environmental policies, I have a few comments.

1) You want to get the worst polluters off the road. This conflicts with your desire to help the poor, unless you plan to buy them a car: most of the worst polluters are the oldest vehicles, which are barely kept running because that is what the owner can afford.

2) You want to decentralize to help us against terror attacks. This I agree with entirely, and not merely for terrorist reasons; but again, you need cars for that. I am a great believer in light rail systems -- Virginia's VRE was a wonderful way to commute, when I had to get into DC. But you can't run a railroad everywhere. Most of America is going to drive where it needs to go.

That "most" of America is also the poorest part of America -- the money is in the cities. So, again, unless you're going to buy new fuel-efficient pickups for the rural poor, you're hitting a conflict.

3) Building new plants is a great idea. Moving power generation closer to where it's being generated is a great idea.

4) We should encourage better air quality and other environmental benefits through tax breaks rather than new regulations and oversight agencies. We should always endeavor to avoid regulation, and keep taxes as low as at all possible; so let us do so here.

David began the "R" platform here:

#24 from Armed Liberal: "David B - do you want to coordinate w/Grim on the "fantasy Republican" response?"

Sure.

If you don't think it's too badly off topic, we could start discussing it here, in the context of what you said and the need for Republicans to have an answer to this.

#25 from Grim: "It'd be odd for a Southern Democrat and an Australian to write the Republican platform. On the other hand, by all evidence they seem to need any help they can get."

True.

I agree with Peggy Noonan: the Republican Party now is headless. George W. Bush has thrown away Ronald Reagan's coalition as though it was his property and he was entitled to. He, and other top Republicans like the odious Trent Lott, seen to think that the base of the Republican Party consists of stupid people whose hearts are in the wrong place.

That implies a political crisis) as seen in the illegal immigration struggle) and fundamental rebuilding - much more bottom-up rebuilding than the Democrats need to do.

The party aristocracy will not do this - and if they did they'd do it wrong, but they simply will not rethink and rebuild. We see this in their lack of reading on jihad. We see this in their slowness in getting internet savvy. They won't read, they won't think, you can't make them, and if you're so smart why aren't you incumbent like them? That's their attitude.

Any serious rethinking will have to come from outside the charmed circle of the "best" people. Anybody can pitch in and help with this. Even us.

Who was that Australian recently who I vaguely recall was found to be an illegal immigrant working for one of the major parties? I guess I'm one up on him, because due to the wonder of the Internet, I can do my part here without violating my principle of promoting legality. :)

First, let's see how much were are on the same page on fundamentals.

I start with faith and confidence in the goodness and powers of the American people, the wisdom of their founding fathers (including and especially the author of the second foundation, Abraham Lincoln) the fundamental correctness of their system of law as enshrined in the American Constitution (though not always as courts have applied it: out, damned Roe!), and their future. The American are strong and clever (good engineers), they breed enough to replace themselves (ignoring the major problem of the vanishing white), they've got socially useful religious traditions (Christianity limited by strong requirements for non-establishment and freedom of speech, with a dash of fix-the-world Judaism), they have good neighbors (compare Mexicans and Americans to Palestinians and Israelis), they have a natural network of informal allies (the Anglosphere) - and so on.

So my attitude to fundamental, serious pessimism about America is to dismiss it. Just let the system work and it'll be fine. And my attitude to fundamental reform is, America's fundamentals aren't broken, so don't fix them.

You know the joke about the young multi-millionaire who owed his success to applying a formula? His daddy gave him millions of dollars and said: "Son, this is yours, don't lose it." When it comes to liberty, and the conditions of prosperity and national strength, America is that lucky young man and the Constitution is the most valuable item in his legacy.

Most people in most countries will never come close to achieving the freedoms that in America come gift-wrapped in the founding documents of the state. Better yet, these freedoms are not bestowed, they are recognized by the state as coming from God. That couldn't be better.

So, since you live in a lucky country, your first concern should be to stay lucky.

The Republican Party as an instrument for the preservation of American national greatness is not nearly in the happy position of America itself. I have always been and still am skeptical that "red state" demographics guarantee conservatives a growing edge in national politics. I think that the party has lost its way.

Americans are problem-solvers and they like problem-solvers. Even though it may be true that often the government does best by doing less, I think Americans will always be biased to the guy running for a position in government who says: "I've got a solution, let's do this!"

Through apparent futility in war, protracted deadlock on key social issues, and a needless failure of his intended reforms in the two terms of George W. Bush, the Republican Party has more or less lost the mandate of the effective do-something party. (Which is not to say that Democrats have picked up - prior to the rise of Armed Liberal of course. :) The recent Republican "victory" on illegal immigration was won by gladiators like Jeff Sessions and Jim DeMint. Yes, it's valuable to block bad things, so well done. But the Grand Old Party has to get back to positively accomplishing good things, specifically it has to accomplish good things for the three vital elements of the Reagan coalition, which must be restored.

Grim:

1. What do you think Republican security conservatives most need?
2. What do you think shrink-the-government free enterprise conservatives most need?
3. What do you think Christians, pro-lifers and social conservatives most need?

4. What do you think is the issue the system most needs? What is the top issue that's like preventive maintenance on sewers: it's really, really got to be done, regardless of whether there's a charged-up constituency for it?

(I've said it's legality, with Justice Clarence Thomas as my guide to what that is. I think American needs to get back to working a lot more like a civics class says it does, and a lot less like the "earmark" system, the pro-bill side of the illegal immigration debate and the jurisprudence of the "living constitution" demonstrates that it does. I think you need a state of laws, not a system where in effect the law is to do what the powerful and wealthy say, or you'll be sorry.)

5. What do you think independents and persuadable Democrats most need from the Republican Party? What do you think would count as the Republicans solving something for once?

6. What do you see in what Armed Liberal said that we should mercilessly steal, or regard as an offer that's so hot that we have to make some kind of rival offer?

#33 from David Blue at 2:41 am on Jul 06, 2007
Re: point 6: I see you've already addressed that in a lot of ways, but I'm trying to pick out your top priority in each category that I think is important.

My response is here.

All right, David, if you want to give it a go, I'll join you.

On your fundamentals:

I agree that the American people are fundamentally good, insofar as humans can be good. You will recall "The Smell of Death," in which I considered what some of the limits on inner goodness might be. Still, judged as humans, they're well-intentioned, and want to live in a country that "does the right thing."

The underlying freedoms of the American Constitution are solid. The system for administering them is, as I see it, broken (see "Time for a Change," another piece on the topic). Serious Constitutional adjustments are needed to bring the government back into something like what the Founders actually intended for it to be.

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by crediting Lincoln with 'the second foundation' of America. It's true that Lincoln's example and rhetoric were and are stirring; and it's true that the Civil War would have been lost without his guidance. However, Lincoln himself did not do much to change the operation of the Constitutional system. The Reconstruction Amendments, 13th-15th, are to be credited to later actors. It is principally the 14th Amendment that is responsible for the structural changes in the US government, which were severe enough to be rightly considered a second foundation.

I am not a fan of the 14th Amendment, and think that a successful settlement of America's internal social differences will require that it be amended to reduce the power of the Federal courts. It is precisely the abilities of the 14th that make SCOTUS decisions so needlessly explosive: because they are impositions on all jurisdictions, it is a matter of extreme political rancor when we have to nominate a new Justice. In fact, I would say this has become the central issue of our elections -- people who are totally furious at the Republican party will vote for them anyway in 2008, precisely to avoid the risk of the SCOTUS drifting left. A huge amount of our political fundraising and activism is driven by concerns about the court.

I think we need to change that, to return to something closer to the original founding, if we are to have an America that can really be for all Americans. The American social contract was meant to allow for multiple solutions to contentious issues -- Bostonian Puritans, Southern rumrunners, and "Rogue's Island's" freethinkers. Now every contentious question demands a one-size-fits-all solution from SCOTUS. There either will or will not be a protected right to abortion; there either will or will not be prayer allowed in schools; and so forth. So much of the heat that is keeping us from working together and viewing other Americans as allies and brothers first is coming from the concentration of power in the SCOTUS and other Federal courts.

There are other systemic concerns I have, which are cause for a certain amount of real pessimism about the American government. About the American people, I am broadly optimistic. They're good lads, mostly; watch too much TV, but mostly they're all right.

I think your story about the young millionaire is precisely right. The number one thing we ought to do is to focus on preserving our heritage of freedom, and not frittering it away (see my objection, above, to AL's proposal for endless "working on" this and that impossible problem, to the tune of constant new regulations in every sphere of life).

I do agree that Americans like to see the government doing things, for fundamentally cultural rather than well-considered reasons. They hate idlers, and they hate people who seem not to be earning their money or benefits; Congressmen have money and other benefits; therefore, they'd better at least appear to be doing something worthwhile to earn it.

