Movie Review: Expendables 3
It's rare that I go to see a movie in the theaters these days, let alone on opening night! Nevertheless The Expendables in its original form is a special favorite of Mr. Wolf, and has therefore gained a certain following around here. Thus some of us went to see the third (and last) in the series last night.
The movie has a tone that is more than a little sad. A lot of these actors are doing their swan song and they know it, so they're taking a moment with it and trying to introduce the next generation. There's a very melancholy feel to it almost throughout.
It's also sad, in another way, that none of the new generation actors being introduced have anything like the style or presence that these guys had back in 1985. You think of the 'handshake' scene in Predator, and compare it to what you're seeing now. There's nothing wrong with these kids, not obviously, but they aren't any of them what Arnold was. Nor is it just muscles -- some have muscles -- because they aren't what John Wayne was, either. There's an absence of confidence, maybe even of an idea of what confidence would look like.
On the other hand, the action sequences were an improvement over the last rendition, though they lacked the relative realism of the first movie. There were, blessedly, fewer referential jokes -- Arnold got in a couple, towards the end, but they didn't present the awkward distraction of Chuck Norris reading out his own "facts" in Expendables 2.
Smuggle some beer into the theater, sit back, and enjoy watching the last parade of a generation that set the standard for Reaganite confidence during the end stage of the Cold War. These aren't the actual guys who won the war, but they're the guys those guys cheered on screen. They're the guys who spurred some of those guys to enlist. That's not nothing.
"This just in: Halt in Global Warming due to Climate Change!"
Sadly, that's not just a joke.
A commenter on a Watts Up With That post reminded me of something I hadn't read in a long time:
A commenter on a Watts Up With That post reminded me of something I hadn't read in a long time:
“First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,
“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”
Startled by this sobering analysis, I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading. Professor Sutton said that many scientists are, as of this moment, examining the complex patterns in the North Atlantic, and trying to work out whether the current run of inclement European winters will persist.
When pressed on the particular outlook for the British Isles. Professor Sutton shook his head, moaned eerily unto the heavens, and stuffed his fingers into the entrails of a recently disembowelled chicken, bought fresh from Waitrose in Teignmouth.
Hurling the still-beating heart of the chicken into a shallow copper salver, Professor Sutton inhaled the aroma of burning incense, then told the Telegraph: “The seven towers of Agamemnon tremble. Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini. When, when cry the sirens of doom and love. Speckly showers on Tuesday.”
It’s a pretty stark analysis, and not without merit.”
The post itself links to explanations for how the Global Warming model explains heating, cooling, drought, flood, and anything else you can possibly imagine, but it was the comments (including the title of the post) that caught my fancy. Another commenter adds: "When the temperature remains constant (relatively), that is due to natural cooling offsetting the human induced warming." Another describes the phenomenon as "Policy-based evidence-making."
An early frost
Global warming puts another notch in its belt: unusually early fall color in Pennsylvania.
A friend called from the Rocky Mountains earlier this week, reporting that the hummingbirds are coming through much earlier than usual. I've learned my lesson, though. I made no attempt to link the phenomenon with the curiously persistent belief that temperatures are rising. She'll see the pattern on her own some day, or she won't. If I try to get her to think about it, she'll only get defensive. And of course I can't be sure, either, whether the current cooling is noise in the signal or a reliable indicator of long-term trends. The difference is that I'm aware there's room for doubt, and have at least attempted to look into the reliability of the physical explanations for a projected warming.
A friend called from the Rocky Mountains earlier this week, reporting that the hummingbirds are coming through much earlier than usual. I've learned my lesson, though. I made no attempt to link the phenomenon with the curiously persistent belief that temperatures are rising. She'll see the pattern on her own some day, or she won't. If I try to get her to think about it, she'll only get defensive. And of course I can't be sure, either, whether the current cooling is noise in the signal or a reliable indicator of long-term trends. The difference is that I'm aware there's room for doubt, and have at least attempted to look into the reliability of the physical explanations for a projected warming.
Who lost the cities?
Kevin Williamson wonders why progressives can't see what their own policies are doing to the cities whose conditions they so deplore:
Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles — and Philadelphia, Cleveland, and a dozen or more other cities — have a great deal in common: They are the places in which the progressive vision of government has reached its fullest expressions. They are the hopeless reality that results from wishful thinking.
. . . [T]he Reverend Jackson is undoubtedly correct in identifying “a national crisis of urban abandonment and repression.” He neglects to point out that he is an important enabler of it.
Philadelphia, for example, has not had a Republican mayor since the Truman administration. It did enjoy the services of Mayor Frank Rizzo, a Democrat who endorsed Nixon in exchange for federal handouts and who governed in the progressive style: He converted a private utility into a public one and promptly turned it into a patronage machine, he was close with the labor unions and raised the city’s wage tax to fund spending on transportation and infrastructure projects, worked for economic benefits for the elderly, etc. He was a classic welfare-statist Democrat — and a man who, as police commissioner, famously promised to “make Attila the Hun look like a fag.” (Rizzo later ran as a Republican.) It wasn’t a right-wing radical who bombed a Philadelphia rowhouse and burned down the neighborhood — it was an African-American progressive, Wilson Goode. Closet Ayn Rand fans have not been running the affairs of Detroit all these years, and the intellectual patrons of the Chicago Boys have had approximately zero influence on the municipal affairs of Chicago. Ralph Reed will never be the mayor of San Francisco.
. . . The philosophy of abusive eminent domain, government monopolies, and opportunistic taxation is also the philosophy of police brutality, the repression of free speech and other constitutional rights, and economic despair. Frank Rizzo was not a paradox — he was an inevitability. When life is reduced to the terms in which it is lived in the poorest and most neglected parts of Chicago or Detroit, the welfare state is the police state. Why should we expect the agents of the government who carry guns and badges to be in general better behaved than those at the IRS or the National Labor Relations Board?
Anonymous
Apparently the officers did not call dispatch to report the shooting for thirty minutes, at which time they reported only that they needed backup for crowd control. Anonymous has obtained, and released, what they say is the unedited dispatch recording. If the police think it has been edited, they can release the full record, but the dispatcher says several times that she has no more information on why a disturbance might be occurring at this location.
I know: vigilantes, breaking the law. But sometimes -- as at, and after, the O.K. Corral -- the law and the law enforcement are the problem, and citizen resistance to authority is the solution. That the law forbids resisting the government in this way is no defense. Of course it does.
The truth will out.
I know: vigilantes, breaking the law. But sometimes -- as at, and after, the O.K. Corral -- the law and the law enforcement are the problem, and citizen resistance to authority is the solution. That the law forbids resisting the government in this way is no defense. Of course it does.
The truth will out.
Polizei
Jonah Goldberg gives his thoughts about the potential rapprochement between liberals and libertarians:
I think the Ferguson story has become more interesting and significant than the usual spectacle of this kind. The timing coincides with the ripening of an argument on the right against the militarization of U.S. police forces (led by Radley Balko as far as I can tell). It’s funny how unaware so many liberals are that this conversation was even taking place on the right. Liberals have been mocking libertarians for years as paranoid lunatics. Oh you want to live without government? Move to Somalia! Oh wait, when did the cops get tanks?He also touches on one of my favorite issues: the blindness of the state-vs.-individual school of thought to the existence of voluntary communal institutions that relieve us from choosing either a 100% individualistic society or a totalitarian state:
Perhaps the most annoying thing about libertarianism is its blind spot about the importance of community. Ayn Rand and Barack Obama share the view that there are only two important institutions: the individual and the state. The difference is Rand thought the state is evil and Barack Obama thinks it is awesome. The truth is closer to the middle. Well, let me modify that. The state in the Bismarckian/Wilsonian sense sucks. But government is not evil. Oh, it can be. But it needn’t be. Sure, semantically you can make the case that it is a necessary evil, but I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Nothing truly necessary can be evil. Gravity is not evil. Food and shelter are not evil. There are things we need to do collectively. That’s why the Founders wrote the Constitution. Its genius lay in the fact that it understood that government is necessary but not sufficient for a good life. . . . Oh, for you constitutionalist libertarians, you might ponder the fact that the reason we swapped out the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution was that the Barbary pirates were getting all up in our business and we needed to pay for a navy to open a can of whup-ass on them.
A Potentially Unjustified Complaint Against the Ferguson Police
So, in general, I'm on board with the complaint that this whole series of events demonstrates a police culture in need of reform and defanging, if not outright neutering.
Still, there are limits. We must be fair to the officers involved as far as we can. The most outrageous charge against them today is that they refused a nurse the right to perform CPR on the shot body of Michael Brown.
The case is very different if the life-threatening issue is a gunshot wound. Now, artificially pumping the heart is pumping blood right out onto the ground. As anyone who has taken a combat lifesaver course knows, the #1 most important issue in cases like these is to prevent blood loss. Blood loss is the fastest killer in a gunshot victim who was not killed immediately by the gunshot itself.
So you should not attempt CPR on a gunshot victim. You should focus on stopping the bleeding.
Of course, my defense depends on the police knowing any of that; given their generally horrid training in crowd control, escalation of force and firearms safety, one may doubt that they understood the medical issues. It also depends on them having done everything they could to stop the bleeding.
Still, of itself, refusing a self-identified nurse the power to conduct CPR on a gunshot victim is not alarming. It's not necessarily a good idea, except perhaps in a hospital where blood supplies are immediately available to replace what is going to be lost.
I wish Doc Russia were still around to comment on this with greater expertise.
Still, there are limits. We must be fair to the officers involved as far as we can. The most outrageous charge against them today is that they refused a nurse the right to perform CPR on the shot body of Michael Brown.
Mr. Stone ran outside and saw two police officers, both white men, standing near Mr. Brown, who was lying on his stomach, his arms at his sides, blood seeping from his head. Another neighbor, a woman who identified herself as a nurse, was begging the officers to let her perform CPR.So here's the thing about CPR. The way it works is by artificially pumping the heart. In the case of a heart attack, that's a good idea. What will occur is that you will move blood -- still filled with oxygen -- to cells that will shortly begin to die without oxygen. These include brain cells, without which there isn't much point in reviving the body. Almost everyone who receives CPR is not going to survive, it's interesting to note: the success rate is somewhere under one-fifth, and perhaps as low as two percent. Still, in the case of a heart attack, you have nothing to lose by trying!
They refused, Mr. Stone said, adding, “They didn’t even check to see if he was breathing.”
The case is very different if the life-threatening issue is a gunshot wound. Now, artificially pumping the heart is pumping blood right out onto the ground. As anyone who has taken a combat lifesaver course knows, the #1 most important issue in cases like these is to prevent blood loss. Blood loss is the fastest killer in a gunshot victim who was not killed immediately by the gunshot itself.
So you should not attempt CPR on a gunshot victim. You should focus on stopping the bleeding.
Of course, my defense depends on the police knowing any of that; given their generally horrid training in crowd control, escalation of force and firearms safety, one may doubt that they understood the medical issues. It also depends on them having done everything they could to stop the bleeding.
