Jesus as Ideal Ranger

Those of you who know the famous RANGER! video ("You'll fight tigers!") will remember that it included among famous Rangers Jesus Christ. In a new book, Chaplain Captain John McDougall of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, attempts to make the point with more seriousness.

“As I drove up the Cascade Mountains, I started thinking about how much my Rangers resembled Jesus – selflessly willing to give their lives for other,” McDougall said. “God took this simple thought and then inspired me to write an entire allegory about how Jesus was like an Airborne Ranger.”

McDougall, a United States Military Academy graduate, recently published Jesus was an Airborne Ranger, a faith-based illustration of the warrior ethos of Jesus Christ’s ministry in relation to the mentality and characteristics of the members of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

McDougall, who has served as 2d Ranger Battalion’s Chaplain for three years, was inspired to write the book when he realized that his Rangers were generally unaware of the strength of Jesus as depicted in the Bible.

“My desire to write the book came from the realization that the Jesus of many churches is a weakling – someone that our Rangers cannot relate too,” McDougall said. “I wanted to introduce them to the Warrior Christ that I see in the Bible – someone bold, disciplined and unafraid.”

I have two competing thoughts about this. The first one is that it mirrors almost precisely the tactic Fafhrd used in Lean Times in Lankhmar to address the unpopularity of his chosen diety:

As delivered over and over by Fafhrd, the History of Issek of the Jug gradually altered, by small steps which even Bwadres could hardly cavil at had he wished, into something considerably more like the saga of a Northern hero, though toned down in some respects. Issek had not slain dragons and other monsters as a child—that would have been against his Creed—he had only sported with them, swimming with leviathan, frisking with behemoth, and flying through the trackless spaces of air on the backs of wivern, griffin and hippogryph. Nor had Issek as a man scattered kings and emperors in battle, he had merely dumbfounded them and their quaking ministers by striding about on fields of poisoned sword-points, standing at attention in fiery furnaces, and treading water in tanks of boiling oil—all the while delivering majestic sermons on brotherly love in perfect, intricately rhymed stanzas.

Fritz Leiber was playfully mocking the actual course of alterations of the tone of the Gospel stories as Christianity spread north into lands that had been less Roman and more barbarian. It worked very well at the time, and might work again (as indeed it worked for Fafhrd in the tale).

The second thought is that there is a kind of validity to the move. As the perfect man, all things proper to men are fully realized in Christ. This change in emphasis of focus isn't changing Jesus in the same way that Fafhrd was changing Issek: it's merely attending to a different aspect than before. The danger to the move is that in focusing on areas where men are already strong, it draws their attention from what Christianity can best help them with: recognizing and confessing to the areas where they are weak. Perhaps it's a good approach, still, insofar as it builds a trusting relationship between man and God. Confession is easiest where trust is deepest.

Precision is Beautiful

Food, cut into 2.5cm cubes. Surprisingly beautiful for a piece of modern art, but I suppose nature gets most of the credit here. The art of imposing an exactly-similar external form only highlights the beauty of the natural differences.

Yep: Insecurity is the Issue

This just proves that today’s outrage culture and offensensitivity (to use a wonderful term coined by Berke Breathed in Bloom County nearly three decades ago) is self-immolating by its very nature. It demands a lock-step groupthink and punishes any criticism as bigotry or worse. It’s the exact opposite of both tolerance and plurality, plus the nature of this particular offense — calling someone by their first name? — exposes the high degree of insecurity among those involved in the debate, and their desperation to shut their critics up, even if it’s the most progressive President since LBJ.

Sometimes people say really offensive things, and on those occasions genuine offense can be warranted. But we often see outrageous outrage coming from two additional classes of people:

1) People who are really insecure.

2) People attempting to leverage victim status to obtain some advantage.

A lot of criticism focuses on type (2) cases, but I think type (1) cases are actually the most common. There are just tons of people walking around in constant fear of being looked down upon because they don't really think much of themselves. This is sometimes true even of people who have actually achieved quite a bit -- say, becoming a Senator after gaining tenure after earning a Ph.D., all of which are substantial accomplishments. There's a named psychological disorder associated with it, and some believe women are especially susceptible to it.

Under those circumstances, a highly confident man like the President can provoke outrage by saying things that would be completely inoffensive to someone with more self-confidence. Calling someone by their first name? He does that to Senators all the time. He used to be a Senator himself, and it's part of the culture of comity even among political opponents.

I suppose the rebuttal would be that sexism in society is so prevalent that it's our collective fault that high-achieving women like these sometimes feel sensitive to criticism. Certainly the society doesn't adhere to my own standards as to what I consider ordinary decent respect for women in day to day life. The way to make a road forward isn't by setting up a bunch of eggshells for people to walk on when talking about high-achieving women ("Don't use her first name!"). That's just going to reinforce the idea that women need special protections if they're going to get out in the world.

Certainly I always try to encourage women in my life to be confident and to take honest pride in their achievements. Mostly I do this because I like them, but there's a small element of self preservation interest as well. Confident, bold women are easier to live with. They make better friends, partners, comrades, call it what you will.

Probably they make better Senators.

Thunderstorm in Wyoming

Story here.

Comin' Down the Grade, Makin' 90 Miles an Hour...

....watch Ol' 97 roll.

An Amtrak train that derailed near Philadelphia was apparently traveling at more than 100 miles per hour at the time of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Wednesday.... Seven peopled were killed and more than 100 injured during the crash.

If you're interested in the story of the real 'Old 97,' it's an interesting one too.

The noises we make

More from Jesperson's "Language":  just as we call birds by their sounds, cultures develop names for foreign visitors that reflect their characteristic verbal tics:

A special subdivision of particular interest comprises those names, or nicknames, which are sometimes popularly given to nations from words continually occurring in their speech. Thus the French used to call an Englishman a god-damn (godon), and in China an English soldier is called a-says or I-says. In Java a Frenchman is called orang-deedong (orang 'man'), in America ding-dong, and during the Napoleonic wars the French were called in Spain didones, from dis-donc; another name for the same nation is wi-wi (Australia), man-a-wiwi (in Beach-la-mar), or oui-men (New Caledonia). In Eleonore Christine's Jammersminde 83 I read, "Ich habe zwei parle mi franço gefangen," and correspondingly Goldsmith writes (Globe ed. 624): "Damn the French, the parle vous, and all that belongs to them. What makes the bread rising? the parle vous that devour us." In Rovigno the surrounding Slavs are called čuje from their exclamation čuje 'listen, I say,' and in Hungary German visitors are called vigéc (from wie geht's?), and customs officers vartapiszli (from wart' a bissl). Round Panama everything native is called spiggoty, because in the early days the Panamanians, when addressed, used to reply, "No spiggoty [speak] Inglis." In Yokohama an English or American sailor is called Damuraīsu H'to from 'Damn your eyes' and Japanese H'to 'people.'

And that's the good news

"Junk," with a negative outlook:  that's how Moody's characterizes Chicago's bond rating.  In other words, "That's as good as it gets, and it's never going to get that good again."

