Class Leadership

So I saw this story about a student banned from class for challenging the commonplace '1 in 5' sexual assault statistic. This is hardly a rogue position, as challenges have appeared in very mainstream publications such as the Washington Post and TIME.

Nevertheless, I assume the teacher was responding less to the challenge and more to the mode of challenge. That's a matter of taste, to some degree: academia is supposed to be able to sustain robust but civil disagreements, but what constitutes the boundaries of "civil" are very much under contest. The excerpts from the professor's letter suggest that other students were highly uncomfortable, and that he had issued multiple warnings before the ban. Online student-reported feedback suggests that he's a good professor: he rates near the top in all categories except "easiness," where he rates at the bottom. This is exactly as it should be. I'm inclined to trust his sense of his environment.

Besides, it sounds as if the professor's claim that there were sexual assault survivors in the classroom is extremely plausible:

Despite its small size, Reed’s students reported the most sex crimes of all colleges and universities in the state of Oregon during 2010–2012 and ranked third in the number of reported assaults per 1,000 students in the country in 2012.

Sounds like part of the reason the student's mouth was such an issue is a complete failure of the college to uphold other standards. That's neither the student's nor the professor's fault, but it can't help but be a factor here. Reed as an institution bears the real shame in this story.

No Wonder It's Hard to Develop Virtuous Citizens

Related to Grim's recent post that discussed developing virtues in our citizenry, I recently ran across an article in the New York Times by philosophy professor Justin P. McBrayer that considers one reason why it's difficult to do today. The article is a quick read, so I'll let you take in the rest there, but the problem begins with this:

When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.”

I agree with McBrayer that a lot of young people today end up with a serious case of doublethink. On the one hand, they insist that things like sexual morals are merely personal opinions. On the other, they are great devotees of social justice, which is nothing but a system of morality. It's very strange. His partial explanation for why that is sounds true to me.

Ah, youth

From James Taranto:

The headline in London’s Guardian the other day was certainly eye-catching: “Privatising BBC3 Would Be as Pernicious as Isis Destroying Iraq’s Historic Sites.” It seems like an overstatement but turns out not to be much of a statement at all. Here’s the first paragraph of the commentary, by Stewart Lee:

When so-called Islamic State destroyed historic sites in Iraq, I was wary of making judgments of other cultures, and gave these exuberant young men the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps shattering the statues was mere high spirits, like when Greeks trample wedding crockery? Or perhaps it was the fault of MI5?

We strongly disagree with Lee on ISIS, but it does sound as though he’s right that privatizing BBC3 wouldn’t be the least bit pernicious.

Douthat on Marriage

A helpful inquiry.

The first counterargument is about men: It concedes that there is a modest upward post-’60s trend in household income, rather than a steep decline, but it argues that focusing on the general trend ignores a collapse in earnings for low-skilled men.... As I said in the column, a modest version of this argument makes sense to me. Less-educated men haven’t seen the same gains as their female peers in recent decades, male-dominated sectors of the economy have declined relative to the female-friendly sectors, and so some lower-income men clearly do look relatively less appealing as partners, less “marriagable” in strictly economic terms than they would have in 1960.

At the same time, though, even in a world where women are earning more on their own, the strictly-economic advantages of the two-parent family and the potential costs of single parenthood are still very significant, and they get more significant, not less, as you go down the ladder of income and education.

...the issue is this: The men dragging down the overall low-skilled wage average since the ’60s are primarily recent immigrants, whose numbers have dramatically increased relative to mid-century, and whose wages are low by American standards but obviously much higher than the wages earned by their fathers and grandparents in their countries of origin.

I think that's right. Marriage is still very beneficial for those who can keep its disciplines. The working class is being damaged by both a collapse in public morality, and also by an immigration-heavy policy that makes American workers compete with immigrants who are willing to accept much less (as well as by globalization, which allows companies to hire non-American workers in the cheapest parts of the world).

Currently the politics are such that there's no possibility of controlling immigration or reducing globalization. Those who control the political class in our country are completely in favor of both of those things, as they benefit financially from them. The one thing we can really do to help the poor and working classes, then, is to encourage public morality.

That society should find ways to support the development of virtues in its citizens has been a commonplace idea since Plato. That it remains a perennial issue doesn't imply, I think, that there's no solution to it: it implies that something about human nature always requires a focus on developing virtue and avoiding vice.

How to do that, though? The working class is unlikely to take lessons from the government, because it is manifestly obvious that the government isn't concerned about their good: the policies of both political parties are dead-set on opposing the good of the working class in immigration and globalization, and dead-set on pursuing the good of their donor class instead. The Republican politician's game of pretending to oppose amnesty only makes them less credible with everyone. Similarly, the implementation of Obamacare has been a disaster for the workers of America, as we've often discussed: the only jobs available in much of the country are 24-hour-a-week part-time gigs, or temporary/seasonal labor, that avoid the law's mandates. The government has presented this as "help" for the worker, but it's clearly the opposite in effect.

You can make the argument in the hope of persuading people, but the working class is less likely to read political blogs (or the New York Times, for that matter). Churches are a good option in some places, less in others. In any case, they need more than persuasion: virtue development is hard. In many cases a young, poorer, married couple lacks models for success -- their parents may well have been divorced -- and therefore doesn't know what skills they need or how to develop them. We don't teach them in schools, instead handing them condoms and telling them to be 'safe' while working it out for themselves.

Where's An Actuary?

It occurs to me that this offer is one that it would be enlightening to test with data. Leaving the politics to the side entirely, is it a good deal?

A local attorney said he is giving his employees a $50 bonus each month if they choose to conceal carry.

“I was like so you’re going to give me $50 to carry a pistol? And he was like, yup that’s what we’ll do. Well sign me up,” said paralegal for Puryear Law P.C. Elizabeth Payne.

Carrying her gun at work gets her $50 extra each month from her boss.

Now carrying a pistol exposes you to a certain amount of risk. Even with near-perfect use, the danger that you will accidentally shoot yourself or someone else is higher if you handle a firearm every day than if you don't ever handle one. (So much higher that, even in Iraq, the Army made everyone inside the wire except guards on duty carry in condition green -- magazine not loaded, chamber empty, rifle on safe). Assuming you are properly trained and that you obey correct safety rules, however, the risk is not great. On the other hand, the consequences are potentially substantial: major medical bills or wrongful death lawsuits are quite expensive.

So, if I were an actuary writing you an insurance policy, would I charge you more or less than $50 a month to cover you for the additional risks?

Obviously that leaves out questions about how dangerous your neighborhood is, etc. It's also not about the politics: if you're a law-abiding American citizen, I fully support your right to keep and bear arms as you please. I'm just interested in how the money works out. Is $50 a good deal? Should a rational economic actor who is not otherwise inclined to carry, and who lives in a safe neighborhood where the firearm is unlikely to otherwise be useful to them, take such a deal if offered?

Because We Stole It, Obviously

Headline: "Why was a 9th century Viking woman buried with a ring that says ‘for Allah’ on it?"

Israel and Iran

We have come to an odd passage with yesterday's election. United States policy is now formally opposed to the elected government of Israel, which has (with a few exceptions) been an American ally of long standing. Some state that the world is no longer bound to defend Israel. I wonder what precisely that is intended to mean, since the "world" of international diplomacy has typically been strongly critical of Israel at the UN and elsewhere. Nevertheless, commentary expects Israeli isolation to deepen. Perhaps the pressure is intended to grant the President some cover to fail to veto a Security Council resolution that would lead to Israel being declared a rogue state, or a criminal regime, or placed under punishing sanctions. That would represent a shock to the seven in ten Americans who view Israel favorably, a figure which suggests that the administration is acting against the will of a clear majority of Americans.

