Magical Thinking

Magical Thinking:

Psychology Today has an article (h/t Arts & Letters Daily) on several nearly universal types of magical thinking. What is interesting to me is that, at the end, the piece notes that several of these types have strongly beneficial effects -- and may have moreso in the future.

They also notice several ways in which science has proven that some aspects of magical thinking are actually borne out in reality. I would add two more: we know that particles entangled can instantaneously convey information, no matter how far apart they get subsequently -- what happens to one, in effect, happens to another. This supports the thought that "anything can be sacred / anything can be cursed."

But most, I want to add to this:

7. The world is alive.

To believe that the universe is sympathetic to our wishes is to believe that it has a mind or a soul, however rudimentary. We often see inanimate objects as infused with a life force. After watching The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid, I desperately wanted my own plush bear to come alive. When I asked my mom if loving something enough can make it real, she said no. It broke my heart.

The worse that she did, for your mother was wrong. Loving a thing can make it alive.

Though the scientific proof of this fact is not yet with us, the empirical proof of it is solid. The extension of qi into the sword is a thing anyone can experience. Go and see.

Ethics

Ethics: On the Flag

Today's ethical discussion will treat the following video.



(The knife used, by the way, is a US Army-stamped Kabar. Among my small collection of knives, I have one just like it -- I have carried it faithfully around here until yesterday, when I shipped it home along with my footlocker.)

Some background: Once upon a time in Dawson County, Georgia, there was a local business that had a flag display by the highway. One of the several flags on display was an American flag; and one windy day, one of its stays broke and caused it to hang from only the bottom stay. I noticed this while driving past it on my way to work.

Three days later, it was still not repaired. So, I stopped, cut it the rest of the way down, and took it home to hang above my mantle in a place of honor.

Here is the ethical proposition to debate, then: the American flag is not something that can be owned by an individual, like a piece of property. It belongs to all of us, and its care to all of us. While an individual can buy a flag, if he does not take care of it properly -- or if he deliberately insults it -- any citizen is fully correct as a point of ethics to rescue it and restore it to the honor it is due.

Note that I do not say you are legally correct: the law is often unethical. I am interested in the philosophical truth of the matter, not the question of whether or not the law is correct as currently constructed. Laws can change, and if we find that the law is currently out of order with what is right, we can propose such a change.

What I want to know is your thought on the question of whether the philosophical propposition is right. If you think that ethics requires you to conform to the law (as I certainly do not; but that is a separate discussion), assume the law permitted you to do what this gentleman has done (as it yet may; you may find it hard to find a jury to convict him. If he is acquitted by a jury of his peers, that will mean that our system of law has ratified his action -- and the case will then serve as precedent for future cases. This is right and proper: our law has as part of its tradition the appeal to trial by combat, so that a man might prove his right after the fact. We no longer have the physical combat, but a man may yet prove his right before a jury of his peers. This is as much a part of our legal tradition as any other, and as valuable as any other part of it).

Assume that the law were clear on the point, if that is necessary to consider the philosophical question; or, if law and ethics are tied together for you, assume there is yet no law, and we are debating what the law should be.

Does the flag belong to us all, a symbol whose honor we are all concerned with defending? Or is it property, to be disposed of at the whim of the individual who paid for this particular bit of cloth?

St. Patrick's Day

The Feast of St. Patrick:

As we are nearing the 17th of March, I would like to offer readers the service of linking to this collection of lyrics for your favorite drinking songs, Irish songs, and other merry tunes you may not have heard. I assume you will all want to read through the lyrics to, "Do Virgins Taste Better?", for example.

Evolution and laughter

Evolution and Laughter:

Apparently Christopher Hitchens (amid what I gather was an unforgivable rant) suggested that laughter is necessary for men who want to reproduce. Cassandra asked if we think it is true, and I think it may be, as I told her:

As for whether or not a man must be able to make women laugh to stay in 'the evolutionary concept,' the answer I think is that indeed he must -- in the West. It is an unrecognized fact that the West is the major civilization in which women have had the largest voice, for longest.

In China or Turkey or Iran, much of South America, all of Africa, most of Asia excepting the parts reformed through long contact with the United States -- women's consent is not so greatly required.

It is in the West that Marie de France and others set out the rules of courtly love, and what began as an amusement for the elite ladies became the rule for the whole society. We have a concept of love and true love, and women's power to consent or refuse, that is not present in the rest of humanity.

I mention "major civilizations," by which I mean civilizations that have managed to convince other civilizations to fold themselves into it: as "the West" has absorbed both "the British" and "the Polish" and many others; and as the "Chinese" has absorbed many, and as Islam has.

Judaism has had a major effect on the world through its writing and thinking, but has not convinced any other civilizations lately to fold themselves within it -- although they used to do so, in the Old Testament days. We shall say it is a special case, and Hitchens apparently also thinks so, since he sets women who are Jewish aside. But it holds the rule: it is famously female-led, within the context of whatever other civilization its members have found themselves, and famously a producer of funny men.

It would be interesting to see if others do too: you could test the proposition by checking to see if societies in which women were granted their choice of mates placed a higher value on male humor than those where marriages are arranged, or otherwise forced.

I suspect that it would be, for this reason: humor is an excellent way to test a man's strength in the two areas where men are often weakest, which is their verbal ability and their emotional intelligence. Both are crucial factors in success in life, and both are relatively difficult to observe in the way that physical strength, stamina, and so forth are. It would therefore make perfect sense, from an evolutionary standpoint, for women to delight in humor as they do in broad shoulders and hard work.

If the civilization allows them to choose, then, whether they yield to love or refuse, I would expect humor to be a large part of the gentlemanly arts. If they are not, then humor has far less importance to men, and they will learn it less. This is not to say that there will be no humor in such societies, to be sure, but only that such societies will not place such high importance on learning to be funny; and I would think that the forms of humor would be less subtly developed, since they would be more to include people in jokes in order to resolve other kinds of social tension, than to test your intelligence and verbal skills. (For example, in China, the predominant form of humor is a sort of word play that makes fun of the fact that so many of the words sound exactly alike, but mean totally different things. This is amusing -- think "Who's on first?" but with almost all words having multiple possible meanings -- but accessible to almost anyone who is familiar with the language.)

As for why more men than women are famous comedians, it is probably for the same reason that more men than women are famous poets or authors, though women in general have better verbal skills: at the top of any profession, you expect to find genuises. Men are more likely than women to be geniuses, as they are more likely than women to be true idiots, because the IQ curve is flatter. This has been consistently observed across cultures, with women clustering more toward the center, and men spreading out more along the whole range of possibility.

A Collection of bad ideas

A Collection of Bad Ideas:

Christina Hoff Summers on the equity movement in higher education. It's a long piece, but keep going: the rabbit hole goes deep, and the thinking she showcases for you gets worse the deeper you travel.

But both college regulations and Federal force are behind the bad ideas becoming real.

Two from Dawn Patrol

Two from the Dawn Patrol:

From Mudville's Dawn Patrol, two items. First, al Qaeda makes excuses:

It is true that we have lost several cities and have been forced to withdraw from others, after a large number of [Sunni] tribal leaders betrayed Islam and when their tribe members joined forces against us. However, we are still fighting, and the 'paralysis' mentioned by the Crusaders is true only for some of the regions.

Duly noted.

Besides, it is common knowledge that any war always involves advance and retreat, so that [even] in those regions I wouldn't call our position 'paralysis,' but rather 'the [changing] conditions of the war....

Specifically, for you, the conditions are changing from "bad" to "worse."

The second item shows some American good-sense: Military officers are one of the most prestigious of careers, actors and journalists two of the least.

“Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

“The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the Nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.”

Duty, honor and country refer to the giving of yourself for something greater than you are. You may earn a few medals on the way – but in the end, joining the military and, in the event that you become an officer, leading your uniformed legions into battle in defense of your country and its ideals, putting yourself in harm’s way – means a lot more to most Americans than how many Oscars or Pulitzer prizes are collecting dust on your mantel.

Firemen, I have to note for the benefit of my father, were the most prestigious of all.