Old Time Color

Following a rendition of "Rye Whiskey," Woody Guthrie is asked to give some off-color toasts he might have heard. It's an interesting exchange, compared to what you are more likely to hear today.

Aristotle for Everybody

This sounds like a neat little book -- it's 200 pages, but for a summary of Aristotle that is pretty short.

....accessible not only to the average reader but also to children in middle school. That ambition is what Mortimer Adler aimed at with this book. His thirteen year-old and his eleven year-old read the manuscript and gave helpful feedback, so he certainly thinks it is a success.

You could do worse, and hardly better, than to acquaint yourself with the Master.

H/t: Brandywine Books.

Habeas Corpus

Soon after the agency’s contractors began their program of “enhanced interrogation’’ at the secret black site in Thailand – placing him in a coffin-size box; slamming him against wall; depriving him of sleep; bombarding him with loud music; as well as waterboarding – they sent an encrypted cable to Washington.

The CIA interrogators said that if Zubaydah died during questioning, his body would be cremated. But if he survived the ordeal, the interrogators wanted assurances that he would “remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

Senior officials gave the assurances. Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen, “will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released,” the head of the CIA’s ALEC Station, the code name of the Washington-based unit hunting Osama bin Laden, replied. “All major players are in concurrence,” the cable said, that he “should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

It would be nice if the court would explain itself, at least in broad and general terms, to the American people. Courts are not political branches, at least in theory, but their workings should not be opaque to the sovereign. Accepting some need for government secrecy in matters of national security, nevertheless an explanation for this strange case that redacts what is necessary should be possible. We ought to know, and approve, the justification for such a major exception from our rule.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

With a little molecular tinkering, for the first time scientists have created chicken embryos with broad, Velociraptor-like muzzles in the place of their beaks.

I think I've seen this movie.

Free Speech & Hate Speech

VDH points out a clever trick.

President Obama scapegoated Nakoula at the United Nations — a majority of whose members ban free speech as a rule — with pompous promises that the prophet would not be mocked with impunity in the United States of America. Nakoula was suddenly arrested on a minor parole violation and jailed for over a year. No one seemed to care that the unsavory firebrand Egyptian had a constitutional right while legally resident in America to freely caricature any religion that he chose.

The IRS under career bureaucrats like Lois Lerner targeted non-profit groups on the basis of their perceived political expression. The best strategy now for stifling free speech is to arbitrarily substitute the word “hate” for “free” — and then suddenly we all must unite to curb “hate speech.”

Emphasis added.

Goodness knows I detest the Westboro Baptist Church. If we can ask the families of fallen American servicemembers to endure them at the funerals of their children, who died for our country, we can endure pretty much any sort of 'hate speech.'

No Secret Treaties

Republicans seem to be preparing to save the President's bacon on two trade bills, neither of which should be even remotely considered for passage until they have been declassified and studied by the American people. If it's such a great deal, let us read it. Let us discuss it. Let us write letters to our representatives so they know what we think about it, whether we support or oppose it, and just why.

No secret treaties.

UPDATE: Salon magazine on the President's "lies," their term. Indeed, it's their point.

It’s beneath the dignity of the Presidency to so aggressively paint opponents as not just wrong on the facts, but hiding the truth on purpose. Warren has responded without using the same indecorous tactics. Unfortunately, I don’t have the same self-control. So by way of response, here are ten moments where the President or his subordinates have lied – call it “misled” or “offered half-truths” or whatever; but I’m in an ornery mood so let’s just say lied – about his trade agenda[.]

Last night I was talking with a left-leaning professor I know, and he expressed astonishment at the President's rhetoric on the subject.

UPDATE: Boom.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday delivered a stinging blow to President Obama’s trade agenda by voting to prevent the chamber from picking up fast-track legislation.

A motion to cut off a filibuster and proceed to the trade bill fell short of a 60-vote hurdle, 52-45. Sen. Tom Carper (Del.) was the only Democrat to back it.

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) switched his vote from yes to no to reserve his ability to return to the measure at a later date.

Fast-track is a top legislative priority for the White House, but it has run into significant Senate opposition that has been led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

It faces even more opposition from Democrats in the House, and the surprise Senate failure will raise doubts about whether the legislation will make its way through Congress.

Reading Aquinas

A reflection.

For me personally, there’s also a kind of ponderous clarity and simplicity about Aquinas’s writing that gets more and more attractive as I spend time with it. He’s not the kind of thinker who wants to complicate things or show off his brilliance—he just wants to make sense of the world the best he can, within the limitations of the human mind.

Beyond 'Starve the Beast,' Kill the Monster

The regulatory state has two related weaknesses... It relies on voluntary compliance, and its enforcement capabilities are far inferior to its expansive mandate. So he proposes a private legal defense fund — the “Madison Fund,” honoring the father of the Constitution — that businesses and citizens can rely on for representation against federal regulators. By engaging in expensive and time-consuming litigation on behalf of clients that refuse to comply with pointless rules, the fund drains the government’s enforcement resources and eventually undercuts its ambitions. The state can compel submission from an individual or company with the threat of ruinous legal proceedings, Murray writes, “but Goliath cannot afford to make good on that threat against hundreds of Davids.”

Mesopotamia

The 'land between the rivers' takes on a new meaning, at an hour when the rivers are these:

1) We need to talk about the danger posed by violent, apocalyptic Islam.

2) We need to make sure we don't paint Islam per se as the problem.

Historian Timothy R. Furnish has a good piece on that topic. I liked the SNL bit, too, though.



That's a good way of at least beginning to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the fear that many 'right-thinking' people feel when they are asked to address this topic. There's a huge difference between the virtue of charity towards strangers, and the vices of dishonesty and cowardice. It's only the brave who can truly be charitable here. It is only those of us who are not afraid who can extend a kind and honest hand. First, you must be brave.

Civics

Here's the huge problem:

Three out of five eighth graders tested in a nationwide survey did not know that the 1803 Marbury v. Madison case established the Supreme Court’s power to decide whether a federal law is constitutional. Half of them could not attribute the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” to the Declaration of Independence.... Only about a third of American eighth-graders can correctly separate which presidential powers are set forth in the Constitution from those not specified in the Constitution.

I know that all of you, like me, periodically quiz other Americans you care about to see how many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights they can explain. In general my experience is that people can identify three or four of the five freedoms specified in the First, know the Second, and are fuzzy on the rest of it.

Time's arrow

From Otto Jesperson's 1922 "Language," on the enduring difficulty of evaluating processes of natural evolution in terms of either progress or decay:

To men fresh from the ordinary grammar-school training, no language would seem really respectable that had not four or five distinct cases and three genders, or that had less than five tenses and as many moods in its verbs. Accordingly, such poor languages as had either lost much of their original richness in grammatical forms (e.g. French, English, or Danish), or had never had any, so far as one knew (e.g. Chinese), were naturally looked upon with something of the pity bestowed on relatives in reduced circumstances, or the contempt felt for foreign paupers. . . .  [A] language possesses an inestimable charm if its phonetic system remains unimpaired and its etymologies are transparent; but pliancy of the material of language and flexibility to express ideas is really no less an advantage; everything depends on the point of view: the student of architecture has one point of view, the people who are to live in the house another.

