Ms. Steinem in North Korea

Ah, the march of dignity. It's always worth reading direct translations of the original Korean KCNA articles.

Fortunately, I'm told that elder stateswomen are not required to answer questions.

Should We Privatize Police?

The British are apparently considering it, which is funny since they mocked it as an American idea a few years ago:

The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources... The contract notice does state that "bidders should note that not all these activities will necessarily be included in the final scope, and that each police force will select some activities from these areas where they see the best opportunities for transformation".

Very often we see cities hire a police force rather than depending on the elected county sheriff, as many city councils (and even some county commissions) prefer to own the police department and its leadership rather than having to deal with elected officials who answer to the voters rather than to them. I wonder if this doesn't introduce a similar disconnect in accountability.

On the other hand, private corporations working for the US Federal government can be disciplined quite quickly compared to civil bureaucracies. Compared with disciplining rogue activities at the IRS or CIA, we can pull a contract and hire another firm with relative ease. We're not very good at holding individuals accountable in either case, but civil service employees are notoriously difficult to fire.

"You Can't Be Reasoned Out Of...

...what you were never reasoned into."

Last year, UCLA grad student Michael LaCour and Columbia political scientist Donald Green published a startling finding, based on a experiment they ran: going door to door to try to persuade voters to support same-sex marriage works, they found, and it works especially well when the canvasser delivering the message is gay. They even found spillover effects: people who lived with voters who talked to a gay canvasser grew more supportive of same-sex marriage, too.

This was a really exciting conclusion, for political scientists and laypeople alike. Past research has suggested that people's political views are tribal and largely impervious to rational persuasion. Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan and the University of Exeter's Jason Reifler have conducted multiple studies that show correcting people's incorrect views about, say, the presence of WMDs in Iraq can actually backfire and make them hold their wrong beliefs even more firmly.

Turns out, this exciting conclusion was a complete fraud.

But persuasive!

The thing is, you really can engage reason and change people's minds about things. You just can't do it quickly. I've changed my mind about very many political questions over time, to include free trade (which sounded plausible before the evidence came in), abortion (I was against the practice personally but totally pro-choice before I began to study philosophy, and it is precisely thinking through the issue rationally that has convinced me that we should have much tighter legal restrictions on the practice), foreign policy (as a teenager and twenty-something I had isolationist sentiments that I've been reasoned out of over time), and so forth.

In the course of a single election cycle, though, you probably can't. Those tribal issues are algorithms we use to decide issues quickly, and most people don't pay attention to politics enough to do otherwise than decide when they really have to decide. So you get political responses that are more like, "Oh, yuck, he's in favor of it? I'm against it totally." Push people on this, and they'll push back harder because now you're trying to force them to do something they find gross and disgusting.

There's still reason to hope that persuasion and patient argument, or new evidence, will become persuasive over time. If there were not, there would be little reason to favor democratic forms of government.

Not Quite

Megan McArdle would like you to believe that this is all your fault. Certainly there's an element of truth to the argument, and I am sure she really believes what she's writing here.

However, the blame for the radical change in economic conditions for new American workers is not merely the result of rational choices made by ordinary citizens in the marketplace or at the voting booth. It's true that Americans as consumers buy a lot of stuff from places that get their stuff from China. Some of those Americans have the option of buying American-made goods instead. Those things are now a luxury good, but they didn't used to be: it used to be that American-made clothing factories were all around the South, and it wasn't particularly more expensive to buy American-made and American-grown cotton.

Still, the major changes to the law that enabled globalization to undercut worker wages weren't enacted because of wide popular support. They were enacted because of lobbyists from wealthy interests. Did the massive losses of American jobs and family farms following NAFTA result in a net transfer of wealth from American workers to Mexican ones? No! It turns out it resulted in a net transfer of wealth from the workers of both countries to the wealthy interests, as the interests could more easily undercut workers on both sides of the border.

