Killing You on Metadata

Wretchard:

[F]ormer Director of the CIA and NSA, General Michael Hayden, explained that the administration's drone kill list, contrary to the narrative, was not a masterpiece of judicial and Solomonic judgment by president Obama but simply the result of a computer program. “We kill people based on metadata,” Hayden said.

He then qualified that stark assertion by reassuring the audience that the US government doesn’t kill American citizens on the basis of their metadata. They only kill foreigners.

Pakistanis, specifically. It turns out that the NSA hoovers up all the metadata of 55m mobile phone users in Pakistan and then feeds them into a machine-learning algorithm which supposedly identifies likely couriers working to shuttle messages and information between terrorists.

A program prints it out. Obama reads it and signs it. In a very real sense occupant of the Oval Office has been partially replaced by a hit-list generator actually called Skynet, as Ars Technica explains.

Foreign Policy reports on an independent review of the White House's drone program that uses a report-card rating system. On not selling drones recklessly to foreign states, they get a C. Overall, they get an F.

The number of civilians killed or wounded in the strikes has also generated controversy and raised concerns that the operations foment more violent extremism directed at the United States. The Obama administration has insisted only a small number of civilians have been inadvertently killed in the strikes. Independent estimates from the New America Foundation and the Long War Journal, which are based mainly on local media reports, have put the number in the hundreds, ranging from about 300 to more than 900 between 2004 and 2014. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates several thousand civilians have died in the drone bombing raids.

This comes to mind in part because of the President's self-congratulatory speech on closing GitMo. The reason he can consider closing that facility's prison is that he does not take prisoners. He kills everyone a computer program thinks even might be associated with terrorism, based on opaque metadata that is not subject to an independent review based on other evidence, nor is this killing subject to due process of any kind.

Nevertheless, the GitMo speech was delivered as yet another lecture from the High Moral Ground.

Apple and the FBI

So I've not seen the debate reach the Hall yet, so I figured this was a good time to put in my $0.02 about it.  And I don't suppose my opinion on the matter will surprise anyone.  That said, let's first explain exactly what the situation is.

Campus Carry Update (and a Floor Debate on the Klan)

The Campus Carry bill has been assigned to the Georgia Senate's Judiciary Committee, chaired by one Joshua McKoon. McKoon is a fairly reliable friend of the NRA, but he is in the news most recently for taking the floor to condemn a fellow Republican -- a state senator from Jefferson, Georgia -- for making a remark that appeared supportive of the original Ku Klux Klan.



It is a little strange that we'd be having that discussion in 2016, when I thought the Klan's place in Georgia history was well understood. Obviously they were a terrorist organization, as McKoon says, carrying on the war by other means. There is a distinction worth making between the Klan that existed immediately after the war and the one that was 'reborn' around the time of the movie Birth of a Nation. There is a distinction worth making between that second Klan and the one(s) that exist now. Those distinctions are for clarity among historians, though: none of them were any good.

This is Legislative Day 26, if you're counting. 14 more working days until they have to go away and leave us in peace.

Introduction to Statistical Mechanics

Via Armed Liberal:

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

I'm Pretty Sure That's Not True

Headline: "Hillary Clinton: The Leader You Want When The World Ends."

So, when the world ends, I'll want our enemies read in on all our classified material?

"Authoritarians" Again

How do you take this seriously enough even to rebut it?

[N]ationally, only authoritarian attitudes and fear of terrorism — not income, age, education, or even race — predict with statistical significance whether someone will support Trump....

Individuals with a disposition to authoritarianism demonstrate a fear of "the other" as well as a readiness to follow and obey strong leaders. They tend to see the world in black-and-white terms. They are by definition attitudinally inflexible and rigid. And once they have identified friend from foe, they hold tight to their conclusions.

If a right wing author were describing the Left, particularly in its campus incarnation or its more emphatic activist groups, he could just copy and paste the second paragraph verbatim. But those people are Trump's most devoted opponents, not his supporters. Mote, beam.

As usual when reading the dicta of social psychology, I'm left wondering by their results if there can possibly be any validity to the field at all. If they are blind to flaws as obvious as this, such that repeated studies by practicing professionals replicate these results and publish them as if they were to be taken seriously, how can we trust any aspect of what they are doing?

Religious Groups and Political Leanings

No real surprises here. The Democrats have a mild advantage with all US adults, including those who lean to one party with that party. Catholics are the only religious group that breaks out exactly as the population as a whole does.

Democrats have a huge advantage with non-Christian faiths, and the largest advantage on the charts with Historically Black churches and Unitarians. Republicans have a significant advantage with Anglicans and United Methodists, a significant-to-huge advantage with Evangelicals, and an especially huge advantage with Mormons.

Asatruar didn't make the list. I wonder how they'd break out.

"I Fought Off A Burglar With A Sword"

Technically I think that makes him a "robber," but that's a minor point. Home alone with his ten-year-old daughter in bed, he is confronted by a man bashing in his door even though the house is clearly occupied.

The "burglar" attacked him in spite of him having a sword in his hand, and retreated and then came back multiple times. Being a Briton of the current generation, our hero was doing his best not to hurt the criminal:

I was using the sword to block the blows, while also feigning attack. I was terrified, but I was also very aware that I probably shouldn’t really hit him with the sword; that I should act proportionately. The problem was, I didn’t know how far he was going to go – I don’t think he knew, either.... I started thinking that any moment he would realise I was not trying to hurt him. Then what was I going to do? I was exhausted.

Then, to my relief, he just took off. I was walking slowly back into the house when I heard him behind me. I turned to see him running at full tilt with his arm raised, ready to strike. This was the only time I used the sword as a weapon, swinging at his chest while raising my other arm to block his blow. I got a cut arm and he was injured in the chest – not seriously, because the sword was blunt. Then he was gone again.

It worked, which satisfies the dictum that 'if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid.' The non-sharpness of the sword and the excessive defensiveness of the combat kept him out of trouble with the law, too, which is a real concern in Britain today.

The 'aggravated burglary' charge got the crazed assailant a whole three years, which under British law only half of which can be served behind bars and the rest on some version of parole.

The Death of Twitter

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. I never used the "service" to quit it -- they lost me the minute they decided that the proper way to refer to having posted there was to say that you had "tweeted." There is no room in my life for something as ugly as that.

Jayne Cobb apparently used it, but we all knew where his aesthetics were.

Anyway, he's out too. "Trust and Safety Council," heh.

Second Look at Trump

Headline: 'Trump: As president, I would prosecute Clinton.'

Have we ever had a Presidential election where one candidate was promising to put the other behind bars if elected? It's Clinton's own fault that we're having it now, as she's the one who violated national security law with such casual, regular familiarity. If she had simply obeyed the law, we wouldn't be here.

Still, what an election Clinton v. Trump would be. The one side is promising to ban guns and appoint a progressive Supreme Court that will rewrite the Constitution to outlaw conservatives forever. The other side is promising to send the other candidate's party to prison, build a giant wall on the Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it, bomb our enemies to the stone age, and then steal their oil.

Just small potatoes at stake, then.

Campus Carry Passes Georgia House

The Georgia General Assembly has come one step closer to resolving the strange confusion it created last year by passing two different laws on so-called "campus carry." The House passed its bill to allow those who have undergone the appropriate background check to obtain a Georgia weapons-carry license to carry on campus as most anywhere else.

I found out recently that an old friend I grew up with is now a state representative. I suppose this marks the first time I've ever had a friend in 'high' places.

I'm Not Sure You Understood Arendt

A Washington Post writer worries about Trump.

To understand the rise of Hitler and the spread of Nazism, I have generally relied on the German-Jewish émigré philosopher Hannah Arendt and her arguments about the banality of evil. Somehow people can understand themselves as “just doing their job,” yet act as cogs in the wheel of a murderous machine. Arendt also offered a second answer in a small but powerful book called “Men in Dark Times.” In this book, she described all those who thought that Hitler’s rise was a terrible thing but chose “internal exile,” or staying invisible and out of the way as their strategy for coping with the situation. They knew evil was evil, but they too facilitated it, by departing from the battlefield out of a sense of hopelessness.

