Agincourt

Agincourt:

This article is almost useless except that it points you in the direction of the controversy. If it causes you to be curious, you now know to go find something better on the subject.

One side of the controversy is 'traditional' historians, represented by a single figure who bases his numbers 'on chronicles he considers to be broadly accurate.' A reporter should tell the reader which chronicles he means, and why he thinks they are accurate, since the whole point of the article is that other historians are suggesting revised numbers. It wouldn't take more than a couple of sentences to sketch the position. The revisionist side gets that kind of a sketch -- the reporter cites the types of evidence they are considering, along with a few of their reasons. The piece is as one-sided as the Times' political analysis. Is the Times so anti-tradition that it just assumes that the traditionalists are always wrong, in history as in politics, in academics as in culture?

The Times reporter does find it interesting that "a new science of military history" is making revisions to current Army doctrine. I don't know what he means by 'a new science of military history,' since military history is neither new (anyone heard of Thucydides?) nor a science. History is one of the liberal arts; nor should anyone who cares about history wish to clump it in with such "disciplines" as sociology or the other so-called "social sciences." Better to be an honest art than a fake science!

I'm glad to say that the Army got better advice from its experts than the Times manages to produce here:

The Hundred Years’ War never made it into the [US Army COIN] field manual — the name itself may have served as a deterrent — but after sounding numerous cautions on the vast differences in time, technology and political aims, historians working in the area say that there are some uncanny parallels with contemporary foreign conflicts.

For one thing, by the time Henry landed near the mouth of the Seine on Aug. 14, 1415, and began a rather uninspiring siege of a town called Harfleur, France was on the verge of a civil war, with factions called the Burgundians and the Armagnacs at loggerheads. Henry would eventually forge an alliance with the Burgundians, who in today’s terms would become his “local security forces” in Normandy, and he cultivated the support of local merchants and clerics, all practices that would have been heartily endorsed by the counterinsurgency manual.

The Hundred Years War wasn't a counterinsurgency; it was the clash of two early states. A key fact of the war, unlike modern conflicts, was the power of fortification. Whereas today it is nearly impossible for an enemy army to fortify itself so as to be impossible to attack, the technology of the period made it quite possible to build an impregnable castle. Even cities could be fortified to such a degree that they could stand off an army for weeks or months.

Thus, one of the reason we so often find exhausted English armies having to fight superior French numbers is that the English were required to deal with these fortifications. One tactic was the long siege, during which your forces in the field grew weaker while the enemy elswhere could prepare an army to bring against you. Another tactic was the chevauchee, a brutal march through the countryside, burning and laying waste to such a degree that the French could no longer afford to remain behind their walls. The chevauchee in particular looks nothing like modern COIN methods; intentionally laying waste to the countryside in order to bring the enemy to battle is the perfect opposite of what the US Army manual advises.

Leaving that aside, though, it is true that the two campaigns both featured allies and attempts to persuade those with money or power to support your side. They both also featured violence and death, so I suppose that really, the two conflicts were exactly the same.

Other than that, though, the article is fine.

UPDATE: Actually, re-reading the article, it's still not fine. Re: "...after sounding numerous cautions on the vast differences in time, technology and political aims, historians working in the area say that there are some uncanny parallels..."

Apparently the author decided he wasn't interested in what the historians actually wanted to say, which was the part about numerous cautions on vast differences in time, technology, and political aims. Rather, he wanted to impose a story that there were "uncanny parallels" with today in order to make the piece interesting for average readers and not just history buffs. He elides past everything useful they actually said -- probably including some of the very issues raised above -- in order to get to the slight parallel that they finally admitted to after the "numerous cautions."

Ugh.

Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern

The Ballad of the Devil's Backbone Tavern:

Since I got away with the last language warning (and why not? It's my place; but I do try to make it comfortable for everyone) I'm going to post this video. It's of a favorite song of mine, live from Eddie's Attic in Decatur, Georgia; and this version of the song isn't very good, to be honest. The story that starts it, though, is worth the price of admission.



It's set in East Nashville, which is an interesting place, if you've been there.

Lions Ate Him

"Lions Ate Him"

Dad29 has a picture of a pretty little cat who was seen up his way.



It happens that we've had quite a few mountain lion sightings down in my neck of the woods lately. Georgia's seen a large growth over the last thirty years in its urban regions, where city folk from around the country have been moving in search of jobs and sunshine. As a result, there was something of a panic when the local news reported a "lion" in Gainesville, Georgia.

Back when Gainesville was known by its original name -- "Mule Camp Springs" -- people wouldn't have been so shocked to learn that lions were about. As for the experts who 'don't believe there are any native big cats to Georgia,' I don't know where they got that concept (although the boys in Elijay think the state government just doesn't want to admit to them being there, because that would trigger Federal protections for them). The historical records of Forsyth County, Georgia, show that one of the original white settlers in the area was a woman who strangled a mountain lion with her bare hands. Anybody who doubts that is welcome to drop by the fairgrounds in Cumming, Georgia, where the records are on display. In those days, you had to get permission from the Cherokee nation if you were non-Cherokee and wanted to live in the area. They didn't deny her, and who would?

At any rate, the big cats are sure enough native. They just haven't been quite as public for a while. That's changing everywhere, though, isn't it? And good that it is: we could use a few more predators to eat some of our surplus city-folk help ensure the white-tailed deer population remains healthy and free of sickness.

Wow

Mirabile Dictu:

So, you know that "pay czar"? Well...

The pre-weekend information dump included an announcement by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department that the federal government proposes to extend its control over pay packages beyond financial institutions which received bailout funds.

According to the press release, the government proposes to monitor and, if need be, veto pay packages at any banking institution subject to federal regulation...

This is an earth-shattering development in the annals of government control, yet because the information was released on a Friday, it has received little press attention relative to its importance.

One can understand the bargain made where a company receives federal funds to stay in business. By accepting the funds, which must be repaid, a measure of corporate and shareholder freedom was sacrificed.

But to base government control of salaries on mere regulatory jurisdiction would give the government control over much of the economy, essentially any business involved in interstate commerce. This is the harm which many of us feared from the Trojan horse of the bailouts.

Why not regulate law professor salaries (horrors!)? After all, educational institutions are tax-exempt and thereby receive a de facto federal benefit.

Or doctors? Particularly if Obamacare passes, there will be a federal interest in making sure doctors have the right financial incentives.

Or lawyers? At least those who are admitted to practice in federal courts. There is a federal interest in making sure that the federal resources used to fund the courts are not wasted.

Or truck drivers? They use roads built with federal highway funds (with a touch of stimulus funds thrown in).... And the list could go on and on.

Of course, areas where the government sets salaries tend to do quite well for themselves, as the trend is always to higher pay and gold-plated bonuses. Wouldn't you like a GS job?

Abortion Kills More

The Harvest:

Today featured some news that has had me wondering.

Abortion kills more black Americans than the seven leading causes of death combined, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2005, the latest year for which the abortion numbers are available.

Abortion killed at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC. During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined. These were the seven leading causes of death for black Americans that year.

That doesn't hold for the general population, wherein heart disease alone kills more than abortion. Still, it reminded me of a comment douglas made on the recent evolution post. He wrote:

[Life span statistics for the middle ages] tend to be a bit misleading, as the infant mortality and childhood disease mortality rates were so much higher, it drives the curve down aggressively. If you made it to twenty five, you had good odds of living to at least sixty or better.