Still, of itself, refusing a self-identified nurse the power to conduct CPR on a gunshot victim is not alarming. It's not necessarily a good idea, except perhaps in a hospital where blood supplies are immediately available to replace what is going to be lost.
I wish Doc Russia were still around to comment on this with greater expertise.
Friday Night AMV
Shoot to thrill.
No, I can't explain it. But I really would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they pitched this idea.
A Confession, After A Fashion
IRS Official: "Please delete this email." But doesn't Federal law require you to keep email records like this? Of course!
A Moment of Unity
It appears that, though we still disagree as to whether looting is an appropriate response to a police shooting, there is a moment of considerable left/right unity on the need to restrain the police. From The American Conservative:
A Department of Justice study revealed that a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.”UPDATE: A collection of military veteran comments on the Ferguson events.
This self-reporting moves us well beyond anecdote into the realm of data: Police brutality is a pervasive problem, exacerbated by systemic failures to curb it. That’s not to say that every officer is ill-intentioned or abusive, but it is to suggest that the common assumption that police are generally using their authority in a trustworthy manner merits serious reconsideration.
Joy
This is the latest picture of my old high-school friend's adopted daughter, blissing out in the beautiful clear water off of Padre Island in South Texas:
My friend and her husband adopted this girl from a Russian orphanage when she was about five years old. She landed in clover, with a sane and loving family. I've never met her, but I love reading about her on my friend's blog from time to time. She always seems to be ready to burst with happiness.
My friend and her husband adopted this girl from a Russian orphanage when she was about five years old. She landed in clover, with a sane and loving family. I've never met her, but I love reading about her on my friend's blog from time to time. She always seems to be ready to burst with happiness.
Anti-Ass Coalition
Today's first story comes from right down the road in Gainesville, Georgia (formerly known as "Mule Camp Springs," because it was a place with sufficient water to water your mule train before or after a trip over the nearby mountains; for some reason we have a habit in Georgia of changing excellent historic place names to very bland ones). The Congressman for the Mighty Ninth Congressional district, Doug Collins, is on the job.
Or at least threaten to sue. It seems like that often is enough by itself, these days. Take the case of a little restaurant in North Carolina that liked to give a small gift to customers it observed engaging in saying a family grace before dinner.
These stunts -- I think of the famous case where "Zombie Muhammad" got his butt handed to him by an irate Muslim observer -- are built around abusing the system in order to undermine the things on which the system stands. You may, in a sense, have a right to dress like Muhammad as a zombie and march through a Muslim neighborhood. If you do it, you're an ass. You deserve the beating from which the system will try to protect you. Not for blasphemy, but for being an ass.
Pray or don't, but don't be these guys.
The previous day, the atheists (acting on behalf of a single, unnamed citizen) sent a letter to school officials demanding that the football coaching staff stop participating in team prayers and that they remove all biblical references and religious messages from team documents....Well, if the Caliphate would answer a summons, or obey a court ruling, I'm sure they'd be happy to sue them too.
“The liberal atheist interest groups trying to bully Chestatee High School kids say they have a reason to believe that expressions of religious freedom are ‘not an isolated event’ in Northeast Georgia,” Collins wrote in a statement. “They’re right. In Hall County and throughout Georgia’s 9th district, we understand and respect the Constitution and cherish our right to worship in our own way.”...
And it was not lost on the Collins that while the American atheists are picking on high school kids, Christians in Iraq are facing unspeakable atrocities. “It’s utterly disgusting that while innocent lives are being lost in Iraq and other places at the hands of radical religious terrorists, a bunch of Washington lawyers are finding the time to pick on kids in Northeast Georgia,” he said.
Or at least threaten to sue. It seems like that often is enough by itself, these days. Take the case of a little restaurant in North Carolina that liked to give a small gift to customers it observed engaging in saying a family grace before dinner.
Mary probably thought she had a nice idea that would incentivize gratitude for the good in life. She stated publicly that “Who you talk to or meditate on etc. is your business,” giving all people of all various beliefs and non-beliefs an equal opportunity to qualify for the discount, but that clearly wasn’t enough for a well-lawyered organization whose desires seem to be satisfied by becoming the center of attention that rains on well-intentioned parades.Now probably that one would have survived in court -- after all, plenty of places offer discounts only to certain classes of people ("Student discount!" "Senior discount!" "Ladies' Night!"). But as Mark Steyn has noted many times since his own legal troubles began, the process is the punishment: resisting the suit takes so much time and money that, even if you win, it's probably cost you everything.
Regardless of the fact that the verb “pray” has multiple definitions, aside from the one with religious connotations, the [Freedom From Religion Foundation] decided to work against Mary’s instead of working with them to find an appropriate alternative that worked for all.
These stunts -- I think of the famous case where "Zombie Muhammad" got his butt handed to him by an irate Muslim observer -- are built around abusing the system in order to undermine the things on which the system stands. You may, in a sense, have a right to dress like Muhammad as a zombie and march through a Muslim neighborhood. If you do it, you're an ass. You deserve the beating from which the system will try to protect you. Not for blasphemy, but for being an ass.
Pray or don't, but don't be these guys.
Love the Bill of Rights? Hater.
It's good to know that young ladies are being taught to think critically about their precious Constitutional heritage.
Tenth: Your man is passionate about states’ rights. Racists and homophobes love states’ rights. Be afraid.It's unlikely that he knew that the Ninth Amendment was the "foundation" for Roe v. Wade, since of course the decision has no actual foundation in the Constitution. It was "penumbras" that were the alleged foundation, which is to say that the whole thing is built on shadows.
Ninth: Your man picked the foundation for Roe v. Wade. Good egg!
Eighth: No “cruel and unusual punishment” for your guy! It’s unlikely that he’d be cruel to strangers.
Seventh, Sixth, Fifth, or Fourth: He’s really into criminal justice but probably not a troll. Breathe a sigh of relief.
Third: If he picks an amendment this useless, you should just dump him anyway even if he’s not a troll.
Second: Run. Seriously, just run! Your man might not be an asshole to people on the Internet because he’s too busy being an open-carrying asshole in real life.
First: This could be a huge warning sign. Trolls cite the First Amendment as frequently as college application essays cite “The Road Not Taken.” They think that it gives them the right to verbally harass, stalk, and threaten whomever they want without any consequences. If your man picks the First Amendment, just ask him to explain what it means. If he thinks it means that “it’s a free country” and “people can say whatever they want,” tell him to go back to the playground he learned his politics from and find a new boyfriend.
Bayeux
Ten things you may not have noticed, even if you've spent quite a while looking at the Bayeux Tapestry.
One of the leading theories about it is that it was done rather quickly, and thus doesn't really represent the true skill of the women who doubtless wove it in celebration of the conquest. If true, still, they found time to include a few playful touches.
One of the leading theories about it is that it was done rather quickly, and thus doesn't really represent the true skill of the women who doubtless wove it in celebration of the conquest. If true, still, they found time to include a few playful touches.
Three ridiculous stunts
You've probably heard already that James O'Keefe crossed the U.S.-Mexico border recently, disguised as Osama bin Laden in full get-up. You may not realize, though, as Jim Geraghty has pointed out, that GOP congressional candidate Raj Peter Bhakta of Pennsylvania did something similar in 2006 when he crossed the border on an elephant with a mariachi band.
That can only be followed up with:
That can only be followed up with:
Russian Incrementalism
I'm planning on focusing on this war against the new Caliphate, because Russia is a dying power. Still, it seems intent on spending its last hours in a pleasant game of chess that I suspect it will win -- for an hour, while strength remains to hold what they are playing for. Of course, they might recover a bit of spirit if they win a few games of chess. But it's hard going to recover from a demographic death spiral such as they have entered.
As for the rules of the game, they are these -- the same rules of the Cold War:
As for the rules of the game, they are these -- the same rules of the Cold War:
Cultural Appropriation
The song is from Australia. The idiom is from the poorest parts of Appalachia. The band is from...
...Finland.
...Finland.
Cortez on Gutenberg
Some of you expressed an interest in the history of Cortez in the New World once it was finished and came online.
Here's a Woman with Something to Say
When I hear people talk about sex as if it’s no big deal, as if it’s no different than eating a steak or going for a drive on the freeway, when I see ads comparing voting to losing your virginity, or when I hear social conservatives slapped down when they voice their objections to a licentious culture, my heart grieves.It's not a toy. It's not a game. How strange we have forgotten that so obvious, so terrible a truth.
That’s because I’m picturing the girl walking home alone after having sex on the beer-drenched floor of a fraternity house with a guy too drunk to remember her name. The tears on her cheeks. The tightness in her chest, the sick feeling deep inside, and the already-hardening effect of knowing she will do it again.
I’m remembering a young girl who came to me with scars on her wrists and tremors in her soft voice as she told me about the day she aborted her baby. She wept uncontrollably in my arms for an innocence, a life, she would never have again, her dark eyes filled with a sorrow that only the greatest amount of love and grace could ever wash away.
I’m thinking of the boy who sits in a bathroom, alone, staring at a lab report that says he is HIV-positive. A sense of hopeless desperation wells up within him like a flood of dark water as he tries to breathe, to fight back the overwhelming fear that threatens to drown him. His life is forever changed. A precious gem exchanged for a handful of dust. I hear his sobs as he leans on the side of the tub begging for comfort no human can fully give.
More gender charts
This time, on the crucial distinction between "uh" and "um." As a bonus, a Facebook analysis that shows men are humorless, angry policy wonks while women are ditzy Polyanna shopaholics.
My Facebook verbal analysis would look about like this:
My Facebook verbal analysis would look about like this:
Trayvon redux
I don't know what to make of this bizarre police shooting at an Ohio Walmart. It's got a lot of the Trayvon Martin dilemmas in it, right down to the tearful accounts of the dead black man's girlfriend, who was on the phone with him when he died, but with a lot more witnesses this time. The guy is said to have been driven to the Walmart without having a gun on him. At some point he was spotted wandering around the Walmart with a scary black gun and pointing it at people, perhaps trying to load it. Or else he simply picked up a toy gun and was carrying it to a cash register. Police shot him when he refused to surrender the weapon. Or else he was innocently turning to reply to a challenge, and answering "it's only a toy."
In any case, it will be a relief to have a little more evidence to go on this time.
How to pick 'em
Suppose you're a young woman in college, trying to follow Salon's advice to pursue that M.R.S. degree. You might gravitate to a young man who "had a high GPA in high school, was his class valedictorian, was on [a sports] team, and was ‘from a good family.’”
Or you might find that you'd just profiled a potential rapist, by the standards of Occidental University.
LAPD Detective Michelle Gomez interviewed the parties and witnesses. In a charge evaluation worksheet dated November 5, Deputy District Attorney Alison A.W. Meyers declined to prosecute, writing, “Witnesses were interviewed and agreed that the victim and suspect were both drunk, however, that they were both willing participants exercising bad judgment …. It would be reasonable for [Doe] to conclude based on their communications and [the accuser’s] actions that, even though she was intoxicated, she could still exercise reasonable judgment.” This decision ended police involvement in the case.