Followup

A Brief Followup:

Eric is right: I do approve. Allow me to followup his post with a few links. We've had the Schola St. George on the links bar, under "Gunfighting and Bladework," for a while. See also their list of allied schools.

Finally, if you'd just like a book, this one is one of my favorites. From the 15th century, it shows how closely allied the Western martial arts were to judo and jujitsu, as well as Japanese forms that combine weapons with existing grappling. No surprise: the human body is the same, and therefore the physics that are effective (or not) are largely the same. One chief difference was the use of gloves so that you could grip the blade of your own longsword in close quarters, and thus use it as a staff or a dagger or a hammer; and as a tool for grappling and damaging your foe.

Many of these tactics can also be employed with a long knife, for those of you who are bowie or other big-knife fighters.

Grim will approve.

Rapier wit.

SEATTLE — The golf cases propped up against the walls are full of swords, daggers and the occasional bit of chain mail. The halls of the community center ring with the clash of steel, the thud of shields and the quick snip-snip of rapiers. The books quoted are as often as not in medieval German or Latin.
Welcome to a Western martial arts conference. Not a cowboy or lariat in sight. Western in this case is Western European, as opposed to the better-known Asian variety.

These are the arts of warfare and self-defense of medieval and renaissance Europe. Also called historical martial arts, they employ bare hands, pikes, a variety of swords, daggers and rapiers in the way that practitioners of Eastern martial arts might use bo staves, Katana swords and Tanto knives.

Unlike in the East, these fighting traditions died out in Europe in the 1600s with the introduction of gunpowder-fueled weapons.

But now they're making a comeback.

"Eastern" martial arts were never supplanated by gun-powder weapons the way it happened in Western Europe. The Japanese, although very happy to use gun powder weapons, made a conscious decision to de-emphasize them (and cut themselves off from the world) which worked pretty well from the 17th century to 1868. This allowed the knowledge to still be there in living memory once people started getting interested in the subject after WWII. China, although a very early adopter of gun-powder weapons, managed to shamble along till nearly the 20th century using a polygot mix of pretty much everything, and again living memory was available to reinvigorate a what was basically a living tradition.

Western Europe for better or worse, went a different route. The immediate spread gun powder weapons starting in the 13th or 14th centuries (The English supposedly had artillery at Crecy) had, by the 1520's made guns the missle weapon of choice. At Cerignola in 1503, at Bicocca in 1522, at Pavia in 1525, men armed with guns shot down their opponents armed only with cold steel. I suppose it is tragically fitting that the Chevalier Bayard died from a arquebus ball. In someways, Chivalry died with him.

But not in others. That quote from Henry V that found the other day has another interesting little marker. "Art thou Officer?" Not knight or gentleman, although certainly that helped, but an officer. It shows how the thinking had changed even by 1600. The nobility of the west walked down a different path.

Certainly, some of the best fencing manuals date from the 16th and 17th century, but that declined over the course of time to where sport fencing was just a faint echo of the past.

The demise of birth based nobility also had something to do with it, and although there was a slight revival of things medieval in the late 19th century, that pretty well got wrecked in the general destruction of WWI. (As I like to point out).

I've noticed the growth of this over the past couple of decades. It is probably, something else in which Gygax and his game was a factor.

(via FARK, believe it or not)

New Rome

The New Rome(?):

Apparently Cullen Murphy's new book omits the question mark in its British title, but when publishing the same work in America he allows it an open question. The links above are to two reviews, one Australian and the other British.

It's a subject we've discussed often lately -- we know my opinion is that we are the latest Medievals, who also were always trying to be "the New Rome." I think the book might fire Eric's imagination, though, and I'd like to hear his take on it when he's had a chance to read it through (which I, obviously, have not done).

Resolve to win

"Resolve to Win"

Some veterans and supporters of the military are making a sixteen-day hike across country to DC. Read about their efforts. If you're in the area, you might stop in to welcome them at the Lincoln Memorial.

Marine Combat arts

Marine Combat Artists:

Miss Ladybug posts on the subject, with links and some commentary.

SBFS

South Baghdad Film Society:

Tonight we had the first (long planned) meeting of the South Baghdad Film Society, which will probably be also the last meeting, as all of us are ripping immediately or soon. Still, we managed to find time at least once to do it. The film was Henry V, which should make Cassandra proud. Henry V himself was an interesting character, and the battle remarkable for the use of mobile palings as a defensive structure for longbowmen. Thus did an exhausted army defeat a fresh one, in spite of having to leave its defensive encampment.

There are some fine speeches in the film. We remember the St. Crispin's Day speech, but the "take a soldier" speech is also very good. In all, a pleasant evening, and a chance to reflect on history.

A protest

A Protest:

I realize that The Wall Street Journal is in New York City, but this is still unacceptable:

Other nations, though, should be as offended by this "cowboy socialism" as Europeans are by America's supposed "cowboy capitalism."

This is an offense against the following code:

It is with annoyance that the Dean of Students notes a comment from Sweden's Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, where she criticized President Bush for acting like the lone ranger in Iraq. . . .

Displays of ignorance of this sort were common long before the Iraqi conflict, but Ms. Lindh has distinguished herself by plunging to new depths thereof. In the Pantheon of Cowboys, the Lone Ranger (note the caps, Reuthers) stands among the Major Gods, right up there with Will Rogers, Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, and John Wayne. There are good reasons why the Texas state police are called the Texas Rangers (an organization that pre-dated that state's admission to the Union). The deeds of the Army Rangers are even more glorious.

Here, here. "Cowboy" should never be used as an insult.

Doom

China's Doom:

All that rapid progress, growth and expansion you've been reading about for several years? It's over -- they've started to sue. Soon you won't be able to set up a fence without a lawyer, two permits and a hearing.

Seriously, the Chinese drinking thing is beautiful to behold. I never once saw a drunkard staggering on the streets; but you could buy beer out of the soda machine at the police station. While you're waiting on them to process your request, just pop a Pabst Blue Ribbon (big in China) or the local brew. It makes the time pass far more pleasantly.

ML

Miss Ladybug:

ML kindly sends me updates to her stuff on a regular basis; I always intend to link to her, and always forget to do so. Please see what she has, lately, been writing for you.

Vera

You Get All Dressed Up, You Get Taken Somewhere Fun:

Doc would like you to meet Vera. If you were here, Doc, you could take her to church with you.

The name comes from Jayne Cobb.

Well, heeeelllllooooo Ashleigh.

Iowa Soldiers Deploy

Trolls

Troll Misidentification:

The other day we talked about the problem of misidentifying defenders as vandals, in The Ecology of Trolls. Today, the Geek w/a .45 has a moment of clarity, in which he realizes that he has been doing that:

The American Left (to the extent that Leftism is consistent with an authentically American outlook) is a totalitarian movement dedicated to the bringing forth of unlimited Good, through governmental mechanisms.

These aren't people who seek evil. They are people who seek Good, albeit through dubious means. They are people who blind themselves to the truth that the power for unlimited good is cannot be distinguished, even in principle, from the power for unlimited evil. As such, they do not understand that we oppose them for their means, not their ends, and many believe that we oppose the Good they seek to bring forth, and cannot understand why anyone (other than a reactionary degenerate seeking to preserve a position of oppression based privilege) would oppose such Goodness.

He's still opposed; and he and I basically agree on right policy. However, he no longer sees the opponent as a vandal who seeks to break the Republic -- but rather, as someone who intends to defend some hope for the nation that is different from his own.

I think I started to formulate my ideas about this in a concrete way in the wake of the 2004 election. There are a lot of good people out there on what we often think of as "the other side." It's worth taking the time to be patient, weather some of their verbal assaults, break bread and drink tea.

Not that you should leave off your knife; no good man ever should. Still, remember that it isn't the only tool.

Cooper & COIN

Cooper, Dr. Helen, and COIN:

Dr. Helen rereads a classic, and worries about whether the values of Colonel Cooper are drowning under "The New Feminized Majority." (An aside -- surely no one wanting a "feminized majority" would have actually titled their book that; no title could have been better calculated to drive off half the populace. One meets cheerful self-described "tomboys" on a regular basis, but one never meets a self-described "feminized male," at least, not in the places I'm accustomed to travel.)

