God Gap

Foreign Policy Needs More God:

So says the Chicago Council on Foreign Policy, at the conclusion of a study.

American foreign policy is handicapped by a God gap, a narrow, ill-informed and "uncompromising Western secularism" that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures, and fails to engage and encourage religious groups that promote peace, human rights and the general welfare of their communities....

American foreign policy's God gap has been noted by others in recent years, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. "Diplomats trained in my era were taught not to invite trouble. And no subjects seemed more inherently treacherous than religion," she said in 2006.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment's reluctance to engage religion continues today, the task force says. "The role of nationalism and decolonization was not widely understood in the U.S. until after the Vietnam War, despite considerable supporting evidence in the 1950s. Such is the case with religion today," says the task force's report, released at a conference at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.

"Religion has been rapidly increasing as a factor in world affairs, for good and for ill, for the past two decades. Yet the U.S. government still tends to view it primarily through the lens of counterterrorism policy. The success of American diplomacy in the next decade will not simply be measured by government-to-government contacts, but also by its ability to connect with the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world whose identity is defined by religion."

This is indeed a critical weakness in U.S. policy, but not merely because of some sort of sentimental attachment to secularism. There are actually very solid reasons why American officials have more trouble talking in religious terms than, say, officials from the U.K. The British government, similar to ours in many respects, has an official church: the Church of England. The U.S. government has in the 1st Amendment a rejection of the 'establishment' of a national church.

As a result, any U.S. official making a religious statement can speak only in the most bland and unobjectionable terms; or he has to speak as a private citizen, making very clear that his personal sense and feelings have absolutely nothing to do with the policy of his government. That latter position strips any power out of what he might say; the former prevents any power from being present in the first place.

The official in the U.K. has 'top cover' in the sense that, because there is a doctrine that he can appeal to as the official faith of his country, he's got a lot more depth and range that he can invoke here.

So, what do we do about the 'God gap'? There's really not very much we can do. We can bring in more people with religious backgrounds to speak in addition to our diplomats and and other officers. We can go out of our way to show respect for religious practice.

The report had four specific recommendations, but point 4 is going to be problematic for the reason listed above. Essentially, they argue that we should stop talking about religious freedom, because that is seen as a kind of 'cultural imperalism' in places without religious freedom. Unfortunately, that's the one thing we can talk about; it's the one kind of 'official doctrine' to which our diplomats can appeal. "We believe in honoring your religion, along with all the others," sounds like weak tea, but apparently it's too strong.

There are not a lot of good answers here. This may be one area where our form of government has a structural weakness. The principle of religious freedom has also provided us with a great internal strength; and there are some people in the world outside our borders who likewise aspire to it (although always fewer than not, since 'religious freedom' is about the freedom of minorities, since the majority already has religious freedom by virtue of main force. Thus, religious freedom is most commonly about the freedom of others, others you probably believe to be necessarily different from yourself in a crucial way).

Hooah

Hooah.

This guy is my kind of guy. Mr. David Benke stopped a school shooter 'with the faith of his body,' as they used to say: wagering his life against a killer, and saving many others in the process. He also came away unhurt himself, whereas had everyone cowered he could well have been shot. This proves the truth of the proverb, 'He that will lose his life, that same shall save it.'

Also in good news today, car thieves meet Air Force security. These are things that make you feel good while you have your coffee.

Poison in the Well

Poison in the Well:

An interesting bit of history that I had never heard before.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Can you imagine the havoc that would be created if the government, today, were accused of poisoning crack cocaine or methamphetamine in an effort to scare off users?

Class War

"Class War"

That is the title of a Reason piece that portrays the public sector pension crisis as a case of public servants versus the rest of us.

Although Americans may have a vague sense that the nation has run up a great deal of debt, the public employee benefit problem is not well known. Yet the wave of benefit promises is poised to wash away state and local government budgets and large portions of the incomes of most Americans. Most of these benefits are vested, meaning that they have the standing of a legal contract. They cannot be reduced. And the government employees’ allies, such as California’s legislative Democrats, are cleverly blocking some of the more obvious exit strategies.

For instance, when the city of Vallejo went bankrupt after coughing up 75 percent of its budget to police and firefighters, the state Assembly introduced legislation that would allow cities to go bankrupt only if they get approval from a commission. Such a commission would of course be dominated by union-friendly members. The result: Cities would be stuck making good on contracts they cannot afford to fulfill....

That money will come from taxpayers. The average private-sector worker, who enjoys a lower salary and far lower retirement benefits than New York or California government workers, will have to work longer, retire later, and pay more so that his public-employee neighbors can enjoy the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

He Was Right!

He Was Right!

Dad29 says: "He Said 'If You Elect Me the Seas Will Stop Rising,' and he was right"!

In the Instapundit sense, anyway.

Who built America?

Who Built America?

Thomas Freidman is talking about nation building in America again, which raises an interesting question. When we do 'nation building' in other countries, we're talking about using a relatively functional organization -- the US military, with State Department and other assistance -- to improve services in non-functional areas like parts of Afghanistan. America itself, though, is a 'functioning area' if anything is: problems with corruption and bad philosophy in our government aside, if America doesn't work than nothing can be said to be functional.

So, do we need "nation building"? Well, maybe, if you mean (as he seems to mean) infrastructure improvement projects. The Federal government certainly has a role in improving interstate commerce by building, say, roads across multiple states or bridges between two states.

How have we built the infrastructure we have? Let's look at a few examples.

The railroads: The Federal role here was limited to crafting a system that would encourage and reward private industry in building the rail system. They were paid bribes, essentially, in terms of the land that they were granted along the railway route, which they could sell or lease to raise funds. That paid for the construction of the railroad; after it was built, it operated on a for-profit basis.

The highways: The Interstate System was based on Dwight D. Eisenhower's support for a network of highways connecting the nation. He got the idea from the Lincoln Highway, the first intercontinental road, which was apparently built by a private group. Automobile manufacturers were important in funding the Lincoln Highway, and in lobbying for the Interstate System. The Federal role here was to help the states organize their efforts, and provide some funding.

The airport system: This, again, was a partnership between industry and (local) government. The cities of America have had a leading role here, with states supporting them. The Federal role has been smaller; but there has also been a large degree of input in terms of money and leadership from private industry.

The telephone network: This has been very largely a private investment, with the government serving a regulatory role either to avoid, or to manage, monopolies in certain areas. The same is true for cell phone networks.

The internet: The government played a major role in the formation of the internet, though private investment has expanded it in many ways. Government continues to sit in regulation on the basic structure of the thing, but new additions to the network are very often based on private companies, groups or individuals who have information they wish to add. Many of these provide their own infrastructure up to a point, and normally pay for access through their privately-owned Internet Service Provider.

We could go on and consider oil pipelines, deep-water ports, etc., but I think the point has been made.

The government has certainly had a role in the building of the infrastructure of America. Sometimes this has been a leadership role, and sometimes it has mostly been about arranging funding; and sometimes it hasn't led and it hasn't funded, but it's regulated the provision of privately-created services.

All of these models are before us if we talk about "nation building in America." I'd like to know two things about any such proposal:

1) What is this new system that needs to be built, which we don't already have in the sense that we "didn't have" a railroad or an Interstate System until it was built?

