No Government Believes in Democracy

An open letter from the UK protests the American invocation of how interested we think we are in having the UK remain in the EU. There's a tremendous irony in the United States lecturing the UK on the need to maintain a political union its people no longer find acceptable, of course, but the author lets that pass. He's after a more serious point about democracy:

The President of the United States is considered by many to be the leader of the free world, and the United States itself considered to be a beacon of democracy. So it is profoundly disappointing to see the United States administration endorsing and encouraging something that is fundamentally undemocratic. I would like to ask you the following questions.

* Would it be acceptable to you and your fellow United States citizens that over 70% of the laws and regulations they were forced to comply with across all 50 states were created by a supranational government comprising layers of complex political and judicial structures, mostly unelected and unaccountable, and made up of delegates from not only the US, but Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru?
* Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and members of the Senate and House of Representatives that they were routinely handed diktats from the various bodies that make up the supranational government and were bound by law to implement the directives or be fined or dragged into a supranational court operating an alien form of judicial code and process? Further, that Congress was denied the ability to draft, and the President sign into law, other legislation of national interest whenever the supranational decided it was not appropriate?
* Would it be acceptable to you, your fellow United States citizens and the Justices of the Supreme Court that decisions made by the bench, the highest court in your land, could be appealed to a supranational court overseas with the hearing presided over by foreign judges and if overruled the Supreme Court would have to accept that as a binding ruling?

If these scenarios do not sound very democratic or judicious to you and your fellow Americans it is because they are not.... No one who believes in democracy – people power – would endorse and encourage a continuation of this anti-democratic situation for the United Kingdom.

The problem is that the author has just made a criticism of the EU that is just as valid a critique against the UK itself, viewed from the perspective of Scotland's independence movement. Indeed, it is just as valid a critique against the United States government. There is simply no possibility that such a criticism, however valid, can be entertained by the political class of either nation.

The only difference between the EU and the US in the first point is the question of whether the super-sized government is 'alien' or not. Measured in the most obvious way for a democracy, that is by the values that the people hold dear and want to see protected and furthered, the complaint may be no better. Probably the people of Belize, a former British colony, have at least as many common values with the people of the UK than the people of Alabama do with the delegates from California (whose people include some conservatives, but whose government no longer does). The Federal government here also generates a massive percentage of regulation via bureaucracy rather than democratic processes. These bureaucracies are staffed by people never elected to make law, who lack any actual Constitutional authority to make law, and who are only in a small percentage of cases vetted by elected representatives.

The same is true for judicial fiat. Is it acceptable to have laws settled upon by the state legislature, approved by state courts, overturned by the Supreme Court in direct defiance of the ordinary values of the people? It has become usual. When the Supreme Court set aside the laws of thirteen states in Lawrence v. Texas, the Bush administration said that they considered the issue a state matter. Linda Greenhouse replied that the SCOTUS had said otherwise: what had been a state matter was now a matter of "binding national constitutional principle." Yet this was only the latest occasion when the SCOTUS had taken a matter where states had legislated according to the traditional morality of their people, and pronounced the issue was one on which the democratic process could not be trusted. It has likewise removed the power from Congress to legislate on issues very traditionally ordered by law, and is considering whether to do so again in the Defense of Marriage Act. We find that more and more issues are matters of "binding national constitutional principle" from which no dissent from democratic organs is tolerated.

This is not democracy. The invention of "binding constitutional principles" by the court is the repudiation of the method by which such principles were meant to arise: that is, following rather than preceding the development of constitutional consensus. A new Constitutional principle was supposed to follow the process described in Article V of the US Constitution, whereby a supermajority of support from the states would be required. That was the democratic ideal: that we would alter the fundamental bargain governing American life only when the vast majority of Americans agreed it was wise and proper. Instead the Federal government has learned to pretend that the bargain always was whatever it now wants the bargain to be. We are told that we simply misunderstood the bargain when we ratified it, and perhaps for two hundred years after.

There's nothing magical about a "national" as opposed to a "super-national" government that gives the national government a better claim to legitimacy. Legitimacy was supposed to arise from adherence to the Constitution, whose limits and forms were meant to ensure that the government remained within the bounds of the powers actually delegated to it. The EU and the US are no longer different forms of government at all. The citizen of the United Kingdom who works to move her nation out of the EU is acting wisely, and in the defense of what remains of her democracy. But she can expect no support from the 'leader of the free world.' Our political class has learned to hate the ideal she advocates.

Non-fiction

Some months ago I posted skeptically about the idea of requiring schoolkids to spend 50% of their time reading bureaucratic white papers of the "Chicken production and transportation issues in Willamette County" variety.  Maggie's Farm linked to an American Thinker article today that does the idea more justice.  Although I have real doubts how the program would be carried out in actual schools, the notion started by David Coleman is to introduce students to evidence-based argument using texts like de Toqueville's Democracy in America.  As he puts it:

It is rare in a working environment that someone says, "Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood."

Not that I'm crazy about the idea of all students aiming for jobs in which they have to churn out market analyses, but the same principle applies to a request for an analysis of any proposal or policy.  Why do you believe this is true?  And come up with something more powerful than the more-or-less grownup equivalent of "all the cool kids think it."  It's the rare corporation or government bureau -- or any other human endeavor -- that couldn't use more of that skill.

The author of the American Thinker article does have a funny approach to categorizing writing as fiction or non-fiction, though.  This is a list of what he describes as the proposed "fiction standards":

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; Thomas Paine's Common Sense; The Declaration of Independence; Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the 4th of July?"; Allen Paulo's Innumeracy:  Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences; Mark Fischetti's Working Knowledge:  Electronic Stability Control; and George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

I'm listening to a series of lectures about Winston Churchill.  He was an indifferent student who hated Greek and classics.  In some dismay and contempt, his father sent him off to a kind of military or administrative professional school, where he was given practical works to study; he loved them and excelled.  Without being at all in the "special snowflake" school of thought, I do believe that the task of education is to develop the different strengths of different students.  Especially as they get older, students should be offered a wide variety of higher-level materials that will challenge whatever their talents happen to be.  There will be some who can be nourished by Working Knowledge:  Electronic Stability Control in a way they never could have been by War and Peace.

Heh:

President Barack Obama was “totally furious” he spent a week of his time posing for a trillion-dollar platinum coin that would never be minted, a White House source confirmed today....

Mr. Obama devoted much of last week to posing for the trillion-dollar coin on the assurances of outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who told Mr. Obama that the coin had “a way better than fifty percent chance” of being minted.

Based on Mr. Geithner’s advice, Mr. Obama carved hours out of his schedule to pose for the ill-fated coin, even cutting short meetings with world leaders such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai....

When Mr. Geithner delivered the news to the President that the coin idea had been scrapped, according to the source, “to say that things got ugly would be a massive understatement.”

That's one of the most perfect satires I've ever read.

Risk

From Maggie's Farm, a link to an interview with Fred deLuca, who started the first Subway sandwich shop in 1965 with a $1,000 loan from a college professor who was also a family friend.  Almost half a century later, they still share the profits 50/50 -- no quarrels, no lawsuits.