That said, Americans also do know that we have tons of useless, pointless, and outright harmful laws and regulations. A Congress that was predicated on passing laws to repeal laws of that sort -- to hunting them out from constituent advice and getting rid of them -- would be a Congress I could even get excited about. "Let's clear the way for you to build the life you want," would be a good slogan. You could easily do ten thousand 30-second ads that would resonate:

Sue: "Hey, you're a good cook, Jill. Why not open a bakery?"

Jill: "That's a great idea!"

Flash through ten scenes of clerks denying her things, enforcing regulations, trying to explain the regulations, etc.

Sue: "You look down. What happened?"

Jill: "So much for my bakery. It's gotten to where you can't do anything in this country."

That's not freedom. Vote for Joe Republican, and start living your dreams!

I'll handle your "six questions" separately.

#39 from Grim at 4:20 am on Jul 06, 2007
1. Security conservatives are, at this point, mostly concerned about security at home. Above all, they want the border secured -- and really secured. They want the TSA to be professional and courteous, quick and yet thorough. Right now we're in an isolationist moment, as security conservatives feel like Iraq means the end of any chance of fighting terrorism overseas -- so they want to make sure the locks on the doors work.

That may change if things improve in Iraq before the election. Speaking as a military analyst, I expect them to do so -- though there is no certainty about it, to be sure. Still, even if things are going far better in Iraq next year, there will be no more Iraq-style adventures in the near future. The next president will, absent a massive provocation, be limited to Clinton-style air war at most.

2. The number one issue for shrink-the-government types is tax reform. There's a "Fair Tax" book that is making the rounds -- I see it everywhere. I don't mean, "in bookstores everywhere." I mean, you go to people's houses, it's on the coffee table. I haven't read it myself, so I don't know if the plan holds water or not -- but I know a whole lot of people are thinking about it.

If the plan's any good, it would make sense to endorse it. If it isn't, it would make sense to get the guys who are behind it off to one side, negotiate a compromise they could support, and become the candidate of tax reform.

3. Pro-lifers are separate from others, in that they are defined by their issue. They will vote Republican for SCOTUS reasons; aside from the occasional meet-and-greet to talk about their issue, they need no further attention.

Movement Christians are hard for me. I hardly ever set foot in a church, to be honest; I have a great respect for religion, and indeed for Christianity, but I have little use for sermons and prefer to sort it out on my own. Nothing at all against people who find a great deal of joy in having a community of believers to belong to; it's just not for me, at least not so far. As a result, I don't know what conversations they're having, so I can't give much of a sense of what their top issues are.

Social conservatives are #1 on immigration right now. Much like security conservatives, they want to make sure the locks work on the doors; but they have the added concern of the culture being overrun, as mass immigration leads to millions of new citizens (children born here, in any event) who may not be fully assimilated and yet able to wield tremendous ballot-box power. There are several solutions to this; the one I favor is to remove forever the path to citizenship from anyone who came here illegally, and to repeal birthright citizenship so that only lawfully naturalized immigrants or the children of American citizens would become American citizens (this is, of course, how almost all nations do it already).

But you still have to secure the border. Fortunately, per #1, you were going to do that anyway.

4. I think we need to hold a Constitutional convention along the lines discussed in the comments to this post and the "Time for a Change" post already mentioned. There are several nuts and bolts issues about the function of the government we need to think about.

If I had to pick just one, it would be the SCOTUS/14th issue I mentioned above. America would be a quieter, happier place if the people on the other side of the Red/Blue divide weren't always having to fear that one SCOTUS ruling would put the heathens on the other side in charge of some cherished aspect of their life.

I don't want to control people; I am happy for California, for example, to have universal health care if the governor wants it and can arrange it within their means. I just don't want it here. That's what America was meant to be, a place for all of us. I want that back. I'm tired of fighting Americans, whom I really want to be happy and to have the lives they want to live -- just not at my expense, if you please.

5. You could get a lot of Democrats with the immigration issue -- I mean union men, chiefly, but also poor Democrats from the western states who are competing for jobs. It's a wedge issue, and if the Republicans could "solve" it, they'd win big.

On the other hand, as I mentioned above, my own preferred solution includes permitting mass immigration to continue -- I think the greater immediate threat is a collapse of the Mexican state, which would cause far larger problems. The influx of hard cash from illegals in America is one of the legs holding up a wobbly Mexican table.

We do have to address the demographic / cultural concerns, but I think we benefit from keeping Mexico propped up in this way. At least, given that the option is a failed state on our southern border, it's the lesser of two evils.

6. The health care issue is a problem. People have been talking about it so long -- and aging Baby Boomers, who either neglected to provide for their retirements properly or are just greedy enough to take 'free' health care from younger people trying to raise families, are so large a voting bloc -- that something has to be done. There's just this huge number of people who are hot to suck up the health care industry into the state's clutches, and others who are scared and don't know what to think, and others who have just heard it talked about so long they've become convinced.

What we need to do is the hardest of things -- we need to educate the public about those budgetary deceptions I mentioned earlier. We need to let them know that the government already can't pay, and has not intention to pay, for their Social Security and Medicare at anything like its promised levels. We need retiring Federal pensioneers (and current workers) to understand that they have been sold a fraud. They have been promised assets that will vaporize when they need them most.

Once the scale of the fraud is clear, I don't think the taste for socialized medicine will be so strong. We need to push for those accounting changes I mentioned above, so the scale of the real Federal debt is clear. We need to talk about how hard the benefits cuts and tax increases are going to be already.

We need to make clear that all those rosy promises that came with money sucked out of your every paycheck -- they were all lies.

We need people to understand that the government cannot be trusted with the security of their families. That is a duty you cannot lay down, because there is no one out there who can be trusted to take it up. You cannot trust the government to take it for you; you must not trust them to seize it.

Sorry to end on a negative note -- that's just how the questions fell out. But there we are.

Thoughts?

Anabasis I

Anabasis, Book I:

The Commissar has taken to the study of ancient Greek, and is blogging his translation of Xenophon's Anabasis. This, the story of "the Ten Thousand," is a tale of Greek mercenaries who become involved in the losing side of a civil war in Persia -- and have to fight their way all the way back home. It is one of the great tales left to us from the Classical period.

In the comments to his post, a discussion about hosptality and the concept of the xenos, the "Guest-friend." Readers of Grim's Hall will recognize strong parallels with the concept of frith, particularly as it plays out in surviving Anglo-Saxon literature and the Norse sagas.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday:

Two hundred thirty-one years ago, a small band of men got together to settle a large problem. They represented a group of colonies in one of the world's largest empires.

The declaration they wrote was a daring one.

These men willingly put their lives, fortunes and honor at risk in an attempt to make the colonies into free states. They could not predict whether their attempt would succeed or fail, but they signed their names on that Declaration of Independence.

Historians would later document a long struggle from that bright July day in 1776 to the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the ratification of the Federal Constitution. The nation birthed in that struggle is now one of the greatest nations on the Earth.

This 4th of July, we remember the Declaration of Independence that was published more than two centuries ago.

Happy Birthday to the United States of America.

Maulana Jeff Davis

Maulana Jefferson Davis:

This story from Pakistan should be fun to watch. It reminds one strongly of the alleged capture of Jefferson Davis in a dress. As you may know, the story is that Confederate States' President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union forces wearing his wife's garments, in an attempt to hide. Jefferson Davis strongly resented the story, and its truth is unknown to historians. It may have simply been Northern propaganda; or it may have happened in some form.

However, it was a tale that was widely distributed among the public, made for numerous political cartoons, and so on. Even in America, the portrayal of Jefferson Davis in a dress was sufficiently humiliating to be a major propaganda strike against the whole Confederacy. Such blows were needed, as the war was ending and the people in the South needed to be convinced that the CSA was not merely defeated but illegitimate. Whether or not the story was true, it was used for just that purpose.

Will the Pakistani government use the maulana's capture in a burqa in the same fashion? They ought to, if they have any sense for information operations. It's a gift on a platter, if the story is true; and if it's not, maybe they're as smart as P. T. Barnum.

Libby Commutation

Mr. Libby:

I'm bothered to see President Bush, who has never shown a particular desire to make use of the presidential powers of pardon or commutation, take a unique interest in the Libby case. That's not to say that the case was justly handled to begin with; followers of Cassandra's page, especially, have been kept up to date on the various oddities around the whole affair. There is no doubt that "Scooter" got extra-bad treatment from his political foes for being who he was; why shouldn't he get extra-good treatment from his allies?

Well, because factionalism is meant to stay outside of the justice system, not that it does. Prosecutors from Chicago famous for their ethics, as Fitzgerald was, are meant to keep to those ethics when given the chance to go after members of an administration unpopular in Chicago. Presidents who do not normally pardon or commute are meant to continue their preferences when dealing with intimates, just as they would with the poor and unknown.