2) Which model of Federal leadership are you proposing? The one where they find ways to spur private investment (like the railroads)? The one where they take control of an existing private system (like the AT&T breakup)? Or the one like the Internet, where it really builds something new and then lets private groups add on?

Paranoia

Choices:

Three items today.

First:

Moving to her criticism of the president’s spending, Bachmann pointed to a chart of rising federal deficits.

“This is intending to fail,” she said.

“They have left us holding an invoice of $105 trillion in unfunded federal liabilities,” she went on, alluding to the federal government’s entitlement programs. “Sounds to me like someone is choosing decline.”

Second:

Two years after Buckley’s death, the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC.

Why is the Birch Society a co-sponsor?

“They’re a conservative organization,” said Lisa Depasquale, the CPAC Director for the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. “ Beyond that I have no comment.”

On its website, the Birch Society describes it mission as to “to warn against and expose the forces that seek to abolish U.S. independence, build a world government, or otherwise undermine our personal liberties and national independence. The John Birch Society endorses the U.S. Constitution as the foundation of our national government, and works toward educating and activating Americans to abide by the original intent of the Founding Fathers. We seek to awaken a sleeping and apathetic people concerning the designs of those who are working to destroy our constitutional Republic.”

Third:

Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.

Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."

In his response, Holder has given Grassley almost nothing.

Making America Work

Making It Work:

The Economist has a strong piece on the subject of success in American politics. Why, they begin, are things looking so hard for Washington, D.C.? Blame Obama:

Although a Democratic president is in the White House and Democrats control both House and Senate, Mr Obama has been unable to enact health-care reform, a Democratic goal for many decades. His cap-and-trade bill to reduce carbon emissions has passed the House but languishes in the Senate. Now a bill to boost job-creation is stuck there as well. Nor is it just a question of a governing party failing to get its way. Washington seems incapable of fixing America’s deeper problems. Democrats and Republicans may disagree about climate change and health, but nobody thinks that America can ignore the federal deficit, already 10% of GDP and with a generation of baby-boomers just about to retire. Yet an attempt to set up a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission has recently collapsed—again....

America’s political structure was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. Its founders believed that a country the size of America is best governed locally, not nationally. True to this picture, several states have pushed forward with health-care reform. The Senate, much ridiculed for antique practices like the filibuster and the cloture vote, was expressly designed as a “cooling” chamber, where bills might indeed die unless they commanded broad support.

So, it turns out that obeying the 10th Amendment's restriction on Federal powers is not just the right thing to do for constitutional reasons. It is also the more effective way to enact the policy you prefer. If you're willing to set your goal as "Changing the way we do things in California," or "Making Massachusetts better," you can accomplish a lot -- and with low constitutional hurdles to clear.

If what you want to do is "Change America," that's going to be harder. It's supposed to be hard. America has always been big -- even the 13 original states, in an era before railroads and other motorized travel covered a substantial area. It has always been diverse, with agricultural areas and urban ones; with different religious groups and interests, and immigrants from everywhere.

The model is designed to let different parts of this big, diverse nation do different things. You're supposed to be able to live the way you want in Tennessee, if you can't in Boston. That's the idea.

If it's hard to wrench the ship of state to a new course on a whim, it's supposed to be. The Federal government has wide powers to alter those few things that are really supposed to be its job. The Bush administration, which wanted little authority over the day to day lives of Americans, wielded tremendous and decisive authority in international affairs: and of course they could do so, because that was a legitimate area for the Federal government to exercise wide authority. Therefore, the Founders designed the system to support that kind of action.

If it's hard to force legislation on the country at the Federal level, good. Maybe you should stop and do something else instead. The only new Federal laws we really need are laws to repeal some of the existing over-regulation of our daily lives; and to reduce the percentage of our paycheck-to-paycheck wealth that the Federal government intends to suck up and spend.

Aside from that, we've got all the Federal laws we need.

Against Mothers in Combat

Against Mothers in Combat:

Hoover considers the question. Can we make this distinction? I'm putting the question particularly to my female readers, who are a stalwart lot on the matter of women having the right to compete on equal terms. So? Does motherhood make the difference Hoover thinks it does, or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

He's had all he can stand.

A pilot furious with the Internal Revenue Service crashed his small plane into an office building in Austin, Texas, that houses federal tax employees, setting off a raging fire.

I wonder how much more of this we'll see.

The Roots of Morality

The Roots of Morality:

Many modern philosophers are under the impression that humanity sort-of invents morality. This is not Protagoras' "Man is the Measure of All Things" concept, although like most of the problematic moral issues of the modern era there are ancient echoes of bad ideas long abandoned. Rather, this is rooted in the writings of Immanuel Kant on moral philosophy, although those who followed him have run with it well past his own writings (which presuppose the existence of God, though Kant doesn't believe we can have reason to believe in God; and state that the 'moral legislation' we are doing can only produce laws that are in accord with the moral laws that would be acceptable to a 'holy will').

The normal condition has been to assume that any 'moral law' is rooted in nature, whether because God put it there or because it arises from evolutionary success. Dogs and other canids have a clear moral structure, as do other advanced animals.

We talk about the dogs and horses a lot, because they mirror our own ethics in useful ways (though the animals are quite distinct biologically, unlike the primates who may be more similar to us). Since this is the year of the Tiger, though, it might be worth looking at how a Tiger would 'legislate' morality.

If Kant were right, a tiger who evolved into a rational being would abandon eating other rational beings -- he would be able to understand Kant's 'categorical imperative,' and would reason that it was wrong to use other rational beings as means to his ends.

Is that plausible? Would a rational tiger reason any such thing? Or would he use his reason to decide that nature had made him an efficient predator, and that it was his duty to keep others strong by removing the weak and stupid from the gene pool?

If that's right, the concept that humanity is in charge of morality is an illusion; our reason doesn't create morality, but is merely used to ratify what we already believe by nature. Where we disagree -- some people are quite willing to prey on others -- we resolve the issue not by reason, but by force (which appears to me to be another law of nature).

It's only a thought experiment, since there isn't any rational tiger. Still, what do you think?

Socialist Books

Books Are Good:

Some books are better than others, but what really matters is what you do with the books you read. If these books are to help you understand a problem in American society, and route around it, that's one thing; if they're inspiration and a roadmap for you, that's something else.

Good catch.

Comments "Upgrade"

Comments "Upgrade"

The threatened promised upgrade to the Echo comments system has arrived. I realize that some of you didn't like it very much, but I didn't find anything else that would be any better; and any other change would have resulted in the loss of the 20,000+ existing comments, which would annoy me (though I archived them as xml files, we would have no practical access to them).

Good luck with the new system. I hate change as much as the rest of you, I assure you. :)

Palin on Tea Parties

Mrs. Palin on Tea Parties:

So, we just finished saying that one of the most important contributions Mrs. Palin might have to the Tea Party movement was in helping it learn what it needs to do to compete for power. It happens that she spoke to that issue tonight.



You can skip the first bit, where O'Reilly is talking to himself. He wants to say that the Tea Party movement needs to do a William Buckley and cast the extremists from its ranks; but that's not the real question. The real question has to do with how the bulk of the movement can pursue an agenda without a central authority. He's missing the point; she seems to be onto it.

Daring Young Men

Daring Young Men:

What do you know about the Berlin Airlift?