[I]t is easy to see that NAFTA was a bad deal for most Americans. The promised trade surpluses with Mexico turned out to be deficits, some hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost, and there was downward pressure on US wages – which was, after all, the purpose of the agreement.... But what about Mexico? Didn't Mexico at least benefit from the agreement? Well if we look at the past 20 years, it's not a pretty picture. The most basic measure of economic progress, especially for a developing country like Mexico, is the growth of income (or GDP) per person. Out of 20 Latin American countries (South and Central America plus Mexico), Mexico ranks 18, with growth of less than 1% annually since 1994. It is, of course, possible to argue that Mexico would have done even worse without NAFTA, but then the question would be, why?

[Long analysis of why NAFTA didn't help Mexico clipped, but available at the link. -Grim]

It's tough to imagine Mexico doing worse without NAFTA. Perhaps this is part of the reason why Washington's proposed "Free Trade Area of the Americas" was roundly rejected by the region in 2005 and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is running into trouble. Interestingly, when economists who have promoted NAFTA from the beginning are called upon to defend the agreement, the best that they can offer is that it increased trade. But trade is not, to most humans, an end in itself.

The American public isn't against trade, either. The author is right, though, to say that while we're happy to trade, we don't think 'free trade' or even 'more trade' is an end in itself. Economic activity is a means to our ends, and for American and Mexican workers those ends have been harmed rather than helped by the free trade pact.

So the blame for the 'great reset' is only partly on the people who, in 2000 or so, bought the cheap shirts from Bangladesh instead of the slightly more expensive ones made in South Carolina. The blame is mostly on those who lobbied for this law, then used the advantages it gave them to put workers in competition with each other. Very little of the 'savings' got passed on to you as a consumer: inflation was pretty strong during that period, up until the financial collapse of 2008. Your money wasn't going further.

Also, buying American didn't become a luxury good slowly over time, as a result of the buildup of rational choices made by individuals in the marketplace. It happened suddenly, as a choice made by corporate entities that forced the consumers' hand. You can't buy American goods from South Carolina at near the same prices if all the factories were closed in a rush to take advantage of wage competitions enabled by the new law. "We" didn't make that choice at all.

Neither the economic choices nor the political ones are really in the hands of ordinary Americans. Possibly we can make the political choices going forward, though quite possibly not: the entrenched interests are very strong here. Still, let's not make the mistake of thinking that Americans are just having to live with the effects of their choices as consumers. Their choices as consumers had very little to do with the forces at work here. Not nothing, to be sure: but not nearly as much as economists like McArdle would like to believe.

Easy as Riding a Bike

That is to say, not at all easy.

"Father" "Marries" "Son"

I suppose this represents a sort of progress, since what they are doing is more like marriage than it is like being father and son:

Norman MacArthur and Bill Novak, father and son, though not biologically, will soon be husband and … whatever, reports the Patch of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The pair, both in their 70s, have been together for 50 years and registered in New York City as domestic partners in 1994. But when they moved to Pennsylvania, they discovered their domestic partnership wasn’t recognized, and legalized same-sex marriage was nowhere on the horizon.

Needing to take care of estate-planning issues, the pair pursued a novel legal approach. Novak adopted MacArthur in 2000. The fact their parents were deceased removed any legal objection.

That's the problem with pendulum swings. The 'domestic partner' law might have been stable, except it ran into places that refused to grant any status at all. So first they had to 'adopt' a ridiculous legal fiction, and now we're going to radically alter the institution of marriage for a while.

The Safety of Israel

Possibly in the long term it will prove to be the most dangerous place on earth, standing as it does under a Sword of Damocles in the form of a surrounding Middle East that nurtures a very deep grudge against its very existence. Still, for today, this is true.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, says he felt safer during a recent trip to Israel than he would “in certain parts of New York City or Chicago.... The whole time we were there, of course, we had security with us, but there was no restrictions on travel, we never felt threatened one bit... In fact, I can say that we felt safer in Israel than we would in certain parts of New York City or Chicago,” Loudermilk said.

“Yeah — or Baltimore, I would think, as well,” interjected host Tony Perkins.

I had no security with me at any time, indeed was walking completely alone, and still felt perfectly safe. Even in East Jerusalem, even in the Arab parts of town. Several of the Arabs told me I was very welcome, I think because they want Americans to come and see the situation for ourselves. No one during the entire trip was even mildly threatening, except the Israeli security officer who pulled me aside to question me very intensely about my business in Israel when I first arrived. That was only his duty, and I took no offense.

