Lives Well Lived

Lives Well Lived

What do people regret from their deathbeds? A palliative care nurse reports that her dying patients felt that they'd sold their dreams too cheap and wished they hadn't given in so thoroughly to the expectations of others. Breadwinners on treadmills regretted missing so much of their children's and partners' lives, only to be able to buy more things none of them really needed. Stoics and shallow peacemakers were sorry they'd lacked the courage to express their feelings. Many regretted not keeping in better touch with old friends. Others concluded that a fear of change had left them mired in old miserable habits when they could have chosen happiness for themselves.

I took this all as a rather sweet cautionary tale about drawing from the deepest wells within ourselves and not spending our lives caught up in frantic but not very meaningful scurrying: Mary vs. Martha. The comments on Assistant Village Idiot's site made me realize that others might see a much more unattractive "lotus-eaters" kind of message. Our friend Retriever, for instance, read the nurse's account as a kind of "watered down Joseph Campbell follow your bliss" screed, and doubted whether most people ever really regretted "doing the right thing, or meeting their responsibilities." Not being much of a "follow your bliss" type myself, I went back to read the original post to see if it still struck me the same way.

It did. I still see it the way AVI does. He quotes Screwtape on the human souls he was teaching his nephew to tempt:

...so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here [Hell], "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked."

The difference must lie in my assumption that the work the dying patients regretted was neither their true duty nor their heart's desire but a lot of vain fuss. It's one thing to do hard, unpleasant work that really needs to be done, either for its own sake or to provide for your loved ones. It's another to get caught up in a rat-race that separates you from everything that should be most important. This is something that C.S. Lewis wrote about a lot: the idea that neither hedonism nor self-negation for its own sake was the ideal. Screwtape's advice continues:

As a preliminary to detaching him from the Enemy [God], you wanted to detach him from himself, . . . . Of course I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. Hence, while He is delighted to see them sacrificing even their innocent wills to His, He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason. And we should always encourage them to do so. The deepest likings and impulses of any man are the raw material, the starting-point, with which the Enemy has furnished him. To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human's own real likings and dislikings. I myself would carry this very far. I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the "best" people, the "right" food, the "important" books. I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.

So there are different ways of looking at giving in to the expectations of others. A lot depends on what they expect.

Moving on to other Remedies

Other Remedies:

Having closed the last inquiry, then, let us examine other ways in which we might be able to repair -- or if need be, restore -- the proper function of the government. This essay looks at the structure of the original American government, and asks why that particular model was chosen. There was a problem at that moment in history that people were thinking about: the difficulty of defending a Republic that was extended over a large territory. Such a Republic would be necessary, because smaller republics would not be able to muster the resources to defend themselves in that era. But there were problems with the model:

Governments at a distance from the people they rule tend to be invisible; and when human beings are invisible, they tend rightly to suppose that they can get away with a lot. Moreover, large polities tend to face emergencies more often than small polities, and emergencies require from rulers vigor, alacrity, and resoluteness of the sort most easily provided by a man who can act alone. The challenge facing the American Framers was to devise a constitutional structure capable of producing a government fit for meeting emergencies but unlikely to become, as James Madison once delicately put it, “self-directed.”

To meet this challenge, they turned to the second and third parts of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws – where he sketched out two different ways in which a republic can overcome this limitation on its magnitude. It was, he realized, necessary that it do so because – at least in modern times – no small republic could hope to marshal the resources necessary for its self-defense when attacked by monarchies of intermediate size or despotisms immense in size.

The first expedient suggested by Montesquieu was federalism. By means of federalism, a group of republics could project power in the manner of a monarchy while remaining small enough to be genuinely self-governing.

Montesquieu’s second expedient was the separation of powers. By distinguishing along functional lines between the executive power, the legislative power, and the judicial power and by distributing these three powers to different bodies in such a fashion as to render them separate and quasi-autonomous, the English had managed to transform a monarchy into a republic capable of sustaining itself on an extended territory. For emergencies, they had an executive capable of vigor, alacrity, and resoluteness. To prevent that executive from becoming a tyrant, they had a House of Commons responsible to the electorate and capable of calling the executive’s servants to account. To avoid populist excesses, they had a House of Lords capable of checking the House of Commons; and to protect the liberty of the citizens, they had judges who could not easily be removed from office and juries selected from among the peers of those accused.

The Americans combined both expedients. To begin with, they instituted a federation, building on the remnants of the old colonial system and on the structure that existed under the Articles of Confederation. At the center, they established a government of limited powers – capable of defending the nation, of guaranteeing to every state a republican government, of regulating commerce between the states, and of responding to emergencies. To the states and local governments, where the territory was comparatively small, they left all other legitimate powers. To make the federal government in some measure independent of the states, they provided for direct popular election of the House of Representatives; and to enable the states to protect their own prerogatives from federal encroachment, they had the state legislatures elect the federal senate.

At both the state and federal level, the American founders instituted a separation of powers, giving to the executive, the legislators, and the judiciary the means by which to defend their own prerogatives and the motives for doing so – and, by dividing and separating the powers, the Founders sought to make the government and its operations visible to the citizens. Each branch served the general public as a watchdog with regard to the others.

The measures undertaken by the Obama administration and by its supporters in Congress that gave rise to and sustained the Tea-Party Movement all have this in common. They constitute an assault – evident to anyone who cares to look – on our inherited political order. They transgress on the two great principles constitutive of that order. They are inconsistent with federalism and the separation of powers...

Federalism has another great advantage, which was important to the Founders: it allows for the diversity of opinion that was very important to making the early Republic as stable as it was. There was not a great deal of social trust between the early states, and the factions in those days were just as hostile to each other as our factions are becoming today. The Federalist structure intended to protect the states' rights to substantially different internal social contracts, so that the descendants of the Puritans in the north and the descendants of the Cavaliers in the South could each have their own laws and ways.

That part of the idea remains important today: a major part of the friction we have in the United States comes from the use of the Federal government to impose one-size-fits-all solutions on the whole of the nation. The more urban blue states have some basic assumptions about law and justice that are incompatible with what the more rural red states believe, and vice versa. Some of those issues have to be Federal issues (e.g., does the Constitution authorize programs like Social Security?). Many, though, could be handled in a Federalist manner without causing injustice to anyone -- after all, if they really did not like the interpretation of the state of California (say), they could move to New York or to New Mexico.

Such a model gives us more liberty, as we are free to have several different modes -- at least as many as fifty, as there are that many states. Individuals can then choose from among the many interpretations what they prefer for themselves and their families. Furthermore, they can then live at peace with their neighbors who feel differently, instead of constantly being in friction with each other over the attempt to finalize a 'one-size-fits-all' solution that their faction prefers.

Thoughts, on the essay or on these matters that it raises?

Limits Continued

Limits: Some Concluding Remarks

Eric says that he doesn't like the talk of limiting the franchise; he's not the first to say so.