[An important work of history-since-1945 devoted] less than a page to the airlift. That caused Reeves to wonder whether the 277,500 high-risk, expensive flights through Soviet airspace to supply food and fuel to the West Berliners had disappeared in the mists of history.

Students questioned by Reeves said they had never heard of the airlift. Reeves' contemporaries generally guessed the effort had occurred during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, not the presidency of Harry S. Truman 13 years earlier.

Unable to restrain his enthusiasm, Reeves told audiences about Truman's heroic decision to supply Berlin by air, in the face of objections from his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it would be impossible to feed a city of more than two million by using cargo planes.

"Then I would babble on about the daring young men (and some women) from the States and Great Britain being pulled away from their new lives, their wives, their schools, their work for the second time in five or six years," Reeves writes. "This time they were supposed to feed the people they had been trying to kill, and who had been trying to kill them, only three years earlier."

Much of the mission in Iraq has been of the same nature. America may not be the only power in history that so readily forgives former enemies, and bends itself wholly to their good when they are ready to be friends instead; but it must be in rare company.

The Pirate Queen

The Pirate Queen:

So, via Dr. Althouse, some fellow has gone to a lot of trouble to photoshop Mrs. Palin to remove everything he calls 'glamorous' about her.

Result? It demonstrates that her loveliness, which is genuine, is not a result of the make-up or hairstyle. If anything, several of the retouches make her beauty clearer by removing distractions. (I always took the beehive hairdo as a way of playing down her beauty, since it's not normally associated with beauty. And since when is taking off the glassess supposed to be the way that you make a woman less glamorous? That runs counter to every movie Hollywood ever made. She really has these people spinning.)

My suspicion, however, is that you could photoshop her with a pirate hat, a scar across her face, and an eyepatch without changing anyone's mind.

Dr. Althouse says, "This is an effort at defeminizing Sarah — like drawing a mustache on her." Given her sense of humor, I won't be surprised if she turns up soon on a FOX broadcast wearing a fake moustache. If she did, it would only increase my sense of admiration.

What do people like about her? It's as if no one has understood. It's not just that she went to small, state schools; it's not just that she did local news and beauty pagents before she became a small-town mayor. It's very much that she does things like write notes on her hand because she still gets nervous in interviews and forgets even the most basic things she wanted to say. Yes, she does; and everyone who has ever had to speak in front of a group can relate to the pressure, while imagining how much worse it must be for someone the media longs to destroy and humiliate. What is amazing is that she doesn't let it stop her: she writes a note on her hand, and goes right ahead.

She's ordinary, yet has managed -- through discipline, through these little tricks, and through the strength of the family she and her husband have built -- to succeed at what she has set out to do. When she hits a wall, she finds a way to climb it.

Of course people admire her. She happens also to be lovely. Good that she is; why shouldn't she be?

Cossacks

Cossacks:

For Doc Russia.



A good piece! Here's another:

Year of the Tiger

Year of the Tiger!

We were in China for the Lunar New Year in 2001, and let me tell you, it is a thing to see. This year is the Year of the Tiger, which is the sign that stood over the year in which I was born.

Tigers are said to be most compatible with horses and dogs. Chinese tradition holds also that tigers love to resist authority, are unable to resist a challenge when honor is involved, and provide excellent protection against the danger of burglary.

What was your year of birth, in the Chinese system? They poured thousands of their finest minds into developing it, over hundreds of years: did it work? How much does the system match what you find to be true of yourself?

GHBC 34-53

Grim's Hall Book Club: Bendigo Shafter, Chapters 34-47

Perhaps due to the Super Bowl, we are a week behind here. With your permission, I'll go ahead and include both weeks' readings here.

This is the climax and dénouement of the book. Ben goes to New York City and wins his love; he returns to duty, helping people along the way survive a snowstorm that drifts over the tracks. (Easy to feel some sympathy for that bit of the plot, for those of you up north!) They go to the medicine wheel and resolve the last fight with the rogue Shoshone.

Some last questions about the book:

1) What do you think about how the town turns out, and the future plans of the main characters?

2) We should talk about the question of what constitutes a proper education. Drake Morrell ends up being highly praised, after his initial introduction as a murderer on the run. He introduces the children of the backwoods to Latin, classics, history, and many of the things that Bendigo has been introduced to as well.

L'amour describes the effect of this education as "pride of bearing and appearance, as well as a love for knowledge," but "not... 'scholarship,' for that is often a different thing."

Is this the right vision of education? If so, why? If not, what is missing?

3) What do you think of how Webb turned out? Was it what you expected from the early foreshadowing? Is he a virtuous character, or not?

Finally, there's a last question:

What should we read next? I had originally intended to follow some of Ben's education, and we could talk about which of those books he read that we might want to read also.

However, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea -- given recent discussions -- to branch into some material that concerns our recent debates. We've debated some descriptions in Chaucer in isolation from his broader works; it might be good to read one of the Canterbury Tales (I am thinking of the Wife of Bath's tale, which you might describe as an early feminist take on the story of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall). We could also look at some classic texts on how men and women view each other, both by Medieval and Renaissance men and women; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette, perhaps, along with some of the Marie de France or Christine de Pizan stories. That might give us a deeper view of that material.

I'm quite open to your opinions here. Please chime in, and let's discuss it.

Sledding:

Romantic Love and Practical Service:

The Lady of the Lake, a post from 2008 that was one of the most discussed ever written here, talked about how the courtly love tradition allowed men to channel their romantic love into practical service. It examined how this form of chivalrous love is an ethic of willful service, one to the other; how this service diffused the tensions that endangered feudal bonds, and instead let a knight serve his lady as energetically as he might serve his lord; and thereby opened the way for women to occupy positions of genuine power in the Medieval period.

Such service needn't be grand, though. One might channel the romantic energy of the holiday into something as practical as making lunch:



Some lucky marriages incorporate this broader ethic of love and willful service. In time faithful service may win a lady's love, and her friendship; and her heart, so that she feels a duty to serve in turn. That is what gives you the strength for harder times. I have missed the last two Valentine's days, but we survived on stores laid in earlier years; and now is the hour for refilling the store, while we may, against future troubles that may come.

Happy Valentine's Day.

St. Valentine's Day

St. Valentine's Day:

This video is said to be the St. Valentine's Day concert at the "Guacheros Club" in Belgrade.



Who was St. Valentine? There were three! The most likely was a martyr put to death for conducting marriages among Roman legionnaires, who had been instructed not to marry. It has an interesting history, as a celebration. Our friend Chaucer features.

Speaking of Chaucer, and without meaning to rekindle the previous discussion, I did run across another description of the female lead in one of his tales that might better suit some of you who objected the last time. It is of Griselda, from the Cleric's Tale:

Amongst these humble folk there dwelt a man
Who was considered poorest of them all;
But the High God of Heaven sometimes can
Send His grace to a little ox's stall;
Janicula men did this poor man call.
A daughter had he, fair enough to sight;
Griselda was this young maid's name, the bright.

If one should speak of virtuous beauty,
Then was she of the fairest under sun;
Since fostered in dire poverty was she,
No luxurious in her heart had run;
More often from the well than from the tun
She drank, and since she would chaste virtue please,
She knew work well, but knew not idle ease.

But though this maiden tender was of age,
Yet in the breast of her virginity
There was enclosed a ripe and grave courage;
And in great reverence and charity
Her poor old father fed and fostered she;
A few sheep grazing in a field she kept,
For she would not be idle till she slept.