I don't think the use of the Presidential pardon or commutation is unjust in and of itself -- in fact, I think it is vastly underused. Were I President (if you can imagine so unlikely a thing), I would make it my habit to subject every sentence to the review of my office, and commute or pardon freely when I felt injustice had been enacted by jury or judge. That is part of the President's job: to serve as a bulwark against injustice by the courts. That is why he was given the power. That recent Presidents have rarely used it only means that they have abandoned that responsibilty, not that the need for it no longer exists.

Yet to use that power once, for a friend, when you have denied it to nearly everyone else? That is not justice.

No one in this episode has covered himself with glory, at a time when our Republic could greatly have used an example to convice the People that the law still bound the powerful. There is no reason to be happy about any aspect of this episode. It has been disgusting from first to last.

Oddly enough, the only exception was Mr. Libby himself, who behaved in a generous and noble fashion at a time when that very action was likely to endanger his liberty. Perhaps alone among the actors in this drama he did something praiseworthy and right when it could not benefit him, and in fact was sure to harm him.

That cannot undo the fact that he was convicted by a jury of a deadly offense. Perjury, of which he was accused and convicted, is a terribly serious crime for a public official. The violation of one's oath attacks the foundations of our government, which invests great powers in public and military officials, but requires binding oaths of them in turn.

If only we could prosecute every one of them who seems to have violated his oath, with the severity that the offense deserves. But this episode underlines and affirms the lesson of the Clinton years: the political class that commands our government laughs at the concepts of honor and perjuy, and sneers at any attempt to enforce them.

Back to the future.

Just keep clicking.

I'm of an age where I only saw this stuff in old magazines. I wonder what it was like to see it all the first time.

I bet James Lileks would like this.

They shot the Donkeys too.

Michael Yon, who proves once again that he is the equal of any reporter working for a 'real' news service, posts this dispatch recounting Iraqi and American forces cleaning up after after Al-Queda has evidently liquidated members of a village near Baqubah.

Congrats Mike

Congrats, Mike!

A happy day for Mike the Marine, who is a new father. Mike is a long-time friend of the Hall, and in fact is the guy who taught me how to install comment code on the blog, back before Blogger had such things. So, all these great discussions we have? They're his doing, in a way.

All the best, Mike, all the best.

Retention Survey

Officer Retention Survey:

This morning, I and a bunch of younger officers had to take a survey sponsored by the Army Research Institute, aimed at job satisfaction for junior officers (junior in rank; some of us are not so junior in age). The results, I'm told, will be out in a month or two. The purpose is to help figure out why so many pre-majors leave the Army, and find ways to convince them not to.

The multiple-choice questions were about what you'd expect. There were many variants on (1) are you afraid to leave the Army because of money? (2) do you learn more from your leaders and peers as opposed to Army-provided training materials? (3) how impressed were you with your most recent supervisor? (4) how impressed are you with your current training? (5) how much do you think the Army really really cares about you and your job? and (6) do you think of yourself as a natural take-charge leader type? There were two questions I didn't like, about whether you'd advise someone else, male or female, to join the Army (insufficient data there). There were also sections on whether you think you owed the Army various things (mostly extra efforts and commitment; I answered mostly "agree" or "strongly agree") and whether the Army owed you various things (mostly personal attention, flexible work hours, recognition, etc.; I answered "disagree" or "strongly disagree" on just about everything except leadership). There were some good questions about your source of commission, whether you were from a military family, and so forth; but in the main the focus was on "What kind of things is the Army giving you?" as opposed to, "What else is the source of your commitment?"

There was a section at the end to write what you pleased about the subject matter of the survey. I put something like this:

I joined the Army to support the war effort. I don't believe the Army should attempt to attract too many selfish officers. A leader who is obsessed with his own pay, education, and benefits is NO INSPIRATION. Such people are poisonous, and I am glad not to have worked for many of them.

Frankly, I can't comprehend anyone who would sign up in wartime for benefits alone, or even mainly for that reason; but I don't think I want to be led by people like that in any event. Some years ago, I read a Wall Street Journal article on the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, which suggested that the SDF had a lot of trouble recruiting when their ads emphasized pay and benefits; and did somewhat better when they emphasized the challenges and hardships.

Thoughts?

Congrats, Doc

Congrats, Doc:

Having mentioned Doc Russia in the last post, I should point out that he has completed his internship. At last, he and his beloved wife will be reunited. I've never met the lady, but the little I've seen of her on the blog suggests that he's a very lucky man. I think she and my own wife would like each other a lot.

Another meme

Another Meme:

I have noticed that almost every one of these things that gets to me comes from Cass or FbL. So here's another one.

* Post these rules before we give you the facts.
* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
* People who are tagged need to write their own post about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of their post, they choose eight people to tag and list their names.
* Don’t forget to leave a comment telling them they’ve been tagged, and to read your blog.

As always, I will not be tagging anyone else. Anyone who wants, however, is welcome to play.

Eight random facts (that you don't already know? Hmm):

1) I totalled my first car at the age of sixteen, while trying to take a curve at the top of a Georgia hill faster than... well, more than twice as fast as the speed limit allows. However, now that I'm older, I rarely drive over the speed limit at all.

2) I've lived in the outright wilderness, on the edge of the wilderness, in rural cattle country, in a suburb (Germantown, MD), a small town (Warrenton, VA), a small city (Savannah, GA), a medium-sized city (Atlanta, GA) and an Asian-stytle dense city (Hangzhou, China).

3) I prefer revolvers to semi-automatics, single-actions to double-actions, and knives to firearms. The simpler the thing, the more reliable.

4) I love to cheat at poker -- though not against an unsuspecting opponent, but as part of the game. If you can catch me and accurately explain how it happened, I'll be glad to forfeit the pot. (If you ask me not to cheat at cards, however, I will keep my word not to do so).

5) On the advice of Doc Russia, about two years I took up smoking cigars -- though fewer than one a month, on average. I prefer the Indian Tabacc Company's Cameroon Legend. That is to say, I almost never smoke, but once in a while on a quiet evening, with the whiporwill singing in the trees, a smoke can be a great pleasure.

6) I love to cook. I've written about cooking outdoors, but I like to cook inside as well. I most often make bread, beer, steaks and chilis, barbecued ribs (Texas style, with a dry rub but no sauce), pizza from scratch, fire-grilled vegetables marinated in olive oil, and a wide variety of Mexican-style foods. Also, chuck-wagon cookery: biscuits, beans, bacon, and beef.

7) I also love to sing. I can sing a lot of different songs, but most of them fall into one of three categories: Irish songs, cowboy songs, and patriotic songs.

8) My favorite sport is Professional Bull-Riding. I myself, however, only ride horses (although some of them are as nearly as big as the bulls), and not in the rodeo. We didn't have rodeo in Georgia when I was a kid, though it's all over the place now. I think, if I'd grown up with it, I'd have been a steer-wrestler. As it is, though, I've never learned to do more with a horse than teach it to ride trails and cross-country, and to use them for working. I can teach a dog to do just about anything, but as a horse trainer, those are my limits.

Fri Lyrics

Friday Lyrics:

I'm not sure why on Friday, but it's a habit of Cassidy's. And why not?

When I woke up I was all alone
With a broken heart and a ticket home.
And I ask you now, tell me what would you do
If her hair was black and her eyes were blue?
'Cause I've travelled around,
I've been all over this world,
Boys, I ain't never seen nothin' like a Galway girl.

Dangerous Old Men

Dangerous Old Men:

Looks like the work on improving our social harmony is proceeding apace. Let's look at some examples from just the last week.

You probably saw the 72-year-old former Marine beat down the pickpocket. There is video of that one, so it got a lot of attention.

But did you see the Vietnam-era Paratrooper who took out a far more dangerous thug? A crazed White Supremacist who had already killed a man, armed with a gun and a knife, tried to rob the sandwich shop our former soldier was in. Airborne!

And then, this story from Kim's site:

One gunman is dead and another is in critical condition after they tried to rob a sandwich store and were shot by an armed customer Wednesday night, authorities said.

Donicio Arrindell, 22, of North Lauderdale, and Fredrick Gadson, 21, of Fort Lauderdale, entered a Subway restaurant at 1949 N. Pine Island Rd. and demanded money at gunpoint about 11:17 p.m., said Detective Robert Rettig, a police spokesman.

They then attempted to rob the lone customer, John Lovell, 71, of Plantation, by forcing him into the restroom, but Lovell, who was legally armed, pulled his gun and fired, police said....

A man who said he was a friend of Lovell's described him as a "quiet Clint Eastwood-type you don't want to mess with."

"They just happened to pick on the wrong guy at the wrong time," said Wesley White of Yulee in north Florida. White said he's known Lovell for 19 years.

Lovell is a former Marine who was a member of the helicopter detail that transported Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, White said. He also was a former Pan Am and Delta airline pilot who worked out regularly and was in good condition, White said.

"He's also one heck of a shot," White, 50, said.

This is a good start. Lots more like this, if you please.

Reading Faces.

Virginia Postrel has a post on the 1930's photogragher-to-the-stars George Hurrel.