Meanwhile, Occidental pursued its own investigation by hiring the firm of Public Interest Investigations, which produced an 82-page report about the incident. Among other evidence, the report examined text messages between Doe and his accuser leading up to the sexual encounter. In the messages, the accuser asked Doe, “do you have a condom,” texted another friend “I’mgoingtohave sex now” [sic], and, in an exchange spanning 24 minutes, coordinated with Doe to sneak out of her dorm and proceed to Doe’s dorm to have sex with him.Obviously a rape, but then she should have known better than to hang out with a valedictorian.
Profiteering
Adding "--eering" to a noun is a handy way to disapprove of the activity without explaining what's wrong with it.
Dipping a toe
Richard Fernandez doubts the efficacy of the pro-Yazidi airdrop and limited strikes:
In Obama’s gesture is an implicit lie. Nobody ever comes to a war “to help”. It’s not like stopping by a picnic or helping a neighbor move house, where you can participate as much or little as you want and then walk away. The only valid object of joining a conflict is ‘to win’, or at least, be on the winning side. Fighting to look good is neither moral nor does it work. You don’t ever want to “help” and be among the defeated. For those in the field, defeated means dead.
Bombing once started makes enemies and kills people. Unless it is done for a definite object and terminal state in mind, then it is better not done at all. Any action sufficient to ‘stop the genocide’ requires defeating ISIS. Either Obama aims to defeat ISIS or he is merely prolonging the agony. Lyndon Johnson was a great fan of “targeted airstrikes” in Vietnam. Johnson famously boasted of his fine grained control over the USAF.
“LBJ liked to pick bombing targets himself”. More strongly expressed in Vietnam Magazine, December 1997, by Air Force Major John Keeler (Ret) – who quotes LBJ as saying: “Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission”.
Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam to ‘send a message’. Ho Chi Minh was in it to win. How did that work out?
"Hold on; we're winning"
George Will reports on Ken Hughes's theories about what Nixon was really asking his "plumbers" to cover up:
Is it really "private diplomacy," let alone treason, to send a clear message about what you'll do if you're elected president in a few months? I objected to Obama's "flexibility" statement, not because it was secret or improper diplomacy (and of course he wasn't a private citizen at the time, either), but because the message I got was "I'll be in a better position to compromise my own country's best interests in a few months, when I have this pesky domestic political competition out of the way."
On Nov. 2 at 8:34 p.m., a teleprinter at Johnson’s ranch delivered an FBI report on the embassy wiretap: [unofficial Nixon agent] Chennault had told South Vietnam’s ambassador “she had received a message from her boss (not further identified). . . . She said the message was that the ambassador is to ‘hold on, we are gonna win.’ ” The Logan Act of 1799 makes it a crime for a private U.S. citizen, which Nixon then was, to interfere with U.S. government diplomatic negotiations.Setting aside the Logan Act violation for a moment, should we see this as an act of treason? Something along the lines of "I'll have more flexibility after the election"? Some will argue that Nixon deliberately prolonged the Viet Nam War for the purpose of positioning himself politically as the only man who could end it. I wouldn't put it past him, but I wonder if it isn't more fair to imagine that he believed that the war must be ended justly if at all, and that he was trying to send a message of encouragement to some desperately besieged fighters to have courage in the knowledge that reinforcements were on the way. Whether he was right or wrong in this conviction, it's not clear to me that he was sacrificing lives in war for petty personal political gain.
Is it really "private diplomacy," let alone treason, to send a clear message about what you'll do if you're elected president in a few months? I objected to Obama's "flexibility" statement, not because it was secret or improper diplomacy (and of course he wasn't a private citizen at the time, either), but because the message I got was "I'll be in a better position to compromise my own country's best interests in a few months, when I have this pesky domestic political competition out of the way."
Where's the outrage against ISIL?
I saw this yesterday, linked by a friend online:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And the real pull quote for me was the following:
"I don't see any attention from the rest of the world," a member of the Yazidi minority in Iraq told the New Yorker. "In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, 'Save Gaza, save Gaza.'"
So why is that? What is it about Gaza that draws the world’s attention and ire, that seems to be lacking in the case of the Yazidi in Sinjar?
Well, the first and most obvious answer is that the Yazidi aren’t being killed by Jews. Anti-Semitism is alive and well across the world. Since the outbreak of the latest fighting (I will NOT use the term “Gaza War”, because Hamas is not engaged in war, this is just a continuation of their ongoing terror campaign), we’ve seen anti-Semitic riots across Europe, with Jews fleeing France. I bolded that, because can you imagine violence directed at you being threatening enough to force you to flee the land you were born in, all because a nation that shares its ethnicity with you is engaged with terrorists? The only thing I can compare it to is the Japanese Internment camps of WWII. Germany has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic violence as well. Mostly from Turkish and Arab immigrants, but the local skin heads are in on it as well. Much to the embarrassment of Establishment Germany. They’re not really stopping it, mind you, but they’re very embarrassed all the same.
But not everyone is opposed to what’s happening in Gaza due to anti-Semitism. I actually know people who are not racists but still take the side against Israel. They all happen to be Leftists, and I think their objections are racist, but not in the same vein. They see Israel as a modern European democracy. As in, “white”. And for these people, “white” and “European” are just synonyms for “oppressor” and “racist”. “Brown skin good, white skin bad” type stuff. So therefore, by opposing Israel, they’re showing what good, caring people they are. It’s still racist, but not because they’re Jews, but because they’re pale skinned and European in outlook.
But I think the reason most overlook is that it’s easy to deal with the conflict in Gaza. Israel, regardless of what is said about it in the UN and international press, is not a pariah nation. Nor is it willing to be one. It actually cares (within reason) about international opinion. If it didn’t, then the IDF would roll into Gaza, slaughter every living thing there, tear down the buildings, salt the earth, and dare the world to come do something about it. That’s what a pariah nation does when faced with an existential threat and the means to deal with it. But they will not ever do that. Sure, they’re not so suicidal as to let Hamas keep flinging rockets at their civilians. Hell, if Canada or Mexico started doing that to us, it’d be an act of war, and we’d roll over their military, occupy their capitals and put a stop to it permanently. And we’d be right to. But Israel recognizes that doing what they would be justified to do will come with far too high a price politically. So they act (and have acted) with inhuman restraint.
So why not Sinjar? Why does no one care about the Yazidi? Because it’s not easy. Because while Israel will eventually stop fighting due to international pressure, no amount of talking is going to stop ISIL. They simply do not care about international opinion. At all. Put them in Israel’s position, with a comparable army to the IDF, and they absolutely would sow the fields with the blood of their enemies. Words cost nothing. But they can influence Israel. To stop the slaughter of the Yazidi, it’s going to take combat. Troops, on the ground, fighting ISIL in cities. It will take wealth. Driving out the ISIL troops will not be cheap. And it will not be quick. The problem with organizations like ISIL and al-Qaida, is that routing them in the field simply shatters their operational command. The individuals will keep fighting on, until you root them out and destroy them. There’s no one to “sign a cease fire” with. If you were to capture al-Baghdadi, and tried to force him to sign a surrender, no one in ISIL would abide by it. They’re not an army. So destroying them root and branch will take years.
So it comes down to laziness. It’s easy, cheap, and quick to talk-talk at the Israelis, and it will eventually lead to a cease fire (long enough for Hamas to refill its supply of Katyusha rockets). Stopping ISIL, not so much.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/stopping-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
And the real pull quote for me was the following:
"I don't see any attention from the rest of the world," a member of the Yazidi minority in Iraq told the New Yorker. "In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, 'Save Gaza, save Gaza.'"
So why is that? What is it about Gaza that draws the world’s attention and ire, that seems to be lacking in the case of the Yazidi in Sinjar?
Well, the first and most obvious answer is that the Yazidi aren’t being killed by Jews. Anti-Semitism is alive and well across the world. Since the outbreak of the latest fighting (I will NOT use the term “Gaza War”, because Hamas is not engaged in war, this is just a continuation of their ongoing terror campaign), we’ve seen anti-Semitic riots across Europe, with Jews fleeing France. I bolded that, because can you imagine violence directed at you being threatening enough to force you to flee the land you were born in, all because a nation that shares its ethnicity with you is engaged with terrorists? The only thing I can compare it to is the Japanese Internment camps of WWII. Germany has seen an uptick in anti-Semitic violence as well. Mostly from Turkish and Arab immigrants, but the local skin heads are in on it as well. Much to the embarrassment of Establishment Germany. They’re not really stopping it, mind you, but they’re very embarrassed all the same.
But not everyone is opposed to what’s happening in Gaza due to anti-Semitism. I actually know people who are not racists but still take the side against Israel. They all happen to be Leftists, and I think their objections are racist, but not in the same vein. They see Israel as a modern European democracy. As in, “white”. And for these people, “white” and “European” are just synonyms for “oppressor” and “racist”. “Brown skin good, white skin bad” type stuff. So therefore, by opposing Israel, they’re showing what good, caring people they are. It’s still racist, but not because they’re Jews, but because they’re pale skinned and European in outlook.
But I think the reason most overlook is that it’s easy to deal with the conflict in Gaza. Israel, regardless of what is said about it in the UN and international press, is not a pariah nation. Nor is it willing to be one. It actually cares (within reason) about international opinion. If it didn’t, then the IDF would roll into Gaza, slaughter every living thing there, tear down the buildings, salt the earth, and dare the world to come do something about it. That’s what a pariah nation does when faced with an existential threat and the means to deal with it. But they will not ever do that. Sure, they’re not so suicidal as to let Hamas keep flinging rockets at their civilians. Hell, if Canada or Mexico started doing that to us, it’d be an act of war, and we’d roll over their military, occupy their capitals and put a stop to it permanently. And we’d be right to. But Israel recognizes that doing what they would be justified to do will come with far too high a price politically. So they act (and have acted) with inhuman restraint.
So why not Sinjar? Why does no one care about the Yazidi? Because it’s not easy. Because while Israel will eventually stop fighting due to international pressure, no amount of talking is going to stop ISIL. They simply do not care about international opinion. At all. Put them in Israel’s position, with a comparable army to the IDF, and they absolutely would sow the fields with the blood of their enemies. Words cost nothing. But they can influence Israel. To stop the slaughter of the Yazidi, it’s going to take combat. Troops, on the ground, fighting ISIL in cities. It will take wealth. Driving out the ISIL troops will not be cheap. And it will not be quick. The problem with organizations like ISIL and al-Qaida, is that routing them in the field simply shatters their operational command. The individuals will keep fighting on, until you root them out and destroy them. There’s no one to “sign a cease fire” with. If you were to capture al-Baghdadi, and tried to force him to sign a surrender, no one in ISIL would abide by it. They’re not an army. So destroying them root and branch will take years.