DeLuca says he was lucky when he started to be so young that he didn't really understand the danger of failure.  His first intended franchisee had a more typically grown-up attitude:

"When we first began franchising, I knew we needed a first franchisee, and the only person I could think of was [our good friend] Brian.  So I went to him and said, 'I’ve got this opportunity for you.'  He gave a practical response, which was, 'Even though I’m not crazy about [my job], I get paid every week.'  He didn’t feel comfortable taking the risk of quitting. 

"Then one day he showed up for work and his employer had gone bankrupt.  So he called me and said, 'Hey, is that offer still available?'  That’s how we got started.

Walk the Plank

Here's a theory about Republican re-orientation that sounds really exciting: Peggy Noonan says "It's pirate time."

Now is the time to fight and be fearless, to be surprising, to break out of lockstep, to be the one thing Republicans aren't supposed to be, and that is interesting. Now's the time to put a dagger 'tween their teeth, wave a sword, grab a rope and swing aboard the enemy's galleon.

That sounds great. Throw out the rules, grab a blade, and start swinging. And what does she go on to suggest that these wild swashbucklers do?

Endorse gun control, tax increases on the very rich, and "immigration reform."

Apparently when Republican Pirates yell "Surrender!" they are to precede the exclamation with "I."

Condolences to FPS Russia

Our condolences to FPS Russia on the apparent murder of their producer. I had not realized that they were close physical neighbors to the Hall, but they are apparently located quite close by (and not at all in Russia, as you might think).

Here is their top five list, in memory of the good work they have done.

Fluidity and locusts

Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons in 1936.  He quoted the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was opposing direct efforts to prevent Germany's remilitarization:

"We are always reviewing the position."  Everything, he assured us, is entirely fluid.  I am sure that that is true.  Anyone can see what the position is.  The Government simply cannot make up their minds, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind.  So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.  So we go on preparing more months and years -- precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain -- for the locusts to eat.

Justified

Happiness, a new season. This is a good trailer:

Two on Tolkien

Richard Fernandez writes a review of the new Hobbit movie, which makes me think I might ought to go see it after all. I hated Jackson's treatment of LoTR very much -- well, the first movie, which I hated so badly I didn't see the others. The MTV swinging-cameras and technicality seemed to me to do violence to Tolkien's vision. I can't imagine he wouldn't have hated the movies at least as much as I do.

Still, Fernandez mentions a couple of Jackson's additions to the plot kindly. That's another thing of which I was suspicious. I can't imagine that Jackson's ideas about what the plot should contain are so superior to Tolkien's that the expansion is a great idea. Usually a novel benefits from cutting, not expanding, extra elements.

A man much more after my own heart, Lars Walker, writes the second piece for today on the subject. He looks back at older editions of LoTR that meant a great deal to him. Now this is the kind of thing that Tolkien would have understood!

Lucky Gunner on Brass v. Steel

For those of you interested in arms-related questions, the folks at Lucky Gunner email to draw your attention to their recent tests. They've passed tens of thousands of brass and steel cased ammunition through Bushmaster AR-15s, and have a report on the effects of each on weapon accuracy and reliability. Conditions were pretty rough at times, between rain and sandstorms in the Arizona desert.

Learn more at LuckyGunner.com

Of course, if any of you are inspired by this to go out and buy an AR-15... good luck! As D29 points out, there's little need for gun control on these weapons right now. You couldn't find one to buy if you wanted.

Comfort food

Over at Maggie's Farm, they're featuring a series of old favorites like chicken pot pie. Today's topic is chicken tetrazzini, which inspired me to write about the difference between the turkey tetrazzini I once whipped up using an undistinguished recipe off of the net, and the immensely superior one my husband made up shortly thereafter. It was like a demonstration from a cooking school: how a real cook makes even ordinary dishes something special. His didn't even take longer to make. It left mine in the dust.

This recipe is pretty close to what he did. It starts with a light roux, which is just flour stirred into butter in the saucepan until it thoroughly dissolves. You add equal parts cream, stock, and white wine and cook them down a bit. In the meantime, cook your noodles and hold them to one side. Also, start sauteeing the vegetables, whatever's handy, but a good mixture is celery, onions, carrots, garlic, and mushrooms. Add some salt and pepper as well as some herbs; he used thyme and sage. Grate up some parmesan and get your bread crumbs handy. Then all you have to do is mix up the diced turkey or chicken with the veggies, sauce, 1/3 of the bread crumbs and cheese, and the noodles. Pour the mixture into a casserole dish, then top it with the rest of the bread crumbs and cheese and bake it until golden brown and delicious.

This is a forgiving dish, but it will be better if only read food goes into it. That means actual butter, actual parmesan, stock you made yourself, crumbs made from actual bread, and dry wine you wouldn't object to drinking on its own. On the other hand, most of these ingredients are leftovers. We make stock whenever the pile of chicken carcasses and leftover chicken bones, innards, and necks gets too big in the freezer, and stock freezes just fine in conveniently-sized containers until you're ready to use it. While it takes several hours, it's not like you have to be doing anything to it while you wait. It would be a fine thing to leave bubbling away in a crockpot while you're away or busy. It's nice to add vegetables or herbs to the stock while it's cooking, but you'll get a fine stock even if you dump in nothing but the chicken parts. When the chicken is cooked to pieces, strain it and reserve the liquid. Our dogs love to eat the mush that I pull off the bones. With the chicken bits in the dogs and the stock in the freezer, all that's left of many chicken carcasses is a tiny pile of bones.

As for the wine, it's a great way to use up any wine that's sat out overnight; this year we used the tag-end of a bottle of Champagne that sat out in the back yard overnight after New Year's Eve losing its fizz. It goes without saying that the bits of fowl are leftovers, and the veggies can be anything you have handy: peas or whatever. For bread crumbs, we keep a bag of heels from loaves of bread in the freezer and periodically pulverize them.

When this "leftover" dish is finished, you'll wish you had more.

This Is What I Want To Do For Vacation:

About five minutes into this video and the wife veto'd the idea, but I think I can talk her into it.

Some of you may recognize the road.

The 15-Hour Workweek

An economist writing in Aeon has an article on the rise of a leisure-based society, long predicted by Keynes and others. He asks, "Are we ready for it?" It's kind of an interesting reading for a notion of where the Left thinks we are.

The social democratic welfare state, supported by Keynesian macroeconomic management, had already smoothed many of the sharp edges of economic life. The ever-present threat that we might be reduced to poverty by unemployment, illness or old age had disappeared from the lives of most people in developed countries. It wasn’t even a memory for the young....

[F]or the first time in history, our productive capacity is such that no one need be poor. In fact, more people are rich, by any reasonable historical standard, than are poor....

If work was distributed more equally, both between households and over time, we could all be better off. But it seems impossible to achieve this without a substantial reduction in the centrality of market work to the achievement of a good life, and without a substantial reduction in the total hours of work. The first step would be to go back to the social democratic agenda associated with postwar Keynesianism. Although that agenda has largely been on hold during the decades of market-liberal dominance, the key institutions of the welfare state have remained both popular and resilient, as shown by the wave of popular resistance to cuts imposed in the name of austerity....

In a post-scarcity society, everyone would be guaranteed an income that yielded a standard of living significantly better than poverty, and this guarantee would be unconditional.