That's right, of course; but I wonder what it would do to our "life span" statistics if we included the aborted as if they were really people.

We ought to do so, shouldn't we? A major part of the rationale for abortion-on-demand is that it allows us to focus resources on the woman and her "wanted" children, rather than on "unwanted" ones who would burden the system. ("Every child a wanted child," the slogan goes.) Thus, by eliminating these people at age zero, we're focusing more "health care" resources on the remnant. By excluding the aborted from the calculation, we're masking that cost from our understanding of where our culture really stands. The aborted child is helping to 'pay the freight' for the rest of us, because all the resources she would have used are free to be applied to the rest of us.

(An aside -- this is, I suppose, the opposite of Mrs. Palin's death panels. Here you have pushed the life-or-death decision making wholly onto a single individual, with the government taking a completely-hands-off approach. I've argued with regard to the 'death panels' that it's better if families make these decisions than if government does, deciding with love how to balance these difficult cost-to-benefit choices at the end of life. At the beginning of life, though, these statistics make clear that hundreds of thousands of would-be mothers a year stand ready to eliminate a child they ought to love, but don't "want." I suppose we should figure that into our discussion for the end-of-life too: why wouldn't people who choose 'lifestyle' over 'baby' also choose 'lifestyle' over 'grandma'? In some cases, it could be that government death panels could be grandma's only hope!)

To return to the point, however: I lack the mathematical skill to cruch the numbers with precision, but I think it would be interesting. What is America's life expectancy, calculated to account for those we choose to deny life as well as those we choose to support?

Rockwell, II

Followup:

On the subject of Norman Rockwell, Bthun noted this piece as "still relevant":



Well now. True enough.

But since we're on the topic, I like this one:



Is there any one of us who can't instantly sympathize with this fine young lady? She's been physically pounded, and now is suffering the anger of authority; but look at that smile.

It pulls the punch a bit to have painted this scene with a girl, but it works very well with a boy, too. Every one of us can remember the glow of having stood up for yourself, fought the good fight, and the pleasure of standing off Those On High with the simple knowledge, in your heart, that you were right.

I hope we can all recall it, anyway. If there are any of you who can't, try it sometime.

It's quasi-political too, these days, because of the current lawsuit-driven frenzy among authorities to think of fighting among young children as a 'serious problem.' It's not, of course; it's the normal behavior of children across ten thousand years. They need to learn how and when to fight, and how and when not to fight; they need to learn to be just as well as strong and brave.

Like the parents afraid to spank lest they be called awful, though, the schools afraid to be sued have surrendered their rightful authority in the face of fear. They are protecting themselves instead of doing what is right for the children who need their guidance and care. There's no good can come of it.

On a second topic, RCL cites another fine Irish ballad.



I've normally heard this piece played more up-tempo, which strikes me as more suitable for the material (although it may be just that I'm used to it being done that way).

But since we're on the subject of virile Celtic tunes, how about this song from the Scots?



"I can drink and no be drunken; I can fight and no be slain! I can lay with another man's lass, and still be welcome to me own!"

Now that's a boast. I'd have to say, and with a smile: prove it.

C4C2

Cash For Clunkers II: Home Sales

Get ready to see a new crash in this 'recovering' market:

First-time homebuyers and investors are snapping up those homes and taking advantage of low mortgage rates. These buyers can also take advantage of a tax credit of 10 percent of the sales price, up to $8,000, if the sale is completed by the end of November.

The tax credit is so important to some buyers that they are adding a clause to their contracts, allowing them to back out if the sale doesn't close by Nov. 30. However, economists note that bargain-priced foreclosures and low mortgage rates are making a big contribution to the sales boom.

"We think the housing market has touched bottom and it is now only a matter of time until home prices stabilize — something that we anticipate to occur in late 2010," wrote Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank.

Home sales are spiking because of the closing window for the tax credit, as the article rightly notes, not because the market has 'touched bottom.' If housing prices are likely to fall another 11%, but you can get a 10% tax credit (up to eight grand), you're very close to buying at the true bottom of the market. If they fall 20% more, you're buying near the bottom, but it's still possibly worth doing if you plan to hold the home for several years. If you were in the market for a first home anyway, this is the time to buy: December is too late, because your home effectively costs eight grand more.

What that means is that everyone who might buy a house in the next year is scrambling to do it now. Home sales will crater on 1 December 2009, and remain in the crater for the forseeable future. Just like auto sales following the end of "Cash for Clunkers," all this Federal money is just buying an artificial spike in the market -- it's not doing anything to spur real recovery, it's just making people who wanted to buy do it now instead of two months from now.

Of course, another thing spurring home buyers is the weakening dollar, and the administration's dangerously inflationary policy. If you have X dollars to buy a house and you do it now, you get X dollars worth of house, plus eight thousand dollars. If you wait two months, you get roughly X dollars worth of house. If you wait for the expected 11% drop in prices, however, you have to wonder if the inflation will kick in and make your X dollars worth only X-divided-by-something. Since the housing market may be near its bottom, getting out of 'cash' and into real estate might make some economic sense.

The Illusion of Clean Hands

The Illusion of Clean Hands:

We once discussed it; but here is a fine example of how it distorts the mind and the sense of justice:

A stunned shopper bought a chicken from Preston's Asda store only to find its head still attached. Helen Kirby, 27, of Thistlecroft in Ingol, was horrified to discover it tucked under the body of the bird.... Bosses at Asda have apologised to Miss Kirby and confirmed they have given her £100 and a new vacuum cleaner in compensation.

Seeing the face of the animal you killed for dinner is worth a hundred pounds sterling, and a new vacuum cleaner? How can anyone so far removed from the reality of the world they inhabit trust anything their heart tells them? How can it be an honest guide?

Rockwell

Norman Rockwell:

Once a shorthand for 'the American Way,' many of the paintings of Norman Rockwell have become less relevant as time has passed. Of "the Four Freedoms," only "Freedom of Speech" remains powerful, The Wall Street Journal explains:

"Freedom of speech and expression" and "freedom of worship" are, of course, from the Bill of Rights. But the other two—"freedom from want" and "freedom from fear," which the president defines as "a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point . . . that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor" — are Roosevelt's, or perhaps his wife Eleanor's, utopian wishes for universal rights that were to become part of the United Nations Charter.

As a superb illustrator who used the familiar world of his viewers to tell them stories with messages that touched their hearts, Rockwell said in his autobiography that he had difficulty conceptualizing the abstract, and internationalist, Four Freedoms, especially the negative rights of "want" and "fear": "I never liked 'Freedom from Fear' or, for that matter, 'Freedom from Want,'" he wrote. "Neither of them," Rockwell thought, "had any wallop." He was right.

"Freedom From Want" depicts a homey Thanksgiving dinner; it's more about what we have than what we want, surplus rather than scarcity. In "Freedom Fom Fear," a mother tucks in her children while her husband holds a newspaper with headlines reading "Bombings" and "Horror." This reference to the war is so specific that it conveys little about fear or Roosevelt's plan for universal disarmament. Rockwell just could not get his hands around these airy abstractions.

And, although he was proud of "Freedom of Worship," his depiction of spectral close-up faces and hands raised in prayer is bland, without any real message about religious freedom—again, no wallop. This is because faith, like the absence of fear and the absence of want, is essentially private, something personal, intangible and unpicturable.