I may here anticipate the results of the following investigation and say that in all those instances in which we are able to examine the history of any language for a sufficient length of time, we find that languages have a progressive tendency. But if languages progress towards greater perfection, it is not in a bee-line, nor are all the changes we witness to be considered steps in the right direction. The only thing I maintain is that the sum total of these changes, when we compare a remote period with the present time, shows a surplus of progressive over retrogressive or indifferent changes, so that the structure of modern languages is nearer perfection than that of ancient languages, if we take them as wholes instead of picking out at random some one or other more or less significant detail. And of course it must not be imagined that progress has been achieved through deliberate acts of men conscious that they were improving their mother-tongue. On the contrary, many a step in advance has at first been a slip or even a blunder, and, as in other fields of human activity, good results have only been won after a good deal of bungling and 'muddling along.' My attitude towards this question is the same as that of Leslie Stephen, who writes in a letter (Life 454): "I have a perhaps unreasonable amount of belief, not in a millennium, but in the world on the whole blundering rather forwards than backwards."

Schleicher on one occasion used the fine simile: "Our words, as contrasted with Gothic words, are like a statue that has been rolling for a long time in the bed of a river till its beautiful limbs have been worn off, so that now scarcely anything remains but a polished stone cylinder with faint indications of what it once was" (D 34). Let us turn the tables by asking: Suppose, however, that it would be quite out of the question to place the statue on a pedestal to be admired; what if, on the one hand, it was not ornamental enough as a work of art, and if, on the other hand, human well-being was at stake if it was not serviceable in a rolling-mill: which would then be the better--a rugged and unwieldy statue, making difficulties at every rotation, or an even, smooth, easygoing and well-oiled roller?

A Hard Nut, To Crack

On Roman sling bullets.

Happy Mother's Day

"Where would any of us be, without a woman? Why, even Father Lonergan had a mother."

Two on Ben Carson

Ben Carson, running for President, has decided to break with the rest of the Republican field and endorse a minimum wage increase. Meanwhile, he is chided for taking his claim to be 'politically incorrect' too far.

Political correctness is dangerous when it discourages thought or expression. But simply declaring oneself "politically incorrect" — as Carson pridefully does — is not a license to throw off the shackles of protocol and politeness and say crazy, offensive things.

That's right. He should say "With all due respect" instead.

A Quiz for Eric Blair

On Roman History.

While you're there, read this article on the Fall of Rome.

Roman historians recognized what they considered to be a decay in the traditional Roman character from the late Republic onwards. Symptoms included a falling birth-rate, a growing gap between rich and poor, and declining attachment to ancient traditions. Modern historians have tended to focus on economic and political changes, but this new theory suggests that the root cause was, in fact, a mass change in temperament driven by prosperity.

Sounds familiar.

The UK Goes Right

Sorry to see Farage go, but George Galloway will not be missed. I like that a wave of nationalism swept the UK in response to the Labour attempt to flood the country with immigrants who would permanently change the face of the electorate. That augurs well for a similar (and even more deserved) wave election here.

The Scottish National Party swept the Old Country.

Patience is a Virtue

A US Army colonel goes on C-SPAN, with hilarious very sad results. Kudos to Col. Petkosek for putting up with the callers.

Voice of the Mighty 9th

My Representative, Doug Collins, on religious freedom and the void that used to be the Constitution.

Return From the Wild

I have returned from five days in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. During this time I crossed Clingman's Dome on the Appalachian Trail, which is the highest point of the trail from Georgia to Maine and which is attained by first surmounting Mount Love or Mount Baldwin and then crossing a ridge to the next summit. I also hiked the aptly named Death Ridge, and then descended into the lower regions of the park to enjoy the water features. Saw every species of big game native the the park, including elk and a bear I had to stand off of his kill (of a wild boar) in order to make a narrow and precipitous trail clear for passage.

Google's auto-editing program did this with one of my photos:

Overall, fifty miles or so of backpacking through some credibly difficult terrain. It was a beautiful place, just as you'd imagine.

Mousetraps

If the Garland shooting of two would-be jihadists in the parking lot of a Mohammed-cartoon-drawing contest was a mousetrap, then it was a carelessly designed one.  I'd have at least armed the security guard.  As Ace says, the left is trying to force at least two contradictory claims on us in this context:

1. To speak of Islamist violence, or to suggest there is a problem in Islam, is racist, and hateful, and irrational, and "islamophobic."

2. It is so predictable that Islamists will kill you if you say something "anti-Islamic" that victims of murder attempts can be said to have brought their attacks on themselves.

Two other hard-to-reconcile claims:

1. Islam is compatible with Western values.

2. We're going to have to change some core Western values to avoid violence from our new Muslim friends.

Luckily the unarmed security guard was not the only spring-loaded lethal device included in this mousetrap. Bearing Arms has up a useful summary of what we know about the attack and the prompt, successful defense by a police officer:

No matter how you break down the details, this was an incredible display of bravery and marksmanship by this 30+ year veteran of the Garland Police Department, who not only resisted the natural urge to create distance between yourself and rifle-armed assailants, but who appears to have done precisely the opposite, and who advanced while firing accurately, bringing the attack to a swift conclusion without a single additional casualty once he brought his weapon to bear.

Coping

I'm a big fan of "The Great Courses." Naturally, I enjoy writing reviews on their website and appreciate the helpful reviews that other TGC customers leave. TGC ranks reviewers according to some metric that includes the number of their reviews and the positive feedback from readers. Recently I stumbled on a review by the top-ranked contributor, then clicked on her name in order to read all of her reviews. Phenomenal. I quote here from a review of a course about the neuroscience of everyday life:

My father died of Alzheimer's. To stay in his beloved house and present a good front whenever I visited, he kept all his vital necessities (his peanut butter, bread and various clothing items) in a single location — the dishwater.

Eventually I was forced to use trickery. We "visited" an assisted-care facility. For a day or two he begged me to go back home. He cried like a child. I was overwhelmed with guilt.

Then it abruptly stopped. The house he shared with my mother for 40 years until she died, his castle and refuge, disappeared like everything else down a memory hole. He was serene again within a week of entering the facility. Perhaps drugs had something to do with it.

That was years ago. He now rests in peace.

Cathedral of May / Into the Wild

Welcome to the Cathedral of May, that fine time of year with no equal except October, and with the summer instead of the winter in front of us.

I am departing at once for the Wild. I will be gone for a week or thereabouts. Partly I will be on the Appalachian Trail, and partly in less well-traveled places.



Some appropriate music for the Maytide.

Increases Past 100%?

Extensive research shows that using harsh verbal discipline and physical hostility is counterproductive to good parenting. It increases the risk of delinquency, fighting, misbehavior and belligerence in teens.

First of all, fighting and belligerence aren't always bad things. Sometimes they are exactly the proper and just response, in which case the son you have raised with a capacity for them will be the person with the capacity to act virtuously in those circumstances. The one you've raised to shrink from conflict and physicality will be unable to defend the right when push comes to shove.