What is most interesting to me about this is that it is unmoored from any discussion of means-to-ends. The assumption is that the means are already in place: the problem is that the market distributes those means to the wrong people. What looks to me like a "Kill the Golden Goose" issue looks to them like an opportunity for golden eggs for everyone, whether they work or not.

In any case, the 15-hour workweek seems to be on its way. Obamacare brutally punishes businesses that have more than 50 full-time workers, where "full-time" is defined as 30 hours a week or more. Whole industries are now pushing low-wage workers onto 15-29 hour schedules, which means that they will be going on food stamps (if they aren't there already). Many of these jobs are no longer paid minimum wage, using the 'seasonal' or 'temporary' loopholes.

You'll have lots of time, I guess, to sit around and worry about how poor you've become. But of course there's a solution for that: the new 'guaranteed income' will ensure that no one is poor. (How will we pay for that when we can't pay for Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or already-promised pensions? And we, the richest nation on earth?).

That's the Spirit!

A review of Scottish fencing.

Re-think that bicycle

And maybe the modern trend toward excessive personal grooming is not such a hot idea either, not to mention zippers.

Avalanche

“If you swim out in the ocean, the ocean’s always alive,” Saugstad said. “You can feel it. But the mountains feel like they’re asleep.”

This New York Times article about an avalanche is a virtuoso piece of multimedia presentation, combining a riveting story with fantastic links and video.

We watched "The Pink Panther" the other night, which came out when I was eight years old.  I believe that was the last time I had seen it.  My husband objects to the gratuitous insertion of musical numbers into movies from this era, but the jazzy/samba lounge-singer scene in the ski lodge is the only bit I remembered from childhood, apart from the theme song and the tiny pink flaw in the great diamond.

The dancing looks like fun, even for poor hapless Peter Sellars, the comic cuckold.  The people in these conventional American thrillers and comedies from the early 60s were so sophisticated and at ease in their society.  There was nothing sullen or dreary about their rebellion.

The fellow presenting the movie remarked that David Niven expected his jewel-thief-Don-Juan character to become a successful franchise.  No one guessed that Inspector Clouseau would steal the show.

How to talk to a moderate voter

In a comment thread below, Tom linked to a fine article by Kevin D. Williamson at the National Review Online, which I thought should be highlighted here.  Williamson cites three areas where conservatives fail to engage the middle-of-the-road voter:  (1) the best way to address risk, (2) the real value and dangers of economic inequality, and (3) how to rely on growth instead of on redistribution of a finite pie.  On the first point, he reminds us that segments of the population who historically were systematically excluded from the formal economic system will be hard sells on the notion that accepting economic risk is the best path to prosperity; we'll have to acknowledge their legitimate suspicion of the game.

Regarding inequality, he cautions against arguing that "merit and merit alone accounts for the diverging prospects of the very well off and the rest."  A free market doesn't ensure that merit will triumph, only that individuals' preferences will have more clout than those of bureaucrats.  A conservative's desire to favor individuals over bureaucrats doesn't rest on a conviction that all individuals are better judges than any bureaucrat.  It rests in part on a philosophical preference for individual autonomy, and in part on an empirical conviction that, although masses of individuals can make appalling choices, their inevitable failures pale before the even more appalling choices of bureaucrats.

On the subject of growth vs. redistribution, Williamson points out that the "people as useless mouths to feed" cant of Malthusian liberals sometimes raises its ugly head equally in the hearts of conservatives who back trade barriers and oppose immigration.  He recommends a focus on people as the engines of future growth and prosperity, and on the education and healthcare policies most likely to make that possible.

He closes with an encouraging look at recent conservative reforms in Sweden, all achieved without outraging the compassionate or liberal instincts of most voters in that very collectivized state.

"You Can't Cut Your Way to Prosperity."

I'm really impressed with this new line from the President. It's so perfect. It's obviously wrong, in fact the very opposite of true, but it sounds so good. It's a masterpiece of the genre.

If you have income of X and expenses of X+Y, cutting is an excellent way to prosperity. It may be the only road to prosperity. This is so obvious that I feel a little odd even saying it: the line from the White House is so obviously out of order with reality that it makes you feel as if you must be missing something to challenge it.

Nor is it clear whose prosperity is meant in any case. The line is being deployed in service of proposed additional tax hikes, which means that we can't be talking about the prosperity of individual families. We must be talking about some sort of collective prosperity. But the government has never had, and will never have, enough to ensure that everyone is prosperous. This was the entire lesson of the Cold War. Only a robust market can ensure widespread prosperity, and while the market needs some regulations to function smoothly, a heavy tax burden is harmful to it.

Of course, not everything coming out of Washington is so carefully scripted as this masterpiece from the White House. Sometimes plain honest sentiments do make their way into the discourse.

Thomas Sowell Against Republicans

It's an interesting piece that begins with a cheerful invocation of the nearness of death, but I suppose I can understand the sentiment.

The beginning of a new year is often a time to look forward and look back. The way the future looks, I prefer to look back — and depend on my advanced age to spare me from having to deal with too much of the future.

Near the end he asks us to consider what the country would look like if we'd had Judge Bork on the Supreme Court all these years, instead of Justice Kennedy. Of course one doesn't know for sure, but it's hard to imagine that the substitution would have been harmful.

I Feel A Little Less Eccentric Now:

The Red Book is an immense illuminated manuscript, which [Carl] Jung indited on cream vellum in the private scriptorium of his study over a period of about sixteen years, copiously illustrated with elaborate, vivid, and occasionally ghastly painted panels, and bound in red leather.

Concrete

Too much of it. But it won't last. They can't afford it much longer. In the fullness of time, we shall live and die again on our own.





It's the last one that matters. In the last two minutes, he is the warrior calling them to account before him. To call such to account is to demand a mastery implicit until minutes later. Only then does the mastery move from the hidden to the explicit.

But to say that is to say that we have wasted a hundred years. That may not be the worst thing we might say.

Happy New Year.

God Send Us A Happy New Year

I'm doing a kind of double-Lent this year, starting this New Year's Day and ending on Easter Sunday. There are reasons for this which don't enter into the matter of this page, although some of you are aware of why I might do such a thing. In any case, I hope this year is better than the last, though if I look on it with proper gratitude it had much good in it.

Happy New Year to all of you. God save us, if it is right that he do so; or if He should choose, out of undeserved grace. Enjoy the feast, or fast, as you choose.

More syne

Maggie's Farm has a terrific punk Auld Lang Syne up, and here's a dixieland rendition:

 

Flags at Half-Mast

We're about to cross the line between 2012 and 2013. Lately I can't remember a time when I rode by the Post Office or the schools and didn't see flags at half-mast.

I'm tired of this, ladies and gentlemen. More than I've ever been, I'm ready to hear good answers. I haven't heard any lately, so I'm working on my own. Do you have any?

Luck, money, and the indispensable song

In the shape-note songbook, this is called "Plenary" and has gloomier lyrics than I can begin to describe, but I opted for the cheerful New Year's Eve version:

In the bleak midwinter

Not so bleak here, though the house is down to 65 degrees. But this Christmas carol is just the thing for frozen Northerners contemplating the advent of hope. That Holst can really write a harmony.

