You know what? Mr. Hines makes it clear to me that we are not having enough fun around here. Elections are serious business, almost a revolution every four years; but the primaries are over, and the finals are far away. It's time to take a step back, and not let the political order our lives for us.
The rest of the week until next Monday, no more politics except in the comments to posts below. November will come soon enough, and we've got September and October to deal with it all as well. I charge all of you with posting rights to come up with something fun between now and Sunday. We've fought enough for a while. It's time to be merry.
Even if a war starts between now and Sunday, we'll deal with it in God's good time.
This recording makes Brett's words hard to make out, though you can hear the strings clearly. Let's have it from the Clancy Brothers.
Dr. Althouse and Scott Adams
I cited a post of Dr. Althouse's the other day that was critical of her, but I think she's written the best thing I've seen written about the current controversy (and a companion, concerning a left-wing thinker in the UK who was fired for a column about rape):
So he said something that was wrong (probably, though as we've discussed it's actually very difficult to tell what to make of the numbers), and he sounded kind of dumb, but he did it in an honest attempt to explain the reasoning underlying his principles. That's good! In fact, it's the only way around the problem that Scott Adams is pointing us towards: the only way to take advantage of all this new knowledge is if we find a way to bring our stupid areas forward for correction by those whose functional area it happens to be.
We learned something from this (whether or not he did): about where we stand as a republic on the question of rape, about the existence of a theory most of us probably did not realize was informing part of the abortion debate, and about what we think about that theory. We are all better off for having had this discussion, even though it made a lot of people angry and upset.
I gather Dr. Althouse takes that to be to the good -- and except for some sympathy for those who were upset by the remarks, the effect is good. A legislator isn't elected to make policy about the one thing he or she knows about, after all: they're going to be functionally stupid in a lot of the areas where they have to make law. The freer they feel to talk in public about what they believe and why they believe it, the better off we will be as a nation.
Take note. That's something that if you say it, you will lose your job. It's now, officially, a topic that cannot be discussed anymore. Feminists used to have to fight to get sex without consent recognized as real rape. (Here's Susan Estrich's book "Real Rape," spelling it out in 1988 for people who were struggling with concept could bring it within grasp.) Now, you're on notice that making distinctions between types of rape could utterly destroy you. Don't talk about it.She captures a great deal of what I thought was important about the matter too. If we're going to be governed by citizen legislators, they'll be ordinary men and women -- which means they will sometimes be, or at least sound, dumb and inarticulate. It turns out that Akin is a former Army combat engineer, so he's probably not stupid as such; but as Scott Adams pointed out, we're all increasingly functionally stupid as the amount there is to know grows exponentially but our capacity to learn stays largely put. Outside of our functional area, then, more and more we're going to sound stupid even if we're really quite smart inside of our proper sphere.
What a victory for women in the war on women.
ADDED: There's a big difference between Akin and Galloway, and it's not just that one's a righty and one's a lefty. Akin is, I think, rather dumb, and he's obviously inarticulate. By contrast, Galloway is quite smart and articulate.
Ironically, it was Galloway who was talking about a category that could be termed — using language properly — "legitimate rape." When Akin said "legitimate rape," he was referring to the most serious kinds of incidents within the larger category of unconsented-to sexual intercourse, the acts that everyone will agree are rape.
The word "legitimate" makes it sound as though Akin were saying those acts are acceptable, but he only meant those are the acts that are properly referred to with the word rape. And this was all in the context of talking about abortion.
Akin wants to say abortion is always wrong, and he's got to deal with the widely held opinion that a woman who has become pregnant through rape ought to be able to get an abortion. How can he find a way to say no? What if it were true that when it's a really serious rape — an act properly categorized as rape — that the woman's body would repel the sperm? That would be really convenient as a way to fend off the argument that has worked so strongly against his absolute anti-abortion position. Of course, it's not true, so it's some highly stupid wishful thinking on his part.
Now, let's look at what Galloway said. He's talking about the kind of rape that's not at the core of what is reprehensible about rape. Like Akin, he's thinking about the most serious types of rape and distinguishing other acts that also get classified as rape, and he's legitimating those less serious acts. Akin was probably only trying to say that it would be good always to favor the life of the unborn over the interests of the woman (because if she got pregnant, she wasn't a victim of the harshest violence).
But Galloway wasn't talking about the innocence of the unborn at all. He was talking about the innocence of the man who has sex with a woman without her consent. He was saying that when a man is naked in bed with a woman who has already had sex with him, that man can proceed with another act of intercourse without acquiring her consent. He's saying that something that some people categorize as rape is not really rape.
So Akin and Galloway raise 2 different issues about rape. One is about access to abortion in a world where there is rape. The other is about the extent to which sexual intercourse should be criminalized. These are actually both things we should be able to talk about!
So he said something that was wrong (probably, though as we've discussed it's actually very difficult to tell what to make of the numbers), and he sounded kind of dumb, but he did it in an honest attempt to explain the reasoning underlying his principles. That's good! In fact, it's the only way around the problem that Scott Adams is pointing us towards: the only way to take advantage of all this new knowledge is if we find a way to bring our stupid areas forward for correction by those whose functional area it happens to be.
We learned something from this (whether or not he did): about where we stand as a republic on the question of rape, about the existence of a theory most of us probably did not realize was informing part of the abortion debate, and about what we think about that theory. We are all better off for having had this discussion, even though it made a lot of people angry and upset.
I gather Dr. Althouse takes that to be to the good -- and except for some sympathy for those who were upset by the remarks, the effect is good. A legislator isn't elected to make policy about the one thing he or she knows about, after all: they're going to be functionally stupid in a lot of the areas where they have to make law. The freer they feel to talk in public about what they believe and why they believe it, the better off we will be as a nation.
Is Ryan a "Cafeteria Catholic"?
If so, he may be filling up his tray with the right stuff. The Wall Street Journal chronicles the trials of Ryan the Heretic:
So here we are in 2012, when all but one of the active senators and representatives who are members of the official Catholics for Obama campaign team enjoy a 100% approval rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.
This fundamental dissent from a basic church teaching is now a fact of modern Democratic Catholic life. The result for our politics is an extraordinary campaign, in the 10 days since Paul Ryan became the Republican candidate for vice president, by those on the Catholic left to strike a moral equivalence between Mr. Ryan's reform budget and Democratic Catholic support for the party's absolutist position on abortion.Mr. Ryan's own bishop wrote recently that the Church considers abortion
an "intrinsic evil" (meaning always and everywhere wrong, regardless of circumstances). In sharp contrast, he said, on issues such as how best to create jobs or help the poor, "there can be difference according to how best to follow the principles which the church offers."As a result, the bishop concluded, "it's wrong to suggest that [Ryan's] views somehow make him a bad Catholic." In the view of Catholic progressives, however, his budget certainly does. That leaves us with the conclusion that Catholic progressives
believe that the pope and bishops have nothing of value to offer about the sanctity of marriage or the duty of protecting unborn life, [but] when it comes to federal spending, suddenly a miter means infallibility.
More Georgia Politics
With the runoff behind us, it's a good day for Zell Miller, argues Jim Galloway of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution. It's a bad day for Sarah Palin, at least down here.
Meanwhile, a Federal Appeals court has decided to allow Georgia to enforce its version of the famous Arizona law. Our friends at the SPLC turn up again, on the losing side of this ruling:
The former governor of Alaska is now 0-for-2 in Georgia races. Sarah Palin had endorsed Zoller, though she made no personal appearance to back up her choice. Palin had also endorsed Karen Handel in the 2010 Republican race for governor.I'm sure we don't have anything against Sarah Palin down here, but mountain ties run strong. Zoller was a good candidate too, and I hope she does well elsewhere in the state.
The 9th District race had pitted north Georgia mountain sentiments against the tea party tidal wave. Zell Miller, the former governor and U.S. senator, had backed Collins – his grandson, Bryan Miller, was Collins’ campaign manager.
Meanwhile, a Federal Appeals court has decided to allow Georgia to enforce its version of the famous Arizona law. Our friends at the SPLC turn up again, on the losing side of this ruling:
“It’s not the end of the story,” said Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We believe that eventually the law will be struck down and found to be unconstitutional as it is applied in the real world.”The argument that it is unconstitutional is that state laws on the subject are pre-empted by Federal laws. That's an interesting argument, although the state doesn't claim the right to override the Federal government here -- just to check to see if Federal laws are being obeyed, and make an arrest if they are not. What's at issue is whether agents of the state, and not the Federal government, are entitled to the power to "check."
Once Upon A Time in the East
Here is a collection of old photos from Shanghai, during its wild days in the 1930s. I really liked Shanghai. We had a great time there, I guess it would have been 2001: we dined on a wonderful spiced yak dish, and bought artwork in little markets to bring home after our long stay in China. I've been to the Bund, which still looks much like this (or did ten years ago). The other side of the river, though, has changed a little bit in the ensuing decades.
Terrorism Futures
I thought this was a great idea the last time around, and I still think it is. Strange to think that was nine years ago, and I have an old comment to link about it; maybe I've been blogging too long.
Runoff Day
If you're one of our Georgia companions, today is runoff day. There's still an hour to get to the polls if you have forgotten, although if you're like me you cannot possibly have forgotten because a recorded campaign announcement has called you two or three times a day every day for two weeks to remind you.
The biggest race today is the runoff in the Mighty 9th Congressional District. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins, although frankly I think we can be pretty happy either way.
UPDATE: A map of results from the 9th runoff is here. Doug Collins has an early lead, though it looks like a lot of results have yet to come in. I'll be very surprised if Union County stays in Zoller's column.
