Justice and the Law, II

Aristotle himself would not accept that formulation. He argues in the first book of the Politics that the political is the highest form of good, because only in the polis are the goods possible that the family cannot achieve by itself. Thus, the political -- including especially the work of the legislator -- is at the heart of a just society. The law should govern us almost completely, he says in the Rhetoric:

Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and this for several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency. The weightiest reason of all is that the decision of the lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general, whereas members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on definite cases brought before them. They will often have allowed themselves to be so much influenced by feelings of friendship or hatred or self-interest that they lose any clear vision of the truth and have their judgement obscured by considerations of personal pleasure or pain. In general, then, the judge should, we say, be allowed to decide as few things as possible. But questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since the lawgiver cannot foresee them.

Here we see the same concern at work identified in the previous piece: the law is about removing the influence of 'feelings of friendship or self-interest,' but we also see 'hatred' mentioned. Here we get the fist indication of where the problem of revenge enters into the law. Another source of injustice in the law is hatred for those against whom we seek revenge.

Notice that the way the formula works, however, we don't get the suggested benefit that the state can take over the vengeance business in a better or more just way. The state isn't supposed to execute revenge, according to Aristotle: the point of the state is to prevent revenge, not to execute it for us.

A Christian may find this idea appealing, because we are taught that revenge isn't the proper business of individuals or states: it is a divine prerogative alone. Yet the law doesn't encompass everything. What do we say about conflicts between states, or with non-state actors like al Qaeda who live in areas where our laws do not properly apply?

For that matter, what do we say in a secular state (like ours is supposed to be, according to many)? Revenge is a very natural human desire, and our most deeply felt accounts of justice are built around it. If a man rapes your daughter and kills her, nothing will seem just except that something horrible should be done to him in return. Once again, justice is the work of the intimate bonds. The only kind of thing that could seem just to us is vengeance. Anything else is a pale shadow of justice. Did we not say that justice is 'getting what you deserve'?

Well, we can say that we might all like to get something better than we deserve! Again, in a Christian context, this is possible to imagine: the wages of sin is death, but no matter how severe the sins, vengeance will be forgone by the One whose sole right it is. Here is a kind of justice that we might all find very appealing (found in the most intimate of bonds, as it happens: there is nothing more intimate than being, and in the context of this faith, it is only God's love that holds you in being at all).

Yet we know from experience that a society that attempts to be as forgiving as God does not achieve good results. The weak as well as the strong may benefit from having their sins forgiven, but the weak will suffer greatly if crimes are forgiven, and a Christian society is supposed to be a friend to the weak.

One answer I have often thought was a good one was -- at least in severe crimes -- to separate the functions of fact-finding and punishment. Aristotle proposes separating them because fact-finding has to be done in individual cases, whereas punishments can be set by a rule that is not open to hatred or desire for revenge. Yet justice lies in the intimate relations. Once the independent court has determined that a man is in fact guilty of having raped and murdered a family's daughter, why not give him over to them for punishment?

What we do instead is to deny them, the family, true justice. We spend a very great deal of time and money denying them this. We make ourselves into jailers and torturers, just so they may be denied it.

King Arthur is supposed to have said, after Morgan le Fay sent him the poisoned cloak, that if he had his way he would be revenged on her so all Christendom would speak of it. He was a king, and if the king and the land are one, all the more are the law and revenge. Perhaps the most just thing would be if everyone were a king or queen, just as every home is a castle.

Justice and the Law, I

So we had a brief discussion at Cass' place last week, which Mike rightly pointed out was not well-rooted. I was talking about revenge (because Sly and Elise started there), and YAG wanted to talk about what he sees as the advantages to society of outsourcing revenge to the state, which led to some talk about law and justice. Since we were discussing several different things without a careful foundation, the discussion did not produce as much light as heat.

Let's try again.

When talking about the relationship between justice and anything else, we should try to define what is meant by "justice." This is not easy!

Plato understands individual justice on analogy with justice “writ large” in the state, but he views the state, or republic, as a kind of organism or beehive, and the justice of individuals is not thought of as primarily involving conformity to just institutions and laws. Rather, the just individual is someone whose soul is guided by a vision of the Good, someone in whom reason governs passion and ambition through such a vision. When, but only when, this is the case, is the soul harmonious, strong, beautiful, and healthy, and individual justice precisely consists in such a state of the soul. Actions are then just if they sustain or are consonant with such harmony.

Such a conception of individual justice is virtue ethical because it ties justice (acting justly) to an internal state of the person rather than to (adherence to) social norms or to good consequences; but Plato's view is also quite radical because it at least initially leaves it an open question whether the just individual refrains from such socially proscribed actions as lying, killing, and stealing. Plato eventually seeks to show that someone with a healthy, harmonious soul wouldn't lie, kill, or steal, but most commentators consider his argument to that effect to be highly deficient.

Aristotle is generally regarded as a virtue ethicist par excellence, but his account of justice as a virtue is less purely virtue ethical than Plato's because it anchors individual justice in situational factors that are largely external to the just individual. Situations and communities are just, according to Aristotle, when individuals receive benefits according to their merits, or virtue: those most virtuous should receive more of whatever goods society is in a position to distribute (exemptions from various burdens or evils counting as goods). This is what we would today call a desert-based conception of social justice; and Aristotle treats the virtue of individual justice as a matter of being disposed to properly respect and promote just social arrangements. An individual who seeks more than her fair share of various goods has the vice of greediness (pleonexia), and a just individual is one who has rational insight into her own merits in various situations and who habitually (and without having to make heroic efforts to control contrary impulses) takes no more than what she merits, no more than her fair share of good things.

Let's talk about where justice is properly located. Both of these philosophers are treating justice as an individual phenomenon that has links to a social or political phenomenon. Where is justice to be found?

Another discussion last week involved an analogy to water: it isn't reducible to the oxygen and hydrogen that are its parts, I said, because water has properties of its own that the components do not have. The relationship creates a new thing that is just as real as the components (and even hydrogen and oxygen are, after all, nothing more than relationships of sub-atomic particles, which are themselves only relationships of another kind). Properties that come to be realized at higher levels of organization are called "emergent properties," and we can say that a property belongs to the level of its emergence -- wetness, so to speak, belongs to water rather than to oxygen or hydrogen.

So where does justice emerge? It seems that on Plato's account it emerges in the individual, but on Aristotle's it does not emerge until there are multiple individuals in relationship to one another. For Plato, it would be possible to speak of an individual as just because he was guided by the Good, and so he could be just while dining alone -- he would be just, in a sense, by being moderate with his food so as to maximize his capacities. For Aristotle, justice is about not taking more than what is fair given your own value and virtues. Moderation is a virtue, and it is related to justice because it is what allows you to resist the temptations that might cause you to be unjust.

Either way, justice is a property of pre-political levels. Either it emerges in the individual soul, or it emerges at the level of first relationships -- family relationships, naturally, because our first relationships are the relationships with those who bring us into the world and sustain us. And indeed Aristotle will talk, in the Politics, about how political unions form out of the family unions that are our first society.

Justice is therefore not a property that belongs to the law. It is a pre-political virtue. Why, then, do we associate it with the law?