In Iran, on the other hand, we have a longstanding enemy that continues to pursue nuclear weapons while also backing terrorist groups across the region. Yet our policy seems strangely aligned with them. We are both working to assist Iraq's government against Daesh. Yet the Maliki government is heavily Iranian influenced, so much so that its army is now fighting alongside Iranian-trained Shi'ite militia. Furthermore, Maliki has broken the accords with Sunni Iraqis that we helped to negotiate and often pledged to ensure. It was at one time US policy to ensure that those agreements were fairly kept, which might have prevented the breakout success of Daesh in Western Iraq in the first place. Meanwhile, Iran seems happy with our proposals on its nuclear policy, proposals made in spite of the clearest possible signal from the US Senate that it will not ratify that deal and might even overturn it with veto-proof majorities. Here, too, the administration is out of order with the democratic will of the American people in a serious way.

The unifying factor here is an apparent preference to hurt our friends and help our enemies, in defiance not only of the well established character of these relationships but the sense of the majority of the American people and their representatives.

Not a suicide pact yet

And never again, I hope:

Netanyahu [told] the country that left-wing groups funded by foreign money were busing Arab voters to the polls in order to elect a left-wing government led by his Zionist Union rival Isaac Herzog. Netanyahu’s opponents interpreted this as an appeal to racism. . . . But a critical mass of voters viewed the prospect with alarm not because they’re racists but because a government that relied on the votes of anti-Zionists that favor Israel’s dissolution was something they considered a danger to the future of their country…. They may not like Netanyahu but today’s results demonstrates that there is little support for a government that would make the sort of concessions to the Palestinians that President Obama would like. They rightly believe that even if Israel did make more concessions it would only lead to more violence, not peace.

St. Patrick in Germany

Another Long Video

Forty-one minutes with Jim Mattis. I assume no introductions are required.

A Documentary for St. Patrick's Day

If you have an hour or so this evening, you might enjoy it.



We will do what we always do on St. Patrick's Day here at the Hall, and have a showing of The Quiet Man a bit later.

Separations

A liberal writer ponders why other liberals are welcoming an increasing role for religion in public life.

Going back to Jefferson and Madison, the idea behind separating church and state has been to prevent the state from forcing taxpayers to pay for other people’s religious practices. Fair enough. But in order to get religious conservatives to go along with that principle, secular liberal thinkers felt they had to give them something in return. And what do religious conservatives want? They want to be able to express their deepest religious convictions in the public sphere. They want to pray at town meetings, to place religious symbols in government buildings and on public lands, and, more generally, they want the state to acknowledge the importance—and perhaps also the truth—of their religious heritage.

So here we have the makings of a compromise: Liberals would get a ban on state funding of religion, and conservatives would get state-sponsored religious recognition...

Except that the Roberts court, like the Rehnquist court before it, isn’t interested in taking this deal. In exchange for greater acceptance of religious practice and symbols in the public square, they have given up, well, nothing. In a series of 5–4 decisions, conservative majorities have rejected the ability of taxpayers to challenge state funding of religion...

If giving up your side in exchange for nothing looks like a shoddy compromise for liberals, what else might explain acceptance of Justice Kennedy’s new coercion principle[?]

See, the legislature is where you go to make compromises with the other side. When you try to fight your battles in the courts, you're going to get decisions on one side or the other. That's the nature of the beast.

The preference for waging war against conservative ideas in the courts is based on the hope that the battlefield itself is biased against conservatives. This follows from three ideas: 1) The judiciary must, in order to do their jobs, be highly educated. 2) The academy has largely been captured by liberals, which means educated people will have been taught to think by liberals most of the time. 3) As a consequence that re-enforces the bias, peer pressure among the highly educated is to conform to left-leaning ideas. Thus, the courts are much better ground for locating the real power of government than the legislature in which the general population gets most of the vote in selecting representatives. If the courts will just go along with stripping legislatures of the power to create laws that transgress against the principles of the left, it doesn't matter very much if you win or lose elections. When you win, you can pass new laws in line with your principles. When you lose, you can relax because the courts will throw out new laws that you'd oppose.

Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages to this approach. One of them is this one: when the court goes against you, it generally goes all the way. The other one is that politicizing the courts damages the legitimacy of two whole branches of government. The author really wants the courts to come up with political compromises here, in order to rewrite the laws in a way that would satisfy everyone. That's a legislative function. Should the courts take over the legislative function while also embracing the power to set aside legislatively-enacted laws that violate principles held by the educated elite who make up the judiciary, the court has effectively gelded the legislature. The legislature will not be respected as a co-equal branch of government if its power is completely co-opted by the courts.

By the same token, since Federal judges are not elected (and in this court serve lifetime terms) their decisions have no democratic legitimacy. When the legislature rewrites the law, it does so with the direct involvement of the people's representatives. Those representatives, should they defy the people's will, can be replaced at the next election. Unelected judges who cannot be replaced ought not to perform the legislative function in a republic that claims to draw its legitimacy from the will of the people.

So, grammercy for coming up with a viable compromise. I think people might go along with it. Take it to the legislatures, and at the state and local level as well. Make the argument. Point out that Jefferson and Madison are on your side. You might convince some people. Stop trying to get the courts to alter the playing field such that laws you don't like are forbidden to legislatures. Instead, play fairly and talk with the people with which you disagree instead of suing them.

Crazy idea, I know. But I'm pretty sure it's how the system was supposed to work.

Well, Obviously

When large groups of female students on a campus claim they feel unsafe if they cannot utilize their constitutional rights to carry a firearm, does it cause a massive uproar and immediate shift in policy? When pro-Palestinian students rally, chanting phrases that make Jewish students feel unsafe, does the student body call an emergency meeting with the plan of silencing the pro-Palestinian students?

Of course not.

But, when a single Muslim student calls a movie like ‘American Sniper’ racist...

Islam isn't a... oh, why bother.

The Rifle Team at Harvard

Increasingly I find myself reading news stories and thinking, "We talked that all through ten years ago." The important lesson may be that blogging is a waste of time.

Today the story that is wasting my time and energy is this story about Ivy League schools taking up rifle teams. Yes, fully ten years ago we had that all out here at the Hall.

[I]f any pale student glued to his desk here seek an apology for a way of life whose natural fruit is that pallid and emasculate scholarship, of which New England has had too many examples, it will be far better that this sketch had not been written. For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar.

Francis Parkman wrote that. If you don't know who he was, you should look him up. If you're a Harvard man and you don't know, your school has failed you: as it has if it produced you without teaching you to shoot a rifle or use an oar.

In Celebration of Blogger's About-Face

...some sexually explicit content.



Seriously. Don't watch that at work. :)

Good News For The Clinton Administration

The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails....

Unlike other offices within the White House, which were always exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the Office of Administration responded to FOIA requests for 30 years. Until the Obama administration, watchdog groups on the left and the right used records from the office to shed light on how the White House works.

No more of that!

Premise Good, Conclusion Bad

Crooked Timber draws our attention to a new British law called "Prevent" that seems to impose serious restrictions on the kinds of political ideas you can advance in certain public spaces. There's some sort of exemption for institutions of higher education, since professionals might need to study dangerous ideas. However, they are still meant not merely to monitor but to "engage and consult students on compliance with their Prevent duty."

So, Grim Can Start Posting All That Sexually Explicit Content Again

An update on the Blogger porn content policy

This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy stating that blogs that distributed sexually explicit images or graphic nudity would be made private.

We’ve received lots of feedback about making a policy change that impacts longstanding blogs, and about the negative impact this could have on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

We appreciate the feedback. Instead of making this change, we will be maintaining our existing policies.

Sustainability

It's not always clear what we mean by it:

That fossil fuels are finite is a red herring. The Atlantic Ocean is finite, but that does not mean that you risk bumping into France if you row out of a harbor in Maine. The buffalo of the American West were infinite, in the sense that they could breed, yet they came close to extinction. It is an ironic truth that no nonrenewable resource has ever run dry, while renewable resources—whales, cod, forests, passenger pigeons—have frequently done so.

Something Short and Sweet on a Monday Afternoon

H/t the Anchoress

Collective guilt for thee, not for me?

There was a piece to a National Review article that I saw on Ace's page that touched on the idea that the protesters and inciters in Ferguson have some level of culpability in the shooting of the two officers outside of police headquarters there.  And it's an article worthy of reading.  But I think both Ace and the author (Andrew McCarthy) missed a salient point.  While the usual suspects in Ferguson are complaining about being tarred with the brush of the shooter (just as they did with regards to the ambush assassination in New York City), they have no problem tarring all officers in those police departments with collective guilt.  We hear about "command climate" and "institutional racism" and all manner of reasons why the entire structure is corrupt.  And yet when someone from within their ranks (quite literally) shoots a cop, suddenly it's "bad actors" and "we had nothing to do with it".

So which is it?  Is everyone on both sides culpable for the actions of "bad actors" from within their ranks, or are we to judge individuals on their own merits and faults?  Because I have no stomach for the hypocrisy of either side claiming that they should be held to different standards.  Last time I checked, we have a system where everyone is equal before the law.

That "Unprecedented" Letter from the Republican Senators to Iran

Over the weekend, I had a liberal acquaintance link the following image on her Facebook:

And while I normally have a great deal of tolerance to publicly post ideas I disagree with, this one bothered me, specifically because I happen to know a bit of history about this very question.

You see, during the Carter Administration, the President (through his State Department) negotiated a treaty with the Soviets.  The name of this treaty was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II Treaty of 1979 (more commonly known by the acronym SALT II).  And, generally speaking, the treaty was pretty bad for the US.  It committed us to limitations in the very systems most feared by the Soviets, and in return they "promised" to limit the same classes of weapons (which they lacked the technology to duplicate on the scale we had).  Before ratification before the Senate occurred, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.  So the Senate balked.  And in 1986, they flat out repudiated the treaty, and it was dead.

So, what would happen if 47 Senators told the "Russians" that they "shouldn't trust us" because we "wouldn't keep our end of the deal?"  Well, I don't know about the exact number of Senators that killed SALT II (but I do know that it was Democrats who held the majority in the Senate in 1986, so that should tell you how bad the deal was), so it may not have been 47.  And they didn't tell the "Russians" since it was actually the Soviet Union back then.  And as for "they shouldn't trust us" I think the author is saying that "we won't ratify this piece of dreck" is saying "not to trust us" because we "wouldn't keep our end of the deal", but if that's how the Iranian theocratic dictators want to take it, I don't really care.

So I basically summarized all this, linked to the details of the treaty and called it a day.  Strangely, no debate followed.  I guess pithy quips via image macro are only so clever when there's no competing history to refute them.

Yeoman Farmers

It used to be when a Kennedy would marry, we'd get a whole set of stories about how they were "American royalty," and this wedding was therefore somewhat like the marriage of prince so-and-so to some duchess or other.

Nobody anywhere thinks that about Dakota Meyer marrying Bristol Palin. Dakota Meyer has a better claim to the virtue of courage, at least, than any prince I can think of who has lived since the Hundred Years War; Palin is certainly from a family of high political connections among a certain political party. Yet I think it's fair to say that no one would mistake them for royalty.

Even better, no one would mistake them for people with aspirations toward being royalty. That's the real difference.

That no one would make the comparison might be a way in which some people look down on them as not being fit for membership in the aristocracy. That they would be horrified by the comparison says something about their own character. The something said is deeply American.

Good luck to a young couple. Marriage is hard, but it can be wonderful.

Why Our Enemies Are Doing Well

The answer is straightforward:

* Social insularity: Our leaders know fellow insiders around the world; our enemies know everyone else.

* The mandarin’s distaste for physicality: We are led through blood-smeared times by those who’ve never suffered a bloody nose.

* And last but not least, bad educations in our very best schools: Our leadership has been educated in chaste political theory, while our enemies know, firsthand, the stuff of life.

...

[W]hen new blood does enter — through those same “elite” institutions — it’s channeled into the same old calcium-clogged arteries. And we get generals with Ivy League Ph.D.s writing military doctrine that adheres cringingly to politically correct truisms and leaves out the very factors, such as the power of religion or ethnic hatred, that prove decisive. Or a usually astute commentator on Eastern European affairs who dismisses Vladimir Putin as a mere chinovnik, a petty bureaucrat, since Putin was only a lieutenant colonel in the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed and didn’t go to a Swiss prep school like John Kerry.

That analyst overlooked the fact that Hitler had been a mere lance corporal. Stalin was a failed seminarian. Lenin was a destitute syphilitic. Ho Chi Minh washed dishes in the basement of a Paris Hotel. And when the French Revolution erupted, Napoleon was a junior artillery officer.

Certainly it's the weak and the poor who have the most interest in overturning any given system. But Peters, though not wrong, has only half the answer. The problem isn't just that the elite is both insular and so detached from the real world as to be largely immune to the pain their bad decisions cause. That's true, but it's not the whole truth.

The other half of the problem is the old problem of scale. We talk about this here often under the heading of Schumpeter's economic principle; it's more familiar to military science as the OODA loop. Our institutions are so large and so intricate in their approval chains that there's a huge advantage in terms of how fast a decision can be made and acted upon for streamlined organizations. Putin just issues orders, after all. ISIS isn't very big. USEUCOM or USCENTCOM has to socialize a plan among all their staff sections, who reach down to subordinate commands for input and then hash out a plan among themselves before they present it to their general. Most likely, he will need to push that plan up to the Pentagon if it represents a radical change to existing strategy. They have their own process before an answer comes back down, and the easiest answer is to push the suspense for the decision to the right while we ask a few more people. If the change requires a change from an interagency partner, their bureaucracies have to get involved too.

Even if the President were replaced with someone with new-blood ideas and the will to enact them, the bureaucracy would still have to go through at least a basic staffing process to ensure that it carried out the decisions in an orderly fashion. Because the bureaucrats are part of the existing order, there will be many who drag their feet or otherwise resist firm leadership (remember the CIA's campaign of leaks to the press about Bush's programs?).

In the absence of firm leadership from a President with such ideas, the system is almost too ossified to move at all. This is a real issue even for those leaders who are correctly motivated and trying to do the right thing.

What has to be done to address these challenges is to create a new way of responding to them -- one that isn't part of the bureaucracy, and that doesn't answer to it. A lot of the success of the special operations community comes from the fact that it operates on a much shorter chain. Were Congress to issue a letter of marque to a private organization tasked with fighting ISIS, that organization could act with Congressional authorization without any need to be directed by the State Department or the other executive bureaucracies at all.

It's absolutely true that we need new blood from outside of this elite, people who are more familiar with and in more direct contact with real life. We also need for them to be able to move fast and hard. They need to be able to make a call and make it happen with the same speed that our enemies can leverage. Otherwise, even our great strength and wealth will but little avail us.

Hardest quiz ever

I've never done this badly on an internet quiz before: only 50%.

A higher authority

The White House is taking that letter more seriously than I expected:

Sure, it’s tasteless for the American president to go over the heads of the American legislative body and appeal to an unelected council of international diplomats in order to outmaneuver his domestic opposition. This kind of behavior is also precisely what the American people have come to expect from Barack Obama.

Scots Magic

A joke I heard today:

An Englishman and a Scotsman go to a pastry shop.
The Englishman whisks three cookies into his pocket with lightning speed.
The baker doesn't notice.
The Englishman says to the Scotsman:
"You see how clever we are? You'll never beat that!"
The Scotsman says to the Englishman:
"Watch this, a Scotsman is always cleverer than an Englishman."
He says to the baker,
"Give me a cookie, I can show you a magic trick!"
The baker gives him the cookie which the Scotsman promptly eats.
Then he says to the baker:
"Give me another cookie for my magic trick."
The baker is getting suspicious but he gives it to him. He eats this one too.
Then he says again:
"Give me one more cookie... "
The baker is getting angry now but gives him one anyway. The Scotsman eats this one too.
Now the baker is really mad, and he yells:
"And where is your famous magic trick?"
The Scotsman says:
"Look in the Englishman's pocket!"

Honor and Food

As I assume is well known to readers here, in the United States Marine Corps it is a standard that leaders do not eat until their men are fed. This is a point of honor, because honor is sacrifice of your interests for the good of others in your community. The leader occupies a position of honor, which means that when there is a sacrifice to be made, it properly belongs to him to be the one who makes it. The leader sees that those under his command are fed first, and only then takes time -- if there is time -- to eat himself.

So I read with interest this article about an attempt to re-invigorate traditional Japanese foodways, in which the person in the position of honor also has a duty related to the order of the eating of food. It's just that it's the opposite order:

“The principal is the first person to eat lunch,” says Masahiro Oji, director of the Ministry of Education’s School Health Education Division. “If he gets sick none of the rest of the food gets served."

Different practical concerns prompt a different order, but the deeper issue is the same.

That Glow

Way back in 2004, Newsweek writer Evan Thomas admitted that "the media ... wants Kerry to win. They're going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic .... There’s going to be this glow about them ... that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points."

Apparently their relationship to Hillary Clinton is slightly different.

Sleeping Dogs

Apparently in China, they should be left lying.

No Progress

Grim's Hall, 2008:

I looked up the definition for "sexism" today, and I find that it is defined as "the sense that one sex is inferior to, or more valuable than, the other." We have a number of ways of expressing the same concept: "male chauvanism" or "female chauvanism," "misogyny," and so forth.

What we don't appear to have is a way of expressing a concept that recognizes the real differences between the sexes in a way that honors them. As far as I know, there is no word in the language for a "a sense that though the sexes are genuinely different, both are necessary and valuable." That is to say, we have a lot of ways of describing a problem, but we have no way of talking about the solution.

I've tried to use the term "chivalry" in this context -- that men should regard women, though different, as wonderful and valuable, and should take care to listen to their concerns and help make a world in which they feel welcome.

Two things happened when I did that, which point up the severity of the problem. The first is that it was pointed out to me, by a well-meaning and kind-hearted woman, that I was offering good advice to men, but nothing for women. If "chivalry" is right for men, what is the female version of recognizing the differences between themselves and men, honoring men, and trying to make a world in which we also feel welcome and valued? I have no answer to that question: there is no word I know of that applies.

The other thing that happened was that certain feminists received my use of "chivalry" as a sort of code-word for male chauvanism.

The Daily Mail, today:

They found men whose answers led to them being classed as benevolently sexist smiled more while playing the quiz game and chatting. They were more patient while waiting for their female partners to answer the trivia questions and warmer, friendlier and chattier than those who were hostile sexists... Study co-author Jin Goh said: 'Benevolent sexist men hold women in high regard and are willing to sacrifice themselves to save and protect women.

So, OK. Let's ask the same questions. What is the female version of what is on display in men seeing women as valuable, listening to their advice as a civilizing influence (an impulse rather unfairly degraded by being phrased as "putting on a pedestal"), and trying to do right by them and show them that they are safe and welcome in public places?

And why should we receive men who do it as bad? There are some senses of the word "strong" in which women are stronger than men. There are others, including the most fundamental sense, in which this is not the case. That fact is a fact simply: can't we be honest about it? Can't we show each other honor while recognizing each other's imperfections? If we can't acknowledge the truth about each other's imperfections without failing some assumed duty of respect, talk about putting on a pedestal!

Can't Wait For The Hillary Presidency

The main piece of news to emerge from the session was her confusingly worded disclosure that she has already deleted the emails that she believes are no one’s business but her own.

Go to hell is not typically a sentiment expressed by politicians on the brink of a presidential campaign. But in Hillary Clinton’s case, it reflects a sincerely held belief[.]

OK, So We Can't Make "Treason" Stick...

...how about the Logan Act?

...critically, the citizen must act “without authority of the United States.” Although most assume that means without authority of the Executive Branch, the Logan Act itself does not specify what this term means, and the State Department told Congress in 1975 that “Nothing in section 953 . . . would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution.” That doesn’t mean Members would have immunity under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause; it just means the statute would arguably not apply in the first place. Combined with the rule of lenity and the constitutional concerns identified below, it seems likely that contemporary and/or future courts would interpret this provision to not apply to such official communications from Congress....

Finally, as Peter noted yesterday, the Logan Act has never been successfully used (indeed, the last indictment under the Act was in–not a typo–1803). Although most assume this is just a practical obstacle to a contemporary prosecution, it’s worth reminding folks about “desuetude”–the legal doctrine pursuant to which statutes (especially criminal ones) may lapse if they are never enforced[.]

There's a long history here.

In 1970, as an inactive Naval Reserve Officer, Kerry traveled to Paris and talked with North Vietnamese government officials. He even stated later to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “I realize that even my visits in Paris,” Kerry testified, “are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating.” He got it wrong there too. Again the Logan Act does not differentiate between public or private individual. It's pretty clear on the "any" part.

That one really was treason in the aid-and-comfort sense, coming from a military officer at a time when we were deployed at war against the very people with whom he was publicly negotiating, but the man went on to a long career in the Senate and now holds the position of Secretary of State.

Small is Beautiful

The polling did not just show the lack of faith in national institutions and leadership; it also shows that people increasingly feel that the best solutions for the country's problems will come from local communities, state governments, and institutions. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that state and local institutions—from governments to businesses to community groups and volunteers—offer the best new ideas because they were closer to the problems, more adaptable, and had a greater stake in finding solutions. Just 22 percent of respondents thought the federal government and big business were better equipped to solve the country's challenges.

To varying degrees, that attitude remained constant across gender lines, age, race, and party affiliation—reflecting respondents' strong preference for state and local institutions and solutions.... It shows the extent to which people across demographic groups are turning away from the federal government[.]

The Federal government can still do some useful things. It just shouldn't try to do so many things that are better left to smaller governments. State and local governments can often represent a community with a sort of consensus about what should be done, or about what's important or best in life.

The Federal government has to represent a vast number of communities, and Americans simply no longer share a set of common values across the population. As the diversity of the American community grows, the government will either have to become less powerful or less legitimate. Put another way, the Federal government can either let powers pass to smaller communities that can honestly represent the will of the people, or it will have to use increasing amounts of force and compulsion to impose a view without broad support.

I still think the 10th Amendment more or less gets this right: outside of specifically delegated powers, the Federal government should draw back and leave things to the states. We should reconsider the amendments after the original Bill of Rights insofar as they expand Federal power beyond that original allocation, or serve to limit the power of the states vis-à-vis the Federal government. We should encourage a rollback of Federal laws accordingly.

Win Small, Lose Big

A Small Victory:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) said it will not seek to issue a final framework for the rule “at this time” after receiving more than 80,000 comments on the proposal, the “vast majority” of which were negative.

A Huge Loss:

Regulators won a big victory at the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices endorsed expansive powers for changing the interpretation of federal rules. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that federal agencies do not have to follow procedures for notifying the public and collecting comment when changing the interpretations of rules, effectively removing steps from the process that can take months and sometimes years to complete.

So the next time there won't be 80,000 negative comments on a proposed rule change. There will just be a rule change. If you're lucky, you'll find out after the fact. If not, you'll find yourself in violation of a law that "changed." Like magic.