UPDATE: Looks like Zoller has conceded in the face of what looks to be roughly a 55/45 split, so Dan Collins will be our new Representative (although there is a pro forma election in November, barring a miracle the Democratic candidate might as well not be running). Union County did stay in Zoller's column, by a little under a hundred votes. I'm surprised by that -- I would have thought Zell Miller's endorsement would have carried Union County, but apparently not. Of course, only about fourteen hundred people got out to vote today, so I guess anything can happen in a low-turnout race.
The biggest race today is the runoff in the Mighty 9th Congressional District. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins, although frankly I think we can be pretty happy either way.
UPDATE: A map of results from the 9th runoff is here. Doug Collins has an early lead, though it looks like a lot of results have yet to come in. I'll be very surprised if Union County stays in Zoller's column.
UPDATE: Looks like Zoller has conceded in the face of what looks to be roughly a 55/45 split, so Dan Collins will be our new Representative (although there is a pro forma election in November, barring a miracle the Democratic candidate might as well not be running). Union County did stay in Zoller's column, by a little under a hundred votes. I'm surprised by that -- I would have thought Zell Miller's endorsement would have carried Union County, but apparently not. Of course, only about fourteen hundred people got out to vote today, so I guess anything can happen in a low-turnout race.
A Tribute to the Land
Victor Davis Hanson has written the story of the land his ancestors worked for 140 years. It's an interesting story, and you can see the feeling that motivates him very clearly in it. In spite of his sense of loss, though, he has an appreciation for the marvels of new creation:
This winter I watched a new owner of the farm parcel next to mine bring in enormous Caterpillar equipment and land-levelers. He ripped out every living tree and bush. He changed the very contours of the land, flattening even the once rolling hills. Within days, arose a postmodern almond orchard of some 40 acres.
I say postmodern because the new creation is beyond modern. High-density-planted new trees are genetically designed to grow on these sandy soils. The drip system is computerized and injects precise amounts of fertilizers, while not wasting a drop of precious well water. An ancestral pond and its overflow basin have now shrunk to about an acre. The result is that the almond trees — not more than six months old — are growing so rapidly that they appear as if they were supernatural and in their second or third leaf. It is agribusiness development such as this that explains why California farmland is the most productive in the world.
Experts Wonder: Can We Make Cars Hacker-Proof?
Apparently this is a hard question. Let me provide an answer. If we're talking about 'hackers' in the computer-centric sense, as the article seems to be, yes, you can. Here are several examples of cars completely immune to computer hackers:
Ford Mustang, 1968
You know what else is hacker-proof? My motorcycles. Not a computer on the things anywhere.
So yeah, it can be done. The results look pretty good from where I sit.
Dodge Charger R/T, 1970
You know what else is hacker-proof? My motorcycles. Not a computer on the things anywhere.
So yeah, it can be done. The results look pretty good from where I sit.
The spirit of invention
This one is practical, too:
Akin's Fallacy
It may now be named after a likely-to-fail Senate nominee, but the error is not his alone.
I put this down as a highly unlikely claim. Still, it's not a surprising one. Fertility is one of the great mysteries of nature, and it is not at all surprising that there remain some magical ideas about it. It's a magical process, in the good sense of the term: it brings forth life and renewal. It's also a hidden process, in that the early stages of it happen out of sight and according to things we really don't consciously control. That's the kind of process where magical thinking is most likely to turn up.
So it's hard for me to blame someone for believing something like this, assuming he was -- as Akin said he was in his original remarks -- told it by doctors. Such doctors exist; the Mother Jones post just cited offers a link to "Physicians for Life," which makes the same claim. The claim isn't inexplicable, and it seems to be shared by certain pseudoscientific figures on both sides of the abortion debate (my professor was quite left-wing on reproduction issues: his whole point was that here was another wonderful way for women to take control of whether or not they got pregnant). It's important to get the facts right, and to disabuse people of claims that are demonstrably wrong: but if their reasons for holding the belief is understandable, it's not a demonstration of bad character that they happened to believe something that isn't really true.
But here's the thing: Akin didn't make this idea up. That women can't get pregnant when they're raped is a thing that some people actually believe. I stumbled across this several months ago while researching another story. It turns out to be an idea held and repeated by individuals who oppose abortion in any circumstance.Not only them! I was taught a version of this as an undergraduate, in a class on Eastern (i.e., Asian) metaphysics. The professor was explaining the benefits of Kundalini meditation, one of which was allegedly that it allowed women to exert greater conscious control over their reproductive functions. This was something women could do anyway, he said, as in the example of women repelling pregnancy from rape; but with adequate meditation you could come to understand and order the flow of energy within your body, and use the same capacity simply as birth control.
I put this down as a highly unlikely claim. Still, it's not a surprising one. Fertility is one of the great mysteries of nature, and it is not at all surprising that there remain some magical ideas about it. It's a magical process, in the good sense of the term: it brings forth life and renewal. It's also a hidden process, in that the early stages of it happen out of sight and according to things we really don't consciously control. That's the kind of process where magical thinking is most likely to turn up.
So it's hard for me to blame someone for believing something like this, assuming he was -- as Akin said he was in his original remarks -- told it by doctors. Such doctors exist; the Mother Jones post just cited offers a link to "Physicians for Life," which makes the same claim. The claim isn't inexplicable, and it seems to be shared by certain pseudoscientific figures on both sides of the abortion debate (my professor was quite left-wing on reproduction issues: his whole point was that here was another wonderful way for women to take control of whether or not they got pregnant). It's important to get the facts right, and to disabuse people of claims that are demonstrably wrong: but if their reasons for holding the belief is understandable, it's not a demonstration of bad character that they happened to believe something that isn't really true.
On Traveling Dragons
Somewhere I came up with a postcard of this piece by Wendy Ellertson, although I haven't been to Boston in ages and I can't recall having seen her work when I was there.
I sent the card to Sovay with the following limerick:
Though traveling a tremendous distance,
Beware of a dragon's assistance.
He may keep his offer
Just as he did proffer --
But he may be seeking subsistence.
I sent the card to Sovay with the following limerick:
Though traveling a tremendous distance,
Beware of a dragon's assistance.
He may keep his offer
Just as he did proffer --
But he may be seeking subsistence.
Chuck Schumer, Matchmaker
Come on, now, Dr. Althouse: this is surely the best thing we've ever read about the Honorable Chuck Schumer.
The man's only doing what his Jewish faith suggests to him is the most helpful thing he can do. What's wrong with that? What's wrong with an old man advising the young on how to achieve the greatest happiness that life offers, and helping them to find the path? The young find this thing very hard, even mystifying: goodness knows I did.
We've gone a long way from what makes sense if we get mad about something like this. Yes, Republicans who did it would be mistreated; but that doesn't change the fact that it is mistreatment, which those interested in justice ought to avoid rather than repeat. What does anyone look for at that age more than love? What should anyone look for more than true love? That the man has helped so many find it is a mark of an unsuspected virtue in one we more often encounter as a bare-knuckled political opponent.
Clang
Since we're talking about Kickstarter programs, here is one I particularly like. It won't revolutionize the world like maybe mini-solar panels could, but it might at least give people some renewed respect for their ancestors.
It's harder than it looks, you know. What you don't know is just how much harder!
It's harder than it looks, you know. What you don't know is just how much harder!
The anti-Solyndra
Send $10, and they'll have lunch on you. Send $35, and eventually you'll receive a Solar Power Kit, though I'm afraid it may not arrive in time for putting it under the tree. For $10,000, they'll come to your town and put on a big bash.
Just admit it . . .
. . . This makes you say "Awwwwww." My husband, who has my number, forwards me this image, from Ace, I think. Sort of a William Wegman* in a marshmallow key. (*Thanks, Douglas.)
The Wylde Hunt
The use of the didgeriedoo in a Celtic composition may strike you as odd, unless you are aware that it moved into northern European roots music a decade or so ago. I think the first such group to incorporate it was Hedningarna ("The Heathens"). The primal sound of the instrument fits in well with their attempt generate an impression of something ancient.
So that's Celtic and Nordic. How about we round it out with a Saami singer? They turn up from time to time in the Norse sagas, a mysterious people from the uttermost north, possessed of strange magics.
On "Hate Groups" and the SPLC
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has a proud enough history that its current misbehavior needs to be condemned with some care. Even today, it still does good work a fair part of the time: for example, it was the SPLC that had tracked the White Supremacist who ended up attacking the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. When we see them doing something overboard, then, we want to condemn them just that far: not the whole organization or its mission, but just their particular overreach.
A Fair in Dingle
Ah, the autumn is coming. Have you had a taste of the fine air yet? And autumn means fairs.
It's coming, boys and ladies. Just bear the faith a little while longer.
It's coming, boys and ladies. Just bear the faith a little while longer.
Oh, Yeah, That Makes Sense
Mr. President defends his VP:because we're suckers.
I mean fair. We're just very fair about these things, considering the history and all.
"Most folks know that's just sort of a WWF wrestling part of politics," Obama told "Entertainment Tonight." "It doesn't mean anything, just fills up a lot of airtime."Oh, ok, no problem then. Except... if someone on the right had said anything like that, he'd be forced to resign whatever office he happened to hold. But that's just fair play in a wrestling match, and we accept the handicap
I mean fair. We're just very fair about these things, considering the history and all.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Harrison
Harry Harrison wrote a number of good books, most of them more fun than serious, but good books all the same. My particular favorite of his works was The Stainless Steel Rat for President, a send-up not only of SciFi/Spy-novels, but also of politics in general. Esperanto never took off, but the Rat is forever.