So it comes down to laziness. It’s easy, cheap, and quick to talk-talk at the Israelis, and it will eventually lead to a cease fire (long enough for Hamas to refill its supply of Katyusha rockets). Stopping ISIL, not so much.
A Non-Controversy
Apparently a restaurant up north is "facing heat" and has set off a FaceBook "firestorm" by adding to its receipts an explicit surcharge to cover the minimum wage increase that local voters have approved.
This seems like the sort of thing that both sides of the debate should love. If you are opposed to the minimum wage increase, you can say: "Good! This way all those do-gooder customers who voted for this increase have to face up to the costs they have imposed on everyone else. They can't hide from the fact that every single customer who comes in here now has to pay a higher price in order for the business to remain in operation. That'll teach them."
But if you're for the minimum wage, you can say: "Good! This shows everyone that the cost of providing these workers with a better life is just thirty-five cents per meal. I'm happy to pay that, and I think you should be too. If I eat at this restaurant twice a week every week all year, I'll still only be out an extra thirty-five bucks! That'll teach those minimum-wage opponents that their arguments that the costs will be ruinous is ridiculous."
Another front over the minimum wage regards the second-order effects of the thing: it turns out that, after every business has adjusted its prices, the minimum wage increase ends up doing no good at all for the worker. But if this is what you believe, then you too should enjoy seeing the information made explicit on the receipt. "See? If a minimum-wage worker wants to eat here, it now costs them an extra thirty-five cents every time. Once you increase every transaction they make by about that amount, how much is that increase really helping them?"
There's nothing here not to like. Everybody should be happy. Nobody is happy.
This seems like the sort of thing that both sides of the debate should love. If you are opposed to the minimum wage increase, you can say: "Good! This way all those do-gooder customers who voted for this increase have to face up to the costs they have imposed on everyone else. They can't hide from the fact that every single customer who comes in here now has to pay a higher price in order for the business to remain in operation. That'll teach them."
But if you're for the minimum wage, you can say: "Good! This shows everyone that the cost of providing these workers with a better life is just thirty-five cents per meal. I'm happy to pay that, and I think you should be too. If I eat at this restaurant twice a week every week all year, I'll still only be out an extra thirty-five bucks! That'll teach those minimum-wage opponents that their arguments that the costs will be ruinous is ridiculous."
Another front over the minimum wage regards the second-order effects of the thing: it turns out that, after every business has adjusted its prices, the minimum wage increase ends up doing no good at all for the worker. But if this is what you believe, then you too should enjoy seeing the information made explicit on the receipt. "See? If a minimum-wage worker wants to eat here, it now costs them an extra thirty-five cents every time. Once you increase every transaction they make by about that amount, how much is that increase really helping them?"
There's nothing here not to like. Everybody should be happy. Nobody is happy.
WDCAACMTS
It's getting to where White House press conferences should just come out and say "we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation." Any followup questions about plans for specific action can be met with, "Yes, as I said, we're deeply concerned and are closely monitoring the situation."
亨利 VIII
China will create own Christian belief system amid tensions with church, says official.Well, it's worked before.
Ponzi and education
I miss Richard Jeni:
Imagine my surprise when it turned out the main thing that I was qualified for was to get another degree and teach Political Science to other people, who would, in turn, teach it to other people! This wasn't higher education, this was Amway with a football team!No disrespect intended to poli sci majors. My own undergraduate degree was in Fine Arts.
Rose Tattoo
The Dropkick Murphys have what they are calling a "hair razing time," as part of a fundraiser for a child with a deadly disease.
Maybe sometimes we do get better as we get older.
Maybe sometimes we do get better as we get older.
Gimme the cure
Richard Fernandez ruminates on the unfairness of first-world medicine:
The UK’s top public doctor says the failure to find a cure for Ebola represents underscores “the moral bankruptcy of capitalism”. Does that mean we can expect an Ebola vaccine from a socialist country any day now?
. . .
Whenever you discover a new cure, you have a problem. When most diseases were incurable, health care was cheap because you hired a grave digger and that was it. It’s when a cure is discovered that one can start ranting about the unfairness of it all. Ebola doesn’t illustrate the moral failure of capitalism; if anything it underscores the creative dilemma of private unreasonableness.
A Corporatist Constitution
Mickey Kaus has an interesting complaint about the way the administration looks at American society.
Two things to say about the system: in the short run, this approach provided those with the power to license new corporate parts with some significant control over the structure of society. If (like Edward I) you wanted a town somewhere to provide you with a base for military operations and increased tax revenue, you could offer special privileges to people who would become part of that town. In Medieval Spain, these systems were critically important to the conquest of Spain from the Muslims: many special rights were offered to those who would come settle (and defend) the disputed land, including elevation to knighthood if you came with a horse and could fight on it, liberation from any existing bonds on you, freedom from certain taxes for a period of time, and more. If you moved to one of these 'new towns' as an unfree serf but could find a way to live there for a year and a day, you would be free and a member of the town from then on.
In the long run, then, these corporate bodies increased human liberty a great deal. Not only could people move from one body to another as they pleased, but desirable privileges came to be claimed by more and more bodies. Sometimes they were enacted by law into general rights of the class of those who were free; for example, the right to a trial by one's peers originally pertained to the barons and perhaps the knighthood, but came to belong to everyone (who are, now, also the peers of everyone). The privileges that pertained to any of these special classes are now general rights possessed by all free Americans, with few exceptions (freedom of churches from taxes still pertains chiefly to churches, although other 'corporations' can get special tax breaks in return for moving their business to somewhere that desires it!).
So clearly it is a short-term interest in control of society that motivates the President: for example, by giving journalists special privileges he is propping up the prestige of a dying industry, and obtaining a sense from them of being on their side that will benefit him in his public relations.
In the long term, though, these special rights are likely to become general rights. Banks are too big to fail? So is everyone! Mortgages must be bailed out! No one can be suffered to lose everything through bankruptcy.
It's only fair, after all.
The upside is that sometimes there are improvements in the relationship between the government and the citizen that might still exist. So if we see journalists being granted a shield law, don't worry: sooner or later that law's protections will belong to everyone. Sooner these days, given the American model of everyone being leveled into a single class with equal rights before the law.
The downside is that many of these special privileges are special just because it would be harmful 'if everyone did it.' Likely as not, eventually everyone will.
Special privileges for reporters (they’re “society’s eyes and ears”!) or big banks (they’re “too big to fail”). Corporatism’s acutely fascinating because it’s insidious, anti-democratic, sclerotic and perhaps inevitable....The system is characteristic of the Middle Ages, in which one had rights and duties chiefly determined by which part of the 'body' one belonged. If one was an abbess, one had certain privileges; if one was a master member of a trade guild in a major city, other privileges. The abbess was absolutely not free to move to your town and start selling your goods in a shop in the market! Nor was anyone else not in your guild -- your position ensured access to substantial wealth. By the same token, you had to pay some taxes from which she would be exempt, and you might be compelled into some sort of military service to defend the town. You were both expected to dress in a specific fashion proper to your role, in part so that everyone would understand how to treat you when they met you on the road.
The vision is “corporatist” because it analogizes society with a body, or corpus, with different institutions and sets of people performing different specialized, orchestrated roles, like bodily organs (as opposed to, say, seeing U.S. society as 300 million free, individual citizens exercising equal liberties and moving in and out of the marketplace in various unpredictable roles of their own choosing).
Two things to say about the system: in the short run, this approach provided those with the power to license new corporate parts with some significant control over the structure of society. If (like Edward I) you wanted a town somewhere to provide you with a base for military operations and increased tax revenue, you could offer special privileges to people who would become part of that town. In Medieval Spain, these systems were critically important to the conquest of Spain from the Muslims: many special rights were offered to those who would come settle (and defend) the disputed land, including elevation to knighthood if you came with a horse and could fight on it, liberation from any existing bonds on you, freedom from certain taxes for a period of time, and more. If you moved to one of these 'new towns' as an unfree serf but could find a way to live there for a year and a day, you would be free and a member of the town from then on.
In the long run, then, these corporate bodies increased human liberty a great deal. Not only could people move from one body to another as they pleased, but desirable privileges came to be claimed by more and more bodies. Sometimes they were enacted by law into general rights of the class of those who were free; for example, the right to a trial by one's peers originally pertained to the barons and perhaps the knighthood, but came to belong to everyone (who are, now, also the peers of everyone). The privileges that pertained to any of these special classes are now general rights possessed by all free Americans, with few exceptions (freedom of churches from taxes still pertains chiefly to churches, although other 'corporations' can get special tax breaks in return for moving their business to somewhere that desires it!).
So clearly it is a short-term interest in control of society that motivates the President: for example, by giving journalists special privileges he is propping up the prestige of a dying industry, and obtaining a sense from them of being on their side that will benefit him in his public relations.
In the long term, though, these special rights are likely to become general rights. Banks are too big to fail? So is everyone! Mortgages must be bailed out! No one can be suffered to lose everything through bankruptcy.
It's only fair, after all.
The upside is that sometimes there are improvements in the relationship between the government and the citizen that might still exist. So if we see journalists being granted a shield law, don't worry: sooner or later that law's protections will belong to everyone. Sooner these days, given the American model of everyone being leveled into a single class with equal rights before the law.
The downside is that many of these special privileges are special just because it would be harmful 'if everyone did it.' Likely as not, eventually everyone will.
Oaths and Pledges
While arguing that corporations should have to take a loyalty oath in order to do business here, a Daily Beast author muses:
1) Could we possibly confuse the distinction between an oath and a contract any more? One of the most damaging things that happened to marriage was that people started thinking of it as a contract -- which, of course, can be renegotiated at will by the parties to the contract, and which may even have breach clauses just in case it doesn't work out -- instead of the sacred oath in which God unifies man and wife into one flesh, until death do they part.
2) Why should an oath or a pledge be "creepy"? Does the language of honor frighten you so much? There is an honor interest at stake, actually, because the corporation wishes to join the polity in the sense of obtaining legal protections and at least property rights. That means that the company takes the business of the polity -- protecting the rights of its members -- to be a common good of which it would like a part. Why, then, should the corporate person not be bound in the same way as the ordinary person: that is by honor, so that loyalty is owed if (and only if) the state does its duty in protecting the rights it was constituted to protect? What makes corporations special, that they should not have to take an oath that properly expresses the relationship between citizens and the polity of which they are a member?
3) Perhaps your real concern is that corporate loyalty to the state sounds like fascism. So, you're a fascist to some degree. But the American project has used the fasces in its iconography from the very beginning. This kind of proto-fascism is not the same as the full-throated Fascism of Mussolini -- for example, it admits of limits such as the right to renounce citizenship, the right of revolution in the cases where the state ceases to perform the duties for which loyalty is the reciprocal reward, and that some of the rights the state is duty-bound to protect include freedoms of association, religion, the press, etc. That we intend to bind everyone together, 'E Pluribus Unum,' does not mean that we shall have 'everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' Our version creates several areas that are meant to be outside the state, where the state is supposed to be bound not to interfere.
4) Of course you understand that this demand for loyalty raises the price of doing business somewhat: what you are imposing is an opportunity cost. That will have economic as well as political ramifications. You had better be clear on just what you are offering in return, and the deal had better be fair if you want the corporate citizens to accept it. For example, I've heard a lot of noise lately about trying to overturn Citizens United via legislation. If you do, you had better think carefully about what you will use to replace it. If corporations are citizens, they won't get a vote (unless we change the Constitution to permit corporate citizens one vote, in addition to the votes of their members who are American citizens). Nevertheless, you have yourself proven that they will have a legitimate interest in being able to express opinions about the government and its policy. That's one of the traditional parts of loyalty oaths, going back even to the feudal loyalty oaths: in return for loyalty, you have the right to advise on policy.
Because oaths and pledges are a little creepy, this effort needs something else—something that comes out of the legal and business worlds: a contract.I have several things to say about that.
1) Could we possibly confuse the distinction between an oath and a contract any more? One of the most damaging things that happened to marriage was that people started thinking of it as a contract -- which, of course, can be renegotiated at will by the parties to the contract, and which may even have breach clauses just in case it doesn't work out -- instead of the sacred oath in which God unifies man and wife into one flesh, until death do they part.
2) Why should an oath or a pledge be "creepy"? Does the language of honor frighten you so much? There is an honor interest at stake, actually, because the corporation wishes to join the polity in the sense of obtaining legal protections and at least property rights. That means that the company takes the business of the polity -- protecting the rights of its members -- to be a common good of which it would like a part. Why, then, should the corporate person not be bound in the same way as the ordinary person: that is by honor, so that loyalty is owed if (and only if) the state does its duty in protecting the rights it was constituted to protect? What makes corporations special, that they should not have to take an oath that properly expresses the relationship between citizens and the polity of which they are a member?
3) Perhaps your real concern is that corporate loyalty to the state sounds like fascism. So, you're a fascist to some degree. But the American project has used the fasces in its iconography from the very beginning. This kind of proto-fascism is not the same as the full-throated Fascism of Mussolini -- for example, it admits of limits such as the right to renounce citizenship, the right of revolution in the cases where the state ceases to perform the duties for which loyalty is the reciprocal reward, and that some of the rights the state is duty-bound to protect include freedoms of association, religion, the press, etc. That we intend to bind everyone together, 'E Pluribus Unum,' does not mean that we shall have 'everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' Our version creates several areas that are meant to be outside the state, where the state is supposed to be bound not to interfere.
4) Of course you understand that this demand for loyalty raises the price of doing business somewhat: what you are imposing is an opportunity cost. That will have economic as well as political ramifications. You had better be clear on just what you are offering in return, and the deal had better be fair if you want the corporate citizens to accept it. For example, I've heard a lot of noise lately about trying to overturn Citizens United via legislation. If you do, you had better think carefully about what you will use to replace it. If corporations are citizens, they won't get a vote (unless we change the Constitution to permit corporate citizens one vote, in addition to the votes of their members who are American citizens). Nevertheless, you have yourself proven that they will have a legitimate interest in being able to express opinions about the government and its policy. That's one of the traditional parts of loyalty oaths, going back even to the feudal loyalty oaths: in return for loyalty, you have the right to advise on policy.
Further Considerations on Impeachment
Dr. Codevilla, who has written some thought-provoking pieces on American government in the recent past, has a new piece treating the history of the impeachment clause. Just what was it supposed to control?
It turns out that Alexander Hamilton was worried about this at the time:
By the way, what constitutes "bribery," that offense which the Founders coupled with treason as a clear-cut case? The President spends very much of his time flying from one fundraiser to another.
Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, “contended that the legislature should have power to remove the Executive at pleasure.” Nobody agreed. Virginia’s George Mason expressed the general sentiment when he argued that, while “the fallibility” of electors and “the corruptibility of the man chosen” makes indispensable “some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate,” nevertheless he “opposed decidedly making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature in violation of the fundamental principle of good government.” New York’s Gouverneur Morris agreed, but was wary, lest impeachment “render the Executive dependent on those who are to impeach.”Dr. Codevilla is worried that partisan politics have rendered this system nonfunctional, as recent Congresses have been unwilling to act to defend Congressional power per se if either house is controlled by the President's party. So in the Clinton administration we saw the House but not the Senate act in impeachment; now the House but not the Senate is suing to try to compel the President to keep his oath regarding 'the faithful execution of the law.' If Congress won't act to defend Congressional powers, but pursues partisan outcomes first and the Constitutional separation of powers second (if at all), the controls no longer function.
Having agreed to provide for the president’s impeachment, the question became how to define the occasions of it so as to prevent impeachment from becoming a mere tool of political control. Everyone agreed that “treason and bribery ” ought to be causes. But George Mason noted that “Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offenses….He movd. to add after “bribery” “or maladministration.” Mr. Gerry seconded him. Virginia’s James Madison objected: “So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.” Seeing the sense of that, “Col. Mason withdrew “maladministration” & substituted “other high crimes and misdemeanors”
It turns out that Alexander Hamilton was worried about this at the time:
Alexander Hamilton warned that [nonpartisanship] would be in short supply. In Federalist 65 he wrote: “A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective.” That is because the “subjects of its jurisdiction…are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL… The prosecution of them…will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”So it seems to have proven.
By the way, what constitutes "bribery," that offense which the Founders coupled with treason as a clear-cut case? The President spends very much of his time flying from one fundraiser to another.
Bank Run
Credibility is the currency, and sometimes currencies collapse:
This flouting of a U.S. red line by [the Republic of Georgia] might seem relatively inconsequential — Saakashvili, after all, is not under arrest but in Ukraine advising its new pro-Western government. But it is part of a larger trend. Ally after ally of the United States, including regimes that, like Georgia, depend heavily on Washington for military and economic aid, have begun openly defying the Obama administration and, in a few cases, deliberately humiliating its envoys.
Just in the last two months, Egypt sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to long prison terms on flagrantly bogus charges the day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced that he had discussed their case with Cairo’s new strongman, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. Bahrain, the Persian Gulf host of the U.S. 5th Fleet, expelled the assistant secretary of state for human rights after he met with members of a legal opposition party. Even tiny Aruba, whose foreign policy is run by the Netherlands, blindsided Washington by releasing a senior Venezuelan general it had arrested on a U.S. drug trafficking warrant. Apparently, it was considered easier to offend the Obama administration than the Chavista regime in Caracas.
Then there is Thailand, a “major non-Nato ally” of the United States, where the army carried out a military coup against an elected government even though it knew U.S. law would mandate a cutoff of military aid; and Burma, which backtracked on political reform promises its president made personally to Obama last year.
“It’s like a bank run,” one congressional foreign policy staffer told me last week. An international consensus seems to have gelled that the United States can’t be counted on to uphold its commitments and red lines, even with allies; the result is a free for all that can be seen as much in the nose-thumbing of Georgia as in Israel’s high-profile rejection of U.S. diplomacy.
What if We Don't Want Anti-Poverty Programs?
A writer at no less than the National Review worries that the Deep South can't be trusted with Federalism, because states there don't tend to enact anti-poverty programs like other states do. He posits that this is because Southern Republicans are white and above-average in income, so that the constituents who vote for Southern governors and many legislators don't want to pay the taxes because they wouldn't benefit from the programs.
Yet even in the Solid South, the Republicans are not always in charge (and have only been in charge for a generation anyway: it was a Democratic stronghold through most of its history).
I'm not sure the wisdom is exactly correct, but it is at least partially correct. Having good work is an important part of any anti-poverty program. Where the South has flourished, around cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, it has done so in this way. By attracting major corporations and investors, you create an environment in which small business creation is also encouraged: some small businesses that support the corporations directly, and others that provide services to their employees (or, at a second order, services to people who provide services). I know a young man who recently quit his job at a business that does pressure-washing of trucks (on contract to Federal Express, Pepsi, and others) to take another job at a company that does trimming and cutting trees for subdivisions that house those who have come down during Atlanta's growth over the last several generations. He's working-class, uneducated but energetic and willing to do a hard day's work, and even this terrible economy has provided him with a couple of opportunities from which to choose.
Additionally, the South has not had a good experience with Federally-led anti-poverty programs. Where such programs have had flourishing enrollment, poverty has not declined, but morality has (as a writer at the National Review should know). This had led to a general degradation of the culture in those areas, as well as the people who become wrapped up in this culture of dependency. Where traditional moral structures have held strong, in spite of Federal enticements, rural poverty is not obviously worse yet people live better lives.
Where the Southern anti-poverty strategy falls down seems to me to be in three broad areas:
1) Federal intrusion: It can't defeat Federal regulations, which have badly hurt the working class -- especially the Obamacare regulations, which have lately turned most unskilled workers from full time employees into part-time employees, suppressed business growth and formation, and generally created an atmosphere in which it is harder to create work. Likewise it was very vulnerable to the disruption caused by the housing bubble, which was created in part by Federal regulations on mortgages that destabilized the risk market. No Southern legislature could pass a law countermanding the Federal law that mortgages be issued to people who probably couldn't pay for them, and if they had tried they would have been suspected (and accused) of being racially motivated for it. Yet it would have protected workers in the region from the vastly negative effects of the bubble's formation and collapse.
2) What do we do about people for whom jobs aren't the answer? This strategy gives workers a measure of independence by encouraging the formation of lots of job opportunities, which means that they can elect to move from one job to another. Thus, they aren't quite in the situation of having their lives dominated by a corporate master: they can go work for someone else. But what about those who are getting older and can't work as hard or as long (if they can find an other-than-part-time job, or enough of them); or who lack the resources to train for new skills; or who happen to lack the intelligence to be useful to anyone; or who have developed chronic illness; or, really, anyone else for whom employment isn't the answer? When new technologies alter the playing field for workers, how do we ensure they can adapt to it? What happens if we just need fewer workers because of technological changes -- what do we do about people who can't work though they would? We seem not to have a good set of answers here.
3) Corruption: National and international banks who are protected by lobbying relationships with the Feds are impossible to hold to account locally. Federalism is supposed to be our method of protection here -- it's supposed to provide a level of government that is better able to handle larger-scale actors who may be beyond the reach of a state. Instead it has been captured by the people it was supposed to regulate. The danger of the South's model is that it is inviting state-level corruption of the same kind that has already captured the Federal government. It is a short walk from offering tax breaks and fewer regulations to offering special protections from torts or lawsuits, or to structuring regulations in a way that actually allows bad behavior by the wealthy corporations you'd like to court.
Of these problems, only problem #2 even conceptually might be amenable to solutions of the type this author would like to see. Yet solutions of that type have failed -- see the links under 'such programs have had flourishing enrollment,' above. There isn't a general agreement about what the solutions ought to be in any case; and there's a balance to be achieved between any solution and the general strategy of encouraging the growth of the private sector.
So it could be that the reason there aren't more anti-poverty programs in the South is that the South doesn't want them. That doesn't mean there are no problems, and poverty is certainly a serious issue. It just means that we don't agree about how to address the issue or solve the problems. Government at any level isn't helpful if you don't know what you want it to do; and if you just start screwing around and trying things, you're apt to upset that general strategy of business development. We are only willing to do something that damages the general strategy in the rare case that it has come to command broad democratic agreement that the cost would be worth the benefits.
None of that has anything to do with race.
* This begs the question of why the South didn't grow instead of the Rust Belt, or begin its upswing earlier. After all, the policy is very old. The answer is partially one of infrastructure development: the South was deeply impoverished by the Civil War, and had less money for the infrastructure on which an industrial economy depended; impoverishment only got worse outside of the city centers, because the South's economic structure postwar was a cotton monoculture, which meant that the economic activity was wealth-extracting rather than wealth-creating from the perspective of the region. (It created lots of wealth for those down the line, who were buying cotton cheaper every year and turning it into finished products: but that was done outside the South.) Broad educational attainment was less for a long time for similar reasons, and an industrial worker must be basically educated.
Yet even in the Solid South, the Republicans are not always in charge (and have only been in charge for a generation anyway: it was a Democratic stronghold through most of its history).
Did the Democrats who controlled legislatures in the Deep South, black and non-black, play any role at all in the creation and governance of anti-poverty programs? It seems important not to neglect this part of the story. Bouie references the history of the region: “In keeping with their histories as low-tax, low-service states,” Bouie writes, ”places like Alabama and Mississippi have aimed for the minimum, providing as little as possible to poorer residents.” To be sure, Bouie’s point isn’t exactly a partisan one. It could be that it’s not just Republicans in the Deep South who can’t be trusted with anti-poverty efforts, but rather all elected officials in the Deep South, including the Democrats, including the African-American Democrats, who controlled the legislature until relatively recently. (It’s also true that Republicans proved more competitive in races for governor in recent decades, and governors have a great deal of power.) This seems like a dispiriting conclusion to draw, particularly for those of us who have at least some faith in the public-spiritedness of southern lawmakers. Though I would concede that southern policymakers of the past have much to answer for, it seems excessive to discount even the possibility that future southern policymakers will learn from the mistakes of the past.As a Southerner who has written quite a bit about concern for the poor and the working class in the South, let me suggest that perhaps you're missing the point. There's more than one way to use the government to help the poor and the working class. The Southern way has traditionally been to encourage business development (a tradition that dates to the Reconstruction-era "New South" programs of the Bourbon Democrats who ran the region before, during, and after the Civil War). This is not done by establishing programs that have to be funded by higher taxes, because taxes tend to cause businesses to flee or not to form at all. It is done through a combination of tax brakes and deregulation, that is, by making it cheaper and easier to run your business here. This is the standard wisdom, and it is why the South has been growing at the expense of the Rust Belt for quite a long time now.*
I'm not sure the wisdom is exactly correct, but it is at least partially correct. Having good work is an important part of any anti-poverty program. Where the South has flourished, around cities like Atlanta and Charlotte, it has done so in this way. By attracting major corporations and investors, you create an environment in which small business creation is also encouraged: some small businesses that support the corporations directly, and others that provide services to their employees (or, at a second order, services to people who provide services). I know a young man who recently quit his job at a business that does pressure-washing of trucks (on contract to Federal Express, Pepsi, and others) to take another job at a company that does trimming and cutting trees for subdivisions that house those who have come down during Atlanta's growth over the last several generations. He's working-class, uneducated but energetic and willing to do a hard day's work, and even this terrible economy has provided him with a couple of opportunities from which to choose.
Additionally, the South has not had a good experience with Federally-led anti-poverty programs. Where such programs have had flourishing enrollment, poverty has not declined, but morality has (as a writer at the National Review should know). This had led to a general degradation of the culture in those areas, as well as the people who become wrapped up in this culture of dependency. Where traditional moral structures have held strong, in spite of Federal enticements, rural poverty is not obviously worse yet people live better lives.
Where the Southern anti-poverty strategy falls down seems to me to be in three broad areas:
1) Federal intrusion: It can't defeat Federal regulations, which have badly hurt the working class -- especially the Obamacare regulations, which have lately turned most unskilled workers from full time employees into part-time employees, suppressed business growth and formation, and generally created an atmosphere in which it is harder to create work. Likewise it was very vulnerable to the disruption caused by the housing bubble, which was created in part by Federal regulations on mortgages that destabilized the risk market. No Southern legislature could pass a law countermanding the Federal law that mortgages be issued to people who probably couldn't pay for them, and if they had tried they would have been suspected (and accused) of being racially motivated for it. Yet it would have protected workers in the region from the vastly negative effects of the bubble's formation and collapse.
2) What do we do about people for whom jobs aren't the answer? This strategy gives workers a measure of independence by encouraging the formation of lots of job opportunities, which means that they can elect to move from one job to another. Thus, they aren't quite in the situation of having their lives dominated by a corporate master: they can go work for someone else. But what about those who are getting older and can't work as hard or as long (if they can find an other-than-part-time job, or enough of them); or who lack the resources to train for new skills; or who happen to lack the intelligence to be useful to anyone; or who have developed chronic illness; or, really, anyone else for whom employment isn't the answer? When new technologies alter the playing field for workers, how do we ensure they can adapt to it? What happens if we just need fewer workers because of technological changes -- what do we do about people who can't work though they would? We seem not to have a good set of answers here.
3) Corruption: National and international banks who are protected by lobbying relationships with the Feds are impossible to hold to account locally. Federalism is supposed to be our method of protection here -- it's supposed to provide a level of government that is better able to handle larger-scale actors who may be beyond the reach of a state. Instead it has been captured by the people it was supposed to regulate. The danger of the South's model is that it is inviting state-level corruption of the same kind that has already captured the Federal government. It is a short walk from offering tax breaks and fewer regulations to offering special protections from torts or lawsuits, or to structuring regulations in a way that actually allows bad behavior by the wealthy corporations you'd like to court.
Of these problems, only problem #2 even conceptually might be amenable to solutions of the type this author would like to see. Yet solutions of that type have failed -- see the links under 'such programs have had flourishing enrollment,' above. There isn't a general agreement about what the solutions ought to be in any case; and there's a balance to be achieved between any solution and the general strategy of encouraging the growth of the private sector.
So it could be that the reason there aren't more anti-poverty programs in the South is that the South doesn't want them. That doesn't mean there are no problems, and poverty is certainly a serious issue. It just means that we don't agree about how to address the issue or solve the problems. Government at any level isn't helpful if you don't know what you want it to do; and if you just start screwing around and trying things, you're apt to upset that general strategy of business development. We are only willing to do something that damages the general strategy in the rare case that it has come to command broad democratic agreement that the cost would be worth the benefits.
None of that has anything to do with race.
* This begs the question of why the South didn't grow instead of the Rust Belt, or begin its upswing earlier. After all, the policy is very old. The answer is partially one of infrastructure development: the South was deeply impoverished by the Civil War, and had less money for the infrastructure on which an industrial economy depended; impoverishment only got worse outside of the city centers, because the South's economic structure postwar was a cotton monoculture, which meant that the economic activity was wealth-extracting rather than wealth-creating from the perspective of the region. (It created lots of wealth for those down the line, who were buying cotton cheaper every year and turning it into finished products: but that was done outside the South.) Broad educational attainment was less for a long time for similar reasons, and an industrial worker must be basically educated.
Enemies
A thoughtful post from David Foster explores the mental gymnastics we sometimes engage in to tolerate the sins of our friends (and ourselves) and avoid the duty to forgive our real enemies. It includes this passage from C.S. Lewis:
“All Christians know that they must forgive their enemies. But “my enemy” primarily means the man whom I am really tempted to hate…. If you listen to young Christian intellectuals talking, you will soon find out who their real enemy is. He seems to have two names–Colonel Blimp and “the businessman.” I suspect that the latter usually means the speaker’s father, but that is speculation. What is certain is that in asking such people to forgive the Germans and Russians, and to open their eyes to the sins of England, you are asking them, not to mortify, but to indulge, their ruling passion.”
Now you've done it
This forest worker discovers he's got a lifetime job rubbing Bambi's belly:
H/t Ace.
H/t Ace.
Inventory
The Daily Telegraph has a photo story showing reproduction kits for soldiers in English wars from 1066 until the present day. There's a real proliferation of gear starting in the middle of the 20th century.
Reading for the bar
More via Maggie's Farm: It used to be commonplace to "read for the bar"--i.e., apprentice oneself to a practitioner rather than get a J.D.--but in recent decades the practice has all but disappeared. It's a mystery why reading for the bar shouldn't be an excellent alternative. Assuming the bar exam itself has any validity, why would we care how people learn to pass it? Not everyone goes to an elite law school with a high bar pass rate, and yet we're comfortable handing out licenses to people from second-rate or third-rate schools as long as they're in the top portion of their class and can eke out a passing score on the bar exam. It's not as though learning the law required expensive facilities or laboratories. These days it doesn't even require a good law library, considering that absolutely anything a lawyer is likely to need can be found online. I haven't done legal research in a book for decades. There's some value in talking out legal principles in class with a good professor, but less than you might think, and anyway who says you'll have a good professor, outside of a handful of good schools?
This assumption that only an accredited school can disseminate professional knowledge is part of the attitude that denigrates home-schooling. Judge by the results, sez I, not the trappings and the expensive salaries. Clients are free to decide whether they want to hire a lawyer with a fancy degree, or just one who's proved he knows his stuff.
This assumption that only an accredited school can disseminate professional knowledge is part of the attitude that denigrates home-schooling. Judge by the results, sez I, not the trappings and the expensive salaries. Clients are free to decide whether they want to hire a lawyer with a fancy degree, or just one who's proved he knows his stuff.
Moral non-equivalency, part two
Ted Cruz describes two hospitals. One is used by Hamas as a human shield in a deliberate attempt to produce collateral damage to civilians for propaganda purposes. The other:
Meanwhile in Israel, Ziv is a center for pediatric and orthopedic medicine. Given its proximity to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, Ziv has seen its share of violence, but despite taking direct rocket fire during the 2006 Lebanon war, it has remained in continuous operation.
During the past three years of the Syrian civil war, Ziv has treated more than 1,000 Syrians injured in that conflict — all free of charge. In a visit to Ziv this spring, I met the social worker whose job it is to explain to the patients who wake up grievously injured and surrounded by Israelis that they are not in hell, but that the people who they have been told from birth are the devil are, in fact, working very hard to heal them.The experience is different for anyone who wakes up grievously injured and surrounded by Hamas. Hamas, by the way, denies possession of the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped and dragged away during Hamas's almost immediate breach of the most recent ceasefire. In fact, Hamas says it has "lost contact" with that unit altogether and assumes the entire unit, along with the Israeli soldier, were killed by Israeli bombardments.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
#Facebook is not a Law Enforcement issue, please don't call us about it being down, we don't know when FB will be back up!
— Sgt. Brink (@LASDBrink) August 1, 2014Sigh. H/t: Ranger Up.
