Courtship Rite

Threats or Promises?

As the November elections approach, we hear a good deal of doubt about whether they can be expected to make a difference, or whether the new pols will fall prey to the same temptations as the old once in office. I worry a lot, as do many, about whether you can make a democracy work when a slim majority can vote to require the slim minority supply their material needs, or when a politician's best chance of being elected is to promise short-term perks no matter the long-term consequences. Then this week's controversy erupted over whether the President did or did not personally guarantee that passing the Stimulus Bill in 2009 would prevent unemployment rates from hitting 9%, and whether that should be construed as a promise or merely an "unenforceable" prediction.

It reminded me of one of my favorite science fiction novels, "Courtship Rite." Part of the setup in this imagined world is that the leader is called the "Prime Predictor," and earns his post not by favoritism or descent but because the predictions he has deposited in the official archives have proved more accurate than those of any of his countrymen. The Prime Predictor presides over a council. Each citizen is given a vote in council proportionate to his personal constituency, defined as those loyal friends whom, on being challenged, he can list by name and detailed concerns. A citizen who can identify no constituency must remain childless or leave the clan.

In this hypothetical society, promising goodies that you can't deliver is instant disaster, as is winning support for a policy by predicting a successful result that does not materialize. It doesn't help to have good explanations for why the predicted result doesn't materialize, unless you accurately predicted the obstacles, too. A side benefit is the imagined society's extreme care taken in the negotiation of contracts, where the emphasis is on finding an agreement that most accurately embodies the expectations of both parties and is highly unlikely to disappoint either. Tricking someone into a bad deal is self-defeating when your political power depends on your public predictions having come true.

Folías de España

Folías de España:

I'll join Eric in giving honor to the Spanish for their victory in soccer, though to my mind the far greater honor is in having inspired this tune.

La Belle Homicide:

There is a particularly awesome version of this on this record, but I see no version online. It is amazing; this video is a small hint of what it manages.

A Lost Bird

From the writings of the Venerable Bede, an analogy from an ancient British pagan. It comes from the period of the conversion of Northumbria, under St. Edwin, king of that land in part of the seventh century. (It happens that I was born on his feast day.) The conversion was by conquest, but the story is a fairly insightful image for thinking about the human condition:

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter amid your officers and ministers, with a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he has emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before of what is to follow we are utterly ignorant.

So the bird flies into our hall, and we see it come; and we see it pass through our hall, lit by our fire; and then it flies out the other end, and we know no more of it. This is like the soul, which comes from who knows where? And where does it go?

G. K. Chesterton had one of his Danes re-tell the story in The Ballad of the White Horse:

‘For this is a heavy matter,
And the truth is cold to tell;
Do we not know, have we not heard,
The soul is like a lost bird,
The body a broken shell.

‘And a man hopes, being ignorant,
Till in white woods apart
He finds at last the lost bird dead;
And a man may still lift up his head
But never more his heart.

Chesterton's version goes beyond the pagan story, which begins and ends in honest mystery: it allows the soul extinguished, even as a concept, by 'cold truth' that comes at the end of 'being ignorant.' Guthram, the great king, has come to believe this. He sings that his wars are waged for no other reason than to try to drive the memory of this thought from his mind.

After his poem, Alfred takes the harp. He sings boldly, but:

And the King, with harp on shoulder,
Stood up and ceased his song;
And the owls moaned from the mighty trees,
And the Danes laughed loud and long.

The first time I read the Ballad of the White Horse, I found this entire book an annoying bit of sermonizing in an otherwise rousing tale of war and adventure. I've come to realize that, instead, this book is the heart of the work.

The Twelfth of July

On the Twelfth of July:

I nearly forgot.



"King Billy" would be William of Orange, who came to fight the Jacobites of the Scottish, Stewart line in their last great stronghold in the year 1689. Later the Scots thought better of it, and gave the Stewarts two more good tries, in 1715 and again, for the famous "Bonny Prince Charlie," in 1745.

Didn't work out. But as the man said: "May have been the losing side; still not convinced it was the wrong side."

World Cup Result.

The round table. Or hall. Or something like that.

Researchers exploring the legend of Britain’s most famous Knight believe his stronghold of Camelot was built on the site of a recently discovered Roman amphitheatre in Chester.

Wisdom and Education

Wisdom and Education:

Here's an article that jumps right into Neo-Platonism as it affects a current debate among scientists.

Is there such a thing as wisdom -- a thing, stuff, an abstract entity -- or are there only wise individuals and wise actions and attitudes, these latter not exclusively the possession of the individuals in question given that even fools can sometimes be wise?

This question is a significant one, because it bears on the enterprise of "wisdom studies," a parallel endeavour to the "happiness studies" now big in the neuropsychologically-informed social sciences. (And there too the question has to be: is there such a thing as happiness, or only happy individuals and happy times and experiences, the latter not the exclusive property of the individuals in question, given that even the gloomiest of us can occasionally be happy?) If you aim to study wisdom, or happiness, presumably in the hope of finding out how we can all be wiser and happier, you had better be clear about the object of study; and, as Stephen S. Hall's Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience shows, that is hard to do.

I am somewhat amused by the persistence of this stumbling block, which was a major issue at the fall of Rome; again, during the return of Aristotle's writings following an early Medieval period dominated by neo-Platonists; again, as we were just discussing the other day, at the beginning of the Renaissance; again, in the nineteenth century when many of our ideas about language were being re-examined, and some of the old ideas of Peter Abelard were being independently rediscovered by men like Gottlob Frege; at several points in the 20th Century; and again, now.

In other words, it's one of the eternal stumbling blocks of philosophy: a basic metaphysical claim that both scientists and philosophers continue to dispute. Nor is this a "science v. philosophy" issue: there are scientists on both sides, and philosophers on both sides.

Science might be expected to shed some light on this question, and sometimes it seems like it is going to do so in a very helpful way. It may yet! Consider anger:

Lixing Sun, a professor of biology at Central Washington University, thinks we have a "fairness instinct." And he may be right. He maintains that high on the roster of human propensities is a "Robin Hood mentality" that characterizes our species and qualifies as one of those "mental modules" that evolutionary psychologists consider part of our likely biological inheritance. If so, our fairness instinct goes far beyond the pleasure we take in romantic tales of medieval Merry Men adventuring in Sherwood Forest. Sun believes that despite the fact of our specieswide social and economic disparities—perhaps in part because of them—human beings are endowed (or burdened) with an acute sensitivity to "who is getting how much," in particular a deft attunement to whether anyone else is getting more or less than one's self.

In a much-noted laboratory experiment several years ago, described in the report "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay," the primatologists Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de Waal trained capuchin monkeys to perform a certain task for which they received cucumber slices. The monkeys performed just fine, until they were permitted to see others being rewarded with grapes, a higher-value payment. Previously acquiescent, many of the cucumber-receivers promptly stopped participating, sometimes even throwing those measly, unfair cucumber payments out of their cage.

So: that suggests a neo-Platonist position, does it not? After all, monkeys are expressing "anger" over "unfairness" in just the same way as their not-very-close relatives, humanity. This suggests there might be some real set of qualities that capture "fairness," and that perhaps we can build systems to ensure these outcomes.

The problem is that the split isn't over data, but over how we interpret data. So, if I am instead a Nominalist -- that is, I don't think that "wisdom" or "fairness" are real, but just names -- I can point out that we humans are doing the observation and naming in both cases. Thus, you're just as free to be a Nominalist about this data. There's only one category, after all; and humans are making the rules about what data to include in that category.

If that's the case, then it's not clear that we could capture what "fairness" really is; indeed, by including the different case of monkeys in the category, we may be making it impossible to get at a system that approaches human ideals. (A system that ensured all people got equal numbers of grapes and cucumbers would not be very satisfying to humanity! We would prefer a choice.)

Here is one of the basic splits in our understanding of reality, then. Which of you are Realists, and which Nominalists? Don't be surprised if one position seems entirely and obviously correct to you, and the other preposterous on its face: that has very often been the case, for adherents on both sides, across the centuries.

Another good question, then: Why have so many smart people been so unable to see the reasons that so many other smart people have favored the other position?

Europe and Women

Europe and Women: A Day in the Life

Cassandra notes a story wherein France stands up for its vision of what a woman's rights are, and should be. As comments note, that right does not include the religious freedom to choose to veil in public; but it does include a freedom from being forced to do so. While not "optimal," as Mr. Axlerod might say, it's better than nothing.

Switzerland, however, has freed Roman Polanski. Their reasons for doing so appear to be that the US Justice Department did not correctly handle the Swiss legal procedure, by failing to properly answer Polanski's claim that he had already served his agreed upon sentence of 42 days of "observation." I'm sure that he did not enjoy his month and a half in jail. The fact is, however, that his offense included raping and forcibly sodomizing a girl who was not only smaller and weaker than him, and not merely a minor while he was an adult, but whom he also had weakened by giving her drugs and alcohol.

The law is rarely just, however, and this case may well have been decided upon the law. I suppose we're meant to feel good about that.

Spatial Thinking

Android Dreams

From Vanderleun, this Smithsonian article about imposing virtual maps on sensory input:

Hold an electronic tablet up as you walk along a street, and it will show an annotated overlay of the real street ahead—where the clean restrooms are, which stores sell your favorite items, where your friends are hanging out. Computer chips are becoming so small, and screens so thin and cheap, that in the next 40 years semi­transparent eyeglasses will apply an informational layer to reality. If you pick up an object while peering through these spectacles, the object’s (or place’s) essential information will appear in overlay text. In this way screens will enable us to “read” everything, not just text. Last year alone, five quintillion (10 to the power of 18) transistors were embedded into objects other than computers. Very soon most manufactured items, from shoes to cans of soup, will contain a small sliver of dim intelligence, and screens will be the tool we use to interact with this transistorized information.

iPhone already has apps that create overlays on reality in very handy ways. One is an app that listens to a song on the radio and tells you what it is, which I consider pure magic I've been waiting for all my life. Even better, there is an app that can identify a tune that's being hummed in the roughest and most incompetent way.

I thought there was another app that lets you point the screen at the night sky and see a superimposed constellation map, but it turns out it really uses your GPS-determined location to load a map of the sky you ought to be looking at, rather operating directly off of the visual input. Pretty nifty anyway.

The Smithsonian article also offers this view of the increased powers of intellectual synthesis that may result from web-surfing:

Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more utilitarian thinking. A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do something: to research the term, to query your screen “friends” for their opinions, to find alternative views, to create a bookmark, to interact with or tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it. Book reading strengthened our analytical skills, encouraging us to pursue an observation all the way down to the footnote. Screen reading encourages rapid pattern-making, associating this idea with another, equipping us to deal with the thousands of new thoughts expressed every day.

My own experience is that following links sometimes fragments my attention and leads me down rabbit holes, but it also encourages me to connect many ideas I might not otherwise have done. I suppose there's the danger of turning into one of those guys who's always muttering about how "it's all part of the pattern: the Freemasons, Obama's birth certificate, fluoridation."

Hooray!

Good news.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7883874/Historians-locate-King-Arthurs-Round-Table.html

Church Music

The Wedding Feast

Here's something from Assistant Village Idiot that reminded me of what we were talking about the other day, the metaphor of music or dance as Heaven:

One of my repeated themes of the last year is that worship is not something we create on Sunday mornings. Worship is going on all the time in heaven, and our worship is an attempt to connect with that - to become part of it, learn the steps and the songs. If you remember the descriptions of heaven as a wedding feast, then the idea of learning all those line dances, preparing for the songs that have special meanings at various parts of the ceremony, and looking forward to drinking almost too much except now you actually have good judgment, can begin to see how the combination of pentecostal enthusiasm and liturgical familiarity might work.

The Anchoress (h/t Little Miss Atilla) hosted a long discussion the other day about the role of music in church services, during which lots of people got to air their frustrations with the trend in hymns in the last forty years or so. The point of the article was to ask readers to identify their ten most-hated hymns, but a lot of the discussion was equally about why some music works better than others. (I was surprised to hear that even what I think of as traditional old Episcopal hymns were a hotbed of heresy from the point of view of Catholics, but there you are! My education in most of what separates Catholics from Episcopalians is spotty, aside from obvious things like the authority of the Pope.)

Salute!

Let us Render a Proper Salute!

I saw this photo over at the Cold Steel Blog.



Like you, I assumed he was planning on cleaning that boar with that knife.

Nope. That's what he killed it with.

One of these:



Now that's a man.

Adjuncts

The Adjunct Professor:

Grade inflation continues apace, but the amount of time students spend studying continues to fall across the board. Some theories as to why this may be the case include this:

Mother Jones commenter Lisa argues, "Rise in numbers of temporary, adjunct faculty, who teach many, many courses, and are terribly vulnerable to course evaluations (that's me, by the way). One can only assign so much work and expect to be invited back to teach -- plus, if you assign it, you have to read it and/or grade it yourself, which, when you're teaching four or five classes on multiple campuses, becomes impossible. This has become the bulk of university teaching[.]"

How vulnerable are adjunct professors to student comments? So vulnerable that a professor of Catholic studies can be fired for teaching Catholic doctrine:

The University of Illinois has fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech by saying he agrees with the church’s teaching that homosexual sex is immoral.

The professor, Ken Howell of Champaign, said his firing violates his academic freedom. He also lost his job at an on-campus Catholic center.

Howell, who taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought, says he was fired at the end of the spring semester after sending an e-mail explaining some Catholic beliefs to his students preparing for an exam.

His email has been published for consideration. It's not great as a teaching tool -- it's generally not good academic practice to say things like, "I won't go into details here but a survey of the last few centuries reveals..." in academic discourse. Cite your sources!

On the other hand, (a) he is teaching a Catholic doctrine, as a professor of Catholic studies, and he's broadly correct about the doctrine; and (b) he raises some good points about some bad thinking prominent in current American thought. It really is the case that we, as a culture, have trouble separating people and actions. We see this all the time; if a Bill Clinton does something wrong, rather than saying that we approve of him in spite of his misdeed (which we condemn), we say either that the misdeed proves he is a wicked man outright; or we rush to find a way to explain his misdeed so that it isn't wrong at all. Just a few examples I remember hearing at the time: 'He was just being a gentleman in committing perjury to protect a young woman's reputation'; 'He was under a lot of stress from all the good he was doing'; 'She was a stalker, so it was really the fault of the person I don't approve of instead of the one I do'; 'It was a private matter that should not be subject to public moral evaluation.'

That approach to moral thought impoverishes us, as we lose the ability to condemn even clear wrongs like perjury and adultery. We all remember the rush of the feminist leadership to stand with Bill Clinton, and smooth away the faults of his betrayal of his wife and abusive advantage-taking of a young woman awed by his power and position. It is just as harmful from the other side, however: those who use the misdeed to condemn the whole man end up missing his good qualities. I was guilty of this myself; with time to reflect, his positive qualities have become more apparent.

Honest attempts at teaching that kind of lesson to college students, who are still young enough to be full of fire -- likely to rage, at times, against things they don't like to hear -- means you will occasionally draw some negative comments. These may be quite fiery. Yet this is what tenure was for: to ensure that one could honestly teach even controversial positions without fear for losing one's job.

Tenure led to some 'untenable' consequences, especially in terms of finances, but it needs to be replaced with something that protects this basic idea. If we've come to the place that a Catholic professor of Catholic studies teaching an introduction to Catholic thinking can be fired for expressing Catholic doctrine, we've gone too far. Students were supposed to be challenged to think about these principles, not have their own prejudices catered to by the professor. If it were a Muslim professor of Islamic studies teaching an introduction to Islam, we wouldn't think of firing him for expressing agreement with some point of shariah, and nor should we. If we want to learn about why people believe in shariah and are willing to structure their lives around it, we need honest teachers.

It would also help if students weren't so convinced that the professor's job is to give them A's while making them comfortable. Since it's unlikely we will persuade the students to feel that way, however, the next best thing is to ensure that professors who hold them to high standards -- and who make real attempts to teach controversial or difficult subjects -- will not be fired for doing what is, in fact, their job.

A Revolutionary Battle

A Revolutionary Battle:

Via Red State.

A Kindred Spirit?

A Kindred Spirit?

My Chinese is still good enough to recognize that the first two characters read "Middle Ages." It's a collection of medieval music, apparently from a Chinese speaker with most excellent taste.

I have a Chinese-language book on the Vikings, to tie this in with the post below; as well as a French-language edition of the same book, which I bought because I could read only small amounts of Mandarin even when I was there encountering the language daily. (The book is available in English as well; but the French appears to be the original. Amazon does not appear to sell the Chinese edition, if it is still in print, but I still have mine.) I bought the Chinese version to loan to my students who were interested in Western culture and history; it was one of a very few books I ever found on the subject available in Mandarin.

It's good to see interest in these topics across the sea. Japanese and Western cultures harmonize on a number of points, but China had a very different cultural opinion on warriors. Witness the old Chinese saying, "You don't use a good man to make a soldier, just as you don't use good iron to make nails"! Yet the Beijing opera tradition, which has infected Hong Kong cinema (and, these days, everything everywhere) has invigorated Chinese interest in their traditional martial arts probably far beyond what it was during the Middle Kingdom's own Middle Ages.

UPDATE: If my Chinese friend should backtrack the link to his site, here is a video he might like that I don't think he has:

J.A. Dalza - Calata ala Spagnola from Valéry Sauvage on Vimeo.

Njal's Saga, First Week Discussion:

Image from here.

We are reading The Saga of Burnt Njal. This week we are to discuss sections 1-20. By the end of these sections, the two main characters of the saga are introduced: Gunnar and Njal himself. Let's look at their base descriptions, along with the notes provided.

Gunnar:

There was a man whose name was Gunnar. He was one of Unna's
kinsmen, and his mother's name was Rannveig (1). Gunnar's father
was named Hamond (2). Gunnar Hamond's son dwelt at Lithend, in
the Fleetlithe. He was a tall man in growth, and a strong man --
best skilled in arms of all men. He could cut or thrust or shoot
if he chose as well with his left as with his right hand, and he
smote so swiftly with his sword, that three seemed to flash
through the air at once. He was the best shot with the bow of
all men, and never missed his mark. He could leap more than his
own height, with all his war-gear, and as far backwards as
forwards. He could swim like a seal, and there was no game in
which it was any good for any one to strive with him; and so it
has been said that no man was his match. He was handsome of
feature, and fair skinned. His nose was straight, and a little
turned up at the end. He was blue-eyed and bright-eyed, and
ruddy-cheeked. His hair thick, and of good hue, and hanging down
in comely curls. The most courteous of men was he, of sturdy
frame and strong will, bountiful and gentle, a fast friend, but
hard to please when making them. He was wealthy in goods.


ENDNOTES:

(1) She was the daughter of Sigfuss, the son of Sighvat the Red;
he was slain at Sandhol Ferry.
(2) He was the son of Gunnar Baugsson, after whom Gunnar's holt
is called. Hamond's mother's name was Hrafnhilda. She was
the daughter of Storolf Heing's son. Storolf was brother to
Hrafn the Speaker of the Law, the son of Storolf was Orin
the Strong.

Njal:

There was a man whose name was Njal. He was the son of Thorgeir
Gelling, the son of Thorolf. Njal's mother's name was Asgerda
(1). Njal dwelt at Bergthorsknoll in the land-isles; he had
another homestead on Thorolfsfell. Njal was wealthy in goods,
and handsome of face; no beard grew on his chin. He was so great
a lawyer, that his match was not to be found. Wise too he was,
and foreknowing and foresighted (2). Of good counsel, and ready
to give it, and all that he advised men was sure to be the best
for them to do. Gentle and generous, he unravelled every man's
knotty points who came to see him about them. Bergthora was his
wife's name; she was Skarphedinn's daughter, a very high-
spirited, brave-hearted woman, but somewhat hard-tempered. They
had six children, three daughters and three sons, and they all
come afterwards into this story.


ENDNOTES:

(1) She was the daughter of Lord Ar the Silent. She had come
out hither to Iceland from Norway, and taken land to the
west of Markfleet, between Auldastone and Selialandsmull.
Her son was Holt-Thorir, the father of Thorleif Crow, from
whom the Wood-dwellers are sprung, and of Thorgrim the Tall,
and Skorargeir.
(2) This means that Njal was one of those gifted beings who,
according to the firm belief of that age, had a more than
human insight into things about to happen. It answers very
nearly to the Scottish "second sight."

We can see, as Mike noted, that parentage and families are very important: we don't just learn about the personal qualities of our heroes, but about their parentage on both sides of the family. The notes say what the original listeners would have known, about which families and to what great historic heroes their parentage may tie them.

What did you think of the first week's readings? Next week, we'll do the next section, 21-37.

You're Bound to Pass Sooner or Later, So Here's Your Diploma

Fake Tests, Fake Schools

The Texas Education Agency must be staffed with refugees from the Enron smoke-and-mirrors factory -- except that the Enron guys were reputed to be "the smartest guys in the room," whereas these people in TEA are . . . I can't even describe it. You be the judge:

A Texas legislator grilled a TEA hack last week about how Texas students who had failed every single question on a standardized ("TAKS") test could have been scored as "passing." These passing scores evidently caused the number of schools ranked as first- or second-rate in the state's four-tiered system almost to triple in a single year. How did this work?

Simple. Instead of old-fashioned grading, they used the new "Texas Projection Measure." Under this measure, "nearly half the 1 million TAKS tests that had been failed [were counted] as passing for the purpose of rating schools and districts." You might think this had something to do with counting a performance as passing on the ground that it at least was an improvement from the even more dismal performance of the year before. Alas, no. The measure "looked only at last year's scores and, based on a formula devised from thousands of prior results, projected that children who pass reading or math [tests] were likely to pass other tests in future years." In other words, we'll pass you because this formula says that if you passed a test in subject A, you're very likely to pass a test in subject B at some point in the future.

It gets worse. The formula is not even based on identifiable trends in low-performing students in situations where improvement has been documented in the past. No: the formula is based on overall trends among all children who take the TAKS test, from the ones who ace it down to the ones who flunk it. In general, kids do tend to do better on tests from year to year, thank goodness. However, if you consider only the kids who flunk a particular test, the "Projection Measure" is about 50% accurate in predicting that they'll eventually pass that same test. So the thinking apparently is, since about half the kids who flunk can be expected to do better at some point in the future, why not go ahead and count all of them all as "passing" right away?

The author of the article wonders about the same question that so often engages us here: lunacy or malice? Could Texas education officials really be stupid enough to buy this kind of metric, or are they cynically manipulating any and all data in furtherance of the one true aim, which is to maximize funding?

But, as one commenter noted, what's the real difference between this and the system of vague expectations of future merit that resulted in both Barack Obama's Oval Office and his Nobel Prize? Wishin' makes it so.

Yay 10th

Yay, 10th Amendment!

Or, a gay "marriage" ruling I might be able to support.

We all know that marriage as an institution has nothing to do with homosexuality. Saying this is not an expression of prejudice, but a simple statement about an institution that is as old as mankind. It has been practiced in many different ways in many different places, but never in human history until the current generation did anyone think it could be, or ought to be, applied to one's same-sex lover.

Many of us generally oppose attempts to revise or undermine the basic institutions of society; as an instinct, we believe that such institutions are what hold up the world. This is at the heart of the revised Constitutionalism that underlies the Tea Party movement.

Nothing is more important to that movement than to get the Federal government to respect the traditional, intended limits on its power. Supporters of an ever-expanding Federal government believe, I think, that they are on the side of the Federal government. This is not so. Continual revising of the social contract undermines that contract. The chief danger to the Federal government, as to the Republic at large, is that it will expand until it must be resisted; that it will revise the social contract so often that a majority of Americans become alienated from that contract, and no longer believe it applies. If the Federal government holds to its traditional and Constitutional limits, it might last a thousand years. If it refuses, it may not last out this generation.

On the other hand, the same people often wish to have substantial liberty from institutions: freedom to associate with them, and freedom for the institutions to uphold their own standards independent of the passing whims of society; but not a requirement that individuals be subject to those institutions. One can marry or not, for example. If you don't like the terms, don't.

So here comes a movement that balances two of those instincts against the third. It offers a vigorous and much-to-be-desired rebirth of the 10th Amendment!

However, it undermines the institution of marriage by redefining it so far from its original core purpose -- that of establishing new families to provide wealth and security for the next generation -- that it is undefinable. Further, it will require all of us to play by someone else's rules: under Full Faith and Credit, what we end up with is not "each state may determine the laws of marriage," but "the lowest-common denominator will apply everywhere." Freedom of association is not being respected; what is disguised as a state sovereignty ruling actually undermines the ability of states to uphold the traditional standards. What it really does is empower any state that wishes to undermine those standards.

As Dad29 points out, there's no reason to believe that the 10th will be applied in this way anywhere else; this seems to be special pleading for gay "marriage," when viewed in context of Federal jurisprudence.

However, as Volokh points out, the same arguments could be applied to destroy the unconstitutional health care regime being imposed. And, actually, a whole lot of unwise Federal regulation falls under this heading.

So... do we get behind this or not?

Anti-B

Anti-Business:

The White House has had it.

The White House has launched a coordinated campaign to push back against the perception taking hold in corporate America and on Wall Street that President Barack Obama is promoting an anti-business agenda.

To fight back against this perception, the President has backed a new round of corporate tax cuts, grants for new small businesses, and begun combing the books for onerous regulations to repeal by Executive Order made a speech in which he says he's not anti-business. He has also instructed aides to make similar remarks whenever they are in front of cameras.

That should be enough, don't you think?

Ants & Grasshoppers

"The Austerity Contagion"

Bill Bonner, writing at the "Daily Reckoning" site I've been enjoying lately, asks what will happen if all the world's grasshoppers start acting like ants:

An economy can go on like this - softly, gently destroying savings...quietly bankrupting the government - for many, many years. That could be what is coming now.

But wait. The US Senate refused to extend unemployment benefits. Even in the US, Republicans are talking about "austerity." Paul Krugman is hopping mad, referring to a coalition of the "heartless, the clueless and the confused" that is refusing to go along with his "spend, spend, spend" agenda. All of a sudden, the Americans seem to be catching the "austerity" bug, too. Uh oh ... this could be a disaster for everyone. If everyone saves, who will use their savings? Who will spend? Who will keep the wheels of commerce turning? Who will keep the lights on in the malls and the grills hot in the restaurants?

What will happen if all the grasshoppers suddenly become ants ... and all of them go on a rampage of financial prudence? Wouldn't it cause a new economic Dark Age for the whole world?

Part of his answer is that deleveraging -- working through the debt realistically instead of kicking it down the road -- is worth doing despite the cost.

Insurgence

Insurgence:

To go with the music, this thought: "To be alive is to be a murderer."

First, Let's Enslave All the Doctors

Calling Doctor . . . Doctor . . .?

Joseph Rago has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the Massachusetts universal coverage plan as a miniature preview of the wonders that are in store for us under ObamaCare. A Massachusetts appeals board has just shown surprising sanity in overturning an insurance commission's denial of 235 of the 274 insurance premium increases that had been requested by the state's insurance industry. The insurance carriers had trotted out that stale old free-market argument that the increases were necessary to cover their expected claims over the coming year. They were still operating under the quaint economic principle that an insurance company ought to have sufficient reserves to stay in business, even if that makes them appear unfeeling about their policyholders' household budget strains. As Mr. Rago notes, the insurance commission "was in effect ordering the carriers to sell their products at a loss." He also identifies a key question:

An entitlement sold as a way to reduce costs was bound to fundamentally change the system. The larger question—for Massachusetts, and now for the nation—is whether that was really the plan all along.

Meanwhile, he reports,

Richard Moore, a state senator from Uxbridge and an architect of the 2006 plan, has introduced a new bill that will make physician participation in government health programs a condition of medical licensure. This would essentially convert all Massachusetts doctors into public employees.

(Emphasis supplied.) Or, in other words . . . where did all those doctors go that we used to have in Massachusetts? How come I can't get an appointment?

Weren't there primitive tribes who lamed their doctors so they couldn't leave?

I had no idea this even happened.

Amedeo Guillet, who died on June 16 aged 101, was the Italian officer who led the last cavalry charge faced by the British Army.

Early in 1941, following outstanding successes in the Western Desert, the British invasion of Mussolini's East African empire seemed to be going like clockwork.

But at daybreak on January 21, 250 horsemen erupted through the morning mist at Keru, cut through the 4/11th Sikhs, flanked the armoured cars of Skinner's Horse and then galloped straight towards British brigade headquarters and the 25-pound artillery of the Surrey and Sussex Yeomanry.

Wow.

Irrationality

Economics As a Mystery Religion

I've felt as if I were drowning in irrationality all day. I've been trying to conduct an online discussion with a bunch of people who believe that Social Security -- indeed, the entire welfare state and debt structure of the United States -- is hunky-dorey. To begin with, I found it virtually impossible to get across the idea that, although this may seem a very, very wrong, unpleasant, and inconvenient result -- Social Security will inevitably be degraded and then dismantled. The first 20 times I tried to say so, I got back the furious reaction that these benefits are a debt, a honorably incurred debt, and it would be wrong if the people expecting their benefits did not receive them.

I don't disagree, of course, but I don't see how that changes the odds that it's going to happen. "But we really are going to need that money," they'd say. Yes, I'd agree, it's going to be bad. And it doesn't change the odds that it's going to happen. "But it wouldn't be fair to expect us to do without them." No progress.

I did, at length, come to a point where we could define the difference between me and them as the belief, or doubt, that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unfunded federal, state, and local pension obligations, which together amount to over $500,000 per American household, can all be absorbed without the U.S. defaulting on a single one of these obligations even in part. I myself doubt whether it can be done, no matter how hard we tighten the screws on the rich people, unless we recklessly risk the health of the economy and the currency and court a fate like that of Greece. They, in turn, believe this is no problem at all, and only a mean person would say it is.

Here's the part I need help with. One commenter had this explanation for why it was all going to be possible, even without raising tax rates. The problem is, I literally cannot understand a word of the following. I'm hoping someone here can help:

I don’t think they have to turn the screws on the rich a little harder. I think they can just mark up the account balances to match the needs, and I don’t even think that, I know that. It’s a factual statement. I don’t even think the government needs to tax at all, except for to manipulate the money supply to soak up excess liquidity that might be in the market. In fact, I know that as well. It’s not a guess, it’s the way it is. We don’t operate our policies around those foundational realities, but it doesn’t make them any less real. . . . Debt and deficits just don’t mean what you think they do in a modern-money world, and they’re not indicators of the things you think they are.

I'm certainly no economist. Is this pure nonsense, or something like a respectable branch of the science?

Natural Libertarians

"Natural Libertarians"

Some people apparently react from the heart on these matters; these are my people. Not shockingly, the story comes from the Great State of Georgia.

In the radio interviews I did after the publication of my new book, its alarming title, The Next American Civil War, received much attention. Some interviewers thought it was simply wacko. Others were more sympathetic, but argued that I really meant a war of ideas. But this is not what I really meant. I was referring to the clash between two radically incompatible attitudes towards life—a far more serious clash than mere intellectual debate. Ideas can be changed much more easily than our fundamental attitude. In fact, few things are more difficult to change.

On one side of the clash are the people like those who visited the libertarian booth in Tucker, Georgia, and whose attitude was: “Hell, no, nobody owns me.” Perhaps some of these people have joined the Tea Party movement, but I suspect most have not. Yet they still remain natural libertarians, who instinctively place their locus of control within themselves. Like Rotter’s internals, they resist any effort by others to manage and control their lives.

On the other side of the clash are those who stand to benefit from encouraging others to rely on them instead of relying on themselves. Those who seek to exercise power and influence over others will naturally be hostile to the independent attitude of the natural libertarian, simply because this attitude is ultimately the one thing that stands in the way of achieving their own ambitions to rule, manage, and govern others. Today, far too many people in governmental circles, in our universities, and among the custodians of mass culture all share the goal of encouraging ordinary men and women to stop being self-reliant, cease to think for themselves, embrace their status as victims of circumstances, and to blame others for their own misfortunes instead of rousing themselves to overcome difficulties, as Frederick Douglass did.

The stakes in this clash are enormous. Natural libertarians find themselves in a desperate struggle to keep alive the traditions of independence that have shaped and molded their attitudes. They see themselves battling forces that seek to create a state of helpless codependency among their fellow citizens. Often, like the natural libertarians of the past—for example, our own revolutionary ancestors and the seventeenth-century English parliamentarians who resisted Charles the First—today’s natural libertarians display a paranoid tendency to imagine that wicked men are conspiring to rob them of their liberty.

I suggest you read the rest of this piece.

Brains and Killers

Brains and Consciousness:

A Neuroscientist you may have heard of, James Fallon, reveals two things: first, that his family includes a number of murderers, including alleged killer Lizzy Borden. Second, that his brain scan says he's a psychopath.

"And I took a look at my own PET scan and saw something disturbing that I did not talk about," he says.

What he didn't want to reveal was that his orbital cortex looks inactive.

"If you look at the PET scan, I look just like one of those killers."

So he tested this with another marker that reveals murderous behavior.

Along with brain scans, Fallon also tested each family member's DNA for genes that are associated with violence. He looked at 12 genes related to aggression and violence and zeroed in on the MAO-A gene (monoamine oxidase A). This gene, which has been the target of considerable research, is also known as the "warrior gene" because it regulates serotonin in the brain. Serotonin affects your mood — think Prozac — and many scientists believe that if you have a certain version of the warrior gene, your brain won't respond to the calming effects of serotonin.

Fallon calls up another slide on his computer. It has a list of family members' names, and next to them, the results of the genotyping. Everyone in his family has the low-aggression variant of the MAO-A gene, except for one person.

"You see that? I'm 100 percent. I have the pattern, the risky pattern," he says, then pauses. "In a sense, I'm a born killer."

But he isn't, of course, a killer at all. Not only that, he doesn't have the impulse control problems -- one doesn't succeed at neuroscience if one cannot delay gratification, and he has a wife who's known him since he was 12 and feels entirely comfortable with him.

He has a theory that you need a third factor -- abuse.

Significantly, he says this journey through his brain has changed the way he thinks about nature and nurture. He once believed that genes and brain function could determine everything about us. But now he thinks his childhood may have made all the difference.

With respect to the scientist, that's not a convincing answer. It would be adequate to explain the presence of a gene in someone with no wicked impulses; but it doesn't adequately explain the brain scan. A gene may be a predisposition to developing in a certain way; untriggered, that potential may simply not develop.

A brain scan, though, shows what is happening in your brain right now. His brain really is showing low activity in the impulse-control region; and yet his impulse control is perfectly fine.

This suggests that brain activity isn't as closely related to consciousness as we have come to believe. Indeed, the leading theory in "philosophy of mind" is close to his own "genes and brain function... determine everything" about our conscious experience; or as that is put in philosopher-speak, "mental states supervene on brain states."

It may be that we aren't looking at the right part of the brain scan; it could be that "happy childhood" people have another part that is more active than "unhappy childhood" people with the same markers. In that case, his theory could prove out.

The alternative is that there is something to the mind besides the brain. That's always been my sense of where the truth lies; but it will be something of a revolution among both scientists and philosophers if it proves out.

The Government Is Making Us Fat

I'm thinking of putting in for compensatory damages. A Canadian university study finds a correlation between cigarette taxes and obesity. Just as you might have suspected, forcing citizens to stop smoking by making it too expensive merely causes them to gain dangerous amounts of weight. I predict a fat tax next.

Kindness to Widows

Kindness to Widows:

Not always a good idea.



Found today in the tomatillo patch.

Hitch a Ride with the Next Russian Supply Ship

The National Aeronautic

Self-Esteem Administration

Speaking to al-Jazeera on a recent trip to the Middle East, National Aeronautics and Space Administration head Charles Bolden heralded a new age in international space relations:

When I became the NASA Administrator . . . [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, [second,] he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Bolden also said that in the past, NASA had worked with countries that were capable of space exploration, but now Obama has

asked NASA to change . . . by reaching out to "nontraditional" partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations.

So we won't be restricted by the need to work with countries that actually can explore space, but can expand to those that can't.

I applaud this escape from hidebound tradition. It's not the Muslim countries' fault they aren't capable of space exploration, and it's time to end the pale male hegemony. If we ever need a landing strip again, we may need one of these countries to provide it. Even if we don't, what's more important: our space program, or helping predominantly Muslim nations feel good about their accomplishments many centuries ago? Also, the diplomatic mission is bound to be cheaper, and it will get NASA out of the way while the private sector knuckles down.

Bankers with Pitchforks

Wall Street and San Francisco Are Revolting

Per today's Washington Post, contributions to the Democrats' House and Senate congressional campaign committees from New York are off 65 % from two years ago. The drop-off is attributed to relentless Wall Street bashing.

Although the overall drop is only 16%, the trend is much sharper among big-dollar ($1,000+) donors, down to under $50 million from over $80 million. The New York area accounts for half of that big-dollar-donor drop: $24 million then vs. $9 million this year. In 2008, 28% of Democratic House and Senate committee donations came from the New York area, including 20% from Manhattan alone. This year, New York accounts for only 10% of the total.

Contributors in San Francisco aren't much happier, with donations falling by 34%. Fundraisers explain the drop there by disaffection with overly conservative Democratic initiatives.

The Romans Took Themselves Out

The Romans Took Out Themselves:

A post from the Anchoress, who is guesting at Hot Air. Eric's point is her own.

It goes with this video.

Threats and the Tea Party

Threats & the Tea Party:

What I find very interesting about this poll is not the top-line finding, which tells us that the Tea Party is much more concerned than other Americans about the massive debt and the size of the Federal Government. I'm not even interested in what Hot Air notes -- that there is minimal difference in Tea Party supporters' and opponents' opinion on racial matters.

What interests me is the subject of percentages that view a given issue as an "extremely serious threat" to the future of the country. It's worth noting that only 49% -- under half! -- of Tea Party supporters view the size and scope of the Federal Government as an "extremely" serious threat.

What I find more interesting, though, is that there is no issue -- no issue -- that a majority of non-supporters find to be such a threat. Only 44% of those who are neutral feel that the government's debt is a such a threat, and that is the very largest level reported among non-Tea-Party-supporters. Among Tea Party opponents, no issue approaches a majority; only "health care costs" even achieves a third (33%). The Tea Party supporter is even more concerned about that issue! 41% feel that is an extremely serious threat.

Confer all of that with this set of papers on genetics and political leanings. The upshot of these studies is that conservatives are far better at recognizing threats in the environment -- but are also more likely to produce false positives of threats. Liberals are much less likely to correctly recognize that there is a genuine danger, but also much less likely to falsely perceive a threat.

That seems odd in the wake of eight years of hearing about how BushCo was about to overthrow the nation; but it does line up with these polling results. (A further refinement: looking at the table comparing "Tea Party supporters" and "Republicans," we see that Republicans are also much less worried about things -- and therefore, much less conservative on this model.) Tea Party supporters are more deeply concerned than liberals about even the issues that concern liberals. There are only three issues where the numbers flip, and Tea Party opponents are more concerned: the size of corporations (just under a third for opponents, with about half as many supporters being concerned); the environment and global warming (opponents: 30%/ supporters: 13%); and racial issues (17%/13%).

Yet even here, the liberal concerns are not great. On the three issues of greatest concern to Tea Party opponents, only one of them achieves a bare third of respondents. Two-thirds of respondents in the "opponents" category see no extremely serious threats to America at all. Over half of neutrals see no extremely serious threats to America at all.

One is tempted, at this point, to post a whole bunch of graphs that illustrate the deadly dangers to the nation; but the point is, if the conjecture is right, doing so wouldn't matter. People are predisposed to worry about these things or not. If they aren't, they won't worry no matter how ugly the graphs are. If they are, the graphs could be rather less ugly than they actually are, and would still produce concern.

This may illuminate the "incompetence or malice" debate, which is ongoing. Part of the competence issue could be the ability to recognize the harm being done. Another potential anti-malice line of argument: they really just can't see how dangerous their actions are, how badly they're harming the nation and undermining its foundations; or yet another, that at least some of the "malice" readings are false positives.

Den Beste Speaks

Malice or Incompetence? Den Beste Speaks

Everyone who has read blogs for a long time knows the name of Steven Den Beste. He isn't answering the question of malice versus incomptence, but he is raising it.

Poodle

Poodle:

I wasn't going to say anything about the Gore business, because frankly I don't want to talk about Al Gore; I can't muster the interest. However, I have to admit that this Taiwanese news animation does a remarkable job of conveying the story even when you can't speak the language. I hadn't really thought of animation as a good tool for the news: it's too easy to tell a misleading story even with actual video! Still, as long as you don't put any faith in the notion that things happened as depicted, this depiction does at least convey the content of the accusation in very clear terms.

Since we're doing an animation today, I found this one while following a link from Cassandra's page. Some of you who like animation may find it amusing.

ObamaCare

Voters Still Don't Like It

Per Rasmussen, 78% of Republicans believe ObamaCare will be bad for the nation, as do 66% of unaffiliated voters. But 67% of Democrats believe ObamaCare will be good.

I don't understand why the levels of support are veering around so wildly. There's nothing obvious in the news to explain it. The smoothed-out overall trend looks slightly discouraging for ObamaCare enthusiasts who were hoping that voters' initial enraged reaction would moderate when we "find out what's in the bill."

Another Enlightening Fact

Another Enlightening Fact:

From Professor Bainbridge, this:

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period....

Under current law, it is unlikely that Members of Congress can be held liable for insider trading.

This is a failure of justice -- perfectly in accord with the law, for the lawmakers are the ones who are manipulating the law to their advantage. When law and justice sharply diverge, there are consequences.

Fisking The Declaration of Independence

Fisking the Declaration of Independence:

Snide pretentions of superiority and intentional misunderstandings are the order of the day. What if they had been, in Jefferson's time?

Well, you may as well read through it. Just expect to hear the same arguments fielded soon, for we are going to be having many of the same debates in the next few years.

We've begun, actually. Consider:

"You can’t simultaneously complain that he’s providing too much government and not enough. Pick one."

Who among us hasn't heard one or another on the Left say something like, "Well, this BP thing sure shows the case for Big Government, doesn't it?" The idea of Constitutionalism is ignored: that it is not a case of "big" versus "small" government, but of government restricted to its proper place and role. The seas have always been the Federal government's responsibility: they have the right to maintain a navy, and to set maritime rules, and rules governing letters of marque and reprisal, and so forth. It was clearly the Founder's intent that the deep waters should be a Federal concern.

The government has abandoned all traditional restraints and limits, and as a consequence it cannot, or will not, perform its actual duties. Or, as T99 put it:

"If the entire federal bureaucracy did not exist and not one penny of federal funds was available, the cleanup process would be helped instead of hindered."

Calvin Coolidge

Progress

I wouldn't have guessed who said this:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

It was Calvin Coolidge.

Grand Old Flag

On a Slightly Brighter Note

Here's an obsessive painting project after my own heart. The building covers 3.5 acres and is near Hobby Airport in Houston. It took a couple of weeks to paint.

Mexican Meltdown

When Democracy Blows Up

I failed to find anything inspiring today, other than this nice picture of fireworks. So here goes with the bummer stuff. Today is election day in 14 of Mexico's 31 states. Twelve states will try to elect governors. Things aren't going well.

Last Monday, the man favored to win the governor's seat in Tamaulipas, just south of the Texas border on the Gulf Coast, was killed in an ambush on his campaign car. His brother has replaced him in the election. A mayoral candidate in the same state was shot dead in May. Over 550 electoral officials have resigned. In the state of Sinaloa, on the West Coast of Mexico just off the southern tip of Baja, the campaign headquarters of a candidate for governor were attacked with bombs this week. Nearly 23,000 people have been killed since Mexican President Calderón launched a military crackdown on organized crime over three years ago.

On Thursday, 21 people were shot dead in a battle between rival drug gangs in the state of Sonora, about 12 miles over the border from Arizona, "along a known trafficking route for drugs and illegal immigrants."

What we are seeing in the last couple of years is a much more gruesome kind of killing, beheadings, dismembering, hanging corpses up on highway overpasses, all of that, with messages left by the cartels, all of that to send a message, either to the law enforcement authorities, who would go after them, or to their rivals or to the local government. . . . [W]e're starting to see some Mexicans even talking about, well, maybe it would be better just to make a deal with some of the cartels. . . . A lot of candidates have just stopped campaigning.

The most amazing thing to me is that the news reports generally add that this is the worst violence in Mexican elections "since 1994." Gosh, has it been that long since the last collapse of civilization? Also, I've just about given up trying to figure what might distinguish one Mexican party from another, since concepts like "right" and "left" seem to have lost all meaning down there. Per the Wall Street Journal, the current trend in distinguishing between Mexican parties is to focus on the number of voters who would never consider voting for them:

A survey by the Mitofsky polling group showed the PRI is now the country's "least rejected" political party, with only 19% of Mexicans saying they would never vote for it. Some 30% said they would never vote for the PAN [Calderón's "conservative" party], and 38% would shun the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, which has been hurt by internal divisions and a hard-left faction that has turned off middle-class voters.

This is what it means when we let inmates take over the asylum. Happy Fourth!

There's Always Somebody Better

There's Always Somebody Better:

Via PowerPoint Ranger:

Kittehs

Dogs and Cats Living Together

I'm too bummed to keep reading about the bungled spill cleanup for a while, so, as they would say over at Ace, it's time for kittehs and a little unnatural interspecies action. This is old National Geographic footage; my apologies if you've all seen it before.

Translation, Technology

Translation, Transliteration, and Technology:

There are two fascinating stories today on the subject of texts of supreme historic importance, and the new things that technology is allowing us to do with them. One is the Declaration of Independence: using spectral analysis, we now know something about a moment of enlightenment in Jefferson's thinking.

"Subjects."

That's what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

The word he replaced it with was "citizens."

The second story, which I have from Lars Walker, is to do with translating the Bible. How do you translate the Bible into a language that has no written form? First, you must work with the speakers of that language to develop a writing system.

"Wycliffe missionaries don't evangelize, teach theology, hold Bible study or start churches. They give (preliterate people) a written language," Edwards said. "They teach them to read and write in their mother tongue."

The missionaries develop alphabets. They create reading primers. They translate the Bible.

About 2,200 languages remain without a Bible. About 350 million people, mostly in India, China, sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, speak only these languages.

This work has been going on for some time. Before the age of technology, the motto of the Wycliffe missionaries was, "One team, one language, one lifetime." Now, they say, they can do several languages in a lifetime -- indeed, they expect to finish the rest within fifteen years.

Freedom

Freedom:

Now here is a lesson. You've seen this before: but look at the subtitles, especially in the final moments.



"In anul Domnului 1314."

"Patriotii Scotiei"

"Trubaduri"

"Libertatea."

Every one of you knows enough Latin to understand what is said there, if you didn't know the English at all: "In the year of our Lord, 1314... patriots of Scotland... warrior-poets... freedom."

Yet it's not Latin. It's Romanian. Enough of the old tongue survives.

Our friend Lars Walker is writing about American echoes in Viking sagas. Yet we should also recognize that this Scottish moment was a moment that touched the world, and changed it. 1314 was the battle on the Bannock burn. 1320 was the Declaration of Arbroath, which inspired our Declaration of Independence as much as anything ever written before it. That was written in Latin, addressed to the Pope:

"Non enim propter gloriam, diuicias aut honores pugnamus set propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi simul cum vita amittit."

That is to say, "It is not in truth for glory that we fight, nor for honors, but for freedom alone: that freedom that a good man lays down only with his life."

And now I will quote a piece from Anthony Kenny's Medieval Philosophy, as regards a document written by certain Franciscan friars in 1324. William of Ockham was with them, and wrote supporting pieces in their train. It does not intend to speak to the Scottish situation particularly, but to the Pope in general. Having published it, they fled to the Holy Roman Empire for protection from the Church. There, in what is now Germany but was then a place of endless free states and cities, these ideas were welcome.

The work, Defensor Pacis ("The Defender of the Peace," 1324) became a classic text of political philosophy.... There are two types of government: rule by the consent of the ruler's subjects, and rule against their will. Only the former is legitimate and the latter is a form of tyranny. The laws of the state derive their legitimacy neither from the will of the ruler nor directly from God: they are given authority by the citizens themselves....

An irregular or incompetent prince should be removed from office by the legislature.

And if the legislature will not do it?

[W]e should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and make some other man who was well able to defend us our King; for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule.

Thus they said, in 1320. Four hundred years later, and a bit, they said thus at Philadelphia. Two hundred years later, and a bit, it may be time to say it again.

Constitutional Question

A Constitutional Question: How Does This Work?

Dad29 has an interesting report from Wisconsin, which made me recognize a void in my knowledge.

Jackson County District Attorney Gerald R. Fox has declared that, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling this week that the Second Amendment clearly applies to the states, he will no longer prosecute people for carrying concealed weapons, or certain other gun related offenses.

The high court's ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago, "immediately renders some of Wisconsin's current laws unconstitutional," Fox said in a news release. Therefore, he said, his office won't take any cases police might refer that are solely about violations of concealed carry, uncased or loaded weapons in vehicles, guns in public buildings or where alcohol is sold or served. Nor will Fox prosecute the possession of switchblade and other types of easy-opening knives.

When we've seen other landmark SCOTUS cases -- Lawrence v. Texas, say -- I've always heard that the ruling would overturn laws in many states besides the one where the suit originated. Exactly how that works is not clear to me. SCOTUS presumably does not do the work of identifying similar laws, and sending a note to the state governments; so my guess is that the work is done at the state level -- perhaps by the Attorney General?

Here we have a D.A. making the call, which seems strange. It makes sense that they would not want to prosecute cases that have just been rendered untenable, but it also seems odd that you might have two districts making different calls on whether SCOTUS has just voided the law.

So, my friends who do this for a living -- how does this work? What is the process for recognizing which laws have just been rendered invalid, and harmonizing them with the fundamental right that SCOTUS has just announced that it intends to protect?

Strays

More Missing Cat Humor

Not that I want to get everyone started on the kind of physics humor that took over Cassandra's site the other day, but . . . .