But, second, this particular teen was already physically present for the purpose of joining a riot. I don't think you need to worry about 'increasing the risk' of misbehavior on this occasion. Mom was just trying to keep her son from getting himself killed, as was not improbable under the circumstances. Not only is the author a pansy who should mind his own business, then, he's also got his head entirely in the wrong game.

Stone Tools

Archaeologists claim to have discovered tools that pre-date the genus homo.

Popping bubbles

"Safe places" are all the rage, as young people struggle to find a refuge from disturbing ideas on campus and enforce orthodoxy on the whole student body and faculty. Robert Tracinski argues that this strategy is a good way to lose the war of ideas:

The most powerful historical precedent for this is the totalitarian creed of the Soviet Union—a dogma imposed, not just by campus censors or a Twitter mob, but by gulags and secret police. Yet one of the lessons of the Soviet collapse is that the ideological uniformity of a dictatorship seems totally solid and impenetrable—right up to the moment it cracks apart. The imposition of dogma succeeds in getting everyone to mouth the right slogans, even as fewer and fewer of them understand or believe the ideology behind it.

Treaty Obligations

As long as the grass grows and the river runs...

I Hate Airports

So, is this flight delayed? Guess so, but they won't call it or let you know for how long. Will I make my connection? Who knows! It's part of how we keep travel exciting.

Civilzation: The Skin of Our Teeth

On the strength of my recent enjoyment of BBC documentary, a British friend recommends to me this 13-part series from the BBC on Western Civilization. I am told it is from 1969, twelve hours long, and one of the finest examples the BBC ever produced.

You may think you're having trouble committing to a 12-hour documentary. Don't. Give it three and half minutes, starting at 5:58 into this video.



Now that you've seen that, and since you're the sort of person who spends his or her time in the Hall, I expect you'll probably watch a bit more. Some of you will probably find time to watch it all.

Alt-history

Playing off the popularity of the BBC's excellent production of "Wolf Hall," about Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church, the Catholic Herald website imagines what England would have looked like if the King's infant son by Catherine of Aragon had lived to become Henry IX.  Would England have avoided war with Spain? Would the North American colonies have been less Puritan and obstreperous?  There would have been no Elizabeth, no Stuarts, perhaps no beheading of a King, no frantic search for continental monarchs to bring reliable Protestantism.

Bach on boomwhackers

Unconsensus

When you're a scientist, sometimes it's good to be the king, if it means you get to look under a different rock from the one that all the smart people agree is the right one to be looking under.

Selling Nuclear Material and International Affairs

So, the question that I am curious about in the wake of this latest Clinton scandal is about options for fixing things should we determine that it is actually undesirable to have the Russian government owning a significant amount of US uranium output. (How much output is that? 4.8 million pounds was the total figure in 2013.)

Let's say we decide that's a bad idea. However, the sale was approved by all the appropriate parties, including the Clinton State Department. The sale is presumably perfectly legal and settled, then. What happens if we determine that Russia is using energy resources to leverage its position in an attempt to dominate smaller neighbor nations? What if it should decide to sell uranium to Iran, or for that matter to a Saudi government bent on developing a bomb to counter Iran?

I don't know the answers to those questions. Do any of you know what might be done, were we to decide that something ought to be done? The only thing that occurs to me is nationalizing the mine via eminent domain, presumably paying Russia some fair market value for it.

Hurrah the Feast of Saint George

The image is a photo I took of a tile in Jerusalem last December. If I were to have a patron saint, I should think it would be St. George. Today is the Feast of St. George, patron saint of cavalrymen and horsemen generally, of Dragonslayers, and I trust of bikers.

There is an impressive list of 'Alternative Second Readings' today, for those of you who keep up with such things. They all have to do with being prepared for persecution for being a Christian.

Romans 5:1-5

Romans 8:31-39

2 Cor. 4:7-15

2 Cor. 6:4-10

2 Timothy 2:8-13,3:10-12

Hebrews 10:32-36

James 1:2-4,12

1 Peter 3:14-17

1 Peter 4:12-19

1 John 5:1-5

The Gospel reading, if you are still inclined after all of that, is John 15:18-21.

Taxes Are About The Public Good!

MSNBC hosts lecture on the democratic glories of tax season, dodge tens of thousands of dollars in taxes.

The video at the link is glorious.

Plays on Words

Today's game: does the headline match the statement?

"[If] we have to give some Christians refugee status given that with Iraq and Libya there's almost nowhere for them to go then fine but Europe can't send the message that everyone who comes will be accepted," he told BBC Breakfast.... Asked whether this meant only Christians should be accepted by Europe, [Nigel Farage] replied: "I am saying we can make a gesture and we could give refugee status to a few people and I am highlighting the plight of the Christians."

Headline: "Refugee crisis: Only take in Christians insists Nigel Farage."

Now, one of UKIP's long-standing interests is limiting immigration to preserve the character of its nation. Farage is being asked if he'll make an exception to that principle for humanitarian reasons. He says yes, but a limited exception for cases in which they have nowhere else to go. Muslim refugees are being accepted elsewhere, but where except Europe might Christian refugees go?

Well, to the United States, I suppose. Except...

At the end of World War II, the Jewish survivors of Europe’s Holocaust found that nearly every door was closed to them. “Tell Me Where Can I Go?” was a popular Yiddish song at the time. Decades later, the Christians of the Middle East face the same problem, and the Obama administration is keeping the door shut.

America is about to accept 9000 Syrian Muslims, refugees of the brutal war between the Assad regime and its Sunni opposition, which includes ISIS, Al Qaeda, and various other militias. That number is predicted to increase each year. There are no Christian refugees that will be admitted.

So why are we asking Farage if he isn't prejudiced against Muslims for wanting to offer a safe haven to Christians that is lacking elsewhere? Shouldn't we be asking everyone else if they aren't prejudiced against Christians?

Add This One To The List Of 'Things To Avoid'

'Get your gang together, and break into the house of a professional MMA fighter.'

Graffiti

Obesity and the Military

Major General Allen Batschelet, CDRUSAREC, says that only thirty percent of American youth ages 17-24 are fit enough to join the US military. The trend lines, he goes on to say, are for that to decline to only two in ten.

That's OK. The Dempsey Rule shows us the way forward. 'If [an obese person] cannot meet a standard, senior commanders better have a good reason why it should not be lowered.'

The Hour of the Sea

"And in the last eclipse the sea
Shall stand up like a tower,
Above all moons made dark and riven,
Hold up its foaming head in heaven,
And laugh, knowing its hour.

"And the high ones in the happy town
Propped of the planets seven,
Shall know a new light in the mind,
A noise about them and behind,
Shall hear an awful voice, and find
Foam in the courts of heaven.

An hour is only a little while, and in time it comes to an end. Laugh while you can.

Variations on the Trolley Problem

I'm sure we've talked about the famous 'trolley problem' many times. Classically, there's no right answer to it, but it exists to expose the fact that moral intuitions differ. You ask a group of people to consider this problem:

There's an out of control trolley speeding toward a group of people. If it rushes in amongst them, it will kill a number of them and injure others. You are near a switch that would allow you to redirect the trolley away from those people, onto a track where there's only one person. Do you pull the switch?