In "Freedom of Speech," however, Rockwell found a subject that is active and public, a subject he could grasp and shape into his greatest painting forging traditional American illustration into a powerful and enduring work of art.

OK, but the best Rockwell paintings were barely political at all. Not that political lessons couldn't be drawn from them. For example, my favorite of his works has always been "The Runaway."



That captures the difference between a "Peace Officer" and a "Law Enforcement Officer." If I were in charge of the training of the police, I'd set aside a whole day of the course to reflect on that painting and write essays about how it defines your duty.

Global Horse Culture

Global Horse Culture:

A nifty blog I hadn't seen before is Global Horse Culture, which is interested in the many ways that man and horse interact. There's a lot there. For example:

Thai Cowboy bars.

Japanese Horseshoes.

What do you pull with a 48 Belgian hitch? Anything you want to, of course.

John Wayne did his own stunts, but if you need a good horse stunt today, the horse does it.

I appreciate the author's hard work on putting together such an interesting collection.

Spanking != Shouting

Spanking Does Not Equal Shouting:

Via the Sage of Knoxville, another of those pieces from the New York Times on how hard it is for the upper class to feel good about themselves while raising children.

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do."

A bit of advice on that: screaming is much worse than spanking. Screaming demonstrates lack of control, and the breakdown of authority.

Spanking a child is a terrible thing to do in anger, but it can be effective if done calmly and without passion. A father might order his child to report for a spanking in quite placid terms. He might likewise order his son to do pushups -- a time-tested means of corporal punishment that benefits the body as well as the soul. A mother might wield the hairbrush dispassionately when the child has pushed the limits too far.

In each of these cases, the authority of the parent is obvious and explicit. Accompanied by a calm explanation of why the child is being punished, it makes the clear case that you are exercising a distasteful duty out of long-term concern for the child's well-being. You are on their side, even if that means right now you must do something you'd prefer not to do.

Screaming at a child cannot be done dispassionately. It makes you look like a fool to other adults, but far worse is how you look to the child: out of control, undisciplined, lacking the power even to control yourself, let alone anyone else. Not only is your authority not obvious, but acting out in this way calls into question whether or not you merit authority. I wouldn't follow someone who blows his top and screams at people; would you?

Louis L'amour once wrote of one of his characters that he 'could be ruthless with others, because he was ruthless with himself.' That model commands respect, and respect is what is most necessary in parenthood. To lead, you have to have it. To have it, you must deserve it.

Sucker

Sucker:

Let this post be clearly marked "viewer discretion advised." I normally try not to let this kind of thing happen here; but today, I'm going to do it anyway.

I have to admit that I love it when Congressional grandstanders get what they have coming. Consider the case of the famous 'die quickly' grandstander, who has set up a website to memorialize the names of those killed by the Republican menace:

Grayson may be leaving himself open to some online practical jokers. At the moment I write this, four names are memorialized in the site's rotating list:

• Lassie Martin, 10, Kanab, UT

• Norma Jeane Mortenson, 36, Los Angeles, CA

• Steve Rogers, 90, New York, NY

• Wile E. Coyote, 55, Sedona, Arizona

All four of those names are fraudulent. Lassie Martin is the dog "Lassie," whose owners on the 1950's TV show were called the Martins (and the town of Kanab, Utah, was one of the filming locations). Norma Jeane Mortenson was Marilyn Monroe's real name. Steve Rogers is the fictional Captain America from Marvel Comics, and of course there's Wile E. Coyote....

Late Update: The automated list of names has been removed from the site. It may be that mourning "Hugh G. Reckshinn," age 44, from Dumas, Texas, was a bit too much for them.

It's a shame about old Hugh. I've heard that some of our lady readers were personal friends of his. Still, I have to wonder -- though I wouldn't want to run afoul of the Obama administration's anti-blasphemy initiative: is it certain that he won't rise again?

Since we've gone so very far down this road already, I'll take the opportunity to mention that the famous Irish song "Danny Boy" is set to a tune called the "Londonderry air," or "Derry Air" for short. Which means, of course, that there is a version entirely appropriate for dedicating to certain congressmen:



Indeed, it's hard not to think of Congress while that song is playing.

Cowboy Songs

Cowboy Songs:

Having spent most of the day with a bunch of horses, it's on my mind; and this one particularly, because I caught the wife humming it to her Tennessee Walker as she was coming back from the trail. This is the original version, a majestic piece by Dimitri Tiomkin. The song is called "Settle Down," from the movie Red River.



But of course, that wasn't the version of the tune she was singing. It's better known in this form:



The pieces are the same tune, but the effect is not at all the same. The first, and older, is sung in the fashion of a chorus of angels looking down on men working and dying; or in the fashion of the valkyrie, singing while they weave the fates. The chorus is not the actor; rather, apart, they sing to enrich and ennoble the action.

The second is the voice of a man, echoing the divine song in a single and more personal voice. He sings of the concerns of a man, of work and love and the ride home. He is the actor in the scene, not an observer, but a man with his own perspective.

Could a man hear, imperfectly, the songs of angels or valkyrie? Would he feel called to reproduce some poorer version of their song in his own voice, in the same tune even if from a more limited perspective?

Do we do that in life, as we do it in art?

CIA Terminators

CIA Terminators:

Boom.

Some Men, From Ireland

Some Men, From Ireland:

This bit is a study in joy, and not chiefly even the music:



Good lads, and merry in their hour. "Let the wind and the rain and the hail blow high, snow come traveling from the sky." The hour is what we get: do as well with yours.

English Reformation Ends

The English Reformation Ends?

In what must be regarded as a remarkable event by those of us who study the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, a fair number of those who remain in the Anglican Church have asked to rejoin Catholicism.

Groups of Anglicans will be able to join the Roman Catholic Church but maintain a distinct religious identity under changes announced by the Pope.

The Vatican said the new rules follow requests from Anglicans wanting to join but retain their liturgical heritage.

It comes amid splits among Anglicans worldwide over homosexuality and the ordination of women.

But Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said he did not think it was a "commentary on Anglican problems"....

The measure, known as an Apostolic Constitution, was shown to leaders of the Church of England just two weeks ago.

Under its terms announced by the Vatican, groupings of Anglicans would be able to join "personal ordinariates".

This would allow them to enter full communion with the Catholic church, but also preserve elements of the Anglican traditions including the possible use of Anglican prayer books.

There weren't many left to start with. The Episcopal Church is about 1/30th the size of the Catholic Church among Americans, for example; and that though the Church of England had a substantial advangate in early American culture. (Indeed, Catholics were outright banned from Georgia during the colonial period, along with slaves and lawyers.)

A Classified Ad

A Classified Ad:

Health in China

Health and Polution in China:

An article that brings back memories. I picked up tuberculosis in China, though apparently I also beat it there, untreated except by Chinese beer (HangZhou's local, XiHu Pijiu, was the miracle cure). The pollution was often so bad that, if you climbed anything of any height, you could look down through it in thick, translucent gradients.

Yet, as the man says, you get over it.

Tell it, Victor:

I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.

Yeah, that's about what I feel these days, too.

(via Instapundit)

Wow

Wow:

So, really, all of you who listen to talk radio? (I don't myself, but I'll guess some of you do.) According to a doctor of psychiatry, you like to suck up to bullies. You're stuck in a sort-of childhood playground mentality.