Dr. Helen worries:

Some useful bits of information that Cooper provides is that one must train himself into a state of mind in which the sudden awareness of peril does not surprise him. "His response should be not "Oh my God, I'm in a fight!" but rather, "I thought this might happen and I know what to do about it."

I often think how few people in our society would really know what to do if they were confronted with a mortal confrontation. Sadly, our mindset is now more like The New Feminized Majority in which soft power and discussions are slowly taking the place of the Combat Mind-set.

The key to successful counterinsurgency is being able to move quickly back and forth between these modes. Listen to Megan Ortagus, a young lady from (I gather) Beverly Hills, talking COIN operations with a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. She says she'd never been to Iraq before and "watched all the good war movies," so she could feel prepared. She likens the Dora Market in Baghdad to Rodeo Drive. She understands what is going on well enough to think about it and discuss it, however. She is able to fulfil her function as a citizen in voting for representatives, and in advising those representatives as to right courses of action.

Jim has been doing COIN since the 1980s. While she talks about "kinetics," he talks about how you have to sit down and "break bread and drink chai," and how you come to see the local population as "friends," and build "relationships" that are the real way you win this kind of war. That is "soft power and discussions" exactly. Yet you do this with a rifle or a pistol or a knife always to hand, always ready to swap gears into the mode Colonel Cooper talks about.

The rest of life is also this way: COIN only shows the division in its best light. A citizen has a duty to resist felony, or to assist other citizens under attack by felons; the power to attempt to effect a citizens arrest, or -- if you lack the capacity -- to gather information to aid the police. A citizenry capable in this way is defense-in-depth against all the evils that man inflicts upon man. Not only crime but terrorism, not only lawbreaking but simple social rudeness can be dealt with by having the mindset Colonel Cooper advocates. This mindset is necessary in all times and places, as its presence in the minds of the citizenry is the surest insurance against the breakdown of the space in which our liberty and peace endure.

But, as the Colonel would have told you himself, there are other things that matter in life: poetry, song, friendship, family. Protecting those things is what the whole mindset is for. And they are the things on which that peace and liberty is built: the Cooper mind wins the space in which you build peace and liberty, but this is how you build it.

Young ladies from Beverly Hills can get that; so can crusty old Master Sergeants. We're richer for every such citizen we add, for every one we train to think in these terms.

SOUTHERN APPEAL IS BACK

SOUTHERN APPEAL IS BACK!

Spread the news. Feddie has decided to start Southern Appeal back up. Stop by his blog and give him an encouraging word.

Heh

A Socratic Moment:

Fafhrd once traveled to Tyre, in Adept's Gambit, where he found himself in conversation with a student of philosophy.

"You belong to the Socratic school?" Fafhrd questioned gently.

The Greek nodded.

"Socrates was the philosopher who was able to drink unlimited quantities of wine without blinking?"

Again the quick nod.

"That was because his rational soul dominated his animal soul?"

"You are learned," replied the Greek, with a more respectful but equally quick nod.

"I am not through. Do you consider yourself in all ways a follower of your master?"

This time the Greek's quickness undid him. He nodded, and two days later he was carried out of the wine shop by friends, who had found him cradled in a broken wine barrel, as if newborn in no common manner. For days he remained drunk, time enough for a small sect to spring up who believed him a reincarnation of Dionysus and as such worshipped him. The sect was dissolved when he became half-sober and delivered his first oracular address, which had as its subject the evils of drunkeness.

Res ipsa loquitur, and most people sort out the joys and perils of drink in their own way. But now comes The New York Times to tell us that Socrates was on to something, after all:

The researchers served alcoholic drinks, most often icy vodka tonics, to some of the students and nonalcoholic ones, usually icy tonic water, to others. The drinks looked and tasted the same, and the students typically drank five in an hour or two.

The studies found that people who thought they were drinking alcohol behaved exactly as aggressively, or as affectionately, or as merrily as they expected to when drunk. “No significant difference between those who got alcohol and those who didn’t,” Alan Marlatt, the senior author, said. “Their behavior was totally determined by their expectations of how they would behave.”

Someone tell Matty-boy. He's in charge of drinking my share, this St. Patty's day, and his own accustomed ration to boot.

Remember the rational soul, son! It's your only chance!

RIP Gygax

Requiescat In Pace Gary Gygax:

Readers are either asking themselves, "Who was Gary Gygax?"; or, they're making puns.

No harm there: he was a merry fellow, who spent his life in games, and even those who have left games behind -- or for a while -- may remember him kindly.

Wiki needs trolls

The Ecology of Trolls:

In a charming article on Wikipedia, Nicholson Baker talks about the rise of vandals:

The Pop-Tarts page is often aflutter. Pop-Tarts, it says as of today (February 8, 2008), were discontinued in Australia in 2005. Maybe that's true. Before that it said that Pop-Tarts were discontinued in Korea. Before that Australia. Several days ago it said: "Pop-Tarts is german for Little Iced Pastry O' Germany." Other things I learned from earlier versions: More than two trillion Pop-Tarts are sold each year. George Washington invented them. They were developed in the early 1960s in China. Popular flavors are "frosted strawberry, frosted brown sugar cinnamon, and semen." Pop-Tarts are a "flat Cookie." No: "Pop-Tarts are a flat Pastry, KEVIN MCCORMICK is a FRIGGIN LOSER notto mention a queer inch." No: "A Pop-Tart is a flat condom." Once last fall the whole page was replaced with "NIPPLES AND BROCCOLI!!!!!"

This sounds chaotic, but even the Pop-Tarts page is under control most of the time. The "unhelpful" or "inappropriate"—sometimes stoned, racist, violent, metalheaded—changes are quickly fixed by human stompers and algorithmicized helper bots. It's a game. Wikipedians see vandalism as a problem, and it certainly can be, but a Diogenes-minded observer would submit that Wikipedia would never have been the prodigious success it has been without its demons.

Wait... why do the vandals cause an improvement?

Say you're working away on the Wikipedia article on aging. You've got some nice scientific language in there and it's really starting to shape up:

After a period of near perfect renewal (in Humans, between 20 and 50 years of age), organismal senescence is characterized by the declining ability to respond to stress, increasing homeostatic imbalance and increased risk of disease. This irreversible series of changes inevitably ends in Death.

Not bad!

And then somebody—a user with an address of 206.82.17.190, a "vandal"—replaces the entire article with a single sentence: "Aging is what you get when you get freakin old old old." That happened on December 20, 2007. A minute later, you "revert" that anonymous editor's edit, with a few clicks; you go back in history to the article as it stood before. You've just kept the aging article safe, for the moment. But you have to stay vigilant, because somebody might swoop in again at any time, and you'll have to undo their harm with your power reverter ray. Now you're addicted. You've become a force for good just by standing guard and looking out for juvenile delinquents.

Any addiction arises because the pleasure centers in the brain light up -- they cause the body to release happy drugs that, in turn, create addictions. "Addiction" is a perjorative, in fact: this is learning behavior. We consider it a problem because sometimes nonproductive or even harmful activity can light up those centers, causing you to spend all your time snorting white powders or whatever it is that is causing you that high. In the wild, though, this is meant to be positive reinforcement.

So you get a spike from defending the Wikipedia against vandals; and that causes you to commit to spending time on the Wiki. You wander about, looking for vandalism to correct, touching things up here and there, and since you're here anyway, maybe you plug in a few details from a book you were reading recently (with proper citations, of course). The vandals addicted you, along with certain other qualities:

All big Internet successes—e-mail, AOL chat, Facebook, Gawker, Second Life, YouTube, Daily Kos, World of Warcraft—have a more or less addictive component—they hook you because they are solitary ways to be social: you keep checking in, peeking in, as you would to some noisy party going on downstairs in a house while you're trying to sleep.

This is a pretty good metaphor for how you build, and maintain, the politically involved polity necessary to the success of a Republic. You need an engaged citizenry -- and who are the most engaged citizens? The ones who have friends that are involved, who want to participate because politics for them is social as much as it is practical...

...but more than that, those who perceive politics as a struggle against vandals attacking society. The really involved people are the pro-Life marchers, or the pro-Choice marchers -- the people who believe that society is being destroyed by someone else. It's that same energy that comes from standing off vandals that drives both the left and the right's key actors, the engaged few.

Now, the difference is: whereas vandals are obviously bad, in the case of the Republic you have people who have come to interpret other defenders as vandals. In the case of Wikipedia, the existence of vandals actually improves the final product.

In the Republic, much of that energy is turned on other people who are defending a different vision of the right way for the Republic to be. They are interpreting what you are doing out of your truly felt morals as vandalism -- and you may be interpreting their acts in the same way. This appears to me to be a flaw in the brain: a false identification of someone as a vandal, when in fact a real vandal actually intends to harm or destroy the project.

That leaves me with two questions:

1) Is there a method, other a greatly increased Federalism, by which you can resolve that tension?

2) If you're spending all your energy on "vandals" from the other side -- what about the real vandals? The ones who want to destroy the project?

The first question is about finding a way to work with other people who believe themselves to be moral actors, without ending up in a civil war. The second question has to do with the other sort of war. I would suggest that these two questions may point to the key problems facing the nation today.

It strikes me that the Obama campaign is attempting to address the first one, whereas the other two are not: while Obama shows no sign of pushing for actual compromises, he is at least attempting to recognize the 'other side' as moral actors, and to tone down the "vandal" rhetoric. This may be a way of at least approaching a discussion of how to fix the first problem: we can start talking across the aisle about how we might order things (Federalism being, as you know, my preferred solution) so that the defenders of both sides are more satisfied than currently.

Unfortunately, the Obama campaign seems not to believe that the second problem is a serious one, to judge from his recent statement on defense policy. If he thinks the greatest challenges facing our nation's military involve not building new weapons systems and cutting spending on things recommended by the Quadrenniel Defense Review, he's saying something I've heard before: in 1984, and 1988. The problem then, as now, was that there was an actual threat.

Making misjudgments about how many officers and men you will need -- and how many capital goods, like airplanes -- is tremendously expensive even if things go well. It costs a fortune to retool a factory, once you have shut down the line: so if you didn't bet right, you either can't get new airplanes, or you have to spend so much more to build any that you need to build hundreds to make back the cost of setting up the factory.

By the same token, the huge number of contractors engaged in the Iraq war exists for two reasons:

1) In 1993, when it had to start training majors and senior NCOs for service this year in 2008, Congress vastly underestimated the forces we would need.

2) No expeditionary civilian service exists to supplement the military, so nationbuilding operations and COIN operations are being largely carried by the military. Even the State-led PRTs and ePRTs, of which I've written much and in high praise, are often filled with military officers or reservists. In addition, an expeditionary civilian service needs to carry at least defensive arms, or the military has to be tasked to guard them anyway (or else you're back with contractors).

Congress also abolished the draft (and it is hard to draft people of field-grade-officer quality, or senior NCO quality, anyway -- how do you find them?). So, since they need men and women who can serve as majors (and there is a real shortage of majors in the Army right now), the only choice is to pay market rates to hire people with the right experience and willingness to come. That's "market rates" for people able to operate at that level, and enough to make them willing to interrupt their careers and lives -- for unlike an actual military officer or State Department official, who is furthering his career by deploying, other sorts of civilians are usually trading away the business they could have been building at home, or the job with a pension and healthcare they could have had, for a three-to-eighteen-month opportunity.

(And how much is that, exactly? Depends on the person, just like with any other market rate. My contract specifies that I am paid GS-12 pay, and as the Marines will tell you, that's the civilan service equivalent to a Major -- so, Congress doesn't lose out by hiring me at market rates, plus they didn't have to pay me for the previous fifteen years to get me here now. Others, however, demand better deals to come over.)

So, the Obama approach concerns me. It is reckless, and treats the DoD as more suspect than the actual enemies. In that way, it is an even worse misidentification of defenders for vandals than the one he seeks to address.

How do McCain and Clinton stack up? They seem uninterested in question one; but are substantially better on question two.

No Good Stories

No Good Stories:

I don't really have any good stories tonight. I've been blogging more mostly because Camp Victory now has wireless internet access in places, so I have non-work access this last little while for the hour or so I can scrounge out of the day. This has given me a little more leeway to talk with you, at the expense of my previous leisure activity of reading heavily. Too, the weather has been extremely pleasant here in Baghdad, when you can get outside -- 75 degrees and sunny, with a cool breeze this afternoon that was pleasant until it finally stirred up too much dust and everything had to be sealed up. The warm weather means the hot weather is just around the corner; but while the pleasure of the breeze is better for me, it is not nearly so interesting for you to read about.

Since I don't have anything interesting to tell you, I'll give you Walter Scott, instead. This is from The Talisman, one of his novels of the Crusaders. We often talk about how bad our armor is, but we are somewhat better off than when armor-of-proof was wrought from steel:

The dress of the rider and the accoutrements of his horse were peculiarly unfit for the traveller in such a country. A coat of linked mail, with long sleeves, plated gauntlets, and a steel breastplate, had not been esteemed a sufficient weight of armour; there were also his triangular shield suspended round his neck, and his barred helmet of steel, over which he had a hood and collar of mail, which was drawn around the warrior's shoulders and throat, and filled up the vacancy between the hauberk and the headpiece. His lower limbs were sheathed, like his body, in flexible mail, securing the legs and thighs, while the feet rested in plated shoes, which corresponded with the gauntlets. A long, broad, straight-shaped, double-edged falchion, with a handle formed like a cross, corresponded with a stout poniard on the other side. The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one end resting on his stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his own proper weapon, which, as he rode, projected backwards, and displayed its little pennoncelle, to dally with the faint breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equipment must be added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and worn, which was thus far useful that it excluded the burning rays of the sun from the armour, which they would otherwise have rendered intolerable to the wearer. The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant leopard, with the motto, "I sleep; wake me not." An outline of the same device might be traced on his shield, though many a blow had almost effaced the painting. The flat top of his cumbrous cylindrical helmet was unadorned with any crest. In retaining their own unwieldy defensive armour, the Northern Crusaders seemed to set at defiance the nature of the climate and country to which they had come to war.

The accoutrements of the horse were scarcely less massive and unwieldy than those of the rider. The animal had a heavy saddle plated with steel, uniting in front with a species of breastplate, and behind with defensive armour made to cover the loins. Then there was a steel axe, or hammer, called a mace-of- arms, and which hung to the saddle-bow.

The knight is described as a "knight of the Red Cross," which actually could mean one of several parties, including the Templars, who are actually the villians in this book (moreso, in fact, than the Muslims -- Saladin is a co-hero, as Scott was impressed with his character, recognizing good men in any faith, as I also think is proper). In this case, the Red Cross means the St. George's Cross, and the party of Richard the Lionheart. This is in the same way that a Knight of the White Cross could be a Hospitaller, or a Dane, or one of several others.

It's a good story, although not Ivanhoe. If you want a story set in the desert, though, it's better than any I have to tell you today.

Cosmic Favors

Cosmic Favors:

It is a kindness from the fabric of the universe itself that Cassandra's husband returned before the Washington Post published this. If it had come out a week ago, her head would have exploded.

Now, though, I would say she is safe. Oh, and drop by and congratulate her on surviving his deployment; and thank him for his service, as one of the Marines just returning from another trip to Iraq.

It may be a few days before she sees it, but I'm sure she'll appreciate it then. :)

They don't call it the suck for nothing.

LT G got dumped. I saw that in peacetime, and it sucked then. At least he's taking better than his CPT did.

Arthur in Baghdad

King Arthur in Baghdad:

Though not a Paladin, King Arthur was Charlemagne's chief competitor as a legendary symbol around whose court chivalric tales were told. I mention this because I was over at Camp Slayer today, and in the light of our discussion, I happened to notice their sign:



The flag is a detail from this tapestry of Arthur.

