Balance

After reading posts and comments on sites like Zero Hedge where he hangs out, my husband sums up the message about the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, and the Grand Bargain this way:  We're going to get either tax hikes combined with spending cuts if there's no deal, or we're going to get tax hikes alone if there is a deal.  If the sequester takes effect, we won't like the composition of the spending cuts, but we're not going to get a better composition out of this crowd.

My bet is a cave, a deal, and tax hikes without spending cuts; at most there will be vaporous promises of future decelerations in increased spending.  The tax hikes will be narrowly targeted and therefore will generate negligible revenue in comparison with the deficit, so we won't so much raise the debt ceiling as (in Mark Steyn's phrase) lower the debt abyss.  "We can't cut our way to prosperity," the President informs us, but apparently we can borrow our way there.  Well, the press will eat up anything that smells of hands across the aisle, and the voters don't care about the military unless it's handing out water bottles after a storm.

Which reminds me of another comment my husband ran into, musing on Mayor Bloomberg's volte-face on the idea of clean-up support from those violent military types that he previously didn't welcome in his pristinely unarmed streets:  "You have reached the military.  Your call is very important to us.  Please pay attention, as some of our menu options have changed. . . ."

Forgotten exactly how the sequester works?  It was enacted as the Budget Control Act in August 2011, and consists of a deal to trade certain future spending cuts for a $2.1 trillion deepening of the debt abyss.  The cuts come in two parts.  First, there are $1 trillion in mandatory spending reductions, not contingent on any potential deal, in the form of caps on non-entitlement discretionary spending over the nine-year period from 2013 through 2021.  Second there is the sequester itself, which was intended primarily as a "sword of Damocles" to induce the Super-committee to reach an alternative deal, and which took effect when the Super-committee failed to do so in November 2011.  The sequester consists of $1.2 trillion in cuts spread out evenly over the same nine-year period, including $109 billion in 2013.  (Note that all these "cuts," as usual, are not to the current spending amounts but to the projected increased spending over the next decade.  Even if the sequester takes effect, the federal deficit is projected to increase over the ten-year period covered by the Budget Control Act, and the increase is projected to exceed the rate of growth of the economy.)

The sequester cuts are evenly divided between non-war military spending and non-entitlement discretionary domestic spending.  For 2013, therefore, there would be roughly $55 billion in cuts to each of defense and domestic spending.  Affected programs are projected to be cut by between 7.6% and 9.6%, except for Medicare reimbursements, which will be cut at a lower 2% level.  Included in what lawmakers call the "non-discretionary" cuts on the domestic side of the equation are $11 billion in Medicare reimbursements and a total of $5.2 billion in a hodge-podge of other non-discretionary programs, the largest of which is farm price supports, but which also include student loans, vocational rehabilitation, mineral leasing payments, and the Social Services Block Grant.  The other $38.5 billion will be cut from "discretionary" domestic programs, not including veterans' health benefits (which apparently are considered "domestic" rather than "defense") and Pell grants, both of which are mostly exempt.

The sequester deal received broad bipartisan support in 2011:   it passed by 268 to 161 in the House, opposed by about one-third of Republicans and half of Democrats.  It passed by 74 to 26 in the Senate, opposed by 19 Republicans and 6 Democrats.  The sequester can be avoided if lawmakers reach a deal to achieve $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions through other means.

We're going to bump up against the debt ceiling again at the end of this year, and of course the Bush tax cuts are set to expire then as well.  It is the combination of the expiration of virtually every tax cut enacted since 2001, the imposition of new Obama-era taxes, and the imposition of spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act (including the sequester) that is generally referred to as "the fiscal cliff."  Here is a summary of the tax changes automatically set for the end of this year:

1. Bush-Era Tax Cuts:  this includes the return of the current 10/15/25/28/33/35% individual tax rate brackets to the pre-2001 rates of 15/28/31/36/39.6%, the return of the tax-rate on long term capital gains and qualified dividends from 15% to 20% and 39.6%, respectively, and the return of the limitation on itemized deductions and phase out of personal exemptions.

2. Obama-Era Tax Cuts:  on January 1, 2013, several provisions that benefit the lower classes — most notably the increased child tax and earned income credits and the expanded education credits — are slated to expire.

3. The Estate Tax:  the estate tax exemption and tax rate are currently at $5,120,000 and 35%, respectively.  Come January, they will return to $1,000,000 and 55%.

4. Expiration of the AMT Patch: The most recent patch raised the AMT [alternative minimum tax] exemption for 2010 and 2011 from $45,000 to $74,450 for MFJ. In 2013, this will reset to $45,000, pulling tens of millions of taxpayers into AMT.

5. Temporary Payroll Tax Cut:  For 2011 and 2012, the employee’s share of Social Security tax was cut from 6.2% to 4.2%.  This rate cut expires at year end.

6. Obamacare Taxes:  Starting in 2013, taxpayers earning more than $250,000 will pay an additional 0.9% tax on their wages and 3.8% on their unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains.)

7. Extenders:  There are a host of provisions set to expire at year end that regularly do so, before Congress retroactively resuscitates them.  Foremost among the “extender” provisions are the R&D credit and the personal deduction for state and local income taxes.

Welfare for the Modestly Rich

One:

Mitt Romney’s careless comment about “the 47 percent” receiving government benefits — implying they’re all deadbeats — squelched any serious discussion in the campaign. Interestingly, his figure is probably low: More than 50 percent of Americans may already receive benefits. Obamacare will raise this, because families with incomes up to four times the federal poverty line ($91,000 in 2011 for a family of four) qualify for insurance subsidies....

Take Social Security. Created to prevent destitution among the elderly, it now subsidizes the comfortable. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about a couple (he 66, she 70) touring the world. They’ve visited London, Paris, Florence and Buenos Aires. Their financial adviser sends them $6,000 a month from investments and proceeds from their home sale. They also receive Social Security. How much? They don’t say. My hunch: between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. (I e-mailed the couple for details but received no reply.)

Two:

As the election fades into the rearview mirror and attention turns more seriously toward the looming “fiscal cliff,” lobbyists and advocates are once again wondering whether Congress might look to the healthcare law for spending cuts.

Specifically, lawmakers might be tempted to tap the health law’s insurance subsidies — by far its most expensive provision, and probably the most tangible benefit it will provide. …

Critics say the subsidies are too generous — 400 percent of the poverty level is more than $90,000 per year. And because the subsidies don’t begin to flow until 2014, they represent a giant pot of money that’s in the budget but wouldn’t have to come out of anyone’s pocket.

Confer.