One can see both of these phenomena unfolding now. The first shows itself, for instance, when journalists cover every crude and cruel thing that comes out of Trump’s mouth and thereby help acculturate all of us to what we are hearing. Are they not just doing their jobs, they will ask, in covering the Republican front-runner? Have we not already been acculturated by 30 years of popular culture to offensive and inciting comments? Yes, both of these things are true. But that doesn’t mean journalists ought to be Trump’s megaphone. Perhaps we should just shut the lights out on offensiveness; turn off the mic when someone tries to shout down others; reestablish standards for what counts as a worthwhile contribution to the public debate.

Arendt's answer to the dangers of totalitarianism was not speech control. Attempting to shut up the ideas of people who believe as Trump claims to believe is how you got here. I think it's accurately said to be the major source of his power: to hear someone speaking the forbidden thoughts shows him to be strong, because he stands in defiance to all the collected power of media and state, intelligentsia and 'decent society.' Clamping down on his ability to put out his message is only going to make that message stronger where it does get out.

What Arendt suggests as an answer to totalitarianism is two things: thought and community. She was worried that the loneliness and collapse of traditional communities associated with modern life were what made us peculiarly vulnerable to the totalitarian draw. It was common sense, by which she meant the way in which we improve our individual views of the world by comparing them with each others', that was robust enough to stand against propaganda and power.

If you want to beat Trump, the way to do it is to make common cause. If left and right agree that Trump is not the answer, they can defeat him if and only if they can come to an answer they can agree upon. If you're on the Left and you want to beat Trump, what are you willing to compromise on in order to make common cause with those on the right who agree? Will you support Ted Cruz in preference to Trump? Rubio? Would you be willing to allow conservatives to reclaim Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court if that were the price of avoiding a Trump presidency?

Those on the right have to decide if they would be willing to accept Sanders or Clinton. For myself, I think Clinton is demonstrably worse. I would dare a Trump presidency gladly rather than vote for someone so corrupt, deceptive, and disdainful of those whose lives she would hold in her hands as Commander in Chief. Sanders has an ideology I don't care for, but I respect him as an honest man. Others may disagree even on Sanders, especially with the Supreme Court hanging in the balance.

If there are no ways in which we can come together in 'common sense' and community, Trump may well win over the objections of both left and right. In a sense, his victory will be deserved -- I mean that the country will deserve him. I speak chiefly to the left, though. You have to defy what Arendt calls 'loneliness.' I mean that you have to rediscover community with the hated right. You have to break out of the bubbles that keep you only with those ideologically aligned with you. It is your 'safe spaces' that are enabling him. Trying to strengthen the walls of those spaces will only allow him to grow stronger in the world without them.

DB: Military Adopts Gender-Neutral Hair Standards

Following the conclusion of a lengthy period of focused testing and evaluation, the Department of Defense is poised to mandate full gender neutral integration of hair standards across the US military.... “For far too long, the US military has propagated an environment of double standards, lowered expectations, and lame-ass haircuts,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, running his fingers through his luscious mane, working carefully to wrap the flowing locks into a compact, gender nonconforming “War Bun” atop his head.

Love Itself

Love went on and on.

Donald Trump Comes to Georgia

And what a speech.

‘Our country does not win any more. We don’t win against ISIS. We don’t win with health care….We don’t win at the border with Mexico. We don’t win anywhere. But we’re gonna win. Oh, are we gonna win. You’ll get so tired of winning, you’re gonna get so tired, you’re going to say, ‘Please, please, Mr. President, we can’t stand it anymore. We don’t want to keep winning. We can’t stand it.’ And I’m going to say, ‘I don’t care, we’re going to keep winning, we’re going to make America great again.’”

Bring Back Dueling!

David Harsanyi, senior editor at The Federalist, argues:

The great Democrat, Andrew Jackson, supposedly participated in six duels with much success. No less an American hero, young Abraham Lincoln was almost involved in a duel before honor was restored.

Is Donald Trump a more honorable man than Abraham Lincoln? I think not. Right now, the leading candidate in the GOP race is celebrated by his fans for his vulgarity and eagerness to attack the dignity of others. People confuse this incivility — and he’s not alone — as a statement against political correctness. It isn’t. That would entail using ideological or cultural rhetoric that others have deemed morally unacceptable. Not calling a rival candidate a “pussy.”

Yet, the more personal and boorish his invective gets, the more Trump fans are awestricken. The belief that tough-guy Trump is a “fighter” propels his candidacy, even though pampered scions of wealth rarely have to fight for anything. And his success will only produce others who’ll ape this strategy.

I think we can all agree dueling would be a much-needed corrective.

As part of his argument, Harsanyi offers a brief discussion of dueling history in the US and links to sites with more, including a duel between women, two famous dueling grounds, the Code Duello and the Project Gutenberg text for “The Code of Honor; Or Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Duelling," written by a South Carolina governor.

Whatever you think of this suggestion, I am greatly amused by the thought of Cruz and Trump squaring off with rapiers at Weehawken.

Doubtless an EEO/SHARP Violation

Doctrine and the perils of staff officer romance. A parody, I think.

Georgia Legislature Update: Religious Liberty Advances

The Georgia Senate created a combined bill out of two different pieces of religious liberty legislation, which can now be advanced for a floor vote whenever the Rules Committee says so. The combined bill is fairly tame: it's no threat to "gay marriage" being the law of the land. However, if you own your own business, you can life your life according to sincerely held religious beliefs.

The combined legislation under HB 757 would enable faith-based organizations and individuals to opt out of serving couples — gay or straight — or follow anti-discrimination requirements if they cite a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction regarding marriage.

The bill would bar state and local governments from taking any “discriminatory action” to punish those beliefs, specifically over convictions that marriage should be between a man and a woman or that sexual relations between two people are properly reserved to such a marriage.

It would protect government grants and contracts, among other things, held by faith-based organizations such as those that receive money to aid in adoption. Those organizations would also not be required to register as a nonprofit, although they would have to state a religious belief or purpose in their governing documents or mission statements.

Additionally, the bill states clergy could not be forced to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony.

The bill would not, however, allow public employees or elected officials such as Georgia probate court employees to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses if that offends their faith.

Not sure if it will pass. It's already got some corporate opposition, which normally spells doom even for carefully-crafted compromise bills in the Georgia legislature. Corporate opponents say they believe the law might prevent them from firing people whose religious views are against company policy.

UPDATE: The Senate passed the bill on Friday, having just approved it out of the Rules Committee on Tuesday. No word yet on next steps, or if the governor is willing to sign it if it gets to him.

Dear Trouble

Given the hand that feeds you
Are you really hungry at all?

Superdelegates

Here's a fun project: this site lists all the superdelegates in the Democratic primary, by state and whether or not they've committed to backing Clinton. Those with Twitter or Facebook pages have links given, but mostly they are political officials who won't be hard to find.

It's probably worth your time to ping the ones from your state, and tell them that you won't thank them for backing Clinton if Sanders wins the local primary. Whatever we can do to undermine her last bastion of support is worth doing, as she is by far the worst choice in this election. We cannot afford to turn national security over to someone for whom the lives of its defenders are so small a concern next to her own convenience. Nor is her relationship to the truth, in general, apparently a wholesome one.

Farewell to the Rose

The author, and noted philosopher, was 84.

Roughhouse

Some of the best advice I ever got as a parent was this: A baby boy is like a lion cub. You need to play with him that way.

When Someone Asks You If You Are A God, You Say "Yes!"

Pelley began by asking Clinton, “You know in ’76, Jimmy Carter famously said, ‘I will not lie to you.’”

“Well, I will tell you, I have tried in every way I know how, literally from my years as a young lawyer, all the way through my time as Secretary of State to level with the American people,” Clinton claimed.

Pelley replied, “You talk about leveling with the American people. Have you always told the truth?”

“I’ve have always tried to, always, always,” Clinton suggested.

These sound more like the ramblings of a suspect in an interrogation room with their hands cuffed to the table than a presidential candidate. How on Earth is the question, are you going to lie to us a tough one? Even if you’re talking out the side of your mouth, the answer is no. There’s some panic setting in at Clinton HQ as much as her many surrogates insist that they always knew it was going to be a long, hard slog.

Against Philistines

Tennessee moves to protect its statues from destruction. Seems like there's a wave of destroying art that symbolizes history we'd rather forget, these last few years. The Taliban dynamited Buddhas. ISIS wrecks even mosques they don't like, as well as any remaining Classical civilization they can lay hands upon. Iran visits Italy, and Renaissance sculptures are hidden away so they don't disturb. Cartoons that offend must not be republished, or hung even in an art gallery where people might see them. The Merlin sculpture hardly got up before people were arguing it was "vandalism" to put it there.

Whatever this is, it is not liberal tolerance for diversity. Even the dead must conform to current opinions.

Who Wants to be a "Protected Class"?

Washington state is considering a bill to add bikers to its list of classes protected under civil rights law.

The Washington State Senate and House, at the request of the Washington State Council of Clubs and the Motorcycle Profiling Project, have both proposed identical legislation, SB 6624/ HB 2950, that would add individuals wearing motorcycle or motorcycle club related paraphernalia to the Washington State Civil Rights Act (RCW 49.60.030) as a protected class. Additionally, SB 6624/HB 2950 adds the right to be free from law enforcement profiling to the list of explicated civil rights protections for all protected classes.

The Washington State Council of Clubs, the Motorcycle Profiling Project, and BOLT of Washington drafted the language for the identical proposals. ABATE of Washington also supported the effort.

The addition of individuals wearing motorcycle or motorcycle club related paraphernalia would provide unprecedented protection against many forms of discrimination if these bills pass. It would be a violation of civil rights to deny an individual employment, public accommodations, or profile them based on their expression or associations with a motorcycle club.... Individuals in motorcycle clubs have a fundamental right of association that should not be infringed upon based on generalized suspicion. Absent proof of the intent to commit criminal activity an individual should not be subjected to government regulation or law enforcement actions.

I have two questions about this, understanding that ABATE is a good organization that normally means well.

1) Is it really necessary to seek protected status to obtain what sound like ordinary Constitutional rights -- free association, and the right to be free of unreasonable harassment by police?

2) Doesn't this bill protect free association in one case only by limiting it in another? Your freedom to associate with your club is protected, but at the cost of telling (say) employers that they can't choose whether or not to associate with you because of it. What makes it right to use the government to place our rights above the rights of others? It's the same right, and we are both of us citizens of the United States in the same way.

All in all, I don't think I want to be a member of a 'protected class' anyway. I'm one of the last Americans who isn't, and there's a certain glory to that.

Sea Story

One I hadn't heard before:

Baggett’s [B-24] was badly hit, and the crew were ordered to bail out. The Japanese pilots then attacked U.S. airmen as they parachuted to earth.

Two of Baggett’s crew members were killed, and Baggett, though wounded, played dead, hoping the Japanese would ignore him. One Zero approaching within several feet of Baggett, then nose-up and in an almost-stall, the pilot opened his canopy. Baggett shot at the pilot with his .45 calibre pistol. The plane stalled and plunged to the earth, with Baggett becoming legendary as the only person to down a Japanese airplane with a M1911 pistol.

Field & Stream called it one of the greatest feats ever accomplished with a .45. As for Baggett, he apparently survived the war and lived to a prosperous ripe old age.

The 'Hurt Feelings Report' Goes Live

No way.

A school in Delaware apologized on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, after a staff member accidentally sent a snarky "Hurt Feelings Report" to parents.

It looks like the one we've been passing around for years as a joke. I wonder if the parents got the joke?

The Pope Is Making News Today

I have a lot of respect for Pope Francis, but he should probably not opine on American politics without taking more care to understand the situation. When Donald Trump can make you look like you haven't really thought through your position, you're having a bad day.

Of more interest may be his remarks on an exception to the Church's ordinary prohibition of birth control, which draws a bright line between birth control and abortion. This is the sort of thing he's better placed to talk about. I suspect there's a danger, if that's the right word, that most American Catholics would be only too happy to take that distinction and run with it. Almost no Americans of any stripe are opposed to birth control on moral grounds. If the Church intends to maintain that prohibition as a usual thing, exceptions will need to be very carefully drawn.

A Crucial Demographic in Nevada Speaks

Up until now, I thought Bernie was winning women in this age bracket, but I suppose there are interested exceptions.

The Hearing Protection Act

Speaking of gun rights legislation, HR 3799 is in committee in Congress. It would remove suppressors and "silencers" from the National Firearms Act, making them readily available for use by individuals. As someone who both shoots guns and rides motorcycles, all I have to say is -- what did you say? I couldn't quite hear you.

Altamont South

A sold out concert in Tampa, Florida may lack the usual police protection.

In the wake of Beyonce’s controversial Super Bowl halftime performance of her new song “Formation” — which critics say contains an anti-cop message — police and politicians around the country have been speaking out against it.

But the criticism could be manifesting itself in practical ways, given what’s happened since police in Tampa, Florida, got a request to work her April 29 concert in town.

Usually off-duty officers sign up to work concerts and sporting events for extra cash, but to date no officers have signed up for the show, WTVT-TV reported. And given it’s expected to sell out, that could be a security issue.

While police spokesman Steve Hegarty couldn’t tell the station if zero sign-ups means local cops are angry with Beyonce, he did say the show would have security.

I didn't see the Superbowl, but I did see a lot of mockery of her for having demanded a police escort that closed off an entire highway for her motorcade -- in order to sing a song about the evils of cops. That's par for the course with these celebrities, though. I may field occasional criticisms of police, but I don't ask them to bow and scrape to me while I do it. In fact, I try to leave them alone, and if I do have to call them for some reason -- usually a neighbor's escaped livestock, out here -- I always treat them with the courtesy and respect due to someone who shows up when called to do a hard job.

Probably this lady will get her way again, as the sense of duty toward securing the concert-goers overwhelms the bad taste in the mouths of off-duty police.

But hey -- if the police thing doesn't work out, she can always try the Outlaws.

Georgia Legislature Update: Campus Carry Passes House Committee

House Bill 859 has made it out of its initial committee, and can now proceed to the House Rules Committee. You can write the members of that committee to urge its passage here. However, I expect it will pass out of this committee whether or not you write anyone: the chairman is a co-sponsor.

Georgia is in a weird position on campus carry because it passed two laws with different language recently. Students for Concealed Carry explain after the jump.  This law would clarify the situation legislatively, rather than waiting for a court to do it -- which could result in someone who thought they were obeying the law going to jail, if the court decides against them.

Oddly, HB 859 seems to undo a feature of Georgia's weapons carry laws I normally tout as a highly desirable feature:  it severs handguns from knives.  I often prefer to carry a knife instead of a handgun, as it is useful in far more situations and eliminates the dangers of overpenetration, ricochet, and similar risks in highly populated areas.  (Obviously, it does this at the cost of limiting your effective range, and knives require much more training and practice to be effective.)  HB 859 would allow people who have undergone background checks and obtained the weapons carry permit to carry handguns only on school property (and not to sporting events).

Turkish Fascism

The piece I mentioned below deserves a longer consideration. No one knows what to do about Turkey, which is a NATO ally that is -- to quote what I wrote earlier this week -- "openly Islamist, deceitful, and murderous, [and that] does not deserve our support." Nevertheless, the treaty obligation requires us to fight in their defense should the war they and Russia are playing at starting break out into full scale.

I suspect Russia believes we would not, especially under Obama, actually come to their aid with more than symbolic force. There is some reason to doubt they are right about this supposition. We moved F-15C fighters to Turkey following the movement of Russian air superiority fighters to Syria earlier this fall. In response, probably, came Russia's deployment of S-400 missiles in Syria. The older F-15C is not thought capable of defeating this system. Of the fighters we have, only the F-22 and F-35 incorporate stealth technology completely enough that we think them safe against the S-400 system. We deployed four(!) F-22s to Germany in August on an operational basis.

Does that mean we're getting ready to fight the Russians? Perhaps -- these are two of several shifts that suggest we are at least bluffing our readiness to do so. A bluff is rational, since the best outcome would be avoiding a Russian test of our treaty commitments entirely. Unfortunately, bluffs by this administration are likely to be called because they have been called in the past and have proven to be empty. Syria itself is the leading example, thanks to the President's so-called "red line" on chemical weapons use. Putin probably doubts that there is anything behind these moves besides bluster.

He's probably right to probably think that.



All of that leaves us with a quandary about Turkey. It's a major problem.

American democracy could survive as a liberal democracy despite the heavy repression of socialists and radical labour. However, in much of Europe, these forces were so strong [in the 1930s] that the state’s repressive apparatuses expanded indefinitely. When they were not sufficient, civilians were mobilized, and fascism was born.

What is clear, in light of the Turkish case, is that liberalisation and democratisation cannot go hand-in-hand for an extended period of time in structurally weaker societies. While the spoils of a semi-productive model could satisfy many social groups, the downturn of the world economy after 2008 gradually dynamited the cash basis of the AKP’s consent. In this new global scene, the party had to incorporate more and more Islamist cadres to retain a mobilised base, but these very cadres pushed the regime into a collision with Israel, the liberal intelligentsia, and various (local and foreign) capitalist interests.

Under increasing pressures from the emboldened cadres (and the opening granted by the Arab Spring), the party’s hardly contained imperial ambitions were bolstered further and eventually ran out of control. Becoming more Islamist first seemed to be a wonderful resolution to the problems created by slowing economic growth, but this political choice backfired.

What sense does it make to have a major alliance with a fascist, Islamist power? Is it worth defending should the Russians decide to smack it around, at the cost of war with Russia? Certainly not. If the NATO alliance is fractured by our failure, though, can it be saved for the more plausible cases? What if Russia moves to reconquer the Baltic states it ruled as the Soviet Union? Are they worth fighting for, at the cost of war with Russia? What about Norway?

Further, if liberalization and democratization of Turkey is the very reason they are turning Islamist, what policy choices do we have in front of us for improving that alliance should it survive? Endorsing the fascism? But the fascism is now part of the Islamist problem. Endorsing more democracy? That's how we got the fascist Islamists. Endorsing a liberal but anti-democratic coup? Overthrowing, in other words, a NATO ally?

The conclusion that the administration does not have any idea what to do with Turkey is warranted. The best choice might be to preemptively expel them from NATO for their genocidal policy against the Kurds. Then the Russians could do what they liked to Turkey without endangering NATO, which would be reserved for its more obvious and plausible function of defending liberal democracy in Europe. That would concede the Middle East to the Russian/Iranian alliance, however.

Twitter Diplomacy

A sharp criticism of Samantha Power, but by extension of the Obama foreign policy regime.

Power’s tweets are a legitimate response to a horror that is unfolding daily. What’s so odd about them is the Twitter account they come from belongs to the American Ambassador to the United Nations, who has been a member of Obama’s inner circle since before he hit the campaign trail in 2007. Hence, Ambassador Power’s doe-eyed outrage against the policies that she helped to shape in her time in the White House and whose current public face is literally Samantha Power leaves a casual observer a bit slack-jawed. Is the real Samantha Power being held prisoner in the U.N. basement with access to Twitter, while a Davos-friendly version of Arya Stark from Game of Thrones impersonates Power in policy meetings?

John Kerry is involved in the Twitter diplomacy, too, as OpenDemocracy notes:

“Humanitarian aid to [civilians] must be allowed immediately. ‘Surrender or starve’ tactics are directly contrary to the law of war.”

Any western leader might easily use these words to scold the Turkish state, and its starvation of Kurdish towns to the south-east of the country. But it would be highly unlikely. In fact, John Kerry’s tweet was aimed at the Syrian regime, not the Turkish one.

Why do American leaders describe Assad’s strategy of ‘surrender or starve’ as a war crime, while they ignore Erdoğan’s?

Because, they decide after a lengthy analysis, nobody in the administration knows what to do about Turkey.

The Texas Plan, Part III

The third of Abbott's proposed amendments would restore the balance of legislative and executive power that existed before the New Deal, and specifically before Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing scheme intimidated the Court into letting him do what they had repeatedly held to be unconstitutional.

III. Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law.

At this point, this would make a massive change in the way the Federal government does business. Administrative rules now make up the bulk of Federal law, including the bulk of Federal felonies for which you can be sent to prison for years. This is another one of those issues that readers of the Hall have read about for years.  Here's a longer piece from 2007 that talks about administrative regulation as well as the explosiveness of SCOTUS picks.  (Here is a post from the same year on the problems of over-regulation for government itself, from the perspective of trying to be sympathetic and helpful to the State Department.)

Looking back over my work in assembling that quite incomplete list, I see that Abbott's solution is the very one I was endorsing eight years ago: not just this shift, but a constitutional convention to restrain the SCOTUS and the regulatory agencies. It would be a huge change. The argument against it has to do with the complexity of the economy and society: a Congress that had to pass all the laws would be unable to come up with nearly so many laws and regulations and standards. We would have a much less managed society and economy.

The compensation would come in the legitimacy of the rules we did pass. Now, most of Federal law is created without you or your representatives being involved in the process, or even knowing about it. That's not obviously legitimate in a representative democracy, or a democratic Republic. If "No taxation without Representation" is a founding principle, well, every regulation is a kind of tax: compliance takes time and, yes, money. Regulations of such complexity that you cannot be sure you are following them all -- and we are very far past that threshold -- destroy the legitimacy of the whole scheme. They also create a great danger of partisan tyranny through prosecutorial discretion: if we are all guilty of transgressing these hidden laws, the government can punish its enemies and reward its favorites simply by choosing where and on whom it enforces the law.

The amendment suggests a course that will not be easy, but I think the hardships are necessary to the legitimacy, and stability, of our government. I have thought so for a long time.

Honor and Monuments- Now that's a knife!

Grim's post below about the Merlin cave and it's monument to Merlin- the carving in the rock of the wizards face, brought to mind another monument I'd seen recently, alas not in person but perhaps someday- Sverd i Fjell.  It's near Stavenger, Norway and memorializes the battle most symbolic of the unification of Norway, the Battle of Hafrsfjord, where King Harald Hårfagre (Fairhair) united most of Norway under one crown, effectively marking the origins of the modern Norway.

The largest sword represents that of the victorious King Harald, with the two smaller swords representing those of the two defeated petty kings.  The swords are about ten meters tall, making them rather impressive in scale.  Similarly to Merlin's Cave, it's a beautiful natural location of historic significance, where a memorial has been placed, and in my opinion, in an effective and powerful way, boldly marking the place and presenting some information and raising one's curiosity to learn more about that which is here memorialized, I would think.  It also makes it quite clear what it took to give birth to a nation.

While I'm at it- here's another monument in natural stone like Merlin's Cave-
the Löwendenkmal, or Lion of Lucerne.

It's a memorial to Swiss Guards massacred in the French Revolution in 1792 at the Tuileries Palace.
This one I have had the honor of seeing in person.  As I recall, having seen it in photographs prior to going there, I was rather surprised at the scale of it.  Because of the pool of water in the foreground, photos never really give a true sense of it's scale.  The sculpture is about 33 feet long and 18 feet high, not the 1:1 scale I had always assumed in seeing the photos.

Partly because of the sculpture itself, and partly because of the setting, it's quite moving.  Mark Twain describes it better than I ever could (from "A Tramp Abroad"):

"The most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world."

"The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff — for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is."

I think these two monuments are quite powerful, each in their own way.  Maybe if I'm lucky, some day I'll win a commission to design a memorial for some event or person of significance.  I'd think it a great honor.  I would only hope I could do so well as these.

Lincoln on the Supremacy of the Courts

Dad29 reminds us that Lincoln was not a fan of conceding moral questions to the Supreme Court. Indeed, it was opposition to one such decision that brought him into politics -- and the Republican party into being.

...Perhaps the most famous opponent of judicial supremacy in our nation’s history was Abraham Lincoln, who as President directly defied the abominable and inhuman monstrosity that was Chief Justice Taney’s ruling in 1857’s Dred Scott v. Sandford.

"...the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

Far from the Supreme Court being the obvious answer to the problem of state slavery, for a time it was slavery's most prominent defender.

Two from Arts & Letters Daily

One on Thoreau and his view of life:

Thoreau is less an ecologist than a thinker obsessed with the problem of life in a properly ontological sense. By this I mean not only that everything in his world—from stones to humans—is alive, but also that in his philosophy life is afforded the status of a force that precedes and generates all individuations and into which individual forms dissolve. Consequently, death is considered a process of deformation but not of cessation. Differently put, in Thoreau’s world death does not have the power to interrupt life but instead functions as the force of its transformation, enabling us to experience finitude while ushering us into what remains animated.

And one on Shakespeare and his evolution as a writer, as seen through a (disputed) earlier edition of Hamlet:

[T]he Bad Quarto moves more swiftly to its bloody climax, so that it could be said to lose — or never have had — the very quality that gave birth to the phrase "Hamlet-like."

Most people don’t realize the Hamlets they read are not the Hamlets Shakespeare wrote. They’re, more often than not, a cut-and-paste, conflated version that mixes and matches some of the best bits from the Good Quarto and the Folio. "The pales and forts of reason," "the mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye," and "nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" are each in either the Quarto or the Folio but not in both.

This Guy

Draft-dodger Donald Trump once said that the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases was his own “personal Vietnam.”

In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky” not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around.

“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,” Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

All right, let's add a complete incapacity to distinguish virtue from vice to your list of qualifications.

Merlin's Cave

Below Tintagel Castle lies a sea cave that has long been associated with Merlin. Lately the British government has decided that this national heritage site should boast art as well as natural beauty. They hired a sculptor to work the rock into Merlin's face.

The decision has not pleased everyone. I expect that is probably always true. Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument both have their critics, though they are far larger works to be sure. There is always some question about whether we can really improve upon the beauty of nature, as well as some reason to object to the politics: whenever you honor someone or something, even a myth, you do so by raising it above the things you didn't choose to honor. Rarely will there be no one to object.

When Uther in Tintagil past away
Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two
Left the still King, and passing forth to breathe,
Then from the castle gateway by the chasm
Descending through the dismal night—a night
In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost—
Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps
It seemed in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof
A dragon winged, and all from stern to stern
Bright with a shining people on the decks,
And gone as soon as seen. And then the two
Dropt to the cove, and watched the great sea fall,
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried "The King!
Here is an heir for Uther!" And the fringe
Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,
Lashed at the wizard as he spake the word,
And all at once all round him rose in fire,
So that the child and he were clothed in fire.

The Texas Plan, Part II

The second proposed amendment is one that has been hugely popular with states as a proposal -- there are almost enough states demanding it to force the Constitutional convention on this point alone.

II. Require Congress to balance its budget.

The only thing that I can think to say against this is that the amendment might need a waiver for high emergencies such as wars. Of course, any waiver can be abused, and is likely to be. Still, you can't always fight a war on a budget, and some wars are necessary for the survival of the nation. Those of you who are Keynesians may wish to see this extended to business cycle events, although the evidence of the last decade should probably cause us to re-examine the validity of Lord Keynes' theories on that point.

Someone You Know

A former Marine who participated in one of the most iconic moments of the Iraq War was knocked unconscious and robbed by Black Lives Matter activists in D.C.

A Marine vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan became the target of an assault while eating at a McDonald’s Friday night in northwest DC. Metro PD is now investigating the incident and looking for five suspects between the ages of 16 and 21.

According to the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), the group of teens started harassing Christopher Marquez while he was eating — surrounding his table and asking him: ‘Do you believe black lives matter.’ They also started calling him a racist....

[T]he manager at the fast food chain reviewed surveillance video and informed Marquez that after he walked out of the restaurant, one of the teens struck him on the side of the head knocking him unconscious. The others robbed him, taking off with his wallet, which contained $400 in cash, all his ID’s and three credit cards.

It being D.C. he was completely defenseless against mob violence, as the law requires.

BLM can't be held responsible for everybody who claims to be acting in its name, and it has some reasonable points worth considering. They had better get a handle on this kind of thing quick, though, or it will destroy any momentum the movement has. People will be rooting for more police violence if this kind of thing becomes normal.

Adventures in Machiavelli

In addition to being a political philosopher of the first water, Niccolo Machiavelli also wrote operas. The University of Georgia has decided to perform one, "The Mandrake," originally an opera about the degree to which men will set aside their moral limits in order to pursue longed-for desires. This being 2016 in America, the opera will not be performed with the original music.

“We’ve made them rap songs with lots of stomps and percussion type beats,” Marotta said.

And this being 2016 on an American college campus, the opera will be cast in order to make a point about gender.

In order to change up the stereotypes and force the audience to ask deeper questions about power play and gender roles, all of the male roles will be played by women and all the women roles are to be played by puppets.

The Texas Plan, Part I

Cassandra suggested a series of posts exploring the Constitutional amendments proposed by Greg Abbott. I think her intent is that we should look at them critically, to see if they need refinement.

I. Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.

My sense is that this is intended as a reinforcement of the limits of the Interstate Commerce Clause against SCOTUS overreach. As you know, a long series of SCOTUS rulings have expanded that power until it is essentially unlimited: it is now a power to regulate any economic activity that has any effect on commerce sufficient to plausibly affect interstate prices, but also power to regulate economic non-activity that might affect prices where the Federal government would like to require some activity (e.g., health insurance purchases you haven't been making).

Since states are forbidden to raise tariffs that would isolate their markets, the law of supply and demand means that any supplier in any state affects the market as a whole. The same is true for people who elect not to become suppliers. It is not clear what aspect of life is thus outside the expanded scope of Federal power under this revised understanding of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Presumably, the state can regulate any sort of economic production or non-production: you can be made to do or not do anything at all, and more than that, you can be told not just that you must do it but how to do it as well.

If this section has a weakness, it lies in the fact that the language does not specify that it is talking about "economic" activity. Presumably as written this would strip the Federal government from any power to regulate any sort of activity that occurs wholly within a state. On the other hand, the limiting force of the word "economic" is not clear to me: the Interstate Commerce Clause, which clearly is limited to economic activity, has somehow expanded to embrace any sort of activity or non-activity. It may be that there are very few human activities that cannot be described as economic.

I am going to propose a general standard for considering these amendments, which is that it is best if they start off stronger to leave room for negotiation in the necessary Constitutional convention. The amendments should be a little stronger than necessary going into the convention, so that what emerges from the convention is more likely to be adequate medicine.

Discuss.

Syria, Reality and Metaphor

Wretchard pens a piece responding to an earlier piece by Peggy Noonan, which likens the geopolitical moment to a gamble. It's most rational to bet when you have good cards, Wretchard notes, but also when you have terrible ones: bluffing is the only option to avoid losing then.

I would dispute that. As a lifelong poker player, I almost always fold a bad hand. Bluffing works best when you almost never do it. Then, people who have called you in the past have learned that your cards are always strong when they try you. At that point you can get one over on them from time to time. The small cost of losing the ante now and then by folding weak hands preserves your ability to win a pot when it matters, later on, with a weak hand.

Wretchard's point is that America gambled a lot on Obama and has lost. With Obama at the head of the table, not only America but everyone -- allies and enemies alike -- have lost so much that they can no longer afford to play.

Kerry is probably accurate in saying of Syria that "there is no military solution to this conflict" because no one is strong enough to emerge the victor. The failed Obama gambit drained so much energy from international system that it cannot rebuild order yet paradoxically left more than enough fuel to burn what was left.

The ruined cities of Homs or Aleppo may come to perfectly symbolize the current predicament, examples of once bustling places now without the wherewithal to rebuild yet with more than enough to destroy. Like the militias in those agonized cities the post WW2 Security Council members are no longer strong enough to pursue an independent strategy. They will be forced into a constantly shifting constellation of coalitions each competing and cooperating with the other to ensure survival and acquire gains.

Russia may pair off in its facile way with first one partner then another. Turkey will play the same duplicitous game, only more duplicitously, as will China. And Europe will do what is necessary to survive. In both the international and domestic political spheres, -- betrayal and counterbetrayal -- will become the rule rather than the exception. And this will continue until a new order emerges.

A new world order may not emerge. We may see a collapse of world order, and the rise of local hegemonies. The one power that has gained in the last year is Iran. It is going to be richer and stronger, even as it tears down other oil-producing powers by flooding the market with crude. Iran is likely to emerge the leader of the Middle East's northern crescent, from Afghanistan to the Levant.

Russia, just because it is weak and on the verge of crisis, will expand again. The one way for a weakened power to enrich itself is by stealing. Europe is too weak to resist. The next expansion will probably be in the Baltics, and aimed at breaking NATO by proving its treaty guarantees are worthless. Russia may wish to prove that first with Turkey, where the stakes are lower and the NATO power much less sympathetic. The Turkish government, openly Islamist, deceitful, and murderous, does not deserve our support.

China is likely to be consumed with its own problems for some time, and not to look too far abroad for a while.

And Syria, as a real front and not just a metaphor? It is a massacre, a war being waged by clearing the land of people because it is easier to rule over an empty waste. The Russians have only doubled-down on Assad's policy of destroying civilian infrastructure. The Iranian-backed militias are as bad as ISIS, who are backed by our allies the Turks. The West will do nothing to stop it, not for a year at least, if indeed we ever do.

Fun with Rx

Only six weeks into the new year, and we've nearly set things up appropriately with our new annual insurance policy. Though we have a doctor we have no intention of abandoning, we have both also had to acquire an in-network "primary care provider" who has authority to issue a hall-pass for any specialists we may need to see. The PCP already has done yeoman's service getting me clearance to have my right-eye cataract dealt with by an out-of-network surgeon. I thought, for the left eye, we might try to pre-clear with the insurance company and avoid the fire-drill and drama.

No dice. The PCP's office can't start the approval/exception process until I schedule the surgery. OK, sez I, I'll schedule the surgery and then find out if insurance will pay for it, though it seems a bit odd. By the way, for the right eye, the surgeon sent me to a local doc for post-op care, which was very convenient, but she wasn't on the list of out-of-network exceptions, so could you add her to the list this time, see what the HMO says? Oh, good heavens, is the reply, why do you have to see her instead of driving an hour to go back to the surgeon's office? Well, obviously, because it's nice not to have to drive an hour to go back to the surgeon's office. Well, why can't you see someone else in network for the follow-up? I can, but their in-network people are an hour in the other direction.

More guff about the theory of managed care and why they run the network the way they do--at which point I gently interrupt to point out that this is a financial arrangement, not a medical one. I'm not turning over the management of my medical care to an insurance company with whom I'm likely to have a maximum of one-year contact. May I humbly request that you simply ask the HMO if the local follow-up care can be added to the list of exceptions, secure in the knowledge that if the answer is "no," I'll cheerfully go to the local doc anyway and pay her fee out of pocket, in order to avoid the two-hour round-trip?

This precipitates another several rounds of concerned explanation that the insurance company may say "no," and the PCP won't know what to answer if the insurance company asks "why," and managed care means . . . . I gently interrupt again to repeat that I'll accept a "no," and will still do it my way, but I'd appreciate it if they'd just ask. If the HMO asks why, the simple truth is best: the surgeon is an hour away and trusts this local doc to do the follow-up, and the patient prefers to avoid the round-trip. If that's not convincing, fine. It's "no."  I'll live.  But isn't it worth asking?  They may say "yes."

I swear: another round of "but they may say no, and managed care means . . . ." And yet, I also swear, I did not (for once) erupt in a tirade about Obamacare. I'm making a real effort not to offend these people, even though I realize that every time I go out of network, they pick up the message that I lack confidence in professionals who would agree to be in the network. There's some justice in that, but on the other hand some of the doctors we chose independently are in network, which we try to emphasize in order to avoid the unpleasant implication. We've also emphasized that there are some kinds of doctor--such as long-time dermatologists and gynecologists--that we're unlikely to be willing to change every year just because we have to go with a new insurer. Nothing personal against you guys or anyone else who's agreed to be in this year's network.

It sure takes a lot of negotiation and discussion.

This Week in Unlikely Stories...

...Vox explains that what we need to fix America is more corruption in politics.

There's a paper that came out last year called "Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy."... Author Jonathan Rauch argues that deals, rewards, and favors are all essential parts of actually making the government work.

This is apparently the latest in their series on why you should support Hillary Clinton. Earlier parts included theorizing that Clinton would be the most effective President because she feels unrestrained by law and ethics, and an article on how the fact that Hillary Clinton doesn't trust you proves that you need to change.

We Should Not Be Having a War Over the Supreme Court

I do not mean to say that we won't have one, or that we could possibly avoid one. Where we are, a titanic struggle is all but inevitable. The sides have too much to lose. A political compromise would in principle be easy -- the Senate could advise the President whom they would find easy to confirm, and the President could nominate one of those people.

In practice it is impossible.

For the Left it is impossible because with the opportunity to create a 5-vote progressive majority bloc on the SCOTUS, the Left has in front of it the opportunity to dispose of the Constitution as an objection to their program. From now on, they would be able to simply wave away any suggestion that a policy or institution or regulation was unconstitutional because the bloc would vote to endorse it. Laws contemporary to the Constitution, which have coexisted with it for hundreds of years, will continue to be found to be unconstitutional even though neither the generation that wrote the Constitution nor any of its descendants to date have seen any conflict. It will be the end of the Constitution as a limit on government power, in other words, as long as that government power is exercised in a progressive direction.

For Republicans in Congress it is impossible because the rise of such a bloc would put an end to their major reason to exist. They would no longer be able to legislate as a party, because any legislation a Republican Congress passed would be set aside on appeal. So too Republicans in state houses, and indeed Republican governors. At a time when the Republican Party holds both houses of Congress and the vast majority of state houses and governors' mansions, this one person -- this one seat in one of three branches of government -- could effectively strip their entire power base of legitimacy. They could no longer proceed as the loyal opposition, raising procedural or legislative bars. They would be told what they could and could not do at every level of government, having their achievements thrown away and their concessions enshrined in Constitutional law.

Nothing could be clearer than that the Federal courts have become too powerful. Admittedly, this is an old argument for me. I've been arguing it probably since I've been writing here, certainly since 2006 (see "The Judiciary" here). The most important work we could do right now would be to strip the Federal courts, and the Supreme Court, of much of their authority. The Supreme Court's ability to amend the Constitution on the fly has risen at the same time that increasing diversity in the nation has made amending the Constitution legitimately, through Article V, more and more difficult to accomplish.

The Supreme Court has become much like the One Ring. Instead of trying to use that concentrated power to defend our position, we need to destroy the power lest it fall into other hands.

Win or lose this current fight over the seat on the Court, Governor Greg Abbot's suggested Constitutional amendments should become the #1 priority of the conservative movement. They are not extreme. They are not even radical. They impose only the kind of super-majority controls the Founders often invoked as guards against concentrated power.

It is in the interest of nearly every American to disperse this concentrated power, which is a threat to the peace and stability of the Republic. Unfortunately, I suspect the siren song of power -- of finally being able to force the other side to submit and obey -- will prove too strong.

The song is an illusion. No submission will be forthcoming. Beware that road that leads only to war.

Lost Roads of Ancient Rome

Made visible in England.

Kerry: Refugees an "Existential Threat" to Europe

A change in the administration's position that refugees aren't a threat to anyone? The recognition is pointed at the threat to Europe's political fabric, which simply can't absorb further mass migration until (and unless) it can assimilate the mass migration it has already encouraged. The United States hasn't encouraged mass migration from the Islamic world in the same way, but it certainly has from the Third World writ broadly. We're better at assimilation, usually, but I wonder if the administration isn't going to decide that the real answer is for us instead of Europe to take on more Syrian migrants.

My opinions on Trump

So I've made it fairly clear in the past that I did not like Donald Trump as a candidate for President.  His ego, narcissism, and tendency to take everything critical of him as a personal affront or insult reminds me of the current President, which is not a feature, but a bug (in the IT parlance).  And in the past, he has made statements that got under my skin (and before you point out hypocracy here, I will first point out that the statements were not criticisms of me but of others, and second I am not running for President), such as his vile personal attack of Senator John McCain's military service.  While there are many things to dislike about Senator McCain, frankly I find nothing remotely questionable about the conduct of Captain McCain.  And to insult him because "he got caught" is a slap in the face of all POWs, which a better man than Donald Trump would be ashamed of making.  But he's not a better man.

Well, over the weekend, he crossed yet another line.  With his slander of former President George W. Bush as having lied us into war, I think the mask has slipped again.  I have wondered previously, but after this and along with his defense of Planned Parenthood, I am becoming more and more convinced than ever that Donald Trump has gone through no Road to Damascus moment.  He was a liberal Democrat, he is a liberal Democrat, and he will continue to be a liberal Democrat.  Whether he is a Clinton stalking horse or not is frankly immaterial.  He is no conservative, regardless of his stated stances on immigration.  He has directly insulted all of us who supported President George W. Bush during his difficult administration by saying we were supporting a war-mongering tyrant (which would make us culpable, as we supported him).  I am not ashamed to admit that there were actions taken and decisions made by President Bush that I felt were misguided.  But at no time did I (nor do I currently) believe he was anything other than a good man doing his level best to protect this country.  And once again, I think the accusations Donald Trump made at the most recent Republican debate were such that a better man would be ashamed of making.  Or at least a better conservative would be ashamed of making them.  A liberal would likely feel little to no shame in making those accusations.

After Him, The Deluge

Rest in peace Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the last, best guards of the Revolution. In myriad ways, we will miss you.

UPDATE: A private reflection on Scalia's great heart.

Mark Steyn Has Guts

Facing a ruinous, lingering lawsuit for defamation and slander from Michael E. Mann -- creator of the famous 'hockey stick' global warming graph -- Mark Steyn has assembled a book-length assault on the same fellow. Entilted A Disgrace to the Profession, he obtained a blurb for it from one Laura Rosen Cohen:

It's probably the longest, funniest, most savvily organized and meticulous "screw you" in the history of Western literature.

I suppose we know what he thinks of the lawsuit now, if there was ever any doubt.

Not Quite

Allahpundit thinks Ted Cruz is just being symbolic in his language against gay marriage:

Here’s the strongest language I’ve found from Cruz on Obergefell:

“My response to this decision was that it was illegitimate, it was lawless, it was utterly contrary to the Constitution and that we should fight to defend marriage on every front,” he said, before promoting constitutional amendments to overturn the ruling and put justices up for retention elections, along with legislation “to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over challenges to marriage.”

Cruz conceded that none of his proposals are politically feasible at the moment. Once he is elected president, however, Cruz said he will make sure that “we will not use the federal government to enforce this lawless decision that is a usurpation of the authority of we the people in this country.” He also committed to only appoint Supreme Court justices who would not “legislate from the bench” like the justices did in Obergefell.
Okay, but the president’s role in enforcing or not enforcing Obergefell is unimportant. It’s a matter of the states enforcing it, since marriage is a creature of state law. Here again you find Cruz laying down rhetoric that makes it sound like he’s preparing to do something bold when really it’s just symbolism.

That's not true, though, in states like Alabama where the State Supreme Court's chief justice is advising clerks not to stop enforcing Alabama's constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriage. In that case, whether or not Federal enforcement will occur is really important. Keeping this pledge would allow states like Alabama to nullify the SCOTUS ruling, at least for the term of the President making the pledge.

That's important because, for now, Roy Moore is a single guy using his office to hold the line. Everyone expects him to lose. If a President of the United States were to endorse his position, though, it could cause similar moves in other states as well. That could eventually put some teeth in the frequently-proclaimed Republican position that marriage is a state issue, not a Federal issue. A future President who disagreed would have to do more than remove Roy Moore. He or she would have to take on a bloc of states rejecting Federal jurisprudence. They might, or they might back down. If they did take on the bloc, they would do so from a relatively weakened position compared to the position that President Obama holds now.

We All Have Our Bad Days

Madeleine Albright writes:

I HAVE spent much of my career as a diplomat. It is an occupation in which words and context matter a great deal. So one might assume I know better than to tell a large number of women to go to hell.

Common Ground: What about War?

As Grim has pointed out, Jim Webb's exit from the presidential race leaves us with a field of candidates who have never served in the military. What reading would you recommend to our next commander in chief, or a voter who has never served but who is tasked with picking a commander in chief?

Who Are the Good Guys?

Kevin Williamson writes.

He doesn't mention Chicago, whose police department is infamously corrupt -- and whose culture, at least in South Chicago, is astonishingly deadly. The question he doesn't consider that probably needs to be asked is whether the corruption of the department is a product of the struggle with rampant gang violence, or a contributing factor to it. In other words, would a more scrupulously honest and law-abiding police department enable the gangs by being too restrained to stop them? Or would it prove to undercut the gangs, by improving trust between the police and the community in which the gangs operate?

Common Ground: Books under Copyright

The following are books people mentioned that are still under copyright and so generally can't be legally downloaded for free. The book links lead to Amazon.com, and the author links lead to the author page on Wikipedia, if there is one.

Public domain works have already been covered in previous posts, which are accessible by clicking the "Common Ground" label at the bottom of this post.

Drive In Movie Review

So apparently there's a story today where Ted Cruz's campaign hired an actress named Amy Lindsay, but had to pull her ad because she was involved in something called "softcore porn." I wasn't sure what this category was supposed to mean. R-rated movies these days are sufficiently explicit that it's hard to imagine any territory lying between them and real porn.

Well, it turns out the lady has a page on Rotten Tomatoes that lists her filmography. I tried to find an online clip from "Timegate: Tales of the Saddle Tramps" because the name was long enough that I figured it would be easy. All I found was a movie review without clips. I did manage to locate a couple of clips from "Bikini Airways," which I'm not going to post not because the clips themselves were offensive, but because the YouTube editor had added an intro piece of his own that might be too racy. Nobody in these clips is even unclothed, although the jokes are obscene (and very stupid).

The one she seems proudest of is a comedy called "Milf," which I'm not even going to try to find because I have a feeling I know what will appear if I should plug that term into the Google search box. The description the movie gives is, "Four horny college boys discover that older women have a ravenous sexual appetite to rival their own, and ditch their snooty co-eds to seek out ladies who know what they like in the bedroom."

Based on this brief bit of research, I'm beginning to think the real thing that distinguishes 'softcore porn' from R-rated 'romantic comedies' is low budgets and bad writing. Amy Lindsay is at least having honest fun with her work, or gives every indication of being so. Confer with Amy Schumer's high-budget 'romantic comedy' "Trainwreck" -- of which I have only seen clips of about the same length as the ones from "Bikini Airways," but which looks to be just as much a sex comedy -- and nobody minds having her show up to stand next to her cousin Chuck Schumer to talk gun control bills in Washington, D.C.

Chuck Schumer was right on this one. Cruz is competing for voters in the Bible belt, and I guess he thinks they'll hold it against him that he consorts with 'loose women' or something. If you find out he's having an affair with a racy actress, sure. If you find out he's a friend with a racy actress and likes to talk over political ideas with her, so what?

If you find out that a group of people he employed to make ads happened to employ her once without the two of them ever even meeting in person, come off it.

This concludes tonight's Drive In Movie Review.

Jim Webb Out

With respects to Joel's different opinion, I regard that as a shame. He was the last candidate with significant foreign policy experience except Clinton, and the only candidate to appear with military experience, at a time when the world is increasingly on fire thanks to the weak President we've had for eight years. Now the best we can hope for is someone with no experience at all, as the one remaining candidate with any is the worst candidate in the race. She has treated national security as disposable for her personal convenience, as shown by her treatment of classified information. She has treated the people who conduct national security as disposable, also. Prima facie evidence from comparing weapons sales to donations to the Clinton Foundation suggests she has also treated these matters as being chiefly about personal enrichment rather than the furtherance of American security in the world.

Thus we shall have to place our hopes on a novice, or someone not even a novice, at a very dangerous hour.

Cactus Wood Clock

For Douglas, a few old snaps of the cactus wood grandfather clock built by my Dad's great uncle, Eddie LaPlant.

I found some notes from my Dad - he owned a brick yard in Tuscon and built worked on (I don't have much information on this) many of the older brick buildings at the University of Arizona. There's also a snap of a newspaper article from the late 60s - sorry, I don't have a larger version handy - it's somewhere in my files - on the cactus clocks.

I can't even imagine the patience it took to design and build this (and he built five of them!). Photos below the fold.

The Past and Future are Always Changing

Mark Steyn:

I get a lot of mail complaining that I never feature Beatles songs in our Song of the Week. Okay then:

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire...

I also read the news today, oh boy. And it tells me there won't be any Beatles songs on the radio in Blackburn in a few years time, nor theatre in the West End of London, nor pubs in the East End, nor uncovered women in Birmingham, nor mixed swimming pools in Manchester, nor bacon butties in Sheffield, nor the teaching of the Crusades, the Holocaust and other problematic matters in schools... There might not even be Sheikh Speare - whoops, sorry, Shakespeare - at Stratford-upon-Avon. Because when you lose your future, you lose your past, too.

I'm of the James Bond school of thought about the Beatles, myself.



Steyn goes on to note that the police in Cologne denied for a week or so that the attacks on women by migrants actually happened. That's a very important question of fact. A friend of mine who is of Soviet Jewish extraction -- from the USSR to Israel, tour of duty in the IDF, eventually to America and citizenship here -- was greatly concerned by the story because it reminded him of antisemitic stories the Nazis told about Jews ravishing German women. These were apparently part of the justification for the suppression of Jews in the Fatherland. It matters a great deal whether or not these stories are true.

We are forced to judge that from a distance both in time and place. It seems as if they did happen, from what we can tell by reading open sources. Is it plausible that they are a paranoid myth by Germans to justify a reaction against the refugees? It's not impossible, I suppose. However, it is also true that the structure of Islam's approach to women makes it more plausible than the old antisemitic story ever was. Likewise the recent demonstrations during the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt. Laura Logan was an eyewitness to similar violence, and it was reported on a wide scale even by Egyptian women talking about Egyptian men. Neither antisemitism nor anti-Islamic sentiment is indicated there, nor xenophobia either.

The past seems to be trying to change before our eyes, though. Just as Steyn says.

Sedona

 

Let us probe the silent places,

 

Let us seek what luck betide us;






Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

Mardi Gras

I have a friend out in New Orleans whom I keep intending to visit before he moves on in his life. I'd love to see the parades once in my life, and to celebrate the occasion with him.

Tonight is the last few hours before the beginning of the Great Fast of Lent. One of the tremendously healthy things about the Church is its maintenance of this concept of a yearly fast. Feasting and fasting are both healthy, if they are done in their right hour. Lent is a time to tame passions, to regulate habits, and to reconsider the ways in which you are not living in a virtuous way.

For that reason it can be unpleasant. After all, you are giving up pleasures for a relatively long time, especially if they are habitual pleasures. I'm going to give you Kant's remarks on this matter this year. He was writing against "monkish asceticism," of which I have a different opinion. But he also gives you cause to focus on cheer [Ak. 6:485]:

But such punishment [as asceticism] is a contradiction (because punishment must always be imposed by another); moreover, it cannot produce the cheerfulness that accompanies virtue, but rather brings with it secret hatred for virtue's command. -- Ethical gymnastics, therefore, consists only in combating natural impulses sufficiently to be able to master them when a situation comes up in which they threaten morality; hence it makes one valiant and cheerful in the consciousness of one's restored freedom.

That's a big part of what we are doing in the season in the wilderness: discovering a restored freedom from habits that threaten virtue. As Tex says, the locus of control is the self. For an hour -- for forty days and nights -- we demonstrate it to ourselves.

In doing so, we recover our freedom.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There remains one last feast first. Go enjoy it.

Noli Me Tangere

This video includes a long reflection from Benjamin Franklin on an early symbol and motto adopted by American Marines. But don't forget the older connections: to the national motto of Scotland which gave us the Declaration of Arbroath, and to John 20:17.

Puppet Show

Some of those Clinton emails reveal an interesting relationship with the press.

More from Haidt

I was unaware of how angry he is about the condition of the universities.

JOHN LEO: So you got a lot of attention.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Since Halloween, especially. Look, I graduated from Yale in ’85. Yale is very devoted to social justice. It’s very devoted to affirmative action. Now no place is perfect. But it’s probably among the best places in the country. And to have protesters saying it’s such a thoroughly racist place that it needs a total reformation – they call the protest group ”Next Yale”– they demand “Next Yale”!... And these were not requests. This was not a discussion. This was framed as an ultimatum given to the president – and they gave him I think six days to respond, or else. And I am just so horrified that the president of Yale, Peter Salovey, responded by the deadline. And when he responded, he did not say, on the one hand, the protesters have good points; on the other hand, we also need to guarantee free speech; and, by the way, it’s not appropriate to scream obscenities at professors.

JOHN LEO: Or the threat to one professor: “We know where you live”?

JONATHAN HAIDT: I didn’t even know about that. The president was supposed to be the grown-up in the room. He was supposed to show some wisdom, some balance, and some strength. And so we’ve seen, basically what can really only be called Maoist moral bullying – am we saw it very clearly at Claremont McKenna.... As far as I’m concerned, “Next Yale” can go find its own “Next Alumni.” I don’t plan to give to Yale ever again, unless it reverses course.

JOHN LEO; How did they cut themselves off?

JONATHAN HAIDT: They’re so devoted to social justice, and they have accepted the rule that you can never, ever blame victims, so if a group of victims makes demands, you cannot argue back. You must accept the demands.... Anthro[pology] is completely lost. I mean, it’s really militant activists. They’ve taken the first step towards censoring Israel. They’re not going to have anything to do with Israeli scholars any more. So it’s now – it’s the seventh victim group. For many years now, there have been six sacred groups. You know, the big three are African-Americans, women and LGBT. That’s where most of the action is. Then there are three other groups: Latinos, Native Americans….

JOHN LEO: You have to say Latinx now.

JONATHAN HAIDT: I do not intend to say that. Latinos, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. So those are the six that have been there for a while. But now we have a seventh–Muslims. Something like 70 or 75 percent of America is now in a protected group. This is a disaster for social science because social science is really hard to begin with. And now you have to try to explain social problems without saying anything that casts any blame on any member of a protected group.

Somewhat like myself, he has no obvious recourse to politics -- he says that he no longer considers himself a Democrat, but is horrified by the Republican party as well. Maybe he'll join me in voting for Jim Webb, if he decides to run as an independent. That would make two of us, plus I think Webb has a large family. We could break into the double digits.