UPDATE: I guess my radar's a little off. I realize this afternoon that the reason these comments are a story is that the authors are implying some sort of racism in the guy's commentary. "Certain parts of New York City or Chicago"... "or Baltimore" is supposed to be code, I guess.

Well, maybe. All the same, I've been to New York, I've been to Chicago, I've been to Baltimore, and there are certain parts of those cities that are objectively unsafe. They were having riots in Baltimore just recently, and Chicago's murder rate is periodically higher than Afghanistan's. I've also been to Jerusalem, and walking around Jerusalem even alone and late at night felt perfectly safe to me.

So, for what it's worth, if you're reading racism into his remarks it may not be appropriate. He may have been making a comment about Israel, not about race in America. That's how I read it at first.

UPDATE: Not to put too fine a point on it, but last weekend: 27 shootings, 9 fatal in Baltimore. Chicago? 56 shot over the same weekend, including a child. I don't see any for Jerusalem in the same period.

UPDATE: Murders are up in Manhattan too. And according to this list, Israel's total murder rate is 1.7 per 100,000 if you discount the deaths from the war; 1.8 per 100,000 if you don't. That's not great: most of Europe does much better than this, having rates in the zero-point range. The USA is 4.7 per 100,000. The Americas are the worst place in the world overall, even worse than Africa, with an average rate of 16.3. If you break it down by cities, all the worst places in the world are in the Americas, including two US cities: New Orleans and Baltimore.

So yeah. I think dude was objectively correct in his statements.

...As If A Million Voices Cried Out, And Never Shut Up...

Apparently the Waco dust-up has created a storm of mockery.

Over in a corner of Twitter that most of white America doesn't visit (because apparently our social media networks are about as segregated as they are in real life), snark took over. Many tweeted ironically about the corrosive influence of biker culture on weekend warriors and the imperative need for white leaders to denounce the broader scourge of “white on white crime” in front of hashtags like, “#stuffthemedianeversays." Pictures of Sarah Palin and in leather biker gear popped up along below tweets about “radical white politicians, who “coddle,” and commune with, “thugs.” The subtext of all of it was clear: This is what the world’s paid and volunteer shouter corps say when the tragedies involve black people, not white.

"9 killed in Waco biker gang shootout - where are the white leaders decrying this white-on-white violence?" #stuffthemedianeversays

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) May 18, 2015

Well, here's a picture of Sarah Palin being cozy with some bikers. Tough guys, too, the kind who look like they know their way around an automatic weapon. You'd have to think twice before giving one them a gun, right?

Twitter-space may be segregated, but military/veteran motorcycle clubs are not. Those are the ones you usually see with political figures. Whatever is wrong with race in America, this kind of biker isn't it.

UPDATE: Among what is mostly a critique of media tone:

It started as a fist fight in the bathroom of the restaurant. The fight spread. People used clubs and chains and knives and guns. By one estimate, there were 30 people shooting. At least five gangs took part – six, if you count the police.

Amazingly, no bystanders were hurt or killed, even though it took place at a shopping centre on a Sunday afternoon where people were shopping and celebrating graduations.

This comes when the riots in Baltimore on April 27th over the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of police is still fresh in everyone’s mind. The difference in how the police and the press acted is striking.

I often criticize the police if I think they have over-deployed power against Americans. I think this person's argument is highly uncharitable given the performance of the police in Waco. It's also not justified by what follows in the article. A lot of ink is spilled on the difference in the way the media talks and thinks about Baltimore versus Waco, but there's nothing to justify the claim that the police acted in a "different" way.

Before the brawl -- let's call it a "riot" to avoid treating the cases as essentially 'different' in the way the article hates -- police tried to get the bar to refuse service to the clubs. When that failed, they deployed officers in overwatch positions around the gathering. They fired on the club members who were involved, and may well have killed some of the "rioters" (as they did not do in Baltimore). They mass-arrested nearly two hundred people, just as in Baltimore, and appear poised to charge nearly all of them with at least some crime. At least some of the charges look to be capital murder. If so, unlike in Baltimore, the government is planning to put people to death for participating in this riot.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but that's how you stop a riot. Shooting the rioters used to be the ordinary standard for dangerous rioting. It was clearly justified here.