We started with a similar exploratory thought experiment, in Plato: and it was far more tyrannical than anything as mild as 'perhaps the franchise should be earned in some fashion.' The dialogues are still very useful even though no one would ever want to live in such a republic. The good of them is in getting you to teach yourself how to think about the questions of politics. We certainly want a state that is well managed, which executes its functions wisely, and which is able to defend itself (because living in wars, losing wars, or being subject to anarchy is miserable). We certainly don't want a state that goes so far as Plato's in controlling our lives. The one we have now seems to be both overly coercive (as Eric notes) and destabilizing due to ruinous spending programs and internal factional friction.

Now, if the effect of limiting the franchise were to increase government power and decrease citizen ability to restrain the government, then it would be a bad idea. I agree with that prospect, and if I were certain that would be the effect, I'd agree with Eric's remarks entirely.

The counterargument: It's possible that by concentrating the power of the vote among those who have an interest in maintaining the small-r republican character of the nation, you could increase rather than decrease the effect of the vote in restraining government coercion. Hamilton was interested in limits in principle because he thought that was the best way to preserve the newly free character of the nation. His idea was that the government would otherwise naturally fall into the hands of the rich and powerful, who could sway the poor. In this, he was drawing on lessons from England, and fairly old traditions.

Now, that said, this exploration -- as interesting and profitable as it's been to look back at the source of the franchise, to note that the arguments for expanding it were based on virtue, and otherwise to examine how we got to where we are -- hasn't really brought forth useful results. Elise said that her chief objection was that she couldn't think of a way to limit the franchise that would ensure that all and only the right people got to vote. So far, I haven't been able to think of one either.

All I came up with as good examples of qualities that would demonstrate virtue were honorable military service, and faithful parenthood. That's inadequate: I can think of lots of people I know who don't fall in either category, but who are certainly not folks who should be disqualified from voting. And I can't think of any quality or union of qualities that would be a good proxy for virtue: neither education, nor income level (Hamilton notwithstanding, I don't think either wealth or payment of taxes is a good model), nor much of anything else that comes to mind is really useful in this regard.

I doubt that limiting the franchise is the answer. The lesson of the Norman expansion of the franchise is that it's worked better than the systems that did not expand it. I don't think there are good moral reasons to believe that the franchise should be universal and unearned, but I also can't think of a good model for earning it that allows all and only (or mostly) the right people to have access.

Finally, it really does have to be virtue that we have a good way of measuring, and not what Elise calls pragmatics. This is because, as we've discussed, conservatives and liberals seem to have different blind spots in things like threat perception. We need both sets of insights; a state that was ruled by either set alone would be missing a crucial part of the picture. It's important to remember that we need each other, so that someone can see the things I can't see, or that you can't see.

Unless there are solid suggestions that seem to answer that question, I propose to conclude the examination.

Yay Juliette

Yay, Juliette!

Baldilocks gets a cartoon. Nobody's ever made a cartoon about me; but, on reflection, that's probably just as well.

Crusaders

Crusaders:

Since 9/11, there have been a number of books and articles re-fighting the legacy of the Crusades. In particular, the slaughter in Jerusalem at the end of the First Crusade usually is taken to be evidence of the wickedness of the whole project. Dad29 links to a piece today that points out a fact that doesn't normally make the cut:

Violence against, and persecution of Jews was never encouraged, tolerated, or condoned by the Papacy. Christianity did not need a thousand years to “clean up its act” with regard to Jews; in response to the atrocities carried out by soldiers in the crusading armies, Pope Calixtus II issued the bull “Sicut Judaeis” in 1120, which declares, among other things that:

[The Jews] ought to suffer no prejudice. We, out of the meekness of Christian piety, and in keeping in the footprints or Our predecessors of happy memory, the Roman Pontiffs Calixtus, Eugene, Alexander, Clement, admit their petition, and We grant them the buckler of Our protection.

In other words, when Christians carried out acts of violence against Jews, they were doing so in disobedience to their religion, and their spiritual leaders. This was also the case during the unfortunate sack of Constantinople in 1203, in which Christian turned upon Christian during the Fourth Crusade.

What is often also forgotten is that there had been some Christian pushback against the Islamic nations before 1095. One reason that the Normans won at Hastings in 1066 is that the Anglo-Saxon army had been in the north fighting Harald Hardrada, the Viking king, only days before; they'd finished a brutal battle at Stamford Bridge, and then had to force march to intercept the invading Normans.

That same Harald Hardrada had fought in Sicily with the Byzantines, as part of the Varangian Guard. This is told of in the Heimskringla. These campaigns were in the 1040s.

The reconquest of Spain began in 1085 with the fall of Toledo to Alfonso VI of Leon and Castille. We were looking at a scene from El Cid just the other day, as you'll recall.

So by 1095, when Pope Urban preached the Crusade, it was not out of desperation and fear of imminent destruction. It was in part out of a sense that the tide had been turning, and that the once-unstoppable forces of Islam had begun to be rolled back. The atrocities committed against Christians in the Holy Land didn't seem impossible to correct, with Toledo in recent memory and with an ally in the East.

That said, the First Crusade was a miracle. The ally in the East proved treacherous, and a student of the war will be stunned that they carried it off at all. They did so only by the smallest margin, capturing Jerusalem with an Islamic army advancing upon them. I met one of the descendants of the man who led that army, while I was in Iraq; in those days, his tribe (of whom he was one of three brothers who were the paramount sheikhs) had run a kingdom in the north of what is now Iraq. He was very proud of that fact, and he knew that I would know just which army he meant when relating the story -- as indeed I did.

So, you see: the past is with us. It is not, as Requiem for a Nun put it, even past.

The Lifecycle of Gov't programs

The Lifecycle of a Government Program:

Once upon a time, when the city of Atlanta was growing by leaps and bounds, the Georgia Department of Transportation decided that they needed a new major highway that would let traffic into and out of the city on a direct north-south line. They had an interstate (I-75) that did so on a northwest/southeast line; and they had one that went southwest to northeast (I-85). But they wanted another one just to go north to south.

The Federal government said, "Nope." They agreed to pay for a regular highway, US 19, but not another interstate.

So Georgia took the money for US 19, linked it up with some of its own money, and linked it up with the existing Georgia 400 highway. This allowed traffic to flow in from the north directly to the center of Atlanta, where it met up with I-75 and I-85 in the middle of town.

To pay for the construction, they set up a toll booth. This was something of an innovation in Georgia, but not to worry! It was to be temporary, just until the construction costs were paid off by the state.

That's been oh, around fifteen years ago. Tens of thousands of cars a day go through that gate, paying tolls both in and out of the city. The original costs were long paid off, but did the toll go away?

Two guesses.

In re: "Even More on the Franchise"

[This post is a propos Grim's "Even More on the Franchise," shortly below. Sorry for the long post….] It's not strictly true that the Founders we less concerned with voting rights per se; they simply left, by design, the manner of enfranchisement to the individual states. The Constitution, after all, was envisioned as creating a federated alliance of States, with the central government concerned with national-level interests (primarily outward looking at the time—national defense, vice individual State defense, for example), and with the central government granted authority to see to the individual States' "foreign" policies—not just with, e.g., European nation-states, but the united States' [sic.] policies vis-á-vis their fellow States—the original purpose of the Commerce Clause, for instance. Indeed, the house of Congress envisioned as being closest to the People—to the voters—was to be directly elected by the People (The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States,…. Art I, Sect 1).

Since the Founders were trying to guts up a new nation, they left what was at the time viewed to be a local matter to the locals—but they expected voting rights to be granted (acknowledged?) in fashion. It's true that it wasn't until after the Civil War that the concept of voting rights—of the franchise—was nationalized; the Federal government having decided that too many of the States had abused their voting-granting authority (if only because they could enforce that decision, having just won the war). But voting, of some segment of the population having the franchise, is well entrenched in the American polity.

I'll turn now to my view of limiting this franchise, if we should at all. T99 is concerned that those not enfranchised, or actively disenfranchised, might not behave as well as those who are enfranchised, perhaps to the point of active detriment to society as a whole. I'm not convinced that not having the franchise is necessarily a significant limit on freedom, and so a significant incentive to act up. In Heinlein's construction, for instance (which I mention without judgment of its technical or operational merit), all citizens had the same rights, liberties, and responsibilities, save only the vote. Thus, the nonenfranchised citizen was in the same position as the enfranchised who had lost the vote; the nonenfranchised simply lost every vote. This is a significant disability, to be sure, but I suggest it would be no significant loss of liberty, since the nonenfranchised could take steps to cure the disability at any time. In our own American mechanization of the franchise, we actively exclude felons, they having demonstrated by their behavior a sufficient lack of virtue (I'll elide here a definition of virtue).

Thismay well be a valid exclusion; however, American society must ask, and answer, one important question of itself. We believe, as a Christian nation, still, in the possibility of redemption on earth. We also claim that once a felon has paid his/her debt to society—that is, satisfied the court-imposed judgment, including whatever jail time plus parole might have been required—that felon should be restored to more or less full citizenship. I say more-or-less because we still restrict felons from possessing fire arms and from the vote. The question to be answered is, "At what point will this felon truly have paid his debt? At what point will we truly restore this person to his full citizenship?" (Note that I'm tacitly including the franchise in "full citizenship.")

I think the general consensus building is that we do want to limit the franchise, and we do want only the virtuous citizen to vote. This legitimately, I believe, includes felons while in a felonious state (and I suggest that some felonies indeed should cause a permanent felonious state, even though a punishment meted out may have been fulfilled); and noncitizens, even though present legally, regardless of how virtuous. I suggest that such exclusions are legitimate, because they are disabilities that can be remedied by the individual in question: the first by not committing the felonious act in the first place, and the second be deciding to become a citizen. If this construction is accepted, then I suggest that the acceptable window of the definition of "virtue" gets a whole lot broader—because whatever we decide should be grounds for exclusion of the franchise, the individual so excluded has the power to correct the grounds for exclusion himself.

Some miscellaneous minor points. I speculate the Normans' use of the diminutive "franklin" for the Anglo-Saxons was an insulting usage, and that they reserve "frank" for Normans. I speculate this based on the esteem in which the two groups held each other, and the typical attitude of the conqueror toward the newly conquered, as well as your own view that there were simply too many freemen Anglo-Saxons to easily, umm, disenfranchise.

(Note that this was not 'universal franchise' in the American sense either, however, as Athens had a number of non-citizen resident classes, and citizenship was linked to military service.) This distinction may not last: there are various American municipalities that are experimenting with the idea of extending the vote to non-citizens (in Colorado, because they live there, too…) and granting six votes per person (in New England, to improve the chances of electing Hispanics who cannot get elected on their merits). For all that, my remarks will proceed from the current meaning of "the franchise," that is the right to vote.

(Can someone who knows Elise invite her in? It may be that she'd be a willing participant if asked. I'm new to blogging, so I don't know the ethics of this in the blogosphere.)

Eric Hines

Animal Rescue

Animal Rescue

My neighbors and I all agree, in an adult and responsible way, that you can't go rescuing every animal. It stands to reason you can't give the rest of the county an incentive to dump all their unwanted animals on our road. These worthy sentiments don't help at all. A good handful of us are confirmed suckers, to the disgust of the more sensible members of our households. My husband complains bitterly that I should put up a "no kill shelter" sign on the road.

One of my neighbors managed to pick up three kittens one day a few months ago, and then a puppy the very next day. We took care of their medical needs and found homes for all of them before too long. This weekend another neighbor brought a starving, lost, friendly little terrier back with him from his bike ride, tucked under one arm. Even better luck this time: the pup has a home already with a more distant neighbor. We try to keep tabs on anyone on the peninsula who's suggested he's getting ready to think about taking in another animal sometime soon, or who might be browbeaten or sandbagged into it. Email newslists help.

Usually whoever makes the find gets stuck with the foster care (there has to be some discipline!), but the rest of us suckers get together and help with the vet work and the effort to find a new home. There's no explaining this compulsion to people who don't share it. Those of us who suffer from the compulsion have long since exchanged the secret handshakes of recognition. We call each other up to confess that we've done it again, and to get moral support as we reassure our suffering spouses that we're really going to find homes for these creatures, not adopt all of them ourselves. Not all of them.

The picture above is of two of my scoundrels when we first took them in seven years ago. Honestly, who could have resisted them?

I'm grateful for my like-minded neighbors. It would be easy to get burned out on this kind of thing if you thought you were alone.

Tolerance

Tolerance vs. Approval

American Digest's Vanderleun addresses a distinction I've often struggled to make between the desirability of tolerance and the dangers of abject moral relativism:

In essence we agree that I tolerate your worship of a moon god and you tolerate my worship of a tree. . . . If, on the other hand, you decide that I have to make continuous noises of "approval" of the moon god in order for you to grant me the right to worship the tree god in peace, we are headed towards an argument that ends in guns. . . . "Toleration does not require approval." It really is the simplest of social compacts and like all great and simple ideas bringing in nuance and qualifiers doesn't strengthen our common bonds as society but weakens it. This is well-known to those that seek to create a climate of continual upheaval in the mistaken belief that, in the end, the fire will not consume them. Civil war consumes all. . . . In the spirit of America, I am prepared to tolerate a vast and unfettered range of religions, beliefs, lifestyles, and other things that my fellow citizens may wish to don in order to decorate their lives and souls. But if they come to me and seek my unfettered approval for this or that hobby-horse they have chosen to ride I shall reserve my approval according to my judgment. Should they then, like piqued children, insist on my approval of this or my disapproval of that as a requirement in custom or in law for my continued full citizenship in this nation, we will find ourselves at daggers drawn.

It's still not easy to draw the line between tolerance and approval, whatever Vanderleun may say, whenever actions move beyond the largely symbolic and private. I won't be drawing my dagger over monotheism, but I'm not likely to tolerate theft and murder in my immediate vicinity no matter what its multicultural basis.

Updates/Fixes

Corrections:

I have fixed many broken links today, especially on the sidebar. The switch to a weekly rather than monthly archive has allowed the whole of the archives to be available. (The monthly archives were reaching some maximum length, and then ignoring further entries.) However, it also broke about 3/4ths of the links on the sidebar to items in the history here at Grim's Hall. I think I have fixed them all now.

I've also made a new link section called "Frith & Freedom," since it's relatively easy to do at the moment, and since those ideas are of importance right now.