Oh, You Big-Mouthed Woman!

Johnny Cash and June Carter, singing a song a friend wrote just for them.

Shepherds redux

Here goes again with "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night," a/k/a "Sherburne" in the Sacred Harp songbook, minus the tinny buzzing (headphones!  no feedback!), and this time with the benefit of the alto part, somehow dropped out last time.  Also, I learned how to embed:



This one is from the Episcopal hymnbook, called "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee":

Adieu, C.T.O.U.S.

Today being Boxing Day, we turned our Fists of Righteous Harmony to the task of dismantling the Christmas Tree of Unusual Size and regaining the use of our dining room.  I tried something new this year:  we bought the tree fairly early but left it standing in a pail of water for some weeks after.  Then we brought it in and trimmed it only about three weeks before Christmas, and took it down today before it could become desperately dry.  In other years, I felt an urge to have it up for a long time, but somehow this year it was enough to enjoy it briefly and then let it go.

The job's not over by a long shot, though the tree is in pieces and staged on its way to the area where we're piling brush to compost.  There remains the task of dismantling the stacking bookcase that blocks the hidden Christmas closet upstairs, bringing down all the boxes, stashing the fragile ornaments carefully, humping the boxes back upstairs into the hidden closet, and re-assembling the bookcase.  But at not quite noon the day after Christmas, I feel we've knocked a great big hole in the undertaking.  In fact, I may take the rest of the day for Righteous Harmony and tackle the ornaments tomorrow.  About a dozen overripe bananas, the result of exuberant fruit-basket giving, are calling us from the kitchen, urging banana-bread baking on us.

When do you dismantle Christmas deckings?

While shepherds watched their flocks by night

My husband bought me a "Garage Band" program ages ago, but I only recently figured out that it's possible to record voice tracks on the computer's native microphone, if a little tinnily.  I've spent many a happy hour this week laying down all four tracks of a series of Shape Note tunes, including this Christmas carol.

Even when it's just me singing with myself, it's surprising how hard it is to get all the voices to blend.  I'm going to be practicing for a long time laying down the tracks, trying to keep all the parts together and on the beat.  What could be more fun?  And I'll need a better microphone at some point.  But there are only 45 minutes of Christmas left, so this carol has to upload in its current state.

The Feast of Stephen

You may wonder why Saint Stephen's day is the very day after Christmas. Saint Stephen was a martyr killed quite shortly after Jesus himself was put to death, by stoning and for the same sort of blasphemy against the Jewish tradition that occasioned Jesus' execution. You can read a version of the story here. St. Paul mentions Stephen's murder, having been a witness before his own conversion.

When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.’ And he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” (Acts 22:17-22)

We know him best from two songs that have nothing to do with his life or death, but which pertain to his feast day. The more famous is "Good King Wenceslas," which takes place on the Feast of Stephen.



My favorite, though, is the Clancy Brothers' rendition of a song built around an Irish tradition called Wren Day. You can hear their retelling of the tradition starting at about 07:05, followed by a very cheerful song about the sacrificial tradition of wren killings and funerals.

Merry Christmas

Many things attend the feast.

The Second Council of Tours... proclaims, in 566 or 567, the sanctity of the "twelve days" from Christmas to Epiphany, and the duty of Advent fast; that of Agde... orders a universal communion, and that of Braga (563) forbids fasting on Christmas Day. Popular merry-making, however, so increased that the "Laws of King Cnut", fabricated c. 1110, order a fast from Christmas to Epiphany....

Only with great caution should the mysterious benefactor of Christmas night — Knecht Ruprecht, Pelzmärtel on a wooden horse, St. Martin on a white charger, St. Nicholas and his "reformed" equivalent, Father Christmas — be ascribed to the stepping of a saint into the shoes of Woden, who, with his wife Berchta, descended on the nights between 25 December and 6 January, on a white horse to bless earth and men. Fires and blazing wheels starred the hills, houses were adorned, trials suspended and feasts celebrated.... Knecht Ruprecht, at any rate (first found in a mystery of 1668 and condemned in 1680 as a devil) was only a servant of the Holy Child.

The rest of the history is just as interesting: mystery plays and carols, feasts and fires. Through it all, in every generation, we struggle to remember what it was really all about. Sometimes, some of those artists and customs help us see.

Christmas Eve in the DPRK

A rather less enchanted kingdom is a sad reality for millions.

Spare a thought on Christmas Eve for Christians who live in countries where practicing their faith is an act of courage. Nowhere is that more true than in North Korea, where religion is banned....

..."the arrest, torture and possible execution" of Christians, Buddhists and others conducting clandestine religious activity....

23 Christians were arrested in 2010 for belonging to an underground Protestant church. Three were executed and the rest were jailed. The commission estimates there are thousands of Christians among the 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans incarcerated in the regime's infamous political prison camps.

Yet:

[D]espite this repression, something is happening that many characterize as nothing short of a miracle: Christianity appears to be growing in North Korea. Open Doors International, which tracks the persecution of Christians world-wide, puts the number of Christians in North Korea at between 200,000 and 400,000.

The courage of the old martyrs still lives with us today. Remember them.

Christmas Eve

Once, Sir Gawain quested through harsh country for a long time. It was on this night he found rest and hospitality:

Many cliffs he over-clambered in countries strange,
far flying from his friends forsaken he rides.
at every twist of the water where the way passed
he found a foe before him, or freakish it were,
and so foul and fell he was beholden to fight.
So many marvels by mountain there the man finds,
it would be tortuous to tell a tenth of the tale.
Sometimes with dragons he wars, and wolves also,
sometimes with wild woodsmen haunting the crags,
with bulls and bears both, and boar other times,
and giants that chased after him on the high fells....
Thus in peril and pain, and plights full hard
covers the country this knight till Christmas Eve
alone....

Now he had signed himself times but three,
when he was aware in the wood of a wall in a moat,
above a level, on high land locked under boughs
of many broad set boles about by the ditches:
a castle the comeliest that ever knight owned,
perched on a plain, a park all about,
with a pointed palisade, planted full thick,
encircling many trees in more than two miles.
The hold on the one side the knight assessed,
as it shimmered and shone through the shining oaks.
Then humbly has off with his helm, highly he thanks
Jesus and Saint Julian, that gentle are both,
that courtesy had him shown, and his cry hearkened.
‘Now hospitality,’ he said, ‘I beseech you grant!’...

A chair before the chimney, where charcoal burned,
graciously set for Gawain, was gracefully adorned,
coverings on quilted cushions, cunningly crafted both.
And then a mighty mantle was on that man cast
of a brown silk, embroidered full rich,
and fair furred within with pelts of the best –
the finest ermine on earth – his hood of the same.
And he sat on that settle seemly and rich,
and chafed himself closely, and then his cheer mended.
Straightway a table on trestles was set up full fair,
clad with a clean cloth that clear white showed,
the salt-cellars, napkins and silvered spoons.
The knight washed at his will, and went to his meat.
Servants him served seemly enough
with several soups, seasoned of the best,
double bowlfuls, as fitting, and all kinds of fish,
some baked in bread, some browned on the coals,
some seethed, some in stews savoured with spices,
and sauces ever so subtle that the knight liked.