Truthy fiction
The USDA shut down a small-town library's "seed library," citing concerns about corruption of the nation's precious bodily food supply. The library would be permitted to keep a seed library (from which residents could withdraw seeds at the beginning of the planting season, and replace them with new seeds at the conclusion) only if it tested each sample for germination. Which brings to mind Jim Gerraghty's well-reviewed new humorous novel, "The Weed Agency."
Senate rules
Yesterday the multi-billion program to keep the border wide open went down in flames in the Senate, for a surprising reason. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) first tried to crack open Harry Reid's no-amendment gambit to permit the Cruz amendment, which would have prohibited the President from carrying out his promise/threat to grant amnesty to 6 million or so illegal immigrants by executive order. That vote failed, 43 yea/52 nay. But Sessions wasn't done: he raised a point of order that the expensive program violated the pay-as-you-go rules, because its cost was balanced by neither spending cuts nor tax increases. The vote to waive Sessions' point of order, which would have required a 60-vote majority to succeed, received only a 50 yea/44 nay vote.
No Surprise: Latest QDR Too Weak For Global Role
It's a feature not a bug, if you want America to decline in global importance and assume a more humble role. Of course, the question is: who will fill the gaps? Iran? ISIS? Or someone else?
The panel’s report said the past several years of budget cuts and mandated reduction in personnel and weapons have stirred deep unease among allies who would count on the U.S. in a crisis.Exactly! Nobody else could defeat us, so if America was to be defeated on the world stage, we had to do it ourselves.
“Not only have they caused significant investment shortfalls in U.S. military readiness and both present and future capabilities, they have prompted our current and potential allies and adversaries to question our commitment and resolve,” the report said. “Unless reversed, these shortfalls will lead to a high-risk force in the near future. That in turn will lead to an America that is not only less secure but also far less prosperous. In this sense, these cuts are ultimately self-defeating.”
The Sentimental Answer May Not Be the Truthful One
This morning on the way to work, I heard an ABC News report out of Gaza. The reporter was listening to a couple of Palestinian women rant about the war, one saying "we should kill Israeli women and children" (she thinks they haven't been?), and another claiming to be tired of it all...In an effort to seem even-handed and humane, no doubt, the reporter ended by saying the real question was "how to explain war to bewildered children." (Paraphrasing from memory.) She didn't back that statement up with any witnesses. If she'd investigated, she'd've found that explaining war to children is easy...especially if those children are boys. Simply have schools and a community that teach them the national myth, the dominant religion, or both...just as the Palestinians do (and Israelis too). Then a ready explanation will come to them.
(Is that a good explanation or a truthful understanding? Separate question, and the answer differs from myth to myth. But neither Palestinians nor most peoples in the world...outside of modern-day Americans...are at a loss for an answer, the way that reporter was.)
(Is that a good explanation or a truthful understanding? Separate question, and the answer differs from myth to myth. But neither Palestinians nor most peoples in the world...outside of modern-day Americans...are at a loss for an answer, the way that reporter was.)
Justice
The man who killed my neighbors' grandson appeared in court yesterday, almost a year after the fatal accident, to accept a plea. The sentence is sixteen years on two or more counts. Because the sentences will run concurrently, he is likely to serve 90% of the sentence.
The family were told that normally two or three people show up at a plea-bargain hearing. Yesterday thirty people appeared for the victims, including police officers from the scene, marshals who retrieved the defendant from Arkansas after he jumped bail, and the family of the two people he killed and the half dozen (including five children) that he injured very seriously. No one appeared for the defendant, who was hauled off to Huntsville prison at the conclusion of the hearing.
Several people gave victim impact statements. My neighbor said that the judge frequently brought out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. I have never seen a judge in tears. There is something oddly touching about this official, but human, acknowledgement of the family's pain.
Certainly the last parole did not work out well. This was no freak accident resulting from bad luck or a split-second loss of attention. Several cars had called in reports of a dangerous, weaving driver in the minutes before the wreck. There were reports that he had been up all night on meth while on a "fishing trip" with his girlfriend, her child, and his own two children; on the return trip he furiously refused to relinquish the wheel. Despite his criminal record, he had a good job and a real chance of turning his life around. Instead it all went up in smoke.
The family were told that normally two or three people show up at a plea-bargain hearing. Yesterday thirty people appeared for the victims, including police officers from the scene, marshals who retrieved the defendant from Arkansas after he jumped bail, and the family of the two people he killed and the half dozen (including five children) that he injured very seriously. No one appeared for the defendant, who was hauled off to Huntsville prison at the conclusion of the hearing.
Several people gave victim impact statements. My neighbor said that the judge frequently brought out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. I have never seen a judge in tears. There is something oddly touching about this official, but human, acknowledgement of the family's pain.
Competition and innovation
Mark Perry is an Uber fan. He loves to chronicle the desperate fight of the taxi cartels to protect themselves from competition, and the innovations that Uber keeps introducing to delight its growing customer base. In a local fight, the taxi cartels often seem to have the upper hand, with their crony-capitalist lock on protectionism. What happens when Uber ignores all that and exploits two big advantages: the willingness to innovate in the areas that are important to their customers, rather than to the entrenched taxi/city power bases, and the ability to coordinate over large geographical areas rather than to tighten their maniacal grip on a local monopoly?
Update: an oddly absorbing site that shows a New York taxi's typical workday, mostly centered on Manhattan trips.
Update: an oddly absorbing site that shows a New York taxi's typical workday, mostly centered on Manhattan trips.
Invisible antlers
I've always been a little confused by the "male display" explanation for elaborate feathers and antlers and so on. What have they got to do with real survival capability? Why is it a winning evolutionary strategy for females to be impressed? But for whatever reason, they seem to work, unless there's another explanation for their natural selection. Anyway, it's fascinating to see that male beaked whales may have internal antlers that are invisible except to echo-locating females of the species:
These inner structures don’t wreck the whales’ streamlined bodies, as horns or external ornaments surely would. That’s important given how frequently they dive. With internal antlers, they could get the advertising space of a bus and the profile of a Ferrari at the same time.
Market-based medicine
Oklahoma public employees have saved a boatload of money by using a surgery center devoted to price transparency and consumer choice:
Unlike most other medical providers, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma actually posts transparent pricing and offers deeply-discounted, payable-in-advance, cash-only medical procedures. The center does accept private insurance, but it does not accept Medicaid or Medicare — government regulations won’t allow them to post transparent prices online.
Sometimes the Guns Come Out
Mark Steyn links us to a reminder of the nature of government.
Man Shot, Paralyzed Over 31 Unpaid Parking Tickets.
A matter we were discussing at Cassandra's a couple of weeks back: Statists love to pretend that government isn't force, doesn't work through force, and oughtn't to be morally analyzed as force. The first political speech I remember a line from...I mean, I remember hearing it at the time...was Bruce Babbitt addressing a group of schoolkids in the 1988 primaries. I paraphrase: "The Republicans will tell you to be afraid of government. Don't be. Government is us." Or there's the even more repulsive formulation of Barney Frank: "Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together." (Go do 'em to yourself, Barney, thanks very much.)
If the city government wants a tax for parking, or to control where you park...and you don't obey, and pretend the taxes don't apply to you...sooner or later, there's a man with a gun to enforce it. Most of the time we obey and the guns don't come out. But sometimes they do and they're always there. If it oughtn't to be done with guns -- government oughtn't to be doing it at all.
Is it worth pointing a gun to collect city tax and control city parking? I think so...though the traffic cops of Hanoi, if they exist, may not agree[1]. No police force, cars parked wherever urban barbarians want them...this would be less safe yet than having the Pennsylvania State Constables on the prowl. I have a hard time accepting the moral order of the dueling culture, when people pointed guns to enforce simple good manners. (But Grim might talk me around on that one before it's all through.) Wherever we draw that line, though, let's never forget what it really is, and the moral angle of government security, government charity, government culture, or government anything.
[1] Michael Totten's first dispatch from Vietnam is excellent reading and heartwarming, and says some fine things about what humans can do after being crushed by tyranny. You should be reading that instead of me.
Man Shot, Paralyzed Over 31 Unpaid Parking Tickets.
A matter we were discussing at Cassandra's a couple of weeks back: Statists love to pretend that government isn't force, doesn't work through force, and oughtn't to be morally analyzed as force. The first political speech I remember a line from...I mean, I remember hearing it at the time...was Bruce Babbitt addressing a group of schoolkids in the 1988 primaries. I paraphrase: "The Republicans will tell you to be afraid of government. Don't be. Government is us." Or there's the even more repulsive formulation of Barney Frank: "Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together." (Go do 'em to yourself, Barney, thanks very much.)
If the city government wants a tax for parking, or to control where you park...and you don't obey, and pretend the taxes don't apply to you...sooner or later, there's a man with a gun to enforce it. Most of the time we obey and the guns don't come out. But sometimes they do and they're always there. If it oughtn't to be done with guns -- government oughtn't to be doing it at all.
Is it worth pointing a gun to collect city tax and control city parking? I think so...though the traffic cops of Hanoi, if they exist, may not agree[1]. No police force, cars parked wherever urban barbarians want them...this would be less safe yet than having the Pennsylvania State Constables on the prowl. I have a hard time accepting the moral order of the dueling culture, when people pointed guns to enforce simple good manners. (But Grim might talk me around on that one before it's all through.) Wherever we draw that line, though, let's never forget what it really is, and the moral angle of government security, government charity, government culture, or government anything.
[1] Michael Totten's first dispatch from Vietnam is excellent reading and heartwarming, and says some fine things about what humans can do after being crushed by tyranny. You should be reading that instead of me.
Theodore VanKirk
...the last survivor of the Enola Gay's crew, has died. I was glad to read he lived a full life after his service ended, went on to a long career as a chemical engineer, kept his mind sharp, and died peacefully.
The event calls for reflection, of just the kind you've been doing, and that Grim's done before. For World War II was the last U.S. war that ended before the Geneva Conventions of 1948 (the centerpiece of the modern jus in bello) and the U.N. Charter (the centerpiece of the modern jus ad bellum) went into effect. And with it the radical new idea that civilians..."persons taking no active part in the hostilities...no matter what kind of war it was, or between whom...were simply immune as targets. (Jean Pictet's commentary on Common Article 3, which you can get here, describes it as an "almost unhoped-for" extension of common article 2...designed to apply even to civil wars or insurrections, to the savage as well as the civilized.
Islamic radicals sometimes defend 9/11 with a tu quoque...."What about Hiroshima?" There are several answers, but one of them is: "The law changed after that. We wouldn't be allowed to do that now; and by agreement and by custom, neither can anyone else." If you're much younger than VanKirk, older wars feel wrong...punitive expeditions, attacking villages, sacking towns, the jubilation at Marchin' Through Georgia...it feels like something that doesn't belong in war. Yet that is an ancient norm, and it is the modern standard that's in its experimental stage.
Problem is, the experiment may be failing.
Unsurprisingly, John Derbyshire's over a decade ahead of me on that, on the attitude adjustment that a violent people can show when they're well and truly crushed...in this column he takes it further, looking at the different ways a nation can view military defeat, from "total denial" through dolchstosslegende all the way to "full repentance." And then noticing that the more the civilian population suffered in the war, the closer they came to "full repentance"...and, more importantly, to fighting no more wars. It's a decently robust if not perfect model. He notes many examples from the 19th and 20th centuries. I notice it broadly fits the Jewish Wars of the Roman Empire. After the third one was mercilessly crushed, says this, "Jewish messianism was abstracted and spiritualized" -- as well it might be; eternal spiritual truths do have a way of bending to fit the facts on the ground -- and the Jewish leader was vilified in the Talmud. The Scottish suppression was brutal in a lesser way...but also effective. There really was peace tho' Jamie never came hame.
I don't think this comes through a cold calculation (as in the reasoning of Grim's excellent Blackfive post), but more likely through evolved instinct. Every man can talk about fighting to the last...but we're not descended from the men who did. Neither are we descended from the men who caved at the first attack. Thus: a little violence inspires revenge; a lot of it brings submission and peace. It's been made a joke and a funny one...because of the grim truth behind it. Their hands tied by the modern law of war, the Israelis get the worst of all worlds. They get the reputation of Genghis Khan or Tamurlane, and draw as much hatred as they did if not more...but they don't get the security that real brutality might've brought them long ago (and Genghis Khan is a national hero in Mongolia, and got respectful treatment in my elementary school history books; and Tamurlane is still admired at least in some parts of Afghanistan). Israel itself is just as old as the Geneva regime; a citadel of advanced civilization born in the year war was to be civilized, and has suffered ever since from that very fact.
Terrorism lives in that safe space created by the modern order. Terrorism isn't new, as you all know well. The Sicarii were practicing a version in Palestine not too long after Jesus. But the Romans of that era were quite capable of treating a city the way a strategic bombing raid could, only up close and personal, with sword and spear. Hiding behind children only works while the enemy's not willing to target them. And that wasn't a good assumption back then.
Supposing Palestinians continue as a UN-welfare population full of frustrated young men, and the Israelis remain addicted to life, so that the attacks never cease...will Israelis forever hold their hands, if it means dying for their principles?
I don't know. But as I said -- they're not descended from men who did.
The event calls for reflection, of just the kind you've been doing, and that Grim's done before. For World War II was the last U.S. war that ended before the Geneva Conventions of 1948 (the centerpiece of the modern jus in bello) and the U.N. Charter (the centerpiece of the modern jus ad bellum) went into effect. And with it the radical new idea that civilians..."persons taking no active part in the hostilities...no matter what kind of war it was, or between whom...were simply immune as targets. (Jean Pictet's commentary on Common Article 3, which you can get here, describes it as an "almost unhoped-for" extension of common article 2...designed to apply even to civil wars or insurrections, to the savage as well as the civilized.
Islamic radicals sometimes defend 9/11 with a tu quoque...."What about Hiroshima?" There are several answers, but one of them is: "The law changed after that. We wouldn't be allowed to do that now; and by agreement and by custom, neither can anyone else." If you're much younger than VanKirk, older wars feel wrong...punitive expeditions, attacking villages, sacking towns, the jubilation at Marchin' Through Georgia...it feels like something that doesn't belong in war. Yet that is an ancient norm, and it is the modern standard that's in its experimental stage.
Problem is, the experiment may be failing.
Unsurprisingly, John Derbyshire's over a decade ahead of me on that, on the attitude adjustment that a violent people can show when they're well and truly crushed...in this column he takes it further, looking at the different ways a nation can view military defeat, from "total denial" through dolchstosslegende all the way to "full repentance." And then noticing that the more the civilian population suffered in the war, the closer they came to "full repentance"...and, more importantly, to fighting no more wars. It's a decently robust if not perfect model. He notes many examples from the 19th and 20th centuries. I notice it broadly fits the Jewish Wars of the Roman Empire. After the third one was mercilessly crushed, says this, "Jewish messianism was abstracted and spiritualized" -- as well it might be; eternal spiritual truths do have a way of bending to fit the facts on the ground -- and the Jewish leader was vilified in the Talmud. The Scottish suppression was brutal in a lesser way...but also effective. There really was peace tho' Jamie never came hame.
I don't think this comes through a cold calculation (as in the reasoning of Grim's excellent Blackfive post), but more likely through evolved instinct. Every man can talk about fighting to the last...but we're not descended from the men who did. Neither are we descended from the men who caved at the first attack. Thus: a little violence inspires revenge; a lot of it brings submission and peace. It's been made a joke and a funny one...because of the grim truth behind it. Their hands tied by the modern law of war, the Israelis get the worst of all worlds. They get the reputation of Genghis Khan or Tamurlane, and draw as much hatred as they did if not more...but they don't get the security that real brutality might've brought them long ago (and Genghis Khan is a national hero in Mongolia, and got respectful treatment in my elementary school history books; and Tamurlane is still admired at least in some parts of Afghanistan). Israel itself is just as old as the Geneva regime; a citadel of advanced civilization born in the year war was to be civilized, and has suffered ever since from that very fact.
Terrorism lives in that safe space created by the modern order. Terrorism isn't new, as you all know well. The Sicarii were practicing a version in Palestine not too long after Jesus. But the Romans of that era were quite capable of treating a city the way a strategic bombing raid could, only up close and personal, with sword and spear. Hiding behind children only works while the enemy's not willing to target them. And that wasn't a good assumption back then.
Supposing Palestinians continue as a UN-welfare population full of frustrated young men, and the Israelis remain addicted to life, so that the attacks never cease...will Israelis forever hold their hands, if it means dying for their principles?
I don't know. But as I said -- they're not descended from men who did.
The Wonders of the Internet
Allapundit at Hot Air tagged his recent collection of quotes on a resurgent Anti-Semitism "the socialism of fools," and I had not heard the expression (although it was easy to guess the antecedent, not only from the context but because the two movements made such similar arguments in the 19th century). I searched to see who had said it originally, and from there was drawn to read about Königstein Fortress, where the original socialist was imprisoned for a time. Along the way I discovered that it had held not only state prisoners, but the greatest wine barrel in human history:
From 1722 to 1725, at the behest of August the Strong, coopers under Böttger built the enormous Königstein Wine Barrel (Königsteiner Weinfass), the greatest wine barrel in the world, in the cellar of the Magdalenenburg which had a capacity of 249,838 litres. It cost 8,230 thalers, 18 groschen and 9 pfennigs. The butt, which was once completely filled with country wine from the Meißen vineyards, had to be removed again in 1818 due to its poor condition.That's just over 66,000 gallons, which at a quart per person per day would last a family of four for 180 years -- longer than the barrel itself lasted.
Moral non-relativism
From Sam Harris via Bookworm Room:
Consider the moral difference between using human shields and being deterred by them. . . . The Muslims are acting on the assumption—the knowledge, in fact—that the infidels with whom they fight, the very people whom their religion does nothing but vilify, will be deterred by their use of Muslim human shields. They consider the Jews the spawn of apes and pigs—and yet they rely on the fact that they don’t want to kill Muslim noncombatants.Hamas is not just a rogue terrorist organization. It was elected.
Keep it simple
Gavin McInnes advises hewing to tradition unless you've got a much better idea. In marriage, we're allowed to alter the gender-role rules slightly to take reality into account, as long as we don't go too crazy:
If a woman is conservative in some duties, she should be liberal in others. To the non-married much of this talk will sound like rape. There is no such thing in marriage. It’s more like if your sibling was a vampire. If things got really bad, you’d cut yourself so he could eat.
100 Years ago today...
...the middle ages ended. The Empire of Austria-Hungary, with a pedigree stretching back nearly 1000 years, (remember that the Duchy of Austria was created by Emperor Otto III in AD 996, the Kingdom of Hungary in AD1000), declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia (established AD1217, conquered by the Ottomans in AD1459, and reestablished in AD1882), and starting the first world war.
By 1918, Three of the 4 big monarchies in Europe, Austria, Russia, and Germany, were gone. The British survived, but began to yield it's global supremacy to the USA.
The old European civilization, and it's notions of societal order, hierarchy, and supremacy, were all overthrown.
And while it took another world war to completely settle the matter (and get rid of even more of the remaining monarchies in Europe), the die had been cast, and there was no going back.
The war's effects are still being felt today, most obviously in the middle east and the Ukraine.
By 1918, Three of the 4 big monarchies in Europe, Austria, Russia, and Germany, were gone. The British survived, but began to yield it's global supremacy to the USA.
The old European civilization, and it's notions of societal order, hierarchy, and supremacy, were all overthrown.
And while it took another world war to completely settle the matter (and get rid of even more of the remaining monarchies in Europe), the die had been cast, and there was no going back.
The war's effects are still being felt today, most obviously in the middle east and the Ukraine.
There's A Small Problem With This Idea...
Let's see if we can spot it.
Failure to comply with which means a half-percent cut in appropriations?
Back to the drawing board, boys.
“Radical regulations strangle small business and increase the costs for hard-working taxpayers,” said Congressman Scalise. “This much-needed legislation makes unelected bureaucrats think twice before proposing job-killing rules and regulations by increasing transparency and accountability. If our economy is ever to recover from six years of the president’s failed economic policies, we must rein in the out of control costs of this Administration’s radical regulations. I applaud Congressman Collins for joining me in introducing this bill and for being a leader in the House on holding this Administration accountable.”So far, so good. What's your plan for addressing it?
“Our federal budget tells Americans how much money the government spends. The national Regulatory Budget would tell them how much the government is really costing them,” Congressman Collins said. “Too many regulations, however they were intended, cost hardworking Americans in money and in opportunity. We can’t bring about reform and relief if we can’t identify the roots of the regulatory burden, and this is a straightforward and transparent way to do that. Congressman Scalise is a trusted leader on regulatory reform and I know with his leadership, we can get this moving.”
“Regulations are another impediment to investment. For free enterprise to work, it needs a reasonable regulatory system that ensures safety, protects consumers and achieves fair competition,” said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL). Putting the federal government on a National Regulatory Budget will help restrain the job-killing impulses of regulators and reduce obstacles to innovation that creates jobs."
Specifically, the National Regulatory Budget Act would establish the Office of Regulatory Analysis (OAR), which would be required to provide an annual regulatory analysis of federal rules for the upcoming fiscal year and their estimated cost on the economy. The legislation also creates a National Regulatory Budget, which allows Congress to set a cap on the total economic cost of new federal regulations to be implemented in the coming fiscal year. Congress would also set caps on the regulatory cost allowed by individual agencies.The solution you propose is to establish yet another Federal agency?
The legislation requires that all newly proposed regulations receive an OAR estimate before being implemented. Agencies that fail to comply with the OAR will be subject to a 0.5 percent reduction in their appropriation based on their previous budget amount.
Failure to comply with which means a half-percent cut in appropriations?
Back to the drawing board, boys.
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