What we learn from the problem is that some people feel very strongly that it would be wrong to pull the switch, because that implicates them in guilt for killing the one man. The world as they find it is not their fault, but electing to act means taking responsibility for the choice. Thus, they will let many people die to avoid being personally guilty for one death.

Others -- myself included -- feel that not acting is also a choice, and the desire to avoid responsibility is thus a false choice. Even here, moral intuitions differ. Some will pull the switch, believing it better to choose to save more lives. Others will refuse, believing that their chief duty is to refuse to commit murder. Roughly speaking, these choices break you out into the two leading contemporary schools of ethics, consequentialism (i.e., that morality means doing what has the best consequences for the most people) and deontology (i.e., that morality means doing your duty).

Now that I've told you all that, in case any readers weren't familiar with it, we can all enjoy the joke together.

UPDATE: Still more variations.

Unspeakable Adventures

The original classic.



Now, featuring David Hasselhoff!



No, I don't know how this happened.

Priorities

Well, it's good to know that the fine law enforcement folks in Minnesota are taking care of the most serious crimes facing their communities.

The Primary Mission and First Priority of the US Army

The commanding officer of the US Army ROTC program in Arizona has required his training battalion to wear their uniform in a manner violating regulations and the dignity of his cadets as part of a training exercise on sexual harassment. (I consider that it is a violation of dignity, even for female cadets who might otherwise wear these shoes of their own free will, to be required to wear sexualized attire with their service uniform.) The command's Facebook page describes this as a voluntary show of support for women by cadets. A little different story comes from the cadets themselves (brief harsh, but entirely deserved, language):



This commanding officer should be relieved and disciplined. Imagine what this does to the very recruitment of fine potential officers that is his chief responsibility. With the current leadership, however, it is as likely that he will be taken to be a good example. In addition to giving lip service (or foot service?) to the Army's new "primary mission," it's sure to be effective in the pursuit of the #2 priority of shrinking the Army.

Any other mission is harmed, if we still have any other missions. I can imagine Putin is distributing propaganda posters of US soldiers marching in drag even now.

Another Run at Moral Truths in Education

I didn't handle the previous post on this topic well, but I feel like there are some important issues at stake so I'm taking another run at it. In the last few years there have been a number of schools and school systems with mass cheating problems, most infamously in Atlanta where the teachers themselves were participating, and I believe that the incidences we know about are just the tip of the ice berg. There are almost certainly a number of factors at work in explaining the recent problems with cheating, but my chief concern is that rather than teaching critical thinking, our schools are destroying students' ability to think critically, that there are some terrible results of teaching this way, and that we as a society must do better.

I will again begin with professor of philosophy Justin P. McBrayer's New York Times article on the topic.

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from.

 He goes on to describe his discovery that his 2nd grade son was being taught the following definitions for 'fact' and 'opinion' and that part of learning critical thinking for his son's class meant sorting claims into the categories of either fact or opinion.

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

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

He did some research and found that this was standard across the Common Core curriculum, including in higher grades.

What does he claim is wrong about this? First, these definitions conflate truth with proof: truth is "a feature of the world" and proof is "a feature of our mental lives." Something can be true but unprovable, and sometimes we "prove" something that turns out to be false. Second, students are directed to sort claims into a list of either facts or opinions, but many claims are both: If you believe something that is true, then it is both a fact and an opinion.

How does this connect to the amorality or moral relativism of today's freshmen? According to McBrayer, schools that use Common Core spend 12 years indoctrinating students with the idea that claims are either fact or opinion but not both, and that all value statements fall into the opinion category. In doing so, they are thoroughly convincing students that there can be no moral truths. Thus, the idea that cheating or murder are wrong is just someone's opinion, and if someone has a different opinion, that's OK.

Additionally, this way of teaching critical thinking produces a powerful doublethink in students' minds. Schools do teach morality in their codes of conduct, such things as academic integrity, student rights, student responsibilities, etc. But according to their own critical thinking instruction, these are mere opinions, and many students see that. Many others, I believe, are taught not to see the difference at all and doublethink becomes normal for them.

What is the answer? As McBrayer points out, the actual Common Core standard is to sort things into facts, opinions, and reasoned judgments. However, apparently teaching 'reasoned judgment' is being left out, but that is exactly what we should be focusing on. He states:

We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.

While there are other factors at work in the recent glut of cheating scandals, I agree with McBrayer that this is one factor, and I think it's important that we be aware of this failure in our education system. To the extent that we can, we need to advocate for changing the way this is taught in our local schools. And, to the extent that we have the opportunity, we need to correct this idea in students, whether we are teachers or not.

###

PS I'll make another run at whether there are moral truths or not, and if so whether we can ever prove them, in another post.

Scythe Beats Brushcutter

And a video that shows the scythe-work up close:

Captain Tagon is my Kind of Guy

There's a maxim in there somewhere.

Unfree Labor

Searching for the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” one that can “provide you with all the advantages” of domestic workers, but with “offshore prices”? Try prison labor!

That’s the message of Unicor, also known as Federal Prison Industries, a government-owned corporation that employs federal workers for as little as 23 cents an hour to manufacture military uniforms, furniture, electronics and other products.

Well, plus free room and board.

Yeoman Farmers

Kevin Williamson makes a point I agree with, though he credits it to Hayek instead of Jefferson.

Independent contractor? Quelle horreur!

F. A. Hayek worried (presciently, as it turns out) that the two faces of dependency—as public ward or as hireling—would encourage certain undesirable mental and political habits, a kind of deep-set servility born of the delegation of basic responsibilities from the individual and the family to large bureaucracies, public or private. The Company Man and the Obamaphone Lady have more in common than you’d think.

It's best to own one's own means of production. That way, you have the maximum ability to live with genuine liberty.

The Administration's Priorities for the Army

The headline says something important, although if you were paying attention you already knew it because Gen. Odierno said in 2013 that fighting sexual assault should be the "primary mission" of the Army. That would be most perfectly done by disbanding the Army, which would result in a 100% decrease in sexual assault within the service.

So it's interesting that the #2 priority is... shrinking the Army. This is described in terms of "balance" and "skillful transition," but explicitly it is about "declining budgets." (The other most effective thing we could do -- eliminating units in which people who are sexually attracted to each other serve together -- is a non-starter for this administration, which is running as hard as it can in the opposite direction for its last two years.)

It's curious that, with Middle East on fire, our Army's top two priorities are these two. But if we intend to pass the problem off to Iran by helping them expand their regional hegemony and erect their nuclear umbrella, I suppose we won't need an Army capable of going to the Middle East with any superior force. If we go at all, it'll be as partners with Iran. Indeed, in Iraq, that's already the role we are playing.

Iran "Deal" Grows Murkier

Iran releases its own fact sheet, claiming it will operate 10,000 centrifuges including in its underground bunker at Fordow.

The Virgin Mary Consoles Eve

From a church in Mississippi, I gather.

N'Awlins Got This Covered

May Have Been The Losing Side

Not convinced it wasn't the Viking one.