M.C. Quine

M.C. Quine:

Today's xkcd has an inside joke that is probably only funny to philosophers. That's a rare beast: but see also here.

Speaking of which, I went to a gathering of people interested in philosophy tonight; there I received a very great compliment, and witnessed a very great insult. The compliment was just this: at the end of the evening, after I had said goodbye and traveled as far as the street, a young and pregnant woman who had been present at the party followed me out and asked me if I would mind to accompany her through the dark to her car. I don't think I've felt that honored in a long time.

The insult came earlier in the evening. There were only two women present, the one I just mentioned and another from Brazil. They had been largely ignored by the otherwise-male crowd, and so I made some pretense to bring them into the conversation. One of the young men who had been holding forth -- on Kant, as it happens -- joined us but said nothing. The women had been talking about surfing, which proves to have many harmonies with horseback riding as a discipline of body and soul. We discussed that for a while.

After a time, the young lady from Brazil looked at the young man, who had been listening to our conversation, and said: "Do you do any exercise?"

He sputtered a bit, and said, "Do I do any exercise?"

She looked at him carefully, and nodded. "Backgammon, perhaps?"

Njal's Saga: Part Seven

Njal's Saga: Part Seven

I completely failed to post an entry last week, for which I humbly apologize to those of you who have been waiting to discuss this part of the saga. This week's (last week's!) reading is here; next week's is here.

This week's readings touch on two main themes: the marriage and killing of Hauskuld, the Priest of Whiteness, and some conflict involving Njal's sons. The latter is the part that is going to drive much of the rest of the saga. Here we see the first of Njal's family to die.

Note also the mention of Snorri the Priest, who is an important figure in the Heathslayings.

Even More on the Franchise

Even More on the Franchise:

My expectation is that most of you are beginning to bore of this topic, so I appreciate your indulgence as I make a note of my further thoughts.

I regret that our friend Elise has decided not to join us, because I was hoping to obtain from her an idea of why this notion of a universal franchise was so important to her. It's an interesting question, and a debate on the subject of the franchise will not be complete without a defense of it as an idea.

For that reason, I'm going to provide that defense myself, as well as I can.

We should begin with the origin of the word "franchise." Its first use was in the 14th century, making it a fairly new word. It is not the old Greek concept of democracy, in other words, where all citizens have a vote by virtue of being citizens. (Note that this was not 'universal franchise' in the American sense either, however, as Athens had a number of non-citizen resident classes, and citizenship was linked to military service.) Neither was it the Roman sense, which allocated democratic support in several ways over the centuries, but not in our own; we read about one of them in Plutarch's Life of Crassus.

The word comes from the Anglo-French franchir, from the Old French franc: which is to say, it came to us from the Normans. We first observe it as a description of knights in literature. The word means 'the bearing of nobility and honor befitting a free man.' (See Maurice Keen's Chivalry, which discusses this use of the term "franchise" in several places.)

When it becomes a description of a status, rather than a personal quality, it originally did not mean "the right to vote." Rather, it meant "to free from obligations," as a man could become free of serfdom or other obligations; he could also become free to do something, as we now say that you purchase a franchise from a corporation (so that you are free to serve their products, etc.).

So, the word "franc" meant "free man." And this is no surprise, because it is the French word: that is to say, in those days, the language of the Franks. A Frank was a free man. To franchise someone was to make him a Frank. (Do you see the tie to "franklin," the Norman word for the already-free Anglo Saxons who called themselves thanes? It is a diminutive of "Frank," a little Frank! By the same token, "Han" in Mandarin -- which refers to the majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese -- translates literally as "true man" or "hero.")

In other words, Dr. Painter's theory proves out:

When William the Conqueror took possession of the English crown he organized it as a complete feudal state. But England had a large population of freemen in addition to the mass of the unfree and the Norman kings never made any legal distinction between knights and other freemen. The freedoms which were inherent in feudal vassalage went to all freemen as vassals, direct or indirect, of the king...

The right of all freemen to the privileges of vassals was clearly accepted in England from the Conquest, but found its first clear expression in the Magna Carta. This document was stated to apply to all freemen. It also contained in specific form a statement of the most basic of all liberties -- the right to due process of law.

Thus in England as the unfree became free they acquired the same legal status as knights of the feudal world. Individual liberty was part of the fundamental law.

So here, then, is the linguistic -- and, as language informs our basic understanding of the world, much of the emotional -- tie between the franchise and our idea of "all men being created equal," which we are discussing below. "To have the franchise" meant "to be a free man," and has meant that for a very long time. Someone without the franchise is not, by these traditional understandings, truly free.

And that must be the core of the objection: that, by restricting the franchise, we are degrading our fellow Americans to some lesser status than "free men" (and women).

Now, the Founders were not so concerned about this aspect. Voting rights do not appear in the Constitution, nor in the Bill of Rights; only in later amendments do they appear, as a practical consequence of the Civil War. This implies that they did not feel that the right to vote was one of the primary rights that all citizens should have, or that it was of first importance to protect. Hamilton provided (as we have seen) an argument for restricting the franchise; and there were any number of other restrictions in place as well as the one on the poor. These seem to have been rooted in the idea of franchise as something befitting a free man, in many cases -- literally, a man, since the franchise was denied to women; and also someone who had the means to be free (40 shillings' wealth, in those days).

Still, we have rejected both parts of that formula. I personally endorse both of those rejections. Therefore, I can make no argument against universal suffrage arising from the Founders' position.

Furthermore, the Norman exception has proven to be incredibly wise and productive. Whereas much of Europe languished in serfdom and obligation, the exception the Normans made for franklins (largely because it was too hard to enforce any other status on propertied, armed, military families) did great good for England. There was an explosion of liberty and other good things in that land arising from it. By the same token, we have also benefitted by each extension, because it allowed more people the opportunity to rise to the expectations of the status.

There remains the problem of felons! But that exception, which is the one exception we make to align our principle of universal suffrage with the problem of public virtue, may yet swallow the whole. The noble and honorable bearing that befits a free man is not always shown; and we might well say that, while it is good to offer it to all in the hope that they might rise to the standard, it is better to offer it to all on the condition that they rise to the standard.

That is another argument, however. Tonight, it is enough to lay out why it is important as a principle.

Hummers

They're he-e-e-re

To the left is the current level of hummingbird action (multiplied by the number of feeders, which we've increased to nine today). Professional watchers tell us it's safe to estimate that there are three birds in the trees for every one you see on the feeder. I can believe it; the twittering and zooming the trees is certainly getting noisy. We've already gone through 3 quarts of sugar water today as of our last refill just after lunch.

To the right is what they'll look like in a few days or weeks. The local Hummingbird Festival starts in two weeks. It's our county's biggest deal, bigger even than the annual return of the whooping cranes.

Oiks

Oiks

More from the estimable James Taranto this morning: a rumination on the fear of "us" rather than the fear of the "other." He quotes the British philosopher Roger Scruton, who "has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia."

Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " . . .

The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, . . . and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.

The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it.

There is one important difference between the American oik and his European counterpart. American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as -- and may even believe themselves to be -- superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as "un-American" for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ." . . . This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite.