It seems that we have less trouble being just to those we love. On Plato's account, this makes sense: if we are guided by the Good, by definition we desire the good for those we love. On Aristotle's account it is a bit harder, until you realize that he regards friendship also in terms of virtue. It is possible to have lesser species of friendship that are just for useful things, or because they are pleasant, but a true friendship is brought about by the admiration you have for the virtues of another. It is therefore easy not to wish to take more than is fair from those you admire, because you want them to think well of you in return. Likewise, you naturally desire the good for those you befriend, for if they did not obtain things that were good for them, they would cease to be.

When families or other pre-political groups try to assemble themselves into larger groups, however, it is not as easy to be fair to each other. It is, in fact, more natural to continue to favor those whom you love -- either as family or as friends -- and to try to obtain extra advantages for them (or yourself).

Yet the reason we want a larger society is so that we can obtain some kind of benefit from others outside our intimate circles. They do not wish to be exploited, nor do we wish to be exploited by them. So we create rules, agreements, that should govern our interactions to make sure that they are fair.

Still disputes arise. One group claims that the other group didn't adhere to the rules, or broke an agreement. If this is not to lead to fighting and a breakdown of the society (and its benefits), an accord must be made between the parties. Sometimes the parties are virtuous enough to work it out between themselves. Often, though, some respected third party must be brought in to solve the problem.

If this is done by negotiation, and the third party is respected by both, no state is necessary even here. But if it is done by force, and the adjudicating party is not followed by will but because it has the capacity to compel obedience, then you have a state and laws.

So it seems that justice in the law lies in having an institution that is capable of forcing us to treat our fellow subjects in the same way that we would treat those we love, i.e., our friends and family. It forces us to keep the arrangements we made, and requires us to make them in such ways that they are not exploitative. If the law does that, it is performing the function for which the rules were wanted, and thus enabling the society to function.

Yet this seems to be improper. There are many ways in which our intimate connections are rightly privileged by us, especially if Aristotle is right about the nature of justice. If justice is getting what you deserve, who deserves more from me than my father? If I treat him the same way that I treat another, I am being unjust, not just.

This seems to me to indicate that there is a severe tension when we look for justice in the law. The kind of 'justice' it can achieve is only justice by analogy, and itself out of order with the true virtue of justice. True justice lies in the soul, either in a vision of the good or in the sense of love that belongs to those you who most deserve it from you.

That is not to say that the law should make no attempt at this justice-by-analogy. However, it is to say that true justice is impossible for the law, or for the state. If justice is desired, and it is surely desirable, the state and the law must be carefully constrained to their proper and limited role. We should use the state or the law no more than absolutely necessary to enable the benefits of a larger, political society. Nor should the state be allowed to transgress into the intimate spaces where true justice is possible, because the best it can achieve is a mere shadow of true justice. People should be free to depart from such bonds if they fail to be just, but the power to sever or re-order such bonds ought to be located only in the individual, not in the state.

Market Theory of Value

The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it, right?

You’re the cream of the academic world, with many years of study behind you. You're a graduate of Oxbridge, a leading red-brick or a pre-eminent international university. But sometimes academic excellence and a First or 2:1 degree don’t translate into just rewards. Now it’s time to put that right.

What will you be doing?
You’ve accumulated years of knowledge that you can now unlock as an academic writer. You’ll help Academic Minds’ clients with model essays and dissertations that they can use as a basis for their own studies. You’ll earn excellent money, too... from quick £50 projects to dissertations with fees into the thousands. At Academic Minds, we pay the highest rates in the industry, with some writers earning upwards of £4000 a month.

That's over eighty thousand dollars a year. That's at least double the potential earnings of these same people if they should go into actually teaching the students, instead of doing the work for them. But that's not all! Both adjunct faculty members and online/distance educators are subject to terrible working conditions and punishing realities that are totally absent here. You can work from home or anywhere you like, on your own schedule, no BS conditions, exploitative assignments, unpaid extra duties, or training.

All you have to jettison are a few principles, and the sky's the limit!

This would also appear to prove that, if we accept the market theory of value, it is more valuable not to learn than to learn.

Racism in Sports

Serfdom, Nobility, Whatever

I think this is an interesting and challenging article, but it has a key flaw in its frame. The author, Patrick J. Deneen, is talking about a conservative rhetorical tradition going back to The Road to Serfdom. The problem with the rhetoric is that, if you ask the liberal side why they are choosing serfdom over liberty, they will not see things your way.

But here’s the problem: I think Julia regards her condition as one of liberty. She is free—free to become the person that she wanted to become, liberated from any ties that might have held her back, whether debts to family, obligations to take care of aging parents, the challenge and rewards of living with a husband and father of her child, or relying on someone to help her with a business or with her care as she grew old. Would she call her condition “Serfdom”? I rather doubt it.

What is serfdom, then? The author defines it thus:

Serfdom, to be accurate, is an arrangement whereby you owe specific duties to a specific person, a lord—and in turn, that lord owes you specific duties as well.

This, though, is the same relationship that the Duke bears to the King. This is merely a feudal relationship. The difference between a feudal relationship and the relationship you have to the modern state is just this: whereas a feudal relationship defines your rights with regard to the duties you perform, the modern relationship assumes that rights and duties are disconnected and unrelated.

The feudal relationship is healthier in a sense, because it makes clear that we are able to maintain our rights only because (or if) we all pull together in mutual loyalty and friendship. As moderns we have been having a serious debate over the last few years over whether felons should be allowed to vote; in fact, we have some questioning whether the right should be limited to citizens. What's the difference, especially in a country in which many aliens have come to reside (however they have done so), and have an interest in how the government is run? Aren't they people too? Why shouldn't people in Malaysia or Pakistan vote on US foreign policy? Aren't they touched by it? Why shouldn't they have the same right as you to vote?

Having said that, the rest of the article is very much worth reading. The core problem is a key one.

Friday Night AMV

I came across this in an article about horrid Japanese fast food, which describes the tune as "the most cock rock anime theme song this side of the Japanese X-Men."

Not sure exactly what that means, but having watched the thing, I think I have a kind of idea. Good luck with it.

Systems

Cassandra points out to us that Elise's blog is up and running again.  Moseying over there, I found links to two articles from a year ago, addressing the Kermit Gosnell case.  I won't attempt to re-open that wound specifically, though I found myself freshly shocked by details I hadn't yet managed to hear.  What I will do is urge you to listen to the videotaped exchange (contained in the second article) between lawmakers and a Planned Parenthood representative.  They are trying to ask her what objection Planned Parenthood has to a law requiring an abortion doctor to transport a breathing post-abortion baby to a hospital.  After a fruitless exchange that lasts several minutes, she finally responds that there might be logistical issues if the clinic were a rural one that was as much as 45 minutes from the nearest hospital.

I have the strongest impression that she can raise this issue only because she's entertaining some essential confusion.  Suppose a doctor were facing the excruciating choice whether to transport a patient to a distant hospital, knowing that attempting to treat the patient onsite might be too dangerous in light of his limited facilities, but also knowing that the difficulty and delay of transport might itself prove fatal.  A good argument can be made that we should hesitate to pass a law mandating him to entrust his patient to an ambulance in every case.  But the doctor this witness is testifying about isn't facing any such choice.  He will not be "treating" the patient if it remains on his table.  Asked whether the live baby has become the doctor's "patient," the witness is confused, mumbling that she's never really thought it through.