Definition of a problem

As permaculturist Joel Salatin likes to say, sometimes a problem is just a system that worked well but was split into two systems that created seemingly intractable problems.  His example is barren fields and toxic feedlots, as opposed to fields well composted with animal manure.  The "bike desk" is an invention meant to take two problems and combine them into a solution:  people spend too much time inert in front of desks, and it takes a lot of energy to power their desktop toys.

Traitors!

The NY Daily News goes all-out.

Do these people think Americans owe a personal duty of loyalty to the President? That Congress is not a co-equal branch of government structurally designed to counterbalance the Executive, but rather a subordinate branch of government?

No wonder Congress so rarely tells the truth. First honest thing they've said in months, and look how people react.

Right to Work

"Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." - United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23.4.

Scott Walker signs the Right To Work law in Wisconsin.

Nobody's saying you can't form a trade union. They're just saying you can't force people to join it. If you can deliver on your promises to improve pay and working conditions in a serious way, you can probably get people to sign on. Unions did this for years. Yes, it's harder to do it this way than with a rule that requires workers to join your union; yes, it's harder to do it this way than with rules forbidding the company from hiring scabs. But you can still do it, if you devote yourself to providing returns for the workers who pay dues. You can still make your case to the people, too, who may refuse to cross a picket line if they agree you are being shabbily treated.

It was too easy for a long time. Many unions did badly by their members, and devoted themselves to power and corruption instead of helping their own loyally as the first priority. If you want to survive, you'll have to get back to what made unions strong in the first place.

Wikipedia says that "scabs" in this context dates to the Elizabethan era, by the way. I had no idea.

For Eric Blair

A Roman cavalry project along Hadrian's wall.

Pen and Phone

People are really mad about this letter to Iran.

But to directly communicate with a foreign power in order to undermine ongoing negotiations? That is appalling. And just imagine what those same Republicans would have said if Democratic senators had tried such a thing when George W. Bush was president.

Yeah, good thing nothing like that ever happened.

Bear in mind this was not an official trip to Europe and the Middle East. Kerry was not visiting as a representative of the United States Government. He was in no way commissioned by the executive branch to negotiate alliances with foreign countries. So what was he doing there?

What, never? Well, hardly ever.

[Senator] Obama has built much of his campaign for the Presidency on the fact that he has been against the war in Iraq from the very beginning and would demand an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq were he to be elected President. Yet, on his first trip to Iraq recently, he is alleged to have attempted to negotiate a delay in troop withdrawal from Iraq....

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari reports that Obama made his ‘demands’ the central focus of their talks while he was in Iraq.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

But that's just a tu quoque; to stand on it would be an informal fallacy. So let's give a positive argument.

Article I of the US Constitution gives Congress the following powers related to foreign policy, none of which are subject to checks and balances from Article II.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises...

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States...

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water[.]

In addition to that, Congress has the power to raise and order all the armed forces of the United States, checked by the President's commanding of those powers.

The President's powers to conduct foreign policy are all checked by the Congress. Treaties require the advice and consent of a supermajority of the Senate. Appointing ambassadors requires advice and consent. Commanding the armed forces at war, in theory if less in practice lately, requires Congressional consent to having a war.

I say 'in theory if less in practice lately' with Obama's Libyan adventure especially in mind. The President has frequently acted as if the Constitutional checks on his power did not exist. Similarly, he has ignored his oath to faithfully enforce the laws that Congress has enacted whenever he sees fit to do so, not just in the recent 'executive amnesty' but by directing those under his direct control not to enforce laws nor to defend certain laws in court when they came under challenge.

Why should he not expect the Congress to respond in kind, and to wield its 'pen and phone' authority with as little regard for him as he has shown for them?

If he wants a new atmosphere of comity and cooperation with the Congress, the ball is very much in his court.

Today's Quiz: Are You A Socialist?

It's the Socialist Worker's quiz, so they'd like to convince you that the answer is "yes." But they had to admit that, for me, the answer is "no."

There's a weird throwaway question about the US military being a force for good in the world, which of course it is -- but that's not really a socialism issue, is it? I wondered if it might be a trick question, since some people sometimes argue that the military is the most socialist part of the United States. (It's not a very good argument.)

Partly the problem is that the quiz runs things together that don't belong together. Do I think that schools, clean water, and hospitals should never be run for profit? Well, no; but I also think that there's a huge difference between "schools," "hospitals," and "clean water." To me, that's not a category of things that should be run for the common good instead of private interest; it's an ascending scale. I don't think I'd ever be annoyed at someone for starting a private school, even if they charged a fortune for attendance. We've just seen an argument from Tex that it can make really good sense to run a private hospital business alongside a public one. Even if we agree that we should provide some sort of public access to health care, that doesn't imply that every hospital should be nonprofit.

There are several things about water that make it a stronger case for a public approach. In a city, the infrastructure concerns are going to mean that you'll almost certainly get a monopoly, and monopolies are problematic. We often address them with public regulation. Too, even in rural areas where people have wells, the nature of water means that the water table under your house is the same one your neighbor is pulling from. Let's say that you had a neighbor who came in, dug a well, and began bottling and selling the water to such a degree that everyone began having trouble getting water. Your wells might even go dry, but he can dig a deeper one with the profits from the water he sold after sucking it out of the same water table you were using. When dealing with these kinds of issues, at least some democratic controls on the market activity often make good sense.

Embrace Economic "Degrowth"

Today's novel economic concept to come across my desk: "degrowth."

If you watch the video at the second link, you'll learn that "there's no set script" for degrowth, but there are a lot of really bad ideas he's prepared to spitball. The problem is that none of them work with the laws of economics as I understand them. The first link wants to turn things like Airbnb into a sharing service that provides "the benefits of traditional employment." Nobody's stopping you from setting up such a service now. It just won't go anywhere, because it will provide the same service to the customer as Airbnb but at a higher price. Why shouldn't they prefer to contract the service for less?

Maybe you can make them feel guilty about it, but I doubt it.

Price transparency in medicine

Guess what happens when a single-payer system is unsatisfactory enough to allow a vibrant cash-only market to spring up next to it.

Crowdsourcing

From Cafe Hayek:

Under such rules (along, of course, with basic laws of property, contract, and tort) – and in a culture that honors bourgeois virtues and applauds innovators – there will be lots of entrepreneurs striving to earn profit (and respect) by creating new goods and services. These entrepreneurs will compete with each other, as well as with producers of older, established goods and services. The goods and services that yield profits today for their producers will be the ones that consumers, spending their own money and only their own money, today choose above all others. No finer, more objective, or more accurate test is available for determining how scarce resources should be used.

Tomorrow, of course, entrepreneurs will introduce newer products and newer production processes. Some of these, tested by market competition, will succeed. Others will fail. Some older goods and services, once profitable to produce, will become unprofitable to produce. Resources, including human labor, will shift from these older to the newer lines of production.

And so it goes in a free, prosperous, and growing market economy, day-in and day-out; year-in, year-out; decade-in, decade-out. Such an economy is controlled or guided by no one, yet it serves everyone remarkable well – if, though, with the requirement that everyone abide by the rules of the game. These rules are those listed above. These rules imply that no one has a right to any one else’s property – a rule that, in turn, implies that no producer has a right either to prevent other producers (even those in foreign countries) from competing for the patronage of her customers, or to obstruct her customers from shifting their expenditures away from her product offerings.

No one guarantees that the choices won't be intensely annoying, of course. I often observe that rich people would spend their money much better if they consulted me about their choices. But on the whole, the choices made by free crowds vastly outperform those mandated by wise leaders. Why this should be so is a mystery to me, but I can't dispute it, and therefore discount all economic theories that depend on confidence in the unfettered choice of the single person who is advocating them.

Racist Republicans

The NYT cropped former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush out of a picture of the Selma march.  All that remains now is to photoshop Hillary Clinton in.

ISIS fraying?

