Ranger School Update

Ranger School is really hard. The Darby phase is still pretty early in the training.

At the end of Darby phase your squad will evaluate your efforts within the squad and someone has to be last, just as someone has to be first. Ranger candidates will explain to RI’s how the members of the squad are when they think no one is looking: This one of the most important parts of Ranger School. It is set up specifically to challenge the weak link and to see if that link strengthens or if it breaks. By the time the RI’s decide your fate at the end of Darby phase, people begin to question their reasons for being there.

This is where people start to miss home, talk about how their families need them or how they have to quit in order to go to combat with their unit. These candidates have yet to walk mount Yonah, pass the knot test, or conquer the nighttime descents of mountaineering. They have yet to enter the copper head inhabited Yellow river of Florida where alligators will swim next to their zodiac or have upward facing tree stumps ravage their legs as their bodies battle hyperthermia. On average, about 45 percent of Ranger School students will graduate.

Yet it is the Darby phase that has defeated all of the female candidates in the one-time trial program to introduce women to Ranger School. Eight of them were recycled, but they have all failed again. Of these, two will be permitted to retry a third time. That sets the maximum success rate for the Darby phase at 10% for the female candidates, if those two manage to do on the third try what they have twice failed to do. And that just gets them to the Mountain phase at Frank D. Merrill.

The Havok Journal celebrates this, not out of disdain for the women, but because it means the standards have not been lowered. High standards in an elite combat unit save lives on the battlefield.

Others feel otherwise.

But there is another opinion quietly being voiced as well: that Ranger School is more akin to a rite of passage – an opportunity for men to “thump their chest,” as one Ranger puts it – than a realistic preparation for leading in war. That women can actually make Ranger units more effective. And that the standards that keep them out are outdated....

The question, he adds, is: Are these standards a fair measure of the challenges of combat?

Dempsey recalls being in violent Kunar province in Afghanistan and hiking up to the rugged Pakistan border. Along for the mission was a male first sergeant who was also a Ranger-tabbed Golden Gloves boxer. The unit had to stop for the first sergeant because he needed to rest during the strenuous march.

“No one’s going to say that the first sergeant is a deadbeat. We need him, and we’re just going to take a break.”

On other occasions, he adds, the combat patrols would simply make the decision not to bring along their heavy packs.

“The equipment we carry is just insane,” Amerine says. “We all have back injuries at the end of our careers.”

The No. 1 Department of Veterans Affairs claim – made by 58 percent of all claimants – is muscular-skeletal injuries.

“If we really are serious about integrating the force, the equipment we carry is going to be one of the things we have to have a hard conversation about,” Amerine says. “It’s in our grasp technologically to make things a lot lighter.”

That doesn't sound like an argument that the standard is outdated, but that until we make huge changes in how we outfit our troops the standard points to a very real issue. If it's already a huge problem even for men, and we haven't yet made things any lighter, why wouldn't the ruck march at Ranger School be a practical test? First Sergeant's an E-8, so he's probably in his thirties somewhere. At one time he was able to make the ruck march. As a Golden Gloves guy he was at one time in fantastic shape. As an NCO in an infantry unit, he's kept himself in at least pretty good shape for a thirty-something. If even this guy is having trouble later in his career, and back injury rates are so high across the force, why would we think that people more prone to such injuries (and other allied injuries) would be a wise addition?

We should thank everyone who participated for exploring this with us, and declare the experiment closed.

Now There's Something You Don't See Everyday

According to the monitor, the Christian fighter, a member of the minority Assyrian community, found the jihadist in the local village of Tal Shamiram.

"He took him prisoner and when he found out he was a member of IS, the Assyrian fighter beheaded him in revenge for abuses committed by the group in the region," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Justification

The dog in this article is a beautiful animal.

After meeting up with Crystal, Ashlee examined the kittens, who were approximately three weeks old. The little cats were covered in fleas and were in very poor condition.

“They were just skin and bones – completely emaciated,” Ashlee recalled. “I immediately treated them for fleas and worms and then took them home. I fed them and gave them a nice warm place to sleep.”

What you mean when you say that you 'treated them for fleas and worms' is that you poisoned the fleas and the worms. In other words, we found in nature three sets of animals struggling to survive, chose one of them, and destroyed the other two for the benefit of the one.