Postrel says:

...Not even the most gifted photographer can create charisma with only lights and a retouching pencil. Hurrell didn’t invent Joan Crawford’s drive or Jean Harlow’s sexuality. Rather, he encouraged the stars to reveal their innerselves to his lens. Then he intensified their defining qualities, while creating mystery with light and shadow.

True enough for clearly defined personas as Crawford and Harlow (though, as the article goes on to explain, less so for Garbo). But I'm skeptical at how reliably something as genetically determined as facial appearance can reveal character. Maybe we want to believe we can see character in a good portrait, because that would suggest we can accurately judge character from the faces we see every day.

Still, there's something to seeing a person's character in their face, I think.

Just take a look at a mug shot sometime.

This article also made me remember something I stumbled across, here. Yes, Kim, that last photo does show just that.

More of Hurrell's photo's can be seen (and even bought!) here. Check out Norma. Whoa.

Busy

Long Pause:

I know I haven't said anything here since Sunday. I have said things elsewhere; but not on the front page. I'll link back to a few of them.

I've been badgering people to study some military science. This is not a new proposition for us, as longtime readers will recall.

Although today I feel a bit bad about it, given Reid's statement on Republican obstructionism.

Senate Republicans delayed debate on Iraq for weeks… “For weeks, Republican leaders have used procedural maneuvers to delay a debate over Iraq” (The New York Times, 03/27/07)

…and 480 soldiers have lost their lives since the President’s failed surge strategy began. (Department of Defense Casualty Reports)

My customary reserve on this matter is hereby exhausted. Twelve days into the surge, a high-risk fight in which our soldiers are daring valiant things... and this piece of rhetoric is thought worthy of a minor appearance in a complaint over Senatorial maneuvers.

There are no civil words to convey my feelings about this. The man lies in his throat. Those of you who know me well enough will understand what I mean.

On a happier note, the RCT-6 email project was successful, reaching the full six thousand requested emails. That is good; that is fit.

Finally, one of my earlier pieces has apparently drawn Matthew Yglesias fans to attack an old piece I wrote on the South and Western High Culture. I've been as generous as I prefer to be, until the last answer, which was based on the foolish assertion that the American South has no more link to Western culture than to the Mongols. Seriously.

If that was your point, forgive my saying so, it is without value.

I believe one of your fellows has already mentioned Mark Twain's disgusts with his homeland. One of the particular features of that disgust was his hatred of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King. He was furious to find New Orleans enchanted, as he said, by it:

"Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham guads, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society."

So you may have Mark Twain, and his cynical opinions; I myself credit him a great writer, but do not wish to emulate his deep personal misery. But if you will have him and his critique, you must also have its foundations. The tie between the South and the great British writers of the 19th century was the tie between themselves and the Medieval order of chivalry; and the tie to that is the tie to Aquinas, and past him, to Aristotle and Jerusalem.

You are free, as Twain, to scorn it. But there it lies.

Regular readers will realize that Sir Walter Scott's collected works appear on the sidebar; Twain's do not. I am a Southerner, and a proud one; but first, a man of the West.

TX Links

Texas Links:

Miss Ladybug went to a baseball game designed to honor the military. Sounds like a pleasant few hours in good company.

A discussion at the Commissar's reminded me of the old Confederate Air Force. There has been a slight name change -- apparently senses of humor are in short supply these days -- but the organization still does some fine work.

Communism = Evil

Communism is Evil:

The Geek is perfectly right, of course:

Enlightened Americans know better, and would no sooner wear a Communist Star than a Nazi Swastika. And yet, Cameron Diaz had to go all the way to Peru for someone to call her on it.

The refusal to look Communism in the face is not limited to America's, er, self-declared elite. A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece on Communist symbolism, based on having lived in China. The Chinese are not ready to face the truth about Mao, or Communism, either.

On the other hand, it is true that Lenin was a master in certain disciplines.

Don't bring a gun to a knife fight.

Or, if you do, make sure you know how to use the gun.

This guy evidently did not.

An armed robber is hospitalized after employees at a West Virginia pizzeria stabbed him several times.

Hat tip: Don Surber.

Congress ! America

A Congress That Has No Use for America:

For example, even the Speaker of the House can't tell a Canadian uniform from an American one.

Another example: Congressional staffers hate Americans, whether those who dare to tour the capital, or those who oppose their favored policies.

That crisis point is getting close. The political class deserves what is coming. The rest of us must prepare, that what follows the crisis upholds the values and traditions of our great American way.

The Collapse

The Collapse:

Almost a year ago, I wrote a long piece called "Time for a Change." Cassandra spent a week responding to it (starting here). It began:

I was talking to my dear friend Sovay tonight, and as always, talking with her helped to shake things loose that I haven't been able to put into words before. We were talking about the Foley situation, and I heard myself saying something I realize I believe: I have lost all confidence in the Federal institutions governing our country, with the sole exception of the military.

Today, America has arrived to the same place:

Consider the latest Gallup Poll, which finds only 14 percent of the American people have "a great deal of" confidence in Congress or "quite a lot," compared to 19 percent a year ago. That is lowest confidence rating Gallup has ever recorded for Congress since the survey firm began measuring public confidence in major American institutions in 1973.

Congress is far from alone in suffering plummeting confidence ratings. The presidency dropped from 33 percent to 25 percent and the Supreme Court from 40 percent to 34 percent. The "fourth branch" of government, the mainstream media, also has declining public confidence ratings. Television news dropped from 31 percent to 23 percent, while newspapers were down to 22 percent, compared to 30 percent a year ago.

The highest confidence levels were for the military at 69 percent[.]

Last year, I said I thought we needed a Constitutional convention. I still think we do. It might be worth reviewing the old piece, though, to see if a year's thinking yields additional ideas. If anyone would like to discuss it, so would I.

Rodeo Song

Rodeo Song:

Cause you were World Saddle Bronc Champion
Back in Nineteen and Forty-Six
Pass the Hat, boys... he's gone.

We gonna carve him a marker
With classic spur links
So they'll know, here lies the great
Jerry Ambler.

From "Jerry Ambler," by Ian Tyson with Gord Maxwell and Gord Matthews.

Bloodspite remembers a childhood hero. Here lies the great Jim Shoulders, "The Babe Ruth of Rodeo," cowboy and minister.

Racism

More on Racism:

Today I was looking at the Georgia tourist board page, and noticed something odd: there appear to be no photos of black people, even in the photos of south and central Georgia, which are heavily black in their populations. The sole exception I've found is the page on Civil Rights history; otherwise, not one page I've looked at, whether it shows single people or group shots, includes any blacks at all.

Not even the photo from Underground Atlanta. I mean, this isn't an accident. That must have taken some doing.

I presume this is a marketing decision, as I was telling Cassandra earlier today, because there are also no photos of fat or unattractive people (which would also take some doing at Underground). I presume they think that means that most people with money to spend on a vacation in America won't want to see any black (or fat) people.

That says something about the continuing relevance of "unconscious racism," lest the last post be taken as dismissing the concept. Of course it exists; it just seems to me that a man ought to be judged by his actions, not his desires.

Racism

Tyranny, Racism, and Anti-Racism:

An interesting point from Reflecting Light, on the dangers posed by anti-racism when it becomes an overriding concern. Without endorsing the evils of racism, freedom demands a certain amount of just leaving people alone -- even when they are wrong; or even when they're right, but only because they take time to think about it:

Candidates are asked to put images of black and white faces into categories of "good/positive" and "bad/negative" using arrow keys on the keyboard. By getting them to respond to prompts as quickly as possible, the test aims to side-step what is known as "cognitive control" - the brief, but significant time lapse needed to give an "acceptable" answer rather than an instinctive or "honest" one. The programme then automatically calculates a "response-index" that indicates a level of racial bias.

The test is being developed at London Metropolitan University and is aimed at the public sector and multinational companies. Its developers say it is harder to deceive than many of the psychometric tests used to gauge personality type. The test was condemned last night as a potential "Kafkaesque nightmare" where individuals are penalised for thoughts in their deep subconscious.

The blogger notes that the test is designed to be made available to employers. "In other words," he says, "you can be rejected for employment because of ideas you've never expressed, and that you don't even know you have." But isn't it the keenest expression of virtue to do right in spite of having a drive to do wrong?

Robert Conquest, the great historian of the incalculable damage inflicted on humanity by the Communist and Nazi regimes, has pointed out that these disasters arose not primarily from inherent social problems, but from solutions — solutions that hardened into ideologies, then one-party states based on those ideologies, then into tyranny.

This is something that ought to be considered carefully. Someone who has chosen consciously to do the right thing ought not to be punished, for some deep but unacted-upon impulse. This should be true for racism, for alcoholism, or for a drive to spend the rent on gambling. If what you do is right, that ought to be more than enough.

H/t: Roach.