She's never met you, but you know, prove it's not true. And, I mean, she's a doctor.

Ardi, Myself

A Fair Point on Evolution:

Anthropologists can be excused for never passing a chance to take a swipe at Creationists, since there are plenty of Creationists never pass up a chance for a swipe at them. Aside from that forgivable bit of spleen, this is a very clever piece:

For example, there is useful attention paid to the reduction in the size of upper teeth [in the Ardi fossils now being discussed openly] -- the sharp fang-like instruments for aggression and defense. A possible explanation given for this is that teeth in Ardi's clan were no longer as important for male-male combat as in other fossilized and contemporary primates. And going on from there, it is suggested that Ardipithecus was less socially aggressive than the living chimpanzees we thought were our closest relatives, and other African apes. In addition, the canine teeth of males and females are relatively similar in size--in contrast to those of African apes, among whom male teeth are larger--and this suggested to the team of researchers that Ardi lived in a social system with less male-male competition than in other species.

Not only does this imply that Ardi males were morally more acceptable to contemporary values than other species, but it is suggested that an important possible outcome of the greater male-male conviviality could well have been greater male emphasis on their work as fathers....

The long-term result of all this is of course the affable males and comfy families of Berkeley, Calif., or Ann Arbor, Mich. How convenient that our evolution took this correct pro-social form.

But there's an embarrassing problem here, which is that Ardipithecus ... didn't make it. His politically correct social behavior didn't, for example, get to modern Somalia and Afghanistan. Somehow, rather than have Ardi predict our behavior, it seems humbler and more sensible to employ retrodiction--to look at what we do now and posit that, yes, this is how our ancestors behaved.

Well, yes. An equally plausible theory is that Man's ancestors had so long-ago developed the use of weapons that fangs were no more necessary to them than they are to us. That would be the kind of ancestor you'd expect, frankly, even if he weren't the sort you'd care to have over for tea and sandwiches.

By the same token, I'm going to go out on a limb and declare that this theory is unlikely to be true:

"We are so inactive these days and have been since the industrial revolution really kicked into gear," McAllister replied. "These people were much more robust than we were.

"We don't see that because we convert to what things were like about 30 years ago. There's been such a stark improvement in times, technique has improved out of sight, times and heights have all improved vastly since then but if you go back further it's a different story.

"At the start of the industrial revolution there are statistics about how much harder people worked then."

There are also some graves from before the start of the industrial revolution. I'd expect an anthropologist to have looked at one or two of them. People were smaller -- because less well-fed. Having lived among less-well-fed-and-smaller people in China, who nevertheless work very hard indeed in a country not-yet fully industrialized, I can assure you: they are not stronger than me. There are plenty of places not yet industrialized, in fact -- go see them. I've been to a few in my time, and I've yet to find a people anywhere as physically imposing as modern Americans.

There are also some very precise figures from the Middle Ages on how hard people worked, because the duties of serfs (for example) were defined and codified. We know, in some cases, how large the fields were and how many people were to work them, and for how long. They indicate a fairly hard day's work; but not Supermen.

As for the fossilized footprints, what's more likely -- that some physical fact like pressure from layers of soil accumulating above the footprints might have caused them to spread somewhat, or that hunter-gatherers who barely collected enough calories to feed themselves were really more fit than modern Olympic atheletes, who do nothing but train all day every day with the benefits of science to improve their performance?

Mrs. Grim and the Red Ryder:

Nobody likes to be left out of a good time.

Communist Apotheosis

Communist Apotheosis?

Here's the piece BillT was referring to below:



Of course, there's no 'enforcement' regime for this that could have any potential to make us comply, whether or not the government signs it. It's only our own government that could enforce it on us; otherwise, we'll do what we like. If the international community can't enforce nonproliferation on Iran and North Korea (!), they're certainly not going to be able to do anything to the land where -- misattributed or not, the sentiment is quite correct -- 'there is a rifle behind every blade of grass.'

Of course, we'll be told we don't live up to our treaties if we don't comply. If the Constitution is not a suicide pact, however, I don't see how any treaty could be held to be one.

Separate Worlds

Separate Worlds:

Democracy Corps has been down Georgia way.

The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America, according to focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps. These base Republican voters dislike Barack Obama to be sure – which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about George Bush – but these voters identify themselves as part of a ‘mocked’ minority with a set of shared beliefs and knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority in the country. They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism. They overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country’s founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson’s incendiary comments at the president’s joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion – but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives.

Their ears work. I've heard that sentiment expressed several times lately.

The argument is difficult to counter, more difficult than you might imagine. The reason it's hard is that all of the facts are in their favor, and the only thing against them are unprovable: questions of intention, of character, of the meaning behind observed acts.

The facts are these:

1) America is the most powerful nation in the world, and has set the terms of international debates for more than a decade.

2) This power results from three basic things: military strength, the superiority of the market instead of central planning to make basic decisions, and the strength of our economy (this last to include the dollar's position as a reserve currency).

3) Therefore, to undermine that strength, you'd need to undercut all three things.

4) The Obama administration has asked for deep cuts in military spending, while continuing to maintain a heavy deployment schedule in two wars. The Obama administration has also called for unilateral cuts in our strategic nuclear forces. These actions undermine both our conventional and nuclear military strength.

5) The Obama administration has nationalized major industries and banks, not completely, but enough to give the government a controlling interest in the corporation. The argument that taxpayer money is going to these corporations, and therefore that the corporations must submit to government designs whenever the government feels it is important. These actions have vastly reduced the role of markets, and increased the role of central planners, at the center of major decisions in our economic life.

6) The destruction of the dollar is well documented. Obama's major remaning initiatives are health care reform and cap and trade. If successful, the first intends to result in a further government takeover of a massive part of the economy, again working against markets; furthermore, the expense of the thing will compel much higher taxes at some point. The addition of a major new entitlement adds to the fiscal crisis already expected from Medicare, Social Security, and pension funds. Cap and trade will likewise suppress US industry and call for higher taxes, perhaps passed on as "higher prices" on goods, across the economy. These actions undermine our fiscal strength, and make it more likely that the nation will be bankrupted.

7) Therefore, the Obama administration has acted to weaken all three pillars of American strength. Its stated agenda will further weaken all three pillars, perhaps to the breaking point in the case of fiscal policy.

Now, all of that comes from nothing more than reading the headlines. Usually, conspiracy theories are fairly easy to counter because they have some lie at their center: the famous Truther bit about how steel can't be melted by fire(!), or the idea that a missle hit the Pentagon, or whatever. None of this is undocumented. Obama has called on the military to cut its budget while fighting two wars; he has purchased interests in major banks and corporations, and then used those interests to issue orders to the corporations; the dollar has suffered a serious undermining in world markets, to the degree that there is talk of replacing it as the world's reserve currency; and the debates on health care and cap-and-trade both involve the eventual admission that higher taxes or prices will be necessary.

What remains is to argue that all of this is resulting from the Obama administration's adherence to bad economic philosophy, rather than from a secret plan to ruin America. You're left to argue that yes, these things are happening, but it's because the President has no executive experience. He's never run anything in the real world before. His people genuinely believe in their claims that the government can plan better than the market, and will make better decisions. They're trying to help, in other worlds; they just don't realize the effects their decisions will have, because they are too young, too inexperienced, or have lived lives too removed from the private sector and too insulated by government or academia from personal economic consequence.