Thanks for the good work, Mr. Harrison.
Thanks for the good work, Mr. Harrison.
Expectations of privacy
In 2010, after James O'Keefe had taped his ACORN sting operation, one of his sorry victims sued him for invasion of privacy. O'Keefe moved for summary judgment, which a federal judge in San Diego has just denied with this fascinating reasoning:
"ACORN is in the business of providing counseling and support for the community on various matters," Lorenz wrote. "By its very nature, the organization handles personal matters with individual clients. Defendants walked into ACORN and asked for plaintiff's help with tax forms. . . . Specifically, they solicited his help with setting up an illegal prostitution business with underaged girls. . . . Plaintiff, as a worker for an organization like ACORN, reasonably believed that the content of the conversation was sensitive enough that it would remain private."
O'Keefe duped Vera by asking if the conversation would remain confidential, before he launched into details of the nonexistent scheme, Lorenz wrote.
Over the course of a 40-minute conversation, Lorenz noted, the three "abruptly paused their conversation" after Vera's supervisor, David Lagstein, entered the office, and continued talking after the supervisor left.
"Based on the surrounding circumstances, plaintiff reasonably believed that the conversation was private because it was held in his office with no one else present, and he believed that no one else was listening in on his conversation," Lorenz wrote.
Gun Control Report, by Congressional Research Service
Via Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News, it appears that the Congressional Research Service completed and published a report on Gun Control on 3 August of this year. The author is one William J. Krouse, who also authored a piece on hate crimes legislation in 2010.
The only serious problem is the very usual fact that CRS was not authorized to release this report to the public. The report itself is a good thing. Congressmen frequently make badly informed statements about firearms, and some framing of the debate with quality information is beneficial. CRS expects a debate in the next Congress on the subject, so it's trying to anticipate the need for facts. CRS is a good service, and tries to be nonpartisan. The report attempts to outline the basic arguments for and against gun control, and provides what it takes to be the best available statistics (which show, as you will see, a nearly continuous decline in gun violence, gun related deaths, and so forth in spite of an explosion of gun sales over the last twenty years).
There is a lot here that's worth reading if you intend to be involved in the debate that CRS expects the next Congress to have.
The only serious problem is the very usual fact that CRS was not authorized to release this report to the public. The report itself is a good thing. Congressmen frequently make badly informed statements about firearms, and some framing of the debate with quality information is beneficial. CRS expects a debate in the next Congress on the subject, so it's trying to anticipate the need for facts. CRS is a good service, and tries to be nonpartisan. The report attempts to outline the basic arguments for and against gun control, and provides what it takes to be the best available statistics (which show, as you will see, a nearly continuous decline in gun violence, gun related deaths, and so forth in spite of an explosion of gun sales over the last twenty years).
There is a lot here that's worth reading if you intend to be involved in the debate that CRS expects the next Congress to have.
Youth Vote Swings Right?
It's a Zogby poll, so who knows if it's right, but it would make some sense. Youth unemployment has been horrid during this recession, while the trillion-plus dollar deficits will be coming out of the youth demographic's paychecks for years to come.
As the ad says, we understand. You wanted to believe. You tried. He tried. It didn't work. It's OK to make a change.
As the ad says, we understand. You wanted to believe. You tried. He tried. It didn't work. It's OK to make a change.
It's Proven By The Science
Headline: "Scientists: Vegetarian cavemen died off."
Meat-eating cavemen? They're your ancestors!
How about the beer-drinking cavemen? Trick question: cavemen didn't drink beer, because the invention of beer was what gave rise to civilization.
Meat-eating cavemen? They're your ancestors!
How about the beer-drinking cavemen? Trick question: cavemen didn't drink beer, because the invention of beer was what gave rise to civilization.
Shackles
Vice President Biden's remarks, today, are surprising on several levels. One of them is that they weren't a thoughtless or careless remark of the sort to which Mr. Biden has been so prone. This is proven in two ways. First, the campaign had a fully-considered response to the predictable outrage by the Romney camp.
The second fact about the remarks that shows they were pre-planned and intentional is the delivery. Listen to Mr. Biden's delivery. He's just talking at the start, but as soon as he gets to "Unchain Wall Street," he adopts a form that is intended to mimic the feel of gospel church. The following remark is thus framed.
The thing is, if you left off the subtext created by the remarks and the inflection, Mr. Biden is making a point with which I'd be prone to agree. I do want to see Wall Street more carefully monitored and controlled. I do think it's important that the banks be subject to more regulation and oversight. Of course, his administration has been horrible on the subject, but the Romney campaign leads me to believe they would certainly be no better.
The problem with the remarks from a rhetorical perspective, then, is that they poison a legitimate argument with which even your opponents might agree. This is traded for a moment of race-baiting. It's one thing to race-bait when you have nothing else to say -- it's unconscionable, but nevertheless common as a political and rhetorical tactic -- but usually if you have a good argument, you'd press the argument.
I suppose we have to read this as an admission of failure, then. Even here, where ideologically they ought to be on strong ground, the truth is they've done nothing on which they might run. They have no accomplishments to back up their rhetoric, so they must refer us away from an examination of their record.
By the way, these remarks were delivered in Danville, Virginia. That was the town the Old 97 never reached.
A spokeswoman from the Obama campaign defended Biden's remarks, saying there was "no problem" with the accusation. "For months, Speaker Boehner, Congressman Ryan, and other Republicans have called for the 'unshackling' of the private sector from regulations that protect Americans from risky financial deals and other reckless behavior that crashed our economy," said Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. "Since then, the Vice President has often used a similar metaphor to describe the need to 'unshackle' the middle class.The use of shackling metaphors is thus quid pro quo, she suggests, as though there were no difference between metaphors of shackling and unshackling. The American mission, though, is built on the very clear difference between the two.
The second fact about the remarks that shows they were pre-planned and intentional is the delivery. Listen to Mr. Biden's delivery. He's just talking at the start, but as soon as he gets to "Unchain Wall Street," he adopts a form that is intended to mimic the feel of gospel church. The following remark is thus framed.
The thing is, if you left off the subtext created by the remarks and the inflection, Mr. Biden is making a point with which I'd be prone to agree. I do want to see Wall Street more carefully monitored and controlled. I do think it's important that the banks be subject to more regulation and oversight. Of course, his administration has been horrible on the subject, but the Romney campaign leads me to believe they would certainly be no better.
The problem with the remarks from a rhetorical perspective, then, is that they poison a legitimate argument with which even your opponents might agree. This is traded for a moment of race-baiting. It's one thing to race-bait when you have nothing else to say -- it's unconscionable, but nevertheless common as a political and rhetorical tactic -- but usually if you have a good argument, you'd press the argument.
I suppose we have to read this as an admission of failure, then. Even here, where ideologically they ought to be on strong ground, the truth is they've done nothing on which they might run. They have no accomplishments to back up their rhetoric, so they must refer us away from an examination of their record.
By the way, these remarks were delivered in Danville, Virginia. That was the town the Old 97 never reached.
Mediscare whom?
Has ObamaCare turned Medicare into an issue that should scare the Obama campaign more than the Romney one? Yuval Levin at National Review argues yes:
President Obama has put Democrats in the position of being the party that seeks to cut current seniors’ benefits (especially those in Medicare Advantage) and access to care (thanks to the IPAB) while still allowing the program to collapse in the coming years and so watching the deficit explode and bringing on fiscal disaster. And Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have put the Republicans in the position of being the party that wants to protect current seniors’ benefits and make them available to future seniors while still saving the program from collapse in the coming years and so dramatically reducing the deficit and averting fiscal disaster.
Whether you’re now a senior and concerned about your health coverage, are younger and worry if you’ll have affordable coverage when you retire, or are most concerned about the nation’s fiscal health and economic future, the Democrats offer you a very bad deal on Medicare and the Republicans offer you a good one.
Rick Perry Says States Can Ban Guns(!)
I suppose one could get that reading out of the plain language Gov. Perry used here, although I don't think that's what he meant. Saying precisely what he meant was not his strong point in the Presidential debates either, so it's no surprise that he may have phrased this the wrong way.
It almost sounds like he's advocating for a 10th Amendment reading, but actually this is one case where the 10th does not apply. The relevant authority is quite clearly mapped elsewhere:
When it gets back to this issue of taking guns away from law abiding citizens and somehow know this will make our country safer, I don’t agree with that. I think most people in Texas don’t agree with that, and that is a state by state issue frankly that should be decided in the states and not again a rush to Washington, D.C. to centralize the decision making, and them to decide what is in the best interest for the citizens and the people of Florida and Texas. That’s for the people of these states to decide.What he's actually saying is that he doesn't want the Federal government to undertake to enact any gun control laws; if he wants any new gun control laws, he'll pursue them in Texas. Fair enough.
It almost sounds like he's advocating for a 10th Amendment reading, but actually this is one case where the 10th does not apply. The relevant authority is quite clearly mapped elsewhere:
From Article I, Section 8, listing powers Congress shall have:It sounds as though Congress has the authority to regulate the "arming" of the militia, provided that such regulation does not "infringe" upon the right of the People to keep and bear arms. There may be several readings here, but this appears to be a case where it actually is the Federal and not the state government that has whatever power there is to be had.
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Amendment Two:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
To The Ones Who Understand:
The SEALs were also circumspect about death in a way that only those confronted with it regularly can be.