I see an allegiance to a system that's preventing a lot of people from confronting a concrete reality.  What's more, this witness's answer is peculiarly troubling in view of the firestorm raised by Texas's recent legislation requiring abortion clinics to maintain ties to a full-service hospital no more than 30 minutes away.  I frankly attributed that legislation to a desire to regulate a number of abortion clinics out of existence, but this testimony makes me wonder if I didn't judge the pro-life forces too harshly on that limited point.

"For the end of the world was long ago..."

...And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day."

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

Today in 1975 was the first day of Communist rule in Saigon, the day after the famous photograph of the last helicopters evacuating CIA personnel. That was thirty-nine years ago, and it is surprising how much the moment continues to echo here.

May Day

It's strange to hear children singing the song given its subject matter, though it's as true for them as for others. It's easier to make out just what this song is about in this version:



Welcome to the Cathedral of May.

The skim

Nice work if you can get it:  just think how much trouble it would be to go into 50,000 homes where family members were receiving Medicare/Medicaid subsidies for taking care of disabled loved ones, and force them at gunpoint to cough up 30 bucks a month.  How much more convenient to have your governor help you set up a sham election that results in all of these people being deemed employees of the state who have joined SEIU Healthcare Michigan.  Now their union dues can be painlessly deducted from their Medicare/Medicaid checks.

The only fly in the ointment?  After the governor leaves office, someone passes a right-to-work law, and 80% of your ungrateful, disloyal "members" leave the "union."  You might ask, but aren't they giving up fabulous collective-bargaining benefits purchased with all those dollars?  It turns out that SEIU Healthcare Michigan spent most of the money on lobbying, especially on lobbying to keep the skim going and even to enshrine it in the state constitution.  Not outright, of course; these things have to be handled discreetly:

Federal data shows that a majority of those funds in 2012 went to spending on union political activities and lobbying, not collective bargaining.  The union was fined more than $200,000 in March by the state for violating campaign finance laws 2012, the second-largest in state history.  The spending was primarily to back a state ballot initiative which would have codified the union's arrangement with MQ3 in the state constitution.  The union used a front group called Home Care First to conceal its spending.

Nearly half of the states now have right-to-work laws.  Just twenty-six states to go.

Lie-a-Prompter-in-Chief

Yesterday's bombshell was a September 2012 email from Obama aide Ben Rhodes outlining a prep session that would enable Susan Rice to go on the Sunday talk shows and claim that the murder of four Americans in Benghazi could be attributed to an inflammatory video.  Under "Goals," Rhodes listed:

• To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad;
• To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;
• To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests;
• To reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.

A later section entitled "Benghazi" instructs Ms. Rice to state that the Benghazi demonstrations were "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo."

Heartless conservatives jumped on this email, pointing out that they'd said all along that the White House deliberately misled us about Benghazi, in part, by trumping up the ridiculous video story. Voters didn't buy the conservative criticism; they thought Mitt Romney was mean for bringing it up in the debates, and they re-elected Obama.  The White House has denied to this day that it was lying, in between bouts of demanding that we all move on already, and complaining that Republicans are cherry-picking or "doctoring" the documents to create the false impression that the Benghazi response was politicized.

So what was the White House's response when this smoking-gun email came to light? If you can believe it, Jay Carney stood up at the podium at a press conference today and asserted with a straight face:  "The email and the talking points were not about Benghzai. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world."  I guess the White House was planning to bring people to justice somewhere besides Benghazi.  Come to think of that, events have borne that supposition out:   we've done diddly to bring anyone to justice for Ambassador Stevens' murder.

Remember Hillary Clinton's passionate denouncement of the video when the bodies of the Benghazi victims returned to the U.S.?  What are the odds any of this will have an impact on her 2016 campaign?

Greek

This month's Gutenberg project has been a multi-volume work on Homer by W. E. Gladstone.  It took me a while to realize that the author was the same Gladstone who was Disraeli's famous Victorian rival.  Of course many of you have heard their famous exchange of insults:

Gladstone to Disraeli:  "Sir, I predict you will die by the hangman's noose or from some vile disease." 

Disraeli to Gladstone:  "Sir, that depends whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

Gutenberg requires us to transliterate the Greek for the text versions of the ebook, which has led me to learn more about Greek than I've picked up in my whole life.  No Greek or Latin in my high school!  In fact, I don't recall its being offered at my university.

Because I always like to pick up Greek mottoes, I was pleased to run across the original of the Spartan mother's admonition to her warrior son, usually rendered in English as "Come back with your shield or on it." The original is more like "Either this or on it."  I've struck up an email correspondence with a experienced Gutenberg worker who really seems to know his Greek:

ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς--"either it or on it".  First time I've encountered the phrase in Greek!  τάν and τᾶς are the accusative and genitive respectively of the definite article. 

On googling it, the source is given as Plutarch, Moralia 241. But when I look that up in Plutarch, it reads ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας--"either this or on this".  Curious. 

Hmmm.  It looks like the ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς version, copied all over the web by people who don't know what they're talking about, comes from Dübner's edition of 1841.  That's long been superseded by Bernardakis' edition of 1889, which has ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας:  that's the version followed by all the complete online texts of Plutarch's  Lacaenarum Apophthegmata.

According to Gutenberg rules, ἢ ταύταν ἢ ἐπὶ ταύτας is transliterated as "hê tautan hê epi tautas."

More Googling tells me that Gladstone served 60 years in politics, while still finding time to write this very interesting work on Homer.  He apparently was the first to analyze Homer's puzzling use of color terms and to hypothesize that Ancient Greeks didn't see color the same way we do.  They seemed to classify colors by lightness and darkness, and perhaps shininess and dullness, rather than frequency.  Homer used the same term to describe the bright green of a young shoot and the bright red of fresh blood.

Gladstone took a double first at Oxford in Classics and Mathematics and, despite Disraeli's amusing taunt, by all accounts was a thoroughly upright gentleman of the old school.  He loved the Greek culture of the Iliad and the Odyssey and paid special attention to what those poems tell us of Ancient Greek political institutions, especially in contrast with the more Orientalized and despotic Trojan customs.  His own politics were a curious blend of liberal and conservative in the best Victorian tradition of each.  Queen Victoria herself, however, preferred Disraeli's clever, captivating manners; she complained that Gladstone always addressed her "as if she were a public meeting."

Good News in Bad News

In a generally critical report on flagship state colleges and universities, this:

A few institutions have held the line in one or more areas, and some even excel. The University of Georgia, for instance, is the only school in the report to receive an "A" rating for its core curriculum; UGA requires composition, literature, foreign language, mathematics, natural science, and U.S. history or government.

Swagger

Death to Widows

Justice is done, according to our system's lights.

A widow was given ample notice before her $280,000 house was sold at a tax auction three years ago over $6.30 in unpaid interest, a Pennsylvania judge has ruled....

Battisti said her husband handled the paperwork for the property's taxes before he passed away in 2004.

"It's bad — she had some hard times, I guess her husband kind of took care of a lot of that stuff," [county solicitor] Askar said. "It seemed that she was having a hard time coping with the loss of her husband — that just made it set in a little more."

Mercy is for the weak. It has no place in the law.

Graft is a Human Right

Spent part of the trip in DC having breakfast with an old Iraq comrade. He's retired from the military now, and is doing pretty well for himself. Living in the DC area, though, a bit part of the accounts he deals with are government accounts. He was pretty good and mad about the system he's found there.

The graft is literally mandated by the government, my friend explains.

The way it works is that government contracts for services come with certain 'set asides' for women and minority-owned businesses. (Not, my friend points out, veteran-owned businesses.) Now let's say you're talking about businesses with significant capital costs. It turns out that there are only a handful (or fewer) of businesses that are really in the running, because only they have the capacity to perform the work. Nevertheless, they need to find 'partners' who fit these set-aside profiles.

So they do, and the way it works is that there is a front company owned by someone with the right profile. The real company forwards the appropriate front company, which slaps its letterhead on that paperwork and forwards it on. The government approves the work, the real company does the work, and the front company collects ten percent.

Everybody's happy. The company gets a fat contract, the front company collects money for nothing, and the practice is so common -- required by law! -- that the media take no notice of it. If news is man-bites-dog, this is the least newsworthy story of all.

Tennessee Riders

Due to the illness of an earlier family member -- one who did, Tex, end up having brain surgery -- I have made a ride up north this weekend. While I was there I came across these photos that my aunt had dug up for her eldest son, my cousin. Here he is, circa 1977:

And here he is, with my grandfather:

She didn't have pictures, my aunt, but apparently my uncle and my cousin's sister were big riders in those days, too. My father owned a motorcycle then, but he wasn't as big into it as he was into muscle cars.

It's those Tennessee mountain roads. They seduce.

Virtue & Wealth

The Pope has garnered an interesting comment from the UK Guardian.

What makes Pope Francis's attack so significant is that his position, too, is charged in moral terms.

What he really believes is that riches in themselves are bad for people. That is part of the reason he does not live in the papal apartments. This is not a view shared throughout the Catholic hierarchy. Nor is it really, whole-heartedly, shared by the politicians who will praise his views. I don't see any party anywhere in the world, except perhaps the Greens, running for election on the basis that they will make the voters poorer but more virtuous.

I'm not sure that position is as unusual as the gentleman portrays it to be. Generally all government action makes you poorer, and therefore has to be pitched in terms of some new capacity that you will achieve in return: and excellence of capacity is, of course, what the ancients meant by the term "virtue." Progressives promising to force you onto health care exchanges are promising to strip you of considerable wealth in return for a capacity, so far unachieved, to provide some measure of healh insurance to those the markets deem too risky to insure in an ordinary risk pool. Conservatives asking you to support the local bond referendum so they can build a new jail, and therefore lock up more criminals, are also suggesting that they will make you a little bit poorer -- in return for a society that is a little bit more virtuous, in the sense of being stronger against the presumably wicked.

So there's always a trade of wealth for virtue, if government is meant to be the means to the end. The radical thing about Reagan's claim was that you could, by shrinking government's powers and sphere of influence, pursue wealth and virtue at once.

That "riches in themselves are bad for people" is not a position Aristotle held, nor Plato -- both held that a proper substance was necessary to pursue virtue, because it provided the leisure for contemplation. What both condemn is not wealth, but a life that focuses on wealth instead of virtue.

That riches are perilous does seem to be Jesus' position, though, and the Pope is not supposed to be neutral between these ancient thinkers.

Keep your doctor, fire your senator, Pt. 374

Bookworm Room lives in Marin County, California, and pays special attention to how blue politics work out there.  Her post today alerts us to new fun that awaits not only those unlucky enough to have been dumped into the Obamacare exchanges, but also anyone who bought insurance directly from a company that also sells on the exchanges, which by law must mirror what they offer on the exchanges.  Customers of California's Blue Cross Anthem already knew they were in for a tough time finding doctors who were part of their new network, or even determining with any certainty which doctors really were part of the network, given the consistently misleading information they have received to date.  Now customers find that, if they get surgery done at some hospitals, their insurance may cover the bills from their surgeons and from the hospital, but not the bill from their anesthesiologist, pathologist, or radiologist.  (That is, they will find this out if they are alert enough to call first and demand specific information about every conceivable bill that may be coming their way as they schedule surgery.)  And yet at Marin General, for instance, the patient has no choice about which of these professionals to use; the hospital farms out the ancillary work as it pleases.

Yes, this law is really going to bend that cost curve down.

We're still trying to decide what to do later this year if our insurance policy really will not be renewed.  (It's impossible to guess ahead of time how far HHS and the White House will go to avoid panic just before the midterm elections.)  If we really must replace our coverage, I am inclined to go with a company (such as Health Assurance) that has elected to stay out of the exchanges altogether.  So far, the indications are that Health Assurance is maintaining a provider network that can be attempted to be believed.

Recently an old friend looked me up on Facebook, then began to argue with me about how inexcusable it was to support the repeal of Obamacare.  Didn't I care about the uninsured, she demanded?  You can imagine my response.

"Different from you and me"?

Kevin Williamson looks at the fuzzy boundaries of the category we call "the rich":

Far from having the 21st-century equivalent of an Edwardian class system, the United States is characterized by a great deal of variation in income:  More than half of all adult Americans will be at or near the poverty line at some point over the course of their lives; 73 percent will also find themselves in the top 20 percent, and 39 percent will make it into the top 5 percent for at least one year.  Perhaps most remarkable, 12 percent of Americans will be in the top 1 percent for at least one year of their working lives.

Darn 73-percenters.

Progress?

I was reading what seemed like an ordinary article about coming attractions in the biotech revolution when I came across the casual statement:

Cats that glow like jellyfish, now in labs, are just the beginning.

Wait.  What?

Yes.  It hardly seems a sporting thing to do to an animal that likes to hunt at night.

I know I said I like innovation in resource use, but I don't believe cats are merely a resource for us to use as we please.

Overdrawn at the planetary bank

Are we?  Matt Ridley says "Nonsense."  Did Stone Age civilization collapse because people ran out of stone?  Contrasting "ecology" with "economy," Ridley finds that one little letter makes all the difference.  Despite our benevolent host's apparent conviction that the study of economics amounts to inquiries into the ways in which people can be induced to accept monetary bribes to tarnish their honor, the field really consists of examining the ways a society decides how to wield scarce resources for which there are multiple possible uses.  A market economy typically makes this decision by letting prices rise and fall according to the scarcity of the resource, together with the demand for it, as expressed by a large number of individuals exercising freedom of choice.  But supply and demand aren't static, even at a particular price point.  As a resource in high demand becomes scarce and costly, the pressure is on to find a substitute.  And human beings under pressure are remarkably gifted at innovating substitutes.

Our natural short-term perspective regards a price spike as a catastrophe--what if someone in need can't pay the price?--but a longer view suggests that a price spike often is just the impetus needed to discover a cheaper alternative.  As Ridley points out,

The best-selling book "Limits to Growth," published in 1972 by the Club of Rome (an influential global think tank), argued that we would have bumped our heads against all sorts of ceilings by now, running short of various metals, fuels, minerals and space.  Why did it not happen?  In a word, technology:  better mining techniques, more frugal use of materials, and if scarcity causes price increases, substitution by cheaper material.  We use 100 times thinner gold plating on computer connectors than we did 40 years ago.  The steel content of cars and buildings keeps on falling....

In many respects, greater affluence and new technology have led to less human impact on the planet, not more.  Richer people with new technologies tend not to collect firewood and bushmeat from natural forests; instead, they use electricity and farmed chicken—both of which need much less land.  In 2006, [Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University] calculated that no country with a GDP per head greater than $4,600 has a falling stock of forest (in density as well as in acreage).

Would any of those things have happened if the Global Department of Resource Justice had had the authority and the funding to prevent anyone from feeling the consequences of scarcity?  Human beings who care about the suffering of others experience a strong temptation to respond to price spikes by imposing price freezes.  (How dare those hoarders of valuable resources withhold them from the needy?)  While there may be good arguments in favor of the brief application of charitable relief to ameliorate an unusually abrupt transition from one resource to its substitute, we're not doing anyone any favors by subsidizing an economic choice about any resource that has begun to get scarce enough to be unaffordable. If that approach made sense, we'd be subsidizing the use of whale oil so that poor people could light as many lamps as the rich.  Or subsidizing stone tools so that no one had to figure out how to make them out of metal.

Saturday Morning AMV

I'm pretty sure this was just a refight of WWII. With an exciting new ending!!

Only Rarely Does Political News Make Me Feel Like Screaming

"Let's hope #Kremlin & @mfa_russia will live by the promise of hashtag"

These people represent you. They represent me. These are my representatives.

Or Maybe Not

President Barack Obama has declared any secession vote in Crimea illegitimate, and warned: “We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders.”

The End, Beginning

A meditation on what it is to be a good man. To be a good woman.

Political will

President Obama scolded mid-east leaders:  "What we haven't seen is frankly the kind of political will to actually make tough decisions." Any comment I could make would only be bouncing the rubble.

For Our Gracious Host

As well as for anyone else, who like Grim, split your own wood.

http://www.geek.com/news/physics-exploiting-axe-splits-wood-in-record-time-1591725/

I think this is amazing.  And probably the first real advancement in what is an ancient tool in a very long time.

Warning Order: Bannockburn

It is now exactly two months until the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.



Prepare yourselves with due care.

Admirable brevity

Economist and Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent:

I remember how happy I felt when I graduated from Berkeley many years ago. But I thought the graduation speeches were long. I will economize on words. Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches. 

1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible. 

2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs. 

3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do. 

4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended. 

5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency. 

6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well-meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse. 

7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation. 

8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made. 

9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore). 

10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation. 

11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves). 

12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

At ease

A sense of entitlement from having served in the military?  Really?

Tom Cotton cheerfully swats away Sen. Pryor's absurd criticism:

BLM II: Messing with Texas

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott slammed the federal Bureau of Land Management’s claims that private property within the state now belongs to the federal government.

The BLM says the federal government owns a 90,000 acre piece of land along Texas’s Red River, despite it being maintained and cultivated by private landowners for generations and no law has been passed by Congress giving BLM ownership of the land.

...

“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” Abbott wrote in a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornz.

"If A President Signs a Bill into Law, Must He Obey It?"

The answer turns out, of course, to be "no."  It is impossible to make the President obey the law.

Brian Boru's March

The Feast of St. George

April 23rd is the feast day of the patron saint of the mounted warrior, the Order of the Garter ("Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense") and many other orders of knighthood.  Here is an article on the life and myth of St. George, patron saint of the cavalry. New Advent has another piece.

The End, The Beginning

How to rebuild civilization, just in case.

Any Stick Will Do To Beat You

At some point, you might as well do it your own way. You're going to take the hit one way or the other.

State of Adventure

After 2,055 miles -- not counting side trips for gas or food -- the long ride has brought me home. I'll be around a bit more often for a while.

Liz Warren

Elizabeth Warren (whom you may recall I dislike far less than most of you guys) insists she's not running for President, but there's no doubt she's just put out a political biography timed to compete directly with the upcoming Hillary!^TM production.  Warren's views aren't all quite what you'd expect.  The New Yorker reviewer is horrified to find, for instance, that she supports the immediate imposition of unlimited public school vouchers:  “An all-voucher system would be a shock to the educational system, but the shakeout might be just what the system needs.”  "Yes," the reviewer sniffs, "that would be a shock.  It would also be reckless"--and of course doesn't bother to defend this assertion.

Warren previously wrote a book arguing that the two-income family is an economic trap that leads families to take on dangerous levels of debt.  Her own father died suddenly when she was a child; the family survived only because they were accustomed to living on his single salary, so that her homemaking, child-rearing mother was able to go out and get work to replace his paycheck.  This is not an argument that will endear her to many feminists, no matter how querulously the victim angle is spun.  She also has views on the subject of appropriating "other people's money" that are calculated initially to endear her to me, at least (which is to say, not to her target demographic), though unfortunately the only "OPM" context she seems prepared to analyze is that of greedy bankers who collect and re-invest the deposits of virtuous common people.  Evidently if benevolent congressmen do it it's all good.

The reviewer made the surprising admission that it's a bit ticklish for a wealthy U.S. Senator to write an autobiography about how tough the powers-that-be have made her life: "An argument that the system is rigged tends to be somewhat undermined, for instance, by the success of the person pointing that out."

It's a shame that Warren's shabby politics interfere with her considerable analytical skills.  I will never understand how people persuade themselves that other people force them to take on more debt than they can service.  Warren is unusual in her skepticism about debt as an engine of growth for the economy, a stance shared (in my experience) by many people who've made bankruptcy law their specialty, but she seems to think that more regulations on bankers will cure the problem.  Or possibly she believes people would borrow less if they were given more generous handouts, though how that can be squared with the experience of any culture in history is a deep mystery to your humble correspondent.

The $10K degree

Texas Governor Rick Perry is enjoying more irritating success with his troglodyte philosophy:

[W]ith his 2011 state of the state address, . . . Perry challenged Texas's public universities to craft four-year degrees costing no more than $10,000 in tuition, fees, and books, and to achieve the necessary cost reductions by teaching students online and awarding degrees based on competency. 

The idea met with skepticism. . . . Peter Hugill, a Texas A&M professor who at the time was president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, posed the rhetorical question: "Do you really want a stripped-down, bare-bones degree?" .  .  . 

If these reactions suggested Perry was out of step with the higher-education establishment, the public's reaction suggested that defenders of the status quo had fallen out of step with students, their parents, and taxpayers. Baselice and Associates conducted a public-opinion survey commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, finding that 81 percent of Texas voters believed public universities could be run more efficiently.  Nationally, a 2011 Pew study found that 57 percent of prospective students believed a college degree no longer carries a value worth the cost.

Now that the program is solidly launched, showing some success, and being emulated in other states, critics fume that the degrees are substandard "applied science" affairs, as if that were a bad thing. Myself, I look forward to the trend gaining traction in a broader field of academia. My own college degree would have cost about $10K if my folks had had to pay cash (instead, it was a perk that reflected in part my father's modest salary). Admittedly, it was a diffuse liberal-arts kind of degree that left me ill-prepared to earn a living, but it got me into law school, where my subsequent degree cost only a few hundred dollars for each of three years, being, presumably, heavily subsidized by the backward state of Texas. Once I had that one, it was no problem earning a living.

It's true that this was thirty years ago and that there has been inflation since then, but inflation doesn't account for a 440% increase in tuition over the last quarter century, and anyway my university was expensive in comparison with state schools, even if it was a bargain next to the Ivy League. Nor am I persuaded that today's youth are receiving fabulous educations that are 4-1/2 times as valuable as my cut-rate affair, either from an intrinsic point or view or in terms of being able to get and stay employed.  Wherever the extra money is going, it's not making the difference between a good education and a "stripped-down degree."

As for where tomorrow's students are going to receive their essential political indoctrination, well, if the public primary education complex and the media can't find some way to pull that off, then there must be some progressive foundations that can cough up the necessary funding.

On a related subject, I'm enjoying Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World," about Finland's astounding success in catapulting its education success to the top of the world in only a few years. Did they do it by spending a bunch of money? Did their kids suddenly get smarter? Did they implement more and better tests and national curricula?  No, they started hiring teachers only out of the top quarter or so of their classes, then gave them a lot of autonomy. Magic.

Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right

An article about driving a Sriracha factory out of California and into the arms of Texas mentioned a book called "Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right," about the success of the Texas small-government model, which was surprising for two reasons.  First, it's written by Erica Grieder, who is identified as a "senior editor" at Texas Monthly, and I didn't think those people were allowed to entertain suspect political or socio-economic philosophy.  Second, my husband points out that it's on our shelf, where it's sat since he bought it some time ago, though neither of us has read it.  Another book to add to my pile!

A third reason for surprise, of course, is that the author uses the serial comma (a/k/a the Oxford or Harvard comma) in her title.  I'm a serial comma type myself, from way back, but in a decided minority.

In the linked article, Grieder addresses the familiar divide between libertarian and social conservatives in Texas politics, an issue of inexhaustible interest for me.

Somebody didn't get the memo

Intrepid researchers charged the feds $500,000 for an analysis of cellulosic-biofuel production and concluded that it's a net loss from the point of view of the carbon footprint.  Cellulosic biofuel is produced from corn husks rather than corn kernels, and has been favored for its lighter impact on the food supply, especially in the wake of the global food shortages that were attributed to biofuel agriculture a few years ago.  Unfortunately, the new study concluded that removing all the husks and converting them to fuel only exacerbates the problem of failing to re-sequester the carbon in the soil.  It's not great for the soil quality, either.

Quite a spectacle.  Somewhere, someone's pounding his desk and demanding to know whose idea it was to let a bunch of researchers go out there and follow their professional consciences.  Now we have a study that shows that cellulosic biofuels don't decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide.  They also degrade the soil and cost taxpayers a bundle, so they wouldn't make that much sense even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were credibly linked to inimical climate change, which it's not.  Somebody forgot to write a check and/or send an appropriate memo of instruction to the research team, which is no way to keep the science settled.

Worms!

Every year about this time, we get invaded by what we call "woolly worms," which I think are really tussock moth caterpillars:  either Orgyia leucostigma or Orgyia detrita.  The Internet tells me that some people call them "longhorn caterpillars," which makes sense, even if I've never heard it around here.

They arrive in huge numbers, covering every surface to a density of at least several per square foot. Although bug websites say they occasionally cause "defoliating events," we don't see much of that; the problem with cut-leaf ants is far worse.  The main problem is that you can't put a hand or foot anywhere without encountering them.  They don't sting, but their hairs do raise a mild allergic reaction in some people's skin.  The infestation lasts for several weeks.

Right behind them come the indigo buntings, which seem to enjoy eating them.  Lots of sightings right now of indigo buntings and red-breasted grosbeaks:

The indigo bunting is a real treat, because we don't have bluebirds or blue jays, so the bunting is just about it in the bright-blue department.

There is even the occasional remarkable painted bunting:

Some of these shouldn't be tried at home . . .

. . . even though they look like a lot of fun.

Easter morning

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.  I Cor. 15:26

Incompatible formats

I'm no spring chicken or cutting-edge technology adapter, but I seem like one next to my mother-in-law, who lacks a working computer or Internet connection.  She used to have one, but never really got the hang of it.  She's definitely not going to start now, when she's pushing 90.

Last night, Megyn Kelly of Fox News played a clip from a viral YouTube video featuring a wedding in which the Irish tenor priest Fr. Ray Kelly sings a so-so version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."  This excellent song had been covered by all kinds of artists for years, and used in the movie "Shrek," before contemporary churches got hold of it and started incorporating it in services--after ditching the original, interesting lyrics and replacing them with anodyne sentiments framing the essential chorus of "Hallelujah."

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this: The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift:
The baffled king composing Hallelujah. 

Your faith was strong but you needed proof.
You saw her bathing on the roof;
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair,
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah. 

Baby I've been here before,
I know this room, I've walked this floor;
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch;
Love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah. 

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below,
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you?
The holy dove was moving too,
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah. 

Maybe there’s a God above,
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
It’s not a cry you can hear at night;
It’s not somebody who has seen the light;
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah. 

You say I took the name in vain.
I don't even know the name,
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word;
It doesn't matter which you heard;
The holy or the broken Hallelujah. 

I did my best, it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch.
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.
And even though it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Does my mother-in-law want a nice, easy CD with a copy of one of the good covers of this song that are available commercially?  No, she likes Father Kelly's voice on the wedding video.  (So does everyone; the YouTube video has gotten 30 million hits in a few days.)  Probably she also gets a kick out of the unexpected sight of a priest breaking into song from the altar, and the delighted couple smiling shyly.  Sigh.  There's no question that we'll do whatever it takes to provide her with this small pleasure; she's ill and in constant discomfort these days.  But it turns out to be unexpectedly complicated to put a YouTube video into a format that one's TV can play, because absolutely no one does that any more.

This site offers advice about two separate pieces of freeware, one to download the video and another to burn the DVD.  The very first comment notes that the freeware doesn't work, but recommends two other programs that do.  Succeeding comments complain that the second recommendations bristle with malware; others disagree; and others point out that they don't work on Macs.

It would almost be easier to buy her a computer and an Internet connection, but it's all she can do to operate the TV, so that's not in the cards.  I'm hoping some of you will know better than I how to pull this off.  Or that, in the meantime, my delightful husband figures it out.  I can hear him cussing in the other room right now.

What we do

My Holy Week reading has included that old standby, "The Screwtape Letters."  The senior tempter Screwtape explains to his feckless nephew that the "Enemy" wants men to be concerned with what they do, while the tempter should try to distract his subject with what will happen to him.

All our recent talk about insurrection brought to mind this clip from the fine movie "Matewan."  Most of the townspeople were uneasily watching an eviction, thinking about what was happening to them and their neighbors.  The sheriff thinks about what he will do.



Holy Saturday is Jailbreak Day.  The suffering of the Crucifixion is over.  Christ has descended into Hell, opened all the cell doors, and showed everyone the way out.  "Follow Me," He says.  "You know how to put one foot in front of the other."  It's about what we do, not what happens to us.

The Brian Battle

A thousand years ago, Brian Boru died at the Battle of Clontarf. For a long time Irish historians taught Clontarf as the victory by which the Irish freed themselves from the Vikings (as, this being the real point of the lesson for their students, one might hope the Irish might someday free themselves from a more recent ship-borne foreign invader). Thus Brian Boru was a major historical figure in Ireland, a patriotic icon of significant standing.