May you all find good cheer, and warm shelter, this Christmas.

Solstice

And while they were all standing round them, Merlin came up to them and said, "Now try your forces, young men, and see whether strength or art can do the most towards taking down these stones." At this word they all set to their engines with one accord, and attempted the removing of the Giant's Dance. Some prepared cables, others small ropes, others ladders for the work, but all to no purpose. Merlin laughed at their vain efforts, and then began his own contrivances. When he had placed in order the engines that were necessary, he took down the stones with an incredible facility, and gave directions for carrying them to the ships, and placing them therein. This done, they with joy set sail again, to return to Britain; where they arrived with a fair gale, and repaired to the burying-place with the stones. When Aurelius had notice of it, he sent messengers to all parts of Britain, to summon the clergy and people together to the mount of Ambrius, in order to celebrate with joy and honour the erection of the monument. Upon this summons appeared the bishops, abbats, and people of all other orders and qualities; and upon the day and place appointed for their general meeting, Aurelius placed the crown sepulchre upon his head, and with royal pomp celebrated the feast of Pentecost, the solemnity whereof he continued the three following days.

It's interesting that the old story revolves around Pentecost, almost the right hour for the summer solstice. The winter has begun, and the time of fire now begins its height. It'll be cold tonight. Keep your loved ones close.

On Remarks at the Funeral of Sen. Inouye, Medal of Honor Recipient

It's a sad thing when you don't get much attention at your own funeral.

Someone needs to tell Barack Obama—it must get particularly confusing this time of year—that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye....

Inouye was a Japanese-American war hero (he lost an arm in World War II, destroying his dream of becoming a surgeon), and as a senator he served on the Watergate committee, helped rewrite our intelligence charter after scandals, and was chairman of the Senate committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair.

Apparently we did learn a lot about the experience of one Barack Obama, however.

Odd Couple

I remember catching this duet on TV about 35 years ago.  It wasn't two guys I expected to see singing together.  The video was recorded only about a month before Mr. Crosby's death, and aired after.

Christmas cheer

I never get tired of these.  This is what crowds are for.



Synchronized dancing in the school-of-fish style makes me happy, too.

Spherical TEOTWAWKI

Today would be a good day to spend $2.99 and read Heinlein's short story "The Year of the Jackpot," about a statistician who notices that all kinds of cycles are aligning and will trough or crest together in a few weeks.

For those without Kindles or the like, it appears to be available for PDF download for a minor fee here.

Personally, I'm planning the usual solstice preparations to encourage the sun to come back out of the cave into which it has retreated.  It's disappointing that so many people are neglecting this duty in the frenzy of the approaching Mayan apocalypse.

The Season's Upon Us

Locally the kids got out of school today, not to return until the end of the holiday season. That means that we are within the holiday time.

Brigadoon

We watched the old Gene Kelly film, set in the Scottish Highlands in a mysterious vanishing village.



It's based on an old fairy tale, but this version -- in deference to mid-20th century American culture -- has been carefully Christianized. Strangely, maybe, that ends up making the story less plausible. I, at least, find it far easier to believe you might meet a fairy lady in a glen than to believe that God would send a village into a kind of timeless mist, under the conditions that they sacrifice their only priest and that, if anyone should leave the village, the whole population would be destroyed. Those wild conditions sound like the Faerie way more than it sounds like God.

On the other hand, Chesterton makes a great deal out of the similarity between fairy stories and the practical facts of reality. Wild conditions do seem to proliferate in both: cross this bridge, and the village vanishes forever; eat this small red berry, and you die.

VDH on Debt Relief

From a column drawing contrasts and parallels between ancient and modern thought:

was thinking of the class strife in Sallust’s Conspiracy of Cataline the other day as well; I used to teach it and the Jugurthine War in third-year Latin. In my thirties I never quite understood the standard hackneyed redistributionist call of the late Roman republic for “cancellation of debts and redistribution of property!” But recently I reread Sallust with a new awareness — in the context of all the talk of mortgage forgiveness, credit card forgiveness, student loan forgiveness, wealth taxes, and new estates taxes.

Perhaps there are some useful lessons to be found there, for those favoring such tactics today. Certainly there are for those opposing them.

"False security is more dangerous than none"

Megan McArdle opposes practically every policy that's being proposed to "prevent another Newtown," quoting Dr. Johnson:

How small, of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

She makes one sensible proposal, I think, which is to try to  train people to rush a gunman rather than obeying the natural instinct to run and hide.  Everyone should make like a white blood cell.  (And if many of them are armed, so much the better.  The last place groups of vulnerable children should be is in "gun free zones.")

Tact or cowardice?

Is this man teaching his son the right thing?

Faux fox

My niece's dog, who doesn't normally have black foxlike points on her nose or paws.  She looks pleased with herself, doesn't she?  That was some thick black mud she got herself into.  Obviously she doesn't live anywhere near here, where we have neither black dirt nor, lately, water.

Against all expectations, our monster of a black lab, now almost three years old, has not tried to eat any Christmas tree ornaments or presents.  Maybe she's finally settling down, ready to become a good girl.

A Cavalier Christmas

Up the Cavaliers, and down with Roundheads! A piece from the History Channel on the subject of Christmas:

An Outlaw Christmas
In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings.

Cookie art

Someone brought cookies to church today that looked exactly like the picture on the right, though I actually got it from the Net.  I'd be inspired to make some myself if they didn't involve marshmallows, which I'd rather admire from afar than actually eat (unless they're toasted).   I'm thinking gingerbread men instead.  I feel the need to decorate some food.

Also, here's my tree in its final glory, or at least most of it:

On the History of Chivalry

In the comments to the previous post on the subject, Douglas asked me to take on a couple of objections he had seen that he didn't know how to answer. I decided the answers were long enough that they deserved a separate post.

First objection: ...that chivalry and civility were essentially the same (or should be) and so the only distinction was the assignment of gender roles.

Chivalry is not the same as civility; in fact it is not even close. Chivalry is a code that is about the kind of man it takes to ride a horse to war. That's really the root of it, and it has nothing to do at base with 'civility' or any sense of the genteel. It has to do with quiet courage, self-discipline, and the ability to relate to others (first and foremost the horse) so that they come to know that they can trust you and rely on you absolutely.

One of the complaints against civility is that it is inauthentic or fake; Miss Manners says that the whole point of the thing is that it is fake, because you don't really want to know what other people think of you! But chivalry is not fake. It cannot be fake, because at base it is about a relationship with a horse: a prey animal that spooks easily and is naturally fearful, but must come to trust you enough to be ridden into a battle. The virtues that inspire trust -- directness, honesty, calmness, kindness -- must be genuine and to the bone.

That is the first nature of chivalry. It is common to other cultures that grew out of that kind of horsemen: the Arabs, for example, have a similar idea about what it means to be a free man worthy of being a rider. These virtues are the same, because they are the virtues of horsemen who are also warriors.

They are also the virtues of soldiers and Marines today, those who must trust each other when they ride to war, and who must be able to win the trust of foreign peoples they are asked to protect. A civil man can be kind, but need not be courageous. Chivalry is about developing the soul. This is the reason that nothing more than chivalry was needed in Aurora. It is a code of warriors. Questions of how and when to kill or die are part of its first nature. It remains terribly necessary to know how and when to do those things.

