Alphas

The Art of Manliness has a post on the subject of alpha wolves. It's insightful.

Popular culture soon took this conception of the alpha wolf, along with the whole alpha vs beta distinction, and applied it to humans — especially men. Hence, the idea that to be an alpha male, you’ve got to take no prisoners, f*** s*** up each and every day, take what’s yours, and never say sorry.

There’s just one problem with this idea.

The research it’s based on turned out to be hugely flawed....


For most of the 20th century, researchers believed that gray wolf packs formed each winter among independent and unrelated wolves that lived near each other. They had reached this conclusion from observing groups of wolves that had been taken from various zoos and thrown together in captivity.

Under these circumstances, researchers observed that wolves would organize the pack hierarchy based on physical aggression and dominance. The alpha male wolf, indeed, was the wolf that kicked ass and took names....

Instead of forming packs of unrelated individuals, in which alphas compete to rise to the top, researchers discovered that wild wolf packs actually consist of little nuclear wolf families. Wolves are in fact a generally monogamous species, in which males and females pair off and mate for life.... by virtue of being parents, and leading their “subordinate” children, the mates represent a pair of “alphas.” The alpha male, or papa wolf, sits at the top of the male hierarchy in the family and the alpha female, or mamma wolf, sits atop the female hierarchy in the family.

In other words, male alpha wolves don’t gain their status through aggression and the dominance of other males, but because the other wolves in the pack are his mate and kiddos. He’s the pack patriarch. The Pater Familias. Dear Old Dad.

And like any good family man, a male alpha wolf protects his family and treats them with kindness, generosity, and love.

I don't know why this wasn't obvious from the beginning, but it should have been. Something about the 20th century really let people buy into some strange notions about the world and how it works. Urbanization? The rise of psychology, with its assumption that our real motivations are hidden and mysterious?

Go to the Wild and you find the truth. You might die, of course. But you'll learn something.

What Did She Say?

During a Thursday discussion in Connecticut on gun violence, Hillary Clinton agreed with an audience member that “joining a gang is like having a family.” Then she suggested an alternative: “positive gangs.”

You mean like a militia?

The Suicide of a Nation

It is not like Vesuvius destroying Pompeii, writes Joel D. Hirst.

No, national suicide is a much longer process – not product of any one moment. But instead one bad idea, upon another, upon another and another and another and another and the wheels that move the country began to grind slower and slower; rust covering their once shiny facades. Revolution – cold and angry. Hate, as a political strategy. Law, used to divide and conquer. Regulation used to punish. Elections used to cement dictatorship. Corruption bleeding out the lifeblood in drips, filling the buckets of a successive line of bureaucrats before they are destroyed, only to be replaced time and again....

In my defense – weak though it may be – I tried to fight the suicide the whole time; in one way or another. I suppose I still do, my writing as a last line of resistance. But like Dagny Taggert I found there was nothing to push against – it was all a gooey mess of resentment and excuses. “You shouldn’t do that.” I have said. And again, “That law will not work,” and “this election will bring no freedom,” while also, “what you plan will not bring prosperity – and the only equality you will find will be in the bread line.” And I was not alone; an army of people smarter than me pointed out publically in journals and discussion forums and on the televisions screens and community meetings and in political campaigns that the result would only be collective national suicide. Nobody was listening.

So I wandered off. I helped Uganda recover after a 25 year civil war – emptying out the camps and getting people back living again. I helped return democracy to Mali, and cemented a national peace process. I wrote three novels. I moved, and moved, and moved again. I loved my wife; we took vacations. We visited Marrakesh, and Cairo, and Zanzibar and Portugal and the Grand Canyon. We had surgeries. I had a son. We taught our son to sit up, to crawl, to walk and to run; to sing and scream and say words like “chlorophyll” and “photosynthesis”. To name the planets one by one, to write his name.

All the while the agonizingly slow suicide continued.

Which nation do you think he means? Read the rest.

Enter the Gladiators

Paglia again:

[College students today have] no sense of the great patterns of world history, the rise and fall of civilisations like Babylon and Rome that became very sexually tolerant, and then fell. If you’ve had no exposure to that, you can honestly believe that ‘There is progress all around us and we are moving to an ideal state of culture, where we all hold hands and everyone is accepted for what they are … and the environment will be pure…’ – a magical utopian view that we are marching to perfection. And the sign of this progress is toleration – of the educated class – for homosexuality, or for changing gender, or whatever.

“To me it’s a sign of the opposite, it’s symptomatic of a civilisation just before it falls: ‘we’ are very tolerant, not passionate, but there are bands of vandals and destroyers circling around the edge of our civilisation who will bring it down.”

As if to further advance the similarity between ourselves and the fall of the Roman Republic, gladiatorial games are set to resume.

Webb on Jackson

A defense of a President recently treated as indefensible:

A product of the Scots-Irish migration from war-torn Ulster into the Appalachian Mountains, his father died before he was born. His mother and both brothers died in the Revolutionary War, where he himself became a wounded combat veteran by age 13.... like other plantation owners such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, owned slaves...

As president, Jackson ordered the removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. This approach, supported by a string of presidents, including Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, was a disaster, resulting in the Trail of Tears where thousands died. But was its motivation genocidal? Robert Remini, Jackson’s most prominent biographer, wrote that his intent was to end the increasingly bloody Indian Wars and to protect the Indians from certain annihilation at the hands of an ever-expanding frontier population. Indeed, it would be difficult to call someone genocidal when years before, after one bloody fight, he brought an orphaned Native American baby from the battlefield to his home in Tennessee and raised him as his son.

