That was the title of a book I remember reading back about twenty years ago -- ah, here it is. I had to go down to Atlanta to pick up someone flying in to Hartsfield-Jackson International, one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. Flights tend to be delayed, so you take a seat at the bar, order a Guinness, and see what happens....
Two minutes after I had my beer in front of me, a guy sat down next to me who had the look of someone I needed to talk to. Short hair, muscular, Hawaiian shirt -- I read that as US military, on leave from PACOM. Right the first time, it turned out. He was actually a resident of the US military mission in Thailand, but has been on TDY in Hawaii lately. Passing through ATL to deal with family. We had a lot to talk about, however, as he knew quite a few people in the Philippines right now. Since I'm helping Bill Roggio arrange a mission out there, it was a useful conversation. Nice guy. Showed me pictures of his fiancee, a very pretty Thai girl whom he'll be bringing back.
After he pulled out, my contact was still not there, so I talked to the guy who took his seat. Polish, this one, named Tek. First time in America, but he has excellent English as he attended the American college in Rome, and has lived in England. He dances around polite conversation before asking the question Euros always want to ask: what do you think of the President?
I tell him, and we talk politics for a while. He's got a Polish perspective, but that's all right with me -- I like Poles, a lot in fact, and know the history well enough to join him. We talk about Vietnam, Iraq, the Soviet invasions of Eastern Europe. I tell him that America has always fought for those who wanted to fight for liberty, and he nods at once. "That's true," he says with a serious expression. You can see that matters to him. After half an hour or so, America -- you can tell he's excited to be here -- seems more comfortable.
He asks me about wildlife, so we talk about bears, mountain lions, alligators. He's going to Florida. I warn him about how silent and fast gators can be. He's shocked by all of it. "So you mean you could just be walking along out in the woods and suddenly there would be a bear or a crocodile?" he asks.
"Alligator," I remind him.
"Alligator," he says. "That's amazing. In Europe you could never just be out, and meet a dangerous animal. You must carry a rifle all the time."
"A revolver," I say. This starts him off on another topic, so I show him my firearms license. I explain about how the police have my fingerprints, so if I do anything wrong they'll know it was me. He's lived in London, and knows what gun crime is getting to be like there. Another eye-opening conversation, you can see.
About this time, my contact shows up and it's time to go. We shake hands, Tek and I; I welcome him to America. He's glad to be here. I'm glad he came.
I pay my tab; I've been there three hours, and have three beers on it. Two of them are mine; one of them belonged to the soldier from PACOM. He got one of mine, so we're even, but I met my goal of always buying a beer for a serviceman when I drink at an airport. My contact and I head back towards the mountains.
It's a bad world, my old friend from Freemantle used to say; but it can be a good life. With beer and company, and adventure to discuss, it can be good enough.
Tales Bar
Private Security on the Border
I think it’s an excellent idea. Ideally, I would like to see Marine and Army Reserve units deployed down South… but due to the deployment schedule this may not feasible. So I’m willing to privatize the endeavor. While I understand Grits lack of faith in DynCorp there are US firms out there without the stigma they have.
As I said, I don’t trust the Border Patrol’s spokesman. I know it’s anecdotal, but my brother is Texas Highway Patrol in Marfa, Texas (border town) and the security situation is appalling to hear him tell it. Add to that, the Valley is already a pain in the ass as regards Border Patrol checkpoints that are miles from the actual border… complete with overbearing Border Agents.
I realize the popular liberal response is to play the “poor undocumented immigrant looking for a better life” card in response to securing the border. I’m not really concerned with the average dishonest, lawbreaking, Mexicans swimming the border to pick fruit or clean homes… I’m more concerned with the higher level of dishonest, lawbreaking, Mexicans who invade homes, kill citizens, destroy property, or cartels smuggling arms or drugs and outgunning our Border Patrol.
Ev. psych
A fascinating article examines the question of human nature, focused particularly on relations between men and women. For example, did you know that monogamy is bad for women, whereas polygamy is bad for men?
Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.Actually, it sounds like polygamy is better for men too, in the long run -- it creates men who are stronger and fitter in the future. It's just bad for the current crop of men, who want to get women and can't.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
Oh, and for those who'd prefer to avoid suicide bombers. The role of Islamic polygamy in suicide bombing is considered in the article as well. More shockingly, from a personal perspective, is this claim that feminists were right: chivalry and courtesy are forms of discrimination against women. Men who don't discriminate against women instead use sexual harrassment:
Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.I suppose I'll have to accept the role of a proud discriminator, then. Grim's Hall continues to insist on chivalric behavior toward ladies, in spite of these new revelations.
Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.
It appears that Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed in the assault on the 'red' mosque in Islamabad today.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, I'm thinking.
Now what will be even more interesting is whether this deflates the radicals, or stirs them up more.
I predict at least two more brazen assassination attempts on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Can't do anything
As if to underscore the point made two posts down, OSHA weighs in with a "proposed rule" governing "explosives," by which they explicitly also mean "small arms ammunition." Although the rule takes the time to state that such ammunition is covered, it doesn't take the time to distinguish how small arms ammunition is different from, say, dynamite.
So, if this rule goes into effect, manufacturers of ammunition will go out of business due to the costs of complying with new rules, which costs are estimated over $100 million. Stores stocking ammunition will be forbidden to allow firearms on the premises -- which means that outfitting stores will have to sell guns or ammunition, not both. (Of course, there may be no ammunition to sell.) Any store that does sell ammunition will be required to physically search prospective buyers before they will be allowed to approach the display.
NSSF is urging all retailers to contact OSHA directly and request a 60-day extension of the public comment period. Retailers should inform OSHA that the proposed rule constitutes a “significant regulatory action” as defined in Executive Order 12866 (1993) Section 3(f)(1) in that it will clearly “adversely affect in a material way” the retail sector of the firearms and ammunition industry, productivity, competition and jobs and that the annual compliance cost for all retailers of ammunition will far exceed $100 million dollars.I tried www.regulations.gov myself tonight, but the system offers no clear way of knowing if your comments have been accepted or ignored. I'll mail a hard copy letter in the morning.
If you choose to draft your own letter, the reference line must read as follows:
RE: Docket No. OSHA-2007-0032
Request to Extend Public Comment Period and Request for Hearing on
“Significant Regulatory Action” as Defined in Executive Order 12866
Please fax the letter to: 202-693-1648 (include the docket number and Department of Labor/OSHA on the cover sheet and in the reference section of your letter).
This is just the sort of nonsense I was talking about below. We've got to get a handle on this kind of regulatory garbage if, or bureaucrats will fritter away what remains of our heritage of freedom.
Anabasis II
The Commissar's project continues. Especially if you haven't read Anabasis before, you might enjoy following along with his efforts. The comments from readers are also interesting.
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.David began the "R" platform here:
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.
#24 from Armed Liberal: "David B - do you want to coordinate w/Grim on the "fantasy Republican" response?"My response is here.
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.
All right, David, if you want to give it a go, I'll join you.Thoughts?
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.
Anabasis 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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.As always, I will not be tagging anyone else. Anyone who wants, however, is welcome to play.
* 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.
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
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
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.This is a good start. Lots more like this, if you please.
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.
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
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)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.
…and 480 soldiers have lost their lives since the President’s failed surge strategy began. (Department of Defense Casualty Reports)
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.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.
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.
TX 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
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.
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
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
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.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.
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[.]
Rodeo Song
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
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
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 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?
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.
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
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
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."Happy Father's Day.
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.
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
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: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."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.
Second, maybe SP needs to meet another Geek I know. Could be he's not operating with all the necessary information.
mmm
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
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.
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.
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.You might wish to read it.
“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.
Cap 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
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!’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.
‘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[.]
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
A poem, by a young lady who has reason to know.
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 Grannis
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
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.
MONTGOMERY, AL -- State Sen. Charles Bishop hit Sen. Lowell Barron on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.
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
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
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
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.)