“I either want to die in combat, doing my job right now, or live till I’m 98 years old and see my great, great grand kids,” one of them told me. “I don’t want anything in between. None of us do. A warrior’s death, you can’t get any higher than that. It’s horrible for the family, they don’t want to hear that, but for us, the guys at our command, we’re okay with it. That is our duty, the highest calling. And if that happens to you, you hope you are in the right frame of mind that you are okay with it. I have seen a lot of people go, not well. Had they been able to do another take on it, they would probably want it to go better. I remember everything else about Adam also, but I will always remember the end. You know, your first impression lasts a relationship, and your last impression is with you forever. Adam died well.”
Grim Fells a Tree
So this morning I felled an oak, only to have it hang up on a tree about a third of its size. It looked pretty comfortable. The wife said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you....?"
Great idea, dear.
Great idea, dear.
Some Views on Marriage and Family
I'm going to post three articles on marriage and the family for discussion.
First, Lars Walker has a piece on how marriage and family has changed since the Icelandic sagas. I think he's right on here,* as will not surprise you. What he's talking about here is frith and freedom, topics we have often discussed.
The other two articles I won't quote at length, but I leave them here for you to consider. They are of a type: a child of one of the 'new' types of families dispassionately explains what the cost of this type of family was.
The first is "The Child's View of Single-Motherhood," by Michael Brendan Dougherty. His sympathy for his mother -- and ability to see his own flaws as a child -- makes the piece especially worth consideration.
The second one is "Growing up with Two Moms: The Untold Children's View," by Robert Oscar Lopez. He asks both that we understand why this is less than ideal for children, but also for a more sympathetic and respectful treatment from society for those who turn out "weird" because of it. That's surely a reasonable request.
* An aside on the subject of the feud, for Mr. Walker. You write:
Let's say that I kill someone very important in your family (perhaps your father). If I am not also very important, you may not be satisfied with killing me. Killing me won't balance the scales. So, you may go and kill my uncle -- who is a better man than me -- in order to create balance.
The problem is that different families value members of their kinship at different rates than do outsiders. I may think that your father wasn't worth half what my uncle was, even though to you it seemed to even the scale. Thus, I think I now have a blood debt to repay: and so I go and kill your cousin. But to you, this upsets the scale again, so now you feel you have a debt.
This is why the reconciliation system in all of these tribal/honor cultures follows the pattern of getting the elders together to sort out a blood price. A group of people who are respected (or sometimes, if he is respected enough, a single judge) decides where the remaining debt lies, and sets a price that both sides accept. This settles the remaining debt so that peace becomes possible. The hard part is finding a payment -- weregild or diyya -- that both sides agree makes it even.
In other words, the system actually does make sense once you understand the mechanism at work. My killing your cousin isn't irrational, but rather a measured response based on my sense of how important the various people are within the community of honor.
First, Lars Walker has a piece on how marriage and family has changed since the Icelandic sagas. I think he's right on here,* as will not surprise you. What he's talking about here is frith and freedom, topics we have often discussed.
The central political value for the Norseman was freedom (at least for himself and his kinsmen). The defense of freedom is an issue that rises again and again in the history of the age, as an old system based on kinship and traditional law resisted a new system based on central monarchy and imported laws. And the central bastion of this freedom -- the chief counterweight to the power of the state -- was the family. The genealogies in sagas are long because the families were big. The more relatives, the more power and security a man enjoyed, and the more axes he had available to resist oppression.Quite right. The weakening of the family makes us less free, as individuals, because we have only ourselves and the state. Strong families not only serve as another source of support, but also allow you to counterbalance the state's intrusions into individual liberty. The family can resist as well as support.
Marriage was central to that system. Though a Viking woman could not (in theory, anyway) be forced into a marriage, marriages were more the alliance of two families than the union of two loving hearts....
One of the reasons Americans nowadays yell at each other so much over marriage is that we fail to understand this (or understand it and don't care). Those whose idea of marriage looks back to this old model (which is not exclusively Norse, but almost universal in the world in one variation or another) argue with people whose concept of marriage is purely private.
It's my observation that most of us on the traditional side do hear what the moderns are saying, though we disagree. But the other side doesn't hear us at all. The modern idea of marriage makes it purely a private matter. Children are an accessory, and often not an important one.
The other two articles I won't quote at length, but I leave them here for you to consider. They are of a type: a child of one of the 'new' types of families dispassionately explains what the cost of this type of family was.
The first is "The Child's View of Single-Motherhood," by Michael Brendan Dougherty. His sympathy for his mother -- and ability to see his own flaws as a child -- makes the piece especially worth consideration.
The second one is "Growing up with Two Moms: The Untold Children's View," by Robert Oscar Lopez. He asks both that we understand why this is less than ideal for children, but also for a more sympathetic and respectful treatment from society for those who turn out "weird" because of it. That's surely a reasonable request.
* An aside on the subject of the feud, for Mr. Walker. You write:
My cousin's actions are, by extension, mine. If your cousin killed my cousin, I might just kill you, because one kinsman is pretty much as good (or bad) as another. To us, this seems ridiculous.I don't think this is right. I've observed the blood feud at work not only in reading the sagas, and Anglo-Saxon history, but also as it is still lived today among tribal groups in Iraq. The idea isn't that one cousin is as good as another, but rather that the feud is an attempt to balance an account of honor.
Let's say that I kill someone very important in your family (perhaps your father). If I am not also very important, you may not be satisfied with killing me. Killing me won't balance the scales. So, you may go and kill my uncle -- who is a better man than me -- in order to create balance.
The problem is that different families value members of their kinship at different rates than do outsiders. I may think that your father wasn't worth half what my uncle was, even though to you it seemed to even the scale. Thus, I think I now have a blood debt to repay: and so I go and kill your cousin. But to you, this upsets the scale again, so now you feel you have a debt.
This is why the reconciliation system in all of these tribal/honor cultures follows the pattern of getting the elders together to sort out a blood price. A group of people who are respected (or sometimes, if he is respected enough, a single judge) decides where the remaining debt lies, and sets a price that both sides accept. This settles the remaining debt so that peace becomes possible. The hard part is finding a payment -- weregild or diyya -- that both sides agree makes it even.
In other words, the system actually does make sense once you understand the mechanism at work. My killing your cousin isn't irrational, but rather a measured response based on my sense of how important the various people are within the community of honor.
Breaking Stone
I'm told we're in a drought here, but we've had so much torrential rain lately that things are washed out. I've spent the last few days trying to repair the driveway, which (as is common for rural driveways) is somewhat long. The original owner wisely built his house upon a hill surrounded by hardwood trees, with the pastures in the land below. This protects the house from the dangers of flooding, while giving the pastures the benefit of extra moisture from the runoff.
However, it also means that the driveway extends up a hill, and is prone to washing out. Someday I would like to pave it, but for now it is gravel over red clay, and (as is usually true with red clay) quite prone to having whole sections turned into ravines by a heavy storm.
Fortunately there are some spots of quartz stone on the property, which is relatively easy to quarry. So, since Friday, I've been breaking the stone out of the ground with a pick, shipping the big chunks in a wheelbarrow to the ravines, and then breaking them into small stones and gravel with an eight-pound sledgehammer.
Eight pounds doesn't sound like a lot of weight, but swung from above your head with both hands, you will often strike a stone of eighty pounds and see it burst into three or four pieces. With practice you develop an eye for the lay of the crystal structure, so that you can shear off a piece, or cause the whole to shatter into fragments. Sometimes I dig trenches and fill them with larger stones, so as to trap runoff and silt.
In any case it's hard but satisfying work. The next time someone tells me I didn't build the roads I use for commerce, I can answer: "I surely helped."
However, it also means that the driveway extends up a hill, and is prone to washing out. Someday I would like to pave it, but for now it is gravel over red clay, and (as is usually true with red clay) quite prone to having whole sections turned into ravines by a heavy storm.
Fortunately there are some spots of quartz stone on the property, which is relatively easy to quarry. So, since Friday, I've been breaking the stone out of the ground with a pick, shipping the big chunks in a wheelbarrow to the ravines, and then breaking them into small stones and gravel with an eight-pound sledgehammer.
Eight pounds doesn't sound like a lot of weight, but swung from above your head with both hands, you will often strike a stone of eighty pounds and see it burst into three or four pieces. With practice you develop an eye for the lay of the crystal structure, so that you can shear off a piece, or cause the whole to shatter into fragments. Sometimes I dig trenches and fill them with larger stones, so as to trap runoff and silt.
In any case it's hard but satisfying work. The next time someone tells me I didn't build the roads I use for commerce, I can answer: "I surely helped."
Vatican Warns of US Threat to Catholicism
So says the headline, anyway. Is that what the Vatican said? Well...
The Ryan Pick
If any of you went back and looked to see what I've written about Rep. Paul Ryan in the past, you found that the answer was "almost nothing." There's a couple of reasons for that:
1) I think his heart is in the right place, but,
2) I think his brain is in the wrong place.
I haven't wanted to be too critical of a man who wants the right things, and who was clearly fighting in the right direction, but I also don't think his famous plan begins to approach the scale of the problem we face. I think I know why, too: Rep. Ryan has spent literally his entire adult life in Congress, and so his framework for understanding the problem is the CBO math. He's clearly familiar with the CBO numbers down to the minutiae. The problem is that the CBO numbers intentionally refuse to take account of the true costs we face in terms of entitlements and Federal pensions.
Thus, Rep. Ryan's critics are right: his plan is entirely inadequate. It fixes the problem as the CBO sees it, though not for fifty years: but it doesn't begin to fix the real problem.
I would not have chosen this as the starting line for the battle we are about to wage. If we end up compromising from here, as we are likely to do given that is the political process, we will be beginning from a position that already fails to solve the problems. The NYT is already blasting Rep. Ryan's plan as Armageddon for everything good and right in America, but the truth is that plan pales by comparison to what really needs to be done.
On the other hand, as mentioned, Rep. Ryan's heart is in the right place. If he doesn't understand the scale, he does understand the stakes. When he talks about these things, he talks about saving the country. That's really what is at stake: if we don't come to a repair on these issues, the tensions will tear us apart. If we get to the crisis point without having fixed the entitlement and pension crisis, our nation will dissolve into factions over the question of who gets cut most. These will be life or death questions for everyone involved, because they will have come to be dependent upon the programs that are no longer viable.
That leads me to believe that Rep. Ryan is educable on the question of the scale. This also provides an opportunity for those who have been following this issue, like USA Today (and Mr. Steyn, whom Tex mentions below), to bring the issue to the level of the national debate.
It's a chance, which is more than we seemed likely to get out of this election. In an hour of grave danger, one must be bold in seizing on any chances that Fate sends.
1) I think his heart is in the right place, but,
2) I think his brain is in the wrong place.
I haven't wanted to be too critical of a man who wants the right things, and who was clearly fighting in the right direction, but I also don't think his famous plan begins to approach the scale of the problem we face. I think I know why, too: Rep. Ryan has spent literally his entire adult life in Congress, and so his framework for understanding the problem is the CBO math. He's clearly familiar with the CBO numbers down to the minutiae. The problem is that the CBO numbers intentionally refuse to take account of the true costs we face in terms of entitlements and Federal pensions.
Thus, Rep. Ryan's critics are right: his plan is entirely inadequate. It fixes the problem as the CBO sees it, though not for fifty years: but it doesn't begin to fix the real problem.
I would not have chosen this as the starting line for the battle we are about to wage. If we end up compromising from here, as we are likely to do given that is the political process, we will be beginning from a position that already fails to solve the problems. The NYT is already blasting Rep. Ryan's plan as Armageddon for everything good and right in America, but the truth is that plan pales by comparison to what really needs to be done.
On the other hand, as mentioned, Rep. Ryan's heart is in the right place. If he doesn't understand the scale, he does understand the stakes. When he talks about these things, he talks about saving the country. That's really what is at stake: if we don't come to a repair on these issues, the tensions will tear us apart. If we get to the crisis point without having fixed the entitlement and pension crisis, our nation will dissolve into factions over the question of who gets cut most. These will be life or death questions for everyone involved, because they will have come to be dependent upon the programs that are no longer viable.
That leads me to believe that Rep. Ryan is educable on the question of the scale. This also provides an opportunity for those who have been following this issue, like USA Today (and Mr. Steyn, whom Tex mentions below), to bring the issue to the level of the national debate.
It's a chance, which is more than we seemed likely to get out of this election. In an hour of grave danger, one must be bold in seizing on any chances that Fate sends.
Slogans
Mark Steyn favors: "It’s twilight in America: More retirees are falling behind on student debt." He's not happy about the bland Romney campaign. I hope he'll be pleased with the choice of Ryan as running mate.
Why Are We Doing This, Again?
As the worst drought in over a half century took its toll, investors went on a buying spree, boosting corn prices by more than 50 percent from late May to fresh record highs above $8 per bushel. The U.S. government on Friday released fresh crop data that revealed shocking cuts for this year's grain and oilseed output as the drought spread through America's breadbasket.So, the obvious response is to stop putting the stuff into gasoline, right? I mean, E10 -- that is, the gas blend that contains ten-percent-ethanol -- is incredibly destructive to small engines, and it's driving food prices up at a time when grain prices are already ruinously high. There's just no excuse for continuing our current policy.
Naturally, then, we'll be making a change in that policy.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will require all consumers to buy at least four gallons of gasoline from certain gas pumps after the new E15 ethanol-gasoline blend is introduced into the market.Of course. I should have known that would be the solution.
The Limits of Theory
Much of the liberal arts has, for some time now, been dominated by what is sometimes called "theory" -- that is, one of several modes of interpretation that starts with several assumptions and then applies them to reality. Several famous modes are Marxist theory, Freudian theory, and Feminist theory. The intent is to generate insight into the mechanisms behind observed reality, but since you are assuming the mechanisms, the quality of the insight you generate is limited by the degree to which your assumptions are correct.
A glaring example Paul Strom's article "Mellyagant's Primal Scene," (available in The Norton Critical Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, p. 894). The whole article is an extended attempt to apply one of Freud's theories about the effect on a child of witnessing his parents engaged together to a scene in Malory's work that involves neither children nor an actual witnessing of any such engagement. The result is pathetic. There is no reason to believe that Freud's theory is correct applied to other cultures; nor to different centuries; nor that a theory pertaining to a child can inform the reaction of an adult; nor that a theory built around the child/parent relationship should apply to cases of unrelated adults; nor that a theory about witnessing sex in progress captures the reaction of discovering some evidence of sex having happened at another time. In point of fact, there really is no evidence that Freud's theory holds even for all children living in his own time and culture. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Dr. Strom's article in the Norton Critical Edition shows how much academia is captured by this approach. It's a masterful example of the genre, even if it generates misapprehension and misunderstanding rather than insight.
There's another good example linked by Arts & Letters Daily today in a book review by one Sara Wheeler, apparently a feminist theorist. She is reviewing a book on penal codes related to sexuality, and relates a few examples and then her general complaint:
What is also lost is the sense that the theory isn't adequate to the reality being encountered. This is not to say that codes regulating sexuality never have to do with a wish to subjugate women; but the assumption that they always or mostly do is an assumption being brought by the theory. These should stand as counterexamples to the sufficiency of the theory as a mode of understanding human sexuality. It may be that a more complex set of assumptions is needed: it may even be that the assumptions need to be revised.
A glaring example Paul Strom's article "Mellyagant's Primal Scene," (available in The Norton Critical Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, p. 894). The whole article is an extended attempt to apply one of Freud's theories about the effect on a child of witnessing his parents engaged together to a scene in Malory's work that involves neither children nor an actual witnessing of any such engagement. The result is pathetic. There is no reason to believe that Freud's theory is correct applied to other cultures; nor to different centuries; nor that a theory pertaining to a child can inform the reaction of an adult; nor that a theory built around the child/parent relationship should apply to cases of unrelated adults; nor that a theory about witnessing sex in progress captures the reaction of discovering some evidence of sex having happened at another time. In point of fact, there really is no evidence that Freud's theory holds even for all children living in his own time and culture. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Dr. Strom's article in the Norton Critical Edition shows how much academia is captured by this approach. It's a masterful example of the genre, even if it generates misapprehension and misunderstanding rather than insight.
There's another good example linked by Arts & Letters Daily today in a book review by one Sara Wheeler, apparently a feminist theorist. She is reviewing a book on penal codes related to sexuality, and relates a few examples and then her general complaint:
The supposed Enlightenment transition from religion to reason was patchy: in 1806 England hanged more sodomites than murderers, while fear of masturbation reached such a climax in Germany that men caught at it had their foreskins tied shut over their members and held fast with iron rings.The very next paragraph begins:
What all this amounts to, in most of the human cultures that have ever existed, is the male fear of and wish to subjugate women. I would have liked Berkowitz to spell this out.Apparently the irony of the remark was lost on her and her editors, if any.
What is also lost is the sense that the theory isn't adequate to the reality being encountered. This is not to say that codes regulating sexuality never have to do with a wish to subjugate women; but the assumption that they always or mostly do is an assumption being brought by the theory. These should stand as counterexamples to the sufficiency of the theory as a mode of understanding human sexuality. It may be that a more complex set of assumptions is needed: it may even be that the assumptions need to be revised.
Bailout Nation
President Obama wants to repeat the auto bailout: "I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry."
That's a great idea, Mr. President. Have I told you about my horses*** manufacturing business?
That idea will fit right in around here.
That's a great idea, Mr. President. Have I told you about my horses*** manufacturing business?
That idea will fit right in around here.
Socrates and De Charny on Friends and Enemies
Geoffroi de Charny was one of the greatest knights of France, a bold adventurer who features prominently in the chronicles of Froissart. He was a member of the Order of the Star, and was chosen to bear the sacred banner of France at Poitiers. He died with it in his hands.
He also composed a serious work of ethics, from the perspective of a knight trying to explain to other knights and men-at-arms the best way to live. He makes an argument about friendship, and relations with enemies, that ought to interest us.
There is a supreme rule of conduct required in these good men-at-arms as the above-mentioned men of worth inform us: they should be humble among their friends, proud and bold against their foes, tender and merciful toward those who need assistance, cruel avengers against their enemies, pleasant and amiable with all others.... Love and serve your friends, hate and harm your enemies, relax with your friends, exert yourself with all your strength against your foes. You should plan your enterprises cautiously and you should carry them out boldly.He goes on to warn against quarrels, so we may take 'enemies' here to be enemies of the deadly serious sort. There were enough of them for any man in the Hundred Years War.
Recently we considered an argument that questioned whether it was possible to accept an account of patriotism as a virtue, given that it was not universal as many philosophers believe justice ought to be. The good doctor referred us to The Republic, which is supposed to challenge the idea of in-group loyalty. The men who lived in Athens at and after the time of the Peloponnesian War, though, also had real enemies and real friends: this audience understands the proposition. Socrates' arguments are problematic, and I'm not sure that he should be read as undermining the idea he is taken by moderns to criticize.