Deeply Dishonest

[A]nyone who has read the text of the [TPP] agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can’t share my criticisms with you....

The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don’t exist.

Emphasis added.

No lying salesmen.

No secret treaties.

Liberation

A clever matching of perspective makes windows into the past in Paris, 2014/1944.

Odd Split

What kind of controversy gets the Supreme Court to line up Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Breyer, and Sotomayor against Ginsburg, Scalia, Kagan, and Thomas?  A suit over whether Maryland counties (and the city of Baltimore) must give credits to Maryland residents who pay taxes to other states for income they earn across state lines.  This looks like a classic quarrel over whether the problem with a law is that it's lousy policy or that it violates the Constitution.  What Constitutional principle limits taxes, you may wonder, and where has it been all our lives?  In this case, the idea is that double-taxation across state lines amounts to a tariff on interstate commerce.  If you don't find that convincing, you may side with strict-interpretationists Scalia and Thomas, and wish that the problem would be solved at the ballot box instead.

The press is generally reporting this as problematic because Maryland counties and the city of Baltimore need lots of cash, which apparently is the only useful consideration when it comes to taxation policy or the Constitutional limits on state power.  Myself, I'd worry more about having to mediate disputes between states over who has the best right to glom onto every penny of income they can identify in the hands of people who are energetic enough to earn money in interstate commerce--but I suppose they've been facing that issue for a long time now, given that most states already have a system of interstate credits in place.  Ah, for the days when I paid income tax to California, New Jersey, and the State and City of New York while living in (income-tax-free) Texas.  I'm sure they put the money to good use.

From Your Lips...

I think this is right, but we'll see how it goes.

The Magna Carta on Trial

Really the trial will be of the barons who fought for it, I suppose, rather than the charter of liberties itself. The UK has decided to hold a trial for treason against those gentlemen, wierdly presided over by a panel that will include Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court.

George Washington's trial will surely follow. I suppose they're saving Justice Sotomeyer for that one.

Do What Now?

Mikey Weinstein, CEO of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has sent a blistering letter to Chief of Staff Gen, Mark Welsh, arguing that Olson's comments violate an Air Force instruction, which prohibits airmen from endorsing a particular faith or belief.

"Olson's highly publicized, sectarian speech is nothing less than a brutal disgrace to the very uniform he was wearing and the solemn oath he took to support and defend the United States Constitution," Weinstein writes.

I'm not a JAG lawyer -- perhaps Joel or Joesph W. is around? -- but I'm pretty sure it's OK to pray in uniform. Not only are there designated chaplains, but in Iraq I constantly saw groups of soldiers gathering in circles to pray before going outside the wire to do route clearance or dismounted patrols. Who's going to claim soldiers ought not to pray before such a mission?

But here's the letter, and this is what they claim he's done wrong:

2.12. Balance of Free Exercise of Religion and Establishment Clause. Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for their own free exercise of religion, including individual expressions of religious beliefs, and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be construed to be officially endorsing or disapproving of, or extending preferential treatment for any faith, belief, or absence of belief. (emphasis added)

In light of your very own Air Force regulation, irrefutably on point with the matter herein, and the violation of which is proscribed as a potential FELONY under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, do you honestly NOT see any incredibly serious problems here with Olson’s statements, Mark? Please also note the controlling holding of the seminal 1974 Supreme Court case of Parker vs. Levy (417 U.S. 733), penned by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, significantly limiting the Constitutional rights of active duty military members (such as Major General Olson) vs. the same rights enjoyed by their American civilian counterparts....

Consequently, on behalf of itself and its over 41,000 active duty and veteran armed forces clients, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) hereby demands that Major General Craig S. Olson be immediately, aggressively and very visibly brought to justice for his unforgivable crimes and transgressions via trial by General Courts Martial and that any and all others who assisted him with his NDPTF speech of fundamentalist Christian supremacy be likewise investigated and punished to the full extent of military law.

So the claim is that his remarks at a prayer service constitute a felony for which he ought to be imprisoned (since that is 'the fullest extent' of punishment licensed for these 'unforgivable crimes').