Then they remind you of Obama's several apology tours in which he's essentially stated that America has been wicked up until now, but he's going to fix us. Everyone reading blogs is well aware of the Rev. Mr. Wright, Bill Ayers, Ms. Dunn and her Maoist credentials, etc., etc. So are people here. There is, in other words, plenty of empirical evidence on his feelings and associations that reasonably reinforces the worldview.

Democracy Corps says that this means that conservative Republicans are going to have a hard time appealing to others in future elections, because the chasm in worldviews is so wide.

I don't know if that's true or not. It seems just as likely to me that, if things don't get better between now and 2012, other people may decide that these folks may be right. The famous "confirmation bias" suggests that people first decide if you are "good" or "bad," and then interpret everything to fit the profile. Right now, most Americans have their mental switch on Obama flipped to "good," and so they are interpreting all this as unconnected difficulties associated with a challenging situation and inexperience. If that switch flips to "bad," it all becomes convincing evidence of a desire to undermine the nation's strength.

That's where we are now. Obama's favorability ratings line up with this worldview nicely, with both personal negatives and this worldview being higher in the South, and among Republicans. People outside the South, and independents, are more likely to view Obama as personally favorable -- which means they are unlikely to consider him a wicked tool of evil interests.

If unemployment continues at a heavy rate for a long time, some people may find their switch flipping. As they begin to view him unfavorably, they become open to the argument that he might be actively wicked instead of accidentally wicked. There's plenty of room for conversion as the economy grinds down, because his plans will either fail or succeed: if they fail, they won't help; yet if they succeed, the extra taxes and costs will make things worse.

Some may argue that it doesn't matter whether the President is actually trying to destroy the country, or is merely destroying it by accident. It does matter, though. It's very important how we perceive him, because it defines our duty as opponents of the agenda. If you believe as I do, your duty is the duty of the loyal opposition: to try to swing policy through debate and argument, but to support at least foreign policy wholeheartedly once the debate is over. Afghanistan is a good example of this: I hope to inform the debate we are having, but once a decision is made I will, as our military will, try to help bring about whatever we decide to do.

If the President is a "domestic enemy," actively trying to destroy America, your duty may be very different. The performance of that duty creates a world that I hope we'll not have to live in. If you do believe, let me suggest this: it would almost certainly be better for the nation to be led for four years by a wicked man who wanted to destroy it, chafing within the confines of the separation of powers, than to suffer what would come from traveling those roads.

Inspired Commies 2

Those Inspiring Communists II:

One good thing the Communists did inspire was jokes at their expense. West German spies used to collect them:

Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never survive on just two bananas a year.

What would happen if the desert became Communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage.

A new [East German car] has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow.

The Chinese had jokes too.

It was like that in those days. As soon as you went into the shop it went like this: “Serve the People!” Comrade, I’d like to ask a question.

A: “Struggle Against Selfishness and Criticize Revisionism!” Go ahead.

B: [to the audience] Well, at least he didn’t ignore me. [Back in character] “Destroy Capitalism and Elevate the Proletariat!” I’d like to have my picture taken.

A: “Do Away with the Private and Establish the Public!” What size?

B: “The Revolution is Without Fault!” A three-inch photo.

A: “Rebellion is Justified!” Okay, please give me the money.

B: “Politics First and Foremost!” How much?

A: “Strive for Immediate Results!” One yuan three mao.

B: “Criticize Reactionary Authorities!” Here’s the money.

A: “Oppose Rule by Money!” Here’s your receipt.

B: “Sweep Away Class Enemies of All Kinds!” Thank you.

Most Chinese humor doesn't translate well, because it is word play depending on the tremendous number of like-sounding words. That's pretty decent satire, though.

Ironhead

Ironhead:

I ran across this old bit featuring Waylon Jennings the other day.



His musical advice on the way forward sounds very much like our Eric Blair.

Those Inspiring Communists:

First Thomas Friedman, but he's just a journalist from the New York Times. To someone of that particular distinction, covering up the horrors of Communism must seem like an honorable tradition of the firm.

Now it's someone from the White House.

Chairman Mao is an important figure in military science, and anyone who intends to fight a guerrilla war -- or resist one -- needs to read his writings on the subject.

Ms. Dunn is sketching that position by claiming that she's talking about his thoughts on how to fight war, but that isn't really what she's doing. What she's doing is claiming him to be an inspirational philosopher, because 'he did it his way,' and didn't let others tell him it couldn't be done.

Having listened to her speech, you don't know anything about what his insights into that particular war might have been, or how he differed from Saddam. Yet Saddam, too, 'did it his way' and refused to listen to those who told him it couldn't be done. He had a plan too: a plan to resist conventionally, and a backup guerrilla plan that included massive pre-lain caches and support zones seeded with allied families and tribes. Nevertheless, he ended up being plucked out of a spider hole, and hanged a few years later, having led his movement into disaster.

People who learn only the lesson to 'do it your way, and don't listen to those who raise concerns' are at least as likely to end up badly. To the degree that Mao is worth studying, it's to learn how he defied the odds -- how he developed his plans and used his forces, brought pressures to bear, and sustained his movement to victory.

As for the rest of Mao's "philosophy," it's chiefly worth studying to learn how completely it failed. The "Hundred Flowers" movement, wherein intellectuals were encouraged to speak truth to power? Great idea, very inspirational; led to the slaughter or re-education of China's entire educated class. The "Great Leap Forward," wherein China was going to swap out from an agricultural to an industrial economic base? Wonderful thought, very progressive and bold; led to the starvation of tens of millions.

That's the thing to study, if you're going to look at Mao. The chief, key lesson of his life is the horror and misery he brought to everyone he touched.

Punt NFL

Punt the NFL:

College football is better anyway. Go, mighty Bulldogs!



Who wants to watch a bunch of mercenaries who'd leave your team for the first better offer? The college students are, at least, your own true sons and neighbors.

Victory

Victory:

People used to ask, "Can you define what victory in Iraq might look like?" How about this?

I think this makes it official: the liberal Brookings Institution is apparently no longer bothering to update their Iraq Index, with the last update having been done on September 1st. Final score: 8500-11000 MW of power (vs. 4000 prewar), vastly improved access to potable water/sanitation/trash removal, something like five hundred times as many cellphones, a million people with Internet access in a country that previously had essentially none, a tripling of GDP, billions in foreign investment, national debt halved, and thousands of trained judges. Even the endemic fuel shortages appear much ameliorated, with the number of Iraqis saying they had good access to fuel rising from 19% in 2008 to 68% this year. Oh yeah, and a fairly liberal Arab constitutional democracy with basic rights for minorities, including the rights of voting, free press, free assembly, and free speech.

Meanwhile, the security situation in Iraq is better than ever (and far, far better than the average ~7,000 a month killed under Saddam), with icasualties reporting an incredibly low 158 deaths total in September -- the lowest ever recorded....

Iraq is still literally the unthinkable victory. If [opponents currently in office] want to lay any claim to credible analysis of ongoing events in the GWOT, they will need to start acknowedging this basic, painful fact: we won.

They don't, however. They declared the GWOT over, some time ago now.