What's the justification for that? We feel perfectly justified in doing it because we like cats (very much) more than fleas and worms. We certainly have the power to do it, so if power is its own justification -- might makes right -- then our aesthetic preferences coupled with our power are enough.

Religious folks like myself can appeal to Genesis 1, of course, but that's not going to serve as a legal justification under a regime that does not allow for the establishment of religion.

Will the EPA someday prevent us from picking up kittens and "treating" them for fleas and worms? If not, why not? Just because the aesthetic preference is so common?

An Excellent Question

Byron York: "If Hillary becomes president, who will make her obey the law?"

It appears to be the case that no one can make the President obey the law, though a united Congress can impeach him (or her, in Hillary's case). However, there's no reason to believe that Congress will unite on the point in the supermajority required.

So: no one will make her obey the law. Next question: what are the consequences of turning her loose from all legal restraints, coupled with the power invested in a President?

UPDATE: Related.

American Trains Iranian Fighter Pilots

I expect that this guy and I must know some of the same people, because I've been hearing this story too. It's certainly not implausible, given the tight ties between the Iranians and the Iraqi Security Forces right now. It would be a little surprising if there weren't infiltration by Iranian agents.

Clinton Cash

The amounts are very large.

According to Sirota’s accounting from public records, the Clinton-led State Department authorized $165 billion in sales to 20 nations that donated to the foundation. State also authorized another $151 billion in “Pentagon-brokered deals” with 16 nations that coughed up cash for the family charity. Some of the defense contractors involved also donated to the foundation, and a few of them paid big money to Bill Clinton for speeches.

The US routinely conducts arms sales to allies, but this wasn’t a case of business as usual. Comparing the three full fiscal years of Hillary’s tenure at State to the corresponding timeframe of the Bush administration’s second term, Sirota found that the State Department nearly doubled the sales to those nations, and increased the amount of Pentagon sales by 143 percent.

On the other hand, it is possible to push this point too far.

Sirota notes that the Clinton Foundation took cash from regimes like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Algeria, and Hamas’s diplomatic ally Qatar while approving large arms sales. The Israelis objected strenuously to a $29 billion arms sale to the Saudis, and even Clinton warned about their lack of cooperation on counterterrorism strategy. Qatari cooperation against terrorism was “considered to be the worst in the region,” Hillary also declared in internal memos exposed by Wikileaks years later.

Qatar is also a key US ally, and the home of US Central Command's forward-deployed headquarters. Painting them as merely Hamas's ally obscures that the picture is not as clean. They are also our diplomatic go-between when we want to talk with the Taliban. Sometimes, in diplomacy as in war, you have to work with actors whose motives are dubious from your position. Probably our motives appear dubious at times to them.

The story is powerful enough as a painting of the appearance of massive corruption and conflict of interests. Trying to make it into a 'Clintons have ties to terrorist supporters' story is too far. As a diplomat, it was her job to have ties with people who support terrorism. Sometimes diplomacy means routing them something they want. It's the nature of the business, and it's a necessary business for nations to engage in sometimes.

Eternal Punishment

Generally a sentence to punishment like this has been practically reserved to the divine, and for good reasons. Some things it would be better not to invent.

Schlock Mercenary did a bit with an AI that was trapped in isolation for "megayears."

The Problem with American Intelligence

In my experience, this author is exactly right.

Let’s be honest about what it would mean to fix the problems Morell describes. CIA officers would have to get out of protected enclaves to spot and recruit the principal agents who, in turn, could find sources within the jihadist lair. Staying “inside the wire” isn’t just ineffective, it’s dangerous...

The agency has been wary of sending case officers onto the streets in war zones without bodyguards from the paramilitary Global Response Staff. But John Maguire, a veteran of many dangerous CIA assignments, says officers traditionally understood the rubric that “you will not be captured.” Under a special training program called Case Officer Defensive Action, operatives were taught to evade surveillance and, if that failed, shoot their way out of trouble. This course was abolished, Maguire says....

For decades, the CIA and the military have tried to fix intelligence problems by relying on National Security Agency surveillance. But the jihadists have gone to school on the leaks about U.S. capabilities and learned to mask their operations. Gathering intelligence against this 21st-century jihadist adversary, paradoxically, will require the kind of old-fashioned spying and resistance operations we associate with the CIA’s founding generation in the OSS.

The British Press

They have their moments and their flaws, but they do know how to write a great headline.

Cultural Domination

An excellent paper from the English Historical Review asks, "Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become British?" (H/t: Medievalists.) The question may be of interest to us today, not merely for historical reasons, but because of our own mass immigration from very different cultures than our own: different in language, education, poverty, and so forth. What prevented the Anglo-Saxons from fading into the British culture?

The 19th century idea, which the paper considers and rejects, was that the Anglo-Saxons had simply destroyed the native population or driven it out -- rather like early Americans did with the Cherokee. We did not become Cherokees because we cleared the land of them and their civilization, and thus there was little chance that we would intermarry or become subsumed. (I'm told that, in Latin America, genocide against the native population is euphemistically called "the North American solution" to the problems their cultures still today face integrating Spanish civilization and the native ones.) The 19th century thinkers found this view plausible because of the racial theory of the day. Unlike other peoples, those descended from good Anglo-Saxon blood were of a moral character fit for self-government; and since much of moral character was thought to be carried in the blood, obviously the Anglo-Saxon bloodline must be substantially different from, say, the Welsh.

That turns out to disagree with both the historical record and the genetic one. What happened instead was that the Britons intermarried with their conquerors. Rather than the Anglo-Saxons becoming British, the British became Anglo-Saxons in those areas where the new culture could command. In regions further flung, the native culture continued to dominate in spite of intermarriage.

Importantly, then, the issue has to do with language. So why did the Anglo-Saxons not become Frenchmen after the Norman conquest, when French became the official language of court and law?

In an important sense, they did: they became "frank" and free men who were fit for the "franchise." Their old thanes became "franklins." Amusingly, the very concept of being a people whose moral character fitted them for self-government that was fielded by the 19th century scholar with pride in his Anglo-Saxon roots was a French import. It was because they were "frank" that the English were fit to be free men.

(And that of course is true, in a way: the virtues of honor and forthrightness that the Franks saw in themselves are indeed a necessary condition for sustainable self-governance. What is not true is that they are especially French virtues, or especially Anglo-Saxon ones.)

The French language didn't come to dominate in England the way that English did, however. There simply were too few of the Anglo-Normans, and they spread themselves thinner yet: they went to Scotland and became Anglo-Norman-Scots, like Robert the Bruce, whom today we think of as the very model of a Scot. They went to Ireland and became Anglo-Irish, and while today the Normans are referred to by the Irish as "the Old English," even by the day of Elizabeth I they were more Irish than the Irish themselves. They were also the locus of Irish resistance to English rule, as they were the locus of Scottish resistance to English rule. I suspect Tolkien's concept of Black Numenorians is rooted here, in spite of his own stated preference for "Anglo-Saxon" characteristics more like the Eorlings and the Hobbits than like his Numenorians. The Normans like the Numenorians went everywhere the sea would take them, conquered and intermarried, and came to be the ruling element of different and disparate peoples. In the West, they were the leaders of the defense against Sauron; in the East and Harad, they were commanders of his legions.

The lessons for today are... well, again, obvious, aren't they?

Emergency? Why Didn't We Do This All Along?

A story from our friends across the pond, who like us are trying to use their central government to reform local schools' lunch menus.

Pupils at a Bath primary may have to be fed sandwiches from the local pub as an emergency measure while the school struggles to upgrade its kitchens to comply with the expansion of the government's free school meals programme.

The Devil you say! Sandwiches from the pub? Why, it's monstrous. Could the pubs just take over feeding all the students, do you think?

I'd endorse the idea here in America, only we haven't got enough pubs. Though perhaps if they were given responsibility for feeding all the students, we might get pubs in every town....

Call your Senator!

What's a Little Anthrax Between Friends?

Oops!

Wise Advice

Elizabeth Price Foley and Naomi Schaeffer Riley agree that this behavior is problematic, and that it is an excuse:

But this idea that it doesn’t look right for a male boss to be alone with a female employee sounds like it comes straight out of Victorian England. And it’s probably just an excuse.

More likely the congressmen, like the professors I’ve spoken to, don’t want to leave themselves open to claims of sexual harassment and the lawsuits that might result.

I don't think it's an excuse at all. I think "it wouldn't look right" means that some people might think that something sexual is going on, and the point is to dispel any possibility of people coming to that conclusion. It's not just that you might harass someone sexually, it's that the two of you might be doing something perfectly consensual that violates your wedding vows or even just the spirit of the workplace. This was the advice I got from my father decades ago on how to deal with women in the work place: do it in the public eye, so that people come to understand that you never leave yourself room for anything inappropriate.

Once a sufficient bond of trust or friendship forms, of course, things can change. Still, it's hard to be friends with a superior or someone who reports to you directly, just as it was hard for a king to have friends. So the best thing, if you're dealing with someone who reports to you, might well be to deal with them only with the doors open.

The Venerable Bede

In addition to being Memorial Day, Monday was the Feast of St. Bede of England. I assume you all know his history, and its influence. You may not know how he came by the title "Venerable." No one does, really, but tradition holds:

The title Venerabilis seems to have been associated with the name of Bede within two generations after his death. There is of course no early authority for the legend repeated by Fuller of the "dunce-monk" who in composing an epitaph on Bede was at a loss to complete the line: Hac sunt in fossa Bedae . . . . ossa and who next morning found that the angels had filled the gap with the word venerabilis. The title is used by Alcuin...

...from the house of Charlemagne.

Discretion

The Libyan Adventure and 2016

It seems as if 2016 will feature former-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a prominent role. The debate over her tenure in that job is turning more and more toward the Libyan adventure, as it appears to have been her special project, and it appears to line up neatly several arguments about her corruption and incompetence. The most important aspect of the Libyan adventure, though, was that it was conducted as an exercise of pure executive power without any permission from Congress.

Clinton may have been the primary proponent in the administration of overthrowing a foreign government without consulting with the People's representatives. That she did so at the behest of a corrupt adviser who personally profited from it is bad; that the planning and execution of the adventure led to a failed state now functioning as a colony of the Daesh Caliphate is worse. The key thing, though, is the degree to which she proved to have contempt for the division of powers, or the seeking of permission from the People before taking us to war.

Had she sought a debate, I would probably have been on her side. This post is cryptic only if you do not know me: it cites Gadaffi's use of rape rooms as a tool of state policy without commentary from me. Yet the use of rape rooms as state policy was my reason for supporting the Iraq war, a fully sufficient justification for overthrowing Saddam in my opinion without regard to any questions about WMD. I wrote something very similar about Iran's use of rape in state policy. There are just reasons not to go to war in such cases, as for example if you believe you cannot win the war (for then you would be bringing about the harms of war without the hope of victory). However, if you think you can win such a war, it is always morally just to wage war against a state that uses rape as a tool of its policy. That is too deep a violation of human nature to be compatible with just government. Such governments are wicked and ought not to survive.

It ought to be most important in our consideration of her qualifications that she did not care for the limits of the law or the Constitution on such a mighty question.

We live in an hour in which we are told that democracy is the answer to political problems; and therefore, we should be interested in the great questions of the day. Yet the systems are such that, short of breaking the systems, we can have no hope of affecting the questions at issue. The law means nothing -- as we have seen in the case of the war in Libya, where the War Powers Act has proven toothless. I am in favor of that war, and indeed of a more emphatic approach to it, but the law is broken here. The administration shows no deference to the law.... It isn't right to say that we can do nothing; but I wonder if we can do anything meaningful that is also lawful. If democracy is the answer, the Stoic philosophy is of less use; we are bound to be involved, and engaged. Should we say that these matters are nothing to us? The laws are carefully crafted to keep our efforts from having an effect; and where they are not, they are ignored outright.

Democracy can ill afford another such administration. Is there no candidate for office who believes in obeying the limits of the Constitution? Are there no candidates who will feel bound by the laws they swear to enforce?

Happy Birthday, John Wayne

The Philosophical Structure of the New Sexuality

In the wake of the recent vote in Ireland, there is some concern about what the Church's teachings can say to the new generation. To understand what can be said, first you must understand what the new generation is endorsing. It is not (merely) a different position on a few discrete issues. There's a developed and unified mode of thought at work behind it. It tracks to John S. Mill, but has filled out over time.

The first assumption of this new philosophy is Mill's assumption, which is that the important element in human life is the individual. Where Aristotle thought (correctly, I believe) that societies are formed by families, Mill took the Modern position that the thing that comes before society is a state of nature made up of radical individuals. This assumption is unquestioned in the new philosophy as far as I can tell. The individual and the individual's will is the thing that matters.

The second assumption follows from the first: the individuals we are talking about are fully-formed adults. The first assumption means that the wishes of an individual will always be selected for when they come into conflict with the interests of families considered as a whole. The second means that the wishes of adults will be placed before the wishes of non-adults: abortion is at the will of the adult individual who is pregnant, without other considerations. The family structure that is best for children is the one that is best for the adult individual parent given custody of them, so long as that structure does not produce adults who are out of line with the new philosophy. Homeschooling is a questionable practice; single motherhood is not.

Those are assumptions, as I said: they are not argued for, but taken as given.

Proceeding, then, given those assumptions, the philosophy is that sexuality should be regulated this way:

1) Adult individuals should be free to choose.

2) Freedom to choose is not compatible with any sort of coercion.

3) Therefore, sex is fine as long as it is consented to freely, verbally, and enthusiastically.

It's a very simple philosophy, but it is coherent. Many on the right make the mistake of assuming there is some conflict between the left's position that women are the equals of men in all respects, and that they need special protections in college, in the office, in the workplace in general, from harsh language or offensive terms. All of it follows from what has been said above. Both the man and the woman are equals in that they are free to choose. However, men are physically bigger and stronger; in addition, it is argued, society provides men with unearned power over women in various ways. Thus, to ensure that sex is always only fully consensual, we must regulate all sexual interactions to ensure that there was no power relationship providing any sort of coercion. We should ensure that there was clear, explicit, verbal consent and that such consent was really desired in a deep way.

The reason you get 'gay marriage' out of this is that there's absolutely nothing in this philosophy to speak against it. It's fully consensual, and an association of adults, so it's perfectly fine. There's not only no reason to be opposed to it here, there's no room for a reason. The principles are clear bright lines, and they admit of no exceptions.

From this, then, you will not get bestiality and pedophilia in spite of right-leaning arguments to the contrary. Kant thought you would, so it's not a foolish position, but it depends on assuming that the bright lines of the old system are the only possible ones. There the bright line was human nature, and it is obvious that sex fills a natural and necessary function. You can draw a bright line between those acts that do and those that do not fill natural functions. That was the old position, and it is a rational one. The new argument rejects the concept of human nature, however, in favor of individual will. There is just no room in the system for a concept of nature that should constrain will.

You will not get bestiality because consent is not possible. There is no slippery slope there. You will not get pedophilia because of consent issues, and the underlying assumption that this is a system for adults. The slippery slope there is limited to arguments about just how young you have to be before you can't clearly consent, but there's no danger of that line falling beyond a certain point.

What you will get is polyamory and plural marriage, and all of the trans-* desiderata. Those things are perfectly in line with this philosophy, and there is no reason to oppose them possible within the system.

Now, the reason to spell all this out is to address the question: what can the Church say to people who believe this philosophy? Well, you can't persuade them to adopt the old standards without first persuading them to abandon this entire mode of thinking about sexuality (which they will call "my sexuality," because everything is fully individualized in this philosophical structure). You have to show that the whole mode of thought is to be rejected, and then begin again showing why the traditional mode is a rational and proper substitute.

What you need not do, and ought not do, is argue for the rules. The rules follow from the structure. What you have to do is argue against their structure, and in favor of the traditional structure of reasoning from things we can observe about human nature.

How do you argue against the structure of the new philosophy? There are two general modes of argument that can be effective.

1) Argue against the assumptions. It happens that the assumptions are both badly wrong, so a lot of headway can be made here. Point out that these assumptions exist, and that the structure depends on both of them being true. Show that they are false. Human beings do not come into the world as radical individuals. We come into the world dependent on those who brought us into the world, and who care for us until we are able to take care of ourselves. That is to say, we come into the world not as clean actors free to choose anything that they want so long as it does not harm others, but as members of a pre-existing society who carry debts and obligations to those who helped them when they were weak. Those debts point forward to the next generation. We are duty bound to think about what is best for them, and not only about ourselves.

2) Argue against the good being pursued. The good is pleasure. Mill's philosophy believes that life is properly structured around pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, according to rules (such as the three rules of the new philosophy) that make sure that these opportunities are as widely available as possible. But pleasure is a terrible standard for ethics. It is opportunity for pleasure and pain that ethics needs to control, because it is in temptation of pleasure or danger of pain that we are most likely to do wrong against others. Ethics needs to focus on how to ensure that we don't give in to our temptations to pleasure as much as it needs to talk about how we stand true to our duty in spite of the occasion of pain. Mill's rules are inadequate because they leave in place the idea that we should chase pleasure and flee pain as much as possible without being unfair to others. What we should be chasing and fleeing is something else entirely.

We might begin by saying that we should chase what is honorable and flee dishonor. (Aquinas says that, in his treatment of the virtue of magnanimity). Honor and dishonor are not personal like pleasure or pain, but have to do with relationships between human beings. They are the first answer to the idea of radical individualism as the proper seat of the good. The honorable is always about what you do from duty, and the dishonorable is always about letting others down who had a right to depend upon you.

Of course the Church will not wish to stop with honor and dishonor. It has something more to say, something that can become clearer to those who have begun following you on this road. When you have begun them in this direction, so that they see that their lives have some better end than pleasure, you will be doing again your ancient service to humankind.

Memorial Day

Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies
Of one who has done well.

Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead.

-The Havamal

Remembering

Airborne Beer All the Way!

A good story from Stars and Stripes that I stole from Ace:

It took 65 years for Vincent Speranza to find out that his actions in Belgium during World War II had been immortalized — for his ingenuity with the beverage that the country is famous for producing.

...

Speranza joined the Army in 1943 right after graduating from high school. He was assigned to Company H, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, as a replacement in November 1944 while the unit licked its wounds from the devastating failure of Operation Market-Garden.

Within weeks, Speranza would be in a foxhole in Bastogne, Belgium — cold, running short on supplies and ammo and surrounded by German troops.

...

On the second day of the siege, a friend named Joe Willis was wounded with shrapnel in both legs and brought to a makeshift combat hospital in a blown-out church. When Speranza tracked him down, the fellow paratrooper asked him to get him something to drink.

Speranza explained they were surrounded and no supplies were coming in. The soldier asked him to check a devastated tavern nearby.

Speranza found a working beer tap there. He filled his helmet — the same one he had used as a foxhole toilet — and made two trips to the wounded in the church. He was caught by an angry major and told he would be shot if he did not stop, for fear he would kill the wounded.

Visiting Bastogne in 2009, Speranza found his foxhole still there, but Dutch and Belgian military officials told him that the legend of the soldier filling his helmet with beer for the wounded is still told — and had been immortalized on the label of Bastogne’s Airborne beer.

The beer is typically consumed from a ceramic helmet.

So, I had to find  the beer. The website Untappd gives enough information that I should be able to order it. I wonder about the helmet mugs, though. (Pics at the linked page.)

There is more about Speranza's service and a video of him telling the story at Stars and Stripes.

Pentecost

The king stablished all his knights, and gave them that were of lands not rich, he gave them lands, and charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor upon pain of death. Also, that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, ne for no world’s goods. Unto this were all the knights sworn of the Table Round, both old and young. And every year were they sworn at the high feast of Pentecost.

-Le Morte Darthur

1 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he led me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me in the center of the broad valley. It was filled with bones.
2 He made me walk among them in every direction. So many lay on the surface of the valley! How dry they were!
3 He asked me: Son of man, can these bones come back to life? “Lord God,” I answered, “you alone know that.”
4 Then he said to me: Prophesy over these bones, and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Listen! I will make breath enter you so you may come to life.
6 I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put breath into you so you may come to life. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.
7 I prophesied as I had been commanded. A sound started up, as I was prophesying, rattling like thunder. The bones came together, bone joining to bone.
8 As I watched, sinews appeared on them, flesh grew over them, skin covered them on top, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me: Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man! Say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: From the four winds come, O breath, and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.
10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath entered them; they came to life and stood on their feet, a vast army.

-Ezekiel 37:1-10

Some Details Leak Out

What's in the secret treaty? An economist writes:

Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes.

This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking.

The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits....

The proceedings are so expensive that Uruguay has had to turn to Michael Bloomberg and other wealthy Americans committed to health to defend itself against Philip Morris. And, though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments - on labor and environmental standards, for example - citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse.

I can't see why we'd want to further mortgage our democratic institutions to major corporations. Don't they exercise enough control over our form of government already, without granting them a unique right to sue us for any new laws that interfere with their "expected" profits?

Useful...

“We have accomplished what no one said can be done, which is to be a trip for peace, for reconciliation, for human rights and a trip to which both governments agreed,” Steinem, 81, told South Korean media after crossing. “We were able to be citizen diplomats.”

Who said it couldn't be done? North Korea was delighted with the opportunity to help you stage their propaganda.

Lyric Inanity

Ten years ago, the most popular songs read between a third and fourth grade level, but the inanity only increased with time, and after a five-year downward tumble ending in 2014 (the last year of the study), chart-topping hits had a reading level equivalent to second or third grade. Broken into genres, the levels measured just 2.6 for Hip-hop/R&B, a tie of 2.9 for Rock and Pop, and faring best was Country at 3.3[.]

In fairness, it seems like the popular singers only read at that level.

Accounting

At some point on this side of the grave, I may learn to stop regretting all the things I never took the time to study properly in my youth.  This week, I've spent nearly every waking hour trying to learn to think like QuickBooks, once again exposing the gap in my education where some simple business finance belongs.  By very good luck, one of my first clients was very good at explaining the most basic principles of bookkeeping to me, in order to help me decipher a real estate closing statement when we bought our first house.  Once you get used to the idea of debt entries balancing credit entries, it's not too bad--sort of a double vision, from your viewpoint and the view point of the other.  Nevertheless, many aspects of GAAP will likely remain mysterious forever.

In a weak moment recently, I raised my hand for the job of treasurer in the local Woman's Club.  Like many such organizations, it's hard to find people willing to serve as officers every year.  The job of cheerleader or vision developer is decidedly not for me, but I thought I could handle the checkbook.  It turns out that, a couple of years ago, the club acquired a QuickBooks program, so I dived into figuring out how to use this small-business accounting software.

The previous treasurer had confined herself to the checkbook-register functions, keeping the members' running accounts on a separate Excel spreadsheet.  Because this offends my sense of efficiency (i.e., laziness), by requiring the treasurer to enter everything twice, I tried experimenting with the other functions and reading various manuals online.  Soon I broke down and bought a month's worth of tech support by telephone, thus embarking on an exciting half-week of lengthy conversations with nice young people from the Asian subcontinent, most of whom couldn't be brought to understand just how s-l-o-w-l-y they were going to have to talk in order to surmount both the language barrier and my lack of digital and accounting sophistication.  What jobs they must have.

It's a startling pleasure finally to master something like how to collect a bushelful of miscellaneous payments for dues and cookbooks in the form of cash and checks, enter them into each member's account, and tell the program to batch all the payments into a single deposit in a particular bank.  Et voilà!  A deposit entry pops up automatically in the bank register with a "split" to explain all 50-odd individual elements, all properly encoded by type for the summary reports that will be distributed at each monthly meeting.  At the same time, an accounts receivable page shows me who's paid dues and who still owes.  I'll be able to prepare an annual budget and produce monthly budget-vs.-actual reports.  It's becoming clear how double-entry book-keeping brought commercial life out of the dark ages.

I'm still barely using a small corner of this program, which can handle things like payroll that our club doesn't need.  How amazing that such a product is available for about $200.

Animal vid fix

You've all been thinking, "Hasn't it been a long time since Tex posted a good animal video?"  Fresh from Maggie's Farm:  dogs hooked on soda siphons.

Humility

Fed Head (Head of the Fed! Banks in Red! Got to get their coffers fed!) Janet Yellen speaks the truth:

I am describing the outlook that I see as most likely, but based on many years of making economic projections, I can assure you that any specific projection I write down will turn out to be wrong, perhaps markedly so.

The only thing that will never happen is the thing you planned for.

Reshaping Ownership

No, I don't think so, General Motors.

GM has joined with John Deere in asking the government to confirm that you literally cannot own your car because of the software in its engine.

Like Deere, GM wants to stop the Copyright Office from granting an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would allow you to jailbreak the code in your car's engine so that you can take it to a non-GM mechanic for service, or fix it yourself. By controlling who can service your car, GM can force you to buy only official, expensive parts, protecting its bottom line.

As Consumerist quips, GM wants you to know that the car in the driveway is "literally not your father's Oldsmobile."

With one exception, all my cars and trucks have been Chevrolets. The only way I'd be willing to "license" a vehicle I wasn't allowed to work on myself was if you agreed to fix it for free or replace it for free, for however long the "license" lasts. Those are the terms I get when I rent a car, and they're acceptable. I'm not about to 'buy' a car from you without owning it.

Best Behavior

With the Waco dust-up just behind us, the Mongols MC is taking unusual steps to reach out to the community ahead of their annual meeting.

The president of a motorcycle club gathering in Excelsior Springs this weekend promises it will be peaceful. In an interview with KMBC 9 News, Mongol Gary tried to ease concerns of violence in the wake of last weekend’s shootings...