Now, this is a letter posted to the internet by crackpots. Still, how strange to see the lines drawn this way by any American. It's hard to believe that this makes sense to any of our countrymen at all.

Speaking of law and order

Time for a national conversation about what society is supposed to do when violent lawlessness becomes hard to ignore?  Looks like the current trend is to run it through a race filter before we decide whether and how to crack down:

The Obama administration announced Monday it will ban federal transfers of certain types of military-style gear from local police departments, as the president seeks to respond to a spate of incidents that has frayed trust in communities across the country.

The banned items include tracked armored vehicles, bayonets and grenade launchers, according to a task force report released by the White House. Other equipment, including tactical vehicles, explosives and riot equipment, will be transferred only if local police provide additional certification and assurances that the gear will be used responsibly, according to the report.

The announcement came as Obama prepared to travel to Camden, N.J., to highlight his administration’s strategy to help reform local police departments, including efforts to increase the numbers of officers on patrol and the use of body cameras.

It's true the announcement doesn't mention race, but when I read "reform local police departments" (not mention "communities") in a statement coming from the White House recently, that's where my head goes.  Something tells me the President isn't losing sleep over the potential use of tactical vehicles in Waco.  Speaking which, are those Special Forces guys still hanging out in Texas?

Waco Goes Wild West

Speaking of Mad Max, there was some real Sons of Anarchy action this weekend:  nine dead and eighteen injured (no bystanders or cops) at what's being described as a five-gang battle at a "Twin Peaks" restaurant on Highway 35.  Police closed down the whole market area that included the Twin Peaks franchise, as well as some downtown streets and two bridges over the Brazos River.

That's more casualties than I usually expect from a news item about a dust-up.  These guys weren't just blowing off steam in a fight that got a little out of hand:  there was concentrated and effective murder.

The emphasis in a lot of reports is on "bikers," but I'd put it on "gangs."  Waco does appear to respond aggressively to this kind of thing.  There's certainly no talk of "space to destroy."

Mad Max Is Not A Feminist

Andrew Klavan writes that critics are praising the new Mad Max because it upholds the feminist ideal. I think he's quite wrong that it does any such thing. Here's his argument.

....while I consider feminism a dishonest and oppressive philosophy, I believe good feminist stories can be told. This is because even a philosophy that is a lie in general may be the truth in a specific, individual case and stories are individual and specific. Dishonest outlooks can produce honest stories. The left has been living off this fact for decades.

So while ideologically corrupt critics are going wild over Fury Road because it’s feminist, I’m not criticizing it because I’m anti-feminist. I’m criticizing it because it’s not very good. Its title character is ill-defined. His mission is emotionally muddy....

What Fury Road does have is a female warrior (played by the always-watchable Charlize Theron) who does the work that any good story would have reserved for its central character. She has a back story that matters. She performs the major action tasks. She travels over a personal arc within the plot. Some in Hollywood fear that female action leads bomb. So Fury Road sneaks the female lead in by giving the female sidekick all the good stuff to do. As a result, however, the center of the movie is empty and the story collapses into it.

I've complained often enough about the need for female warriors in contemporary movies, but they're less unbelievable in movies set at or near the modern period in which guns are available. Nevertheless, the new Mad Max is not at all a feminist film.  I'll put the counterargument after the jump so as to keep you from encountering spoilers.

Justice as Fairness

Anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer societies have long know that such societies don't split off into family groups as obviously as do more settled and prosperous societies. They've come up with an answer: the relative equality of power distribution in such societies stops that from happening. Why?

First author of the study, Mark Dyble (UCL Anthropology), said: "While previous researchers have noted the low relatedness of hunter-gatherer bands, our work offers an explanation as to why this pattern emerges. It is not that individuals are not interested in living with kin. Rather, if all individuals seek to live with as many kin as possible, no-one ends up living with many kin at all."

So it's a lot more fair that modern society, because in a hunter-gatherer society they all want the same thing but nobody gets it. Justice, at least on the contemporary model of justice-as-fairness, was achieved before the dawn of civilization! One wonders why we ever walked away from such a paradise.