DBB

The Dangerous Book for Boys:

Glenn Reynolds was recently taken to task by someone or other for having referenced The Dangerous Book for Boys 'a disturbing 17 times.' I found a copy at a bookstore down in Atlanta today, and picked it up to look it over.

I bought it. Anybody who thinks it is 'disturbing' to talk a lot about this book either hasn't seen it, or doesn't have any idea what a boy needs to know to become a good young man.

Enthusiasm isn't my usual thing, so let me just say: this book is the best book for boys that I've ever read, and better than I thought any such book could be. It has very nearly everything: how to make a paper airplane. How to talk to girls. Short descriptions of several of the world's greatest battles, with illustrations of unit positions. How to identify common insects. The Declaration of Independence, with a proper reference to the Declaration of Arbroath and a history of Robert the Bruce. How to build a treehouse. Three sections on proper grammar (the introduction to the first reads, quite rightly, 'It is suprising how satisfying it can be to know right from wrong'). "A Short History of Artillery." An introduction to Shakespeare.

How to build a bow an arrow from scratch; how to hunt, kill, clean and cook a rabbit; and how to tan its hide.

Scipio Africanus. Land Navigation. How to play poker, and calculate the odds.

Seventeen times? A hundred times would not be too often.

UPDATE: Miss Ladybug has another book for younger boys.

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day:

It hasn't been a great one here; but that is part of fatherhood, too.

Dad29 links to a unpopular speaker, quoting another -- apparently the only person ever thrown off the Oprah show. Here's what he said:

There is only one force in this world that is capable of controlling a teenage male: his father. Women, you can either let black men rule their households as husbands and fathers or hide in your homes with doors locked as they rule the streets in roving gangs.

OK, that's explosive. It manages to link the two most dangerous topics in America -- race and sex -- in a way that both endorses an unpopular viewpoint, and asserts that there is no other good alternative.

Let me repost, in honor of Father's Day and in the hope of relocating the discussion to firmer ground, an old post called "Social Harmony."

I was reading an article the other day, in the local newspaper, about an elderly Korean gentleman who has moved into town and opened a martial arts studio. He chastened the reporter who had come to interview him not to suggest that the martial arts were 'all about fighting.' "No!" he said. "The purpose is social harmony."

That is exactly right. The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.

Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.

The question is how to move these young men from the first group (violent and predatory) into the second (violent, but protective). This is to ask: what is the difference between a street gang and the Marine Corps, or a thug and a policeman? In every case, we see that the good youths are guided and disciplined by old men. This is half the answer to the problem.

But do we not try to discipline and guide the others? If we catch them at their menace, don't we put them into prisons or programs where they are monitored, disciplined, and exposed to "rehabilitation"? The rates of recidivism are such that we can't say that these programs are successful at all, unless the person being "rehabilitated" wants and chooses to be. And this is the other half of the answer: the discipline and guidance must be voluntarily accepted. The Marine enlists; the criminal must likewise choose to accept what is offered.

The Eastern martial arts provide an experience very much like that of Boot Camp. The Master, like the Drill Instructor, is a disciplined man of great personal prowess. He is an exemplar. He asks nothing of you he can't, or won't, do himself--and there are very many things he can and will do that are beyond you, though you have all the help of youth and strength. It is on this ground that acceptance of discipline is won. It is the ground of admiration, and what wins the admiration of these young men is martial prowess.

Everyone who was once a young man will understand what I mean. Who could look forward, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, to a life of obedience, dressed in suits or uniforms, sitting or standing behind a desk? How were you to respect or care about the laws, or the wishes, of men who had accepted such a life? The difficulty is compounded in poor communities, where the jobs undertaken are often menial. How can you respect your father if your father is a servant? Would you not be accepting a place twice as low as his? Would you not rather take up the sword, and cut yourself a new place? Meekness in the old men of the community unmakes the social order: it encourages rebellion from the young.

The traditional martial arts tend to teach young men to undertake flashy and impressive, but not terribly effective, fighting techniques. Only as you grow older do the masters of the art teach you the real secrets--the subtle, quick, physically simple ways in which the human body can be destroyed. In this way, the old retain their power over the young--although they lack the speed and strength, they have in discipline in training more than enough to maintain the order. Social harmony is maintained in the dojo: the young revere the old, and seek to emulate them. Your father may be a servant, but he is still a warrior--and a more dangerous one than you. The father, being past that age in which biology makes us vicious, guides the son or neighbor to protect society rather than to rend it. It is not particularly different in the military.

If we would have a stable society, we must have dangerous old men. This means that, if you are yourself on your way to becoming an old man, you have a duty to society to begin your preparations. The martial arts are not the only road--my own grandfather did it through a simple combination of physical strength, personal discipline, and an accustomed habit of going armed about his business. There was never a more impressive figure--or, at least, there was never a boy more impressed than was I.

The martial virtues are exactly the ones needed. By a happy coincidence, having a society whose members adhere to and encourage those virtues makes us freer as well--we need fewer police, fewer courts, fewer prisons, fewer laws, and fewer lawyers. This is what Aristotle meant when he said that the virtues of the man are reflected in the society. Politics and ethics are naturally joined.

Happy Father's Day.

Bring Pain

Bring the Pain:

I want to hear these Marines grunt. Help make it happen.

Not Dead Yet

Not Dead Yet:

Well, the immigration bill is back. The fact that like 70% of Americans across the electorate hate it? That means nothing to those elected to, er, represent Americans.

BloodSpite, who has been leading a charge against the bill, has a new post on the subject. I'll just say this: I can't support any bill of this sort. I can see why we might want to allow Mexican immigration to continue at roughly the same levels we've seen -- we can't afford a failed Mexican state, and US cash is propping up its economy. Even by the lowest estimates, we're talking billions of dollars.

It's enough money, and enough of an influence, that former President Fox regularly referred to the same people we call "illegal immigrants" as "heroes."

The problem is that these amnesty bills don't recognize that our real reason for allowing this isn't a desire for immigrants, but a desire not to see Mexico collapse and have to deal with the fallout. As a result, any bill dealing with the issue needs to address that reality:

1) We need strong border controls. This is partially to ensure that we do have control of the border, which is the duty of a sovereign state. It is also a hedge against the possibility that Mexico fails in spite of our efforts to float them; and to deal with the criminal gangs already flourishing because of Mexican government weakness.

2) We need any "Z" type visa to permanently forbid the holder from ever pursuing US citizenship.

The reason for this is that we're allowing essentially unrestricted movement, in order to protect Mexico from collapse. In return for allowing them to export their poorest to us, and receive large sums of hard currency in return, we should be able to recognize that what we are doing is not "immigration as usual" but an emergency aid program.

That's fine -- I don't really hold it against anyone that they snuck across the border for work to feed his family, any more than I would hold stealing bread against a poor man. Somewhat less, in fact, since the guy is ready to work and work hard for the bread.

However, we're accepting them at a speed and level that we can't assimilate. In return for being allowed to come here and get the work they want and need, they should be willing to declare that their alliegiance remains to Mexico, and forgo voting in US elections. We should also change the law addressing citizenship to undo "birthright" citizenship, and instead do what almost all other nations do, and restrict citizenship to the children of citizens, plus those who lawfully nationalize.

If we do that, the immigration problem becomes a lot more tractable. We can start to address the real issues underlying the problem, without the fear and worry that makes up so much of the debate. Americans are worried, quite understandably, that their nation is being overrun, and will be deeply changed at the ballot box by people who came here in violation of the law. They don't want new citizens who felt no obligation to obey the law and the social contract from the start.

That seems reasonable to me. Make those changes -- seriously secure the border, and remove the path to citizenship -- and the rest we can talk about.

In praise of geeks

In Praise of Geeks:

I don't pay attention to what Sock Puppet says either, but since it made InstaPundit:

Glenn Greenwald gets around, eventually, to making two points, One is that I'm a geek, whose interest in Western culture's retreat from traditional ideas of masculinity is thus silly:

Glenn Reynolds -- who, by his own daily admission, devotes his life to attending convention center conferences on space and playing around with new, cool gadgets in the fun room in his house, like a sheltered adolescent in his secret treehouse club -- to fret: "Are we turning into a nation of wimps?"

But, see, that's the point. I'm a geek. I I notice it, it's probably real. It would be like Greenwald complaining that the country was going overboard in hatred of Bush.

I've got two things to say about that. First, Sock Puppet is an "any stick" kind of guy. If you complain about it, it's silly because you're a geek, and he thinks geeks aren't manly. If I complain about it, he'd say, "But Grim is a gun-toting right-winger who actually wears a cowboy hat. Of course he thinks the country is going too soft."

Second, maybe SP needs to meet another Geek I know. Could be he's not operating with all the necessary information.

mmm

Mmmm...

Ground hog burgers. Sounds great to me too, Huck.

And what do you mean, man, that you were 'awoken' at noon? Even my wife is out of bed by eleven. :)

USMC MA

Marine Corps Martial Arts:

There's obviously been a change in focus since I last looked into military martial arts. I mean, who ever expected to hear a Marine sergeant say something like this:

I am proud to be part of a program that teaches people of all ages and backgrounds how to protect themselves in a non-lethal way from the enemy.