Excelsior Springs police said they’ve known about the event for months, have had conversations with Mongols leaders and expect an easy weekend, even though they’ll be preparing for the worst.

If you watch the video, it sounds like the Mongols didn't just grant an interview, they may have sought it out. Talking their plans over with law enforcement is also a little unusual, but the police appear to have appreciated the courtesy.

The Mongols may be on their best behavior in part because they have a court case coming up soon that is of tremendous importance to them.

As part of a plea deal, the club president forfeited rights to the Mongol trademark to the Department of Justice, and a federal judge granted an injunction prohibiting club members from wearing, licensing, selling, or distributing the any materials depicting the Mongolian warrior.

At the time, only Uncle Sam was legally entitled to wear the Mongols' leather vest -- known as a "cut" -- as a jacket without sleeves.

Federal Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled that upon presentation of the court's order by police, "defendants and all their agents, servants, employees, family members, and other persons in active participation with them, must surrender all products, clothing, vehicles, motorcycles, books, posters, merchandise, stationery, or other materials bearing the Mongols trademark."

While another judge partially lifted that injunction a few years later, Uncle Sam and the Mongol Nation are headed back to federal court June 2 in Los Angeles to reargue the case and determine who now owns the trademark.

The Mongols mount a First Amendment defense, arguing in court papers the "government's sole purpose in filing the indictment is to crush the Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club by seizing the intellectual rights to the 'Rider' and 'Mongol' marks and thereby quash the Club and its members rights to freedom of expression and association." ... To Davis, the DOJ actions are "unprecedented and unconstitutional." He said the Mongol's insignia is a "collective membership mark" that's "on a par with the Christian cross, the Masonic compass, or the Jewish star."

Maybe the Masonic compass. I don't think the other two are good analogies.

It'll be an interesting case, especially with the Waco shootout so close in memory. It seems like there's something special about the government seizing a trademark. Free speech rights are against the government and not against other citizens. As a result, you have a right to violate a trademark in the sense that the government can't stop you from saying whatever you're going to say. However, the government can enforce someone else's copyright by requiring you to pay damages to them for violating that copyright. In this case, the government would essentially be requiring you to pay damages to them -- making it hard to discern a difference between the civil damages and a fine.

Can the government use this power more broadly to fine you for saying something it doesn't want you to say? Could the government, in principle, decide to seize the copyrights of a book they didn't like, and forbid anyone from printing copies of it? How about a religious book -- various translations or editions of the Bible, say? It's the same Amendment where all these protections cluster, so it seems as if they're all in danger together.

Ordinarily I'd think the Mongols were likely to win a case like this, but after last week it's hard to say. It's a moment at which it may be hard to get the judge to think about the more theoretical questions regarding how the precedent could be more broadly applied, and less about the very public and concrete example of violence.

"Public" Comments

Did you know there's a surge of interest in giving the EPA expanded authority?

When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a major new rule intended to protect the nation’s drinking water last year, regulators solicited opinions from the public. The purpose of the “public comment” period was to objectively gauge Americans’ sentiment before changing a policy that could profoundly affect their lives.

Gina McCarthy, the agency’s administrator, told a Senate committee in March that the agency had received more than one million comments, and nearly 90 percent favored the agency’s proposal.

Amazing! Who knew the American public was so committed to expanding the range of the EPA's authority?

But critics say there is a reason for the overwhelming result: The E.P.A. had a hand in manufacturing it.

In a campaign that tests the limits of federal lobbying law, the agency orchestrated a drive to counter political opposition from Republicans and enlist public support in concert with liberal environmental groups and a grass-roots organization aligned with President Obama.

Oh.

Oddly enough we were just talking about the difficulty for citizens in influencing the bureaucratic rule-making processes. Pretty much the only way is through the public comment period, when the agency happens to ask for one. If they are now permitted ("required," it sounds like) to game the system by flooding themselves with positive comments from full-time policy organizations that favor their position, that tiny bit of influence will be diluted out of existence.

Once again, the Obama administration is making a mockery out of the ordinary forms of our democratic republic. Rule of law can be set aside by prosecutorial discretion. Rule making comment periods can be gamed. The IRS can be tasked with paying special attention to your enemies. Pervasive surveillance replaces the need for warrants before prying into private communications.

It's a disturbing pattern, and one that will be hard to reform.

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.