I would tell you what Aristotle said about that from a position much closer to the dawn of civilization, but you can probably already guess: that justice means something besides mere equality of suffering. It might have something to do with structuring a society to enable pursuing and sometimes even actually achieving the excellences of which human nature is capable.

Those ideas are somewhat out of favor at the moment. I'm very much interested in democratizing the idea, so that people who are ordinary working class people can have access to the things they need to pursue excellence if they work hard and honestly. I'd like to see society structured in such a way that people are less likely to be rewarded for catering to lower desires, where virtue is rewarded and vice is not. All the same I think that, surely, examples like this ought to call into question the idea that justice is in any way reducible to fairness. I'm not sure that fairness is even a proper part of justice, though I haven't made up my mind that it isn't either. Whether or not fairness is in any way part of justice, it's certainly not the whole.

Forgiveness, Fatherhood, and Mad Max

A great deal of this strikes me as wholesome.

What does fatherhood mean to you?
There's such a blissful sense of otherness that I can't remember what it was like to not have children. I used to think a lot about myself. I still do, I guess. I mean, I have the capacity to indulge in myself. My primary relationship was with myself, and that was interrupted irrevocably when I found out I was going to be a father. It cut out so much... from my head. There was the idea that in order to look after someone else, you must first truly look after yourself. I need to be fit and good to go and get [things] done. I was healthy and already had a lot... behind me—rehab and all that—but I didn't have an anchor. A child is an anchor. And it gets heavy. Is your son going to be a reflection of you? Fear of becoming your father. And then the fear of not becoming your father. All of these conversations which were nice to think about and hypothesize about before are now immediately connected. . . .You can't un-have a son.

You can't un-have a father, either.
All of that stuff with your father falls by the wayside as you realize how inept you can be as a father yourself. And you can't really beat on your parents. I used to have a lot of hang-ups—legitimate hang-ups—about my parents. But then I dialed back the clock. My old man must have been 28 or 30 when he had me—he must have been... terrified. You only have yourself to measure from. A lot of stuff I had to forgive. I wasn't going to move forward in a healthy manner if I didn't start letting go of some pretty major stuff—stuff which held me back while I was young. Serves no purpose any longer now that I'm a father myself. It's impossible to be perfect, you discover. I look back at the flaws of my father and the things that made me say, "I won't do this, and I won't do that. I'm going to do this differently." There's no difference between my dad and me as a dad. I'm becoming my father in some ways, and I'm grateful for that. By no means am I a great father, but fatherhood has helped me focus on what I need to do to become a better man.

There's a lot of swearing if you follow the link. Doesn't bother me at all, but I'm kind of enamored with the idea that there's a time and place for it. This is probably as good a place as any, but when you post to the Internet you can't be sure of the time.

Armed Forces Day

How did Britain Get a Prime Minister?

John Derbyshire spells it out for us.

In those days the monarch was still a force in ruling Britain. He could, in theory at least, dissolve the actual government and form a new one more to his taste. There had, however, been a change of dynasty in 1714. Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, had failed to produce an heir despite having endured seventeen pregnancies.... The law required a Protestant monarch, so Anne’s nearest Protestant relative, the German George of Hanover, was shipped over to be George I....

Unfortunately George I couldn’t speak English. He had rehearsed a little speech to make when he landed in England, to reassure the English that he had come for the good of all. He got the grammar mangled though, and proclaimed: “I haff come for all your goods!”

Unable to follow the debates of his ministers in the council chamber, George got bored and stopped showing up. Walpole, already the alpha male among the King’s advisers, took over the vacant chair.

Accident of history, then, brought on by preferring a Protestant to an Englishman. Or a Briton, I suppose, since the more recent kings had been Scots.

Mad Max

So if any of you were thinking of going to see the new Mad Max, I went. It's a pretty amazing two hours. Heavy Metal acts push a line between hardcore and absurd, and they always risk pushing just a little too far and becoming ridiculous. This movie pushes just as far as you possibly could, but if it crosses the line it does it only in a few moments that are so intense that you've probably lost precision in your bearings.

Joe Bob Briggs will give it an awesome review someday.

Holyfield v. Romney

To the death!



Wait, not to the death. Sorry.

A Fair Accusation of Bias

Language warning, but they're right.

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.

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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: