Off-road thinking
More on graphene: How a greater fear of being boring than of being wrong led to levitating frogs and a Nobel prize.
Genes and culture
Reading half a dozen reviews of Nicholas Wade's new book "A Troublesome Inheritance" had almost reduced me to despair of ever finding one that didn't get stuck in the long-running "tastes great, less filling" quarrel between nature and nurture, or in sterile quibbles over whether the word "race" has any meaning. (I can't say for sure when red becomes orange and orange becomes yellow, but I know that colors can be usefully distinguished.)
This New York Books review, amusingly entitled "Stretch Genes," avoids the usual excitable excesses. Wade's book sounds like an interesting romp through theories about how traits like willingness to trust non-kin, or ability to delay gratification, can profoundly affect the structure of civilization. It also sounds like an inexplicable effort to attribute to genes a number of global differences that could as easily be attributed to culture. Wade looks, for instance, at the hesitance of some Southeast Asian cultures to adopt successful strategies from Chinese immigrants. If it were only a matter of culture, he wonders, why wouldn't people readily adopt the new strategy as soon as they observe its success? It must be genetic. Or . . . could there maybe be some huge non-genetic hurdles to adults' ditching one culture and adopting another that seems to offer an advantage in one sliver of life?
There are fascinating studies involving identical twins separated at birth. They are almost the only line of inquiry that I find persuasive on the knotty problems of disentangling nature from nurture.
This New York Books review, amusingly entitled "Stretch Genes," avoids the usual excitable excesses. Wade's book sounds like an interesting romp through theories about how traits like willingness to trust non-kin, or ability to delay gratification, can profoundly affect the structure of civilization. It also sounds like an inexplicable effort to attribute to genes a number of global differences that could as easily be attributed to culture. Wade looks, for instance, at the hesitance of some Southeast Asian cultures to adopt successful strategies from Chinese immigrants. If it were only a matter of culture, he wonders, why wouldn't people readily adopt the new strategy as soon as they observe its success? It must be genetic. Or . . . could there maybe be some huge non-genetic hurdles to adults' ditching one culture and adopting another that seems to offer an advantage in one sliver of life?
There are fascinating studies involving identical twins separated at birth. They are almost the only line of inquiry that I find persuasive on the knotty problems of disentangling nature from nurture.
Altamont
Two concerts stand at the very core of the Boomer mythos, Woodstock and Altamont. The one was good, the other evil. Woodstock was -- in spite of mud and hardships -- a festival of love and the new way of thinking. Altamont somehow became tainted, and the source of the darkness was pinned on the violence of the Hells Angels.
The matter is of interest because a new feature about them, which 'of course' will address the concert. The initial press is not encouraging.
As for the other matter: 'A young man was stabbed to death.' True, as far as it goes.
Here's a documentary on the matter.
The young man in question had been thrown out of the concert for trying to climb onto the stage. He went somewhere and obtained a revolver, returned, drew the gun, and charged the stage again.
Another story built into the mind of the Boomer generation is the assassination of John Lennon. The Hells Angels stopped a similar attack on the Rolling Stones, perhaps the only band of equal stature to the Beatles.
The Angel who saved the Rolling Stones did it without shooting into the crowd, without hurting anyone else, and by charging a gun with a blade.
That's not bad. The failure to understand what they had seen right in front of their eyes was not the first such failure. We are still today living with the consequences of many other failures by just the same people, of just the same kind.
The matter is of interest because a new feature about them, which 'of course' will address the concert. The initial press is not encouraging.
Of course, the project will include the 1969 Altamont concert in Northern California where the Hells Angels provided a barrier to make sure that the crowd didn’t come onto the stage when the Rolling Stones played. As the story goes, their “payment” was in beer. The Angels got into brawls with the fans and a pregnant woman ended up with a skull fracture and another young man was stabbed to death. It was total chaos. After that, the Hells Angels were persona non grata, and public opinion about the club changed for the worse.The woman was hit by a beer bottle thrown from the crowd, not by the Angels.
As for the other matter: 'A young man was stabbed to death.' True, as far as it goes.
Here's a documentary on the matter.
The young man in question had been thrown out of the concert for trying to climb onto the stage. He went somewhere and obtained a revolver, returned, drew the gun, and charged the stage again.
Another story built into the mind of the Boomer generation is the assassination of John Lennon. The Hells Angels stopped a similar attack on the Rolling Stones, perhaps the only band of equal stature to the Beatles.
The Angel who saved the Rolling Stones did it without shooting into the crowd, without hurting anyone else, and by charging a gun with a blade.
That's not bad. The failure to understand what they had seen right in front of their eyes was not the first such failure. We are still today living with the consequences of many other failures by just the same people, of just the same kind.
Hah!
'And then it hit me! By which I mean, my wife pointed it out.'
I wonder how much this insight applies to the one show -- which, like most television, I haven't seen at all -- and how much it is a barometer for the current society.
Confer:
I wonder how much this insight applies to the one show -- which, like most television, I haven't seen at all -- and how much it is a barometer for the current society.
Confer:
Live by the Viral, Die by the Viral
One of the key problems in American foreign policy is always the maintenance of political will among the American people. It's hard to sustain a long-term and difficult operation if the American people's interest in or support for it wavers; harder still if the opposition party is actively undermining you.
It turns out a particular problem with the use of social media as the forefront of your diplomacy is that, on the Internet, interest wanders quickly.
It turns out a particular problem with the use of social media as the forefront of your diplomacy is that, on the Internet, interest wanders quickly.
Intellectual disarmament
Here's an exceedingly odd article in Foreign Policy about the accelerating collapse of Libya, because Republicans. What I apparently didn't understand before is that the purpose of a Congressional investigative committee is not to look into malfeasance by United States officials but to solve Libya's internal problems. The author sputters with outrage that Republicans in Congress have obsessed about the President's "bungled communications" about Benghazi rather than about how to transform Libya into a paradise without committing either treasure or blood. That turns out to be the proper task of the opposition party rather than, say, the White House or the State Department. Here are the helpful ideas of the State Department, by the way:
"Libya has many challenges, and we're aware of that," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday. "We believe they cannot be overcome if its leaders don't settle differences through dialogue and work together."
Last week, in London, Secretary of State John Kerry pledged to do "all we can to help the Libyans" solve their political problems. "We need to try to accelerate the effort to bring about stability and security and the governance that is necessary to provide the time and the space for Libyan authorities to be able to confront the threat from extremism and the challenges that their country faces of just providing governance to their people. . . ."But it seems the problem wasn't the flabby emptiness of these sentiments; it was Congress's inexplicable refusal to provide "resources":
With the hours upon hours of hearings dedicated to Benghazi, very little of that time focused on how Congress could help provide the resources the administration might need to improve the situation in Libya. The fact that this isn't likely to change bodes poorly for the country's future.The article mentions the administration's alert readiness to evacuate the Libyan embassy as soon as things go from desperate to nightmarish this time. (Not gonna make that mistake twice!) Imagine the morale in that embassy. "Yes, this cesspool of a country's blowing up, and I can't imagine what professional sins I must have committed to have been assigned here, but I take comfort in knowing that Washington has my back."
Two True Things From The FBI
The FBI has issued a couple of interesting statements lately: worries about concentrated government power, and a confession of defeat in the War on Drugs.
It would be nice to hear more frankness like this. Well done.
It would be nice to hear more frankness like this. Well done.
Clue bat
The president boasted that wait-times at the VA have been slashed by 50% in the last year.
But wait, wasn't there some kind of scandal about fudged wait times? Maybe he hasn't heard about it yet.
I shouldn't blame him too much. Most of the coverage I've seen lately is depressingly confused, focusing on the wait-times themselves instead of the fraudulent coverup. The wait-times have been with us for a long time and are unlikely to be fixed as long as we're moving in the direction of socialized medicine instead of away from it; they're also an extremely comfortable issue for the current administration, being one of its many "inherited" problems. The current scandal is, or should be, about the fraud, the coverup, and the President's refusal even to acknowledge it, let alone to effect a remedy.
Even though, as he says, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." You've got a telephone and a fountain pen, Mr. President. How about putting your tush in gear to solve a purely executive-department problem? You may not be able to supply decent medical care to vets (or at least, not until you reform your philosophy), but you can sure address fraud in your own ranks. It might even be easy to get the voters and Congress behind a solution if the problem isn't deliberately buried.