Slander

Slander:

Once again, MSNBC is host to a vicious, nasty attack directed at a lady because she doesn't hold 'progressive' political opinions. Jenn Q. Public has a list of prior offenses for the character involved here, one Keith Olbermann. He's one of the few TV hosts I'm familiar with, because AFN played his show in the DFAC about the time I'd take lunch chow every day.

Ms. Public has covered some of his historic offenses, but it's worth remembering the treatment Chris Matthews gave the same lady. Zell Miller remembered it, in the famous interview he did with Chris Matthews after his 2004 speech at the Republican National Convention.

Zell was right: it is a shame that we can't challenge people to a duel. As a distant second-best option, however, Ms. Public suggests you might write the network. Since these networks are in show business, and controversy means viewers, I doubt that will do more than encourage the thuggery; but if you like, she has the addresses on her site.

UPDATE: In the comments section of a post about Google searches as they apply to the failed relationships between modern men and women, Cassandra writes:

I rarely hear anyone acknowledge that a man who behaved the way many men behave today would have been shunned by society when I was growing up. Men, too, are demanding that behaviors society has never approved of be not just legitimized but mainstreamed and approved of.

I would not want to have to raise a daughter in today's climate.

This is exactly the kind of thing she's talking about. The reason we've got this kind of behavior going on is that we've created a society in which the rude are completely protected from any sort of reprisal.

It's exactly like the way that virtual communication leads to flaming: because you have removed the physical elements of the communication, there's nothing except personal character to stop people from flaring up emotionally at each other. This is a well-known phenomenon among bloggers, though it predates blogs, and has been observed since the beginning of internet communication.

The removal of the duel -- and the practice of filing criminal charges for assault every time a jerk gets a punch in the face -- has performed a similar transformation on non-virtual society. Neither Chris Matthews nor Keith Olbermann is the sort who would dare to speak that way in the presence of a man like Zell Miller if he were permitted the duel he wanted, even though Zell is spotting them both about fifty years.

Instead, modern society has made the good men powerless to do anything about the bad ones. You can point out that they are mannerless, cowardly puppies; but the more they get called names, the more attention they get, and the more money they make. They are actually rewarded for their bad behavior. Of course you're seeing more bad behavior as a result, and of course their model is being emulated by young people who witness it and see it being rewarded.

Like the internet flamer, they find that all restraints on their worst impulses have been removed. There is nothing to stop them from being abusive except their personal character. If they have any, it is clearly overwhelmed by the actual monetary rewards paid to them for generating controversy.

Of course things are getting worse: there is a powerful, practical mechanism to encourage them to get worse. There is no similar mechanism to ratchet things back the other way. It's been removed from society, and we are seeing the natural consequences of that.

UPDATE: Cassandra's use of Google inspired me to do a little self-check to see how well we've lived up to these standards here. I Googled grimbeorn.blogspot.com for three common insults used against women. (You can click the links to see the terms, if you wonder which ones I searched for, but your imaginations will probably work fine.)

In the history of the site, there are three uses of the first, plus one use of the "-y" version: all in block quotes from other pieces, one of them a reference to a man ("son of a..."); two of the others quotes from other women (including Peggy Noonan!); and the third a quote from a Navy SEAL, who was not directing it at women particularly, but just employing a profanity to suggest emphasis in the way that sailors will.

There are no instances of the second.

The third has one citation, another block quote, from an author who agrees that Britney Spears "dresses like a...," but not that she is one.

All of the posts featuring quotes including these words were mine. None of my co-bloggers have ever employed any of them, even in block quotes from other places. I'm proud of them for that, and want to say so.

I invite readers to apply a similar test to any male-run progressive site they like.

Profanity isn't everything, though. Equally important is your treatment of individual women to whom you are opposed politically or culturally. You might wish to contrast our treatment of, say, Cindy Sheehan with how Mrs. Palin was treated at those progressive sites.

For those of you who choose to test your own sites, and are ashamed with what you find? I call on you to do better in the future.

A Public Service

A Public Service:

Obviously, the critics of the rhetoric on the right are better-founded than I knew. This is the kind of reckless, irresponsible... er, wait, no.

Actually, this is from season one. They're now on season three, which would make this a couple years old. We had a totally different President then.

Nothing bad here! This was just edgy, push-the-envelope comics who represent the clever, creative parts of our great nation. It's a mark of the rich intellectual nature of our society that we can accept satire that punches back against the powerful and their interests.

Bthun's Collection:

As promised in the comments below, here are some photos of a portion of bthun's collection.





He writes:

Howdy Grim,

I managed to dig up a few of my favorite all purpose blade. At least the ones I use most often.

I also found the Japanese bayonet. A type 30, straight quillon, with the Mukden Arsenal ( Manchuria ) marking.

The ceremonial sword is not that nice, nor has it ever taken an edge. I have no idea from whence in came. Only that it was in mom and dads, house and I found it while sorting out their estate. Unfortunately the two Arisaka Rifles, a type 38 and a type 99 that dad brought home and gave to me were sold by one of my brothers while I was in the Navy. Whatcha gonna do?

I’m still looking for my oldest knife, the barlow. I packed it away to keep it intact and now I can’t seem to remember where I put it. As they say, of all the things I miss, the thing I miss the most is my mind…

Anyway, in spite of the coughing and an old camera, I managed to capture a few of my blades. And in the spirit of iddy biddy caliber stuff, I pulled out my little Buckmark Pro Target plinker.

Thank you for sharing it with us. I'll be happy to post other reader's favorite blades if they'd like to email me photos and commentary.

Hee Haw

Infidelity:

In honor of the ongoing debate at Cassandra's house, a medley:



Hang out to the end for some Johnny Cash.

UPDATE: Here's Johnny Cash and June Carter doing the same number.



It's funny to see these two singers, both of them highly talented, hamming it up like this. Hee Haw was fun because it was about mocking the biased image of what Southerners were like. Everyone knew that Johnny Cash was a poet and a masterful performer. Part of the fun was seeing him act like a stereotype, showing how ridiculous the stereotype really was.

UPDATE: OK, two more:



That one reminds me of a non-Hee Haw piece, by the "Mouth of the South" himself.

No John Donovan

Shooting Off Your Back Porch:

Well, I'm no John Donovan: the man has a much finer collection than I've imagined, and much more experience employing it. Still, it looks like he was having fun, and I admire a man who knows how to have a good time.

I did do a bit of such shooting today, albeit with a much less impressive weapon. Shooting off the back deck is a good way to enjoy the autumn air even when you have the kind of downpour we had all day today. Here's my target:

Be Ready

Be Ready:

Mickey Kaus has a good thought.

If there are well over a million students in charter schools now, and the federal government is pushing them to grow like Topsy, at what point does a vicious circle set in, with public schools losing their even moderately motivated students, causing them to decline even further, causing even more students to leave, etc.? Not that this public school death spiral would be such a bad thing. We should just be prepared for it. The way we should have been prepared for GM.

We should be preparing for the collapse of our public institutions, not just the schools, because they are indeed on an unsustainable course quite parallel to GM's. We already can't afford the Federal Pensions, Medicare, and Social Security promises made; and yet we've got this wonderful idea to add some sort of universal health-care, funded by yet-more taxes and regulations.

The truth is that 'if a man shall not work, neither shall he eat' -- not because he should not eat, or because we don't want him to eat, but because somebody has to pay his freight. If it's not him, it might be his children; or it might be his wife; or it might be someone he helped out when he was younger. It won't be "society," though, because they won't love him enough to make serious sacrifices for him, forever.