Of course, the Arthurian romances were just that -- "romances," by which Medievals meant, 'stories about adventures and times that were as great as Rome.' One mark of High Medieval civilization was that it self-consciously looked back to Rome, and tried to be like the Romans: you saw it in Charlemagne himself, and the "Holy Roman Empire," and the symbolism of the Church, and in kings like Edward I of England, and the popularity of Vegetius as a guide to how to run an army. In Arthur's case, he was given the Latin title Dux Bellorum very early.

In that sense, even a reference to Arthur is a reference to Rome; and one of the additions to the old Celtic Arthurian tales in the High Middle Ages was an Italian expedition to Rome itself. It's only in the 19th century that you begin to see Medievals as a rejection of Rome. You might say that the thing that made you a Medieval, rather than a barbarian, was the reference to Rome.

Here we see Arthur with pre-14th century Medieval heraldry, although the tapestry is modern.

UPDATE:

In reading the page on Arthurian heraldry, I noticed this picture of Lancelot, whose arms -- argent three bends gules -- "have been stable since the 13th century" in the romances.



Here's the heraldry I see on every wall and every soldier:



I was given one of the "right sleeve" SSI patches recently by a Major here: a purely honorary gift, as I am not in the Army, but he said I'd been here more than long enough, and under (indirect, and poorly-aimed) fire often enough, to merit it in his opinion. I will certainly treasure it, and the sentiment that came with it. The Third Division heraldy is azure three bends sinister chief to dexter base argent.

Now if we could just get some round tables into the DFAC, everything would be in order.

Pandora's Box

Pandora's Box:

Let's watch this video:



Did you guess who this ad was for before the end? The New Republic and I, for once, had the same reaction.

The other fellow says he'll never use ads like this to win votes. But that is no sacrifice: he is self-evidently the weakest candidate on this score. Naturally he'd prefer not to discuss the question.

Althouse says she cried a real sob over the video, before "laughing" at herself.

Is this a laughing matter?

Who Love

Who Do You Love?

Foreign Policy asked a few thousand field-grade and general/flag officers, serving and retired, some questions:

When asked how much confidence they have in other U.S. government institutions and departments, the index’s officers report low levels of trust nearly across the board. For instance, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means the officers have a great deal of confidence in the department or institution and 1 means they have none, the officers put their level of confidence in the presidency at 5.5. Some 16 percent express no confidence at all in the president. The index’s officers gave the CIA an average confidence rating of 4.7 and the Department of State, 4.1. The Department of Veterans Affairs received a confidence rating of just 4.5 and the Department of Defense, 5.6. The officers say their level of confidence in the U.S. Congress is the lowest, at an average of just 2.7.

That's not so good. What might fix it?

Sixty-six percent of the officers say they believe America’s elected leaders are either somewhat or very uninformed about the U.S. military. How can the military’s perception of elected leaders be improved? In part, the officers say, by electing people who have served in uniform. Nearly 9 in 10 officers agree that, all other things being equal, the military will respect a president of the United States who has served in the military more than one who has not.

Probably wouldn't hurt for Congressfolk, either.

Si, Se Puedo

Yes, We Can!

Victory through mockery; at least, where mockery is deserved. InstaPundit:

INTERESTING NEW POLL: Pew: Majority now believe U.S. effort in Iraq will succeed, 53-39.

Yes we can!

Best of the Web:

So let's see if we have this straight. Al Qaeda in Iraq isn't worth fighting because it wouldn't be there if it weren't for Bush and McCain. Obama is going to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq to go fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although he will send them back to Iraq if al Qaeda are there, even though he now wants to withdraw notwithstanding al Qaeda's presence.

Yes, we can!

I suppose we can do a lot of things.

Respect / Honor

Respect & Honor:

From a fourteen year old, at that:

When I think of an American soldier, four words come to mind, Honor, Respect, Freedom and Valor.

Your story is filled with Honor and Respect. Honor for our country and all we hold dear. These brave men and women risk their lives to honor this great nation. All of the service men and women show great respect for our flag and everything it stands for. With everything these wonderful people do, I don't think we show them the respect and honor they deserve in return. I can not think of a more honorable profession than to be a United States Soldier.

Nor can I. I could name a few that are not less honorable; but none that are more. Read the rest.

Prince Harry wins his spurs.

I'm sure Grim approves.

I want to know if he helps clean the .50.

Mead

On Mead:

Slate has an article on resurgent meads:

Judging by the prominence of honey these days, you'd think there's a run on sugar. Local, flavored honeys are now in restaurant kitchens.... But even more unexpected is the rise of honey for an ancient use: alcohol, in a drink known as mead. You might know mead from Beowulf[.]

In return for the link, I'm going to borrow Slate's graphic:

I expect Sly will be including it in future emails; in the meantime, it's rather cheerful.

Paladin

Have Gun, Will Travel:

We recently had a side conversation on Rome v. the Middle Ages, and whether our modern age is more like one or the other. I was reflecting on that through the lens of our 155mm self-propelled howitzer, the Paladin, which provides the deep defense of our bases and, in my case, identifies for my comrades an important piece of my equipment, without which my contribution to the war would be even smaller than it is.




But what is a Paladin, properly speaking? The word has an interesting history, before it became the standard of Dungeons and Dragons.

The term paladin was first used in Ancient Rome for a chamberlain of the Emperor, and also for the imperial palace guard, called the Scholae Palatinae by Constantine. In the early Middle Ages, the meaning changed and the term was used for one of the highest officials of the Catholic Church in the pope's service and also for one of the major noblemen of the Holy Roman Empire, who was then named Count Palatine. Similar titles were also used in 19th century Hungary and in the German Empire and United Kingdom during the early 20th century.

In medieval literature, the paladins or Twelve Peers were known in the Matter of France as the retainers of Charlemagne. Based on this usage, the term can also refer to an honorable knight, which has been used in contemporary fantasy literature.

One of the Medieval usages is interesting, because it pertains to the swearing of oaths.

From the Middle Ages on, the term palatine was applied to various different officials across Europe. The most important of these was the comes palatinus, the count palatine, who in Merovingian and Carolingian times (5th through 10th century) was an official of the sovereign's household, in particular of his court of law. The count palatine was the official representative at proceedings of the court such as oath takings or judicial sentences and was in charge of the records of those developments.

The other night I attended a re-enlistment ceremony at the Al Faw Palace. Hundreds of soldiers, assembled together under the heraldry of the Third Division, swore an oath of loyalty and common defense. Three Silver Stars and several Purple Hearts were awarded to some of these men, as were Bronze Stars. It was hard not to hear those oaths sworn in that setting, and not reflect on the belting of swords, in a castle carried by conquest.



This is the nature of echoes: you hear the sound, and its echo, and the echo of the echo, each of the latter distorted slightly by whatever surface it struck. We live as if in a canyon, where the sounds of old return again and again until the whole world seems to tremble.

Mr. Buckley

Goodnight, Mr. Buckley:

There were two things I admired greatly about William F. Buckley, Jr. The first was that he could cut to the bone of a problem in one swipe. The second was that he wrote Latin into his work without explanation or apology. With a little phrase in italics, he would tie an issue of the day to two thousand years' tradition -- and send many a reader to learn a little bit more about just what that tradition contained.

He did this so frequently that he was asked to write the introduction for a book of useful Latin phrases, Amo, Amas, Amat and More. In it he lamented, as Tolkien did, the abandonment of Latin by common education; and increasingly, even by priests and doctors. The common language is now English, of course, and English is as noble and its history even more interesting -- but there is yet a power to the Latin, which was spoken by Caesars and saints, and sung by soldiers and merry scholars alike.

We may have to use it more here, if only to provide some small mortar to the foundations of the West.

Of course National Review has numerous words, but they are not alone. Reason magazine pays tribute as libertarians, and Cassandra as well.

PACOM

The Pacific Command:

Pacific, in both senses of the term. NPR interviews CDRUSPACOM, Admiral Timothy Keating.

Saudi Harems

The Mandate of Heaven:

God, and the Tourist Board, need you to marry. Lots.

Here’s an official plan submitted to invigorate tourism in Saudi Arabia: Marry four women, domicile them in corners of the kingdom, travel to visit each during the year, and — boom — you’ve stimulated airline business, hotel occupancy, and car rentals. This was submitted by none less than Hassan Alomair, director of self-development in Saudi Arabia, at a Jeddah conference for the development of internal tourism.

The project combines piety with efficacy by uniting Sharia’s entitlements to multiple wives with economic stimulus, Mr. Alomair argued. Sharing the dais was the female dean of the school of literature at King Faisal University, Dr. Feryal al-Hajeri, who remained silent as he prescribed his harem-induced economic scheming.

Not so with the readers and bloggers on the Saudi daily Al Watan’s website, which lit up on February 12 with commentary. “Why not make it four cows? He can fly around to milk them,” one said. “If that is the mentality of our director of self-development,” another asked, ”how are the others in that department?” There was plenty of accord with Mr. Alomair too. Some saw his idea as a “pillar” for building a true Islamic society, a “refuge” for unmarried Saudi women, and a “cure” for a widening spinster phenomena.

Saudi Arabia: as always, out on the forefront of social experimentation.

Oliver Twisted.

LT G among the urchins. One of his men may end up acting the part of Mr. Brownlow.

And it starts.

Killadelphia is the city of brotherly love after all.

(via American Digest)

Crowds Iran

The Wisdom of Crowds:

In Iran, at least, the people are more decent than the law.

It happens every day on the streets of Tehran: a police squad grabbed a young woman for dressing immodestly. But this time, the young woman fought back: and a crowd defended her and attacked the police.

As well they ought.

Emptiness

"Who Among You Will Not Embrace Emptiness?"

Obama has a signal advantage, that is also a signal problem: he is empty. He is the first Presidential candidate to attempt, successfully so far, the strategy that is now usual in getting a Supreme Court Justice approved. He is a stealth candidate.

It is fairly clear that his rhetoric, lofty but without specifics, is serving as a vessel. Many are pouring their hopes into that vessel, imagining it to be full of whatever they want it to contain. Other people are pouring in their fears.

Hillary Clinton has started to try and force his hand by pushing several lines of attack; this is the wrong approach. It will not work because (a) voters, as a whole, cannot and will not follow several lines of attack at once; and (b) it will therefore be easy for him to simply step aside of the arguments, not respond to them, and carry on giving speeches about Hope and Brotherhood.

A vicious, but strategically sounder, approach is to pour just one very bad thing into the vessel, to see if he spits it out. If he does not, he owns it and -- it being the one thing people can now know about him -- it can destroy him; if he does, then you have at least forced him onto the record, and can press him to define just what he does believe if it isn't what you suggest. Getting further and further details from him, you can tie the debate down to actual facts, rather than empty rhetoric.

This appears to be the approach his political opponents from the right have settled upon. The attacks against Obama are in one sense absurd to the point of being offensive. Yet, in another sense they seem perfectly fair: if he is to have the good of being unknown and undefined, he must also have the bad. If he does not want to be defined by his opponent, he can tell us for certain who he is.

Is this Obama?



Or is this?



Or is neither? Are both costumes, as seems likely? Then who is he really?

I don't mean to be vicious; I read Richardson's anecdote also.

But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"

More than anything, that leads me to believe that Obama is probably a pretty decent guy, deep down. The flag-pin thing is silly. His mother clearly was a Communist; that doesn't make him, as Spengler put it, "a mother's revenge against the America she despised."

His wife has a lot of rage against America; that doesn't mean he does. My wife and I disagree about a few things, even a few fairly basic ethical issues (like the morality of suicide). Obama's wife and mother don't necessarily define him.

But I would like to know what does. If he is going to be President, as is not unlikely -- the field has narrowed quite a bit of late -- we need to know, and now, not next January.

For Cricket

The Wisdom of an Attorney:

Cricket asked if we'd like her to drop in and share some things from an attorney, who wrote a book called "The Moral Basis of a Free Society." This post is to permit a space for that discussion.

Canterbury Map

A Map to Canterbury:

Since we were talking about Chaucer a few days ago, and apropos of a discussion at Cass' place, here is an interactive map by a very clever undergraduate student of English lit. It shows where in the journey each of the tales would have been told, provides a short summary of the tale, and the names and backgrounds of the characters involved.

Neat.

Pledge Pin

"A Pledge Pin? On your Uniform??"

Mr. Juan Cole finds a few people who seem to think a pledge pin is a uniform. H/t Commie.

"A Cub in the Yard, a Comfort sent by Heaven"

The title of this post is a line from the Haney translation of the Beowulf.

Heh - Hill 44

How many Feminists does it take to change a Lightbulb?

I was reminded of the old joke when I ran across the all-pink site HillaryIs44.org, a webside devoted to her quest for the Presidency. Now, you'll recall that I endorsed her in the Primary, but leaving that aside, it appears she isn't doing too well in the polls just now. What do the folks at Hill44 say about that?

[D]uring the many times Hillary Clinton has been unfairly attacked by Big Media, Democrats supporting Obama have rejoiced. That treachery by Democrats and allies will never be forgotten.

This, of course, is a large part of why she is doing so poorly. It's not that Hillary and her staunchest supporters are all hateful, nasty people bent on vengeance; but they sure give that impression sometimes. It's hard not to want to vote for Mr. Sweetness-N-Light by comparison; at least you don't fear he'd have you shot the minute you disagreed about something. The impression that Hillary might is not undone by the fact that one of their categories for posts, along with "Edwards" and "Health Care," is "Scum".

Of course, there's another reason. On the sidebar, they have a link called "Why Hillary?" and another called "Why not Obama?" Here's what that latter page says:

Coming Soon

This page is under development and will be uploaded soon.

It better be pretty soon. :)

Home is where the heart is. Or something like that.

LT G makes a pit stop and goes. Back. Out. There.

Things aren’t right here, anymore. Or maybe we’re the ones who aren’t right, anymore. I don’t know. Either way, it’s time to go. Time to go back out there. Where the Wild Things Are. Where the paranoia is justified. Where we now know comfort. Where we ride and die and die to ride and ride to die like every scout before us intent on making his way home or making his way to Fiddler’s Green, and no other options exist. Where we fixate on an edge we can’t describe or even prove exists, but feel every time we leave the wire because it sends our senses spinning into a poisonous clarity only the transcendent and reckless drug addicts should ever have to comprehend. We don’t do it for the thrills, though. And we don’t do it for our country, either. Not like we thought we would. We do it because we’re doing it and it seems like we’ve always been doing it so we will continue to do it for the same reason. Only the simplicity of that statement matters. We continue our movement back out there. Where we belong.

Way to channel Paul Baumer. I think I'm beginning to worry about the LT. Well, at least his mom knows what's on his mind. I guess that's something.

Control

Control of the Highest:

Two articles from Arts & Letters Daily today, each in its way on a defense of the heavens.

The first holds against space-based weapons, in the wake of this week's satellite shootdown. They argue at length, but the argument is undone by the very quote from Sun Tzu they themselves provide:

In war, do not launch an ascending attack head-on against the enemy who holds the high ground. Do not engage the enemy when he makes a descending attack from high ground. Lure him to level ground to do battle.
—Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategist, The Art of War, circa 500 B.C.

It will done because it must be done; war will not end, yet the advantage to be had here is one that could stop a war. It could perhaps stop many, as the US Navy has stopped many by ensuring the freedom of the seas so that smaller nations need not fight each other for their commerce; as the US Army has sat through sixty years of peace in the lands around its bases in Germany. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

The other article is on the Crusades. I think often of the Crusades here, in the land of minarets and fortifications, sandstorms and military-issue Bibles. In the scant spare time I have, I am rereading Ivanhoe.

Apparently I'm not the only one to think of it. Unfortunately, not everyone sees clearly where the parallels stop. In the interest of seeing the lessons of history properly learned, I will reprint a section of this critique by Roger Sandall at length.

Hitchens however regards the opportunity as too good to pass up, and on page 35 drags the Iraq War into the argument. The gist being that there’s nothing to choose between Christians and jihadis, and that the modern atrocities of the latter could be seen as a delayed but appropriate response to “the bloodstained spectre of the Crusaders”.

This attitude is widespread. Moreover, as Paul Stenhouse points out in a valuable recent study, “The Crusades in Context”, Hitchens’ “bloodstained spectre” is absurdly seen as the result of unprovoked Christian aggression. It is claimed that “five centuries of peaceful co-existence” between Muslims and Christians were brought to an end by deranged sword-waving Soldiers of the Cross, terrorising, killing, burning and sacking decent, respectable, peace-loving Muslim communities.

More than this, the Crusaders are being presented in schools as the original terrorists. As a Year 8 textbook in the Australian state of Victoria has it: “Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists … Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?”

No it wouldn’t be fair. Nor would it be true. In the story Paul Stenhouse tells, the 463 years between the death of Muhammed in 632 AD, and the First Crusade in 1095, were extremely dangerous for Christian Europe. Instead of peace there were unrelenting Islamic wars and incursions; Muslim invasions of Spain, Italy, Sicily and Sardinia; raids, seizures, looting of treasure, military occupations that lasted until Saracen forces were forcibly dislodged, sackings of Christian cities including Rome, and desecrations of Christian shrines. And be it noted: all this went on for 463 years before any Christian Crusade in response to these murderous provocations took place.

Sixteen years after the death of Muhammed, in 648 AD, Cyprus was overrun. Rhodes fell in 653, and by 698 AD the whole of North Africa was lost. In 711 Muslims from Tangier crossed into Spain, set their sights on France, and by 720 AD Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt in 732. As Gibbon emphasised, only the resistance at Poitiers of Charles Martel in 732 saved Europe from occupation, and arrested the Muslim tide.

From 800 on, incursions into Italy began. In 846 a Saracen force of 10,000 landed in Ostia, assaulted Rome, and sacked and desecrated the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul. In 859 they seized the whole of Sicily. After capturing a fortress near Anzio, Muslim forces “plundered the surrounding countryside for forty years”. In southern France at the end of the ninth century they held a base near Toulon from which they ravaged both Provence and Northern Italy, and controlled the passes over the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. Genoa was attacked in 934 and taken in 935. In 1015 Sardinia was taken, occupied, and held my Muslim forces until 1050.

In 1076 the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem finally exhausted the patience of Islam’s victims in Christian Europe. Only then were concerted moves begun to drive back the infidel, launch the First Crusade, and retake Jerusalem.

In fact, even that was not enough. It was the envoys from Constantinople -- the second Rome, the capital of Constantine the Great. In 1095, the Turks had advanced into the lands controlled by Constantinople, and the city sent to its sister Rome for help.

Rome agreed, and asked for men to ride to her defense, and to begin to push back against these incursions. So they left their homes, knights and barons, and went instead to war in distant lands.

Were they right? The folk of their day, like our own, were divided. Even good hearted men of the cloth sometimes could not see the purpose.

"What took the honest knight from home? or what could he expect but to find his mistress agreeably engaged with a rival on his return, and his serenade, as they call it, as little regarded as the caterwauling of a cat in the gutter? Nevertheless, Sir Knight, I drink this cup to thee, to the success of all true lovers."

Others saw further; whether they saw clearly is a debate that could fill many books.

UN: Disappear!

UN sez: Disappear!

You've probably seen the story from InstaPundit. This is a genuinely bad idea that people in power get from time to time. It says more about the UN and Google than it does about the journalist.

Mounting a Camel

Todays Iraq Tip of the Day: How to Mount a Camel

I haven't tried this method myself, but I can't see anything wrong with it:

Brain power

How do you Feel?

FuturePundit had an interesting piece yesterday, which goes back to our theoretical debate about what pills you might take to deal with your spouse having an affair. There may be one, he suggests:

What does the future hold for love? Greater knowledge of a phenomenon very often brings with it the ability to manipulate and control it. I expect the development of drugs and other treatments that cause people to fall in and out of love and to recover more easily from lost love.

Some people will choose to immunize themselves from love by using treatments that prevent the love process from developing in the first place. A person with history of heart breaks might decide that the possibility of a new love is just too painful to bear. Or someone who wants to devote their time to career might decide to innoculate themselves from the risk of romantic distractions. Still others of a more cerebral sort will decide that love is just a costly cognition distorting evolutionary vestige that they are best off without.

The ability to manipulate love medically will inevitably lead to misuse via surreptious reprogramming of the love state of others. Someone who wants to ditch their mate will be tempted to surreptitiously deliver medicine that will cause the mate to fall out of love. Or imagine the case where a suitor is rejected because the object of their love is in love with someone else. Inevitably some suitors will look for ways to surreptiously deliver a medical treatment that will cause the object of their love to fall out of love with someone else and thereby open up the possibility of forming a new love bond with them.

But why fight for love anyway? Only because you're wired too, the studies suggest -- you're almost doomed to a long, miserable slide:

Psychologists studying relationships confirm the steady decline of romantic love. Each year, according to surveys, the average couple loses a little spark. One sociological study of marital satisfaction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Penn State University kept track of more than 2,000 married people over 17 years. Average marital happiness fell sharply in the first 10 years, then entered a slow decline.

Think about all those people becoming steadily less satisfied with each other. The outcomes of natural selection are cruel.

For a certain few people, however, love can last:

Brain scans show the perpetually in love as different than the masses. Those people in long term relationships who profess to still feel very excited about their partners have more intense brain activity in the ventral tegmental area of the brain just like the newly fallen in love do.

Days after Mrs. Tucker's brain scan, Dr. Brown, the neuroscientist, sat in her book-lined office looking at the results. "Wow, just wow," she recalls thinking. Mrs. Tucker's brain reacted to her husband's photo with a frenzy of activity in the ventral tegmental area. "I was shocked," Dr. Brown says.

The brain scan confirmed what Mrs. Tucker said all along. But when she learned the result, she too was a bit surprised. "It's not something I expected after 11 years," she says. "But having it, it's like a gift."

The scan also showed a strong reaction in Mrs. Tucker's ventral pallidum, an area suspected from vole studies to have links with long-term bonds. Mrs. Tucker apparently enjoyed old love and new. In the months since, Dr. Brown analyzed data from four more people, including Ms. Jordan, who also showed brain activity associated with new love. The study is ongoing, and more volunteers are being sought.

Now, what all this means to FuturePundit is that you can save marriage with a pill -- in theory, you can make everyone experience the continuous love that now only a few know.

What is interesting to me, though, is how counterintuitive the findings are. I don't mean counterintuitive only to me -- that is, "not what I'd expect." I mean, counterintuitive to everyone.

For me, it seems odd that the vast majority of marriages experience a sharp drop in happiness over the first ten years. For others, love isn't what it is for me. They and I use the same word, but we don't experience the same thing at all. Yet the science bears it out.

For the others, the concept that you could continue to love someone forever was the counterintuitive part -- but again, the science bears it out. What is genuinely unimaginable for most is simple truth for some.

I can honestly say that anyone I've ever loved, I still love. That's apparently extremely unusual, which I would not have expected. By the same token, others whose brains work the normal way find that they couldn't imagine the way I feel at all. To the psychologists and neuroscientists running the study, such things are -- their words -- shocking.

The thing to remember about all this? If you say to someone, "How do you feel?" and they answer, "I am in love," you still don't know how they feel. They use the same word you do; but the word alone won't tell you. You have to see them ride the river a while to know for sure.

District work period

Happy President's Day:

Hope you had a good holiday, or if you prefer, "district work period."

Dogs & Media

On the Importance of Dog Reporting:

Cassandra snarls at poor little Uno, the beagle who has captured all our hearts:

Last year about this time, the media said they didn't report the good news in Iraq because they couldn't find any good news. Now, there is more good news than bad, and yet they seem to have gone largely silent. Why is that?