Socrates' first argues not that it is wrong to be more interested in helping your friends than your enemies, but it doesn't make any sense to say that justice is the art of 'helping friends and harming foes.' But Socrates has set us up, by portraying justice as a kind of skill -- techne, in the Greek. If justice were 'the skill of helping friends and harming enemies,' then Socrates' argument would be right: justice would be of little use, since the actual power to cause help or harm is always found in other skills. Justice isn't a skill, though: it's a disposition. The just man is disposed to use your skills for the help of your friends and the harm of your foes.
Socrates goes on to prove that justice is theft. Again we see the skill/disposition problem, though. It is true that the same skill is involved in knowing how to keep money from being stolen, and knowing how to steal it. Justice doesn't lie in the skill, though, but in the disposition of the man who employs the skill. The difference between the just man and the thief is how he is disposed to use the skills that he has.
Both of these objections are answered by Aristotle's system of ethics, whereby virtues are not skills but a kind of habitual response to a kind of problem. This is to say that Socrates is treating a man as having skills, of which justice is one; but Aristotle adds the layer of a man having character. There is a reason you can trust the good guard, but not the thief, even if their skills are just the same. The virtue of justice is part of the character of the one man, while the other one is vicious.
Socrates, though, has another set of arguments that are more troubling. First he asks who our friends and enemies are:
S: By friends and enemies do we mean those who are so really, or only in seeming?Here there is another problem, which is that the definition of justice has become circular. Justice is helping the just and harming the unjust; 'the just' are defined as those who help the just and harm the unjust; 'the unjust' are defined as those who fail to help the just and harm the unjust. So how do I know whom to help? It can't be that I pick the man who helps everyone, unless no one is unjust: for failing to harm the unjust makes him unjust, and so I have a duty to harm him.
P: Surely, he said, a man may be expected to love those whom he thinks good, and to hate those whom he thinks evil.
S: Yes, but do not persons often err about good and evil: many who are not good seem to be so, and conversely?
P: That is true....
S: Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and harm to the unjust?
Socrates goes on to argue that harming anyone makes him less just, and thus that the just would only help. In practical fact, of course, that isn't true; punishments sometimes do reform, or at least dissuade. But it's also a logical problem even on his own terms. Say someone goes about harming everyone. That makes those people less just. I have a duty to harm the unjust; thus, everyone who was a victim of the first person is a more legitimate target of harm from me simply by virtue of being a victim.
There is a sort-of hope that we might be able to lift people up by doing better by them than they deserve. If we always help (and if the assumption were true that helping people makes them more just), we could ratchet our way up to justice meaning helping everyone because everyone is just. Of course, in practical fact, it's not true: but again, logically, if I help someone who is unjust I am not being just according to the standard, and my choosing to be unjust damages me. I become less just (and thus more worthy of harm, by everyone) because of my act of charity.
Ultimately, then, Socrates' arguments do what Socrates loved to do -- they raise problems for you to struggle with. Socrates isn't proposing an answer, he's making you question the assumptions in the hope that you will come to a deeper understanding of the issue.
Notice, though, two things:
1) In his earlier arguments, Socrates doesn't abandon the idea of an in-group morality: we are to help our friends and harm our enemies. The question is merely whether justice helps us do this.
2) Likewise, in the later passages, there is an in-group morality: the distinction between 'the just' and 'the unjust' is still there. Unfortunately, the circularity of the definition, and the misapprehension of justice as a skill, gives rise to logical problems that confuse the discussion.
We learn more of practical worth by reading de Charny, but we learn more about how to think -- and how to avoid the traps of thought -- by reading Plato. Both things are worthy. As de Charny says:
Refrain from remonstrating with fools, for you will be wasting your time, and they will hate you for it; but remonstrate with the wise, who will like you the better for it.Socrates was like that: he loved no man better than the one who would argue with him.
LawDog on Satwant Singh Kaleka
The LawDog Files explains a bit more about the character of this good man, and also a little about just why he was at such a disadvantage when it came time to do his duty. (H/t: D29)
The Sikhs have an additional problem, which is that their universal duty means that they run afoul of 'special places' laws. For example, in Georgia, it is illegal to carry a weapon, even with a permit, into "a place of worship." That law is ill-advised on its face, but it's especially terrible in the case of a Sikh temple. It criminalizes the performance of their duty in the very place most consecrated to the way of life that solemnizes the duty. Presumably the police could drop by every weekend and round up the whole congregation unless they comply with this pretense, and carry "symbolic" knives instead of real ones.
The state legislature won't be in session again until next year, but let's undertake to repair this injustice. Asking them to make do with symbols instead of the real thing is disrespectful of a highly honorable faith, and it may have cost a very good man his chance to stop an act of murder. He gave his life trying, but with the proper tool he might have succeeded.
One of the tenets of the Sikh religion is that adherents must carry on their person a knife, called a Kirpan. The Kirpan is a reminder that the carrier should have the courage to defend all those who are persecuted or oppressed.I have long advocated -- and in Georgia, successfully -- for the extension of weapons carry laws to knives. In spite of that, it's rarely the case that a state with 'shall-issue' permits for handguns has the same approach to its knife laws.
In our enlightened, politically-correct times, however, this has caused some problems. The blade -- traditionally between six inches and three feet in length -- seems to be "intimidating" in the Age of the Common Man, and thus has been variously legally required to be "less than four inches", or blunted, or even sealed inside of its scabbard with glue.
I mention this because initial reports state that when Evil presented itself in his place of peace and began to slaughter those of his flock, 65-year-old Satwant Singh Kaleka did his level best to punch the ticket of the decades-younger murderer with what the Media has described as a "butter knife" -- a blunted blade, less than four inches in length.
The Sikhs have an additional problem, which is that their universal duty means that they run afoul of 'special places' laws. For example, in Georgia, it is illegal to carry a weapon, even with a permit, into "a place of worship." That law is ill-advised on its face, but it's especially terrible in the case of a Sikh temple. It criminalizes the performance of their duty in the very place most consecrated to the way of life that solemnizes the duty. Presumably the police could drop by every weekend and round up the whole congregation unless they comply with this pretense, and carry "symbolic" knives instead of real ones.
The state legislature won't be in session again until next year, but let's undertake to repair this injustice. Asking them to make do with symbols instead of the real thing is disrespectful of a highly honorable faith, and it may have cost a very good man his chance to stop an act of murder. He gave his life trying, but with the proper tool he might have succeeded.
Bounty of Summer
I spent most of today on food. In spring and early summer you lay away firewood for the next winter; in late summer you lay away food. We usually hang strings of peppers to dry, and we freeze many things, but this year I decided to try canning as well.
I made up a bit more than a gallon and a half of salsa and chipotle sauce, and canned a few stewed tomatoes and peppers as well. If the seals are good tomorrow, I'll make a bunch more.
We're also getting pears off the trees we planted for the first time this year. The trees still look like sticks after two years in the ground, but they've begun to produce.
My apple trees are still not producing, but someday! We'll have cold-pressed cider, and apple pies, and apple jelly and butter.
This is what I made the wife for dinner. It's just a garden-fresh stuffed pepper with a bunch of red chili and pico de gallo, but she thought it presented nicely and wanted you to see it.
I made up a bit more than a gallon and a half of salsa and chipotle sauce, and canned a few stewed tomatoes and peppers as well. If the seals are good tomorrow, I'll make a bunch more.
We're also getting pears off the trees we planted for the first time this year. The trees still look like sticks after two years in the ground, but they've begun to produce.
My apple trees are still not producing, but someday! We'll have cold-pressed cider, and apple pies, and apple jelly and butter.
This is what I made the wife for dinner. It's just a garden-fresh stuffed pepper with a bunch of red chili and pico de gallo, but she thought it presented nicely and wanted you to see it.
The Fortress of Saladin
Time has a series of photos from famous castles located in Syria, near where the fighting is ongoing, including one belonging to Saladin and visited by T. E. Lawrence.
Earlier this spring, rebels based in Krak des Chevaliers descended to destroy a loyalist fortification. The kind of building where the loyalists were holed up will be familiar to any of you who went to Iraq.
Earlier this spring, rebels based in Krak des Chevaliers descended to destroy a loyalist fortification. The kind of building where the loyalists were holed up will be familiar to any of you who went to Iraq.
Hey, Here's a Song Ya'll Know
Everybody knows George Thorogood.
But just for the record...
That's a familiar character, is it not? In fact, by now, you even know which Hank Williams that one was.
But just for the record...
That's a familiar character, is it not? In fact, by now, you even know which Hank Williams that one was.
Let's Hear Some Mormon Jokes
Allahpundit writes on the new Obama campaign ad:
The complexity of the regulations and the scale of the penalties will make compliance expensive even for those without moral objections -- especially as HHS appears to believe it has been given a free hand to revise the mandated requirements at any time. You can hire lawyers and accountants to keep you in compliance, risking massive fines if you should miss something; or you can pay $2,000 total and opt out for the year.
Just a cost of doing business, that.
As for attacking Mormonism, coincidentally Adam Gopnik just finished a piece for the New Yorker on the history of Mormonism. The upshot of the piece is that Mormonism is clearly a fraud perpetrated by an unstable madman, has weird doctrines, and was imposed in Utah through extreme brutality including the massacre of a large number of innocents who had accepted safe passage from Brigham Young's riders. We learn that it was so dangerous that the US Army was called out to quell it, avoiding war only because the Mormons surrendered key doctrines of their faith.