But wait, wasn't there some kind of scandal about fudged wait times? Maybe he hasn't heard about it yet.
I shouldn't blame him too much. Most of the coverage I've seen lately is depressingly confused, focusing on the wait-times themselves instead of the fraudulent coverup. The wait-times have been with us for a long time and are unlikely to be fixed as long as we're moving in the direction of socialized medicine instead of away from it; they're also an extremely comfortable issue for the current administration, being one of its many "inherited" problems. The current scandal is, or should be, about the fraud, the coverup, and the President's refusal even to acknowledge it, let alone to effect a remedy.
Even though, as he says, "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want." You've got a telephone and a fountain pen, Mr. President. How about putting your tush in gear to solve a purely executive-department problem? You may not be able to supply decent medical care to vets (or at least, not until you reform your philosophy), but you can sure address fraud in your own ranks. It might even be easy to get the voters and Congress behind a solution if the problem isn't deliberately buried.
The Quest for Bannockburn
In the run-up to the celebrations attending the 700th anniversary -- 23 June, remember -- BBC Two has put together a fairly neat short history. If you aren't fully familiar with the Bannockburn, you could do worse than to look it over.
Price-fixing, Part . . . oh, I forget
Health insurance rates too high in California? No problem, we'll respond just as we did to unruly prices on other necessities. Remember the fabulous success of California's artificial "market" for energy prices? Me, too: most of my work starting in 2001 arose out of the nationwide wave of electrical power generator bankruptcies that began with Pacific Gas & Electric, a business failure caused 100% by barking-mad state power utility regulators who thought they could repeal the law of supply and demand with a regulatory wand. Regulators never dreamed that micromanaging PG&E's business would lead to brownouts. It worked for the Soviet Union, right?
The more critical a product is, the worse idea it is to jack with its market. Price caps mean crashed supply and stymied innovation, last time, this time, and every time.
The more critical a product is, the worse idea it is to jack with its market. Price caps mean crashed supply and stymied innovation, last time, this time, and every time.
"There Is No More Molly"
Mark Steyn remarks on the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of cartoonist Molly Norris:
[Four years ago]The latter quote is from an article about the "Draw Mohammed Day," which was the event she started. This year it was shut down by Toronto police.
You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.
On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"?
[Today]
Because of the Muslim death threats, Molly Norris, who started the event, had to go into hiding and change her name. She disappeared completely and nobody knows whether she is dead or alive.
Against Rutgers
P. J. O'Rourke has posted a spirited defense of Madame Rice, a harsh indictment of Rutgers' institutional culture and college education generally, and a reminder of an excellent poem that I hadn't read in many years. Indeed, I had forgotten the poet -- not the poem itself, but for some reason I thought it was Thoreau's work, and not Robert Frost's.
SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,"Elves" is not a bad explanation, after all.
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
A Day of Civic Duty
Today I both voted and, shortly thereafter, donated blood to the Red Cross. Tonight we'll have the exciting tabulation of the winners and losers, and see how the general election will shape up.
I went with Todd Robinson over Michelle Nunn not out of any strong sense that she was a bad candidate, but just for the reason most people will vote for her: her father was Sam Nunn, a man I greatly respect. On reflection, though her career in charitable organizations is worthy of respect, the real reason she's the out-front favorite is just because she comes from a famous family and has a famous name. Robinson has earned the respect he has all by himself, as for example when he served with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.
In a way that's unfair to Ms. Nunn, who isn't at fault for having famous parents, nor for coming of age at the same time that Jimmy Carter's grandson is going to be a candidate for governor, or at the same time that we've recently had two Bushes and two Clintons as serious contenders for President (and a third Bush on the way, according to reports). Of course we have had the Kennedys for years, and of course every President we've ever had has been kin to George Washington.
Nevertheless, I believe that if there is a natural aristocracy, it must be an aristocracy not of blood but of virtue. We should look for the ones who have earned it. I have no doubt that Mr. Robinson will say, at his victory or his concession speech, that he owes everything to his family. In a way he will be right, but not in the same way. Doubtless he owes them a great deal, but not a direct ascension to the top of the ticket; doubtless he couldn't have done it without them, but it was him all alone there in the mud and the night.
UPDATE: With 2% of results in, NBC already feels safe calling it for Michelle Nunn.
I went with Todd Robinson over Michelle Nunn not out of any strong sense that she was a bad candidate, but just for the reason most people will vote for her: her father was Sam Nunn, a man I greatly respect. On reflection, though her career in charitable organizations is worthy of respect, the real reason she's the out-front favorite is just because she comes from a famous family and has a famous name. Robinson has earned the respect he has all by himself, as for example when he served with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.
In a way that's unfair to Ms. Nunn, who isn't at fault for having famous parents, nor for coming of age at the same time that Jimmy Carter's grandson is going to be a candidate for governor, or at the same time that we've recently had two Bushes and two Clintons as serious contenders for President (and a third Bush on the way, according to reports). Of course we have had the Kennedys for years, and of course every President we've ever had has been kin to George Washington.
Nevertheless, I believe that if there is a natural aristocracy, it must be an aristocracy not of blood but of virtue. We should look for the ones who have earned it. I have no doubt that Mr. Robinson will say, at his victory or his concession speech, that he owes everything to his family. In a way he will be right, but not in the same way. Doubtless he owes them a great deal, but not a direct ascension to the top of the ticket; doubtless he couldn't have done it without them, but it was him all alone there in the mud and the night.
UPDATE: With 2% of results in, NBC already feels safe calling it for Michelle Nunn.
Battle of the Nations: Good Parts Version
Well, "best parts version," but that loses the reference.
That Ukrainian in the beginning may have had an unfair advantage in terms of real-world experience.
That Ukrainian in the beginning may have had an unfair advantage in terms of real-world experience.
Foreign Cars Do Sometimes Resemble Trolls
[A]round 7 a.m. as she drove her red BMW by the intersection of Southeast 7th and Morrison.... A man dressed in chain-mail with a helmet, shield and carrying a sword and staff ran into traffic and started attacking her car.Apparently she called the police and reported that "a pirate" was attacking her. A gross mis-identification!
Pointing the gun turrets in
States are operating under an unfair disadvantage. Companies are voting with their feet, moving in large numbers from California to Texas and in lesser numbers from New York to just about anywhere with more reasonable gun-control and right-to-work laws. What's a state to do?
Foreign countries showed us the solution a long time ago: the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea made the border more secure. That is, secure not only in the sense of controlling immigration, but in the even more important sense of stopping those terrible rich people from leaving in disgust. California and New York don't have the power to shake down emigrants at the border, though California has toyed with the idea. In contrast, the U.S. federal government is quite prepared to give it a try.
That's the ticket: Never influence economic behavior by persuasion, or by applying incentives out of your own pocket, when you can do it by force.
Foreign countries showed us the solution a long time ago: the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea made the border more secure. That is, secure not only in the sense of controlling immigration, but in the even more important sense of stopping those terrible rich people from leaving in disgust. California and New York don't have the power to shake down emigrants at the border, though California has toyed with the idea. In contrast, the U.S. federal government is quite prepared to give it a try.
That's the ticket: Never influence economic behavior by persuasion, or by applying incentives out of your own pocket, when you can do it by force.
Debate, equal sign, over
Klavan:
The time for talking is past. The experts have reached a consensus. We’ve come too far to go back now. The people have decided. The toothpaste is out of the tube. We’re not going to return to the bad old days. Sure, there are some who insist on being anti-science. There are people who are still clinging to their Bibles and their guns. I don’t know why they’re working so hard to keep folks from having health insurance. They want to put y’all back in chains. They want to put women in binders.
Stop me before I buy or sell again!
Two good articles about the market. First, the healing powers of the minimum wage:
So let’s break down what she does for her $8 an hour. She says “may I help you” to a customer, a customer gives her their order which she enters via a touchpad computer. The computer computes and totals the order. She enters the amount of cash tendered and it tells he how much change to give back. Or she swipes a credit card, waits for the receipt to print and hands both back to the customer. At some point after that, she hands the customer a tray with food on it or a bag containing it.
Guess what else can do most of that?Second, Harry Binswanger confesses his guilt for playing a part in "market failure":
You see, a "market" is the interaction of individuals, buying and selling. A market trade is distinguished from seizing goods by force. In the supermarket, I trade my dollars for the items I take from the shelf. That's, as the name says, a market. If I just grabbed stuff from the shelves and ran out the door with it, hoping to evade capture, that would not be "the market" operating but theft. . . .
. . . When people like me are left free to make our own decisions, we screw up. We create chaos. We can't be trusted with freedom. That's when the government has to come in to clean up the mess.
The Elise Situation
I waited for a few days to comment on this, in the hope she might change her mind. Cass has shut down a few times, and come back on second or third thought. Elise seems determined to deprive us of her insights.
I’d also like to thank Cassandra over at Villainous Company for encouraging me early on: You made a world of difference to me, Cass. And I’d like to thank both Villainous Company and Grim’s Hall for taking me seriously as a blogger and for making me feel welcome as a commenter; I’ll be stopping by from time to time.You're welcome. If you want to post here from time to time, just once every few months or years as interests you, let me know. We've been glad to have your company, myself especially.
Context
I'm not sure when it happened, but I noticed several years ago that every damaging admission from a leftist was explained as having been "taken out of context." (I'm open to correction here; maybe I don't notice it when right-wingers do the same thing.) (But see "Gaslighting.") The primary defense to the Climategate emails, for instance, was that some dozens of jaw-dropping admissions of the politicization of the peer review process were taken out of context. Sure enough, when peer reviewers recently rejected a mildly skeptical climate paper on the ground that it would only provide ammunition for those terrible denialists, it wasn't surprising to learn the next day that their remarks had been taken out of context.
I confess, though, that reading their remarks in context hasn't much cleared things up. The paper was rejected because it pointed out an inconsistency in an important recurring feature of climate models, which the reviewer considered a "false comparison" because rational people always understood that no consistency was to be expected on that point. Sorry, not helping.
Mark Steyn is on the case, as usual, with a fine piece about the "Clime Syndicate," entitled "The Descent of Mann." He has not, to put it mildly, reacted to the Michael Mann lawsuit by describing his adversary with more gentleness or caution.
The rejected paper put its finger on the sore spot: the unjustifiable assumption that CO2, a weak greenhouse gas, has suddenly become a greenhouse gas that dominates even its much stronger cousin, water vapor, because of what is often called "forcing" or "sensitivity," which means an assumption that there is a positive feedback loop that is causing greenhouse warming to spiral out of control. There is no physical explanation of why a positive feedback loop should be present, when Nature abounds with far more examples of negative feedback loops tending to equilibrium. The assumption that the feedback is positive is entirely inferred from historical data, then plugged into computer models to create predictions. The problem is that the historical data don't particularly support the positive sign on the feedback loop: at best they support widely varying estimates of its magnitude, and they can with equal rationality be seen to support a negative feedback loop. Nor does a positive feedback loop assumption make for a predictive model that matches experimental data, particularly during the last inconvenient 17 years, which have seen an inexplicable pause in inevitable warming that is sure to be followed by the apocalypse.
Here are the peer reviewer's comments explaining why a paper pointing out problems with various models' feedback assumptions would be "unhelpful":
I confess, though, that reading their remarks in context hasn't much cleared things up. The paper was rejected because it pointed out an inconsistency in an important recurring feature of climate models, which the reviewer considered a "false comparison" because rational people always understood that no consistency was to be expected on that point. Sorry, not helping.
Mark Steyn is on the case, as usual, with a fine piece about the "Clime Syndicate," entitled "The Descent of Mann." He has not, to put it mildly, reacted to the Michael Mann lawsuit by describing his adversary with more gentleness or caution.
The rejected paper put its finger on the sore spot: the unjustifiable assumption that CO2, a weak greenhouse gas, has suddenly become a greenhouse gas that dominates even its much stronger cousin, water vapor, because of what is often called "forcing" or "sensitivity," which means an assumption that there is a positive feedback loop that is causing greenhouse warming to spiral out of control. There is no physical explanation of why a positive feedback loop should be present, when Nature abounds with far more examples of negative feedback loops tending to equilibrium. The assumption that the feedback is positive is entirely inferred from historical data, then plugged into computer models to create predictions. The problem is that the historical data don't particularly support the positive sign on the feedback loop: at best they support widely varying estimates of its magnitude, and they can with equal rationality be seen to support a negative feedback loop. Nor does a positive feedback loop assumption make for a predictive model that matches experimental data, particularly during the last inconvenient 17 years, which have seen an inexplicable pause in inevitable warming that is sure to be followed by the apocalypse.
Here are the peer reviewer's comments explaining why a paper pointing out problems with various models' feedback assumptions would be "unhelpful":
COMMENTS TO THE AUTHOR(S)
The manuscript . . . test[s] the consistency between three recent "assessments" of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity . . . . The study finds significant differences between the three assessments and also finds that the independent assessments of forcing and climate sensitivity within AR5 are not consistent if one assumes the simple energy balance model to be a perfect description of reality. . . . . The finding of differences between the three "assessments" and within the assessments . . . are reported as apparent inconsistencies. The paper does not make any significant attempt at explaining or understanding the differences, it rather puts out a very simplistic negative message giving at least the implicit impression of "errors" being made within and between these assessments . . . . Summarising, the simplistic comparison of [forcing ranges] . . ., combined with the statement they they are inconsistent is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of "errors" and worse from the climate sceptics media side. One cannot and should not simply interpret the IPCCs ranges for AR4 or 5 as confidence intervals or pdfs and hence they are not directly comparable to observation based intervals (as e.g. in Otto et al). In the same way that one cannot expect a nice fit between observational studies and the CMIP5 models.Oh. Well, all right, then. The silly author expected a nice fit between observational studies and models. Can't be printing unfair criticism like that! Especially if he's some kind of wet-behind-the-ears arriviste or a well-known looney denialist:
For a decade, [the author] was director of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology. For another decade, he was Director of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. He's won the Descartes Prize, and a World Meteorological Organization prize for groundbreaking research in numerical weather prediction. Over the years, he and Michael Mann have collaborated on scientific conferences.That's what peer review is for: to elevate the tone.
Apostates
Liberals exaggerate "much" more, says the study -- meaning that many don't really believe at all.
Nor are we intolerant of questioning. Does not The Ballad of the White Horse say:
But Mark was come of the glittering towns
Where hot white details show,
Where men can number and expound,
And his faith grew in a hard ground
Of doubt and reason and falsehood found,
Where no faith else could grow.
Belief that grew of all beliefs
One moment back was blown
And belief that stood on unbelief
Stood up iron and alone.
Why lie about something so intimate, in an age when you will confess your most intimate transgressions to the crowd?
“I think there’s absolutely a level among liberals of not wanting to be defined by their lack of belief,” says Wear. “But there’s also an element of wanting to hold on to the spiritual benefits or comfort of theological beliefs that come with religion, while not wanting to be associated with a lot of the public implications of faith, including social issues.”One wonders why, in this society, more tolerant of unbelief than ever before, and more tolerant than of any ancient.
Nor are we intolerant of questioning. Does not The Ballad of the White Horse say:
But Mark was come of the glittering towns
Where hot white details show,
Where men can number and expound,
And his faith grew in a hard ground
Of doubt and reason and falsehood found,
Where no faith else could grow.
Belief that grew of all beliefs
One moment back was blown
And belief that stood on unbelief
Stood up iron and alone.
Why lie about something so intimate, in an age when you will confess your most intimate transgressions to the crowd?
Stop calling them rolling coffins
For reasons I cannot fathom, GM included a PowerPoint presentation in its recall agreement with federal safety regulators that included instructions on how to speak like a weaselly lawyer when discussing the stuff we used to call safety defects, n/k/a items that do not perform to design. For reasons I cannot fathom even more, someone seems to have combed through actual employee emails to make a list of particularly unhelpful expressions, and quoted them in this soon-to-be-made-public document. Terms to avoid include:
“Kevorkianesque,” apparently a reference to Jack Kevorkian, the doctor who claimed to have helped more than 130 patients commit euthanasia, was one of the presentation’s “judgment words” to be avoided. Others included: “apocalyptic,” “Band-Aid,” “Challenger,” “Cobain,” “Corvair-like,” “death trap,” “decapitating,” “disemboweling,” “genocide,” “grenadelike,” “Hindenberg,” “impaling,” “rolling sacrophagus (tomb or coffin),” “spontaneous combustion,” “Titanic,” “widow-maker” or “words or phrases with biblical connotation."I am not making this up.
All fixed at the V.A.
What's the count up to, now, seven different V.A. caught falsifying records to hide delays in treatment? But the powers that be are all over it, having demanded the resignation of a top official, Robert Petzel. The administration is so all over it, in fact, that it announced Petzel's replacement several weeks ago, in light of Petzel's planned retirement later this year.
The bare and the clothed
Apropos of the dignified "Golden Buns" discussion taking place over at Cassandra's, a rueful ballad:
I went to see my doctor for my annual exam
Standing there in the buff, till suddenly he said, "Man!"
"What is it, doc? Some dread disease? I have to know the score."
"No," he said, "You just don't look good naked any more."
I went to see my doctor for my annual exam
Standing there in the buff, till suddenly he said, "Man!"
"What is it, doc? Some dread disease? I have to know the score."
"No," he said, "You just don't look good naked any more."
Self-cooling electronics
The NPH, a heat-transfer engineer by training, directed me to this article about some surprising qualities of graphene. Most matter follows a well-recognized law requiring that its heat-transfering properties remain constant regardless of its volume. Graphene, in arrogant disregard of this law, gets better at transferring heat the bigger your sample is. I have no idea why; the answer seems to have something to do with the rigid molecular structure, which transmits the heat "signal" without dissipating it very fast, and something to do with what the journalist is pleased to call "reduced dimensionality" (close-packing of molecules?). It's like a reverse case of the "telephone game."
Anyway, apparently it's a big deal for the electrical engineers, who are always on the lookout for tiny bits of things that can do their work without overheating themselves and everyone around them. Many of the amazing gadgets we take for granted these days are possible only because engineers found a way to perform tasks with tiny moving parts that didn't generate more heat than could be quickly and safely dissipated.
The NPH used to spend a lot of time, too, worrying about how hot some things could get in zero-gravity on the Space Station, where the "hot air rises" rule doesn't apply, which means air doesn't circulate the way we take for granted down here: convection cooling doesn't happen without a lot of fans. They say the fan noise got to be quite a problem on the Station, and of course the fan motors contribute to the heat problem themselves. On the Station's exterior, the problem was even more acute. In vacuum, all you get is radiative transfer to dissipate the heat with, which isn't always easy if you're in sunlight or even reflected Earthlight.
Anyway, apparently it's a big deal for the electrical engineers, who are always on the lookout for tiny bits of things that can do their work without overheating themselves and everyone around them. Many of the amazing gadgets we take for granted these days are possible only because engineers found a way to perform tasks with tiny moving parts that didn't generate more heat than could be quickly and safely dissipated.
The NPH used to spend a lot of time, too, worrying about how hot some things could get in zero-gravity on the Space Station, where the "hot air rises" rule doesn't apply, which means air doesn't circulate the way we take for granted down here: convection cooling doesn't happen without a lot of fans. They say the fan noise got to be quite a problem on the Station, and of course the fan motors contribute to the heat problem themselves. On the Station's exterior, the problem was even more acute. In vacuum, all you get is radiative transfer to dissipate the heat with, which isn't always easy if you're in sunlight or even reflected Earthlight.
Idaho Leads The Way
These are men of the people!
I'd vote for either of the guys with beards for a state-level office. I know exactly what they stand for, and just what they hope to accomplish if elected. There's no doubt that they want to hold the office for those purposes only, and not for self-enrichment.
Are they crazy? Well, most people are. They aren't lying to you, though. Besides, any elected office that's too scary to turn over to an ordinary crazy person is too powerful anyway.
I'd vote for either of the guys with beards for a state-level office. I know exactly what they stand for, and just what they hope to accomplish if elected. There's no doubt that they want to hold the office for those purposes only, and not for self-enrichment.
Are they crazy? Well, most people are. They aren't lying to you, though. Besides, any elected office that's too scary to turn over to an ordinary crazy person is too powerful anyway.
Hashtag Diplomacy Works!
But as always, you can't have truly effective diplomacy without a robust military option.
In response to the new demands, Marine Corps Cyberspace Command unveiled a new Twitter task force of Marine Expeditionary Hashtaggers (MEH). “This is a whole new theater of warfare,” said MARFORCYBER spokesman Lt. Col. Brock Ruggedsson. “The Marines of the MEH will significantly impact world events 140 outraged characters at a time."More on the subject here.
Pleading for Sodom
"Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?”I was thinking of this passage while reading Dan Henninger's piece on the closing of minds at some of America's elite academies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was told not to speak, though she is an atheist and a feminist, for she had slandered Islam. Christine Lagarde was told not to speak, though she is one of the world's most successful women and a leader of the International Monetary Fund, for the IMF has gone from being a leftist darling to falling under suspicion of "imperialist" leanings. Robert J. Birgeneau, who as Chancellor of Berkeley was one of the guiding stars of political correctness and a long-time advocate of gay marriage, he was told not to speak. Why? Because Berkeley's police used force to expel Occupy protesters.
The LORD replied: If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.
Abraham spoke up again: “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty righteous people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?” I will not destroy it, he answered, if I find forty-five there.
But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it for the sake of the forty.
Then he said, “Do not let my Lord be angry if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it if I can find thirty there.
Abraham went on, “Since I have thus presumed to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?” I will not destroy it, he answered, for the sake of the twenty.
But he persisted: “Please, do not let my Lord be angry if I speak up this last time. What if ten are found there?” For the sake of the ten, he replied, I will not destroy it.
-Genesis 18:24-32
Just as Sodom turned away from the righteousness of the Lord, these academies have turned away from the moral laws on which they were founded. Established as places of free speech and respectful inquiry, they have become dens of anger and oppression. Henninger explains how it began as a purge against conservatives in the academy, but now has come to consume even those who ought to be darlings of the left -- who have, indeed, been men and women of the left all their lives.
It will not take God to destroy an institution that leaves behind the good it was founded to achieve, and out of which its power grew. Their power depends upon their doing that good, for the sake of which good people donate money or pay taxes to support them, and send their children to be educated there. For a while these institutions may linger, while a few righteous remain to do the work that justified these institutions' economic and social support.
When the day comes that you 'can no longer find ten righteous people among them,' though, they will cease to be.
UPDATE: Via Lars Walker, apparently Science Fiction is now undergoing the same process.
Racist Sexist Fascist
[T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. You cannot say to someone that who you are is wrong, an abomination, is horrible, get a room, and all of those other things that people said about Michael Sam, and not be forced -- not forced, but not be made to understand that what you're saying and what you're doing is wrong.But what you think is who you are. Doesn't that follow from your own ideology? You aren't your sex, or we're sexist. You aren't your race or the color of your skin, or we're racist. You're not your religion, because we are all free to criticize the tenets of our religion and take them as metaphorically as we want. You're not your upbringing for the same reason. You're certainly not bound by your physical 'gender.'
To be free, on the left-liberal reading, is to be free to self-determine. You are what you decide to be. That means you are what you think. You are what you choose to believe in.
Thus if one cannot say to someone that what they are is wrong, one cannot criticize thoughts or ideas once the thinker of those thoughts has identified with them. That follows logically from what has been said before.
This is a contradiction of the will. Willing this understanding of 'who we are' means that you can't say that "You can't say that who you are is wrong." It's madness. It's irrational. It doesn't make any sense at all.
Or are you a racist? A sexist? You've confessed to being a fascist.
The monkey on our backs
American healthcare consumers have a bad habit: they want to have a choice of doctors and hospitals. It's an impulse that needs to be crushed if the new day in cheap, universal healthcare is ever to dawn, according to experts interviewed by the New York Times:
“We have to break people away from the choice habit that everyone has,” said Marcus Merz, the chief executive of PreferredOne, an insurer in Golden Valley, Minn., that is owned by two health systems and a physician group. “We’re all trying to break away from this fixation on open access and broad networks.”The Times coverage is interesting: they seem to be getting just the least little bit skeptical of the brave new world. They even quote Monica Wehby, the doctor running for the Senate in Oregon on the slogan "Keep your doctor, fire your Senator," and Lamar Alexander, who warns, “Too often, Obamacare cancels the policy you wanted to keep and tells you what policy to buy.” Not too long ago, if the Times bothered to acknowledge such positions at all, they'd immediately follow up with some nasty snark. Instead, this article mentions a Medicare policy of allowing people to change plans in mid-year if their network is abruptly eviscerated, as well as controversy in state legislatures or insurance commissions over whether to force insurers to provide some form of out-of-network coverage.
The Pentagon Loses Its Grip
In the old days we would just have shot him.
So, if you catch me at my most sympathetic, I can be quite sympathetic to this idea. However, if you've already betrayed your country and stabbed your fellow soldiers in the back, it takes guts to then turn around and demand in the next breath that they start calling you "Chelsea" and pay your way to your new, feminine way of life.
As far as I'm concerned, Mister Manning had better get used to his cell at Leavenworth. I can't believe the military is going along with this, to the point that this Rear Admiral has already adopted the pronoun change for official military statements.
Pentagon OKs Manning transfer to civilian prison for gender treatmentYou know, in general I don't care what people do. If you decide that you are really a woman, and you want to go through surgery and whatnot on your own dime, it's a free country. Maybe you really are a woman, if "being a woman" means having a female soul rather than having physical chromosomes of the XX type, and somehow your female soul got trapped in a male body. That's a metaphysical question, and it could even be the truth for all I know. Certainly I'm inclined to believe in souls, and manifestly bodies are not always perfected for us, as we often encounter disabilities in the physical body.
...
Some officials have said privately that keeping the soldier in a military prison and unable to have treatment could amount to cruel and unusual punishment....
"No decision to transfer Pvt. Manning to a civilian detention facility has been made, and any such decision will, of course, properly balance the soldier's medical needs with our obligation to ensure she remains behind bars," Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said.
So, if you catch me at my most sympathetic, I can be quite sympathetic to this idea. However, if you've already betrayed your country and stabbed your fellow soldiers in the back, it takes guts to then turn around and demand in the next breath that they start calling you "Chelsea" and pay your way to your new, feminine way of life.
As far as I'm concerned, Mister Manning had better get used to his cell at Leavenworth. I can't believe the military is going along with this, to the point that this Rear Admiral has already adopted the pronoun change for official military statements.
Stands to reason
More from Bookworm Room: a chart she received from Caped Crusader:
A Tale of Two Cities
Chicago Houston
Population 2.7MM 2.15MM
Median HH Income $38,600 $37,000
% African-American 38.90% 24%
% Hispanic 29.90% 44%
% Asian 5.50% 6%
% Non-Hispanic White 28.70% 26%
Pretty similar until you compare the following:
Concealed carry gun law No Yes
# of Gun Stores 0 184 dedicated gun
stores plus
1500 legal places
to buy guns
(Walmart, etc.)
Homicides, 2012 1,806 207
Homicides per 100K 28.4 9.6
Avg. January high
temperature (F) 31 63
Democrat Conclusion: Cold weather from global warming causes murder.
A Congressman who can communicate
Tired of watching your public representatives stumble all over themselves and put people to sleep trying to explain why it's important not to let the White House get away with Benghazi? It looks like somebody screwed up and put a guy in charge who knows how to talk to juries. His opening salvo to the media: if you'd done your job, I wouldn't have to be asking these questions.
H/t Bookworm Room.
H/t Bookworm Room.
Underground Goes Public
"Underground Atlanta" was a vibrant social district about the turn of the 20th century, when the oldest buildings built since Sherman began to get covered up by viaducts, but died when the cover-up was complete. It became important again in the 1960s, and flowered for a few years because of Georgia's blue laws:
It re-opened as a shopping mall in the 1990s, and had one of those Warner Brothers stores that featured big Bugs Bunny statues. The Groundhog Tavern, which was a regular stop for yours truly during the days when I was at Georgia State, was eventually shut down due I gather to drug sales on the premises; otherwise, the core of downtown Atlanta just wasn't a great place for a shopping mall, and shopping malls were dying anyway.
Additionally, the whole surrounding area is just not a friendly place to be. Atlanta has desperately wanted a successful 'fun' district downtown for a long time, but the truth is that it's not a fun place. It's a sterile industrial park masquerading as a city. There are fun towns around the downtown core -- try Decatur! -- but the core itself is the least fun place on earth excepting prisons and other areas explicitly purposed for anti-fun.
Nevertheless, the city has decided that the reason the private sector can't have any fun there is that it was being run by the private sector, and a public-sector solution will do better.
I'm sure it will work out this time.
At the time, Fulton County was the only county in the state of Georgia that permitted mixed alcoholic beverages to be served, provided that men wore coats and ties in places that served them. As a result, Underground Atlanta quickly became the center of downtown Atlanta nightlife. Among the more popular spots in Underground Atlanta were Dante's Down the Hatch, Scarlet O'Hara, The Blarney Stone, The Rustler's Den, The Pumphouse, The Front Page, The Bank Note, and Mulenbrink's Saloon, where Atlanta's Piano Red, under the name Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, played from 1969 to 1979. Other attractions included a souvenir shop owned by governor Lester Maddox and a wax museum. With the old-style architecture lending considerable charm to the district, Underground Atlanta was compared to Bourbon Street in New Orleans....but died as alcohol laws became more sensible across the state, and crime rates in downtown Atlanta exploded in the wake of desegregation and the resulting White Flight.
It re-opened as a shopping mall in the 1990s, and had one of those Warner Brothers stores that featured big Bugs Bunny statues. The Groundhog Tavern, which was a regular stop for yours truly during the days when I was at Georgia State, was eventually shut down due I gather to drug sales on the premises; otherwise, the core of downtown Atlanta just wasn't a great place for a shopping mall, and shopping malls were dying anyway.
Additionally, the whole surrounding area is just not a friendly place to be. Atlanta has desperately wanted a successful 'fun' district downtown for a long time, but the truth is that it's not a fun place. It's a sterile industrial park masquerading as a city. There are fun towns around the downtown core -- try Decatur! -- but the core itself is the least fun place on earth excepting prisons and other areas explicitly purposed for anti-fun.
Nevertheless, the city has decided that the reason the private sector can't have any fun there is that it was being run by the private sector, and a public-sector solution will do better.
I'm sure it will work out this time.
That Wonderful Public Broadcasting
So now that we're going to enjoy the brilliance of NPR instead of Album 88 on our radio, what do we have to look forward to? How about this meditation on how Ice Cream Trucks are associated with deep-seated American racism?
The final part of the article asks whether we should tell our children about the racism embedded in the truck that they -- the children -- care about only because it represents a source of ice cream in the hot summer weather. Should we? "The answer is intellectually complex, but parental intuition provides clarity." This 'complex' answer proves to be, 'Yes, when they are old enough to understand about Santa Claus.'
Can we get a ruling on this nonsense answer? Either this is an ongoing affront to justice, in which case we need to do something about it; or, when our kids ask what the name of the song is, we can just say, "Turkey in the Straw." I'd have never known about the racist minstrel version of the song if NPR hadn't mentioned it, and I'm pretty sure it would not have made America either better or worse if that were the case.
Where there are continuing violations of natural rights, or continuing actual harms due to racism, that's one thing. There remain some places where we really need to carefully investigate the historic injustices in order to make some positive change in accord with true justice.
Picking at scabs is another thing all together.
I came across this gem while researching racial stereotypes. I was a bit conflicted on whether the song warranted a listen. Admittedly, though, beneath my righteous indignation, I was rather curious about how century-old, overt racism sounded and slightly amused by the farcical title. When I started the song, the music that tumbled from the speakers was that of the ever-recognizable jingle of the ice cream truck. (For the record, not all ice cream trucks play this same song, but a great many of them do.)Well, not only is the song not the same one played by all ice cream trucks, it's just one version of a much older traditional tune better known as "Turkey in the Straw." The article makes that point, but insists that we really need to focus on the racist version because ice cream became popular in association with traveling blackface minstrel shows.
The final part of the article asks whether we should tell our children about the racism embedded in the truck that they -- the children -- care about only because it represents a source of ice cream in the hot summer weather. Should we? "The answer is intellectually complex, but parental intuition provides clarity." This 'complex' answer proves to be, 'Yes, when they are old enough to understand about Santa Claus.'
Can we get a ruling on this nonsense answer? Either this is an ongoing affront to justice, in which case we need to do something about it; or, when our kids ask what the name of the song is, we can just say, "Turkey in the Straw." I'd have never known about the racist minstrel version of the song if NPR hadn't mentioned it, and I'm pretty sure it would not have made America either better or worse if that were the case.
Where there are continuing violations of natural rights, or continuing actual harms due to racism, that's one thing. There remain some places where we really need to carefully investigate the historic injustices in order to make some positive change in accord with true justice.
Picking at scabs is another thing all together.
Georgia Elections
The primaries are upon us. I'd like to offer a few thoughts for those of you in Georgia who are committed to doing your civic duty and voting.
I'm only going to speak to the two statewide races, Governor and Senator. Since most of you are Republicans, I'll cover the Republican as well as the Democratic primaries.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is running for re-election. He was my congressman for many years, and I was generally happy with him there. However, he has been a serious disappointment as governor, and I urge you to vote for someone else. He was in Washington too long, and has come to care what DC thinks more than he cares what Georgia thinks.
While I think Common Core's math education is more interesting than it is often credited as being, I don't like its social education at all. We would be much better off with local control of school issues in any case. Likewise in terms of 2nd Amendment issues, Deal has focused his attention on Washington, supporting the national NRA over Georgia's local 2nd Amendment groups in every case. Finally, in the snow emergency, his mismanagement came from an assumption about how snow and cities work that derives from having lived up north for a very long time.
If you are a Republican, I would suggest that your best option is David Pennington. If you are a Democrat, there's really only one candidate in the race at all, Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter. At this time we have only his words to rely upon, but he sounds like a very different man from his grandfather. His thoughts on education and the economy at least sound like his heart is in the right place -- especially the focus on small business -- and he refuses to defer to identity politics in favor of freedom of expression, as exemplified by his support for the (purely symbolic) freedom to purchase Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates.
Turning to the Senate, whatever we do let us not send another Senator like the one who is retiring this year. If at all possible, let us elect a Senator who represents the people of the state, rather than the national party to which they belong -- either of those parties.
On the Republican side, the two candidates I tend to favor are Jack Kingston and Paul Broun. Both of these men have been my congressmen at different points. Kingston is the less ideological of the two, and presents himself as the more thoughtful. Broun is probably more reliably attached to conservative interests, but already has a reputation as something of a crackpot. Nevertheless, there are worse things than crackpots who will always vote in line with the common and deeply-held opinions of the people he represents.
On the Democratic side, I think the two candidates who are best are Michelle Nunn and Todd Robinson. Nunn, another heir of the last generation of Southern Democrats, is far more likely to win. Her work with the Bush family's 'Points of Light' group has been the biggest part of her professional life, which indicates a genuine openness not often found at the national level. I think you'll find that she has been devoted to worthy causes throughout. She has a lot of experience building public/private partnerships to effect improvements in Atlanta and elsewhere. In addition to her famous father, the greatly respected Sam Nunn, her current family seems to exemplify the kind of unity and values that suggest a strong moral foundation.
Todd Robinson is a former US Army Ranger. His issues are not the usual ones for a Democratic candidate for Senate: getting people off welfare, improving Veterans' benefits, reducing unemployment. He would likely join the Congressional Black Caucus, and would be a wholesome addition to it in terms of helping to drive it away from its reflexive embrace of hard-left positions.
So that's what I think about the two biggest races this spring. Feel free to tell me what you think in return, especially if you are from the Great State of Georgia yourself.
I'm only going to speak to the two statewide races, Governor and Senator. Since most of you are Republicans, I'll cover the Republican as well as the Democratic primaries.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is running for re-election. He was my congressman for many years, and I was generally happy with him there. However, he has been a serious disappointment as governor, and I urge you to vote for someone else. He was in Washington too long, and has come to care what DC thinks more than he cares what Georgia thinks.
While I think Common Core's math education is more interesting than it is often credited as being, I don't like its social education at all. We would be much better off with local control of school issues in any case. Likewise in terms of 2nd Amendment issues, Deal has focused his attention on Washington, supporting the national NRA over Georgia's local 2nd Amendment groups in every case. Finally, in the snow emergency, his mismanagement came from an assumption about how snow and cities work that derives from having lived up north for a very long time.
If you are a Republican, I would suggest that your best option is David Pennington. If you are a Democrat, there's really only one candidate in the race at all, Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter. At this time we have only his words to rely upon, but he sounds like a very different man from his grandfather. His thoughts on education and the economy at least sound like his heart is in the right place -- especially the focus on small business -- and he refuses to defer to identity politics in favor of freedom of expression, as exemplified by his support for the (purely symbolic) freedom to purchase Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates.
Turning to the Senate, whatever we do let us not send another Senator like the one who is retiring this year. If at all possible, let us elect a Senator who represents the people of the state, rather than the national party to which they belong -- either of those parties.
On the Republican side, the two candidates I tend to favor are Jack Kingston and Paul Broun. Both of these men have been my congressmen at different points. Kingston is the less ideological of the two, and presents himself as the more thoughtful. Broun is probably more reliably attached to conservative interests, but already has a reputation as something of a crackpot. Nevertheless, there are worse things than crackpots who will always vote in line with the common and deeply-held opinions of the people he represents.
On the Democratic side, I think the two candidates who are best are Michelle Nunn and Todd Robinson. Nunn, another heir of the last generation of Southern Democrats, is far more likely to win. Her work with the Bush family's 'Points of Light' group has been the biggest part of her professional life, which indicates a genuine openness not often found at the national level. I think you'll find that she has been devoted to worthy causes throughout. She has a lot of experience building public/private partnerships to effect improvements in Atlanta and elsewhere. In addition to her famous father, the greatly respected Sam Nunn, her current family seems to exemplify the kind of unity and values that suggest a strong moral foundation.
Todd Robinson is a former US Army Ranger. His issues are not the usual ones for a Democratic candidate for Senate: getting people off welfare, improving Veterans' benefits, reducing unemployment. He would likely join the Congressional Black Caucus, and would be a wholesome addition to it in terms of helping to drive it away from its reflexive embrace of hard-left positions.
So that's what I think about the two biggest races this spring. Feel free to tell me what you think in return, especially if you are from the Great State of Georgia yourself.
The lack of outrage
I have found myself in an uncomfortable position. I find myself getting angry at others for not being angry at what has been going on with the VA. I mostly believe that my anger is misplaced, but I cannot help it.
There has been a laundry list of malfeasance on the VA's behalf, and every indication that little to nothing will be done to punish the malefactors, nor to hold the leadership of the VA or its hospitals accountable. Good men and women are dead because of the bureaucratic game playing that may not be explicitly rewarded from the top, but certainly is not punished. Shinseki has stated unequivocally that he will not resign, and mouths excuses that these problems existed before he took over. He has been in charge of the VA for a half-decade. If he is unable to affect change after five years, then it seems to me that he will never be able to. It is past time for him to go.
Now, that's all well and good, but my specific problem comes in when I point this out to my friends and relatives. I've been met with all but silence. I do not feel that I can properly attribute this silence to partisanship or a lack of interest, but it is increasingly hard not to; especially when they get worked up about issues where it is their ox being gored. I understand that less than 1% of Americans have served, and many of them never retired and will not ever step inside of a VA hospital. This is true for me as well. And while my family contains an abnormally high number of veterans (half of my immediate family, half of my aunts and uncles, a quarter of my grandparents, a few of my cousins, etc), only one of them (my father) is eligible for treatment at the VA, and he has better health insurance so he can seek better treatment from better healthcare systems. So ultimately, it's not even my ox being gored. And yet I am infuriated at the treatment of our veterans at the hands of the very government they served. Why is this something that I feel, but no one else seems to care about?
Is it a feeling of "what can I do?" Is it general apathy? Is it because they don't really care since it doesn't affect them personally? I'm especially cognizant of the fact that "raising awareness" is about as meaningful as shouting into your closet because of recent events. But at a certain point, once I've written my Representatives and Senators, what else can I personally do other than tell everyone I know why they should be outraged? Is that perhaps what is making me so angry? That I am helpless beyond what I've done? I'm not sure.
There has been a laundry list of malfeasance on the VA's behalf, and every indication that little to nothing will be done to punish the malefactors, nor to hold the leadership of the VA or its hospitals accountable. Good men and women are dead because of the bureaucratic game playing that may not be explicitly rewarded from the top, but certainly is not punished. Shinseki has stated unequivocally that he will not resign, and mouths excuses that these problems existed before he took over. He has been in charge of the VA for a half-decade. If he is unable to affect change after five years, then it seems to me that he will never be able to. It is past time for him to go.
Now, that's all well and good, but my specific problem comes in when I point this out to my friends and relatives. I've been met with all but silence. I do not feel that I can properly attribute this silence to partisanship or a lack of interest, but it is increasingly hard not to; especially when they get worked up about issues where it is their ox being gored. I understand that less than 1% of Americans have served, and many of them never retired and will not ever step inside of a VA hospital. This is true for me as well. And while my family contains an abnormally high number of veterans (half of my immediate family, half of my aunts and uncles, a quarter of my grandparents, a few of my cousins, etc), only one of them (my father) is eligible for treatment at the VA, and he has better health insurance so he can seek better treatment from better healthcare systems. So ultimately, it's not even my ox being gored. And yet I am infuriated at the treatment of our veterans at the hands of the very government they served. Why is this something that I feel, but no one else seems to care about?
Is it a feeling of "what can I do?" Is it general apathy? Is it because they don't really care since it doesn't affect them personally? I'm especially cognizant of the fact that "raising awareness" is about as meaningful as shouting into your closet because of recent events. But at a certain point, once I've written my Representatives and Senators, what else can I personally do other than tell everyone I know why they should be outraged? Is that perhaps what is making me so angry? That I am helpless beyond what I've done? I'm not sure.
Even Father Lonergan Had A Mother
For that matter, even the Squire must have had.
Happy Mother's Day, to all of you who have borne the honor. And to the rest of you, who are like Father Lonergan.
Happy Mother's Day, to all of you who have borne the honor. And to the rest of you, who are like Father Lonergan.
Contempt
Steyn:
Speaking as someone who has worked on the intelligence end of hostage rescue, our guys get the hostage killed from time to time too. The one thing you need most to minimize that danger -- as well as the frankly more-important danger that our operators themselves will get killed, as they are very hard-to-replace strategic assets -- is in-depth intelligence. Failing that, eyes-on reconnaissance. If you've got it, there's a chance you can make a raid like this work.
Do we have the right kind of intelligence assets in Boko Haram country? I don't know for certain, but my guess is that we do not. So that leaves reconnaissance, which takes time. If it's been ongoing up until now, it's been in spite of the direct refusal of the host country to permit it.
You can't drop a SEAL team if you don't know where to drop them, and we most likely don't have any idea. That's not contemptible. It's a fact of the art of war.
The right reason to feel contempt is at the posture, which makes our nation look weak and helpless. We probably can't rescue these girls in a Hollywood-style raid, but we could wipe this group off the face of the earth in a few hours if we were willing to kill a lot of innocent people too. We could wipe them out in weeks, with less danger to innocents, if we were willing to deploy the 1st Cavalry Division for that purpose with a very loose set of ROE.
If we don't do those things, it's because we are choosing not to do them. It won't do for the White House to beg, plead, or scold, or make sad faces in front of a camera.
Take responsibility for your choice.
It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture [of Michelle Obama holding a hashtag sign] is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt....Contempt may well be warranted, but not for the failure to deploy special operators into this.
Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.
Speaking as someone who has worked on the intelligence end of hostage rescue, our guys get the hostage killed from time to time too. The one thing you need most to minimize that danger -- as well as the frankly more-important danger that our operators themselves will get killed, as they are very hard-to-replace strategic assets -- is in-depth intelligence. Failing that, eyes-on reconnaissance. If you've got it, there's a chance you can make a raid like this work.
Do we have the right kind of intelligence assets in Boko Haram country? I don't know for certain, but my guess is that we do not. So that leaves reconnaissance, which takes time. If it's been ongoing up until now, it's been in spite of the direct refusal of the host country to permit it.
You can't drop a SEAL team if you don't know where to drop them, and we most likely don't have any idea. That's not contemptible. It's a fact of the art of war.
The right reason to feel contempt is at the posture, which makes our nation look weak and helpless. We probably can't rescue these girls in a Hollywood-style raid, but we could wipe this group off the face of the earth in a few hours if we were willing to kill a lot of innocent people too. We could wipe them out in weeks, with less danger to innocents, if we were willing to deploy the 1st Cavalry Division for that purpose with a very loose set of ROE.
If we don't do those things, it's because we are choosing not to do them. It won't do for the White House to beg, plead, or scold, or make sad faces in front of a camera.
Take responsibility for your choice.
"Make Believe"
I wouldn't be so sure, bub. Even if you're feeling good about the wager, doesn't it strike you as interesting that your side is lining up with Satan himself?
I mean, just maybe think about it.
I mean, just maybe think about it.
Corvidae
Crows seem to be intelligent animals, capable -- according to laboratory tests, as well as significant empirical observation -- of abstract reasoning. Our last common ancestor was before the evolution of dinosaurs, and our brain structures are totally different. What can that tell us about the way intelligence comes to be?
Simpler solutions
The leftish think tank Urban Institute is doing some surprising thinking about market distortions from Obamacare, and has stumbled on the notion that the employer mandate isn't likely to do a lot of good:
“Eliminating the employer mandate would eliminate labor market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from employers, and have little effect on coverage,” say Linda Blumberg, John Holahan and Matthew Buettgens of the institute.You know what else would eliminate market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from American citizens, and have little effect on coverage? Repealing Obamacare.
Cultural Appropriation
We would like to encourage our fellow students at Harvard to join the movement this year: Choose respect over insensitive humor when assembling your costumes. Even more importantly, take this opportunity to educate yourself. Engage in dialogue about why certain costumes can be perceived as offensive and how humor and caricature have historically been used to perpetuate racial and cultural stereotypes. In other words, we would like our campus to discuss how Halloween costumes can serve as mechanisms for cultural appropriation.The Harvard Crimson, 29 October 2013.
According to the blog Unsettling America, cultural appropriation can be defined as “the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another [generally] when the subject culture is a minority culture. This ‘appropriation’ often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities.”
A reenactment of a Black Mass celebrating Satan is scheduled to take place at Harvard University on Monday evening.CBS News, 8 May 2014.
Lileks, Great Writer of Our Time
Anyway: This concludes our examination of a vegan’s review of Ruth’s Chris Steak House.Even better:
Monogamy doesn’t work for Diaz, or the author of the piece, so Ditching must begin. It’s not enough to say, “I just can’t imagine sticking with one person the rest of my life. I foresee a series of satisfying relationships of varying duration and intensity, after which I retire to Nice and become known in the neighborhood as the iconoclastic woman who turned to pottery at the age of 74.” No, you have to decide that everyone should rethink the idea of faithfulness.Quite right, of course. A human institution of great antiquity doesn't suit one particularly irritable and difficult-to-live-with liberal, so naturally it must go!
Thinking of Getting a Tattoo?
I'm a member of the 'No ink, just scars' club myself, but tattoos are popular these days. Here's a slow-motion video of what it looks like.
Slowmotion Tattoo from GueT Deep on Vimeo.
New Business is a Bad Thing
Amid reports that fewer businesses have been created than destroyed every year since 2008, CNN provides a helpful explanation.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).
Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).
The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.
Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.
In Silicon Valley, people start companies to change the world. In the rest of the country, it's out of necessity. That's why new business creation fell in 2013, according the Kauffman Foundation's annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. With unemployment at its lowest level since 2010, out-of-work people who might have started their own companies have simply found jobs instead.Things are so good, nobody's starting new businesses.
Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).
Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).
The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.
Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.
Torture
The UN is insane, but the Vatican was ready for them.
One U.N. questioner said the “restrictions amount to psychological torture” of women, according to McGuire. “That’s crazy,” she added.Life is suffering. Well, some of them are Buddhists.
"Abortion is among the most egregious forms of torture than can be perpetuated against a child, and attacking the church's moral and religious beliefs violates the religious liberty of the church, a human right which the United Nations affirms. Yet, the U.N. Committee Against Torture seems to be setting the stage that if you are pro-life you are pro-torture,” she added.
Contempt
As Ace observed, many of us already held Lois Lerner in contempt without a formal vote. This afternoon's House vote was not entirely along party lines, but close:
Six Democrats broke with their party to support the contempt vote: Ron Barber of Arizona, John Barrow of Georgia, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Patrick Murphy of Florida. All are facing Republican challengers in tough districts for Democrats in November.
Needed: Voodoo Philanthropists
This ad for a band to play a wedding ("No pay") is not at all safe for work, nor does it feature appropriate or respectful language. I'm posting it anyway because I think it will amuse Tex.
Partial excerpt:
Partial excerpt:
Terrible band needed for sham of a wedding. No pay...You get what you pay for, I hear.
[M]y Shylock of a half-brother and his parsimonious fiance have passed off to me the job of finding a band for their wedding. Since they think music is spontaneously generated via voodoo magic by assemblies of self-promoting philanthropists... [if] you and your unemployable band of pothead hobbyists....
Control
I find myself strangely in synch with a train of thought attributed to Hillary Clinton in a National Journal article:
She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to carry weapons in churches, bars, and other public places, saying that they will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many people with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker."I'd rephrase it:
She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to outsource their increasingly petty and intrusive personal preferences to an armed police force, saying that the new raft of Nanny State laws will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many intrusive laws enforced in our names by police with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker or the Big-Gulp drinker or the wood fireplace user or the guy with unapproved health insurance."
Swordplay
Those of you following the comments to a post late last week were directed to the "Battle of the Nations" Medieval Combat World Championship. In the Longsword, Poland's Marcin Waszkielis achieved the men's gold medal. America's own Suzanne Elleraas collected the gold in what I understand is the inaugural competition for females.
Death to Public Broadcasting
The best radio station in Atlanta just got gutted in a backroom deal.
Coincidentally, this is the song the student DJ was playing on Album 88 as I was writing up this post:
UPDATE: "Please direct all comments/complaints regarding the GPB usurpation of WRAS to the following..."
The format has changed over the years but has been primarily rock focused. It started with progressive rock, then went punk and new wave in the early 1980s when it received its Album 88 moniker, said Gail Harris, who worked there from 1976 to 1993 and holds regular alumni reunions... “I am unhappy with the lack of transparency,” Harris said, noting that there was no community debate prior to the surprise announcement.So the strongest student-run radio station in the United States will now spend most of the day playing the same canned Public Broadcasting garbage that caters to aging liberals nationwide.
...
Ana Zimitravich, the outgoing WRAS general manager and senior at GSU, said she found out along with the rest of the student staff today. “It’s a total, complete shock,” she said. “I had no idea this change was coming.”
Coincidentally, this is the song the student DJ was playing on Album 88 as I was writing up this post:
UPDATE: "Please direct all comments/complaints regarding the GPB usurpation of WRAS to the following..."
Honor and Benghazi
Michael Walsh says that Benghazi is a matter of our national honor, but that our leadership can't recognize it because they have no honor.
Honor is sacrifice, and we accept Churchill's imaginary lie as an example of honor because we know it pains him. He does it for his people, not for his own personal advantage.
Mr. Walsh is right that this band is entirely without honor. The unifying thread in all the complaints he raises against them is that, in every case, they put their own personal advantage over the good of the people and the nation.
It is often said that our country's Constitution was devised on the assumption that good people would not always be in charge, and indeed might only be so rarely -- that bad people are more common, and more likely to assume the levers of power. Perhaps it is so. Nevertheless, there is a price for it.
Honorable people do not let American diplomats twist slowly in the wind while they attend “debate prep” and rest up for a shakedown meeting with the One Percent. Honorable people do not suddenly go AWOL while American soil is under attack. Honorable people do not fail to mobilize the formidable resources of the American military, even if it might not be possible for them to get there in time. Honorable people, under questioning by Congress, do not lose their temper and start shouting. Honorable people do not look the bereaved in the eye and lie about who and what killed their loved ones.I bold the one section because it's the one thing he says with which I disagree. Honorable people might tell bald-faced lies about a military problem, and continue to do so for as long as necessary. It is easy to imagine Churchill lying at length if it were necessary to deceive the Nazis in a way that would ensure the final victory in the war.
Further: honorable people do not go before the public on the Sunday talk shows and knowingly transmit a bald-faced lie. Honorable people do not continue to lie about what took place. Honorable people do not say “We are Americans; we hold our head high,” and then hang their heads in shame as they cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Honorable people do not continue to reward the dishonorable with ever-higher posts. Honorable people resign.
Honor is sacrifice, and we accept Churchill's imaginary lie as an example of honor because we know it pains him. He does it for his people, not for his own personal advantage.
Mr. Walsh is right that this band is entirely without honor. The unifying thread in all the complaints he raises against them is that, in every case, they put their own personal advantage over the good of the people and the nation.
It is often said that our country's Constitution was devised on the assumption that good people would not always be in charge, and indeed might only be so rarely -- that bad people are more common, and more likely to assume the levers of power. Perhaps it is so. Nevertheless, there is a price for it.
Vanishing Girls
CNN reports, via InstaPundit, that Boko Haram intends to sell captured Nigerian girls. I had read a report four days ago that they were already selling them.
The CNN report quotes a video in which the leader of the Islamist militia states that 'Allah' tells him to sell the girls, but doesn't bother to explain why he thinks that is the case. In fact, he's probably right about this as a point of Islamic law: the captured girls are almost all Christians.
As I was just saying to Eric, there's a sense in which we're always in the 6th Century -- or, in this case, the 7th. These people are following the law, an ancient law that dates to the very origin of their faith. We can't even begin to understand the problem as long as, like CNN, we don't appreciate that truth about them. What they are doing is not improper by the lights of their system. It is their system. They don't see themselves as villains, but as the enforcer's of God's law upon an unrighteous people: upon infidels whose children, at least, shall be purified by being brought within the fold.
The CNN report quotes a video in which the leader of the Islamist militia states that 'Allah' tells him to sell the girls, but doesn't bother to explain why he thinks that is the case. In fact, he's probably right about this as a point of Islamic law: the captured girls are almost all Christians.
Boko Haram has been abducting Christian girls and women for some time as part of its battle to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria. The group appears to be putting into practice Quranic verses that grant Muslims the right to take, as spoils of war, female slaves, over whom they have sexual rights.There were a few Muslim girls captured in the last raid. What will happen to them could be better or worse, depending on how Boko Haram views Muslims who study at Christian schools. My guess is that their fate will be worse. If they are viewed as apostates, they will probably be killed (after a forced 'marriage,' since you aren't supposed to execute virgins).
As I was just saying to Eric, there's a sense in which we're always in the 6th Century -- or, in this case, the 7th. These people are following the law, an ancient law that dates to the very origin of their faith. We can't even begin to understand the problem as long as, like CNN, we don't appreciate that truth about them. What they are doing is not improper by the lights of their system. It is their system. They don't see themselves as villains, but as the enforcer's of God's law upon an unrighteous people: upon infidels whose children, at least, shall be purified by being brought within the fold.
Eat What You Want & Die Like A Man
The world's oldest living man gives advice on what it takes for a man to make it to 111 (there are 66 living older women):
(Post title from this cookbook.)
• Not having children.Sports are good, but as for the rest of it, what then could be the point of living so long?
• Not drinking alcohol.
• Quitting smoking.
• Playing multiple sports. “I was a gymnast,” he said. “Good runner, a good springer. Good javelin, and I was a good swimmer.”
• A diet "inspired by Eastern mystics who disdain food," the Times said. (According to Imich's caregivers, he eats matzo balls, gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers, scrambled eggs, chocolate and ice cream.)
(Post title from this cookbook.)
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.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?
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.
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.
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