Unlike the Wednesday CBS and NBC evening newscasts, ABC's World News highlighted a favorable development in Iraqi political progress as anchor Charles Gibson gave 20 seconds to: "Overseas, in Iraq, a breakthrough for the country's government that has been so often criticized. Iraq's parliament approved three contentious, but crucial, new laws long sought by Washington. The laws set a budget for 2008, grant amnesty to thousands of detainees and define the relationship between the central government and the provinces."

A month ago, on January 14, Gibson was also the only broadcast network evening newscast anchor to cite how "Iraqi lawmakers have put their differences aside and agreed to allow some members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to take government jobs. It's a key benchmark sought by the United States."

The CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News on Wednesday night both found time to report on how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates broke his arm in a fall on ice and how, for the first time, a Beagle (named "Uno") won "Best in Show" at the Westminster Dog Show. Gibson, who broadcast from Philadelphia, the site of the dog show, managed to note the development in Iraq as well as Uno's win.

As Oh Bloody Hell, who sent the Editorial Staff this item, so aptly put it:

"News about *a Beagle* vs. Important *positive' news on Iraq. Which one gets air time? Need you ask?"

Unlike the puppy-haters at VC and elsewhere, I am glad to see dogs receiving their proper attention. What we need to do is find a way to get the celebrities off TV, so there is time to report on both Iraq and dogs.

Of course, some news agencies find efficiencies:

When Maj. Brian Dennis first spotted a scruffy German Shepard-Border collie mix at a fort in Iraq, the dog wasn't interested in making friends. The dog, who lived in the wild with a pack of canine companions, had already been through a lifetime's worth of pain and neglect. His ears had been cut off as a puppy, and he had been trained as a fighting dog. Now that he was finally free of his tormentors, the dog just wanted to be left alone.

But Dennis saw something special in the dog, which he nicknamed "Nubs," because of his missing ears. It took some time, but eventually Dennis had the dog eating out of his hand. One day, when Nubs showed up one day with a deep wound in his side, Dennis nursed him back to health. Soon, Dennis and Nubs were inseparable.

Sadly, Dennis learned that his unit would be forced to relocate to a new base, and he wasn't allowed to bring Nubs along. As he watched Nubs race alongside his Hummer as his unit drove away from the fort for the last time, he was sure that he would never see the dog again.

But two days later, a familiar face turned up at Dennis' new base: Somehow, Nubs had managed to follow the Marine unit through the Iraqi desert on foot, all the way to their new base – 70 miles away.

"I won't even address the gauntlet he had to run of dog packs, wolves, and God knows what else to get here," Dennis wrote. "When he arrived he looked like he'd just been through a war zone."

"Uh, wait a minute, he had."

Even though it was against military protocol, Dennis' unit felt compelled to give the determined dog a home. They built a doghouse for Nubs, but were soon informed by the military police that Nubs would have to live elsewhere. So, Dennis decided to take Nubs home with him.

Click through for a picture of the Marine Major and the happy hound.

This, of course, proves my point. Dogs and Iraq, yes -- Brittney Spears, no.

Rules for Vets

Rules for Vets:

What should the governing principles be in cases like this one?

(This is from State Representative and Afghanistan veteran Rick Noriega, who is currently challenging chickenhawk Senator John Cornyn in Texas. It appears as though the Republican Party of Texas is moving in to "swiftboat" Lt. Col. Noriega - promoted by Brandon Friedman)

We know where this is going.

The Republican Party of Texas, and by extension, Senator John Cornyn, has requested that I release my military records to them.

The fellow goes on to say that he was planning to do it anyway; but while he's at it, he takes several swipes at "cronies" planning a "smear campaign" and "dishonest attacks on veterans."

The Republican letter is more flowery than a garden:

There are few nobler callings than the call to run for elected office. [*coughcoughcough* Excuse me. --Grim] We applaud your answering that call and wish you the best of luck in your primary against Misters Kelly, McMurrey and Smith.

You have indicated that you intend to make military experience, integrity and transparency the cornerstones of your campaign. We are grateful for your service to this great country and we agree that those that seek higher office should support transparency and openness regarding all of their public service records....

They then provided him with a letter (on Republican Party stationery, even) to sign that would authorize the release of all his records.

The letter strikes me as an audacious document, and though it is kindly worded, the underlying concept seems unsavory. I don't mean to say that an opponent should never be able to ask after the nature of your service. Especially if you are running "on military service," an opponent might reasonably ask, "Well, what sort of service did you provide?"

On the other hand, the main choice you get in terms of how you serve is if you do. You can buck for certain assignments and so on, but that doesn't mean you'll get them. The military is ultimately in the driver's seat. Your record may not be all that impressive, without it being your fault in the slightest. (By the same token, some candidates could look great on paper, but...)

Making release of your personal records a mandatory condition for running for public office might discourage a good officer with an indistinguished career; or a man with a highly distinguished career who nevertheless did not wish to discuss certain aspects of it. Citations for bravery and valor, in particular, can be the sort of thing you'd rather not talk about. We understand there are a host of reasons for that, some highly honorable and sympathetic.

I'd like to say, then, that it's legitimate to mention that you chose to serve, without necessarily being obligated to sign away all your privacy to every military-generated document about your service. The political process is nasty enough as it is, already far too much about the politicians themselves and too little about the concepts and ideas they want to enact; and even the best of men, perhaps especially them, may not wish to discuss certain things about their past.

There probably is some threshold beyond which it is legitimate for an opponent to ask for at least some records to be released. This particular fellow seems only too ready to sling mud to claim that he's running a pristine campaign that ought to be immune from dirty campaigning; but it should be possible to run one. If we can make it possible, perhaps someone will.

Surge celebrants

Surge Celebrants:

Gateway Pundit has some reports and photos, including a press release from our own 6-8 Cav.

Heheh

Heh, Heh, Heh:

Of course anyone is welcome to patronize our store, but...

The device causes discomfort to younger ears by exploiting their ability to hear very high frequencies -- a power which declines once they reach their 20s.

Apparently, the devices are popular with everyone from shop keepers to police.

I know I really shouldn't be feeling this evil pleasure at reading the report. It's a mark of how flawed I am as a human being.

I think there's an emoticon for this: }:>

Heh

Obligations:

Since Eric wants to do FARK stories today, I feel absolutely obligated to post this one.

Two men obviously thought James Pickett, 80, was an easy target when they showed up at his home on Saturday with a knife.

"He just came through that door, stabbing and beating," said Pickett.

Captain Clint Pullin said it looked as though the men wanted to kill him.

Poor... muggers.

He's a WWII veteran, former firefighter and lifelong John Wayne devotee.... What the men didn't know is Picket had taken a pistol and put it in his pocket before opening the door.

"He jumped and turned and I shot him," Picket said.

The two brothers, Paul and Holden Perry, ran but didn't get far before calling an ambulance.

A bullet just missed Paul Perry's spine.

"The only problem was I run out of bullets," Picket said.

That's a shame. You should always have plenty of bullets.

Teflon Don, author of Acute Politics, has gone and returned to Iraq.

Not as a soldier, but as a photo journalist. If nothing else, taken together with people like Michael Yon and Michael Totten, this war is going to improve journalism somewhat.

Take a look. Wish him well.

Epic. Fail.

The thread at FARK is, as they say, 'chock full of win'.

(via FARK)

THE MORALITY OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

THE MORALITY OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION.

Brad Lips & Carrie Lukas have written a very serious article about the morality of government aid. You can read it here. This is an issue that our country needs to discuss seriously. Increasingly, the popular attitude concerning government aid is an unquestioning assumption that, as President Bush said, “When people hurt, government must move.” Our country needs a serious discussion about this assumption and conservatives must lead that discussion before the law of unintended consequences lead us down The Road to Serfdom.

Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Tales:

Chaucer would be thrilled.

35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea

36 And sayed, "an open mind must we

37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man

38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan

39 So question not hys Muslim reason

40 And presaerve ye well social cohesion."

41 Sayth the libertine, "'tis well and goode

42 But sharia goes now where nae it should;

43 I liketh bigge buttes and I cannot lye,

44 You othere faelows can't denye[.]"

Yeah, Chaucer would have liked that a lot.