Fallen Genius

This is a day for thinking about fallen soldiers, and as 11/11/11 marks the end of the First World War, I'll ask a moment of your time for a couple of highly accomplished men - accomplished outside the military, I mean - who lost their lives in that war. Englishmen, worthy ones.

I hope it's still true that every first-year chemistry student learns something about Henry Moseley - at the very least, that his work with X-ray spectroscopy improved our understanding of the periodic table. Mendeleev had arranged the elements by atomic weight, and when their periodic properties did not line up the right way, suggested that the atomic weights had been incorrectly measured - Moseley, as I learned it, showed that atomic number is a physical property independent of atomic weight, corresponding as we now know to the number of protons. What some classes teach, though not all, is that Moseley volunteered for service in the First World War and was killed at Gallipoli in August 1915, as a second lieutenant of engineers. From the article I linked, I see that both his mentor Ernest Rutherford and his mother tried to dissuade him, but he insisted. (It also tells me he tried to leave the Engineers to join the Royal Flying Corps, in what capacity I do not know.) He was killed by a sniper while telephoning for reinforcements.

According to the wiki "[b]ecause of Moseley's death in World War I, the British government instituted a policy of no longer allowing its prominent and promising scientists to enlist for combat duty in the armed forces of the Crown." I'm not sure I approve, but at the hour I'm writing this, I can't articulate why.

Less well known, perhaps, is George Butterworth, a British composer and collector of songs, of the same generation as his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams. He destroyed a lot of his own work (because it didn't meet his own standards) and is best known for his arrangements of Houseman's "A Shropshire Lad." Many of these poems deal with death in a thoughtful way, and Butterworth's settings bring them out beautifully. Try one or two -- "Loveliest of Trees"...

Now of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score -
It only leaves me fifty more...
And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room;
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

If it doesn't read like much, hear it sung by a good baritone (as it is at the link I just gave you). Try "The Lads in their Hundreds," and "Is My Team Ploughing?"

Butterworth volunteered, enlisted, was later commissioned and promoted, and was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross for gallantry at the Somme, where he was killed by a sniper in August 1916.

Spare a moment for fallen genius.

On Veteran's Day

Our old friend John Derbyshire reports that his son, now a young man, has elected a military career. Naturally we congratulate the father and wish the son all the best.

Danny took the AFQT (basically an IQ test: the cutoff for the Army is IQ 92) and the ASVAB (a vocational test to see which military specialty suits you). A smart kid—it’s genetic—Danny aced both tests and is in A-1 physical condition, so they basically told him he could pick his own specialty. He picked Airborne Rangers, the most dangerous specialty on the list...

I am reliably informed by a Texas friend—in Texas everybody has a family member in the military—that Ranger school washouts get all the crap jobs in the Army. I passed this on to my son, but he was unfazed. “I’ll qualify.” As temperamentally hostile as I am to every form of facile optimism, I admired my son’s resolution.

(The only other conservative I know with a son in the military is Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com, whose son Alexander is currently serving with the US Marine Corps in Afghanistan. On the basis of this admittedly tiny sample, I’d suggest that if you want to meet a conservative with a military-minded kid, go to the dissident right. Bigfoot mainstream-conservative pundits send their kids to law school.)

If you want to meet someone with a military minded kid, go and find a family with a military tradition. Few outside what BLACKFIVE calls America's warrior caste bother. You're a fortunate man to have raised a son both brave enough and wise enough to know the course of honor.

From Shanks Mare to real mares to modern power

I enjoyed the following short clip from AEI about power and energy, even though (like many pieces of its type) it confuses the two concepts as well as their separate units.

The picture above shows how hard it is to concentrate literal horsepower to operate something as big as a combine.   That's quite a harness-full of horseflesh (or are they mules?) for one driver to control!  Life gets a lot easier if you can use a concentrated source of energy like fossil fuel and an internal combustion engine.  Well, of course, it's easier in some ways and more complicated in others.

The video claims that a horse, though only seven times as heavy as a man, has 100 times his power (i.e., his ability to apply energy to a useful task in a given time period).  That calls for a lot of oats, obviously -- all the little plant cells industriously working away to use sunlight to combine water and carbon dioxide into high-energy molecules that can be burnt in the horse's metabolic furnace.

  

Happy Birthday

(Rings from here.)

Politics Two: On Commonality

Let's read Parts I - VI today, as they all turn on the problems of a polity trying to hold things in common. The suggestion isn't just for property, but in some cases extends to dissolving the family so that the the community has its women in common: they don't have a home or a family, but 'everyone belongs to everyone,' as I believe Brave New World puts the idea. It's a sort-of free love idea, and a sort of idea about the danger of the family to the integrity of the political community.

Aristotle is quite against all of it, as you will discover. But it may not be clear from what you read here why Plato was in favor of it. There's an interesting piece in the Virginia Quarterly Review on different historic ways of thinking about whether there is a female conscience -- not in the sense of whether women have a conscience, but about whether it is the same for men and women. (Spoiler: the author's position is that it is just exactly the same.)

As she points out, Plato made room for women in the highest classes (the guardians). However, there was a price for admission:

When a guardian woman gave birth, her child was taken at once to a special section of the city. There, minders cared for the young. When a child needed to nurse, he or she was handed randomly to a lactating female. Why all these wrenchings? In addition to the hope that breeding between superior males and females would continue to perpetuate an aristocracy of the best and the brightest, it was held that private homes, sexual attachments, and dedication to personal aims would undermine a citizen’s allegiance to the city. Plato cried: “Have we any greater evil for a city than what splits it and makes it many instead of one? Or a greater good than what binds it together?”

It turns out there is a greater evil, and a greater good as well.

By the way, I don't think that Dr. Elshtain is quite right about Plato's position, which is more emphatically in favor of women in the guardian class than she seems to suggest. Plato is so persuasive on the point that the Islamic philosopher Averroes, in his commentary on Plato's Republic -- I notice Dr. Elshtain doesn't mention it -- takes a much more radically egalitarian position on women than a contemporary American would think to expect from an Islamic law judge. He seems to bring a large part of that philosophical position into his sha'riah intepretations as well.

I was also surprised by her insistence that the idea of women's equality is a product of Christianity, as I'm far more familiar with people complaining just the opposite about it. But she has an argument here, too, and on reflection it's a good one. The Gospel of Luke in particular seems to show a Jesus relating to women in a way that suggests that the divine position is to hold them in respect and honor.