In fact, of course, there were nearly as many Vikings on Boru's side as against him. What he was really doing was entering into Viking politics, with the result that an alliance was formed that improved outcomes for his side. The Irish were more important, and better off, but they didn't push the Vikings into the sea.

Nevertheless, he was a revolutionary figure. Before him the Ui Neill -- the family, that is, of the same Neil of the Nine Hostages who once enslaved Saint Patrick -- had dominated the High Kingship of Ireland. After him comes one of the most famous family names in Ireland: the O'Brians.

"Sequestration Babies"

Children are gifts from God, but this time it appears that the inability of Congress to craft a budget may have had some influence.

Friday Night AMV

Teenager.
Secret talisman.
Giant robot.
Sidekicks.
Villans.
Pretty teenage girl to rescue.
More giant robots.

You can never have enough giant robots.

Disparate petards

It would take a heart of stone not to chuckle at the White House's recent squirming over the results of having "disparate impact" reasoning used against them in re their practice of underpaying female staffers.  Now the same amusing spectacle is playing itself out in a lawsuit by the EEOC against Kaplan, Inc., the private test-prep and for-profit education company.  The Sixth Circuit recently poured out the EEOC's complaint that Kaplan was using the same background checks on prospective employees that the EEOC itself uses.  The EEOC had argued that criminal record and credit checks had a disparate impact on minority applicants.

Can you imagine Kaplan trying to defend itself against a suit by customers whose financial information was stolen by Kaplan employees with access to their student loan records?  "Yes, we could have run routine background checks, but that might have been unfair to minority applicants."  How can anyone even argue with a straight face that it's racially discriminatory to consider criminal and credit records for prospective employees?  What mental gymnastics are required to ignore the implications of that assumption?

More from Steyn

It does seem like the Right spends a lot of time worrying about whether the individual involved in the case is really the right kind of guy, really respectable and really just our sort. The Left doesn't do this, which is probably why they win a lot more of these fights. As Steyn points out, though, it's getting to be common enough that they can't all be bad apples.

These days, pretty much every story is really the same story:

* In Galway, at the National University of Ireland, a speaker who attempts to argue against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) programme against Israel is shouted down with cries of ‘Fucking Zionist, fucking pricks… Get the fuck off our campus.’

* In California, Mozilla’s chief executive is forced to resign because he once made a political donation in support of the pre-revisionist definition of marriage.

* At Westminster, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declares that the BBC should seek ‘special clearance’ before it interviews climate sceptics, such as fringe wacko extremists like former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.

* In Massachusetts, Brandeis University withdraws its offer of an honorary degree to a black feminist atheist human rights campaigner from Somalia.

* In London, a multitude of liberal journalists and artists responsible for everything from Monty Python to Downton Abbey sign an open letter in favour of the first state restraints on the British press in three and a quarter centuries.

* And in Canberra the government is planning to repeal Section 18C — whoa, don’t worry, not all of it, just three or four adjectives; or maybe only two, or whatever it’s down to by now, after what Gay Alcorn in the Age described as the ongoing debate about ‘where to strike the balance between free speech in a democracy and protection against racial abuse in a multicultural society’.

The question, at some point, ceases to be about the merits of the individual case, or whether we do or do not care for the individual in conflict with the government. The first people to come into conflict with an increasingly oppressive system will be the most pricklish, and often we don't care for the pricklish. What we call the 'merits,' though, are about the law as it stands. If the system is the problem, the law that the system interprets is untrustworthy as a guide.

For now it's the pricklish, or the outlandish, or the self-righteous. Or maybe it's the self-described outlaws. But increasingly, it's all of us. If we're going to have to fight, why wait until there are fewer of us left?

Nice Work, NYT: "Veterans and White Supremacy"

Don't you folks ever worry that if you keep calling people racists and white supremacists often enough, the words will lose their sting? What happens if that happens?

The case for sedition

I'm not often on the fence, but I can't bring much order to my thoughts about Cliven Bundy's Nevada standoff with the feds. He's an unsympathetic victim fighting an appalling machine. His cause fails to inspire me, and yet the following sentiment rings quite a bell:

 

 Kevin Williamson's piece inspires me with the view that "there is a great deal of real estate between complete submission and civil war, and that acts such as Mr. Bundy’s are not only bearable in a free republic but positively salubrious."  What's more, it can't be a good idea for the federal government to own 87% of Nevada.  At the same time, Bundy looks like one of those people who have lived next-door to a vacant lot for so long that they've come to think of it as their private park, and are aggrieved when a Walmart gets built on it—though they'd never dream of forming a consortium to save up money, buy it, and preserve it in its wild glory.  After I go through all that, I come back to a profound contempt for Harry Reid that leads me to cheer for anyone who puts a stick in his eye.

Still, while I'm cheering the sight of the feds backing down (however temporarily), it's hard to disagree with Charles C.W. Cooke:

[T]his is a nation with a “government of laws and not of men”—and not the other way around—and it seems to me that this principle should not be considered null and void because one of those men happens to have an agreeable tale, a photogenic complaint, and a romantic genealogical past. . . .  Are we really to believe that the government’s backing up its rules with force is unique to Obama? And why would we imagine that Bundy would have a chance if he doesn’t have a case? . . .  “Mr. Bundy’s stand should not be construed as a general template for civic action,” Williamson writes, thereby demonstrating the problem rather neatly:  When you change the government, you do not need to worry about setting a precedent; when you merely disobey it, you are setting yourself above a system that remains in force. . . .  When can one refuse to obey the law without expecting to bring the whole thing down?

"Coincidental and unfortunate timing"

The Census Bureau announces that, by sheer coincidence, its household survey questions about health insurance status will be so radically changed this year that it won't be possible to determine how much of the change in status resulted from Obamacare and how much from the new form of question. Sorry about that, guys! I guess they figure they can continue to squeak out votes of over 50% of the population without relying on anyone with a brain.

Signs of Capital Times

I've been in the bleak north for a good part of a week, and made the return crossing of the Mason-Dixon line last night. I will be in the DC area for a few days, if any of you who dwell in those regions are interested.

Inner life of a cell

Terrific animation of the operations of a cell at the individual protein level. There's an ad at the beginning, but you can skip it after the first annoying five seconds.

Friday night STMV

TOS, no less.



Steady. As. She. Goes.

How many episodes do you recognize? Your geek cred depends on it!

On The Road Again

Standards

I see that Mozilla fired its first black CEO this week, because he was against gay marriage six years ago. At least, I assume he was black, since support for Prop 8 was highest among the black community.

What? Oh, not black?

Well, doubtless they'd have handled it the same way if he had been.

Break.

Some say the opposite of love is hate. Others say the opposite of love is indifference. Indifference isn't a bad thing, though. Generally you should beware of the move off indifference that comes from forcing people to care about you. They may not care about you just the way you'd hoped.

I'm inclined to indifference about other people, but I have very certain opinions about being forced to do anything.

Name that poet

I got 14 of these questions wrong (out of 50), and in half of those cases I didn't even get the sex of the poet right.  Wouldn't you think that would be easier to guess?

A Brief Return

I have returned from the Wild. A brief rest, and then I will be gone again -- this time, by motorcycle, as far as Massachusetts. I should have at least periodic internet access, though, so my absence may not be as obvious.

The trip was a qualified success. The food I took did not in any sense need to be heated. It was good and pleasant to eat. I did construct an alcohol stove out of a beer can, which weighs less than an ounce (plus the fuel you carry, of course), and which allows you to cook -- or make coffee.

If you want to make one, here's a quick explanation of an easy method. A much more thorough site on the subject can be found here. I modified mine a little further by turning down and in the edges with a pair of pliers, to eliminate the danger of cuts on the metal. I also added more air intake holes for cleaner burning.

Also of great use to me were these excellent tips on lightweight backpacking. My total pack weight, including five days of food (but only 3 liters of water, expecting to need to find more daily) was right at thirty-five pounds.

The THOR pack functioned adequately during the hike, and was fairly comfortable.

Pros for the pack: Though not a purpose-designed backpacking pack, the THOR is adaptable to a lot of other situations besides backpacking. It would make a pretty good pack for air or train travel, I think. It is designed as a three-day pack, but I was able to carry enough for five days. You could easily use it as a Bug Out Bag, or to strap to the back of a motorcycle. If you need extra space, the overall MOLLE construction allows you to rig extra gear.

Cons: The exterior pockets except for the main compartment are smaller than with many three-day packs. Indeed, internal capacity is much smaller -- 2575 cubic inches instead of 3280 like the model I carried in Iraq. This is compensated for by the extensive MOLLE, which is fine if you are experienced and comfortable rigging gear to MOLLE. Many people would prefer a backpacking pack with a larger internal capacity, so they can stow their gear inside instead of rigging it to the outside. The tradeoff is that such a pack is bulkier, which makes it less flexible.

I think their Reaper pack might be a good middle ground, as it has the capacity to expand its internal storage substantially and has a larger secondary pocket instead of several small external pouches. It also has plenty of MOLLE webbing.

Weather was beautiful, although it suddenly is getting warm about the middle of the day. Seems like it was snowing only yesterday, and suddenly it's hot.

Clever Scots

The Bing cover page picture today is of something called the "Falkirk Wheel," which is a rotating boat-lift lock that connects two sections of canal, with a 40-foot change in elevation, in the Forth Valley in Scotland.  Clicking on the information links took me to a fantastic video explaining how the lift works.  It uses 1.5 kWh per lift, the equivalent of the electricity needed to boil eight teakettles.

The video is on this page, over on the right.

Because We Don't Have Enough Conspiracies to Think About

The US is looking to give up control of the Internet to an international consortium of dubious provenance and more dubious imperatives.

The USPS' first class mail delivery monopoly is under increasing stress from actual competition via the Internet: email, IM, Twitter, etc.

The move to tax commerce that occurs via the Internet is gathering steam.

Are these tied together?

Eric Hines

Off To The Wild

I will be gone for several days, trying out your wonderful suggestions for trail food. I have Boar's Head sausage and hard cheese, walnuts and almonds, dried fruits, and several kinds of bread. Pictured is the Julekage, which turns out to be fantastic. Thank you all.

Friday Night AMV

It's all about the race. Think intergalactic "Cannonball Run".

'Night, Warrior

A better man than me, or than most, passes I trust to his gallant reward.

Snakes on a patio

It's getting so that when I walk into my vet's office, they look up and say, "Another snake bite?"  In a sure sign that spring is here, a water moccasin gave up the ghost at the base of my stairs this morning, but not before hitting the newest little 18-lb. squirt of a dog on the nose.  By the time the NPH got downstairs to see what all three dogs were making such a ruckus about, the snake's body was over here, and the head was over there, still hissing "to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee."

The little dog is not awfully swollen and has already been to the vet for injections of antibiotics and prednisone.  I didn't hear her squeal when the snake struck her, but when she got the shots you could hear her shriek a mile away.  She makes the same noise when I pull a sticker out of her foot, the little faker.  For that matter, if she's caught at the rear of the pack and can't get out the door fast enough, she emits the same ear-piercing scream, so that at first I thought I must have stepped on her and torn off a leg at least.  So she doesn't feel very well, but she seems to be OK.

I'm contending with venomous attacks myself.  Earlier this week some kind of critter stung me here and there on the back and side.  I never saw what it was, but the bites have turned into large angry red places, so I'm breaking down and seeing a doctor later this morning.  It's a hostile world.

She Sounds Vaguely Dissatisfied

I normally ignore the writings of Ms. Coulter, but the title of this piece (which the Jackson Clarion Ledger softened to "Thanks for nothing, Mickey Kaus") got my attention.

If the predictions of leading Obamacare adviser Ezekiel Emanuel's prediction that employer-based health care will be nearly destroyed by the ACA. Ezekiel, which is a very fitting name for a prophet of doom, thinks that about two-thirds of those who currently have employer-backed health care will lose it.

Waivers can drag this out for a while, but eventually people are going to get punched in the mouth.

Etiquette and Protocol

Every medium has them. Right, NBC?

Just In: Air Force fires nine nuclear missile commanders over two-year cheating scandal

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 27, 2014

I wonder how many people had heart attacks before they got to word nine?

Fire escape

So our little fireball turned out to be no big deal, but here's some nail-biting video from yesterday's five-alarm apartment-building fire in Houston.  (I recommend watching with the sound turned off.)  The construction worker shows real presence of mind.

Update:  Hey, didn't anyone like this?  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Our pipeline just blew up

Nobody was hurt, as far as I can tell.  Maybe an oyster boat caught the pipeline with its dragline.  Besides the impressive video, the main effect seems to be that our peninsula will be without natural gas for the foreseeable future.  Luckily we're on a propane tank, being the extra-boonified section of this part of the boonies.

Cool tech

Someone pointed me to IEEE Spectrum for better than usual science journalism.  Here are some catchy articles about nano-labs on tiny fiber-optic tubes, infrared contact lenses, and (for Cassandra) an electrical tiara said to relieve migraine headaches.

KDS

Koch Derangement Syndrome.  If it weren't for the leftist press and certain close relatives, I'd never even have heard of the Koch brothers, although it turns out they control all my thoughts.  Harry Reid can't seem to shut up about them lately, in his increasing desperation to change the subject.  The Washington Post ran a typical hit piece recently, blaming the Koch brothers' support for the Keystone XL pipeline (about which they have been studiously neutral) on their status as the biggest lessees of the associated tar sands (which is untrue).  John Hinderaker (PowerLine) ran an intelligent response.  The Washington Post struck back, explaining that it's not important whether an article is both false and malicious, as long as it promotes spirited debate.  It's an interesting approach; would the WaPo be pleased with a thought-provoking article accusing Barack Obama of kidnapping and eating the passengers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

Hinderaker replies again, with an attempt to demystify the double-standard:

So we have a contrast that couldn’t be clearer:  the Washington Post published a false story about support for Keystone because it fit the Democratic Party’s agenda.  It covered up a similar, but true story about [wealthy Democratic donor Tom Steyer's] opposition to the pipeline (and about “green” politics in general) because that, too, fit the Democratic Party’s agenda.  I don’t think we need to look any further to connect the dots.