If any of this is true, it seems a hopeful sign.  The article has two helpful maps.  One shows areas controlled by ISIS and others by some combination of "government and other rebels," which is an interesting way of having to put it.  The other shows the origins of foreign supporters traveling to ISIS.  Much of the article concerns tensions between locals and these new arrivals, some of whom don't particularly want to fight and all of whom, no matter how dreary a situation they left in their home countries, are accustomed to a higher standard of living than the locals.  Many apparently are drawn by the idea of a culture in which rabid Islam is in the ascendancy, but had little notion what that might look like close up, especially if their clique isn't in charge.

I have slowly been reading "In the Shadow of the Sword," about the roots of Islam.  I was skeptical of the author's thesis, that Islam developed in Syria, in a hotbed of conflict among Jewish and Christian sects over monotheism, and only later became associated with Mecca and Medina.  But he makes a good case.

If ISIS did collapse, of course, it's not as though sane people would take over; Iran, more likely.  Yesterday almost 50 Republican senators signed a letter helpfully explaining to Iran how treaties work in this country.  Which Republican senators refused to sign? Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Dan Coats, Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, and Rob Portman.

Defense

From a Gutenberg project about natural disasters, in the flood section, a story about a man-made flood:

Leyden [the Netherlands] was besieged [by Spanish forces in 1574]. The town was well fortified. The Spaniards endeavored to starve the city into surrender. They swarmed about the outworks and taunted the famished people as "beggars." The contest grew daily more hopeless for the besieged. Hundreds were dead of starvation. But the survivors hurled defiance at the Spaniards. They were digging up every green thing, devouring roots of grass, old leather, offal, anything that could in the least aid to sustain life. But "so long as a dog barked in the city, the Spaniards might know they held out." A few faint-hearted ones pleaded with the burgomaster to yield. But the brave Van der Werff, gaunt, pale, wearied with care and watching, told them they could only surrender when they had eaten him; so long as he lived, the city should not yield.

It was a terrible time. Scores crept into out-of-the-way places to die, that their misery might not be seen by their friends. The Dutch without wished to help their friends within--but the lines of the enemy were too strong. As the last resort, the "Silent Man" ordered the dykes cut. It was done. The country folk abandoned their homes. A fleet of two hundred vessels sailed in over the land fifteen miles. They reached the Landscheiding, a great dyke five miles from the city. Three quarters of a mile nearer the town was a second dyke, the Greenway; within that was the Kirkway.

The rising water frightened the Spaniards. But at ten inches, it stopped. The Spaniards renewed their taunts. Again it rose two feet; the vessels drew nearer: then they lay aground in sight of the famished citizens. Then arose a strong southwest wind--and after days of weary waiting, the fleet was close on the last line of fortifications. It was the first of October. In the morning the "beggars" of the sea would make a desperate attack upon the Spanish hordes.

In the night there came a terrible crash. The sea had undermined the wall. The citizens were filled with panic, fearing an immediate irruption of the enemy. They stood under arms through the weary night.

The morning came. Not a Spaniard was in sight. Fearing a sortie of the hunger-maddened people, they had fled in the darkness. The city was saved by the drowning of the land.

A story is told of Frederick the Great, illustrative of the same indomitable spirit. After establishing the supremacy of Prussia, he was suspected of designs upon the independence of the Netherlands. The Dutch envoy at his court, newly appointed, Frederick endeavored to overawe by a display of his power. A great military review was held; and Frederick, who took a peculiar delight in tall men, caused troop after troop of his gigantic grenadiers to file before the weazened little Dutchman, and asked his opinion. Of each one the envoy said: "Very good, but not tall enough." Frederick, much nettled at this oft repeated criticism, asked the ambassador what he meant by it. "I mean," he retorted, "that we can flood our country twelve feet deep!" Frederick left the Dutch in peace.

Entropy

The Belmont Club:

A striking aspect of this phenomenon of capture is its anonymity, at least as far as most commentary is concerned. PJMedia ran a series called Every Single One documenting the radical takeover of the Department of Justice, and describing the individual attorneys and their resumes, close connections between EPA and environmental groups have been documented, the names and faces of the IRS people have been publicized, and one can dig some names out of government notices and letters. But this information is largely ignored, and as far as the general media is concerned decisions are made by offices or bureaus, not by people....

Deference to agency interpretation of law becomes an invitation to the staff to play games with the language, finding and exploiting ambiguities where none should exist. Judicial reliance on agency expertise triggers skewed analyses; staff knows how things are supposed to come out, and knows that no judge will contradict it technical conclusions. To the informed, EPA science and risk assessments have been jokes for a generation.

“Every once in a while, the Supreme Court will rebel against fictions,” DeLong writes, but most of the time we just accept the diktat of the downloaded code — and accept the fictions. Administrative law is just one mechanism. The media, academy, the entertainment industry — everybody — is selling you their narrow agenda. Suppose the president says there are only “lone wolves”. Then by gum, there are only lone wolves. Shouldn’t we in rational ignorance trust the president of the United States?

People who wonder how marriage went from an institution involving men and women to almost any combination conceivable in the blink of an eye, wonder at record winters in an age of ”Global Warming”, who ask themselves why their “Affordable Care” is so expensive and why the “free and open internet” has 300 pages of secret regulations; who puzzle over the identity of the masked attackers who attack centers of population every day are basically watching the effects of industrial scale entropy. They are watching knowledge — indeed common sense — being erased or obfuscated; destroyed at a rate that would defy the understanding of few guys wielding hammers.

A Confluence of Posts About Women

A number of friends from outside the United States sent me women-oriented stuff this morning. I was surprised by the alignment until I came to understand that today is apparently "International Women's Day." Americans don't do "international" things, no more this than the metric system: in America the whole month of March is "Women's History Month," though we tend to forget that if we don't belong to institutions that remind us (as we do "Black History Month," which falls in February).

Nevertheless, there were some good pieces! Here are the three best.

A brief piece on Phillipa of Hainault (see also the sidebar, as she has a permanent reference here at the Hall).

On Marozia, the woman who was the power behind three Popes.

A paper on the ways in which women in the Medieval Islamic world wielded power and influence.

By the way, Ranger Up has a new Joan of Arc shirt that some of you might like for a brave woman in your life.

Happy International Women's Day! I think I'll go have lunch with my mother -- she lives on the other side of the state, but my sister is visiting from Wyoming, so it's a good day to catch them both.

UPDATE: Here's a good one: Betty McIntosh, one of the few women to work in the OSS during WWII, a pioneer in psychological warfare, turns 100 years old.

On Rare Expressions

A very nice piece on the use of unusual points of reference, ending in a great example from a piece on Wimbledon.

I do remember what Kretchmer eventually said. He said, “Maybe one reader in ten thousand would get that.”

I said, “Look: you have bought thirteen thousand words about Wimbledon with no other complaint. I beg you to keep it as it is for that one reader.”

He said, “Sold!"

Sprezzatura is a term of art in what are sometimes called "Historical European Martial Arts," or sometimes "Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe." That's because -- as the article points out -- it turns up in Castiglione’s “The Courtier" from 1528.

It's a wider ethic, though. The guy who first taught me to ride motorcycles put it this way: "Do you want to know what the Holy Grail is for motorcycle riding?" he asked. "It's to be smooth. Everything, smooth."

I Doubt The Validity Of This Premise

"This film points to ways in which we can say what's on our minds without being accused of being bigots," says Trevor Phillips, former chief of equality measures in the UK, of his new documentary "Things We Won't Say About Race That Are True."

Valley Forge & Palace Coups

Sarah Hoyt wants to urge Republicans to stick it out, in spite of the problems resulting from a bad elite that seems to be committed to service to corporate donors against the good of the nation.

This week has been a tough one. And the reason it’s been a tough one is not just the Republicans funding the Obama amnesty nor the “net neutrality” boondoggle where apparently even passing it won’t tell us what’s in it...

Our current administration has brought us far closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since the Soviet Union collapsed in on its corrupt self. And worse, it will be a multiparty war that will leave at best 1/3 of the world in ruins. And what they’re doing to the new generation, between indoctrination, unemployment and setting the sexes against each other doesn’t bear thinking too deeply about, lest the black pit yawns beneath our feet.

One way or another, we already have two more years of this. And that’s enough to make that snow-laden wind of despair howl around our flimsy tents.

If the world were just the US. If we didn’t have to factor on anything from outside, I’d still say “yeah, let it burn is an option.”

But is it?

Like it or not, the Pax Americana is AMERICANA. If we collapse, the world falls in on itself, and more importantly, we get truly overrun. Because we’re still relatively stable. The 7 million of Obama’s imperial amnesty won’t be but a drop in the bucket.

On the Left, though, the mood is not any better. They are also concerned that corporate mastery of their political class is so complete that there may simply be no hope at the national level -- perhaps in a few cities, a few states:

The devolution of the political system through the infusion of corporate money, the rewriting of laws and regulations to remove checks on corporate power, the seizure of the press, especially the electronic press, by a handful of corporations to silence dissent, and the rise of the wholesale security and surveillance state have led to “the death of the party system” and the emergence of what Ali called “an extreme center.”...

“This extreme center, it does not matter which party it is, effectively acts in collusion with the giant corporations, sorts out their interests and makes wars all over the world,” Ali said. “This extreme center extends throughout the Western world. This is why more and more young people are washing their hands of the democratic system as it exists....”

Ali said he was “shocked and angry about all the hopes that were invested in Obama by the left.” He lambasted what he called the American “obsession with identity.” Barack Obama, he said, “is an imperial president and behaves like one, regardless of the color of his skin.” Ali despaired of the gender politics that are fueling a possible run for the White House by Hillary Clinton, who would be the first woman president.

“My reply is, ‘So bloody what?’ ” he said. “If she is going to bomb countries and put drones over whole continents, what difference does her gender make if her politics are the same? That is the key. The political has been devalued and debased under neoliberalism. People retreat into religion or identity. It’s disastrous. I wonder if it is even possible to create something on a national scale in the United States.”

I'm attentive enough to recognize that there's a common theme here, outside of the 'center' (extreme or otherwise). There's a great deal of extra-national power that's come to dominate the governments of all major nations, our own included. Both the hard right and the hard left almost despair at its wealth and power.

Perhaps the real enemy isn't the left at all.

UPDATE: More on the mutiny.

Two History Quizzes

The first one prompts you to put historical events in order. I scored 98% as I got Catherine the Great wrong. I knew dates for the others, but I was just trying to guess based on her clothing where she fit into it.

The second one just asks you which of two things is older. The name of the quiz gives away the game, so it's really not hard at all. Kind of fun, though.

In Deference to Tex's Point

A conversation between a concealed carry instructor and a veteran police officer about how to handle a traffic stop.



He raises a good point about the rookie officer who is probably bracketing you, and who has been tasked with killing you if you prove dangerous. Frequently when a deer hunter accidentally kills another hunter in the forest, it's because he's there to shoot a deer, he's expecting a deer, he's thinking about a deer, and when there's sudden movement the first thing his brain says is: "DEER!"

You have to assume the same thing about the nervous rookie sweating it out back there. His brain is in a totally different place, and he may well kill you on the occasion of any stimulus that falls in on the internal monologue screaming through his head.

H/t: SOF.

Sensitivity Abounds

The US military's own court system has ordered the Army to be sensitive when it refers to an individual who admitted betraying his oaths towards the Army and the nation it defends.

The Army now must refer to incarcerated soldier Chelsea Manning as "she," or in gender-neutral terms, a military appeals court says.

The 27-year old Manning, a former intelligence analyst, is undergoing gender reassignment from male to female while serving a 35-year sentence in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas for leaking classified material to the website WikiLeaks. Previously known as Bradley Manning, the young private first class legally changed her name last April to Chelsea.

Apparently they must also issue "female undergarments" for "her" use in the male prison unit at Leavenworth. Special snowflakes must be handled with extreme care.

Mommies and states

Anna Mussmann on our culture's discomfort with the clash between moral relativism and the demands of motherhood:

To varying degrees, our ancestors tended to believe that correct beliefs and behavior should be enforced for the good of the group. Religious heresy should be curbed, political unrest removed, and destabilizing immorality punished. Nowadays, we value diversity and individual expression more than the strength and security of a monolithic culture. As long as no one is obviously hurting others with their beliefs, choices, or actions, we argue for live-and-let live morality in most spheres. It is not our job, we think, to judge the guy who dumped his wife, critique the “open marriage” of the couple down the street, or even to tell our transcendental brother-in-law that his potted plants don’t hear when he talks to them. We are not our brothers’ keepers.

However, as new parents quickly discover, children who do not experience parental judgment become intolerable, unhappy people. Mothers are forced to become authorities for the sake of their families. They must frequently overcome the will of a child (sometimes by force) and say things like, “No, you may not run into the street, no matter how devastatingly disappointing this is,” “No, you are not allowed to use the toothbrushes and toothpaste to create art on the walls,” “No, you may not attend that sleepover at your friend’s house while his parents are out-of-town.”

One way to resolve this conflict is to relieve mothers other their duties to keep their children perfectly safe 24 hours a day and to teach them right from wrong. The government is standing by to take over these obligations, and it is not troubled by any discomfort when it acts judgmental or punishes heresy.

No Privileges for Flags

UC Irvine votes to de-privilege the American flag, putting it on a par with flags in general, all of which are banned.

You might wonder how it helps freedom of expression to suppress the... ah, freedom... to express... um, political sentiments via flag displays.

But take heart! Now the flag of the nation that pays for the existence of this university shall enjoy no privilege over, say, Nazi or Soviet flags. We've become broad minded indeed out there in California. The nation that supports the greatest university system on earth is now on par with this:



No differences there worth... expressing.

Frank J on Science

Really, science is a great tool for using logic to find the answer to absolutely any question — as long as the question isn’t particularly important.

Against Spock

Not everyone loved the character all that much. Oddly, this review is focused on the movies and later series.

Ferguson Update

In the wake of its report on the Ferguson PD, Eric Holder says the Federal government is prepared to take any steps necessary to enforce compliance with reforms up to and including dismantling the department entirely. The President has suggested that, while he doesn't view Ferguson as "typical," he thinks it's not all that uncommon across the country.

Community Standards Differ

...but they're supposed to differ from one community to another.

Is diversity valuable because the attachments we bring -- 'a wise Latina' -- alter our perspectives? Or is it to be feared, precisely because it makes it hard to detach yourself from the interests of your particular group? Apparently for UCLA, the answer is, "it depends on the question of to what groups you belong." Wise Latinas are welcome. Jews, not so much.

Christians of the wrong stripe probably don't come out all that well either.

Profit & Externalities

We were talking about externalities the other day, because libertarians like the concept as a way of talking about the costs your activities impose on others. The economic concept can be widely applied, but it really is an economic concept originally:

The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs.

We can think of a time when the American West seemed boundless, not just unspoiled but unspoilable. Remember Clint Eastwood's film Pale Rider:



So the claim this article is making is this:

Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero.

The author thinks this makes the global economy a fraud, but that's too strong. Two things occur to me reading it through:

1) A lot of these economic costs are 'greenhouse gases,' about the effects of which there is still some debate.

2) On the other hand, there's a sense to it. The law of conservation of energy and matter suggests you shouldn't be able to get more out of a thing than you take from it. That applies to systems as well as objects. If we consider the Earth as a system, of course there's no profit to be made from re-ordering the parts of the system in various ways.