It's all about me

Missing Voters

The election appears to have turned on millions of voters who voted Republican in 2008 staying home this time around. The change was especially noteworthy in Ohio among rural whites:

...we find ourselves with about 8 million fewer white voters than we would expect given turnout in the 2008 elections and population growth....

Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.

My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well.

That is certainly possible. I know Ohio was blanketed with vicious, negative ads all summer and fall. We all saw them once or twice online, but Ohio voters must have seen them day and night for months on end. The Republican primary may have had some effect as well.

My re-enactment group that we camped out with at the Highland Games includes a lot of rural, blue-collar whites. We had a political discussion one of the nights, and I got the sense that most of them weren't going to vote.

It wasn't because they were satisfied with their government. It was because they believed that Obama was evil, but the Republicans were corrupt, and the system was wholly rigged against them. They saw no benefit to voting or engaging in the political process at all.

They didn't believe things could be changed for the better, saw no one they identified with for whom they could vote, and generally have come to regard the government as a pack of thieves -- both parties.

So they have checked out of our political system. They wanted all the way out, but as close as they can get is to shut down the TV and radio, handle their business cash-only or on the internet, and just try not to be part of it all anymore.

The Politics Book I, Parts V-XIII

Let's finish the rest of Book I today.  It's not the part of the book that has garnered a lot of attention except for its analysis of natural slavery.  We spoke about this to some degree in the comments yesterday, but Part V is really where he lays out his terms on what he thinks might be a just form of slavery.  Although he is critical of the institution in general, there is a specific case when he thinks slavery might be proper:  the case of someone who lacks rational self-control adequate to pursue the good life.

I gave the example of a drug addict as a case in which we might agree.  A drug addict knows that what they are doing is bad for them, and may even want to stop -- but their rational understanding and their ability to be ruled by their reason don't line up.  It would be better for them to be ruled, Aristotle says, by someone who will help them achieve what they themselves know is best for them.

Joseph W. noted that Aristotle also lists barbarians as suitable for slavery, but actually he is quoting a poet rather than making that argument:  "as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature."   You have to be careful with Aristotle's citations, because a normal way in which he argues is to put forward the common opinions of the time before spelling out his own view.  It's important to be clear about when he is giving his own view, and when he is citing or raising a common or alternative view.

Sometimes he isn't clear about why he raised a point, although here the 'as if they thought' suggests he doesn't agree.  Many people think that what we have of Aristotle isn't formal writings, but something like lecture notes from his students.  I'm not sure I agree -- I think his style is unique, and takes some adjustment from us.  We expect contemporary writers to cater to us, but one of the rewarding things about reading an early writer is learning to shape our minds in a new way.

After today's readings we'll be moving on to Book II, where he talks about a sort-of communism that some Greek thinkers, including Plato, sometimes advocated.

UPDATE:

I want to suggest that the big lesson from Book I is contained in the opening sentences.

Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

It's easy for contemporary Americans to get bogged down in the writing on sex and slavery, because these are so objectionable to us; or, possibly, with the question about the proper place of earning money in one's life.

We are thinking about the question of how to persuade people to allow us to govern, or possibly about what kind of a state we'd set up if we were to start fresh. Either question really revolves around this opening point. What is the purpose of a state? We don't establish one for no reason, as a sort of thoughtless reflex, but for some good we want to achieve.

"The highest good" for Aristotle is human happiness. He defines happiness as pursuing excellence (arete, which is both "excellence" and "virtue") with all your vital powers. The purpose of the state is to create the conditions in which such pursuit is possible.

The whole purpose of the state, Aristotle is suggesting, is supporting us in our pursuit of excellence. Supporting us how? Not by giving us anything -- Aristotle clearly thinks that the household is the chief economic unit. Rather, it exists to provide physical security and -- as we will see -- with good institutions that support the kind of culture needed for a free people.

What kind of culture is that? That's the real force of Aristotle's opening remarks on what is worthy of a free man and what is servile or irksome or injurious. Here we find significant common ground between Americans we might wish to persuade and Aristotle: he is suggesting enough focus on work to be able to be independent, but not letting it take over your life. He is giving advice on careers that is similar to the advice we give: don't end up digging ditches, or doing some other physically ruinous labor.

I pointed out in the comments below an alignment between Aristotle's remarks on being trapped in the household, and the mid-century feminist critique of the life of a housewife. It's a point on which I think they agree, and rightly: keeping a well-run house is a kind of necessary condition for happiness, but it's not enough for the good life. Some sort of public engagement is necessary too, whether it is with church or charity, public service, singing in a choir, or otherwise using your vital powers within the community.

Klaven on the Culture

Andrew Klaven is quite right about all this.

Simplification

One advantage to yesterday is that it simplifies analysis of where we are going as a country.  We have returned the same divided government that was unable to pass a budget for the last several years.  Oddly, in the short term this means that there will be some clear fiscal changes:

1)  Sequestration will happen.
2)  We will dive over the 'fiscal cliff';
3)  As a result, government spending is set to decline sharply and taxes are about to go up sharply.

That points to something like a start on the deficit, precisely because the government is incapable of action and agreement.  Pre-planned fires like these, however, will not last forever:  at some point, autopilot won't be good enough.

I'd feel sorry for any of you about to get hit by massive tax increases, except that really under Obama you're lucky to have jobs at all.  I do regret the collapse of American military might that will be demanded by sequestration, but 'they won' -- and the one thing they've always hated most was military spending, which is the largest part of discretionary spending.  They aren't ready to struggle with the entitlement issue, but they are ready to gut the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Free enterprise vs. free stuff

The American people have spoken, and they want more unemployment, and free stuff.  They'll get free stuff for a while.  The unemployment may last longer.

The Politics

In the wake of last night's election, it is time to reexamine our ideas about what makes a legitimate government, and our relationship to the state.  Joseph W. says that we're down to persuasion or secession; persuasion is more desirable, because there is less danger of bloodshed, but clearly no extant arguments have been persuasive to the many.  We must think again on why we have a state, and what kind of state is desirable.  If we are to persuade, we must be persuasive; if we are to secede, we must know what we want to build.

For that reason, for a little while, we will be working through Aristotle's Politics -- just a bit every day, a workable amount that you can fit in to your lives.  I want to say a few things about the book to put it in context.

Aristotle was writing at the last hour of a grand political experiment that had little precedent in human history. The Greek city states had been organized in every possible way, from the pure democracy of Athens to the Spartan experiment to turn men into pure warriors.  There had been kings, there had been states ruled by a small group of aristocrats, and there had been democracies of different kinds.

