More Sweet for Hate and Heart's Desire

Dad29 sends some words from Dr. Russell Kirk:

We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true place in our culture only when many more of us are obedient to Love.

"What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. 

He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

Well, now.  What ought a man to hate?

Not his enemy, to be sure!  Jesus said "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you[.]  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?"

Chesterton put it into verse, a verse that all of you know well:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

If it is not the enemy, it is his evil; and you must hate the evil while loving the man.  This is fitting, for he ought to hate your evil -- and all of us have evil within us -- while loving you.

Follow the first link on the sidebar under "Chivalry," and you will find this:

 If I am to love a man, I must love him as he is; yet if I am to love him as I love myself, then I may fight with him to the degree that I would fight myself. I may even kill him, if there are things I would rather kill myself than be guilty of having done.  

If I can but forgive his soul, I am doing all that is asked in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If I can do that, then we may fight each other as hard as needs be -- and we may even love the chance to strike a blow for what is right, best, just. Even the most wicked man is therefore lovable, insofar as he gives us the greatest opportunity to create good in the world. Even our own capacity for sin is lovable, for the same reason. 

We are meant to hate the evil, but love the man. We often find evil in ourselves, which we should hate; and we should seek mercy for it. Yet we might also remember the good that comes of it. Another man, evil in his way, fights against us in his own glorious cause. For a moment, while he is fighting the evil in us, that wicked man is bright.

So, there are two lessons of substance here.  The first is this:  One of the things we might forgive God for is the idea of original sin.  For if it were not for the evil in us, others would not have the chance to strive brightly against a terrible foe.

The second is the answer to a question Cassandra once asked:  'Why can't we just do the right thing, because it is the right thing?'  The answer is that, if we did -- if we did just that -- no one would have the chance to brighten their spirit.

The evil in us bends to the good of others, and so even it is worth loving, in its way.  

The Old Wound

A new paper asks, 'Who gave Arthur a Crippling Blow?' and answers that it was Saint George:

[W]ith the Norman Conquest, a new form of kingship was imposed on the English people. William I, for example, made far-reaching changes to solidify his regime-change, but at the same time showed less interest in England than in his own native Normandy. Lesyer says that for William, “England was a source of revenue, no more, no less.” 

Although subsequent monarchs were somewhat better on establishing positive relations with their English subjects, the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 quickly led to the growth of his saintly cult and restarted pro-English views that had largely laid underground for the previous decades. Leyser makes a point of noting that it is “hard to find any English king who inspired affection,” and while countries like France produced hagiographies for some of their rulers, this did not exist in England. 

Leyser argues that it was also during this period that as the story of King Arthur became popularized by writers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, he began to be seen as the ideal king, who would return and right all the wrongs imposed on the English people – and that these wrongs often were committed by the present-day kings. For Leyser, nationalist sentiment emerged in opposition to the crown, with King Arthur one of the main representatives of these views.With this in mind, it is not surprising that many English monarchs were lukewarm to depicting themselves as a new Arthur, and it was during the reign of Edward III that another English hero was given more prominence – St.George, a soldier from late antiquity who became the focus of several hagiographic legends. King Edward did much boost the figure of St.George, as well as that of the Virgin Mary. He tied the fortunes of the Plantagenet family to these two saints, and used their cults to promote his own rule.Leyser concludes by noting that by the late Middle Ages it was St.George who became the leading symbol of the English nation, giving “a crippling blow on Arthur, from which he never recovered.”

One small problem with that thesis:  Edward III died in 1377.  Guess who was born about 1405?

Where Could Such An Obligation Arise?

The WSJ has an article today that Hot Air tagged "There is No Such Thing as Free Birth Control."  The article makes the point that someone has to pay for the birth control or abortifacients that come with insurance plans, and since the insurers are going to be tasked to provide it at no cost to the end user, that means that the cost will be hidden and distributed into the costs of the plan.  It has to be that way, because the stuff costs money:  someone has to pay for it.

The point of the article is that this continues to violate the religious freedom of Catholics, who are commanded by their faith not to materially support abortion, contraception, etc.  That's true, of course, but it's not what interests me.

Rather, the Hot Air tag to the article suddenly made me realize how odd it is to expect to receive something expensive for free.  It's not usually the case that you obtain expensive things for free.

The argument seems to be that it's important for women, so therefore it should be free to women.  There are lots of things that are at least as important, though, that we certainly don't expect to be free:  food, for example, or sufficient clothing for the winter.  The argument seems to be that birth control ought to be free (and indeed it is, in the form of abstinence, a form of birth control that Catholics consider it a virtue to materially assist:  but I digress).  It ought to be free, and any employer ought to be sure that any of their employees receives it as free.

This is really an astonishing demand.  I could understand demanding it at cost:  we could structure an argument whereby insurance companies are understood to receive a reasonable profit, and as part of the price of approving the practice of the business in the state, we mandate that they arrange to provide certain critical medications to their consumers at cost.  We might ask, even then, why birth control or abortifacients would be the medicine we chose to occupy this position of special importance -- surely life-saving drugs would be a more worthy choice?  Still, at least at cost could conceivably be a reasonable demand.

Free, though?  Nothing is free.  Everyone knows this.

There is a parallel with last week's Komen feud, in which it was asserted that -- having once given Planned Parenthood money -- a kind of moral obligation existed to continue providing money for free.  Now we have an obligation, apparently on all of us who participate in employer-sponsored health plans, to provide pills for free.

How could any of us have come under an obligation to provide these things for free?  How could such an obligation arise?  "By law" is not an adequate answer, but it appears to be the only one.

UPDATE:  An answer of sorts comes in this piece from Think Progress:

Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

If all the assumptions made here were true, it would perhaps provide a ground from which an obligation of this sort could arise.  We could point to a common good -- the survival of the planet -- which might obligate all of us to contribute to it.  It might even be a good of a high enough order to explain why we would prefer the Pill to life-saving drugs.

Of course, all of these assumptions are controversial, so the ground is an unsteady one to say the least.  Nevertheless, this kind of argument grounds support for families:  we distribute the costs of public education to everyone, not just families with children, because we recognize that we all have a stake in ensuring that the next generation comes, and is educated and capable of undertaking the work of continuing the civilization.  Education is not free -- you must pay property taxes if you own property, and frequently also sales taxes, to support the local schools.  Still, it is offered below cost, which means that the cost is distributed.

The argument for public support of contraception and abortifacients is even stronger, since it demands that these things be free.  I would like to say that the two policies are different as well in that the one is in support of flourishing families and fecundity, while the other is in support of withering and barrenness; which is to say, that the difference is between life and death.  That may not be fair, though; if the supporter of free birth control believes that the planet shall otherwise die, they are in a fashion on the side of life.  They simply believe that life will not be possible but for a very few of us, on very much more parsimonious terms.

It's Eighteen Degrees Outside... What Should We Do?

Well, now, that depends on whether you are in Sweden...



...or New Jersey.



Actually, maybe there's not so much difference after all.

(H/t BSBFB).

Via Cassandra

In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. 

Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay's daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend's missing daughter. Romney's accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could, prostitutes, drug addicts, anyone. 

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney's former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter's life, saying, "It was the most amazing thing, and I'll never forget this to the day I die."...

Gay says Romney helped "save" his daughter, though previous reports have differed on the condition she was in. The line in the retelling now circulating -- that doctors told Gay she might not have lived another day -- comes from a Boston Globe report in 2002.

Newsday, for its part, reported in July 1996 that "Melissa's parents said she was physically unharmed though she appeared 'very fragile.' The family's doctor had examined the girl and pronounced her in fairly good condition. ..."

"She was not harmed," Robert Gay said at news conference after she was found, according to the New York Daily News. "She was in tears. We just gave her hugs and brought her back home." 

It's of no matter whether she was close to death or in 'fairly good condition,' since no one knew that until she was found.  The point is that this was a damn decent thing to do.  I'm going to rescind my absolute objection to voting for Romney on the basis of this, the story checking out as it appears to do.  It's a fit way for a man to have behaved toward his fellows, and it provides an answer to a question that has bothered me.  I think we now know whom he takes for his brother.

He's still not my candidate, on account of positive reasons to prefer Mr. Santorum, and other objections to Mr. Romney's approach that I reserve.  Nevertheless, such work should be rewarded, and it would be wrong not to recognize where a man has done a worthy thing.

Preparerent Se Viriliter Et Sapienter

Via Lars Walker (who notes that Troll Valley is now available as an iBook, if any of you are devotees -- apparently no links are required), a modestly large online version of the complete Bayeux Tapestry.

If you don't read Latin, you can find scene-by-scene translations of the text here.

The "Zweep" of Our Engines

The inimitable Iowahawk takes on the second annual preposterous "Detroit is A-OK" Superbowl spot:

Okay, yeah, so this isn't Detroit, it's actually New Orleans. So sue me. We were supposed to film this in Detroit, but GM rented it out to film their Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad.

I thought he was kidding about filming in New Orleans, but I guess not.

Proof that Gingrich Really Is Smart

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), engaged in a tit-for-tat race for the primary wins, will be addressing this CPAC conference in the grand ballroom, giving impassioned speeches in an 11th-hour effort to convince conservatives that each is the right candidate to defeat President Obama. 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be making his case over pizza and happy hour brews. 

The Newt 2012 campaign distributed a flier... leading up to the big, bold event: a pizza party with Newt at a nearby Italian kitchen on Connecticut Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

“There will be $2 beers, too,” the volunteer told me.

As is well known, all the real progress at conventions and conferences happens at the bar afterwards.

The War in the Mind

A remarkable post on martial arts called The Pleasure of Drowning deals with the self-deception that comes from teaching your students how to fight you.  Here is a master of Aikido whose students have learned that they had best evade his every hint if they are to avoid a painful reprisal:



And here is what happened when he faced another master, who did not have that barrier of fear in the mind.



The author says that the students were complicit, but in fact they probably had each learned painful lessons in the face of the master, so that they were eager to avoid each of his strokes.  The competitor who had learned his own art did not come up with that fear of the master, and so beat him with ease.

There is a lesson here; there are several.  What are they?

An Invitation

I've written a small work of Arthurian fiction, on the order of a modest novel.  I think it would benefit from the critical eye of careful readers, and their healthy feedback.  If any of you would be interested, please let me know and I will arrange to send you a copy of the book.

On the Stakes in the Current Election

You've doubtless seen the news from yesterday; obviously I am pleased to see Mr. Santorum do well.  The key thing about yesterday's events, though, is not that they change the race all that much:  they put Mr. Santorum in the lead in terms of the number of states won, but given the structure of the primary that has no bearing on who actually becomes the nominee.

What it may do is give him the airtime he needs to become better known to the voters.  There is a certain sense in which our archetypes about how stories should be told influence our view of the world.  News stories about elections almost always take on the form of The Favorite and The Underdog; this race so far has been chiefly about competition for the role of The Underdog.  If yesterday cements Mr. Santorum in that role, we'll be ready to tell the story; much of The Favorite's strength comes from the fact that he has had no clear challenger, but rather a series of characters moving in and out of the role.

Though I often write about elections, it is not my habit to participate more than by voting.  This year may be different.  We are seeing a substantial fracture in the Democratic coalition because of the Obama administration's move to force Catholic charities to do things that are sins according to Catholic doctrine.  Much has been written about that lately, and I don't have more to add to it than to say that it is an important question in determining the degree to which we expect religion's submission to the state.  It is a difficult moral question even for Army chaplains who have binding oaths in both directions; but private citizens engaged in a religious charity have only one such binding obligation, and it is not to the state.

This is an attempt to redefine a basic part of the bargain at the root of our social contract.  John Locke wrote of his desire to see churches give up all coercive force to the state, in return for freedom from coercion in matters of faith.  The state's lane does not include using its coercive force to command a voluntary religious society into sin.  This is something we ought all to oppose, and I think Mr. Santorum is uniquely placed to do so.  (However, in fairness, I would like to note that Mr. Romney's organization believes its record on the same issue in MA has been distorted in the press; scroll to "Another false claim" for his perspective on the matter.)

We have always opposed the Affordable Health Care Act, precisely because massive Federal involvement in health care entails loss of freedom in the most intimate areas of our lives.  The loss of practical religious freedom is only the first such command.  If we are not successful, others will follow.

Medieval Romance

This begins with the reading of a section from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original Old English.  It's always fascinating to listen to Old English read aloud:  it's almost intelligible, but -- without training and study -- just beyond comprehension.  Middle English often is comprehensible if read aloud, but our modern language depends so much on the French influence from the Norman period that the Old English escapes us.



You can get a closer look at some of those beautiful manuscripts at the exhibition's website.  If you happen to be in Oxford, the exhibition is free to attend; but alas, I imagine I will not be able to go.

Riding Home

I took a ride over to the ancestral home to join my father and mother, and my sister who happened to be in town, in watching the Super Bowl yesterday.  Here are some of the sights I grew up with.

 The forbidding face of Yonah Bald.  "Yonah" is a Cherokee word that means "bear."  I did my first rappelling on those rocks.

North Georgia College & State University, Georgia's Military College.  I spent a lot of time there as a young man, because my mother worked there and also pursued one of her degrees there.  It is located in the mountain-top city of Dahlonega, whose name comes from the Cherokee word for "Golden" because the nation's first gold rush happened there.  Some of the local gold makes up the roof of the college building in the background.

One of James Vann's taverns, a few yards from the Etowah river and not very much farther from the home where I grew up.  "Chief" Vann was the son of a Scottish fur trader and a Cherokee mother who was involved in a murderous raid against white settlers during the Chickamauga Wars.  He became rich and powerful through taverns, ferries and trading posts along the first Federal Road to pierce the Georgia mountains.  He burned one of his slaves alive for stealing, having hung a female slave by her thumbs to make her name the thief.  He also fought, and won, a famous mounted duel.

And you shall sit and spin

I said that I would marry,

And she would be my bride,

And alone we should not tarry,

And twenty things beside;

"I'll plough and sow and reap and mow

And you shall sit and spin,

Singing, 'How d'you do, and how d'you do,

And how d'you do' again."

Our annual Oysterfest went off brilliantly last night (pictures later). Our last guests have just departed, leaving behind a spinning wheel they are selling on behalf of a friend, which I intend to buy. I got some quick lessons before they left. No one element of the process of spinning a mass of wool into nice, even yarn is very difficult, but it will take some time learning to do them all at once. If I concentrate on the treadle, I can time the downstroke to coincide with the wheel's just turning over the top, so that it doesn't turn in reverse -- but then I've taken my attention off of the job of "drafting" (pulling) the end of the wool ball out into the very thin wisp that takes the spin. If I concentrate on drafting, I lose track of the treadle, or forget to pinch onto the wool at the right spot, or forget to let the wheel pull the spun portion onto the bobbin, or the completed yarn slips off the bobbin altogether and snarls. Each of these tasks must become more automatic before they can be aggregated smoothly.

I'm already eyeing my longer-haired dog as a potential source of wool. The shorter-haired dog, as you can see above, is eyeing the device with some suspicion.

We don't mow, as a rule, since we have nothing to say to lawns. I wonder, though, if I can persuade my husband to do all of the plowing, sowing, and reaping if I promise to do all the spinning? It seems like a good deal from my end.

But before I get to swallowed up in this new craft, I must finish Lars's book, which I am particularly enjoying. I'm about 2/3 of the way through, a feat I accomplished only by stealing moments from our hectic week preparing for Oysterfest.

The Crusader President

Now here is something I didn't know:  Rick Santorum is a Knight of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta.

The Rondel of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

That Order is the oldest living chivalric order in the world; to be admitted is a very high honor indeed.  There are some consequences to it, however, for the direction of US foreign policy at a time when relations between the West and the Islamic World are at a delicate moment.

In general, Muslims respect deep faith in Christians as with others.  George W. Bush, for all his cowboy image, enjoyed the respect if not the trust of much of the Islamic world on just these grounds.  We can also reasonably observe that President Obama, for all that he was supposed to be more acceptable to Muslim world because of his Indonesian upbringing and Muslim stepfather, has not demonstrated much success in leveraging that supposed advantage to obtain improved relations.

I obviously cannot hold it against a man that he should belong to an Order that I greatly admire, and whose history inspires the highest respect.  Still, I wanted to put it out there for our discussion.  What do you think?

The Way of All Beauty

[H]e had searched by the stream by which she had prayed to the stones, and the pool where she prayed to the stars; he had called her name up every tower, and had called it wide in the dark, and had had no answer but echo; and so he had come at last to the witch Ziroonderel."Whither?" he said, saying no more than that, that the boy might not know his fears. Yet Orion knew. 

And Ziroonderel all mournfully shook her head. "The way of the leaves," she said. "The way of all beauty." 

-Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Where is Europe going?



The economic argument here is not entirely convincing, but it's also not what interests me about the piece.  What I do find interesting is the way that it lines up into a story with heroes and villains, and the villains are framed in ways that have been persuasive and deadly to Europeans past.  It is a story of Catholic versus Protestant, of the torment of Europe by an oppressive Germany represented by a black eagle.

What we are seeing in Europe is the development of a narrative that will justify the refusal by the Greeks, the Irish and the other debtor nations to submit to discipline.  It is a narrative that has both ethnic and religious justifications; and if that were not enough, it has justifications based on class thrown in as well.  Thus it has all three of the poisons that have led to Europe's great wars:  the poison of religious division that brought the Thirty Years War, the poison of nationalism that brought the World Wars, and the poison of anti-capitalism that brought the Communists to power in the Cold War.

And yet, though the claim is not entirely convincing, it is neither entirely wrong.  The claim that Europe is moving from democracy to 'bank-ocracy' is right in an important sense:  we recently saw a British MP scolding the EU for daring to force democratic nations to replace their elected leadership with those chosen by the central bankers.  The Germans are driving this process; and there is a clash between Catholic and Protestant assumptions at work in the cultural division between the debtor and creditor states.  The narrative is deadly, but it is founded on several truths.

The season has turned, as seasons will; the leaves come, and then they go.  Some day we'll ask where Europe went, and we won't have any other answer than Ziroonderel's.

Philosophy for Everyone

Brazil has apparently hit upon a piece of wisdom.

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path to greater civic participation and equality.... 

"[I]f you want to build a just and democratic society, isn’t it useful to get as clear as possible on what you mean by justice and democracy and to examine if you have good reasons to pursue these?” I asked. “And aren’t your intuitions about knowledge, goodness and beauty worth investigating?” 

Well, perhaps. But first the students had more questions for me. Is it true that Canadian bacon is the best in the world? What do people abroad think about Brazil? How did I get into philosophy? And—still more personally—do I believe in God, a question I encountered almost every time. I tried to get out of it by mentioning Spinoza’s impersonal God. That didn’t mean much to the students and, truth be told, I don’t even believe in the God of Spinoza. “We knew it—all philosophers are atheists!” they would say. When I asked who was a Catholic, who was an evangelical, and who practiced the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé (Salvador alone has more than 2000 terreiros, Candomblé’s houses of worship), all students raised their hand at least once. 

I assured the students that until the nineteenth century hardly any philosopher was an atheist.  Plato’s Euthyphro—with its argument about the relationship between ethics and the will of the gods—gets us into a lively discussion. 

I asked them, “Do moral norms depend on God’s will? Would it be fine to murder an innocent child if God says so?” The students found the idea outrageous. 

“But doesn’t God order Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” I asked. There was a moment of confusion. 

“But Abraham also holds God responsible when he wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorra,” one student replied. That can be interpreted as an independent norm of justice, I admitted.

He goes on to ask whether God can be held to account to an "objective" standard of justice; but the kind of God who is posterior rather than prior to justice is a different kind of God than most believe in.  It's a holdover from the earlier period, when the God of Abraham was one of very many Gods, and not yet the God who is responsible for existence.  Justice is posterior to existence -- that is, its structure of 'what is just?' arises from the nature of that which exists.  If nothing existed, nothing would be just or unjust; and if the world was substantially different, our ideas about justice might be as well.

Since God is the source of existence in Christian, Jewish and Islamic metaphysics, God would have to be prior to justice.  He may very well choose to submit to the standard, but it is not an "objective" standard -- it is God's own standard.

Still, there are other metaphysics, and the important thing is that these kids are wrestling with the big questions.  The article goes on to cite some professional philosophers who mock the effort to teach kids who can barely read and write to think about these things; but that is foolish in the extreme.  Reading and writing are technical skills, and one learns a technique in order to achieve some higher end.  Thus, if you cannot show them a higher end to justify the effort, they will not bother to master the technique.  If you inspire them to pursue a higher end, they'll find their way to mastery of whatever technology they need.

How The FBI Got Hacked

Apparently the window of vulnerability that allowed a secret FBI phone call to be recorded was the hacking of a personal, private email account.  Login information for the call, emailed to the agent's account, thus came into the hands of the hacking community.

Over the last few years, I've talked with a few experts in the field of digital communication security.  The password issue issue is a problem they often talk about; what they usually are aiming towards instead is a way of identifying the particular computer or phone that is in operation.  Then, even if you had the password, you couldn't call in without the right phone as well:  the other phones wouldn't accept your connection.

There's a lot going on in the field, and I think we'll see some pretty major advances over the next year or so.  I doubt it will end the hacking, though:  it will make it much harder, but a lot of hackers are motivated chiefly by the challenge.  Others, of course, like knowing secrets, and still others like to pull pranks on authority figures.  I've met a few good ones, though, whose real interest was just in doing something that was supposed to be impossible.

One fellow I knew got a job with a major corporation as the head of computer security for their nuclear facilities by hacking into their database and scheduling a job interview for himself.  They were very confused when he showed up for it, apologizing that they didn't seem to have any of the usual paperwork on hand, and weren't sure why an interview had been scheduled without the usual process of review.  After he explained how the interview had gotten scheduled, they hired him.

The story reminds me of that of philosopher and logician Saul Kripke, who was hired as a professor of philosophy without any degree in philosophy at all.

While still a teenager he wrote a series of papers that eventually transformed the study of modal logic. One of them, or so the legend goes, earned a letter from the math department at Harvard, which hoped he would apply for a job until he wrote back and declined, explaining, "My mother said that I should finish high school and go to college first." 

The college he eventually chose was Harvard. "I wish I could have skipped college," Mr. Kripke said in an interview. "I got to know some interesting people, but I can't say I learned anything. I probably would have learned it all anyway, just reading on my own." 

While still a Harvard undergrad, Mr. Kripke started teaching post-graduates down the street at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after getting his B.A. didn't bother to acquire an advanced degree. Who could teach him anything he didn't already know? Instead, he began teaching and publishing. 

 Princeton hired him as a professor, even though their usual standards required a doctorate as a minimum prerequisite.  It was a good decision.

Approval

Rough stuff in politics today.  Sometimes you bring it on yourself:

[Mark Steyn said] "For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother’s salary.”

Sometimes you gripe about being taken out of context, only to discover that your remarks are just as bad in context:

“We now know from Gov. Romney, he joins President Obama. Obama is big food stamp, he’s little food stamp – but they both think food stamps are OK,” Gingrich said. “I don’t think food stamps are a future for America. They’re a necessary bridge back to getting a job and back to being independent of the government.”

Sadly, when you say that you aren't concerned about the poor because of the safety net, you're open to that line.

Of course, sometimes the context that makes you look bad is provided by someone else:



Great ad, except for the last few seconds.  It's a compelling argument against Mr. Romney; but it offers no reason to vote for Mr. Gingrich.

Well, Of Course They Would:

Business Insider wades into a controversy by noticing that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, though no longer willing to associate with Planned Parenthood, is willing to partner with a handgun manufacturer.

This gun is a beauty.  

And a portion of the sale of each P-22 Hope Edition will be donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

So, why would they do this?  Two reasons:

1)  The pistol is a fundraiser for them.  Planned Parenthood was an expense.  An entirely different set of criteria are involved in opting into a program that makes money for your charity, versus opting out of an expense.

2)  It's target pistol -- .22 LR, with interchangable barrels so that it can simulate a real self-defense weapon, or be set up for formal match-style target shooting.  The only people who would find a pink .22 LR pistol threatening are squirrels.  (Squirrels are people too, right, PETA?)

UPDATE:  Looks to be moot now; the SGK Foundation has caved to the pressure brought by the abortion lobby.

Madness

There’s an educational video from that time, called “Understanding Asperger’s,” in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality. 

“Understanding Asperger’s” was no act of fraud. Both my mother and her colleague believed I met the diagnostic criteria laid out in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

No act of fraud?  To say that it was an honest application of the rules of psychology is no defense from that charge.  You would better say that your mother was as taken by the fraud as everyone else.  Say that she was even more a victim than were you, for she gave her life to it.

Flowers in February

The winds in Georgia are coming off the Gulf of Mexico this winter, so that the air is warm.  It's good weather for the road.

We took the bike up to northeast Georgia and western North Carolina.  The mountains are still bare, so that the rocks and waterfalls are easily seen from a great distance.  Nevertheless there is proof of life in the warm winter.

The Methodist Church in Clayton, Georgia.  Clayton is an increasingly fun town, with an outstanding hardware store (featuring archery, guns, camping gear, and the lot), and several good restaurants and bars.  One of the bars is built out of a refinished service station, called "The Universal Joint."  Camp at Black Rock Mountain, a thousand feet above, and you'll hear them rocking down below.

So much for the city.  Beyond, in the Wild, flowers grow.

Georgia Veronica Blue, one of our native glories.

Nandina berries, which are not native but invasive.  "All parts of the plant are poisonous."  It's also known as 'sacred bamboo.'

Daffodils in wintertime.  These broke out on the last day of January this year.