And when she homeward came, why she would bring
Roots and green herbs, full many times and oft,
The which she'd shred and boil for her living,
And made her bed a hard one and not soft;
Her father kept she in their humble croft
With what obedience and diligence
A child may do for father's reverence.

Upon Griselda, humble daughter pure,
The marquis oft had looked in passing by,
As he a-hunting rode at adventure;
And when it chanced that her he did espy,
Not with the glances of a wanton eye
He gazed at her, but all in sober guise,
And pondered on her deeply in this wise:

Commending to his heart her womanhood,
And virtue passing that of any wight,
Of so young age in face and habitude.
For though the people have no deep insight
In virtue, he considered all aright
Her goodness, and decided that he would
Wed only her, if ever wed he should.

Unfortunately, the rest of the tale is nearly unbearable -- certainly to those who love truly. Still, I thought perhaps you would appreciate this much of it: a girl, though poor and only 'fair enough to sight,' but the fairest under the sun inside her heart.

Strong Men Armed.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2010 - U.S. forces in the Marja region of Afghanistan are engaged in a series of missions to prime the Taliban stronghold before a massive assault that's expected soon, defense officials said today.
Some 12,000 U.S. and NATO troops and 3,000 Afghan forces are expected to be involved once the larger-scale operation begins in earnest. Officials declined to reveal when the assault would start, saying only that it is expected to commence soon.

Good luck and God Speed.

Snowfall

Snowfall:

I have no doubt that my friends in the north are very tired of it, but for me, this is the first time I've seen falling snow since Baghdad. That was two winters ago, and in a way it's hard to believe I was ever there. I can remember that, when I was there, it was hard to believe I had ever been here. It was like remembering a different life, more than a different place.

When was the last time I saw snow in Georgia? Perhaps it was 2002, when we lived on Burnt Mountain, high enough that it snowed from time to time. It has been a while, to be sure.

The house is well-stocked, and there is the smell of roasting pork and apple, with cinnamon and wine. The snow is welcome.

Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln:

A figure quite controversial at times, at other times treated as a kind of saint, Lincoln is today celebrated at Powerline. They quote his anti-slavery speech from the Republican national convention of 1860, but let's look at his military judgment instead.

A friend sends, via email, a selection from General Order #100. We can see several things in it that clarify what ought to be done with certain classes of unlawful combatants.

Art. 63.
Troops who fight in the uniform of their enemies, without any plain, striking, and uniform mark of distinction of their own, can expect no quarter....

Art. 83.
Scouts, or single soldiers, if disguised in the dress of the country or in the uniform of the army hostile to their own, employed in obtaining information, if found within or lurking about the lines of the captor, are treated as spies, and suffer death.

Art. 84.
Armed prowlers, by whatever names they may be called, or persons of the enemy's territory, who steal within the lines of the hostile army for the purpose of robbing, killing, or of destroying bridges, roads or canals, or of robbing or destroying the mail, or of cutting the telegraph wires, are not entitled to the privileges of the prisoner of war.

Art. 85.
War-rebels are persons within an occupied territory who rise in arms against the occupying or conquering army, or against the authorities established by the same. If captured, they may suffer death, whether they rise singly, in small or large bands, and whether called upon to do so by their own, but expelled, government or not. They are not prisoners of war; nor are they if discovered and secured before their conspiracy has matured to an actual rising or armed violence.

Forcing

"Forcing"?

I mean, it is the French, but still...

Elisabeth Badinter, a leading French feminist, has warned the green movement is threatening decades of improvements in gender equality by forcing women to give up their jobs and become earth mothers.

Mrs Badinter claims a “holy reactionary alliance” of green politicians, breast-feeding militants, “back to nature” feminists and child psychologists is turning Frenchwomen into slaves to green “fads” like re-usable nappies and organic food.

I'm not sure I recognize any part of that as "holy," though in general I think breast-feeding of infants is a fine idea, and "back to nature" is a concept that -- within certain reasonable limits -- could do a lot of good for a lot of people. Still, it's horrible to hear that they've forged themselves into so powerful an alliance that they can "force women" to give up their jobs. How are they accomplishing this?

In her new book, Conflit, la Femme et la Mere (Conflict, the Woman and the Mother), Mrs Badinter contends that this politically correct cabal is burdening mothers with intolerable guilt unless they stay at home and breast-feed for as long as possible.

Guilt! Ah, well.

Look, people tried to burden me with intolerable guilt for supporting the war in Iraq for several years. I don't recall feeling any actual guilt. I certainly felt some responsibility for the war, and a personal sense of duty to contribute to restoring peace and order to Iraq.

Why not guilt? Guilt comes from the inside. Someone may wish to make you feel guilt, but all they can actually do is bring the guilt you already feel to your conscious attention. If it isn't there, they can't create it.

If you find that you really feel "intolerable guilt" that you aren't spending more time with your child, perhaps you should listen to that. It isn't coming from them; they're just drawing it to your attention. The guilt is coming from inside of you, and you should probably draw off somewhere quiet and reflect on why you feel that way. It may save you regrets later in life.

If you don't find that you feel such guilt, their attempts to motivate you to feel guilty will certainly not create guilt in you. For someone who feels no guilt, such attempts sound -- I speak from experience -- more like a braying ass than the trumpet of judgment.

Lightning Advisory

Lightning Advisory: Washington, D.C.

No shame at all.

Robert Gibbs today tried to take credit for the success in Iraq even though both Biden* and Obama voted against the successful surge that stabilized the country. That’s not all. Biden caused rioting and protests when he pushed legislation to divide Iraq into three countries. Barack Obama told supporters in 2007 that, “Preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

2007 was the year of the Surge. A lot of things happened in Iraq in 2007 that gave us reason to hope for the future of that nation.

Not one of them had to do with this lot.

Mv2-lit fuse

Movement II: A Lit Fuse

Boom.

We have not only fixed nothing the so-called "coordinated actions" of so-called "world leaders" have set up a potential catastrophe originating in Europe.

More than two years ago I predicted that Europe was the most likely place where the second leg - the real "Oh.... My...... God" moment - would originate in this economic mess. These ratios were the reason for my prediction, and all that has happened over the last two years is that they've gotten worse.

Neither Germany or the rest of the EU can fix this without massive reform - read that as restructuring and/or default - of the external debt in these nations, including Germany itself....

The United States, ironically, is one of the better-positioned nations to survive what is coming. No, it won't be easy for us, but of the developed world there are few who have the internal capacity to pull in the horns and make it - not comfortably, but to survive.

Hat tip to Dad29. One of his commenters points out an additional, serious problem: the tool of devaluation of currency is off the table in the Eurozone. As with the U.S. during the 1920s, tied to the gold standard, it's not an option.

So what does that leave? Admission of failure, combined with the cuts that are necessary to restore long-term solvency; or actual failure. Social unrest in the first case, war in the second.

Movement

Movement:

From the National Review:

Imagine if a Republican administration had proposed various cost control initiatives to trim the growth of Medicare spending. Does anyone doubt that Democrats would attack the notional cuts vociferously? Paul Krugman actually had a canned argument ready in case Republicans ever did follow through: while Democrats use cuts to fund coverage expansion, Republicans use them to cut taxes for the rich (cue evil laughter). Now, it's obvious that we're trapped in this dynamic because the median voter reigns supreme, and it is cheap and easy for incumbent interests to distort and oversimplify wrenching reforms on either side of the partisan divide.