Population booms can allow a society to mask that for a while, as the Baby Boomer period allowed us to mask it here, by dividing the extra freight among enough people that the sacrifices aren't so heavy. Yet they were serious, even when they were so divided.

The Social Security system remained essentially unchanged from its enactment until 1956. However, beginning in 1956 Social Security began an almost steady evolution as more and more benefits were added, beginning with the addition of Disability Insurance benefits. In 1958, benefits were extended to dependents of disabled workers. In 1967, disability benefits were extended to widows and widowers. The 1972 amendments provided for automatic cost-of-living benefits.

In 1965, Congress enacted the Medicare program, providing for the medical needs of persons aged 65 or older, regardless of income. The 1965 Social Security Amendments also created the Medicaid programs, which provides medical assistance for persons with low incomes and resources.

Of course, the expansions of Social Security and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid required additional tax revenues, and thus the basic payroll tax was repeatedly increased over the years. Between 1949 and 1962 the payroll tax rate climbed steadily from its initial rate of 2 percent to 6 percent. The expansions in 1965 led to further rate increases, with the combined payroll tax rate climbing to 12.3 percent in 1980. Thus, in 31 years the maximum Social Security tax burden rose from a mere $60 in 1949 to $3,175 in 1980.

Despite the increased payroll tax burden, the benefit expansions Congress enacted in previous years led the Social Security program to an acute funding crises in the early 1980s. Eventually, Congress legislated some minor programmatic changes in Social Security benefits, along with an increase in the payroll tax rate to 15.3 percent by 1990. Between 1980 and 1990, the maximum Social Security payroll tax burden more than doubled to $7,849.

Due to the economic crisis of the moment, we've almost reached the point at which the illusion cannot be maintained. It will not be long before there is no way to pretend anymore. Your family may take care of you, but your government will not: though they may perhaps beggar your family so much that they can't take care of you either.

Poker

Poker and the President:

Apparently President Obama and I have one thing in common: he plays poker. I have to admit that I find the fact surprising, as he doesn't seem the type to enjoy it. What are the high-stakes gambles of his presidency so far? The places where he went 'all in' on a hand that he knew was likely to win, but couldn't be 100% certain of winning?

Then again, the reason he played poker was apparently not for the fun of it, but for the social benefits:

As a writer, professor, and community organizer, Obama was greeted coolly by some of his fellow legislators when he arrived in Springfield in 1998 to take a seat in the Illinois Senate. How was this ink-stained, poshly educated greenhorn supposed to get along with Chicago ward heelers and conservative downstate farmers? By playing poker with them, of course.

In that case, the gambling was only an illusion of risk. What he was really after, he couldn't lose.

The rest of the article is more interesting than that idle speculation. It's about poker as a kind of national game for America.

Geneticists have shown that there is literally such a thing as American DNA, not surprising when nearly all of us are descended from immigrants. We therefore carry an immigrant-specific genotype, a genetic marker expressing itself—in some environments, at least—as energetic risk-taking and competitive self-promotion. Even when famine, warfare, or another calamity strikes, most people stay in their homeland. The self-selecting group that migrates, seldom more than 2 percent, is disproportionally inclined to take chances. They also have above-average intelligence and are quicker decision makers. Something about their dopamine-receptor systems, the neural pathway associated with a taste for novelty and risk, sets them apart from those who stay put.

While the factors involved are numerous and complex, the migratory syndrome has been deftly summarized by the journalist Emily Bazelon: "It's not about where you come from, it's that you came at all." The migratory gene must have been even more dominant among those Americans who first moved west across the Appalachians, up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, then out to California during the gold rush. Their urge to strike it rich, often at the risk of their lives, made poker more appealing than point-based trick-taking games like whist, bridge, or cribbage.

The national card game still combines Puritan values—self-control, diligence, the slow accumulation of savings—with what might be called the open-market cowboy's desire to get very rich very quickly.

I'm not sure how much 'cowboys' are about getting rich quickly; there are fewer better roads to a long life of hard work than trying to raise beef in America. Further, the settling of the majority of the West was not quite the same kind of 'chosen migration' as the settling of America in general. Most of the settlers of the mountain West were displaced Southerners following the Civil War. The point still holds, since they were themselves the descendants of those who chose to come to America, and push into and past the Appalachians; however, the reason so many of them went West was that the South's economy was destroyed by the war and its ruinous aftermath. Home couldn't support them anymore.

Indeed, necessity drove most of them in the first place: the big waves of immigration from Scotland were enforced by the clearances, which we were discussing the other day. The big waves from Ireland, mid-century, were enforced by the famine. A lot of these 'natural gamblers' started the game with little to lose.

Yet they did well, and very well, before the Puritans caught up with them and set up all these rules and regulations. Try starting a business now, and see how much chance you've got. ("Yes, you can start a business. There are 4,000 pages of regulations you'll have to obey, most of them with attendant fines and/or prison time; and you'll need to provide health insurance for your workers, including for at least six months after they leave your company under COBRA; and you'll need to pay them not less than minimum wage, which we'll negotiate for you in advance; and, of course, there will be stiff taxes on any earnings you manage, in order to ensure that we provide for those you're not employing; and...")

A little more poker in the national spirit would be good.

Swords for Peace

Swordfighters for Peace:

It's not so outrageous. After all, the Prince of Peace said, "[I]f you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one."

Crows Fly Backwards

Crows Fly Backwards:

...to keep the dust out of their eyes.



Unfortunately, this is a terrible version of this song, which is otherwise delightful. You can hear a good version on Pandora (h/t for that to Cass, who introduced me to it years ago). It's worth the pain of digging around for it.

Rush to Heap

Rush to Heap:

I have never seen a man for whom so many rushed to heap honors at his feet. In readings of history, I can think of only one parallel, which is when the children of imperial lineages would receive high honors simply for having been born the child of a great man. Few of them amounted to much, and that with a lifetime's training and experience, because the greatness for which they were honored was not their own.

"Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit..."

Indeed, neither fruit nor seed, nor first leaf, nor early shoot.

McQ

Photo of the Year:

At BlackFive, via McQ.

UK Writer Loves Kilts

Another Way:

Apropos of our last discussion on modern women and manly men, a former British ambassador responds to a troll. The subject of the dispute is whether or not the British government was willing to obtain CIA evidence obtained using what the ambassador considers to be torture -- a fairly serious matter all the way around, from the question of what constitutes torture to the question of whether the government of the UK was willing to be complict in it. So, of course, it drew a serious response.

Precisely 38 minutes after I posted a blog entry pointing to definite proof of Jack Straw's complicity in torture, one Helen Wright added this comment, which I thought deserved a wider audience:

Apparently you enjoy sex with a kilt on and like to smack womens arses while singing Scottish songs. You are a man of questionable morals and brough shame on our country. Crawl back under your rock, you slimeball.

I am shocked. You mean there's another way to have sex?

Obviously, it is possible to dispense with the kilt. Not necessary, of course -- that's one of the beauties of the kilt.

By the way, the Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games are the weekend after next. If any of you mean to be there, let me know.

Mystery Solved

Mystery Solved?

You know why we're having a financial crisis now -- Social Security, Medicare, Federal pensions? Why Europe is falling apart? It's because people stopped having kids. Birth rates have fallen across the Western world.

Why? A new study says: because the pill doesn't just block fertility: it makes women want something other than a real man. Even when women are wanting children, the altered hormones have turned them aside from the natural markers that would point to a strong man of great virility. Birth control was the problem all along.

If that is right, two lessons:

Lesson one: Mess with your hormones at peril.

Lesson two: The Church was right again.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck:

This guy is something else.

I've only watched one episode of his work, so I don't know that much about him. He is not what we've come to expect from the media, or the world. "They were talking at people, they weren't listening. They don't understand that people actually care about things -- can actually believe in things. Can be genuine, can weep for their country, can love something so much that they're willing to set everything aside for that: that the country and the Constitution mean something deeply to a lot of people."

The guy is dangerous.

"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous... and Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Glóin, for you are dangerous yourself[.]

"Dangerous" is not a negative quality. Dangerous merely means that you are serious, that there are things you will not let go. The question is whether you are benevolent, or malevolent.

That key is being turned. And I fear an event. I fear a Reichstag moment, God forbid, another 9/11, something that will turn this thing on: power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all.

Q: And if it happens, what should Americans do to fight it?

Read the Constitution. Act Constitutionally. Protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

But that is no more than my oath. Indeed, many of us have sworn that oath. What will matter most is how we interpret the Constitution, and how we define its enemies.

Blue Stonehenge

Blue Stonehenge:

Earthquakes seem to come regularly, these days:

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of what they believe was a second Stonehenge located a little more than a mile away from the world-famous prehistoric monument.

The new find on the west bank of the river Avon has been called "Bluestonehenge", after the colour of the 25 Welsh stones of which it was once made up.

Excavations at the site have suggested there was once a stone circle 10 metres in diameter and surrounded by a henge – a ditch with an external bank, according to the project director, Professor Mike Parker Pearson, of the University of Sheffield.

The stones at the site were removed thousands of years ago but the sizes of the holes in which they stood indicate that this was a circle of bluestones, brought from the Preseli mountains of Wales, 150 miles away.

The standing stones marked the end of the avenue that leads from the river Avon to Stonehenge, a 1¾-mile long processional route constructed at the end of the Stone Age....

"I think we have found incontrovertible proof that the river was very important to the people who used Stonehenge. I believe that the river formed a conduit between the living and the dead and this is the point where you leave the realm of the living at the river and enter the one of the dead at Stonehenge."

That's the big question. What did they believe, and so strongly that they found a way to transport megaliths hundreds of miles to erect in these monuments? What a gift it would be to know.

For My Sister

For My Sister:

...who has been spending a lot of time out Jackson way:

Bomb the Moon

Boom:

NASA prepares to bomb the moon.

Close, but no cigar, boys.

Free Speech

Free Speech:

The administration has declared against free speech at the UN:

The new resolution, championed by the Obama administration, has a number of disturbing elements. It emphasizes that "the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities . . ." which include taking action against anything meeting the description of "negative racial and religious stereotyping." It also purports to "recognize . . . the moral and social responsibilities of the media" and supports "the media's elaboration of voluntary codes of professional ethical conduct" in relation to "combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance."

Quite a statement, given the regularity with which the President's critics are said to be racist. The media is hereby charged with a "responsibility" to produce a "voluntary code" to "[combat] racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance."

Oh, bloggers' free speech will now also be regulated. This first entry into the field is mild, just the camel's nose probing its way into the tent.

Those actions by the Obama administration are almost certainly unrelated. This is not a conspiracy to undermine free speech. It's just the result of a commonly-felt hostility to it among the kind of people that Obama appears to appoint to important positions. There may also be some top-down pressure in certain cases, but I doubt it's being done in a coordinated way. It's just a reflection of who he is, and what kind of people he employs to do his work.

Things Have Changed

Things Have Changed Back Home:

A story from Forsyth County, Georgia, where I grew up:

An effort to crack down on prostitution in Forsyth County’s massage parlors has resulted in the arrests of three women, including one who faced the same charge last year.

The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office charged Mi Suk Yang, 47, of Marietta and Kil Cha Hurst, 65, of Jonesboro with prostitution on Wednesday....

There were probably prostitutes in the old days, but I don't recall having heard of any such arrests. Everybody knew each other then, before the explosion of the Atlanta suburbs caused the county I knew to cease to exist. Apparently prostitution arrests are now a regular thing.

(H/t FARK, who was amused by the lady's name. In general, it's always depressing to see your hometown mentioned in FARK.)

Mack the Knife

Mack the Knife:

My taste doesn't run to jazz, but I still enjoy Mark Steyn's writings on the history of 20th century music. The story of 'Mack the Knife' is unusually interesting even by his standard. Apparently the original was a 1728 London opera...

A Good Article

A Good Article:

National Affairs has a short, comprehensive look at the problems facing America's middle class. Indeed, the problems listed are a good definition of "middle class," one of the most difficult to understand concepts in American politics. If you share these problems, being neither too wretched to participate in the troubled institutions, nor too rich to have to worry about them, you're somewhere in the broad middle class.

It's a good frame for discussing the business before us: the collapse of Federal entitlements, the collapse of employer-provided entitlements, the demographic dangers, and so forth. In a seven-page article, there isn't much by way of solutions, but the sketches do offer some helpful advice: for example, that the worst way to deal with the entitlement crisis is with new taxes, but rather to use the government to encourage fertility rates and ease the raising of children.

Smart Diplomacy

Smart Diplomacy:

This is what comes of forgetting that you are not President of the World.

Quirk of Fate

So Close To Agreement:

By an odd quirk of fate, the last time we talked about Bernard-Henri Levy, it was in combination with today's topic, which is Garrison Keillor. The last time was about trying to reach out to our left-leaning brethren and explore a way in which we might be able to both have the America we want.

Something like that appears true again today. Much is made about Keillor's mean-spirited joke that we could solve the national debt if we eliminated Republicans (an unlikely proposition, given that only half of Americans pay income taxes, and most of those people are Republicans; seventy-five percent of income taxes are paid by married people, and being part of a married couple is perhaps the strongest indicator for membership in the Republican party. Heck, half of my marriage is Republican).

However, take a look at this earlier section of his piece, about the roots of the financial crisis:

...the disaster in the banking industry that ate up a lot of 401(k)s, and all thanks to high-flyers in shirts like cheap wallpaper who never learned enough to let it discourage them from believing that they had magical powers over the laws of economics and could hand out mortgages to people with no assets and somehow the sun would come out tomorrow.

Wow! That's perfect agreement between right and left about the cause of the disaster: reckless loans to people who couldn't pay it back. The only problem is that he prefaces and follows this assessment with a loopy way of blaming "the anti-regulation conservatives," rather than the anti-regulation liberals.

But let's not look a gift horse in the mouth! Reagan said that there was no limit to what could be accomplished if you didn't care who got the credit; the same is true if you don't care who gets the blame. So long as we're all agreed now that we can't be letting people borrow money who will not be paying it back, we can proceed. We can argue for years to come about whether the blame falls mostly on conservative "nihilism" about governance, or the alliance of some liberal politicians with corrupt inner-city predators. If we agree on a solution, we can set it in place, and have the fight about blame after.

Not a Joke

No Joke At All:

A commonplace of American humor is the joke taking the form, "Did you hear the one about the farmer's daughter?" This time, however, there is no joke: just a proud woman who has done a mighty deed.