Results from a quiz:

Harald Hardrada (The vikings)

You would fight for Harald Hardrada, the King of Norway, who is sometimes known as the “last Viking ruler.” You believe ambition and strength are excellent leadership qualities, and you value a vision of expansion and growth. Unfortunately, Harald will not achieve the level of power you think he should. He will be defeated by Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge in September 1066.

Inequality

Elizabeth Price Foley has a long post at Instapundit about the coming end to bans on prostitution and polygamy. Really, once you've legalized gay "marriage," you've already gone well beyond polygamy: any sort of union between reproductive couples/triples/whatever is less a violation of the principle of marriage than what you've already approved. There's no longer any reason to mind consensual unions between men and horses, if that's what they really want. We can wash our hands of it, once "gay marriage" is approved: go that far, and there is nothing beyond the Pale.

The funny thing is that all this is being done in the name of "equality." But as Foley recognizes, equality is the least likely result:

And the mother in me (which is inherently conservative) –with a teenage daughter– gets a little worried when I think of a world in which prostitution and polygamy are legal. The times, they are a-changin.’

Polygamy and prostitution are fine, as long as you don't care that much about your daughters.

I'm Sure This Is In There Somewhere

Uh-oh.

What genius decided this was a good idea?

Congress May Still Have a Foreign Policy Role After All

Unanimous vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to restrain the White House from pursuing the Iran deal without coming to Congress.

A Response To Tex's Priest

'You shall all get the same public shaming as that pizza place.'

I find it endlessly amusing that shame is the weapon of choice here. The whole force of this argument is that somehow gays are being made to feel as if they are shameful by being "denied" marriage or, now that SCOTUS seems prepared to set aside the laws and constitutions of a majority of states to help them overcome this shame, wedding cakes on demand. For a majority to use its size and voice to make a minority feel ashamed is such a positive evil that the world must be turned on its head to avoid it.

And if you don't agree, we'll show up en mass to shame you freaks.

A Corrupt Politician Runs For President

The advantages of being Hillary Clinton in the presidential race just starting are these:

1) Everyone knows you to be a corrupt, manipulative deceiver who is motivated solely by your own interest, and knows you so well that absolutely nothing you can do or say will surprise anyone. No scandal can derail you, because no one expects any better from you.

2) This corruption is a positive recommendation to the richest and most influential political factors: large banks, multinational corporations, and big Labor. They will be delighted to have a President whose administration can always be bought when there's a difficulty.

3) You stand astride a Democratic National Committee that will not dare to cross you. The nomination, at least, is yours unless your health should decline so suddenly that you cannot plausibly serve as President. It is "your turn," everyone agrees, and no one who might credibly challenge you is preparing to do so.

The disadvantages are these:

A) No actual citizens want you to be President.

(i) The true Left does not believe in you.

(ii) The Right doesn't like you either.

(iii) The moderate center tends to want honest, effective government at relatively low tax rates. No one thinks you will provide any of that: the corruption of Clintonworld is infamous, the ineffectiveness of the State Department under your leadership compellingly obvious, the failure of your signature health care proposals your other most famous 'achievement,' and your readiness to raise taxes assumed.

B) Machines can get votes lined up in spite of zero enthusiasm, but that only gets you the bluest states. You've got to be competitive in states where machines such as labor unions are much weaker, such as Florida.

So you'll have plenty of money, given (2), and an easy path to the nomination, given (3). You'll thus have tons of cash to focus on the general election, and you'll be running against a Republican who will be weakened by the primary -- with any luck, some of his flaws will have been exposed for your attack dogs.

Still, you've got to get people to show up and pull the lever for you. No one really wants to. The worst part of being 'inevitable' is that your forthcoming Presidency is seen as a sort of chore even by Democrats. Maybe it's just something they have to do, but it's not something they are at all looking forward to doing.

I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, that lack of enthusiasm is enough to prove her undoing.

Frog-floaters

We got about three inches of rain just before dawn today.  Not only was March was one of the area's wettest months ever, but April is turning out wet as well.  Though it's not a great time of year for it from the point of view of farmers, who are trying to get out into the fields, the rest of us are happy about it; it's an emphatic end to several years of worrying drought.  At times like this a second cistern would come in awfully handy.  As it is, our pond is finally coming back after several years of experiencing the prairie half of its "prairie wetland" mode.  The noise from the frogs is deafening.  Lately you can hardly walk anywhere without scaring up a little cloud of pea-sized froglets, little guys who've only barely lost their tails.  The frog population may be keeping down the mosquito population; at least the mosquitos aren't bad yet.

For several years the drought discouraged us from putting much effort into the garden, which, as the NPH puts it, has been "fallow."  We've reclaimed a good bit of it from the wilderness now, so we have thriving eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers though we essentially missed the winter crop of greens this year.  Soon it will be too hot to plant much of anything new, so we'll concentrate on finishing up the weeding and mulching.

This morning we got a series of klaxon warnings on the cellphone telling us to avoid flood areas.  Those warnings always crack me up:  in an almost totally flat area, what isn't a flood area?  In any case, flood doesn't mean a great deal when the water doesn't have any noticeable flow to it.  A three-inch rain can hardly cause serious problems.  When we were first moving down here, there was a five-month period one fall in which 55 inches of rain fell.  Even that was inconvenient rather than dangerous; the water table was practically at the surface, so no useful digging could get done, and constructive projects were a challenge.  At one point the heavily mulched surface of the ground in the brush around our house felt like walking on a waterbed.  When heavy machinery punched through the mulch, that was an end to purposeful movement.

When the lightning stops and it gets a little lighter outside, I'm looking forward to walking down and seeing a vastly increased pond.

North Dakota, Socialist Paradise

Well, it's an interesting argument, anyway.

In the early twentieth century, agriculture-dominated North Dakota was swept by a populist agrarian movement borne of farmers sick of watching bankers and railroad bosses take advantage of their work and run amok with their savings. That agrarian movement produced two entities that are still flourishing over 100 years later – a state-owned grain mill, which has become the largest grain mill in the United States, and a public bank that ensured North Dakota would be unaffected by the recession of 2008 that rocked the other 49 states and the rest of the world.... The bank didn’t engage in the risky derivatives trading that crashed the rest of the financial sector in the late 2000s, and its executives are state employees that earn a respectable but not excessive salary, and are thus not incentivized to make high-risk bets with deposits to enrich themselves.

Jacksonians generally hate state banks, but it's hard to argue with the 115 year record of success by the grain mill. It's the largest in the country, but not a monopoly as you might suspect: it grinds only 10% of the grain in North Dakota.

Civil disagreement

Father Z has a good idea for businesses targeted for their beliefs and threatened with boycotts if they don't cater gay weddings:  agree enthusiastically to take the business, and explain to your clients that all the proceeds of your work for the event will be donated to a conservative cause.  If your employees' t-shirts say as much, even better.

H/t Bookworm Room.

Whisky and Beer

A paradox of life in the South: we have the fewest number of breweries by state, but by far the largest and best American whisky producers. What explains it?