However, the piece concludes, all is well now because the Mormons sold out. Having left off pursuit of the stranger aspects of their faith for pursuit of vast, vast wealth, they are no longer the danger to society that once they were.
'But hey!' the piece concludes: religions selling out for money is a good thing. The Mormons are role models for the rest of you, who ought to sell out your values like they did. That brings us back around to the business about the huge fines and the contraception mandate, after all.
I'd assume that the timing was coincidental, except Mr. Gopnik explains that it isn't:
Now, I haven't heard any Mormon jokes. Religious jokes can be funny, if they're in the right spirit. Are they?
They won’t attack [Romney] for being Mormon (I hope), so calling him a murderer will have to do.... You know what’s really interesting about this spot? It’s not even a health-care ad. It’d be sleazy under any circumstances, but there’d at least be a concrete policy angle if Burton was selling it as an argument for, say, single-payer, to decouple insurance from employment. He’s not. There appears to be no actual policy argument here at all, unless The One now opposes layoffs on principle, for fear that someone somewhere might be left without insurance.The policy argument doesn't need to be explicit, I think: decoupling employment from insurance is clearly going to happen under Obamacare. As Dad29 was pointing out the other day, it's clear from the way the incentives and penalties are structured that the real desire is that employers should drop coverage, putting people on the public (i.e., government run) exchanges. Otherwise, how do you make sense of the fact that dropping coverage for all employees nets you a $2,000 annual penalty, but it's a $35,600 fine per employee per year if you fail to provide free birth-control, including sterilization and abortifacients?
The complexity of the regulations and the scale of the penalties will make compliance expensive even for those without moral objections -- especially as HHS appears to believe it has been given a free hand to revise the mandated requirements at any time. You can hire lawyers and accountants to keep you in compliance, risking massive fines if you should miss something; or you can pay $2,000 total and opt out for the year.
Just a cost of doing business, that.
As for attacking Mormonism, coincidentally Adam Gopnik just finished a piece for the New Yorker on the history of Mormonism. The upshot of the piece is that Mormonism is clearly a fraud perpetrated by an unstable madman, has weird doctrines, and was imposed in Utah through extreme brutality including the massacre of a large number of innocents who had accepted safe passage from Brigham Young's riders. We learn that it was so dangerous that the US Army was called out to quell it, avoiding war only because the Mormons surrendered key doctrines of their faith.
However, the piece concludes, all is well now because the Mormons sold out. Having left off pursuit of the stranger aspects of their faith for pursuit of vast, vast wealth, they are no longer the danger to society that once they were.
'But hey!' the piece concludes: religions selling out for money is a good thing. The Mormons are role models for the rest of you, who ought to sell out your values like they did. That brings us back around to the business about the huge fines and the contraception mandate, after all.
I'd assume that the timing was coincidental, except Mr. Gopnik explains that it isn't:
It’s only later in the cycle of integration that the group comes banging on the door—as Jews and Catholics did, in the nineteen-fifties—for more general admission, not as cardboard stage-ethnic types good at one or two things but as people available to do everything, just like the ruling Wasps. That’s when everyone starts asking what it is these people really believe.As he goes on to point out, his piece is not alone: in addition to "four scholarly books" on the history, there are a ton of "Mormon jokes" and "a Mormon-themed Broadway show" engaging the attention of New York City right now.
Now, I haven't heard any Mormon jokes. Religious jokes can be funny, if they're in the right spirit. Are they?
Money in Politics
The AJC describes the state of the race for the Georgia 9th Congressional District in an article entitled "Money frames a mountain vs. tea party race in the 9th."
The thing is, neither the mountains nor the Tea Party have much money. The recent T-SPLOST victory in Atlanta was fought by the Tea Party with a budget of around fifteen grand. Their opponents spent millions lobbying for it. When the spirit of the times is on your side, though, sometimes you don't need a lot.
The figures here are on the same scale. I don't think the money will matter, really: I'm not sure how much money really does matter in politics. Remembering the Wisconsin runoffs, it was never possible to determine just how much each side had really spent, and how much of an advantage either side had -- but the final vote totals were almost precisely the same as the vote totals from the previous election (i.e., the recall didn't change any minds; people voted the same way the second time). Likewise, we've seen unprecedented expenditures from the Obama campaign designed to demonize their opponent, but the needle on Romney hasn't moved very much. The people who were going to vote for him are still going to vote for him, and I am not sure all that many people exist who are both genuinely undecided, and interested enough to turn up on Election Day.
It may be that we have vastly overestimated the capacity of political advertising to change peoples' minds. I tend to think they vote their interests and personal values; and that's why I'll be voting for Dan Collins in the runoff. He's mountain-born, carries the endorsement of the last politician in America I truly respect, he's a former military chaplain and he spent time in Iraq. I think he'll serve with honor.
I think Zoller's a good candidate too, though; she's a firebrand and a Tea Party activist. We need all of those we can get. Even so, my sense of what I want is pretty set. I don't think they can move the needle on me with a slick ad, not even when the needle would only have to be moved a little bit. This causes me to believe that, more than we admit, people usually do what they want to do no matter how persuasive you are.
The thing is, neither the mountains nor the Tea Party have much money. The recent T-SPLOST victory in Atlanta was fought by the Tea Party with a budget of around fifteen grand. Their opponents spent millions lobbying for it. When the spirit of the times is on your side, though, sometimes you don't need a lot.
The figures here are on the same scale. I don't think the money will matter, really: I'm not sure how much money really does matter in politics. Remembering the Wisconsin runoffs, it was never possible to determine just how much each side had really spent, and how much of an advantage either side had -- but the final vote totals were almost precisely the same as the vote totals from the previous election (i.e., the recall didn't change any minds; people voted the same way the second time). Likewise, we've seen unprecedented expenditures from the Obama campaign designed to demonize their opponent, but the needle on Romney hasn't moved very much. The people who were going to vote for him are still going to vote for him, and I am not sure all that many people exist who are both genuinely undecided, and interested enough to turn up on Election Day.
It may be that we have vastly overestimated the capacity of political advertising to change peoples' minds. I tend to think they vote their interests and personal values; and that's why I'll be voting for Dan Collins in the runoff. He's mountain-born, carries the endorsement of the last politician in America I truly respect, he's a former military chaplain and he spent time in Iraq. I think he'll serve with honor.
I think Zoller's a good candidate too, though; she's a firebrand and a Tea Party activist. We need all of those we can get. Even so, my sense of what I want is pretty set. I don't think they can move the needle on me with a slick ad, not even when the needle would only have to be moved a little bit. This causes me to believe that, more than we admit, people usually do what they want to do no matter how persuasive you are.
Civil War Buff Disarms Knife-Wielding Robber
So says the headline... but note that they mean the English Civil War.
Mr Thompson, a member of the Sealed Knot, grabbed the robber’s hand and dragged him over the shop counter. The grandfather wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and then pinned him to the counter while the shopkeeper dialled 999.Well done, Cavalier.
During the brawl, the masked robber drew a second knife – but Mr Thompson disarmed him again before pinning him to the floor and waiting for police.
Against Hedonism, or, Why Happiness Does Not Equal Pleasure
Here is a good popular reading of why hedonistic ethics and politics must fail -- including modern utilitarian ethics and political thought. You can maximize pleasure, maybe; maybe you can even structure a plan that maximizes pleasure for a group of people, given a level of resources.
What you can't do is plan to maximize happiness, because it's not that kind of a thing. As Aristotle says, and rightly, happiness is an activity -- it is the particular activity of fully engaging your virtues in the pursuit of excellence. As such the question 'are you happy?' does not especially relate to the question 'how many resources do you have?', beyond a lower boundary that gives you adequate nutrition, etc., to ensure that you have the physical capacity to pursue excellence.
All virtues require developing good habits and good training, but there is also a certain amount of capacity that either is or is not inborn. By the way, the Greek word he mentions -- eudaimonia -- doesn't quite mean 'having a good guiding angel.' A daimon is not exactly an angel: it is a kind of spirit, one that the Greeks metaphorically said rode on your shoulder: that is, you couldn't see it, looking forward. Other people could see your daimon, and could tell whether it was a good one or a bad one, but not you.
There is some wisdom in this. We fail to be able to discern whether distant people are happy -- rich and famous people should be, shouldn't they? -- but we are often able to help people we know well to see that they are happier than they realized. In fact, it is in relating to others that we do discover how happy we are: what really matters is not our internal sensation of pleasure or cheerfulness, but the relationships we build with others whom we love, respect, or honor. That is the field in which we best express our virtues, and thus the field in which we are most likely to discover how happy we can really be.
What you can't do is plan to maximize happiness, because it's not that kind of a thing. As Aristotle says, and rightly, happiness is an activity -- it is the particular activity of fully engaging your virtues in the pursuit of excellence. As such the question 'are you happy?' does not especially relate to the question 'how many resources do you have?', beyond a lower boundary that gives you adequate nutrition, etc., to ensure that you have the physical capacity to pursue excellence.
All virtues require developing good habits and good training, but there is also a certain amount of capacity that either is or is not inborn. By the way, the Greek word he mentions -- eudaimonia -- doesn't quite mean 'having a good guiding angel.' A daimon is not exactly an angel: it is a kind of spirit, one that the Greeks metaphorically said rode on your shoulder: that is, you couldn't see it, looking forward. Other people could see your daimon, and could tell whether it was a good one or a bad one, but not you.