The only way out of this trap is to persuade the median voter of the central importance of achieving fiscal sustainability, even if that means short-term sacrifice. That is a tough job, and it's not clear that conservatives are willing to take it on. The good news is that many in the Tea Party movement understand the stakes and the difficult decisions that have to be made going forward. I'm far more skeptical about the Republican leadership.

A fair point. It also means that the Tea Party movement -- if it becomes successful at achieving power -- is going to need a response to the charge that it is intending to wage war on the poor. All of the things it wants to do involve restoring the government to its constitutionally-specified role; this includes dismantling the social-welfare state, at least at the Federal level.

There's nothing in the Constitution that prevents the states from running any kind of socialist program they want; that's a 10th Amendment issue. Is that the right response? "No, we're fine with you doing whatever you want for the poor at the state level, so long as you understand I'll be moving my business to a state that doesn't require me to pay confiscatory taxes. But anything you find that you can do for them, funded with such taxes as you can confiscate from those who cannot or will not move, go ahead and do."

It seems that globalization hates socialism; we can always move our business to somewhere cheaper! There are some advantages to remaining inside the United States, of course, but these turn out to have limits: for example, the advantage of easy access to markets can be overcome if transportation costs are cheap enough; the advantage of peace and good order can be overcome if the place we move to is willing for us to fund our own security services (and undermined by the increased efforts of our Federal government to act as a corporate shakedown racket).

Part of the answer, then, may be practical and budgetary: we have to make these changes, like it or not. Part is doctrinal, or legal: we ought to restore the idea of Constitutional limits to the central place in our public life. And part is a concession, so as to let the world make our argument for us: do what you can at the state level, freely, understanding that you'll be paying for it by having businesses flee you.

Sports metaphor

Sports as a Metaphor for Life:

Southern Appeal:

Here’s the New York Times article documenting the president’s pick, the Colts.

(Update: Joe in the combox points out that over a week earlier the President had apparently picked the Saints to win as well. So, ESPN is both wrong and right, and the President predicted both correctly and incorrectly. Just like in Neoplatonism, all apparent contradictions dissipate in the being of the One.)

Dennis the Peasant:

But the classic line in all this nonsense is this:

“While he’s been very clear that he supports the House and Senate bills, if Republicans or anyone else has a plan for protecting Americans from insurance company abuses, lowering costs, reducing prescription drug prices for seniors, making coverage more secure, and offering affordable options to those without coverage, he’s anxious to see it and debate the merits of it,” the White House official said.

Both of them? Both of them? How in the world can you support both of them? This is leadership?

Of course it is. The president has always supported the House or the Senate bill, or anything else that could pass.

Super Bowl Thread:

Peyton Manning is a fine young man, I have family connections to the University of Tennessee where he became famous, and the wife is from Indiana; but the Saints are surely the underdog, having never before seen a Super Bowl from the inside. So, I shall be a friend to the weaker party, as Ivanhoe's Richard the Lionheart avowed was always the duty of a true knight.

Good luck, Saints.

UPDATE: Congratulations, champions.

Since music seems to be the topic today, I came across this item.

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

I wonder what they'd think of Johnny:

But then, maybe he had some idea, because he did come armed.

A Boy Leaves Home

A Boy Leaves Home:

In this scene from La Nef's "Perceval: La Quete Du Graal", Perceval asks his mother to get him something to eat... for he is leaving her, to follow a roving band of knights.

In the Lost Forest - Dans la f...

The opera is worked around an old Irish ballad, "The Star of the County Down." It is a rollicking piece when it is done as a folk song; but La Nef is probably right to think of it as something older. The tune is simple, and beautiful, and has probably lived long past the time that men can remember where its fountainhead lays.

Here is the folk song:



And here the opera's version:

In the Lost Forest - Dans la f...

Sir Perceval is originally the knight who finds the Holy Grail. In later versions it was Galahad, Lancelot's son, who did: a perfect knight, without flaw inside or out. We have lately discussed how Galahad borders on blasphemy; but Sir Perceval has no such troubles. He is full of flaws, and misunderstanding, but at last brings the quest to a close. "You have wars you hardly win, and souls you hardly save."

Perceval's Oath - Le Serment d...

In Sir Thomas Malory's version, Perceval's sister is the exemplar of true virtue. She readily lays down her life to save a wicked lady who has preserved herself only by slaughtering maidens to drink their blood: but so little cares Perceval's sister for this world that she gives her blood freely, to save even a wicked life. I reflect on how such spiritual generosity might prepare one well for the next world, but poorly serves this one. Such kindness to the cruel and the wicked only empowers them. It is better to strike them down: the Bible says that God reserves vengeance to himself, but perhaps he might forgive us. What otherwise are we for, and what chivalry, and what justice?

Perhaps only to be forgiven; but, by God, to be forgiven for something.

Professor of Law

Professor of Law:

The lady gives him too much credit. It was not expertise in the law that led him to bait the Supreme Court before the unified Congress.

Instapunk is in despair.

Now, I tend to think Instapunk has been overwrought of late, but he's got a point here.

I want to know how the President says "Peace Corps" now.

Intellectual my ass.

Play Deguello

Play Deguello:

The end is nigh.

Press does not know economics

Press: Actually, We Haven't The Slightest Idea What's Up With The Economy

For several months, every time an unemployment report showed unemployment remaining high or going up, the press reported it as happening "unexpectedly." That suggests that the expectation was that unemployment would go down, right? I mean, we spent all this TARP and stimulus money.

Today, good news on unemployment: it seems to have declined slightly. What's the press' reaction? How unexpected!

Come on, guys. Just admit that you have no real expectations, because you haven't any idea at all what's going on. It's OK: we know. Just report the facts, and quit trying to act like you understand the facts. People who were paid millions of dollars a year to predict the course of the economy blew it; there's no reason you should be expected to act as an oracle here either. Just say, "Unemployment is now at X%, up/down Y% from the last report." We'll be OK with that.

Nashville

Nashville:

Looks like fun.



As much as I like a kilt, though, I'm not sure it's all that effective as a political ploy.

One of the things that the media is making a big deal about is that this is a for-profit movement. That shouldn't be considered a negative: it should scare the crap out of the existing political class.

This removes one of the main obstacles to success for conservatives: normally having a full-time job, they can devote very little time to politics. Even though they have money to support such a 'habit,' they can't leave off their job for a year every two years to help contest the face of Congress.

If it proves that you can make a profit fighting for small government, though, a whole lot more people are suddenly free to do that full time.

The scariest thing in the world for the political class ought to be a for-profit movement to reform the government. That means it is a movement that is genuinely sustainable: it won't run out of money, because it's making money.

Wallop The Cat

The Beatings Will Improve Morale:

According to my morning's email, Tartanic has agreed to come down to play in Georgia for the first time. Who is Tartanic, you ask? They're not the band that likes to beat on cats.

They're the band that likes to beat on knights. (At least, those with a sense of humor.)



Should be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, once the long winter is over and the spring has finally come. Ded Bob will be there, too.

Art & Duty

Art & Duty:

What do we make of a case like this? (H/t: Arts & Letters Daily.)