Crappuchino

Crappuchino

The farm-raised vs. wild controversy wouldn't have been my biggest issue here.

The world's most expensive coffee is gathered from the droppings of wild civets, which eat the coffee berries and enrich their flavor with their digestive enzymes. The results sell for $1,700/lb, which one drinker in Jakarta describes without apparent irony as "twice as expensive as Starbucks," but worth it. Jakarta fanciers now have access to this delicacy because it has been exonerated from the status of "haram," or forbidden to Muslim drinkers, as long as the poop-berries have been washed carefully.

All is not well in poop-coffee-purist-land, however. Unscrupulous capitalists plan to feed coffee berries to caged civets.

"I think wild civets offer more variants to the taste," said specialty coffee expert Edi Sumadi. "Inside the cage, the civets' diet is regulated, they're not free to pick following their instincts, so the enzyme inside their digestive system is monotonous."

Insist on free-range poop coffee.

H/t James Taranto

In Defense

Defensor Pacis:

...Her flag had seven stars, significant because Chavez had arbitrarily added an eighth, making any use of a difficult-to-find seven-star banner an act of defiance.

H/t: Dad29.

Pirates!

Pirates!

From Hoover's Policy Review, a piece on Corsairs:

What was to become the manual on how to deal with pirates appeared in 1618 under the title Discourse on the Beginnings, Practises and Suppression of Pirates. Its author was Henry Mainwaring, himself a reformed pirate, who had turned himself in under James I’s amnesty. As Tinniswood notes, his credentials as an ex-pirate were impeccable, and as a born public relations man he would boost them by telling tall tales of his exploits, as on the occasion when, running out of shot, he had loaded his cannon with pieces of eight and blasted them at the enemy.

In Discourse, Mainwaring lays bare the inner workings of the pirate world — for instance, how some English sailors would happily join their captors but asked for papers saying that they had done so under duress. If caught by their country, they would produce the papers and escape punishment.

He strongly advises against paying ransom, because the knowledge that they will be ransomed will make sailors less inclined to resist capture. Ironically, he also disapproves of pardoning: “Your highness must put on a consistent immutable resolution never to grant a pardon.” Those who joined should know the consequences of getting caught beforehand: The king should “put them all to death, or make slaves of them.” They could profitably be used in improving harbors and coastal forts.

He vividly describes corsair tactics, how at dawn they would lie dead still in the water waiting for their pray; when they spotted a ship on the horizon, they would set sail, ostensibly just a fellow merchantman on the same course. He lists all their favorite safe havens for repairs and re-victualing. And he dispenses some practical advice to merchants, such as mounting a watch while in harbor and not leaving the sails on board, an invitation to mischief. Finally, he recommends the arming of merchantmen and coastal patrols by the navy. The effort earned Mainwaring a knighthood, un-pedagogical proof that you can play both sides of the fence and come out a winner.

Under Charles I, the pirate problem became acute. In 1631, an Algerian fleet under command of the Dutchman Jan Janzoon (operating under his new name, Murat Reis) hit the coastal village of Baltimore, in County Cork, Ireland, and abducted 109 inhabitants. Some 5,000 Englishmen were at the time languishing on the Barbary Coast. Merchants worried about the loss of their ships and the wives of abducted sailors kept petitioning Parliament for help. In response, a ships levy was imposed to fund a punitive expedition. Three ships under William Rainburrow successfully blockaded Sale in 1637 and liberated its Christian captives, having played local leaders off against each other. But Algiers, with its impressive fortifications, was a tougher nut to crack.

An ambitious parliamentary plan to end trade with the Ottoman Empire and to hit evil at its center by sending off a fleet of 40 men-of-war to Istanbul came to nothing, as civil war intervened. Historians have argued that anger among merchants over the king’s lack of funding for coastal defenses was a contributing reason to the war. As regards paying ransom, collections were taken in British churches, but the money shrank on the way because of cuts taken by various middlemen, including admiralty officials who arranged the payments. (In Rome, two religious orders handled negotiations with the pirates, though, as Tinniswood notes, they concentrated on Catholic victims.) To make the pleading letters from slaves carry extra conviction, their masters treated them extra harshly before handing them pen and paper.

A number of books by former captives appeared. One was by William Okeley, who was captured in 1639 and who provides a catalog of the savagery surrounding him in Algiers — of lashings; arms and legs broken with sledgehammers; crucifixions; people hanging on meat hooks; amputations after which the victim’s hand is put on a string and tied around his neck. The lucky ones like Okeley would be allowed to run small shops, whereas those unfortunate enough to be selected for the galleys would sit in their own filth, chained to their oar.

After five years of captivity, with the help of some fellow hostages, Okeley ingeniously managed to produce a boat as a kind of assembly kit in the cellar of his tobacconist shop. Thus the keel came in two parts, and the ribs also came in sections. On the agreed night, the men would carry the parts down to the beach and quickly assemble them; they used a canvass skin, waterproofed with tar, to cover the skeleton. They made it safely to Majorca, and Okeley reached England in 1644. Okeley’s book of his ordeal, entitled Eben-ezer, appeared in 1675. Almost half a century later, Daniel Defoe lets Robinson Crusoe, that most mishap-prone of sailors, be captured by “a Turkish rover of Sallee”; Okeley’s story must certainly have been known to Defoe, before switching sources to Alexander Selkirk’s account of being marooned. Defoe advocated a common European response against the pirate menace.

Calling Down the Thunder

Calling Down the Thunder:

The Case for Women's Suffrage

The Case for Womens' Suffrage:

At one time, I had an advisor in college who had this poster on her door. I was reminded of it today because I was thinking that it might provide a synthesis position on the question we've been debating.



It's a good argument -- one that demonstrates the injustice of women being categorically denied the vote in clear and undeniable terms. It's interesting to note what it is not, though: it is not an argument for universal suffrage. It's an argument for suffrage based on those public or civic virtues we've been discussing.

A woman can be all the things that 'a man can be, without losing the vote.' The question is, which of these should cause someone to lose the vote? The implication is that at least some of them should.

(I have occasionally been given to the drinking of beer, so perhaps I've already achieved Elise's condition of suggesting "principles for limiting the franchise that would eliminate him or herself from the pool of acceptable voters." On the other hand, I have always dissented from the Women's Temperance Movement on their interpretation of temperance as abstinence. Still, it's certainly highly likely that they would have excluded me!)

The wider point is that the defense of womens' suffrage does not depend, as it did not originally stand, on a notion of the importance of universal suffrage. They fought, and won, on the grounds of virtue: of the virtues of women, and the consequent immorality of denying them the vote. I think that was the right ground, and I suspect it remains the right ground.

Plato, Public Character, Australia

Plato, Public Virtue, and Australia:

Cassandra had an interesting post yesterday that I've already cited a couple of times, but let's do it once more. It deserves a top-level discussion.

Classical thinkers like Plato were very much concerned with encouraging responsibility and public virtue because they - like our Founding Fathers - considered these qualities essential to the survival of a free society. I hear a lot of talk about freedom these days but precious little about accountability. Freedom cannot long exist where men seek to be excused from the consequences of their freely made decisions. Such men can neither control nor support themselves.