Nonlethal? I thought that meant you were doing it wrong.

It's not just the Marines -- the army has switched to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as its martial arts form, in order to cut down on training injuries. The reason it cuts down on training injuries is that it's a form of jujitsu that was redesigned for tournament fighting. It is, in other words, safe -- for your opponent as well as yourself.

There might be reasons, of course, why you'd want to take someone alive -- particularly in COIN warfare. I understand that.

Still...

Master Ken Caton, formerly USMC Sergeant Ken Caton, was my teacher of jujitsu; he studied under Wally Jay, who turns 90 this year. I remember clearly something he told his students, who eventually became my students:

"What we're doing here is shorthand," he would say. "We can't do everything in the dojo that you need to do in real life. This art was designed by samurai, though, who never intended to leave an enemy alive.

"If you're ever out there and you get someone in an armbar lock, break their arm. If you get them in a wrist lock, break the wrist. That won't be enough, though -- it's just to buy a second to finish them. Break the arm, then go for their throat, for here or here. And remember: everything striking technique we do with the hands was originally designed to be done with a knife or a sword. If you have one, use one."

There is a philosophy underlying this, a moral ethic. You should not fight except to kill, because you should never fight except when killing is justified. If it is not, you should not fight at all.

If it is, if it truly is, fall on like a thunderbolt.

Samarra

Samarra Bombing:

I just spoke with BGen Bergner about today's bombing in Samarra.

Outbreak

"Outbreak"?

You probably saw this on Drudge, but... Reuters says that "U.S. voters may face outbreak of campaign fatigue."

Next week's headline: "U.S., Europe face outbreak of low infant mortality."

Campaigns are not meant to go on forever. It's unhealthy if they do. For one thing, politicians always in campaign mode never stop thinking about the political angles of their every word and action. A politician not in campaign mode might, just occasionally, do something because it was right rather than because it resonated with this-or-that constituency.

Ladies and gentlemen of the political class, let's have our campaigns in 2008. For the rest of 2007, why don't you just try to do what's right for the country -- not for your political futures.

Iranians in Iraq -- On Our Side:

An interesting report from PJM begins:

From his secret base Abdullah Mohtadi commands a small armed force inside Iraq and a vast clandestine network inside Iran.

“I didn’t believe in the so-called critical dialogue with Iran. We are for regime change, no matter what the Europeans or even the United States says,” Mohtadi tells me.

You might wish to read it.

Cap Contest

Caption Contest:

For Marine wife Sly, who sent me the photo:

"The warning label said I shouldn't drink beer while I was in the hot tub, so I figured -- 'If I'm going to break the rules, why not break 'em all at once?'"

Waverly

Waverley:

From Sir Walter Scott's classic:

[O]ur hero set forth with a fowling-piece in his hand, accompanied by his new friend Evan Dhu, and followed by the gamekeeper aforesaid, and by two Wild Highlanders, the attendants of Evan, one of whom had upon his shoulder a hatchet at the end of a pole, called a Lochaber-axe,38 and the other a long ducking-gun. Evan, upon Edward’s inquiry, gave him to understand that this martial escort was by no means necessary as a guard, but merely, as he said, drawing up and adjusting his plaid with an air of dignity, that he might appear decently at Tully-Veolan, and as Vich Ian Vohr’s foster-brother ought to do. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘if you Saxon duinhe-wassel (English gentleman) saw but the Chief with his tail on!’

‘With his tail on?’ echoed Edward in some surprise.

‘Yes — that is, with all his usual followers, when he visits those of the same rank. There is,’ he continued, stopping and drawing himself proudly up, while he counted upon his fingers the several officers of his chief’s retinue; ‘there is his hanchman, or right-hand man; then his bard, or poet; then his bladier, or orator, to make harangues to the great folks whom he visits; then his gilly-more, or armour-bearer, to carry his sword and target, and his gun; then his gilly-casfliuch, who carries him on his back through the sikes and brooks; then his gilly-comstrian, to lead his horse by the bridle in steep and difficult paths; then his gilly-trushharnish, to carry his knapsack; and the piper and the piper’s man[.]

We've spent the weekend at the Blairsville Scottish Highland Games, attending to the distress of an old friend. In spite of the which, it's been a fine weekend. Most of the old "Wild Highlanders" are bikers from way back, which is to say dangerous men of the gun-and-blade type.

It's good to have friends, brothers and sisters. It's a bad world, as my old friend John Ryan of Freemantle, Australia used to say. It hasn't gotten any better; so perhaps we should get a bit worse.

Choosers

"Choosers of the Slain"

A poem, by a young lady who has reason to know.

Choosers of the Slain

Wagner got it wrong, you know.
There are no winged horses,
no gleaming breast plates
no long blonde braids flying
over a pristine battlefield.

The Valkyrie doesn’t gleam
Sticky carbon residue
from years of burnt jet fuel
paints her metal raven dark.
Red dyed hydraulic fluid
pumps through her veins
instead of oxygen enriched blood.
Though, truth be told, her cabin has been washed in both.

This dual bladed, semi-rigid, underslung raven
slows. Her circling wings beat the air staccato.
She and her crew of wolves,
have followed the concussive silences,
the stench of fear and sulfur,
here.
To where men lie in ragged pieces
or crumpled around themselves
their body fluids leaking onto the ground.

Even during the battle’s rage
through the smoke
and the bullets pinging on her fuselage
the raven and her wolves choose:
slain, unslain.

The Valkyrie lifts the ones she’s chosen
and carries them to her hall of healing,
guarded by her wolves from further harm
until next time.

How can you tell blood from hydraulic fluid?
Blood dries tacky.
Hydraulic fluid makes you slip.

© 2007 by Kacey GrannisHer mother sent that along, and at my request obtained permission to reprint it here.

One of the more interesting books I've read recently is John Grigsby's Beowulf & Grendel, which takes a comparative mythology and archelogical approach to reconstructing ancient Indo-European religions. Or, I should almost say, "'the' ancient Indo-European religion," as it appears to have had strong resemblances in every place practiced -- much in the same way that philologists can speak of a single Indo-European language, which lies behind Greek and English and many other tongues.

The Valkyries have strong parallels in the Keres of ancient Greece, and the Morrigan of the Irish stories, and many others. Grigsby devoted a chapter to the subject of how these various goddesses were seen across Europe, and how they had both bright and dark sides. Like a human woman, who can be the sweetest thing in the world, and the source of the greatest pain in life, these goddesses were loving and murderous, even to the same man.

It makes for interesting reading, should any of you be curious about the topic.

Some Posts

Some Posts at BlackFive:

Sorry I haven't been around much this week. I did make a few posts at BlackFive, which may interest some of you:

An interview with Brigadier Gen. Holmes, DDO CENTCOM. We spoke primarily about information operations and operations other than war in CENTCOM.

Another, with Brigadier General Phillips and Iraqi chief of police Khalaf. We talked about the improvements of the Iraqi police and justice system, especially the new police academy.

A comparison of Bill Roggio and Doc Russia, who are saying the same thing each in his own way.

I'd pay cash money to see something like this on the US Senate floor.

MONTGOMERY, AL -- State Sen. Charles Bishop hit Sen. Lowell Barron on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.

Heroine

A Heroine:

Would you like to meet a lady who did more good than most people can imagine? Meet Irena Sendler.

The attention tires Irena Sendler sometimes. She never sought credit for smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto anyway. Not for risking execution to save other people's children, or holding out under torture by the Nazis, or enduring decades as a nonperson under the communist regime that followed.

Thank you, ma'am.

Grim was right

"Tempting Fate"

That's the title of a new post by Cassandra. For some reason she rejected my suggested title, "Grim was right all along," but it's a fine post all the same. :)

MRMP&M

My Rifle, My Pony, and Me:

Well, really just me and a pony who isn't even mine -- his name is Leo.



Leo's a gelding, not yet fully grown -- we expect him to put on a couple more inches in height, and more length also. He was cut late, so he's not entirely sure he's a gelding. Here he is meeting my second favorite filly, a young lady named Tansy. (The wild tansy, those of you may know who have heard of the Victorian language of flowers, was a declaration of war.)



After which, I put him to work on the lunge line. No pictures of that, because the dust is so bad here that you couldn't make anything out anyway. It's been shockingly dry this summer.

Wrong racket

I'm in the Wrong Racket:

First there was the CMU ethics survey; and now this.

The issue of whether the toilet seat should be left up or down after use seemingly generates a lot of passion among the parties concerned, however, scientific inquiries into the matter are almost non-existent. Notable exceptions are Choi (2002) and Harter (2005).

So, there have been three separate scientific inquiries into toilet-seat behavior in the last four years? And this, by academic standards, is the mark of 'almost non-existence'?

That does it. Eric, get us a grant.