Second objection: ...a general feeling that the devotion of a man to women was somehow demeaning to the women, who were 'put on pedestals'- in their eyes, objectified.

Chivalry differs from the other similar cultures -- for example, the Arabic -- because it took on an elevated second nature during the High Middle Ages. The great chivalry of Charlemagne had the first set of virtues, but Charlemagne and his son and grandson also sponsored schools and education (as did Alfred the Great, about the same time in England). This tradition began a long evolution of what it meant to belong to the class of warriors who rode horses. These new forms melded with a special sort of praise poetry that came out of the reconquest of Islamic Spain (as well as from French knights who served the Islamic kingdoms as mercenaries, and learned the poetry at court). Poets and scholars became central to court life.

Where we find things that look like 'civility' is around the 1000s, but what we're really talking about is not 'civil' behavior but 'courtly' behavior. It's not a general set of rules for all people. It is a set of standards for being or dealing with the very best kind of people -- the most upright, the most moral, the most honorable. It was built on poetry and legends, especially legends about Arthur and Charlemagne.

I think is very healthy for society to have gender roles, because men and women are quite different. On average, such roles help us relate to each other by giving us forms we can rely upon to smooth our interactions just where misunderstandings are most likely. Nevertheless, I realize that some people object to them if they become too rigid. Let me point out, then, that chivalry is not as closed as people take it to be. Even in the High Middle Ages, these poets were challenging these questions. The feminist scholar who looks deeply at the tradition of Arthurian literature will find a great deal of interest -- indeed, I think most of the scholars writing in the field today are women, precisely because it is interesting to them. Modern America doesn't seem to have much problem making room for women to be warriors, including several good ones I had the honor of serving alongside in Iraq.

Chivalry can take such women on its terms, but it also holds open the position of special honor for women who are drawn to the beauty of the old way, and who help shape a place for the courtly: the kind of woman who makes a special place in the world, a place finer and more beautiful than is common, and who fills that place and invites us to be welcome there if only we know how.

Americans have an interesting relationship with the courtly. On the one hand we officially despise it as elitist and anti-democratic. On the other, we admire it tremendously when it is stripped of pretentious trappings. An American gentleman -- and let us remember what it means to be a gentleman -- can be found in any walk of life, but wherever he is found he is the best kind of American man. Of course he is: he is the one you can trust, the one who keeps his word, the one who does not let you down. In the South, being a gentleman is still held up as the ideal toward which any young man should strive. There is a code of conduct, which I described before as things you must do and things you must never do.

When we speak of chivalry and women, then, the same thing is at work. 'Being put on a pedestal' is not objectification, it's about being held to standards. These are high standards: honor, nobility of character, virtue, and yes, kindness. A woman who chooses not to live these standards will still receive courteous treatment, but she need not worry about being put on a pedestal. Rather, she will be treated well in honor of those ladies who are worthy of love, because we know it pains them to see women treated with disrespect.

If we do this out of respect for their wishes and even when they are not around, it is because we do it from love. A code that teaches men how to love women is good. If it also makes men into the kinds of creatures that are worthy of love themselves, it is better. But chivalry does not just make a man fit for the court: it also makes a man fit for the camp. It makes possible a kind of life filled with poetry and the striving after legend. I know of no better life.

Just a Coincidence, I'm Sure:

The Nation's Finest News Source

There are days when The Onion lives up to its fake tagline.

Cat-friend vs. dog-friend

Situational ethics

From Theodore Dalrymple, via Maggie's Farm, a quotation from Golden Harvest:  Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust by Jan Tomasz Gross, about what Dalrymple calls a "transvaluation" of moral values:

The takeover of Jewish property was so widespread in occupied Poland that it called for the emergence of rules determining distribution.  Thus when in August 1941 a certain Helena Klimaszewska went from the hamlet of Goniądz to Radziłów “to get an apartment for her husband’s parents because she knew that after the liquidation of the Jews there are empty apartments,” she was told on arrival that a certain “Godlewski decides what to do with ‘post-Jewish’ apartments.”  She presented her request to him but, she later testified in court, “Godlewski replied, ‘don’t even think about it.’  When I said that Mr Godlewski has four houses at his disposal and I don’t even have one he replied ‘this is none of your business, I am awaiting a brother returning from Russia where the Soviets deported him and he has to have a house.’  When I insisted that I need an apartment, he replied, ‘when people were needed to kill the Jews, you weren’t here, and now you want an apartment,’" an argument that met with a strong rebuttal from Klimaszewska’s mother-in-law:  “They don’t want to give an apartment, but they sent my grandson to douse the house with gasoline…”  And so, we are witnessing a conversation between an older woman and other adults that is premised on the assumption that one gains a right to valuable goods by taking part in murder of their owners.

It's a shift in moral perspective powerful enough to permit its participants to feel genuine outrage at their mistreatment according to the new rules.  "That's not fair" is a cry that always resonates, even among people who deny the power of any traditional system to restrict their own behavior.

What is the Hall's reading list?

Grim has very generously offered to let me put a question before the Hall, and I consider it a great honor that he has extended to me.  In short, I have received a new Kindle (thanks to my lovely bride) and given both my parsimonious nature (I'm a cheap son of a gun) and the fact that there's a world of free literature out there, I have not gone to the electronic book stores to fill it, but instead to sites like Project Gutenberg.  So my question is, what does the Hall recommend?  What are your favorite "classics"?

Better Living Through Science

A company based out of Boston has developed cups that change color if date-rape drugs are introduced to their contents. It's sad that it's necessary, of course, but it's a nice idea all the same!

Adoption

A friend who adopted a Russian girl about five years ago posts a quotation from Glenn Styffe:  ‎"I used to wonder if I was ready to be an adoptive (or foster) parent, until I realized that children are never ready to be orphans."

Having no children of my own, I often thought of adopting, but we never felt it was the right thing.  I'll always wonder.  I suppose I was influenced by my stepmother's experience:  a childless woman not bonding well with her motherless daughters.  Perhaps it wasn't in the cards for me to be a mother, and it's best that I adopted animals instead.  Is it true that some people shouldn't raise children, or does everyone think that until they do it?

It struck me to the heart a couple of years ago, reading that my friend's adopted daughter's favorite verse from Scripture was John 14:18:  "I will not leave you as orphans.   I will come to you."  Her blog is amazing and worth a read, by the way.  She has been an inspiration to me since junior high.

A World Without Consequences

...at least, for North Korea.

North Korea defied the UN again to launch this rocket, an action proscribed by a sheaf of UN resolutions that Pyongyang has ignored for decades. Will this have any negative consequences for the Kim regime? Almost certainly not....

CNN interviewed a professor of international relations in Seoul to discuss the consequences for Kim Jong-un. It becomes clear pretty early on that the expert wants to argue that there will be some, but can’t think of any.

It's not just the UN. Our own 'smart diplomacy' is a contributing factor.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Instapundit mentions a band I always liked, for reasons that are hard to lay out. They have a stripped-down sound most of the time. I think I first liked it just because the singer was a tough, roughneck girl. When I met my wife, she carried a big knife through the front of her belt and wore camo pants and tank tops. She's a little more sedate now, for a biker girl.



Hey, that was a biker jacket Joan Jett was wearing just there, wasn't it?



The piece the Sage of Knoxville linked to has a little fancier sound, but that's according to the original.

'Give Chivalry Another Chance'

We'll skip over the first part of this article, which starts with the Titanic, ground that Cassandra has more than adequately covered as you will all well remember.

As you know, I'm entirely devoted to the order of chivalry. Naturally, then, I find it appealing to see a magazine as left-leaning as The Atlantic raise the issue of taking it seriously. I don't wish to underrate the achievement; it's going to have been quite hard for the author to have written the piece, and even harder for readers to take her seriously given how baldly the terms violate their assumptions.

Nevertheless, I do wish to point out that she hasn't quite got the thing she's talking about. I'll borrow a few words I've written elsewhere, recently, to clarify just where she is wrong.

Chivalry is about respect. It is about not harming or hurting others, especially those who are more vulnerable than you. It is about putting other people first and serving others often in a heroic or courageous manner. It is about being polite and courteous. In other words, chivalry in the age of post-feminism is another name we give to civility.

Well, if it's just another name for civility -- to paraphrase Flannery O'Connor (excellent article, by the way) -- then to hell with it. Civility is certainly included in the virtue of chivalry, where it is appropriate: but so is defiance, where that is what the virtue demands.

Chivalry is not only about civility. Sometimes it is about dying. A moral order that you cannot die for is not really a moral order at all, because it can contain nothing greater than the individual. But any moral order must be about things greater than the individual, or else it cannot demand that the individual should sacrifice in favor of that moral order.

This is why Hannah Rosin was wrong to say that something 'more' than chivalry was at work in the Aurora theater. Nothing more is entailed, and nothing more is required.

The important thing about chivalry is the understanding that it is a set of chains. Sometimes it is about things you must do. Sometimes it is about things you would never do.

It is a discipline, in other words, one that takes God-given strength and uses it not to dominate but to serve. If it is done this way, with an honest heart, it produces the best and noblest kind of man that humankind has ever learned to produce.

That Depends. Can the Grassroots Take a Punch?

This will be an interesting episode. Dr. Althouse wonders if the unions know something about authority's willingness to enforce the law. Well, there are two things to know about it:

1) The policemen who might be making the arrests are part of a brother union.

2) The fine for simple assault is small enough that the union can readily pass the hat for it, if in fact the law is enforced.

What the unions know, in other words, is the product of more than a hundred years of leveraging violence as part of their politics. They're good at it, and this model once brought them astonishing gains. There's no reason it shouldn't be persuasive again, because people don't really like getting punched in the face.

During the period between the end of the Indian Wars and WWI, the US Army's main business was putting down labor strikes. After that corporations hired private armies to deal with them for a while. Finally, everyone surrendered. By now, the unions control the Democratic Party and the President of the United States is their firmest ally because he knows how important they are to him and his agenda.

I don't think the unions are the least bit afraid of the "grassroots," and why would they be? The grassroots aren't ready to stand up to violence, let alone to employ it themselves as part of a broader political agenda. They certainly aren't prepared to organize along those lines, as the unions have done and been doing for more than a century.

What are you 'grassroots' folks going to do about it? Tweet?

An Argument for the Existence of God, From Morality

This gentleman is a professor of philosophy at Boston College.



I find his argument flawed on two points, but I want to save laying out the second point -- the one I really think is decisive -- until we discuss it in the comments. I would like to talk about the first point, because it touches on an old debate we've had here many times, and it situates Joseph W. and I in strange places.

He argues that evolution cannot be the source of morality, because if it were, moral standards could change in ways that we don't intuitively want to accept. He frames this argument badly, I think, by making it sound like cultural change is an evolutionary process: his example is the current moral norm against slavery, which was not recognized in ancient times. In fact, even in modern times -- in the 1850s, say -- there were very strong advocates for slavery as a positive moral good.

(On the other hand, he treats what would more usually be called "evolution" under the heading "human nature," so what an evolutionary psychologist would say is captured -- it's just captured in a strange place. Furthermore, the point he's making about drifting moral standards holds even in cases of genuine evolutionary change in humanity, should there be any.)

So the problem is that we want to be able to say that slavery is really a moral wrong: and that it is a moral wrong now, and previously, even in the ancient world. The reason we want to be able to do that is that otherwise we can't say that society has improved by banning slavery: it has simply drifted from one norm to another. If it should drift back to slavery, there would be no moral harm to society, because there is no overarching standard against which you can test the proposition.

That lands us in odd places because Joseph W. is a strong advocate for moral progress, but not much given to belief in the supernatural. I have no problem believing in God, but have often argued against the idea that society engages in moral progress: I think that at least most of the time what we take for progress is really just change. Since on any timeline more recent societies are more like us (in terms of ideas about morality and otherwise) than more distant ones, from any perspective you will observe a change from more-distant moral ideas to closer moral ideas to your own moral ideas.

Of course that looks like an arrow of progress! But in fact, it would be true from any perspective. If in a hundred years Americans have decided to re-institute slavery for reasons of their own, they will regard us as further away, the middle-time when the pressures came up that caused the re-institution as a sort of period of progress, and their own time as having the enlightened truth. From their perspective, that is what will look like moral progress.

So one way of answering the mail on this question is to do what the professor does, and hold that it must be that God has given us laws that serve as a firm ground for moral standards. Then we can judge progress fairly, and not become confused by our perspective.

Is there another? I think so, but as I said, I'd prefer to leave it for the discussion.

Yuletide

Big 'un

The ladder is eight feet tall, as is the top of the window frame.  I think this tree is about eleven feet tall:  twice my height.  My husband begged me to be more reasonable next year.

Practice

I have begun reading "Complications" by Atul Gawande, a discourse on the fear and confusion inherent in learning to practice medicine, written by a surgical resident near the end of his eight years of training in general surgery.  He describes the agonizing process of learning to insert a central line, something the more experienced residents made look easy:

Surgeons, as a group, adhere to a curious egalitarianism.  They believe in practice, not talent.  People often assume that you have to have great hands to become a surgeon, but it's not true.  When I interviewed to get into surgery programs, no one made me sew or take a dexterity test or checked if my hands were steady.  You do not even need all ten fingers to be accepted.  To be sure, talent helps.   Professors say every two or three years they'll see someone truly gifted come through a program -- someone who picks up complex manual skills unusally quickly, sees the operative field as a whole, notices trouble before it happens.  Nonetheless, attending surgeons say that what's most important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious, and boneheaded enough to stick at practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end.  As one professor of surgery put it to me, given a choice betwen a Ph. D. who had painstakingly cloned a gene and a talented sculptor, he'd pick the Ph. D. every time.  Sure, he said, he'd bet on the sculptor being more physically talented; but he'd bet on the Ph. D. being less "flaky."   And in the end that matters more.   Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot. It's an odd approach to recruitment, but it continues all the way up the ranks, even in top surgery departments.  They take minions with no experience in surgery, spend years training them, and then take most of their faculty from these same homegrown ranks. 

And it works.  There have now been many studies of elite performers -- international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth -- and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they've had.  Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself.   K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and expert on performance, notes that the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one's willingness to engage in sustained training.  He's found, for example, that top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do.  (That's why, for example, athletes and musicians usually quit practicing when they retire.)  But more than others, they have the will to keep at it anyway.

Film Noir

I remember this band from when they were new. An interview with them asked after their main sources of inspiration, and the one I remember them naming was 1940s film noir. Well, I liked that stuff too.



It's clearly 1990s from the sound, but there is something that harkens back to those movies. Still, it is subtle enough that I'm not sure exactly what.

New reasons to home-school

From Ace, a link to a Telegraph article claiming that new standards applicable to most American states will require 70% of the public school reading curriculum to be devoted to non-fiction.  Not just any non-fiction, though.  Scintillating non-fiction along the lines of "Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council."

And they say home-schooled kids are nerds.

The Monkeys Have No Tails

If you've seen the old John Wayne / John Ford movie Donovan's Reef, the lyrics are given "the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga." I haven't been to Pago Pago, but I have been to Zamboanga, and I did meet a tail-less monkey near there. He belonged to a Catholic priest, who had his collar attached to a steel ring that ran along a cable, so the thing could climb up and down the church.

Nice guy. Pretty brave ministry, there in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. But most of the Republic of the Philippines' special ops guys are Catholics.

Pearl Harbor Day

The Pearl Harbor surprise attack occurred 71 years ago today.  It is an example of the kind of intelligence failure we would most like to be able to prevent in the future:  a violent and severe attack against a critical American target, in a case when there is a pretty good set of reasons to expect an attack sooner or later.  It is not, to use Donald Rumsfeld's old terminology, an unknown unknown:  we must simply accept that we cannot predict those.  It is an example of a known unknown.

Something similar is going on in Egypt today.  Media coverage of the protests seems to be under the impression that there are three sides:  the Muslim Brotherhood, the Army, and the protesters in the streets.  In fact there are only two sides, because there are only two powers:  the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army.

As recently as a couple of days ago, the Army was tacitly encouraging the protests -- sometimes more than tacitly, according to reports.  This was about showing Mursi and the MB that their thugs weren't really capable of standing up to a full-scale revolt.  Mursi has been very successful at out-maneuvering the Army politically, and has managed to win power and control at their expense several times.

It was clear that a deal had been struck in principle when the tanks surrounded the palace to protect it, and Mursi.  Now the outlines of that deal have become clear.

Once the powers have finished dividing the authority between themselves in a way that both find acceptable, the protests won't be useful anymore. Then it will be time for a "whiff of grapeshot."

If I were an Egyptian protester, I would realize that now was the time to get off the streets. There is about to be an example made. The only question is exactly when.

Blood Mountain

There was a lot of rain on the way up to Vogel State Park today, so that by the time I finished the ride up on the motorcycle I was completely soaked.  The soaking meant that everything I was wearing took on extra weight.  My motorcycle jacket in particular seemed to have turned to iron.  Still, it was worth it.

The trail rises 2,400 feet over the course of about five miles.  The reward is this:

Clouds rising, seen from atop Blood Mountain.

A cairn along the trail.

The stone shelter, built by the CCC in the 1930s.  Today two hikers from Maine were resting before the final assault, and had built a fire within it.  The fire was most welcome.

Clouds mounting against the ridge.

Transportation anarchy

More from Maggie's Farm, a link to a blurb about the attempts of the Taxicab Medallion Bureaucrat Industrial Complex to crush the upstart mobile app livery service "Uber."  Being a country mouse, I hadn't heard a thing about this service, but there are lots of articles out there about it now (here, here, here, and here).  You sign up in advance with an app for your smartphone and put your credit card on file.  When you need a ride, you punch in your position and wait far less time than you'd wait for a normal taxi.  While you wait, you can see your driver approaching on the GPS map, which definitely beats the amusing habit of many taxi companies, which claim your driver is on the way when he's really across town with another fare and planning to drive out toward your area sometime in the next 45 minutes or so.  No cash changes hands; even the tip is charged to your card.  Fares are somewhat higher than traditional cabs.  Users report mixed results.

Municipal taxi regulators hate this service, of course, and are doing their best to strangle it.

Forces of darkness

From Maggie's Farm, some legal drafting tips.

You Know Who Deserves More Money? Like A Lot More?

The Atlanta City Council, that's who. Largest increase in the history of the city -- a $20,000 raise this year. Recession? More people on food stamps than ever before? Nonsense, give these people a gigantic raise at taxpayer expense.

My favorite part:

A spokeswoman for Reed said the mayor wants to review the ordinance before deciding whether to sign it, veto it or let it slide into law without his signature.

Let me slide it on you people.



More and more, I find myself biting my tongue really hard.

Rebel Songs

Just one, for now.

Socialism Is About Respecting People's Dignity

After all, if we believe a person is truly dignified, we know they ought to have health care regardless of their ability to pay, and also a place to live.

Holland's capital already has a special hit squad of municipal officials to identify the worst offenders for a compulsory six month course in how to behave.
Social housing problem families or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.
Eberhard van der Laan, Amsterdam's Labour mayor, has tabled the £810,000 plan to tackle 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often leads to law abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out....

The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.

"Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together."

Whilst denying that the new projects would be punishment camps for "scum", a spokesman for the city mayor stressed... "This is supposed to be a deterrent[.]"

It starts as "Hey, let's pay for other people to have the things we want them to have." It ends up as, "Hey, those jerks are costing us a fortune by being irresponsible, and saddling us with costs arising from their bad behavior!" So the solution has to be control of their behavior: and control at a level you couldn't employ against someone you respected.

Thus, a movement that began out of a respect for the dignity of humanity turns those same humans into "scum." It will happen here too.

I Didn't Know God Made Honky-Tonk Angels:

Wow.

The Obama administration said Friday that it would charge insurance companies for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government.

The cost of these “user fees” can be passed on to consumers.

Those federal exchanges aren't even legal, and already they're talking about you paying for the privilege of using them -- and by you, I mean you, because the cost can be passed right on to the consumer.  It's like a tax, for an illegal service that the government commands you to accept.

Advent

An aside: this Advent wreath was made by my wife in about fifteen minutes this evening, because I told her I wanted one this year. I'm really quite impressed with her.

Imperial Overreach

There's a pretty solid argument here from Rep. Eric Cantor, which includes something interesting on the link between the rule-of-law and GDP. We were discussing that recently, in one of the Politics sections, and it might be worth revisiting in light of this piece.

Better Enjoy the War: The Peace Will Be Terrible

So, allegedly, went a popular joke in Nazi Germany. How surprising to imagine that they thought of what the peace would be like! The ideology called for a system that was unlikely to ever produce it. A war of all against all, meant to lead to the ethic domination of one party on all others, seems least likely to produce anything like a peace.

Perhaps they always knew that vengeance was coming. The subject of the article is the question: does peace require vengeance? I suspect the answer is that it does: there are times when the failure to exact a due and dispassionate revenge will prevent you from being respected enough to serve as a new locus of authority.

But so say I; decide for yourselves. It is an interesting story.