Around the nation, big beer producers contribute to the campaigns of politicians who will support policies that discourage competition from local upstarts—for example, taxes on breweries and laws that prevent breweries from selling their kegs directly to consumers (instead of through a distributor). But what's unique about the South is that there's a voting bloc—the Baptists—whose moral stance against alcohol happens to align with large producers' desires to keep new competitors from getting started in the business.

So micro-brew is becoming increasingly popular, and only in the South can big breweries effectively smash their competition by using government to restrict people from entering the field of competition. Micro-whisky isn't much an issue as yet, but if it became one, it might follow the same pattern. Kentucky Bourbon and Tennessee Whiskey would then be a kind of historical accident; you might see a similar pattern of distribution to micro-breweries, just because they'd find it easier in non-Baptist states to get the laws changed to make their business legal.

It's an interesting theory. The South does have some microbreweries, including several good ones not too far from me. I'm a fan of the Highland Brewing Company's Oatmeal Porter, and Terrapin Brewery's Hopsecutioner IPA . North Carolina's beer culture is starting to flourish, at least in the mountain west. As for Terrapin, it has a brand new competitor in downtown Athens, Georgia: a brewery called Creature Comforts that is set up in an old tire shop.

UPDATE: So this video of New Yorkers trying moonshine reminds me that there has been a trend of fake moonshine drinks that have been approved around the South the last few years. I've never tried any of them, for two reasons.

1) I hate attempts by the soft to create tourist versions of the South. The last time I passed through Pigeon Forge on the way to the Smoky Mountains, I stopped at a place called The Iron Boar Saloon, billing itself "Best Biker Bar in Pigeon Forge." The bartender looked horrified when I walked into the place. It was all stucco and Yuppies in khaki shorts.

2) I've had enough real moonshine that I don't feel any special nostalgia for it. That stuff will wreck you. I only consent to drink it when a friend has made it, will have his feelings hurt if I don't try it, and I'm settled in for the night and not going anywhere at all before morning. This usually happens around a campsite, as the stuff doubles as a very effective fuel for beer-can alcohol stoves.

Still, the video is amusing -- especially when, after several tourist versions, they finally produce the real stuff at the end. Ninety percent pure, baby.

ISIS Sex Slave Trade

A Documentary.

Yeah, Yeah

You've heard the old joke about double negatives versus double affirmatives. But how about "No, totally"? Its structure suggests that you mean to affirm the negative to the strongest possible degree -- in fact, it means the exact opposite.

Against the Shaving of Beards

Some visual persuasion. Obviously there's a third kind of person without a beard -- a serving member of the US military, with a few exceptions for folks like Sikhs and Special Forces. Still, once you get to the numbered arguments, there's something interesting going on.

There's A Point To Be Made Here

Prompted by host George Stephanopoulous to name “the most promising Republican candidate not in the race yet,”... a smirking [William] Kristol suggested the former vice president.

“If they get to nominate Hillary Clinton, why don’t we get to nominate Dick Cheney? I mean, he has a much… he has a much better record,” Kistol said as the entire panel burst into laughter.

I'm pretty sure we all know why that's not a serious suggestion, but it is true that he has a better record. If you hate Dick Cheney, you hate him for something he did. If you hate Hillary Clinton, it's probably not because you were injured by one of her accomplishments.

Polio anniversary

The first effective polio vaccine was developed just before I was born, but the disease stubbornly persists in a few chaotic corners of the world that, often for good reason, distrust Western medicine.

The effort is so old that it began to be publicized back when you could find work hand-painting billboards:

The Crusades: A Visual Argument

From Power Line.

On The List Of Things To Avoid

"Rob a man who keeps a sword."

If you want to see some graphic photography of the damage he did, you can do so here. Apparently it wasn't very hard for the police to find the criminals: they just followed the trails of blood.

A Drop of Nelson's Blood Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm

The Fisherman's Friends ...

as an introduction to this BBC special on sea shanties and sea songs.

Question: Does Memory Reside in the Brain?

Answer: Not only.

That might create problems for this head transplant I've been reading about. Or not! We'll see what happens, I suppose.

I'm Going To Go With "Probably Not"

Headline: "Is Iran Deal Part of Obama-3rd-Term Scheme?"

A Literary Moment: Heroic Potential

In a recent discussion, I said to Mike:

My point was more that there's a danger that Americans -- who increasingly live sedentary and TV-bound lives -- are losing an understanding of how virtue is linked to the potential to be heroic.

On reflection, I can think of few examples of writers who do this very well. I wonder if there's a moment in human history associated with the insight. It would be the moment at which the work is no longer ordinary enough to be assumed, but familiar enough to be described and understood.

By far the best writer of adventure stories that explain how the hero develops into someone worthy of being a hero is Louis L'amour. There's a Medieval predecessor tradition that includes Malory, who inherited a tradition that didn't dwell on it much as both the troubadours and their audience was part of a knightly class that knew very well what kind of work went on in the background of developing a knight of prowess. It is generally mentioned in passing, and mostly for the edification of young listeners who might need to undergo that work themselves yet. Malory and a few others in the Grail tradition tried to lay out what spiritual work would be necessary to develop the spiritual virtues to go with the physical ones. They were striving for perfection, which is impossible to reach, and it is clear that they understood just how much work moral perfection would entail. Yet they were already talking about heroes, men like Sir Lancelot, whose education in physical prowess was highly advanced long before they turned to spiritual things. That education gets little description because it was so well known to the audience.

L'amour was very interested in the question. Over and over in hundreds of books and stories -- of which I have read very many, as they were always readily available from dusty trade-your-books shelves in Iraq -- he describes the upbringing and character of his heroes. His heroes differ greatly in occupation and heritage, and in accidents of speech or clothing. Some are miners, some are gamblers, some are cattlemen, a certain number are lawmen -- though surprisingly few, given that his plots turn on defending the weak and defeating the wicked. He clearly is thinking of that as primarily the business of a good man, a good friend, a good brother or cousin, a good citizen.

Whatever accidental differences there are in his heroes, they have an essential core.

1) They work hard and in a self-directed fashion. Whatever they do, they do a lot of it. They are conscientious about their responsibility to be actively engaged in making the world better through some form of productive labor -- even the gamblers work to be good at gambling, and to impart their skills to morally worthy young men. His book The Comstock Lode is a positive ode to hard-rock mining, which the hero does on his own account, with no boss and no schedule, working hard whenever he isn't trying to solve the mystery.

2) They have a love of learning, and self-educate passionately. If there is a mentor figure, he imparts this lesson (perhaps with a favorite book, generally a classic of Western civilization such as Plutarch). Many books mention that the hero, a hard man of his hands, has a private library that he has cultivated whenever the chance has arisen.

3) They take care of their bodies. I don't think I can recall reading any other author who made a point of the fact that his characters did a certain number of push-ups and squats every day. They approach fitness in an engaged way, as an art: if they fist-fight, they probably studied boxing in a careful and serious way.

4) They are moderate in their pleasures. If they drink, it is described as 'Not a drinker: perhaps a drink or two, now and then.' They do not allow themselves to be ruled by their animal nature.

5) Sexually, they are universally moral in character. They never take advantage of a woman. To do so would be to be marked as a villain in L'amour's world. They treat women with respect, and if they love them, they love them seriously. Many marry at the close of the adventure; others never marry the woman they love, but love her faithfully from a life that would not be fit for her.