There is some wisdom in this. We fail to be able to discern whether distant people are happy -- rich and famous people should be, shouldn't they? -- but we are often able to help people we know well to see that they are happier than they realized. In fact, it is in relating to others that we do discover how happy we are: what really matters is not our internal sensation of pleasure or cheerfulness, but the relationships we build with others whom we love, respect, or honor. That is the field in which we best express our virtues, and thus the field in which we are most likely to discover how happy we can really be.
Customer Service
Two weeks ago I ordered some motorcycle parts. They were shipped on the first of August, with a note that they would arrive in one to three days. In fact they arrived today, in the following package:
I can't imagine why the Postal Service is having so much trouble with its competition.
UPDATE: ...and unsurprisingly, one of the parts -- a headlight replacement bulb -- was broken. Beautiful.
I can't imagine why the Postal Service is having so much trouble with its competition.
UPDATE: ...and unsurprisingly, one of the parts -- a headlight replacement bulb -- was broken. Beautiful.
A Workman Is Worthy of his Hire
Apparently doctors consider themselves workmen, too. Having paid for their own educations and insurance, they resent being dragooned into working below their rate.
Which states would those be?
This is what the death spiral looks like. Expand social welfare, and costs rise. Costs rising leads to budget cuts. Budget cuts lead to fewer doctors being willing to participate in the social welfare system. This results in political pressure on the politicians to force the doctors to participate...
...and that's surely the next step here. Expect it when you see it.
By the way, what does it mean for the health care law if the Republican states refuse to fund the exchanges, and the Democratic states can't afford to pay doctors for the Medicaid expansion?
Decker finds a positive correlation between Medicaid reimbursement rates and how many providers accept Medicare. In Wyoming and Alaska – largely rural states that pay Medicaid providers about 50 percent more than Medicare reimburses – the vast majority of providers accept Medicaid. In New Jersey – where reimbursement is the lowest – only about 30 percent say they’ll take new patients.Why is this important? Part of the new health care law is expanding Medicaid. In states with lower reimbursement rates, however, more private doctors simply refuse to play along.
Which states would those be?
As Avik Roy pointed out a few weeks ago, states with Democratic governors actually tend to have lower reimbursement rates.What? Why?
Faced with crunched budgets, some have chosen to cut provider payment rather than reduce services.So, faced with crunched budgets, the states have chosen to cut the doctors' pay per Medicaid client. They are shocked to find that doctors are unwilling to accept such clients when they could work for people who pay the full rate.
This is what the death spiral looks like. Expand social welfare, and costs rise. Costs rising leads to budget cuts. Budget cuts lead to fewer doctors being willing to participate in the social welfare system. This results in political pressure on the politicians to force the doctors to participate...
...and that's surely the next step here. Expect it when you see it.
By the way, what does it mean for the health care law if the Republican states refuse to fund the exchanges, and the Democratic states can't afford to pay doctors for the Medicaid expansion?
Bearing True Faith
Temple President Satwant Singh Kaleka, killed trying to tackle and restrain yesterday's gunman. Here was one who understood the kirpan.
Curiosity
A great name for a space probe, Curiosity landed on Mars either yesterday or this morning depending on where you live.
NASA seems pleased. It looks like they got the old Babylon 5 folks to do their graphics.
NASA seems pleased. It looks like they got the old Babylon 5 folks to do their graphics.
The Fiscal Cliff
"The Fiscal Cliff" is what the New York Times calls what we usually call the union of Taxmageddon and Sequestration. However, it happens that the NYT is in favor of both higher taxes and massive cuts to defense programs (although it largely wants to see that spending redirected into "investments," i.e., other kinds of government spending). So where are we on this, in their reading?
Seems like I've heard this story before.
Until recently, the loudest warnings about the economy have come from policy makers and economists, along with military industry executives who rely heavily on the Pentagon’s largess and who would be hurt by the government reductions.So if we don't solve the problem, we get a renewed recession; if we do 'solve the problem,' it means increased deficits because we can only 'solve' it by agreeing to smaller tax cuts and redirected spending.
But more diversified companies like Hubbell Inc. in Shelton, Conn., have begun to hunker down as well.
Hubbell, a maker of electrical products, has canceled several million dollars’ worth of equipment orders and delayed long-planned factory upgrades in the last few months, said Timothy H. Powers, the company’s chief executive. It has also held off hiring workers for about 100 positions that would otherwise have been filled, he said.
“The fiscal cliff is the primary driver of uncertainty, and a person in my position is going to make a decision to postpone hiring and investments,” Mr. Powers said. “We can see it in our order patterns, and customers are delaying. We don’t have to get to the edge of the cliff before the damage is done.”
Seems like I've heard this story before.
On the Occasion of a Sikh Massacre
There are few religions in the world that I admire more than the Sikh faith. These are my brothers, at least in one of their most sacred concepts.
[A]ll baptised Sikhs (Khalsa) must wear a kirpan [sword or dagger] at all times....It is a shame that none of them were able to bring the kirpan to its proper use today. Perhaps we shall learn that some of the fallen were trying. In any case, they are a fine and noble people, and I am terribly sorry for their loss.
The kirpan is both a defensive weapon and a symbol. Physically it is an instrument of "ahimsa" or non-violence. The principle of ahimsa is to actively prevent violence, not to simply stand by idly whilst violence is being done. To that end, the kirpan is a tool to be used to prevent violence from being done to a defenseless person when all other means to do so have failed.
News That Was Obvious Twenty Years Ago
Social Security? Not such a great deal after all, and it's only going to get worse.
Of Course It Would Have to be John
All US Presidents but one are cousins of King John of England. You remember King John?
The song isn't very good history, really: John not only was the first King John of England, he was the last one. The "mom" he allegedly calls for was Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is the consolation prize: if all our Presidents are related to John, they're also related to her, and to his brother, Richard the Lionheart.
Still, good history or not, the song does bear a certain similarity to current events...
The song isn't very good history, really: John not only was the first King John of England, he was the last one. The "mom" he allegedly calls for was Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is the consolation prize: if all our Presidents are related to John, they're also related to her, and to his brother, Richard the Lionheart.
Still, good history or not, the song does bear a certain similarity to current events...
Stand up
Grim's post about the Incas reminded me that I hadn't been over to "The Bleat" in a long time. I find his little daughter has grown up considerably. Today they're discussing a recent film expert poll that places "Vertigo" over "Citizen Kane," but the consensus of many of his readers is that "Casablanca" is better.
It's not an art film, nor subtle. Just a perfect thing of its kind. It's the prodigal son: "for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found." This is the first scene in which the surviving spark of humanity in Rick begins to flare up again. At the same time, you see in Ilsa's face why the story can't finish up with her leaving her husband. How many passionate love stories end with the lovers deciding to part rather than do wrong, and yet without painting them as tragic figures beaten down by their restrictive culture? Notice how the tune of "Die Wacht am Rhein" meshes harmonically with "The Marseillaise," so that the conflict doesn't just sound like Charles Ives noise. Music, courage, and love. The Nazis banging away on the piano like robots are Jewish actors who had recently escaped Europe.
It's not an art film, nor subtle. Just a perfect thing of its kind. It's the prodigal son: "for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found." This is the first scene in which the surviving spark of humanity in Rick begins to flare up again. At the same time, you see in Ilsa's face why the story can't finish up with her leaving her husband. How many passionate love stories end with the lovers deciding to part rather than do wrong, and yet without painting them as tragic figures beaten down by their restrictive culture? Notice how the tune of "Die Wacht am Rhein" meshes harmonically with "The Marseillaise," so that the conflict doesn't just sound like Charles Ives noise. Music, courage, and love. The Nazis banging away on the piano like robots are Jewish actors who had recently escaped Europe.
What Were You Expecting?
Louis Armstrong and the Power of Art
Bthun sends a tale by Charles L. Black, Jr., on the magic of Louis Armstrong.
Dr. Black sounds like he never really despised anyone, and the recognition thus could work its magic. The power of art is something we often discuss here, but art is also like a mustard seed. It seeks the fertile ground.
Here is the recording Dr. Black mentions. You can judge for yourself how well he judged it.
By the way, Bthun noted that today is Louis Armstrong's birthday. It is, in fact, his eleventy-first -- to borrow a phrase from another artist who has done a world of good.
[O]ne never entirely knows the ways of the power of art. I know a little of the framework, a little of the rational components. But when these are exhausted, art remains inexhaustible, unknowable....I remarked to Bthun that I thought Dr. Black was remarkable to be able to make the adjustment. Think of how many people who have first encountered genius in a Jew, and remained as anti-Semitic as ever they were. Worse, perhaps, since they now had cause to fear as well as to despise the object of their hatred.
He was the first genius I had ever seen. That may be a structurable part of the process that led me to the Brown case. The moment of first being, and knowing oneself to be, in the presence of genius, is a solemn moment; it is perhaps the moment of final and indelible perception of man’s utter transcendence of all else created. It is impossible to overstate the significance of a sixteen-year-old Southern boy’s seeing genius, for the first time, in a black.... [G]enius—fine control over total power, all height and depth, forever and ever? It had simply never entered my mind, for confirming or denying in conjecture, that I would see this for the first time in a black man. You don’t get over that.
Dr. Black sounds like he never really despised anyone, and the recognition thus could work its magic. The power of art is something we often discuss here, but art is also like a mustard seed. It seeks the fertile ground.
Here is the recording Dr. Black mentions. You can judge for yourself how well he judged it.
By the way, Bthun noted that today is Louis Armstrong's birthday. It is, in fact, his eleventy-first -- to borrow a phrase from another artist who has done a world of good.
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