Here as elsewhere in his thought, Aristotle was empirical:  this is a book about describing the kinds of government based on observation of how these governments have worked out in practice.  You will find that he doesn't have a clear answer to what kind of government is best.  The book is a taxonomy of kinds of governments, and the particular problems related to them.  It happens to be the case that the particular problem related to our current form, by the way, is just the one we currently observe:  the tendency of members of a democracy to vote themselves wealth, to be taken from others within the same state.

Although he does not finally prefer one system to another, Aristotle does have a standard against which he judges any form of government.  Aristotle's politics is linked to his ethics:  a state is righteous to the degree that it permits and encourages virtue in the individual.  The point of a good state is to permit a good man to live a good life.

Note that the state does not require virtue.  Plato's famous political works, the Republic and the Laws, were built around the question of whether and how the state could compel people to be better than they were inclined to be.  That is the Spartan project, more or less.  It led Plato to interesting places -- he was the ancient world's only advocate of complete female equality with men, for example, for reasons he spells out in the Republic.  On the other hand, he was also advocating complete government control of every aspect of life, including the breakup of families, in order to compel what he thought was the best kind of life.

That isn't what you'll find in Aristotle.  It's a different kind of book.  By coincidence, Aristotle's tutoring of Alexander the Great made this work irrelevant for centuries.  For that reason, throughout the middle ages, the Politics remained one of Aristotle's lead-read works, because no one was really thinking about the question of what kind of state to want.  It was only in the modern era that the question of designing a state from scratch became of interest again.

With that said, let's begin.  Remember that this is a voice from the ancient world, with very different assumptions about human and animal nature -- but with a great empirical insight into how men have organized societies, and what perils face each form of organization.  It happens to start with the issues most likely to cause intellectual rebellion in a contemporary American, questions of sexuality and slavery.  Struggle with those now, so you can see the value in what he is saying in spite of the cultural chasm.  What follows will be more interesting, the more you succeed in the opening struggle.

We'll read a few chapters every day.  Talk about whatever interests you in the comments.

Book One
Part I
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects. For example, the ruler over a few is called a master; over more, the manager of a household; over a still larger number, a statesman or king, as if there were no difference between a great household and a small state. The distinction which is made between the king and the statesman is as follows: When the government is personal, the ruler is a king; when, according to the rules of the political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn, then he is called a statesman.
But all this is a mistake; for governments differ in kind, as will be evident to any one who considers the matter according to the method which has hitherto guided us. As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole. We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether any scientific result can be attained about each one of them.
Part II
He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them. In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves), and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved. For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest. Now nature has distinguished between the female and the slave. For she is not niggardly, like the smith who fashions the Delphian knife for many uses; she makes each thing for a single use, and every instrument is best made when intended for one and not for many uses. But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say,
"It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians; "
as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one.
Out of these two relationships between man and woman, master and slave, the first thing to arise is the family, and Hesiod is right when he says,
"First house and wife and an ox for the plough, "
for the ox is the poor man's slave. The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas 'companions of the cupboard,' and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions of the manger.' But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be suckled 'with the same milk.' And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came together, as the barbarians still are. Every family is ruled by the eldest, and therefore in the colonies of the family the kingly form ofgovernment prevailed because they were of the same blood. As Homer says:
"Each one gives law to his children and to his wives. "
For they lived dispersedly, as was the manner in ancient times. Wherefore men say that the Gods have a king, because they themselves either are or were in ancient times under the rule of a king. For they imagine, not onlythe forms of the Gods, but their ways of life to be like their own.
When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the
"Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one, "
whom Homer denounces- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.
Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.
Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name. The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.
Part III
Seeing then that the state is made up of households, before speaking of the state we must speak of the management of the household. The parts of household management correspond to the persons who compose the household, and a complete household consists of slaves and freemen. Now we should begin by examining everything in its fewest possible elements; and the first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. We have therefore to consider what each of these three relations is and ought to be: I mean the relation of master and servant, the marriage relation (the conjunction of man and wife has no name of its own), and thirdly, the procreative relation (this also has no proper name). And there is another element of a household, the so-called art of getting wealth, which, according to some, is identical with household management, according to others, a principal part of it; the nature of this art will also have to be considered by us.
Let us first speak of master and slave, looking to the needs of practical life and also seeking to attain some better theory of their relation than exists at present. For some are of opinion that the rule of a master is a science, and that the management of a household, and the mastership of slaves, and the political and royal rule, as I was saying at the outset, are all the same. Others affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature, and that the distinction between slave and freeman exists by law only, and not by nature; and being an interference with nature is therefore unjust.
Part IV
Property is a part of the household, and the art of acquiring property is a part of the art of managing the household; for no man can live well, or indeed live at all, unless he be provided with necessaries. And as in the arts which have a definite sphere the workers must have their own proper instruments for the accomplishment of their work, so it is in the management of a household. Now instruments are of various sorts; some are living,others lifeless; in the rudder, the pilot of a ship has a lifeless, in the look-out man, a living instrument; for in the arts the servant is a kind of instrument. Thus, too, a possession is an instrument for maintaining life. And so, in the arrangement of the family, a slave is a living possession, and property a number of such instruments; and the servant is himself an instrument which takes precedence of all other instruments. For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet,
"of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods; "
if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves. Here, however, another distinction must be drawn; theinstruments commonly so called are instruments of production, whilst a possession is an instrument of action. The shuttle, for example, is not only of use; but something else is made by it, whereas of a garment or of a bed there is only the use. Further, as production and action are different in kind, and both require instruments, the instruments which they employ must likewise differ in kind. But life is action and not production, and therefore the slave is the minister of action. Again, a possession is spoken of as a part is spoken of; for the part is not only a part of something else, but wholly belongs to it; and this is also true of a possession. The master is only the master of the slave; he does not belong to him, whereas the slave is not only the slave of his master, but wholly belongs to him. Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another's man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another's man who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.

The End

It's a good thing we did that Outlaw Country series this summer.  You're all Outlaws now.  Welcome to your new world.

The state has lost its legitimacy.  After today, there is The Law, but there will be no Rule of Law.  'The Law' is nothing more than taking from one and giving to someone we like a little better.  That's no law, it's theft, and you have no moral duty to support it.

Sarah Hoyt, at InstaPundit, asks:

I HAVE  QUESTIONS:  We’re not a country of land or blood.  We’re a country of beliefs.  If we’ve lost that, who are we?  Who am I?  And where do I go?

I've an answer to that, but let's talk it through.  Answer it for yourself.  Who are you?   Are you ready to go where you are being asked?

UPDATE:  Confer.