Some Old Posts, Newly Relevant

I find to my surprise that I have a post on Rick Santorum from 2005.  It arises from an article quite critical of him.

Also, chiefly for Cassandra, an old post on Democratic purges and the danger they posed to the party.  I came down on what I take to be her side; but the year was 2006, and the Democrats did well in the next two elections.  Maybe 2010 was the point at which purging the ideologically impure began to harm them; but I doubt it, all things considered.

So, my analysis was wrong:  but why was it wrong?  Do the facts imply that purges were helpful in achieving the wave elections of 2006 and 2008?  Or are they just irrelevant, noise in the face of greater matters?  If so, what are the consequences of that?

Troll Valley Comes to Life

Lars Walker proves prescient.  My favorite scene in Troll Valley was this one, where the prohibitionist is haranguing dissenters in her family by reading pro-temperance newspaper clips at breakfast, and commanding approval of the sentiments.  One morning she read a letter to an editor:

"I would like to relate an incident that occurred on the approach of my youngest daughter's eighth birthday," the correspondent said.  "Upon my inquiring of the innocent what she desired as a gift for the impending celebration, she looked at me with grave, ingenuous blue eyes and said, 'Mother, what I would like most is to see the ratification of Prohibition.'  Think what sorrow was mine to be compelled to inform her that we must await the pleasure of our legislators before this blessing can be ours!  It is apparent to the most obtuse that even the babes in arms are alive to the necessity of the reform of our civilization.  How much longer must they live in fear of the drunkard and his madness?  For our children's sake, we must drive Rum from our shores." 

Mother sighed. "Have you ever heard a more touching story?" she asked. 

Bestefar shook his head.  "I think any child who says she wants Prohibition for her birthday will probably steal as well as lie." 

Mother's cheeks flamed.  "What a wicked thing to say!"

Bestefar was right, of course.  However, the trick doesn't only work on parents longing for the reform of our civilization; it can work on parents of the defenders, too.

Quit Unsettling That Science!

The House Committee on Un-American Activities, that is, the "Forecast the Facts" website, is on a mission to purge the TV weatherman community of dirty denialists and present the viewing public with pure and approved scientific views on Global Climate Whatever. I was surprised to learn that a solid majority of TV weathermen privately harbor heretical skepticism about the role of humankind and/or CO2 in harming Gaia. Almost a quarter of them now are prepared to come right out and call AGW a "scam" in off-the-air polls. This must be stopped! As the creepy blog ThinkProgress puts it:

These climate denier meteorologists are betraying the public’s trust and distorting America’s airwaves with ideological science denial.

The chief meterologist for a Houston TV station explains that more humility is in order:

Operational meteorologists and forecasters are not climatologists. The background education is somewhat similar, but our area of expertise is different. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop some TV weather forecasters from spouting off on the subject.

But hey, if you believe in AGW, go ahead and spout off. You owe it to your viewers to get the truth out! Activists point out that "when a region is in the midst of a drought or heat wave, it is important to discuss the role climate change plays in amplifying such an event." When a region in in the midst of wet or cold weather, though, apparently it is important to stress that climate is not the same as weather, or to explain that anthropogenic CO2 levels can lead to climate disruption of every conceivable variety, by an undiscovered mechanism that nevertheless is completely settled.

Well, our confidence in the information we get from the TV weatherman could hardly be affected one way or another by the amount of nonsense they spout about the "science" of long-term climate trend analysis. Just the website title "Forecast the Facts" should alert the reader of the odd confusion in the mainstream climate community over the difference between facts and predictive models. Last Friday's document dump included a painful admission from the UK's national weather service, dubbed the "Met Office," that the latest warming trend stopped cold in 1997, apparently as a result of changes in sunspot activity. The Met Office didn't sit still for this politically incorrect interpretation of the stubborn facts, though. It explained that right-thinking scientists understand that a predicted severe drop in the Sun's activity, perhaps rivaling the "Maunder minimum" of 300 years ago, might indeed cause the Thames to freeze over again, but for some reason would likely prove to be a strictly local effect, leaving the rest of the globe to endure continued warming. Remember, don't try to do this scientific thinking at home. Leave it to the experts.

Bloody Gay Pride Parades?

I woke this morning to find the Net all a-twitter over Governor Christie's proposal to place same-sex marriage up for a vote on the New Jersey November ballot. Christie inflamed progressives by suggesting that the Civil Rights movement might have been better served by confining itself to the ballot box rather in favor of physical confrontation:

The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.

Like New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver erupted in fury over the idea of putting basic civil rights up for a popular vote:

Gov. Christie better sit down with some of New Jersey’s great teachers for a history lesson, because his puzzling comment shows a complete misunderstanding about the civil rights movement. . . . It’s impossible to ever conceive that a referendum on civil rights in the South would have been successful and brought justice to minorities. It’s unfathomable to even suggest a referendum would have been the better course. . . . Governor –- people were fighting and dying in the streets of the South for a reason. They were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It look legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans. The governor’s comment is an insult to those who had no choice but to fight and die in the streets for equal rights.

Oliver appears a bit confused about history herself. If it took "legislative action" to address the problem, isn't that closer to a solution by referendum than by violence? Perhaps what she's thinking is that the legislative action never would have happened if it hadn't been spurred by violence. Christie's opposing suggestion is that putting the issue to a popular vote early on might have removed the need for the violence. It's never easy to know when people must burst out of the system into personal rebellion or even violence in order to protect their essential freedoms, as our host so often suggests is our duty. Oliver sounds like a woman who needs to think about that dilemma more carefully.

My guess is that Oliver really is trying to argue that legislative action sometimes has to be imposed from outside the local jurisdiction, because the local majority can't be trusted to vote for justice for an oppressed minority. Or she may be suggesting that legislators are wiser than the unwashed public that elects them. If she were sorting through her issues more thoughtfully, she might even argue that nationwide majorities are not always trustworthy, and therefore legislative solutions must give way to judicial, Constitutional action if proponents of same-sex marriage are to obtain real relief.

In the meantime, does Ms. Oliver really want to argue that gays should take up arms rather than work with the system to obtain the rights they believe are due to them?

A second wave of twittering followed Christie's calling a gay lawmaker a "numbnuts," presumably a hate crime. I like this Christie guy, even if at one time he didn't have any more sense than to believe in non-heliocentric cosmic climate metaphysics, or at least to try to take advantage of the tax revenues it might generate for his strapped state.

Glory and Destiny

The University of Georgia has a long and storied history, being one of the claimants to the title of oldest public college in the United States.  So it is no surprise to see another extraordinary story from that institution, featuring a young lady of wisdom and character.  Also, fairly impressive biceps.