(H/t: Fark.)

Sunday Ethics

Sunday Ethics:

Via InstaPundit, I found this ethical survey from Carnegie Mellon University. I'm not terribly interested in their results, for reasons that will become clear, but in the survey itself.

If you provide contact and demographic information, they ask you a series of questions about whether you consider a particular thing unethical, and if so, to what degree. Then, they ask you if you have ever done that thing, and if so, how often.

If you don't provide them contact information, they only ask the questions about whether a thing is unethical; that suggests they're interested in breaking down the second part demographically, and don't want to cloud the data. I assume they have some way of tracking answers to the first type of question so as to separate out the "nondemographic" responses.

Some of the questions are about behavior (stealing expensive items, for example). However, quite a few are not about behavior, but about whether it is unethical to have a desire. What interests me is whether the folks at CMU have understood the distinction between "It's wrong to do," and "It's wrong to want to do..."

I'd like to think that they have, and are testing precisely for that. I wonder, though, because some of the questions are so poorly constructed as to be useless.

For example: "While an adult, [to what degree is it unethical to have] sexual desires for a minor[?]" The problem is that "minor" covers both the 17-1/2 year old and the 5 year old; and "desire" presumably includes a feeling you don't act upon in any way, but merely experience. This means that the reader is left to decide if the question means, "Is it unethical to find yourself sexually interested by a 17-1/2 year old girl playing tennis, even if you don't act on it and turn away?", or if it means, "Is it unethical to fantasize about having sex with little boys?"

If you asked those two questions separately, it would be shocking if you didn't get widely different answers. Indeed, they're wholly different ethical propositions. The teenage girl is sexually mature even if she is not legally so; an initial sexual response to looking at her is chemical rather than ethical, and normal rather than strange. The ethical question is what you do with the sense of being aroused by someone whom you should not have.

In the scenario involving a little boy, presumably the chemical process is the same -- but it is not normally natural. Imperial Chinese grandees may be able to avail themselves of children without suffering for it, but in a democracy, what is normally-natural tends to find its way into the law and the general culture.

It may be that we ought to grant the same exception to paedophiles that we do to everyone else -- that it's OK to feel however nature makes them, so long as they don't act on it. That ethical debate, however, is swallowed by the question that is asked. Since the two scenarios are combined into one question, and you don't know which of the two scenarios the reader was thinking of when he or she answered, any data collected from the survey question is useless.

For that matter, we even draw strong lines between the cases for someone who did act on the impulse. A seventeen year old girl, though a minor, is over the age of consent (at least in Georgia, where it is 16). There is no legal penalty for having sex with her; and in fact, the man who does is even protected by the law from having her father beat him with a stick. (This unfortunate innovation in the law should probably be reconsidered).

A child is formally protected, however, and the man who rapes one is punished -- not as harshly as he deserves, but harshly by the standards of our society.

In any event, I don't think the CMU survey is capable of dealing with the subtleties of these questions well enough to produce useful data. I'm sorry to say that, as a survey of ethics, it won't be interesting.

That said, it does raise an interesting question to be more fully considered. Is it unethical to have fantasies of doing things that it would be unethical to actually do?

This is really two questions.

1) Is it wrong to experience the thought/fantasy?

Most people are under the impression that they are in charge of what they think. This is not actually so. If you test it, you will find that you have almost no control over what enters your mind.

This is the "don't think of an elephant" problem, but it's deeper than that. The clearest example comes from practicing Zen meditation, which requires that you not-think. It instructs you to develop 'a mind like clear water,' and understanding just what is meant by that requires not merely argument, but practice. So you sit in zazen, breathe, and let everything go.

Do you stop thinking? Of course not. Your mind continues to produce one thought after another. You have to train yourself to recognize and release each thought, but they keep arising, one after another, not merely unbidden but uncontrolled. It is only when the breathing exercises move you into another brain state (science has found that your brain wave pattern actually changes at this point) that you experience the empty-mind that was described.

Being in this state for a while influences your brain activity even out of it. Even so, you can't stay in it. Going about your business, you will find that your brain brings things up -- and you aren't always sure why.

As such, merely having a thought is of absolutely no ethical consequence. Ethics requires that you choose something, and thoughts arise from somewhere beyond the structure of choice.

From where? That is fundamentally unclear. What is clear is that we are not in charge of what enters our mind. The mere fact that a dark thought or fantasy should arise, then, is of no concern to ethics; what matters is what you do with it. A Zen master has dark thoughts too; he just trains his mind so that they flow out without leaving a trace.

2) Does ethics then require that you let these thoughts flow out, or can you play with them?

I assume the survey questions about pornography, fantasies of rape, and so forth are of this type. Here there is room to dispute.

Many traditions hold against entertaining dark thoughts -- Zen is not alone here; Catholicism also strongly asserts that you should not entertain evil fantasies. The common thread among this line of ethics is that entertaining evil allows it to take root in your mind or soul; this is the way in which you are contaminated.

There is a great deal of truth to that position. It is indeed important to recognize that evil thoughts have consequences to your self. However, I would make a counterargument -- not to reject, but to modify the proposition.

The surest way to have a problem take root in your mind and soul is to dedicate yourself to fighting against it. This can lead to serious distortions of the mind. Consider the crusader against racism, who begins with a simple desire to right injustices and treat people fairly -- and yet comes to see racism everywhere, in every issue. Racism is embedded in his consciousness, so much so that it affects his perception of the world even where it is not actually present. This can prevent him from actually solving real problems that aren't particularly related to racism; it can also cause him to create new problems for himself and others.

The same is true for any evil. That is not to say that it is wrong to resist evil -- it is right. It is to say that one must be cautious not to wrap one's mind around any particular evil and obsess over it. The obsession is as dangerous as the evil itself.

As noted above, we aren't really sure where thoughts come from. Some of them, though, seem to come from the chemical and physical structures of the body. If you are the sort of person whose structures lead you to have dark thoughts of a particular type on a regular basis, it may be the best thing to do is to play with them in fantasy, and thereby release whatever energies are welling up from within yourself. If you set yourself up to squash them every time they arise, you'll spend even more of your life dealing with them.

The real key is not to worry about fantasies that remain fantasies. Like the Zen master, let them go. If playing with them first lets them then pass away more easily, and stay gone for longer, then so be it. Just let your play be play in truth; laugh them off, and don't worry about them. The more you worry about them, the more of a hold they'll take.

This is not license to obsess over playing with evil impulses, either. The point is that what arises naturally is not your fault; but if you find it bothersome, you want to minimize its impact on your life. For some people, that may mean playing with it a bit first, so they can get it out of their system, or learn to feel in charge of their fantasies rather than scared of the evil within.

Everyone has some evil within; it's how we were made. The discipline that matters is the discipline of learning not to let it control you, but rather to pass away so that 'the water is clear.'

3) Should we accept natural impulses that are not normal, or only ones that are relatively common?

This is closely related to the last question. Most people consider "natural" things to be at least somewhat ethical, but "unnatural" things to be always wrong. The problem is that what is unnatural for us may not be for everyone else. Insofar as a person's evil impulses arise from natural structures, the impulse itself is no less natural for being unusual.

For example, relatively few people experience or can even imagine paedophilia -- when we look at a child, there is an absolute absence of sexual feeling. It's just not there at all. This is obvously not true for some people.

At some point in the future, we may be able to alter that -- to find a way to make people who have paedophilic urges no longer have them. That would almost certainly be a kindness to them, and certainly to the children who might have encountered them.

Until such time as it is, I think the ethical consideration has to be this: as long as a fantasy or impulse remains purely a fantasy or impulse, we should consider it in the terms of point 2. A paedophile who acts on his paedophilia should be killed; one who never does should be left alone.

This extends into the realm of pornography, in the fashion that I gather the SCOTUS decided: child pornography involving actual children is illegal, period. Child pornography that involves only written words or drawings, but in which no actual children were ever involved, is protected speech.

4) Some concluding remarks --

Take this as an opening argument, if you'd like to join it. I'm willing to be persuaded that I'm wrong on the ethics. The part of ethics I most enjoy is the disputation and examination; so if you think I'm wrong, let's hear why, and examine the question.

Sushi

Sushi and Samurai:

The tale of sushi begins most interestingly, in this piece from Vanity Fair:

It looks like a samurai sword, and it's almost as long as he is tall. His hands are on the hilt. He raises and steadies the blade.

Two apprentices help to guide it. Twelve years ago, when it was new, this knife was much longer, but the apprentices' daily hours of tending to it, of sharpening and polishing it, have reduced it greatly.

It was made by the house of Masahisa, sword-makers for centuries to the samurai of the Minamoto, the founders of the first shogunate. In the 1870s, when the power of the shoguns was broken and the swords of the samurai were outlawed, Masahisa began making these things, longer and more deadly than the samurai swords of old.