Results

Locally the county went for Romney, 77/21.  As I mentioned before, the black population in the county is under nine percent, so that's a significant Obama turnout here in rural Georgia.

Doug Collins will represent the Mighty 9th.  I hope he'll do us proud.

Gadsden

I trust you all know how to use a KA-BAR, metaphorically or otherwise.

We'll sort out the rest later.  For now, strike, and no mercy.  I've a fine wager on the point.

Heh

Today's xkcd.

How Did They Miss Liechtenstein?

I mean, that's just carelessness. I would have gotten there well before I hit the 90% mark. It's such a pretty country. Think of all those desolate ones they invaded instead.

Team Rubicon Relief Efforts

In the previous post on Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, I pointed to Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army -- two well-known, reliable charities that already have a presence on the ground.

It turns out that Team Rubicon has also stood up an effort. Most of you probably know them from the many posts about their work at BLACKFIVE. They're a solid group of veterans, so if you're still thinking about where to help, they're a good option too.

Rivers Are Also Roads

Oh, yeah. A coal barge in Ohio.

Running the Line

We're all thinking about Ohio this weekend, so why not a blues piece that starts out there? But I-75 is a long road, from Canada to the southernmost South. My grandfather ran a service station for long-haul trucks out of Knoxville, TN, right there on the line. It crosses the Appalachians near the majestic Cumberland Gap. It runs through a fair piece of the Great State of Georgia on its way to the outskirts of Miami, Florida.

"Chains of Love"

Apparently we have some brethren in the frozen north.

A couple of hours before the storm reached peak strength and before we lost power, my wife left for a business appointment, then shortly returned and reported that there was a tree down, blocking the road. She was about to call and cancel, but I said, “Not so fast there.”

My pre-storm checklist includes—along with stocking up on double-A’s and filling bathtubs—making sure there is some 50:1 premix (i.e., fuel) in the toolshed and that the chain saw will start.

I love that he thinks he needs to explain what 50:1 is.

UPDATE:

Although apparently Chuck Norris is not a fan.

Nate Silver Defends His Model

Mr. Silver has been the focus of a lot of attention lately, but mostly it has come from people who don't understand his model or probability theory. It's not outrageous that his model should show President Obama with an increasing probability of being re-elected: under a Bayesian probability theory, probability should continue to approach 1 until it reaches it. If nothing disturbs existing trends in the polls, the probability should be well above 90% by Tuesday morning.

This is because his model is a whole world to itself, and within that world the number of things that can change the probable outcome are declining every day. It is exactly like the program that calculates the odds of a Texas Hold 'Em hand winning or losing when you watch the World Series of Poker. Every time a card is turned over, if it doesn't materially affect the odds in favor of the challenger, the odds of the high-hand holder go up. This is because there are fewer cards left that might change the game for the low-hand holder.

Thus, Mr. Silver is to a large degree correct. If the state polls are correctly modeled, and if no new data out of line with the existing data is introduced, time is grinding away the opportunities for anything different to occur.

Nevertheless he makes a huge error.

But many of the pollsters are likely to make similar assumptions about how to measure the voter universe accurately. This introduces the possibility that most of the pollsters could err on one or another side — whether in Mr. Obama’s direction, or Mr. Romney’s. In a statistical sense, we would call this bias: that the polls are not taking an accurate sample of the voter population. If there is such a bias, furthermore, it is likely to be correlated across different states, especially if they are demographically similar. If either of the candidates beats his polls in Wisconsin, he is also likely to do so in Minnesota....

My argument, rather, is this: we’ve about reached the point where if Mr. Romney wins, it can only be because the polls have been biased against him. Almost all of the chance that Mr. Romney has in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, about 16 percent to win the Electoral College, reflects this possibility.

That "sixteen percent" chance that the assumptions are flawed is entirely bogus. The model can account for sampling error of the "plus or minus three percent" variety; there's no problem with that because you can give it a percentage using known methods. But there's no way to know what the odds are that a flawed assumption is making the data itself unreliable.

That's the one thing that the model can't actually measure. Any attempt to estimate it is a completely unscientific guess. Investment bankers and pollsters are each a class: they make slightly different guesses, based on their position and what they want to achieve, but they inform themselves based on talking to and watching each other. If they're wrong, it's as likely as not that they're almost all wrong.

There's simply no way of knowing what that means for the model, because the whole model is built around data shaped by their assumptions. It's like trying to guess what the odds are that Elvis is still alive in a nearby possible world: there's no way to put a number on it, because the world in which Elvis is alive is a world built out of entirely different facts.

If the pollsters are biased, the facts of the true world and the facts of Mr. Silver's world are simply not the same at all. His model won't just be wrong in some way that can be estimated and worked into the model. It'll be so wrong that it simply can't be applied to the actual world. Any resemblance between his world and ours will be accidental.

That's How We're Gonna Beat 'Em, Butch:

A German Neo-Nazi went to Afghanistan to train and fight with the Taliban. At last, he had to give it up and come home, saying he made a big mistake. Why? According to him, his wife made him do it. She was very upset by the lack of creature comforts, the bad treatment of women, and the fact that they couldn't hold hands in public.

Oh, and also:

His catalogue of complaints over his poorly thought-out decision included his fellow combatants' drug habits, a lack of hygiene, contracting hepititis A and his friends being horribly killed by Pakistani forces helicopters.

Well, yeah, that too.

Bacteria are your friend

From Rocket Science, an article about a "self-healing"concrete that uses limestone-secreting bacteria activated by water that seeps into tiny cracks.

A Constitutional Right to Hunt

Georgia did a version of this some years ago, but apparently Kentucky has come up with a twist: ordering regulatory agencies to consider hunting the preferred means of animal control.

The thing about a "personal right to hunt" is that it is one of those rights that require provision from us to you. If you have a personal right to own a firearm, if you want to go and own one you can, but you have to buy it. The state is merely forbidden from making it impossible to exercise that right.

If you have a personal right to hunt, however, that means there must be some way of exercising that right. In Georgia, for example, we have many public lands that are owned by the state and set aside for the purpose of public hunting. I imagine Kentucky has similar lands.

It's not a big deal, since the opportunity costs of such lands are often low, and as they are also useful for many other good public purposes (such as hiking and camping) outside the hunting season. The hunting area in the Dawson Forest, bordered by the Amicalola river, is a beautiful place. I've never gone hunting there, but I've hiked the river many times.

Still, it's an interesting point because it's one of the few so-called "positive rights" that conservatives generally support.

I Have Voted

Went over to the county seat today, since I was out that way on other business, and took part in early voting. The line was surprisingly long, but even more surprising was its demographic composition. This county is nearly ninety percent white and about eight-and-a-half percent black, but fully half of the folks who showed up to vote while I was in line were black.

My guess is that any slippage in Democratic voters' enthusiasm won't be coming from the black community this year. Now, of course I don't know how these ladies and gentlemen were voting, and am merely assuming based on the historic record that most of them were probably Obama voters. Still, assuming that record holds, the President can count on a surprisingly strong showing in this part of rural Georgia.

Models and their perils

A good article on RedState on polling methodology, with comparisons to modeling of climate, housing markets, and baseball:

Consider an argument Michael Lewis makes in his book The Big Short:  nearly everybody involved in the mortgage-backed securities market (buy-side, sell-side, ratings agencies, regulators) bought into mathematical models valuing MBS as low-risk based on models whose historical data didn’t go back far enough to capture a collapse in housing prices.  And it was precisely such a collapse that destroyed all the assumptions on which the models rested.  But the people who saw the collapse coming weren’t people who built better models; they were people who questioned the assumptions in the existing models and figured out how dependent they were on those unquestioned assumptions. . . .

I was mistaken in one of my comments below about the "Unskewed Poll" methodology. They do attempt to conform poll responses to a turnout model; they just use an unusual model.

Aid for the Northeast

The original headline on this piece from Staten Island was "We're going to die."

Clearly the government's efforts here are inadequate and misplaced. Given the gasoline shortage in the wake of the storm, a lot of the private options for help are limited because we can't all truck up there with food and supplies. However, if you are able and wish to help, you can donate to relief organizations already on the ground.

Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army are two that are reliable. Both take their religious obligations to help the poor and afflicted seriously, and do so without regard to the religious status of the people they are helping.

If you know of other options that you can recommend, please mention them in the comments.

Negotiations

Last week I got a letter from the bank saying that I owed them $73 for rental on a safety deposit box that my wife apparently took out while I was in Iraq. It was free at the time, but apparently there had been some unannounced change in the policy. I called them to ask that the unannounced fees be waived, and they were intransigent on the phone. "Well, I'll come in and discuss it with you when I bring in the keys," I said.

At the end of that discussion-in-person, they agreed that they would waive the whole $73 and furthermore pay me $4.60 in return for accepting my keys and canceling the contract. I'm not sure if it was my charm, courtesy, or motorcycle jacket.

Unskewed map

My husband suggests that, if this electoral map from Unskewed Polls is even close, David Axelrod will be obligated to get a full body wax.  On live TV.

Of course, I have no idea which polls are accurate.  I'm hoping that most of them are over-weighting the Democratic vote by mistakenly applying data from the 2008 rather than the 2010 races, an error that the "Unskewed" site claims to be avoiding.  We'll see soon enough.

Questions no one in the media is asking

No, not about Benghazi.  I've about given up hope on that one.  What I want to know is whether Senator Menendez (D-N.J., appointed to fill Corzine's vacated seat) is underpaying his male prostitutes as callously as he is the female ones?

Happy Halloween

Disaster prep

One of the first things the emergency response corps does here in implementing a mandatory evacuation is cut off the power, water, and gas to the most exposed shoreline areas.  I'm surprised to see reports of devastated communities (such as Seaside, NJ, in the video below) burning down and gas lines still clearly attached.  On the TV news just now, people were discussing difficulties in finding personnel to shut off the lines.

The new craftsmen

I approve the trend in pumpkin carving.

Memento Mori

Dr. Mead is moved by the storm to musings of the kind that occupy my mind so very often. He has written a good piece, just the sort of reflections that these encounters ought -- once we have done all we can do to prepare or to help -- to provoke in us.

The inimitable Ramirez

Very bad on the coast

Massive fires in Queens:




And -- is that thing really a shark?



This substation explosion really would have gotten my attention.  I can't believe people are walking around in that water.  There's way too many buried electrical lines in New York for that kind of thing.

New York Submerged

Zero Hedge has many pictures, including this shot of Ground Zero.  The tunnels are filling up.

On the Night of the Hurricane

Nothing tonight, save a prayer for those under the storm. First among those for each of us is the one most beloved who lies under that storm; but for all of us who are Americans, among the first must be these.

On the Polls

One of the more interesting stories of this election has been the strangeness of the polls. I don't simply mean the way they are being interpreted by Democrats as clear evidence of a definite Obama victory, while at the same time by Republicans as suggesting a huge Romney landslide. That's to be expected: even if you're not spinning polls at all, it is natural for the partisan mind to weight explanations and interpretations that give favor to their side.

No, what I mean is better brought out by this Washington Post piece. It's an argument against interest on the House elections, but think about what it says.

President Obama remains at least an even bet to win reelection. Democrats are favored to hold on to the Senate — an outcome few prognosticators envisioned at the beginning of the year. And yet, with a little more than a week to go, the party holds almost no chance of winning back the House.

“They called the fight. It’s over. We’re going to have a House next year that’s going to look an awful lot like the last House,” [said] Stuart Rothenberg[.]

In other words, during the worst economy since the Great Depression, in spite of the deep unpopularity of every political branch, in the face of a government so badly run that their idea of smart budgeting is to dive off the fiscal cliff rather than pass a budget... the polls suggest that Americans will use the election to endorse almost exactly the same government for the next two years.

There are two possibilities here. One is that the polls are fundamentally wrong: some aspect of their methodology is distorting the picture badly. The other possibility is that we have structured the political system in a way that is too stable for its own good.

If it were only the Presidential race, it could be something about the candidates. But it's not: the polls suggest stability across the board. It could be that some combination of gerrymandering, ideology, and the like has brought us to the point that most Americans no longer face a real choice at the ballot box. There's a candidate they have to support as the lesser of two evils, because the other guy is somehow deeply against the things they care about. If that's the case, then even in the face of a government as badly run as this one, the democratic mechanisms can no longer make a significant adjustment.

Is that the case? Well, we had wave elections in 2006, 2008, and 2010. It's hard to believe that the picture has since solidified in that way.

Go, Mighty Bulldogs

Now, some of you might have seen the Georgia v. Florida game today, also known as "the Cocktail Bowl." Florida was #2, and a victory would ensure them a place in the SEC Championship in Atlanta. Georgia was the under-Dawg.

Most likely you know how it went.



That is all.

Scots Songs

The Highland Games are over, but I'm still in the mood. A couple of these are sung by Irishmen, but they're Scots songs. One for T99, who identified it rightly:



"...ere the king's crown go down, there are crowns to be broke. So for each cavalier who loves honor and me, let him follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee."

And another, for every good-hearted brawler.



And one more, for true lovers. It's an odd piece of advice, but not a bad one: Go and ask your father, and you know he'll set you right.



UPDATE: See JW's suggestions in the comments; but here are two more.



This one especially is a fine song:



And of course there's American Scots.

A Small Matter

Eugene Robinson speaks in terms that echo Mark Steyn's focus on demographic trends.

Obama’s racial identity is a constant reminder of how much the nation has changed in a relatively short time. In my lifetime, we’ve experienced the civil rights movement, the countercultural explosion of the 1960s, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement and an unprecedented wave of Latino immigration. Within a few decades, there will be no white majority in this country — no majority of any kind, in fact.

Well, that's not quite right, Mr. Robinson. It's true that there won't be a racial or ethnic majority in this country. There will be pluralities. There will presumably be a majority of either male or female voters, most likely female given historic and demographic trends, but it will be a small one.

There will, however, still be one very solid majority in this country: Christians. Christians currently make up 78.4% of Americans, and the growth of Latino voters will not undermine that figure. Catholics, once a reasonably reliable Democratic Party bloc, have been swinging more and more into the Republican column. This is reflected in the party leadership. Paul Ryan, Vice Presidential nominee of the party, is a Catholic. Rick Santorum, near-victor of the Republican primary, is a Knight of Malta. Newt Gingrich, in the top three or four, is a Catholic by conversion.

More and more the Republican party is the party that supports a society roughly built around Christian norms, if not explicitly on Christian teachings. More and more the Democratic Party is the party of undermining and defying those norms. As Christian norms are not all that different from conservative Jewish or even mainstream Islamic norms, there will be a draw even beyond the loose boundaries of the faith of the Cross.

Maybe you can rely on ethnic or racial plurality to overcome that powerful majority interest. I'm betting it won't work out. The very trends making black and Latino voters a richer and more successful part of American society are going to make them less susceptible to manipulation by ethnic patronage. As they rise into the core of American society, they will no longer need -- and may no longer want -- special privileges in hiring or education. They may begin to look to higher values, as people usually do when their economic needs are satisfied.

Just a thought.

No intelligence?

Leon Panetta argued yesterday that help was denied to the besieged U.S. personnel in Benghazi because of a lack of intel.  Jennifer Griffin of Fox News reports otherwise today.  The two SEALS who were later killed were told twice to stand down, but went (with two others) to help the consulate personnel anyway.  Fighting continued at the CIA annex for four hours after the survivors were evacuated from the consulate.  A security officer operating a machine on the roof of the CIA annex "had a laser on the [terrorist mortar position] that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights."  Mortar fire killed the two SEALs.  Communications were intact; it was the response that was missing.

The Importance of Art

Glenn Reynolds' interview with Camile Paglia is worth watching. There is an important point that is raised and lost -- Paglia is moving too fast to recognize it -- which is that a recovery of conservative ideas is necessarily tied to a new birth of conservative art.  There is a huge tradition that she raises, from stained glass windows in cathedrals to the kind of soaring and spiritual music of bygone ages.  We could still make this; we don't.

That's our fault, and it is where we need to focus our efforts if we are to persuade the culture to follow us.  What people follow with their hearts is a vision of beauty.  All the greatest beauty is on our side, but for some reason, we have forgotten how to make and to deploy it.

A first in Nobel history

One laureate sues another . . . sort of.

We're all Nobel winners now.

Campaign dilemmas

A NYT blogger sadly concludes that Obama got bum campaign advice from Bill Clinton.   Obama could have attacked Romney for squishiness, but Clinton advised that no one ever won an election by complaining that his opponent was too shifty, as his own stellar career attests.  So Obama tried to paint Romney as a right-winger, only to find to his horror that no one who gets a direct look at Romney will believe it for a second.

The bottom line here is that one can over-think this whole notion of framing your opponent.  Ninety-nine times out of 100, the line of attack that works best is the one that really rings true.  In the case of Mr. Romney, whatever his stated positions may be, the idea that he’s a far-right ideologue, a kind of Rush Limbaugh with better suits and frosty hair, just doesn’t feel especially persuasive.

It must be painful to find out that the more effective approach would have been to take more account of reality and honesty -- especially since the Obama administration has so little expertise in those directions.

From the Stone Mountain Collection

Here are a few photos I took at the Stone Mountain historic collection of Civil War goods.  Most of these relate to the Battle of Atlanta, and Sherman's march east toward the sea.  I'm afraid I don't have notes, although Lewis Grizzard did:

PS:  Some of you may have found Mr. Grizzard's description of the army of General Sherman a little dismissive.  Here's how he handled our own Georgia Tech:

Confer

Elizabeth Duffy:  "How to Like Women."

Megan McArdle:  "Why Does Everyone Hate Women?"

It strikes me is that what people hate isn't the women, but the power structures that women often set up.

I understand disliking a specific woman who is vicious.  I also understand women like Ms. Duffy, who found the power structures that seem natural to girls horrible to live under as a girl, and who therefore wanted no part of them as an adult woman.  Some men, I suppose, are unable to win free of such things, and find themselves driven like cattle from one thing to another.  These women and these men have a natural antipathy to a form of control they do not know how to resist, and which is punishing and hateful to them.

Still, I've always liked women, and part of it is that I've always found myself entirely outside of these sorts of power plays.  The kinds of power that move me are different kinds, and these sorts of things have passed over me like shadows, without the power to bind.

Nevertheless, I can see how they bind others.  The question of how you treat those over whom you exercise power is deeply relevant to whether or not you earn my respect.  The women who have -- and there are many -- share a virtue in this regard.

Believe the Government - or Else!

I've been taking a first look at the complaint in Michael Mann's new lawsuit against Mark Steyn, National Review, and others. There's so much that's interesting, but I want to focus on one aspect.

As others have often noted, such a lawsuit runs up against the hardest standard for libel cases - New York Times v. Sullivan. Basically, if a "public figure" (which Mann essentially admits he is in paragraph 14) sues a "media defendant" (which fits most or all of the defendants here), he can't recover a penny of damages unless he proves "actual malice" - that is, he's got to prove that the person who made the statements knew they were false, or acted with "reckless disregard" as to their falsity. (The latter was important in the original case, because at least one statement printed by the Times actually was false.) Naturally, in reading the complaint, I was interested to see how Mann was going to argue that.

The answer is found in paragraph 21:

Following the publication of the CRU emails, Penn State, the University of East Anglia...and five governmental agencies...have conducted separate and independent investigations into the allegations of scientific misconduct against Dr. Mann and his colleagues. Every one of these investigations has reached the same conclusion: there is no basis to any of the allegations of scientific misconduct or manipulation of data.

Paragraph 30 goes on to say that "well-respected journalists," the pop-science magazine Discover, and (drumroll) the Union of Concerned Scientists all said nasty things about Steyn, NRO, and CEI "in the wake of these attacks."

Now, as it happens, Mann attaches the offending articles from CEI and NRO. And both these articles explain briefly why they don't agree with the "independent" investigations exonerating Mann. The CEI article includes links to the sources for their belief, and Steyn makes a pretty obvious reference to the "Mike's nature trick" Climategate email.

So there you have it. If the government conducts a bunch of investigations, and you don't believe them, and you don't believe left-wing advocacy groups and an editorial in a pop-sci magazine, according to Mann you've got "actual malice." Believe the government - or get sued and pay damages. The Green left has wandered into strange territory indeed!

A few other thoughts from me. In exhibit C (NRO's response to Mann's original threat), Rich Lowry comments that discover in this case may discomfit Mann considerably. That may well be true. Truth is a defense to libel claims, so any evidence that shows Mann is a "data manipulator" is relevant, and he can be made to disgorge it.

But the defendants should still try to have this complaint dismissed before discovery begins. The complaint itself and the attached documents, it seems to me, make a good case for that - a complaint has got to state facts which, if true, entitle the plaintiff to relief. "He had actual malice" is a legal conclusion, not a fact; "the government did investigaitons and said I'm innocent" is a fact, but in light of the attachments is a "so-what?" fact. If they can't get it dismissed, they should above all things try to win on summary judgment - show the judge that Mann has no evidence to prove Steyn disbelieved (or didn't care about the truth of) what he was writing - and not be tempted by courtroom glory, that serpent's eye that charms only to destroy.

Experience has taught me to be against using trials for spectacles. If you're suing someone, you're there to get the money. If you're getting sued, you're there to not have to pay. If you're facing possible criminal charges - you're there to avoid the punishment, or as much of it as you can. You are not there to tell the world about something - there are many forums for that. If discovery turns up the kind of data that Mann is wont to refuse, well and good, but that should never become the purpose of defending the lawsuit. Litigation, civil and criminal, goes its own strange ways, and does strange things to people - shrinks them if they are not careful.

The same goes for the discovery process. It occurs to me that Mann may be playing a slightly deeper game here. To be sure, the defendants can demand documents, e-mails, etc. from him to show he manipulated data; but he can insist the defendants themselves submit to depositions. Now, really, all Steyn has to say is "I read this book and I chased links at this website and I believed them over the government" - and if Mann doesn't have proof to the contrary, he is (or ought to be) hosed.

But maybe his lawyer's planning to grill Steyn at deposition (rather than trial) on his lack of science background, to make the deposition testimony itself embarrassing ("So, you didn't graduate college? - So, you're not a statistician? - So, you just believe these guys over those? - Because they fit your ideology...?") - and leak it publicly, to make him look foolish. I haven't had to deal with the issue of whether that's forbidden in civil litigation, but I have a hard time believing a deposition from this case would stay secret if it had polemically useful material.

Progress

UNINSTALLING OBAMA.....……………. █████████████▒▒▒ 90% complete.

The Stone Games

The Fortieth Year of the Stone Mountain Highland Games has come and gone.  I've been going for twenty, excepting years when I've been out of the country.

The carving on the mountain is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world.

The Games for me are a lot of work.  I spend most of the weekend on my feet in the ring, teaching history and the physics of medieval warfare, and telling stories of how American freedom and culture has deep roots in Medieval Scotland and Britain.

The best part of the Games for me, though, comes before and after the crowds.  When the Games are not going on, we spend the weekend camping and feasting with old friends.

Nobody said a word to me about the sword strapped to the bike.

The mountain at dawn.

Rise early, and there is a quiet moment to read by the fire before others get up.

It was good to see reader V. R., who stopped by the ring to chat as she usually does.  For her as with me the Games are mostly work, as she is associated with a charity aimed at helping the elderly and disabled enjoy the festival.  It's a noble thing.

Screwtape for the quantum age

God doesn't play at dice, but the Devil can't get enough of it.

Slow down

Take it easy, and enjoy a lightning strike at 7,207 frames per second.  XKCD explains some things about lightning here.

Super-cheap blood tests . . .

. . . developed by Cambridge non-profit funded by the Gates foundation.

H/t Instapundit.

Inconvenient religion

King's College, an evangelical Christian school based in Manhattan, has kicked out Dinesh D'Souza for getting engaged before he's quite finished divorcing his wife.   D'Souza is making quite a stink about it. ("I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced.") Ann Althouse also is puzzled, as are many of her readers; the discussion wandered into the usual weeds over the image of God as the lawgiver vs. the kindly old gentleman (as C.S. Lewis put it) who didn't have very firm ideas about prohibiting bad behavior but instead "liked to see the young people enjoying themselves."   Gradually, however, a couple of traditional thinkers waded in and tried to stem the tide of rampant moral relativism.   All of commenter Paddy O's posts are worth reading:

Jesus, as you note, took the rougher part on himself, while giving grace to others.  Again, it just seems curious that of all the very tough demands Jesus makes on us, some are seen as selective and some are seen as absolute, the selective ones seeming to be applied to that which we would rather not give up, and the absolute seeming to be applied to others who we would like to manage.

Paddy O also offered the useful suggestion that D'Souza should follow the example of Henry VIII and start his own college.

Whether we look at the issue from the point of view of religious principles or just etiquette or mental health, I think it would take a strange view of marriage and commitment to get engaged before you finish divorcing.  Isn't there some essential confusion here?  I've never understand the point of marrying at all if one takes that vague a view of whether he's in a marriage or not.

America's New Poet Laureate

Natasha Trethewey, originally of Mississippi and now at Emory University in Atlanta, is America's nineteenth poet laureate, and the first Southerner to hold the post since the original.

What kind of writer would you have become if you had been born outside the South?

I have no idea. I can’t begin to imagine myself without the fate of my geography. I feel lucky to have been born into a troubled and violent history and a terrible beauty.

Here is the poem cited in the first part of the review. You can see her annoyance at the refusal to see the South she loves -- which is, in a way, different from the one that I do. Yet we are both of the thing, of the place.

The Al Smith Dinner

Four years ago, John McCain killed at this event. This year, well, see for yourself.

I Just Want To Make Clear: Our Sons Are Entitled To Every Form Of Nutrition

H/t: D29.