A deeply religious junior exercise and sports science major, Watson was on the brink of a $75,000 fitness-modeling contract that could have set her up for a lifetime career in modeling -- but she turned it down.... A modeling agent wanted her to use Anavar, a legal anabolic steroid to help her gain up to 50 pounds of muscle. Worried about the effects on her body when she decides to have kids, Watson passed.

There stands some discerning judgment, for one so young.  That's glory.

This is destiny:

She can bench press 155 pounds, squat 255 pounds and dead lift 230 pounds. 

I could do more than that the first day I walked into the gym.  That's nothing in praise of me or against her.  Her muscles show a better 'cut' and appearance.  I'm in fairly good shape, but nobody is going to offer me a fitness-modeling contract.  She has clearly developed virtues of moderation, temperance and wisdom.  It's just a fact.

She's spent a lifetime training to develop muscle and strength, and is probably among the strongest women in America.  Nevertheless, there it is.  This is the sort of thing we increasingly tend to ignore when making determinations about military policy, but it's real enough.  As we cut military budgets, especially in ground forces, we'll be less able to compensate for weaker soldiers in other ways.  It's not just about the weight you can lift and carry; there's the injury problem, too.  By the way, Ms. Watson is out of service due to damage to her Achilles tendon right now.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for women and their contribution to society and the military.  I have often written about how much I appreciate the contribution of American servicewomen in Iraq, where I had the honor to serve with some outstanding ones.  In no way do I wish to detract from the glory of a woman who strives to do her best.  We just have to be clear-eyed about this business, because things are going to get harder for our warriors as the money dries up.

Changing A Name

Good to hear Arlo Guthrie is still singing relevant music.



Of course this is the song of his that gets sung most often around here:

"A Miraculous Turnaround"

I am glad to hear that Mr. Santorum's daughter Bella has enjoyed something of a recovery from the pneumonia that afflicted her.  I was not aware of her other, lifelong, condition until the stories of the weekend.  It's extraordinary to see a family accepting such challenges these days, living with them, and finding strength for pursuing and achieving in the broader world in spite of them.

This morning Michelle Malkin declared for Santorum.  She has a fairly thorough listing of her reasons, and considerations both for and against him.  I don't normally read Ms. Malkin -- I saw her endorsement linked on Memeorandum -- but it is good to see one of the big players join in on his side.

UPDATE:  Santorum gave a pitch in Minnesota at which he was asked how he would win among moderates.  That's been a challenge to him raised here, too, so you might be interested in his answer.

Only toward the end did a process question get asked, when a caller politely challenged Santorum to explain how he’d win moderates.  Santorum replied that moderates don’t tend to be issues voters, but respond to enthusiasm and momentum, and that the important task was to rally the base as happened in the midterms.  Neither Romney or Gingrich are consistently conservative enough to do that, Santorum argued, while his record gave the GOP the best chance to stoke conservative enthusiasm.  He also said that he had a track record in Pennsylvania of winning Reagan Democrats, which he would do throughout the Rust Belt and Midwest.  “Will I lose California by a wider margin than Romney?” Santorum asked, and replied that he certainly would — but losing California and New York by a marginally smaller amount won’t do the GOP any good in November anyway.  Santorum insisted that he could do better in the center of the country than any other Republican, and that would make the difference in November.

Good Luck

Bad news at a bad time for a reasonably good man, as politicians go.  I hope it gets better fast.

Friction

In Beyond Good and Evil, Neitzsche scribed a warning: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

In fighting evil, there is a grave peril that you may be called upon to do terrible things.  It changes you.

But this works both ways. 

A Bowie Would Have Done It, Too:

Today's headline:  "Cleaver aids woman in trouble."

Akbar Case Being Litigated

Here's a limited-time opportunity for people interested in death penalty litigation. Next week, the Army Court of Criminal Appeals is hearing oral arguments in the case of United States v. Hasan K. Akbar. I assume the lead character needs no introduction here.

Well, I follow their website occasionally (a few of my clients, of whom Akbar isn't one, may get relief there in the next year or two). And I see that nowadays, when they're going to have oral arguments, that page sometimes includes links to the briefs. They've done so in Akbar's case. I expect those links will go down on 1 February, when the oral arguments are done, but in the meantime anyone who wishes can pop over there and read the briefs.

I haven't tried a capital case. In fact, I haven't tried a murder at all, and I'm not going to talk here about the cases I have tried. (Some were certainly disturbing enough.) But I know just a little about appellate work and that capital appeals don't look like other appeals. One thing you'll notice, if you take a read through, is that the defense raises a lot of issues, including many that (according to the government brief) were decided decades ago, and not in the defense's favor. This makes a kind of sense. If you know the appeals could go on for decades, the composition of all the courts could change (the Supreme Court included), and they could reverse themselves on dozens of issues that have already been decided. You don't want to waive those issues by failing to raise them. So I can't blame the lawyers for writing their brief that way. Neither should you. (Though you might wish, as I do, that these appeals didn't go on for so long.) In other kinds of case, the ideal is "a rifle, not a shotgun" - make a few points and argue them in depth, and don't waste time with the oddball or the obsolete.

A few notes for anyone who cares to do some wading through --

The page includes the links but not the evidentiary exhibits, let alone the record of trial. The government brief makes frequent references to "GAE 1" (Government Appellate Exhibit 1). This is almost certainly an affidavit from one of Akbar's trial attorneys. Normally, a lawyer's duty of confidentiality continues unbroken after trial, and he will often decline to explain his decisions, as they may relate to things his client told him in private, or information that has not come to light and that would not be good for the client. But if the client is claiming ineffective assistance of counsel (a common thing in capital litigation), the lawyer is partly released from that duty. He can reveal confidential things, but only insofar as is needed to defend himself against the charge of ineffective assistance (if he was really that bad, that has some serious implications for his career and maybe his license). So if the client claims on appeal, "My stupid lawyer didn't pay attention when I told him about my rough childhood" - the lawyer can write an affidavit saying, "Oh, yes I did, and I didn't raise it in court because it would convince the judge you were broken beyond repair and should be locked up for life" - or whatever. Anyway, this is why the government appellate lawyers are writing as if they know so much about what the trial defense attorneys were thinking.

Only one part of the briefs made me raise my eyebrows - page 68 of the appellee (government)'s first brief. "Mrs. Nerad" is an expert in mitigation in death cases, one of several hired for the defense in that case:

Furthermore, trial defense counsel did not agree with Ms. Nerad's philosophy that "a mitigation investigation was effectively endless and that it was her practice to always request more time and more funding until the state government relented on pursuing the death penalty. If the government did not relent, then, according to Mrs. Nerad,
there would be a built in appellate issue.