The little guy with the big knife is Tsunenori Iida. He speaks not as an individual but as an emanation, the present voice, of the generations whose blood flows in him and who held the long knife in lifetimes before him, just as he speaks of Masahisa as if he were the same Masahisa who wrought the first samurai sword, in the days of dark mist. Thus it is that he tells me he's been here since 1861, during the Tokugawa shogunate, when this city, Tokyo, was still called Edo.

Iida-san is the master of the house of Hicho, one of the oldest and most venerable of the nakaoroshi gyosha, intermediate wholesalers of tuna, or tuna middlemen, if you will.... His long knife, with the mark of the maker Masahisa engraved in the shank of the blade, connects not only the past to the present but also the deep blue sea to the sushi counter.

Memory 1LT

In Memory of a Local Soldier:

Miss Ladybug celebrates the life of a lieutenant who was her neighbor. He was a cavalryman by the name of Kile West. He was still a young man, a hunter, and an athlete.

Modified KG

A Modified Kindergarten Ethic:

From the Assistant Village Idiot, a helpful suggestion for upgrading Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Supervising Kindergarten

People get in less trouble if they are doing something constructive.
Victims have to be protected and bullies have to be contained.
You can make people share community property, but it’s not fair to make them share their own: not their lunch, not their clothes, and not the drawing they carefully colored.
No one cares for community property unless you make them.
People like giving things, but not having them taken.
Natural rewards build self-discipline. Bribes undermine it.
You have to learn justice before you can understand mercy.
Boys and girls are not always the same.
Don’t encourage show-offs. Remove their audience, don’t add to it.
Not everyone who speaks has something to say.
Everyone’s got an excuse.
Jealousy leads to cruelty.

These rules hold up for governments and politics and ecology, too.

Yeah, they do at that.

Open Top

A Trucker's Poem:

In reference to this story, another. My father once told me of a trucker my grandfather knew at his service station, which was located on I-75 in Knoxville. The guy had recently had a similar encounter, with very similar results.

He notified his employer (and presumably resigned) with a telegram, which read:

Saw low bridge,
Couldn't stop.
Now you have
an open-top.

I didn't hear if the more recent driver composed any poetry, though given the circumstances, he'll need to be at least as inventive to explain the "accident."

Crime teams

The "Crime Teams" Story:

So there's this story from the AP:

A violent crime spike in four cities led the Justice Department on Friday to dispatch additional teams of federal agents to combat guns, gangs or surging murder rates in Mesa, Ariz.; Orlando, Fla.; San Bernardino, Calif., and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

All a long way from here. But let's consider the general tactic. The story sheds some light on the problem of Federal officers butting into local business.

The report, released Friday by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, warned of problems with federal crime-fighting task forces. It concluded the teams duplicate efforts and compete for help from local authorities while failing to communicate among themselves. The poor communication, in particular, resulted in three so-called "blue-on-blue" cases where federal agents mistook each other for criminals.

Those incidents, which the report found "put officers' safety at risk," included:

_An undercover ATF agent and informant in Chicago bought a loaded gun from an informant working for the FBI's Safe Streets task force.

_FBI Safe Streets agents in Atlanta pulled over a member of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force whose car matched the description of a suspect both teams were looking for.

_ATF agents working an undercover sting at a Las Vegas gun show arrested a suspect for illegally buying firearms. The buyer turned out to be an informant working for the FBI — even though the ATF had taken steps to make sure there would be no overlap between federal agencies.

Fine's inspectors studied task forces in eight cities: Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Camden, N.J., Chicago, Gary, Ind., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Nearly 130 task force members in the cities reported working on at least 45 duplicate investigations.

Let's be honest here: I'd rather have the crime. Nonviolent criminals cause me no trouble to speak of; violent criminals, encountered in the course of their felony, may be shot. Either way, I'm entirely prepared for any problems that may occur.

Federal agencies running around engaged in entrapment, arresting each other, and so forth -- that's a separate problem for which there is no easy solution. A man may deal with all but the most organized crime himself. Few men have the resources to deal with the government, when one of its mistakes enwraps him. It seems to make sense, then, to restrict Federal involvement to only organized-crime matters of the first order.

The rest are better dealt with locally, or personally.

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is what the Federal government is for.

Blogger Roundtable post

Blogger Roundtable: Iraqi Kurdistan

My post on the call is now up.

"Tramp Stamp"

Heh.

Actually, my term for this is "fashion victim".

It seems that the Marine Corps agrees somewhat. (via Blackfive.)

You want a tip for an investment opportunity? Tatoo removal technology. I figure it ought to be big business a few years from now.

Ok, they're all there now:

WASHINGTON, May 30, 2007 – The fifth and final brigade of the troop surge has arrived in Baghdad and should be fully operational by mid-July, the deputy director for operations on the Joint Staff said here today.

So, operational by mid July, which means we ought to have a good idea whether this whole thing is yielding results by September.

PSA: This should be kind of obvious, but:

New Scam Targets Military Spouses

"The scam involves a person with an American accent calling a military spouse, identifying herself as a representative of the Red Cross, and telling the spouse that her husband was hurt in Iraq and was medically evacuated to Germany. The caller then says that doctors can't start treatment until paperwork is completed, and that to start the paperwork they need the spouse to verify her husband's social security number and date of birth."

I figure that most military spouses have more on the ball than to be taken in by this, but one never knows.

Price less:

• 1,200 additional Category I (CAT I) Mine Resistance Ambush Protected (MRAP) Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) vehicles: $623 Million.
• Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT): $20 Million.
• Long lead items in support of the production of Vertical Takeoff and Landing Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VTUAV): $13.6 Million.
• Repair of up to 250 AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) guidance and control sections: $8.6 Million.
• Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) for Phase II of the T-45 Hot Section Reliability Improvement Program: $7.2 Million.
• Supplies in support of the Navy's Ships Stores Program: $33 Million.
• Eight Universal Modular Mast (UMM) Systems: $6.5 Million.
• Maintenance, repair, and operations supplies: $107 Million.
• AH-64D Apache Longbow Fire Control Radar Programs: $28.8 Million.
• PATRIOT engineering services: $13.8 Million.
• Construction of Permanent Party Barracks: $13.5 Million.
• System technical support for the Abrams Tank Program: $11.5 Million.
• Contract to upgrade, fabricate, assemble, integrate, test, and deliver the Air and Missile Defense Planning Control Systems to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command: $8 Million.
• Chameleon Phase VI Program: $5.4 Million.
• C-17 Automated Test Equipment : $12.5 Million.
• Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Launch Capability (ELC) contract: $9.5 Million.
• Global Broadcast Service (GBS) program: $7.5 Million.
• 74 embedded Global Positioning/Inertial Production Units (Installs) for the CH-47F (700 and MH-47 (4) platforms, 4 Mounts for the MH-47 platform, 3 Spares for the F/A-18 platform, and 167 Contractor Depot Repairs (CDRs) for the H-1W (67), CH-47F (25), HH-60J (5), and F-15/F-16 (70) platforms: $7.4 Million.
• Form-fit-function for obsolete subassemblies in the F-15 Avionics Intermediate Shop (AIS) Antenna Test Station (ATS) and Enhanced Aircraft Radar Test Station (EARTS): $5.5 Million.
• LHA 6 Amphibious Assault Ship: $2.4 Billion.
• Long-term contract for support of 44 weapons systems of the T/AV8B Harrier aircraft: $258 Million.
• P-3C sustainment, modification and installation program: $133 Million.
• Nine Extremely High Frequency (EHF) Satellite Communications Follow-On Terminal Communication Groups and 17 ship Antenna Groups: $27 Million.
• Supply and distribution of food and non-food products: $2.8 Billion.
• Sole source items on engine lines: $10.9 Million.
• Fuel: $6.5 Million.
• Wide area surveillance platform: $12.2 Million.
• Light Aircraft Missile Protection (CELAMP) system: $9.8 Million.

Most capable Army, Navy & Air Force in the history of Civilization: Priceless.

Gone

Gone Camping:

I am headed to Fort Mountain for the evening. I should be back tomorrow.

I was on the DOD's "Blogger Roundup" call again today, with generals discussing the handover of the Kurdish region to local control. It was a very interesting, and rather hot, call -- once the transcript is up and I can verify some details, I'll post my thoughts on it.

Blood & Folk

Blood & Folk:

Concerning whether a new tribalism is possible, this item:

Rules 'hiding' trillions in debt
Liability $516,348 per U.S. household
By Dennis Cauchon
USA TODAY

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.

"We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting.

Modern accounting requires that corporations, state governments and local governments count expenses immediately when a transaction occurs, even if the payment will be made later.

The federal government does not follow the rule, so promises for Social Security and Medicare don't show up when the government reports its financial condition.

Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities.

None of those promises will be kept, once we pass a threshold level. Anyone who is expecting the American government to fund their retirement will be disappointed, unless they die young.

Who will take care of the elderly, when these pensions, Social Security and Medicare die? We will, of our own, as well as we can. And we can look for no help, but what kin and friend provide.