[Children's book author Remi] chose to spend the war in his German-occupied homeland, where he continued to work unmolested, thanks to longtime links to right-wing figures. The help of powerful collaborators enabled him to publish new adventures in spite of a severe wartime paper shortage. Most damningly, he accepted work with a Belgian newspaper, Le Soir, which had been confiscated by the authorities to serve as a propaganda organ. The German-controlled paper published, among other things, defenses of fascism and anti-Semitic screeds. Hergé’s cartoons provided a great boost to the paper’s popularity in the face of a boycott of its pages by many well-known Belgian writers and artists. Indeed, his role led the resistance, on the eve of the liberation, to brand him one of the forty leading journalist collaborators....

Even as a collaborator, Remi was relatively innocuous. His worst crime was going along where he ought to have resisted. He is a study not in the banality of evil but simply in the banality of the banal.

A citizen has a duty to defend his nation, but it's worth remembering how quickly the Belgian government collapsed. Indeed, the whole war gets one sentence in the Wikipedia article on Belgium: "The country was again invaded by Germany in 1940 during the Blitzkrieg offensive and occupied until its liberation in 1945 by the Allies." That's the whole war, right there, from the perspective of Belgium. Notice that the sentence is in the passive voice -- Belgium "was invaded... and occupied" until it 'was liberated.'

So, if the government collapses entirely, and there is now lawful army nor authority to which you might apply as a defender of your country, what really is your duty as a citizen? I think we might say that, in such cases, a man who is inclined to fight in the resistance might be praised for his courage -- but he is praiseworthy because he is doing more than his duty requires.

The laws of war, meanwhile, will not necessarily recognize him as a lawful combatant. Depending on his mode of fighting, he may be committing what are technically war crimes. Some of what the French resistance did was clearly against the laws of war, such as shooting soldiers while pretending to be civilians. We excuse this because they were Nazi soldiers, but the action is a war crime all the same. It undermines the principle of noncombatant immunity just as much when the French did it as when the Taliban does.

Finally, from the perspective of a Belgian, this was hardly the first time this had happened! The French and German governments had been invading each other since Napoleon's day. Joining the resistance to the German occupation, in any of these previous wars, was likely to lead only to French occupation instead of German. One can imagine a quiet-minded man, the sort who likes to sit and write children's books, for not feeling like he wanted to get killed over the ping-pong game of two poweful neighbors. 'Fine, let them fight each other if they must! I'll carry on with my books.'

All that would be fairly satisfying, if the Germany of the 1940s had not been Nazi Germany. Had it been simply a resurgent Imperial Germany, bent on reasserting German pride and claims, and revenging itself on France -- but not on extermination of peoples nor racist totalitarianism -- we could say that he had no further duty but to sit out the war. His country was caught between two powerful neighbors who were always fighting; there was no lawful army he might join, since his government had collapsed, and the resistance there was had chosen to fight in sometimes unlawful ways; and fighting against one of his country's neighbors would probably only lead to a new occupation by the other. Bad times, you might say, and let it go: except for the matter of evil.

A citizen needs only to defend his nation, but a gentleman has a duty to defend his civilization. Countries come and go, and governments; but evil is eternal, and we must always resist it. An artist, specially placed to be able to resist in powerful but subtle and nonviolent ways, is not excused from this duty. If anything, his power gives him a special duty.

Heh. Just Heh.

I have a couple friends like this guy.

It's good to have friends.

Shut Them Out

Shut Them Out:

The Politico reports:

President Obama's back is against the wall, so he's getting in touch with his inner Agnew, hitting the neo-nattering nabobs of cable and the net.

“If we could just -- excuse the press -- turn off the cameras," he told Democratic Senators at their annual retreat. "Turn off your CNN, your FOX, your MSNBC, your blogs, turn off this echo chamber … where the topic is politics. … We’ve got to get out of the echo chamber.

Why would this be so important to his agenda? Well, stories like this one.

With the developments in Illinois and Indiana over the past 24 hours, the Cook Political Report now carries 10 Democratic-held seats in their most competitive categories -- meaning, theoretically, that if Republicans ran the table (and lost none of their own toss up seats in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio) they could get to 51 seats and the Senate majority.

Also this one, which demonstrates that a key myth that members of the Democratic Congress have been telling themselves is false: passing health care won't save them in November. That's got to be discouraging.

The fear that reality might scare people out of 'voting the right way' may not be all that's in play. Consider this poll, and confer it with this one from before the election.

What we see in every case is that Democrats, and also groups likely to vote democratic in disproportionate levels, have less actual knowledge about the world.

That may be a correlation, not a causation; but just in case, I can see why the President wouldn't want to take the chance!

Easy = True

Easy = True:

The Boston Globe has a story about how the brain handles difficulty. Short version: it's very suspicious of it.

A handful of scholars have already started to explore the ways that advertisers, educators, political campaigners, or anyone else in the business of persuasion can use these findings. And some of the implications are surprising. For example, to get people to think through a question, it may be best to present it less clearly. And to boost your self-confidence, you may want to set out to write a dauntingly long list of all the reasons why you’re a failure.

Our sensitivity to - and affinity for - fluency is an adaptive shortcut. According to psychologists, it helps us apportion limited mental resources in a world where lots of things clamor for our attention and we have to quickly figure out which are worth thinking about.

Most of the time, the shortcut works pretty well....

Our bias for the familiar, however, can be triggered in settings where there’s little purpose to it. In the 1960s, Zajonc did a series of experiments that uncovered what he dubbed the “mere exposure” effect: He found that, with stimuli ranging from nonsense words to abstract geometric patterns to images of faces to Chinese ideographs (the test subjects, being non-Chinese speakers, didn’t know what the ideographs meant), all it took to get people to say they liked certain ones more than others was to present them multiple times.

More recent work suggests that people assign all sorts of specific characteristics to things that feel familiar. Like beauty. Psychologists have identified what they call the “beauty-in-averageness” effect - when asked to identify the most attractive example of something, people tend to choose the most prototypical option. For example, when asked to identify the most appealing of a group of human faces, people choose the one that is a composite of all the others....

One thing that fools us, for example, is font. When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re reading about. Schwarz and his former student Hyunjin Song have found that when people read about an exercise regimen or a recipe in a less legible font, they tend to rate the exercise regimen more difficult and the recipe more complicated than if they read about them in a clearer font.

This is part of why J. R. R. Tolkien has had such an outsized effect on culture versus, say, analytic philosophers like Williamson (below). Tolkien was no less intellectual. He knew deep things about the roots of languages, and the magic that underlies them.

What he could do was take that knowledge and present it as a story. It was easy to join the story, and easy to follow it; and at the end, you had gone where he wanted to take you.

This is important to remember.

Putnam's Example

Putnam's Example:

We've been discussing Williamson's epistemology in the comments to a post below. The book is actually available online, if any of you are interested in considering his ideas in a more in-depth way.

One of his examples reminds me of this whole spending/belt-tightening thing. Can you explain to me how it is that, having just said you were going to make hard choices and tighten the government belt, you've instead presented a budget of massively increased spending and debt?