Many of these stories start with the hero as a boy; others describe his upbringing in flashbacks, or in description. Always, though, we come away with the understanding that he is the hero because he has earned the right to be. It should be easy to see that a hero could dispense with any one of these qualities, but that any such loss would weaken the man. He would not be as fit to be the hero if he fell from any of these standards. Virtue and the potential to be heroic are very tightly linked: as tightly, indeed, as cause and effect.

That's what I think we may be in danger of losing. Heroism is just an accident, now, or perhaps an unearned gift. It's a kind of unfairness, then: everyone should get to be a hero. Everyone should be treated equally, after all, so that a gift given to one should be given to all. An accident of fate should be rectified. It's fine for different heroes to have different super-powers, but no one should be better than anyone else.

The limits of force

Via Bookworm Room:

Right vs. left

Kevin Williamson argues:

We have a tea-party movement, and a raucous and rivalrous gang of independent groups, precisely because GOP leaders cannot exercise the sort of control over their coalition that Democrats do over theirs. Left-leaning PACs and independent groups are a supplement to the Democrats’ machine; right-leaning groups are an alternative to the Republicans’ machine.

Naturally this narrative appeals to me; I'd like to think I support the party that values honest debate over mindless conformity. But I wonder if it's really true? Democrats--even potential donors--do exhibit some fracture lines in their political solidarity. The fulminating fury at left-wing sites about the sell-out DINOs sounds to me remarkably like its counterpart at right-wing sites: indeed, remarkably like the frustration I vent daily over why everyone in power can't be sensible enough to agree with me all the time.

I will say that Democratic leaders in the House and Senate in the last few years have exercised better control than Republicans over their caucuses.

CL

A man's word to anything, even his own destruction, must be honored.  The movie ends well all the same, thanks to General Sheridan.

Knights of the Holy Whatever

My results from a quiz sent by a friend: Which RPG Class Are You?

Congratulations, you are a paladin!

Paladins are knights of great power, prowess, and respect. They are natural leaders and fearless in battle. These fighters are normally very faithful to whatever alignment they follow, unafraid to show their beliefs. This gives them an important advantage in battle, for they know that, whether they live or die, they will die fighting for a cause and will be rewarded in whatever afterlife they expect. This allows them to fight confidently, fearlessly, and with great focus. If dedicated enough in their faiths, they can even gain abilities and power from their alignments, making them even more lethal in battle.

These are fortified, focused, and strong-willed fighters.

"Whatever alignment they follow"? We are getting broad minded.

They're Lucky He Didn't Read Them Out of the Religion Entirely

The President's Easter Breakfast remarks didn't take the ISIS tact for cake-denying bakers, as you might have expected: they are permitted to remain within the broad walls of Christianity, which is a religion big enough to encompass hateful and intolerant people.

Interview with Edward Snowden

John Oliver's not my very favorite, but he did an interesting interview here.

A Question of Political Friendship

Political friendship is a topic we don't discuss very much in American society, but Aristotle thought it was crucial for the stability of a political project. It is very natural to pursue your own interests. It is natural to pursue your children's interests: most parents are happy to sacrifice a great deal of their own wealth and time to see that their children have a chance to do well. It is likewise natural to make sacrifices for your parents, especially if they did for you. What is less natural is to make sacrifices for strangers. Those who aren't bound to us by family ties can only rely on us to make regular sacrifices to help them if they are friends. Since any society requires that we all sacrifice of ourselves once in a while, for the common good that we obtain by having a community, we should strive to be friends as far as possible.

Aristotle thought we couldn't be friends with everyone to the same degree that we can be friends with one particular person: the more people you add, the harder true friendship is to maintain. But there is a posture of mind that is appropriately directed toward members of your society, an analogy to friendship if not true friendship. We should strive to have a polity in which we can think of each other in friendly ways, if not as friends. It is less radical than Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself (and even to love your enemy), but along the same lines. Aristotle wants you to love your neighbor in a way, and not at all the same way in which you love your true friends: but if we lose that, we lose the integrity of the political project. Instead of having a common good to pursue, we become divided and hostile.

I mention this because I've been appreciating Conor Friedersdorf's recent articles trying to rebuild a sense of political friendship between supporters and opponents of maintaining traditional marriage as a cultural standard. His first article was aimed at his fellows, who believe as he does that marriage ought to be extended to any two persons who want to claim it. He was asking them to think through the limits of punishment for religious dissenters.

His second argument is intended for both sides of the debate, trying to help them each understand why the other side feels like it is under siege. Now if you are under siege, you are under attack; and if you are under attack, it is by an enemy, not a friend. There's a grave danger of losing what political friendship remains to America as it becomes more diverse. Since we are now diverse enough to lack a consensus on what constitutes a right morality, we could perhaps have a consensus on what constitutes a proper toleration of differences in morality.

In an important way, this refers back to the origins of the American story on religion. Religious tolerance in early America was very much about whether and to what degree variations on behavior compelled by differing religious belief would be tolerated. The answer in Colonial America was usually "Not very much." Many colonies had official religions, especially the ones founded by religious dissenters like the Pilgrims, who were determined not to be overrun in their new home. Others, like the colony of Georgia, were tolerant broadly of Protestants but not Catholics. In Georgia's case this was because it was founded to serve as a buffer for the British colonies against the Catholic Spanish colony in Florida and Catholic French settlers in the west, and was therefore staffed with hardened and warlike groups: Scottish Highlanders who had been in rebellion against the Crown, German Protestants who had been expelled from their homes by Catholics, and men with skills who had fallen into prison through debts. The religious wars were not over in those days, if indeed they are today.

By the early period of statehood, though, religious toleration of dissenters had greatly expanded, and states began to eliminate their established religions. As the states experienced both a successful rebellion against the old crown, and the desire to tighten their ties following the Articles of Confederation, they began to see each other as Americans who could be trusted as political friends in spite of religious differences. The Puritan states in the Northeast held out longest and well into the 19th century, but still not as long as Canada where no rebellion forged a new sense of national unity.

I think that if we are going to get through this new national moral crisis, it will need to begin with making some room for each other -- meaning making some room for dissenters from our own view, whatever that may be. The most obvious way was to allow states to have different laws, as different states had different established religions in early America, but the Supreme Court seems poised to disallow that obvious option. Failing that, protection for religious dissent ought to be formalized so that we can live together without agreement. Let us protect each other's interests, so that we can see each other as friendly even if not quite as friends.

If we fail in that -- if we come to the place where the question really is submission or resistance, so the siege is not merely felt but real -- then I think Aristotle will be proven right. A polity that loses political friendship does not long endure. That last phrase evokes Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but his Second Inaugural is perhaps more on point. At the end of a bloody and terrible war, Lincoln too was urging his own side's most intense partisans to rethink how to pursue a sort of political friendship with those they hoped to conquer. It was on that basis, Lincoln believed, that a new American birth might succeed.

The High Feast of Easter

My usual prayer is for God to save all those I love, and all I ought to love. Have a grand feast.