What really matters is the order. If I take gold out of the ground and turn it into wire, and then put that wire into a computer, I can do sorts of work I couldn't do before. If I take the uranium in the ground, use power from burning coal to refine it, and then use the refined uranium to run a reactor, I can capture lots of energy that was otherwise existing as a kind of potential in the earth.

Putting things in the right order is therefore very helpful. It's good to provide incentives for people to do the work necessary to get that done. What we call "profit" is or ought to be a sort of incentive to do work of this kind. It's good work, because it's good for people to have things put in the right order.

God creates. We are merely re-ordering things, bringing to actuality what already exists in potency. There are wise and foolish ways to alter the order of the things in the world. We should take some care to be wise.

High horses

Fr. de Souza on disgraced IPCC Rajendra Pachauri's elevation of global warming into a religion:

Religion is not an ideology, though it can be corrupted to become one. Religion treats as fixed those points of revelation that have as their object that which is unchanging, namely God. Yet their application to the social order precisely requires a response to changing circumstances, including the insights of other disciplines, including economics, politics, history and the environmental sciences. That’s why there is no such thing as Christian tax policy, or trade policy or climate policy. For example, Christians have it as a matter of divine revelation that concern for the poor is not optional, but essential. How to best assist the poor remains a matter of differing circumstances and consequently competing policy choices.

H/t comments section at Chicago Boyz.

Not looking at words

"We don't look at four words," Justice Kagan declared during the Supreme Court arguments this week on ACA subsidies in federal-exchange states.  Not if they're inconvenient words, we don't!  If these four words on the specific subject under dispute supported the White House's position, though, we'd sure be looking at them, wouldn't we?  In further discussion it developed that the four words were being taken out of context.  As we've learned in the last four or five years, that's a glaring signal for "We're straight-up lying to you."

The ghost of Willie Horton

Politico argues that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been hagridden by the drubbing Michael Dukakis took with the Willie Horton ads.  When combined with his flaccid response to a law-and-order question during the 1988 presidential campaign, the Horton ads rightfully pegged Dukakis as confused and ineffectual on violent crime.  Almost 30 years later, however, there is growing sentiment that law and order has stopped being about violent crime and drifting into obsessive microcontrol--so much so that the dreaded Charles Koch is teaming up with people like George Soros and Corey Booker to spend oceans of money on a libertarian anti-criminalization campaign.  Sometimes odd bedfellows can agree that government is too big.

I'd like to see the criminal justice system continue to come down like a big hammer on people who think other people's pockets are their natural fishing grounds.  It's bad enough when they use the voting booth to satisfy their avarice, but if they're prepared to knock people on the head over it, they need to be put away.  Still, I wouldn't lift a finger to help convict someone of violations of 3/4 of the nonsense that's ended up on the criminal statute books.  I'd be some prosecutor's nightmare of a juror.  Someone's upset that Martha Stewart may have misspoken during an interrogation about insider trading that no one ever was able to prove?  Civil court, please.  Tsarnaev?  Shoot him, the sooner the better.

Email Insecurity

Maybe the answer is that she wanted China and Russia to read her mail. It's just an expansive head-fake to help them feel comfortable with American diplomacy, because they think they know what you think, but you really know that you said what you wanted them to think you thought on a server they could easily hack into and read.

I mean, that's what I'd have been doing if I'd done this. It's key, though, that they don't think she's smart enough to out-think them. And I think she's got that part of the play down.

"This needs to stop, and now."

When did sports journalism start hectoring its audience to show more sensitivity? I don't read a lot of it, so maybe I missed it.

My first exposure to Ms. Rousey was in Expendables III. I don't watch television, let alone Pay Per View, so I had no idea who she was when she showed up as the bouncer-turned-mercenary in that movie. Now, movies are fantasy, but she beat the crap out of not just one but a whole horde of men in that film. And, I gather, she does have a dominant record in her sport -- really, quite impressive.

So when the guy said, "that Rousey could beat 50 percent of the male bantamweights in the UFC," I'd take that less as an expression of her superlative glory and more as an empirical claim. Can she? Can she beat any of them?

The author apparently feels the answer is definitely not, and having to admit that takes away from all she's accomplished.

But why don't we ask her? Does she want to try?

In related news, the Army announced this week that it's opening 4,100 new Special Operations jobs to women, including 18 Bravo (Special Forces Weapons Sergeant) and other positions long considered the last redoubt of men. I presume women will have to compete for these jobs in some manner. If we agree that it's insulting even to suggest an equal competition with men to the finest female fighter America has ever produced, doesn't that say something about what will be necessary to fill these positions with women?

I'm told I need to stop talking about this. And now.

UPDATE: Ms. Rousey says she thinks it's at least possible that she could beat every male bantamweight. That's admirable self-confidence, and given her record she's earned the right to some self-confidence. Let her try.

Isn't That Illegal?

So, a friend of mine on the Left -- a gentleman scholar, holds a Master's Degree -- responded to my incredulity about claims that the Speaker of the House might be guilty of near-treason for inviting the Prime Minister of Israel to speak before Congress by asking, "Wasn't the invitation against the law?"

Why, no. In fact, why would it be? Congress has Article I powers related to foreign policy including -- not to put too fine a point on it -- the power to declare war! Why shouldn't they be able to invite, say, heads of state from the region where they might be thinking about possibly declaring war to give an opinion relevant to the discussion? I mean, they can order me or you to come testify about whatever they want. Why shouldn't they be able to invite pretty much anyone who has cause to be in the United States legally?

Give credit where credit is due: the propaganda has apparently been extremely strong on this occasion.

New York City Schools to Close for Muslim Holidays

That's interesting.

The official announcement by de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina came four hours later at PS/IS 30 in Brooklyn, where officials said 36 percent of students were absent the last time Eid al-Adha fell on a school day, according to WCBS.... Official estimates of the number of Muslims living in New York City vary from 600,000 to 1 million, with Columbia University estimating that 95 percent of Muslim children attended the city’s public schools in 2008, composing 10 percent of the public education population.

So, 90% of the children are not Muslims, but nearly four in ten didn't bother to come on Eid al-Adha?

On More Important, If Less Urgent, Business

A new argument that King Arthur fought out of Strathclyde.

I've always thought the "northern Arthur" arguments were stronger than the "southern Arthur" arguments, though the latter have historically been much more popular among historians. I suspect some part of that is the outsized influence that England and English sentiment play on the development of history as a discipline, though: where Oxford and Cambridge lead, it's hard not to follow.

Still, I take 'the City of Legions' to be much more plausibly Chester than Caerleon. The center of resistance to the invading Anglo-Saxons may well have been the Christian kingdoms in the north, Strathclyde and Dal Riada, which are likely centers because they had logistical support from areas the Anglo-Saxons never penetrated, and a proven naval trade relationship with Ireland that would have remained undisturbed during the Saxon invasions. Since the evidence of graves suggests a reverse-migration of Saxons back to the mainland during the latter part of the Arthurian period, we have reason to think that the campaign was broadly successful for a couple of decades. That implies a powerful resistance, which is also in line with the legends, not a rag-tag band of guerrillas. Such a resistance needs a strong logistical base.

Après Hillary, le déluge

Ugly news always follows the Clintons, but rarely derails them.  This has been an especially trying week, though, with reports of Secretary Clinton's using official State Department travel as donor-maintenance junkets to the foreign governments with whom she supposedly was negotiating on behalf of the United States, and conducting most if not all of her official State Department business on a private email account, for the apparent purpose of avoiding the need to respond to FOIA requests and in an equally apparent disregard for the continued security of classified information.

Bill Scher at Politico is beginning to entertain the unthinkable:  what will happen to the 2016 race if Hillary Clinton drops out?  The assumption is that at some point this press will become so disabling that Ms. Clinton's hand will be forced.  Will it, though?  Imagine what would have happened if John Ehrlichman had been in charge of the U.S. press in the early 1970s.