"Putnam's example," captured on page 76, is just this sort of problem:

Professor X is found stark naked in the girls' dormitory at 12 midnight. Explanation: (?) He was stark naked in the girls' dormitory at midnight -ε, and he could neither leave the dormitory nor put on his clothes by midnight without exceeding the speed of light. But (covering law:) nothing (no professor, anyhow) can travel faster than light.

So, how did you promise belt-tightening but deliver an orgy? 'Well, we wrote out the budgetary bill, and we made the required number of photocopies, and then it was sent down in a van along with an escort to ensure that it arrived in an undisturbed form before the proper Congressional officials.'

Yes, indeed, professor, that does offer a complete explanation. Except...

Shorter than usual

Shorter Than Usual:

Didn't we just hear the President say that government needed to tighten it's belt?

Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.

That was just a few days ago, right? I mean, not even a week.

Released to Congress Monday morning, the president’s spending plan anticipates $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next five years and seems almost a cry for help in the face of what he sees as intransigent Republican opposition.

If it's a cry for help, it may be a cry for some other kind of help.

I can understand how you can believe two different, contradictory things. It can happen because there is no context that causes you to reflect on the fact tha these two principles you believe are actually in contradiction. It can also be an act of will: presumably at least some people who shoplift believe they are doing something wrong, but do it anyway because they put aside the sense of the wrongness in return for the immediate need or desire that they are gratifying. Doubtless you can both believe that it is wrong to drink to excess, and also "...believe I'll have another drink."

Still, this seems unusually abrubt and sharp. It's as if he said what he said in the hope that you wouldn't notice that he's doing what he's doing. It's the opposite of Clinton-style triangulation: instead of figuring out where the middle is and going there, you try to satisfy one side through speech, and the other side through action.

As long as the people you're trying to satisfy through speech don't realize you're playing them for suckers, that should work just fine. Only one problem: it's already too late to hope they won't realize.

The Sun, Moon, And Stars:

The Cherry Tree Carol - The Ba...

"...shall sail under thy feet."

CPR

New CPR Method:

I have to admit, since this came from DL Sly, that I didn't look it at first in the assumption that it was a joke of some sort. That proves not to be the case; it is a method of lifesaving, which sounds reasonable on its face.



Something to consider, that you might better do your duty to be prepared to help those in great need.

GHBC 24-33

Grim's Hall Book Club: Bendigo Shafter, Chapters 24-33

Two things happen at the beginning of this section that are of special interest. The first is the letters that Ben gets while he is on his cattle drive. The second is his conversation with Henry Stratton, whose function in the story is to give an outside perspective on the town.

The letters move the plot substantially, but the conversation with Stratton is an interesting one. Stratton is a man of experience, a "watcher" who does not get involved in local affairs but who is capable of handling himself. He gives a verdict on the town: he does not think it will survive, or that it ought to survive.

Ben's reaction is to say, "A mistake is really only a mistake if you persist in it." Stratton avows that is a "rather profound remark."

In spite of this, at least for the moment Ben seems ready to double down on the town. He enters the election for Marshall, wins it, and begins to clean up the bad element that has entered his town. He buys a printing press, and obtains a contract to cut logs for the railroad. They settle in for a second winter.

The section ends with him being attacked by a mountain lion during a hunt for meat, and the aftermath of that attack. He is continuing to read everything he can find -- including newspapers, which give him a grounding in the greater world around him, to go with the deep historical perspective he has begun to gain from Great Books.

He begins to consider not just reading but writing: to add to the store of wisdom, now that he has a few things to say.

Questions for discussion:

1) Do you think that the town is a mistake? How long should he persist in it, if it is? How would you know when to cut loose?

2) This is an interesting account of writing. We teach children today to write fairly early, but Ben is only just about to start. He has an extraordinary experience of the world to inform his writing, though: rescuing children from a snowstorm, building houses, hunting elk, fighting mountain lions, a cattle drive, and being marshal of a small town. Louis L'amour himself was like this too. He read stories and lived stories for a long time before he began to tell stories.

How important is having something to say to being a good writer? In educating our children, should we focus less on teaching them to write, and more on making sure they have experiences that give them something to write about?

Klaven/Culture

Fantasy v. Reality:

I thought this video had some good points. Especially about 'Our old pal, the sacred Earth.' Not that the earth isn't sacred.... just as much as we are.

On Love

On Love:

Our last discussion on Chaucer took an emphatic, and unexpected, turn in the comments. For that reason I'd like to refer to this piece from the Nation on the subject of love.

It mentions feminism, but I'm not at all interested in what the author has to say about that subject. I am interested in the debate with C. S. Lewis.

Lewis considered Ovid to have written the Ars Amatoria as an "amusement," an "ironically didactic" poem that "presupposes an audience to whom love is one of the minor peccadilloes of life, and the joke consists in treating it seriously." Nehring describes Ovid's work as a "first-century self-help book" as well as "the first dating book ever written," though she recognizes that the "rambunctious" Ovid was "forever making fun." She points not to Lewis but unnamed "modern-day editors" who consider the work a "'tongue-in-cheek' parody." She asserts that "Ovid takes his subject seriously," and whether or not he did, it seems worth noting what Lewis sees as the distinction between Ovid's perspective and the troubadours'. According to Lewis, the "conduct which Ovid recommends is felt to be shameful and absurd," but

the very same conduct which Ovid ironically recommended could be recommended seriously by the courtly tradition. To leap up on errands, to go through heat or cold, at the bidding of one's lady, or even of any lady, would seem but honourable and natural to a gentleman of the thirteenth century or even of the seventeenth century[.]

That love as we know it had been invented by these poets was important, Lewis argued, because that meant it was no product of human nature. What goes one way can go the other; and Lewis warned that love might not survive. There is reason to think we might be living at the end of its life even now.

"Real changes in human sentiment are very rare--there are perhaps three or four on record--but I believe that they occur, and that this is one of them," Lewis ventures. Earlier he reminds us that "it seems to us natural that love should be the commonest theme of serious imaginative literature: but a glance at classical antiquity or at the Dark Ages at once shows us that what we took for 'nature' is really a special state of affairs, which will probably have an end."

Sixty years later, in The End of the Novel of Love (1997), the critic Vivian Gornick argued that what Lewis prophesied had finally come to pass. When Gornick was a girl, she recalls, the whole world believed in love. This was the Bronx, New York City, sometime around World War II. The mothers had various advice for their daughters about the nature of love and its embodiments of greater or lesser disappointment, but whatever their admonishments, "love" itself was the creed, a simple operating principle in an unpredictable world. "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man"; "Don't do like I did. Marry a man you love"; "You're smart, make something of yourself, but always remember, love is the most important thing in a woman's life."

When Gornick was a girl, love wasn't just meaningful--it was the quality that gave life meaning.

The author of the book being reviewed takes a substantial beating from her critic, and it seems she deserves much of it. Her ignorance of C. S. Lewis' argument, when she undertook to dress him down, is the sort of thing that merits an academic beating. (I read another such review recently, Francis Lee Utley's "Chaucer and Patristic Expressions," which reviews D. W. Robertson's A Preface to Chaucer. Utley remarks, "[O]ne is tempted to dismiss it simply as a strange hodgepodge of patristics and puzzle-solving, insulting to the community of scholars and, indeed, to the twentieth century itself." Well, and doubtless it was partly that; the question is whether the twentieth century merited the insult.)