In the footnote, the appellate counsel takes a nasty little swipe to say that "Ms. Nerad's strategy is exactly what [Akbar] has placed before this court." The way I was brought up, you don't make that kind of accusation against the other side - at least, not without some very powerful proof. Think it, yes. Say it, no. (And in a death case, there are solid reasons for litigating very differently than in other kinds, as I mentioned before.)

Anyway, if you'd like a little insight into that case that isn't filtered through the press, and you have some time, there's your chance.

The Devil You Know

...When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

Ron Paul Gets the Best Lines

Watching tonight's debates, I have these impressions:

Ron Paul gets all the best lines.  He's still not a serious candidate, but man it's fun to listen to him talk.

Rick Santorum is playing it straight, but there's nothing flashy about his answers.  They're honest, though.  He's probably not helping himself by hammering all the things he's not going to do for people.  There are some applause lines associated with these things, but... well, I hope it works.  His answer about his wife was fantastic.

Newt Gingrich gives the best answers across the board.  Whatever else there is to be said about him, the guy knows his stuff.  Whenever they come after him, he knows just how to turn it around.  When Romney came after him for promising stuff state-by-state, he gave a great answer.  He also took a couple of moments to give kind words to Dr. Paul over his age and health, which was courteous.

Romney just said he'd like to fire someone again, but the audience didn't seem to mind.  His answer on health reform was pretty good.  "Groundhog Day" was a good line; interesting that he followed it up by saying that "we know what it takes to get you back to work."  We?  Good for you, governor.

UPDATE:  Santorum's answer about faith was very good.  'The Constitution is the how of America.  It is the operator's manual.  The why of America is the Declaration of Independence.  We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.' His was the most unapologetic endorsement of faith in public life.

UPDATE:  Hot Air disagrees that Gingrich was strong; I thought he turned the knives very well, but it's true that Santorum went after Romney more.  But see for yourself:

Romney neutralized him on the big immigration exchange at the beginning, and then it fell to Santorum — for the second debate in a row — to pick Romney apart on his core policy vulnerability. (He did a darned fine job of it too.) If you’re operating under the illusion that the election will turn on the presidential debates in October, kindly explain why Gingrich is somehow superior to Santorum. He wouldn’t even accept Blitzer’s invite to hit Romney on his Swiss bank account even though he’s been criticizing him on the trail for it for days. The hapless moderator/punching bag had to practically badger him into answering. I don’t get it. Didn’t he realize that the primary was on the line tonight? 

You’ll be pleased to know that Romney is now a 91 percent favorite to win on InTrade as I write this, up from 74 percent earlier today. Stats guru Nate Silver thinks it’s possible that Romney wins by double digits, perhaps as much as 20 points. And why not? After Santorum’s strong performance tonight, there are bound to be tepid Newt fans and true undecideds who prefer him as the anointed Not Romney to Gingrich. Who could blame them?

Be nice to see the boy do well.

Speaking of Character

...our VP definitely is one.

UPDATE:  Apparently FOXNews decided to change their headline on this one, and the URL changed with it.  The new page questions whether Biden faked an Indian accent, rather than asserting that he did.  I'm leaving the old link up, though, because as Sly says, the 404 page is amusing in itself.

A Problem from the Rhetoric

Aristotle makes a claim in the early part of the Rhetoric that seems like it ought to be the case, and yet is clearly out of order with the facts on the ground here in America today.

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.

That seems like it ought to be right.  Yet in our current Presidential contest, we have one man who is apparently good by general standards, which is to say Rick Santorum, the lowest-polling figure in the race; one man who is apparently not good, but who is a highly effective speaker, which is to say Newt Gingrich; one man who may or may not be good, but is a terrible speaker, which is to say Mitt Romney; and one man who is said by some to be good and others to be wicked, and by some to be a great speaker and by others to be a terrible one, but who is currently the actual victor of the last Presidential contest.

I say that Romney 'may or may not' be of good character; Cassandra is quite sure he is of excellent character, and his personal life seems to be clear of the usual problems, but I can't quite figure him out well enough to decide what to think about his motives.

Aristotle's next argument ends up making perfect sense from our contemporary perspective.

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.

There is a clear failure for Romney on point (3). Thus, assuming the man to be of excellent personal character for the sake of argument, we can still appreciate how he might fail to be persuasive.  He lacks one of the three basic components of effectiveness in persuasion.

Newt clearly has (1), (2), and (3) down.  His reasoning is good, he understands human character and goodness (even if he often fails to practice it), and he knows how to excite the emotions.

Thus, we would expect Newt to prevail in a two-man contest of persuasion:  he's simply better armed.  This will prove to be true in the fall as well:  when imagining a Newt v. Obama match-up versus a Romney v. Obama match-up, we can see that the President will fare better rhetorically in the latter contest.  He would be facing an opponent who simply lacks access to a third of the power of persuasion.

We still have the puzzle of goodness, though.  I have always found that speaking the truth is the greatest weapon in rhetoric, and that good character and a name for honor is -- as Aristotle holds -- a powerful weapon as well.  That does not appear to be the case for us today.

Does this mean that Americans do not care about good character, or that they disagree about what it is?  Or is there something about our electoral process that makes character less persuasive than it normally tends to be?  If the latter, what is the cause of the failure?

Mass Grave in England

Now a University of Cambridge researcher is putting forward a compelling new theory about the identity of the murder victims. The documentary follows Dr Britt Baillie, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, as she examines the remains, as well as documents from the period and other material evidence, to reopen the file on what happened in Dorset a thousand years ago. 

While historians will probably never agree conclusively about who the men were, Baillie’s analysis draws her to the conclusion that they may have been Viking mercenaries who modelled themselves on, or behaved in a similar way to the legendary Jomsvikings – a brotherhood of elite killers whose strict military code involved never showing fear, and never fleeing in the face of the enemy unless totally outnumbered. 

Allegedly founded by Harald Bluetooth, the Jomsvikings are thought to have been based at a stronghold called Jomsborg on the Baltic coast. At a time when Vikings were feared across Europe, they were known as perhaps the fiercest of them all – a reputation which even earned them their own saga.

Uh, Oh, I'm a Cultural Elitist

I'm no Pauline Kael, but I guess I'm not exactly a woman of the people, either, according to this Pop Quiz inspired by Charles Murray's "Coming Apart." I get a few points for having done a little manual labor and having once ridden on a Greyhound bus. On some questions you get credit for your spouse's activity, such as buying a pickup truck, but for hunting and fishing I guess it counts only if you do it yourself. Well, at least I have friends who are evangelical Christians and/or who disagree with me profoundly on political issues. So my score is "You can see through your bubble, but you need to get out more." I could have done better if I'd ever sat through an Oprah show or watched last year's Transformer movie. But no credit for enjoying Jeff Foxworthy? For frequenting Sonic drive-ins?

I knew I was in trouble when out-of-touch Michelle Obama took flack for buying Tuscan kale in a local farmer's market. We grow Tuscan kale and think it's great stuff.

H/t Ace of Spades.

Can This Be Right?

Inflation adjustment is a little tricky, but this still seems like a strange claim:

However, Aaron Blake at the Washington Post finds that controlling for inflation, in fact George Washington would be the nation’s richest president.... In today’s dollars, Washington’s net worth would amount to more than $500 million.

I'm not after the basic claim of the article, which is that we've had a lot of presidents richer than Romney would be if elected.  What interests me is the claim that George Washington was fantastically rich.  I had never gotten that concept from readings of history.  What I thought I understood was that he began quite modestly, as a surveyor -- I've been to places he surveyed, including the town in Virginia that now bears his name.  His marriage to Martha Custis brought him some wealth, and his status as a war hero made it possible for him to obtain more, but I thought he was in debt for a long time after that, nearly until the war started.

That seems to be in accord with the Wikipedia article, which notes:

After retiring from the presidency in March 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon with a profound sense of relief. He devoted much time to farming and other business interests, including his distillery which produced its first batch of spirits in February 1797.  As Chernow (2010) explains, his farm operations were at best marginally profitable. The lands out west yielded little income because they were under attack by Indians and the squatters living there refused to pay him rents. However most Americans assumed he was truly rich because of the well-known "glorified façade of wealth and grandeur" at Mount Vernon.  Historians estimate his estate was worth about $1 million in 1799 dollars, equivalent to about $18 million in 2009 purchasing power.

Eighteen million dollars is still quite rich, but it's nowhere near $500 million.  Is the Washington Post as bad with numbers as everyone else in D.C., or is there some way of making sense of the claim?

A Man or a Mouse?

It seems many Americans perked up when they heard Mitch Daniels's opposition speech after the State of the Union, prompting a heated debate over whether a dark horse could enter the race at this late date. At Pajamas Media, Ron Radosh explains some of the pros and cons of this gambit, but it's the comments section I find most interesting. I had forgotten that Daniels cited his wife's opposition as his reason for giving up the campaign, and that his wife had left him to marry her high school sweetheart, then returned to remarry him ten years later, after he'd earned millions of dollars. To many voters, this apparently marks him as a Beta Man unsuited for the Oval Office.

I don't doubt that that's a common reaction. It's not quite mine. His wife's high school sweetheart was a California plastic surgeon who ditched her after a few years in favor of a younger model. The picture I get is of a woman who made a horrible mistake by choosing a flashy passionate poseur, then came to her senses and realized that the stolid father of her children was the real man. To her great good fortune, he still cared for her and wanted to repair their family. In my eyes, that makes her a reformed liberal, and it makes him a strong man who knows his own heart. There's someone home in there. (Contrast with Ace's piechart of the most common reasons for supporting a candidate:)

Anyway, it's a narrative I prefer over the guy who keeps screwing around on his wife, marrying his mistress, and then doing it again.

What the heck is the matter with the GOP that it can't produce a candidate with a nice, conventional home life who also knows how to translate his personal, economic, and political principles into coherent policy proposals? You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Then I wake up when I read sensible advice like this from commenter "Patrick in Atlantis":

We’re trying to thin the field out, not grow it. If Daniels get in the race now, he’ll have his you know what handed to him. You don’t like any of the contestants? Too bad.

Elberton

Elberton, Georgia, is an interesting place.  The wealth of the city is based on granite, quarries, that sort of thing.  But the history is important.

We went to the McIntosh Coffee shop.  Nice place.  Good prices for lunch, if you wanted lunch.

Georgia's district tartan -- recognized by Scotland's King of Arms, on the sidebar -- is based on the MacIntosh tartan.  I guess a lot of folks don't know that anymore.  John "Mohr" MacIntosh -- that is, 'John the Great' -- was brought to the south of Savannah after the '45.  He was there with Oglethorpe for the wars that kept Georgia and the Carolinas for the English, against the Spanish.  

The post road has run through there since the Washington administration.  It's kind of funny to think that we're looking at the end of the postal service, and to remember just how long it's been around.  Not that long:  two hundred years and change.  It was new in France in the 1600s; Dumas made a point of the novelty in The Three Musketeers.  

Took My Own Advice Today...

Went out to detox from the internet.  The few little towns around here are pretty disconnected from the internet-world, as demonstrated by our most-local pet store:

Hey, I didn't make it up!  I just took the picture.

Do I Hear Twenty Percent? Going Once...

Maybe We Need a Brokered Convention to Get This Guy Back in the Race

From Mitch Daniel's rebuttal to the 2012 (as well as the 2011 and 2010) SOTU address:

An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.

The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.

Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say "First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love."

Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Private sector jobs. That's where everything starts, and that's what everything else hangs from.

The Roman Internet

From The Chronicle of Higher Education, a surprising historical metaphor for the difficulties we face in making good use of the Internet.

The metaphor is Nero's court, and the model for success is one Gaius Petronius Arbiter.  He is supposed to be the guide for how to deal with these massive feasts without being numbed by them.  The model is better than the others around Nero's court; and yet, as the end of the piece shows, ought to be deeply alarming.  Decadence has a high price for even the best human soul.

I'm thinking about this in terms of last weekend's forced detachment from the world.  Along about Sunday, I realized that there must be some interesting news about how the South Carolina primary had gone -- the matter was much debated the week before, and here it had been over and done with and I had no idea how it had turned out.  Instead I was rereading a work of history on an old Anglo-Saxon blood feud, and enjoying it.  I had forgotten the author's insights into how Northumbria was divided, and how that fit into the question of feuds and politics in the generation before the Norman Conquest.

It may be that the real answer is not in refinement of decadence, but in periodic detoxification.  I like to take to the road at times in the year, and go for a while into the mountains or some wilderness.  It is always good, but much of the year it is not available -- we are expected to remain connected at all times for professional reasons.  I have managed to resist this more than many, but even I feel often required to be abreast of the situation, the latest detail.

The table groans, and so do we.