We have become a society that will accept no limits on individual freedom - not even those imposed by nature and consequence.

This is very well said. I noted in the comments:

I was just reading the Charmides this week. It's interesting because it's a discussion of the virtue of duty, sophrosyne. (This is often translated as "temperance," or "moderation," or "self-control," but the real trick to sophrosyneis that it's about understanding your duty, and then doing it.)

One could read the Charmides as comical -- no one in the dialogue actually appears to have the virtue, as Socrates is being tempted by lust, Charmides by liquor, and Critias by pride. Or one could read it as a purely philosophical exploration of the difficult of defining a word that we think we understand, which is how it is usually read.

But the real point of the dialogue is unspoken, because the Greeks reading the dialogue would have known the history: Critias becomes one of the leaders of the Thirty Tyrants, which executes many Athenians and restricts their traditional rights. Charmides joins him in this as one of their officers. Both of them are killed in the ensuing civil war.

Or take the Laches, wherein Laches and Nicias are talking with Socrates, who challenges them to define "courage." They cannot do so; and this is the same Nicias we read about in Plutarch, who lost the Sicily campaign out of timidity. It was the loss of the war with Sparta that caused the Thirty Tyrants to come to power in the first place.

These questions of character have real and severe consequences. Plato could see them clearly from where he sat, following a loss of war to a foreign power, a tyranny set up by the Spartans to rule over the people of Athens, and a brutal civil war. All that could have been avoided, he thought, had the leaders been better men.

Today in The Australian, there's an article that argues that the new Green Party is the party of these civic virtues.

ARE the Australian Greens the party of libertines? Sydney's Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell thinks so, dubbing their influence poisonous.

The Australian Sex Party agrees, recently expressing indignation that the Greens could betray their principles by endorsing candidates (including myself) critical of pornography.

Both the sex industry and moral conservatives see the Greens as the political torchbearers for the liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. Yet a consideration of what it actually stands for suggests that, rather than being the party of extremes that its critics want it to be, the Greens are the party of moderation....

While the Greens embody many of the social values that defined Australia after World War II, their philosophical roots go back to the foundations of Western civilisation.

Indeed, it may be said that the Australian Greens are the party of Plato, the original philosopher of the West, who described the four cardinal virtues as self-control (sophrosyne), prudence (phronesis), resilience (andreia) and justice (dikaioasyne).

When applied to our fellow humans as well as to the natural world, these virtues are precisely what the Australian Greens stand for.

If after this election the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate, Plato's spirit will come alive in our upper house.

Now, as we noticed from the Timaeus, being 'the party of Plato' ought to be a warning sign as much as a point of praise. Some of his ideas were great, and some more problematic.

The idea of public virtue, and its importance to politics, is nevertheless a solid point. It's also part of our broader discussion: how do we decide what it is? Are there any qualities observable at a distance (i.e., that voters who do not actually know the candidates can see) that are reliable guarantees, or does the sinful nature of humankind mean that the best we can do is look for proxies for virtue? What proxies should these be? What do we really want in candidates for office, or those whom we choose to consult about the future and direction of the nation?

These are important questions. Cassandra is very much on the right track in looking for responsibilities as the root of rights, I think; but then, I would say that, because it is an expression of the idea that our liberties (and rights) lie on a foundation of mutual service and fealty. That is to say, it is entirely compatible with the idea of frith discussed below, or Dr. Painter's ideas about the feudal roots of liberty and our rights.

What do you think? These are challenging times, and if there is an answer to these problems we face, part of it must lie here.

The Christian Party

The Christian Party:

I've long thought -- and occasionally argued here -- that the future of the Republican Party would be in transitioning to an explicitly Christian party. This would be a retrenchment, but also an expansionist opportunity for them if they could reach out to Catholics as well as the Protestant denominations that have long been strong in the Republican political body. It might allow them to expand into the northeast somewhat, where there are relatively more Catholics; but more importantly to the party's long term future, it could be a bridge to the Hispanic and Latino communities. It might even allow them to end the division between themselves and the black community, whose Christian tradition is both strong and inspiring.

Reading the transcripts and news accounts of the Restoring Honor rally today, I think that process is well underway. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, as many Christian principles are at odds with old interpretations of the First Amendment's establishment clause; there is also a very large and well-organized movement on the left against Christian expressions in public spaces. Still, it is the most obvious route for a party that needs to evolve, and which is looking for a common unifying principle that can expand its base while allowing it to remain the relatively-conservative option. It will be an interesting, and potentially explosive, transition.

UPDATE: A small distinction:

In a way, the rally today mirrored rallies held for then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and leading up to the election of 2008. Both this rally and many of Obama’s featured mesmerizing speakers, who chose to inspire audiences by rhetorically empowering them to take matters into their own hands.

While Beck’s rally emphasized belief in God, Obama’s generally emphasized himself as a savior of the American people.

Yeah, that's kind of a big difference actually.

Counting Crowds

Counting Crowds

Regardless of what you think of either Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, I'm getting tired of the MSM's complete inability to report accurately on crowds drawn to any event they approve or disapprove of. They're somewhat past the point of last year's ridiculous attempt to describe huge Tea Party events as drawing "dozens" or "hundreds" of attendees -- when they deigned to admit the events were occurring at all -- but they've still got a pretty heavy thumb on the scale.

Here's a picture of today's Washington rally, reported by the AP as drawing a crowd of "tens of thousands." How many people would the AP say were in that crowd if it were an anti-Beck or anti-Palin rally? The Washington Post claimed 1.8 million people attended the Obama inauguration. Here is a site that tried to compare those estimates with attendance at the 9-12-09 Tea Party rally, including crowd photography and aerial shots. Was the 9-12-09 Tea Party a crowd of a million, a few hundred thousand, or "up to 30,000"? Depends whether you ask the MSM or people willing to try to do an honest count.

Voting Mechanics

Voting Mechanics

Once you figure out who can vote, you still have to run the election in a way that inspires confidence. For at least ten years, this has been a fraught subject, in at least two ways: controversies over who is registered (or is allowed to vote regardless of iffy registration status), and controversies over the accuracy or honesty of the tabulation.

Here's a headache I'm glad I don't have. Early yesterday, the warehouse holding virtually all of Houston's (Harris County) 10,000 voting machines burned to a crisp. That's $30 million worth of machines called "eSlates," and their accompanying "judge booth controllers" or JBCs, expected to be used in a county with 1.9 million registered voters in 884 precincts.

The County Clerk, Beverly Kaufman, is a capable and efficient administrator with 16 years on the job who plans to retire this December. Her last election promises to be a doozy. Early voting starts in 51 days in what is expected to be a very high-turnout election that includes a gubernatorial race.

Until the late 1990s, Harris County still used punch ballots. They had switched to the eSlates by the time of the 2000 presidential race, and now everyone is thoroughly used to them, though suspicions continue over the lack of a paper trail for this fully electronic system. I used to think those suspicions were overblown, but I've come to see the value in a paper trail. If there is controversy over an eSlate, all you can do is argue about whether programmers got improper access to the machine. My current county uses a combination of eSlate and something called eScan. The eScan machines require the voter to blacken little boxes on a paper ballot, then feed it through a scanner. If the machine has trouble reading the ballot, it spits it back for correction. If there is a later dispute over whether the scanning and tabulation process has been jimmied, the paper ballots are held in an inside box, so a spot audit could detect a discrepancy -- a prospect I would expect to deter anyone attempting to defraud the system unless he could be sure of uniform cooperation at the precinct and county level. If you get enough people in the conspiracy, any system can be gamed, but the larger it has to be, the less likely it is to be carried off successfully.

I don't envy Ms. Kaufman; I expect she will be putting out an emergency call to all the other 253 Texas counties for the loan of some eSlates. The fire department is investigating arson. As usual, there already were calls for investigations into the voting system pending, so there will be accusations flying about who was most interested in hiding the evidence.

Just before each election, the county clerk issues the voting machines to the election judges, who are expected to ensure their security overnight and during the election day. Before today I never gave any thought to how secure the machines were for the rest of the year.

Principles and the Franchise

Principles and the Franchise:

Many of you have been following the debate over the last few days, mostly conducted at Cassandra's but also here and at Elise's place, on the issue of the franchise. Of these, Elise categorically rejects, as unprincipled and immoral, the idea of limiting the franchise; Cassandra rejects the idea as well, categorically for all biological distinctions, and on other grounds for service-based distinctions. T99 appears to be interested in the idea, but believes that the safest position is universal suffrage.

I have been arguing that we might reasonably talk through the idea of limiting the franchise -- in other words, I disagree with Elise that the idea is immoral by nature. I agree with her, and with Cassandra, that biological distinctions are categorically unacceptable as a standard (other than youth, which is non-controversial as we all appear to agree that children should not be able to vote). I'm going to talk a bit more about where I think the idea may be worth exploring in a moment, but first I want to address one of Elise's concepts.

Elise raises the objection that the concept of limiting the franchise is "unprincipled," in that it is not based on a moral principle, but mere pragmatism. There are two replies to that objection that ought to be made.

First, political philosophy has to have an element of pragmatism in formulating its principles. We have heard, for example, that 'the Constitution is not a suicide pact.' This means that, if some application of a Constitutional principle would destroy the Republic, the Constitution may be set aside.

That is not 'unprincipled.' Rather, it is one of the principles. This is akin to the "feasibility" loophole in Just War Theory's idea of jus ad bellum: if a war cannot be won, no matter how fully justified it may otherwise be on grounds of self-defense or sorrowful humanity, the war cannot be justified. War always causes harm, and therefore there must be a pragmatic chance that the war will be able to achieve success: you cannot morally wage a war simply because your heart is pure. You have to have a chance to win, or otherwise you're killing people for no reason. You may be right on every other principle, but you have to be right on this one too.

So, to justify considering limiting the franchise, we would need to show that the current franchise is causing what T99 refers to as a "feedback loop" whereby the government-dependent classes are voting themselves wealth from the public treasury at a rate that is likely to destroy the Republic. That position would need to be thoroughly argued, which is not the business of this piece. At a glance, though, it is not infeasible that we are indeed facing such a contingency.

Second, it is in fact the case that there are principles that would justify limiting the franchise. We discussed Alexander Hamilton's -- which he took from Blackstone -- at Cassandra's place today. This is the relevant part of the Blackstone quote Hamilton cited.

If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote in electing these delegates, to whose charge is committed the disposal of his property, his liberty, and his life. But since that can hardly be expected in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications...

We are accustomed to thinking that Hamilton, etc., was aiming at 'the mob,' in the way that Plato and Aristotle were deeply concerned about the negative effects of democracy. They had reason to be, as we were discussing in another post at Cassandra's today: they had seen that democracy destroy itself, lead them into wars and then refuse to commit to supporting those wars (as Nicias at Sicily was at times denied support by the legislature); they had seen it lead them into civil war; they had seen it twice suspend its constitution; they had seen it give itself to foreign powers, and domination by Sparta. They had seen it execute Socrates, who had fought for it in his youth. The Romans likewise were deeply concerned about the reality of the Roman mob.

Hamilton, though, is not really taking an aristocratic stance against the mob. He's not worried about how the mob would vote, if they could vote independently: he's worried that their domination by a powerful, wealthy figure who controls their destiny will decide them. Hamilton was not out to prevent the poor from voting, that is to say: he was out to prevent the rich from dominating the new republic with bribes, favors, and threats. What he was doing was protecting the middle class, those shopkeepers and yeoman farmers who had fought for the revolution.

That's 'pragmatism' of the sort Elise is concerned about. It's also, though, a principle: that a certain independence is required in order to be able to participate in a vote. Today we don't consider poverty a bar to independence, because we have generous public programs that are 'entitlements,' so that no one can be pushed to the point of starvation by a wealthy mill-owner. Yet consider the drug addict, whose addiction may drive him instead of his reason: is he independent enough -- does he, as Cassandra says in her post on character, have adequate character -- to participate in public life? But he may have committed no felony that would disqualify him.

I do not share Hamilton's principle. I offer it merely an example of a principle.

I have a different core principle that is causing me to look again at these issues: the concept of frith. As we begin to watch the nation tear itself apart, I naturally look toward frith as the thing we need to rebuild. And what is it? It is a concept of mutual support, common defense, and service to each other. The word is related to "friendship," and to "freedom," because it is this fellow-service that allows us to win and defend a space in which we can be free.

If this is my guiding principle here, it is not a commonly understood one; and it's one that many of you may have not encountered elsewhere. I haven't written about it for a long time, so it's possible you have forgotten even if you've been a long time reader.

The first post on the subject comes from the earliest days of the Hall, way back in March of 2003: scroll to Section V in this essay. Here is a post from 2003 on the subject. Here is one from an early debate between me and Cassandra, on shame.

The debate in 2007 has a number of parts, which begin here; then here; then Joel's first reply; my reply to him; his reply to me; mine to him; Daniel's reply.

The principle is not mine alone, however: we very recently discussed how many of our traditional liberties, including the franchise, are based in feudal service. This is much the same concept, although frith is the Old English rather than the Carolingian version of it.

I have named two groups that seem to me to be good sources: parents who faithfully raise their children, and military servicemembers. I've named something that seems promising as an example of a disqualifier: betraying your bond to your children (as for example by abandoning them without support). I'm sure there are other kinds of qualifying service, and other kinds of things that should be disqualifying; I've only begun to think this through in the last few days. I may eventually reject the idea; but I want to think about it, and talk it through.

Neither group is a pragmatic choice on Elise's terms: both are quite likely to oppose me on any given question. For example, see this post from 2004, when I talk about the frith-bond between myself and a beloved friend who disagrees with me on everything political: but this is just the kind of person, devoted to the nation and its joys, that we ought to want to enjoy the franchise however she votes.

In any event, I wanted to note that there is a principle at work here -- one that I've thought about, and written about, both at length and for a long time. I hadn't really thought about how to apply it to this question before, but if a failure of frith and a rise of government-backed plundering factions are bankrupting and destroying the nation, we may want to look at ways to use what frith remains to strengthen the republic. Looking for people who have demonstrated the virtue in their lives, and making them the chief voice in guiding our future, may be one way of doing that. There may be other ways; there may be better ways. This is why I'm thinking about the question, however.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan

The always-helpful Assistant Village Idiot directed me today to the new Weekly Standard's cover article on Afghanistan by P.J. O'Rourke. Sometimes O'Rourke relies a little too much on snarky one-liners, but not in this article, which is amusing but thoughtful. He interviews Aghans in an attempt to understand the real property system:

Land titles are a mess in Afghanistan, or, as the Turkmen put it with a nice Ph.D. turn of phrase, “Definition of ownership is originally ambiguous.” . . . The situation is so confused that the Soviets, of all people, attempted to impose private property in Afghanistan. “They tried to change the law, but the period was too short. Afghanistan,” the Turkmen said and laughed, “did not use the benefits of colonialism.”

He also tries to understand the legal system more broadly:

The Taliban offers bad law—chopping off hands, stoning desperate housewives, the usual things. Perhaps you have to live in a place that has had no law for a long time—since the Soviets invaded 31 years ago—before you welcome bad law as an improvement. . . . An Afghan civil society activist, whose work has put him under threat from the Taliban, admitted, “People picked Taliban as the lesser of evils.” He explained that lesser of evils with one word, “stability.” . . . A woman member of the Afghan parliament said that it was simply a fact that the Taliban insurgency was strongest “where the government is not providing services.” Rule of law being the first service a government must provide.

He muses about the understandable antipathy to foreign do-gooders:

What if some friendly, well-meaning, but very foreign power, with incomprehensible lingo and outrageous clothes, were to arrive on our shores to set things right? What if it were Highland Scots? There they go marching around wearing skirts and purses and ugly plaids, playing their hideous bagpipe music, handing out haggis to our kiddies and offending our sensibilities with a lack of BVDs under their kilts. Maybe they do cut taxes, lower the federal deficit, eliminate the Department of Health and Human Services, and the EPA, give people jobs at their tartan factories and launch a manhunt for Harry Reid and the UC Berkeley faculty. We still wouldn’t like them.

I don't know. I'd probably like them.

Snakebite Redux

Snakebite Redux

I don't believe it. The little booger got snakebit again this morning, right on the schnozz. We're guessing a cottonmouth this time, from the fact that the bites didn't bleed to speak of (not an infallible guide, but something the vet associates with moccasins), and the general muddiness of the pup. The full inch between fangmarks suggests a large cottonmouth. A painful bite, but not one that usually leads to complications.

I knew something was wrong when his buds came back without him from their morning swamp run. In case he'd found a way outside the fence, I drove around the neighborhood looking for him, but when I came back he was sort of collapsed by the back stairs, poor thing, feebly wagging his tail. Back to the vet for steroids, painkillers, and antibiotics against the filthy bite. He should be OK after lying around feeling like absolute dirt for a day or two. I'd say I'm going to pamper him if that weren't bringing coals to Newcastle.

When my dogs don't come home, I really freak out. With all the rain this summer, it's barely possible to tromp through the unusually thick brush looking for a dog who may not be able to come to me or even bark. The unusually thick, very snaky brush.

The vet told me about helping his father clean out the chicken house after Hurricane Carla when he was a boy. He used up boxes of ammunition and filled three bushels with snakes. He said this to cheer me up about how the snake population has, if anything, declined.

Never In Slavery

...And Shall Never Sound In Slavery:

UN Lying

UN Asks: "Who Are You Gonna Believe?"

Us...

The U.N. said it would not be deterred by violent threats.

...or your lying eyes?

DEA & 9th

The DEA and the 9th Circuit: Continuing to Drive a Wedge Between Americans & Government

So let's say you're lying in bed one night, and your dog starts barking. You walk out onto your back porch, and you see some guys messing around with your car. Should you shoot them?

(A) Yes, because they have invaded my property, and are probably now stealing my car, which I need for the survival and prosperity of my family; also, as a citizen, I have both the right and the duty to stop a felony in progress if I'm able. If shooting them is the necessary means to that end, it's entirely proper.

(B) No, because human life is more important than property. We don't hang people for car theft, therefore we shouldn't be free to use lethal violence to protect our cars.

(C) No, they're probably government agents, whose right to invade my property without a warrant is Constitutionally protected!

(D) Yes, because if they're thieves they ought to be shot; but if they're government agents who believe they should have the right to invade my property without both a warrant and taking clear steps to inform me of the warrant, it's even more important that they be shot.

If you said (A), I think you're right. If you said (D), I think you might be right. (B) and (C) are not acceptable answers. Unless, that is, you're the 9th Circuit.

The matter is of academic importance to me, as (a) I don't live in the 9th Circuit, thank God, and (b) I have a fence with a gate to keep the horses in.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes.

Well, I would hardly say we were "rich people," but such fences are more common in rural areas. In any event, it doesn't matter. The government should be forbidden from sneaking onto your property, etc. If they have cause to do all this, they should have to get a warrant. Warrants should have to be executed formally, in an open and declared way.

"But then he'd know we thought he was growing dope, and he'd quit!" Well, yeah -- right.

"But he's a bad person!" No worse than DEA agents who think they ought to be able to treat American citizens this way -- in fact, much less bad, from my perspective. Agents who don't resign in protest when told to do this kind of thing are wicked, and personally responsible for the harm they are doing to our social contract.

These DEA agents, and the judges that let them get away with it, are turning the police into the actual enemies of the People. That is a story with a very bad ending.

The Last Days of Deepwater Horizon

The Last Days of Deepwater Horizon

Maybe we won't get a good disaster movie out of this until the litigation is over, years from now, but it's not too soon to begin piecing together what went wrong. The Wall Street Journal is running a series whose third installment, today, begins, "On April 20, a small group of men aboard the Deepwater Horizon listened to the nearly complete well and didn't understand what it was telling them."

The brass were largely unavailable that day. The BP manager was on-shore for training, incommunicado. Two onsite Transocean managers were busy hosting visiting BP and Transocean executives who had arrived to applaud the rig's safety record. Everyone believed the troubles with this "nightmare well" were largely behind them. They prepared for what they thought would be the final test, after which the well would be temporarily plugged until BP was ready to tap and transport its contents.

Odysseus

Sing, Pallas:

Archaeologists claim they discover the palace of Odysseus!

An 8th BC century palace which Greek archaeologists claim was the home of Odysseus has been discovered in Ithaca, fuelling theories that the hero of Homer's epic poem was real.

Just one problem. "Odysseus" in the ancient Greek means "Troublemaker."* It's possible that some Greek mother named her son "Troublemaker..."

...but it's more likely that the name is properly bound to a trickster god, from a forgotten period. The heroes and the gods by the time that Homer wrote down his epics (or dictated them, as is more likely -- see Albert Lord's Singer of Tales) moved among each other quite freely, suggesting that they may have been of a similar class in earlier times. The word apotheosis means the point at which a hero achieves godhood.

So let's say instead: An interesting ancient palace has been found on Ithaca! That is no small thing, even if there never was a bow strung there, by a king dressed as a beggar, whose dog had just died.

* See G. E. Dimock, Jr., in Harold Bloom's Odysseus/Ulysses.