Yet our critic is sympathetic to the author's basic view that modern relationships are not love at all, being bland and "safety-checked," and lacking the heroic quality. The critic ends by asking to be 'signed up' for such a cult of love as once ruled the West, and now survives only in certain echoes.

We should embrace love, she tells us, as ecstatic, risky, transgressive, unequal and perhaps violent. It is, she has said, a faith, a demon and a divine madness, but the suffering it induces may be the crucible in which we refine our souls.

That vision is just the one I endorse. Tom asked if I might be mad to do so. Well, indeed I might be. A man who follows love may well go mad -- it is one of the most regularly repeated features of the tales. That may be part of the point.

The critic is right to say that the vision wasn't Ovid's, but that it very much was the troubadour's. Lewis was right, I fear, to say that it was a vision that might die. Yet it need not die; it lies in our power to save it, if we dare.

Jim Webb

Jim Webb For President?

Back when he was first running for Senator, I supported Jim Webb. I admired him for his career of service and for his book Born Fighting, which offers a remarkable account of the contribution of the Scots-Irish to the United States of America.

Since his election, I've taken a lot of heat from those of you who didn't support him, and probably rightly so. He hasn't exactly been what I had hoped to see him become, which was a second Zell Miller: we had every reason to hope that he might likewise stand up for Jacksonian principles and the dignity of the conservative Democrat, but instead we've seen some very odd behavior. I don't have a good explanation for how a man of distinguished service, and an insightful author, should prove to be so apparently unstable and unreliable. He has done some good things in Washington, too, like his work on his G. I. bill, but I can't say that I'm as happy with him as I had hoped to be when I supported his candidacy.

So now word comes that the Senator from Virginia is bedeviling President Obama, and that suggests he may be interested in a primary challenge. My thoughts on this are these:

1) Sen. Webb, in spite of his strange behavior, might still represent an improvement. His patriotism and love of country are undeniable, and he would clearly support the nation's interests in foreign policy.

However,

2) His actions over the last few years suggest a certain instability that makes me wonder if he is genuinely fit for the office. Since he would have a full two terms to serve, whereas a re-elected Obama would have only one, there is a concern that his primary challenge might actually succeed.

If I still thought he was the man that I thought he was in 2006, I would be enthusiastic about his candidacy. Now, I'm not even sure if I feel it is a good idea to support him in a primary run against President Obama. Most likely I would, but I have strong reservations about doing so.

What do you think?

Really?

Really?

Wasn't this story in the Onion a few months ago?

The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday[.]

I thought this was a joke when I saw it. "Ha, ha! I get it! Obama thinks the government should be involved in everything! Sure seems that way, but..."

No, really. College football. It is apparently critical that the US Department of Justice spend time making sure there is an equitable outcome in the ranking of college football teams.

Pop quiz: Which Founding Father was it who said that Federal government would ensure just outcomes in every aspect of life?

Public Choices, Public Money

Money and Choice:

If I'm paying for something, I get to be in charge of how that thing is delivered. Right? Yes, if and only if I am in the market. Once government gets involved... no, they choose.

Consider the following clip, in which Reason's Nick Gillespie has a clash with a very energetic woman who is outraged that he doesn't want the government to step in between us and our kids.



Now, he makes a convincing argument that this is a very good reason to abolish socialized medicine as a concept, and find ways to phase out Medicare and Medicaid over time. Yet I'm not sure he's completely correct to say that the government will use control of the purse to force us to abandon unhealthy behaviors.

For example, what it came to our attention that someone drinks a lot of booze?

Maker's Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey's Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey … and Corona beer.

But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for "in-flight services" – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That's almost $1,000 per week.

Now, not every penny of that grand-a-week is booze, but there's quite a lot of expensive stuff on that list. Who's paying for it? The government.

Does anyone think the government is going to step in and force Speaker Pelosi to, ah, cut back a bit?

Of course not. She's an important figure in the Inner Party. But surely the rest of us will receive similar treatment?

If I had time I'd write a near-future science fiction novel where all these government benefits prove to be un-cuttable. Rather than forcing us to adopt slimmer lifestyles, it's easier simply to start behaving like the Empire we're always accused of being: using our military might to force other nations to pay tribute to support our benefit programs here at home.

Prophecy and Global Warming

Prophecy in the Modern Age: Economics and Global Warming

Nassim Taleb speaks of a kind of statistical modeling that cannot work. It is what he calls "the Fourth Quadrant." There are three others; they are arranged on a square grid. In the first and third quadrants, decisions are binary: yes or no. In the first and second quadrants, there is very little difference from the mean. That is to say, if you say 'yes' and you are wrong, or if you say 'no' and are wrong, the consequences are not that very different from if you were right.

So, in the third quadrant, there is a great difference between being right and being wrong: but you have a simple, binary decision. Yes, or no.

In the fourth quadrant, the decisions to be made are complex, and also the difference in being right or wrong is great. Mankind does not know how to build models that work in this place, Taleb says. There are two reasons why. The first is that we cannot imagine everything that might affect the model: if we are building a model of the economy, what if there are massive snows that year? How does the model compute the possibility, and account for the costs to production of having various roads closed? Did you even think to include that in your model at all?

The second is that we haven't lived long enough to have reasonable ideas about what probabilities are. If we say that something should happen 'once in a century,' how do we know? By looking at how often that thing has happened before, of course. But how many centuries have we had an industrial society? Less than two? Six, if you are very generous? We have nothing like the data set we'd need to build truly accurate models.

As a result, he says, when you are in the Fourth Quadrant you must stop making models. They don't work, and they can't work. We don't have adequate imaginations to work in every possibility; and even when we successfully imagine the possibilities, we don't have adequate experience to know how to compute the real odds of the thing occurring.

So, we must stop making models in this area: wherever there are complex decisions, and the range of possible outcomes is large.

Taleb has been writing about economics, but it works very well for climate change.

All those models of how the climate works? If Taleb is right, every single one of them is necessarily wrong. His theory, if correct, is a sufficient condition for discarding every single one of them.

People hate this. "All you're telling us is that our models are bad, but we still have to make decisions," they say. "Tell us how to make better models." But he can't do that; the thing to be learned is that no model can work at all here. Prophecy is not to be trusted.

At the least, we must say that we have absolutely no idea whether the models are correct -- nor even a capacity for guessing how likely it is that they are correct.

The whole environmentalist movement is based on Fourth Quadrant models. Rationality says that, unless someone can demonstrate that Taleb is wrong -- and I cannot see any way in which that could be demonstrated even in theory -- we must set every one of those models aside. They are necessarily unreliable, and cannot guide us.

Congratulations to Doc Russia

Congratulations, Doc!

May very great good cheer, and even greater good fortune, follow you and your newborn daughter. He writes:

And before I forget, let me fail to describe what I experienced when I first held her in my arms. Something happened. I cannot describe it, but it was like something reached up out of nothingness, grabbed my very existence and shook it awake.

Now here, at least, is a man who fell in love at the first sight of a girl whose rightness is certain. Hail the young lady, and welcome!

By the way, Doc, what did you decide to name her? You didn't say, although given the lack of sleep that I recall from my own first few weeks as a new father, that's quite understandable.

UPDATE: We raised a toast in the hall tonight to you and yours, Doc. One of us toasted with Hi-C, but I trust you will understand and not mind.

Nightingales: Lo Sodard - The ...

To the lady.