Today’s schoolchildren should know and appreciate that Jackson’s July 1832 veto of legislation renewing the charter of the monopolistic Second National Bank prevented the creation of a permanent aristocracy in our country... Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Vernon Louis Parrington called this veto “perhaps the most courageous act in our political history.”

Just as significantly, in November 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union. Jackson put a strong military force in position... Wisely, South Carolina did not call Jackson’s bluff, and civil war was averted for another 28 years.

Once again, I'm sorry to see that Webb didn't do better in the primary. This willingness to stand up for those normally told to shut up and sit down is refreshing.

Trump the End of Conservatism?

I've said before I'll vote for Trump if he's the nominee in order to stop Hillary. Ben Shapiro disagrees with my position.

There is an argument to be made for supporting Trump to stop Hillary. ... Hillary will be a guaranteed horror show, but she’ll be a typical corrupt leftist Democrat we can fight from the outside, not a wild-eyed tyrant with whom we must be forced into alliance. As Alexander Hamilton – you know, the guy from the musical! – once said, “If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.”

He goes on to make the case that by allying ourselves with Trump, we will be complicit in his distortions of the Conservative ethos and the hollowing out of the Conservative movement, which would do more damage than a Hillary presidency.

I don't know if Shapiro's right, or my instinct to oppose Hillary is right, or what. I'm hoping for a contested convention, but I question that as well. Shouldn't the guy with the most votes get the nomination? Do I support the kind of backroom deals I have strongly opposed in the past just to get my preferred result of someone besides Trump?

As the political season grows long, the one thing I am increasingly sure of is that this is possibly the most absurd position we could have found ourselves in.

Write-in campaign for Conan, anyone?

Common Ground for Conservatives

The Intercollegiate Review recently republished Frank S. Meyer's "What All Conservatives Can Agree On". This is from an analysis of the 1964 book What Is Conservatism? which is a collection of essays by Conservative thinkers and which Meyer edited.

He lists the following, though he goes into much more detail in the article:

1. An objective moral order

2. The human person as the center of political and social thought

3. A distaste for the use of state power to enforce ideological patterns upon human beings

4. A rejection of social engineering, or the "planned" society

5. The spirit of the Constitution of the United States as originally conceived, especially the division of powers between state and federal governments and between the three branches of the federal government

6. A devotion to Western civilization and an awareness of the need to defend it

Meyer claims the differences within Conservatism are primarily matters of emphasis. This does seem a good summary to me. Any thoughts?

On Literature

Dana Gioia (pronounced joy-uh), former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and award-winning poet, was interviewed on the Federalist Radio Hour recently. If you are interested in what has happened to the arts in the US over the last 30 years, it's an interesting interview.

Gioia is a bit of a rebel. He has criticized modern poetry as being written by professional poets for professional poets instead of for the culture. In turn, many modern poets have criticized him. He is part of a movement which tends to use traditional rhyme and meter and write to appeal to the average person, in the vein of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

On a related note, Stephanie Cohen at Acculturated writes about schools, teachers, and others who are trying to turn back the tide of eliminating serious literature from the K-12 curriculum.

In the late 1890s, American high school English curricula regularly listed works by Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Alexander Pope, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Daniel Webster, John Milton, William Bryant and Geoffrey Chaucer. Such authors were not just for those headed off to college. Students destined for workrooms—such as those who attended a manual training high school in Denver, Colorado—were still tasked with a similar English curriculum.

Sunday is the Ace of Spades book club day. A number of published authors read AoS, and here they are at the Book Horde. AoS has their own page at Good Reads as well, where you can see what they are currently reading (The Abolition of Man), see the votes for their next book, and, if you join, check out their bookshelf, discussions, etc.

As Breitbart was fond of saying, politics is downstream from culture.

Mattis Rejects Presidential Run, Reminds Us Why We Wanted Him

An excellent address on foreign policy, which shows a clear grasp of the issues entirely absent from the current administration. The man is tempered, serious, rational, and avoids insulting those with whom he disagrees because it isn't necessary. He's right, and they're wrong, and he knows it.

Jerusalem: Massive Greek Fortress Discovered

Now that's good news, I'd have to say.

Forgetfulness

The Feast of St. George

A depiction of the Saint in Jerusalem.

St. George is a martyr, but more famously if less historically certainly a dragonslayer.

There are several stories about George fighting dragons, but in the Western version, a dragon or crocodile made its nest at a spring that provided water to Silene, believed to be modern-day Lcyrene in Libya.

The people were unable to collect water and so attempted to remove the dragon from its nest on several ocassions. It would temporarily leave its nest when they offered it a sheep each day, until the sheep disappeared and the people were distraught.

This was when they decided that a maiden would be just as effective as sending a sheep. The townspeople chose the victim by drawing straws. This continued until one day the princess' straw was drawn.

The monarch begged for her to be spared but the people would not have it. She was offered to the dragon, but before she could be devoured, George appeared. He faced the dragon, protected himself with the sign of the Cross, and slayed the dragon.

After saving the town, the citizens abandoned their paganism and were all converted to Christianity.

Range 15

Probably twenty-five years ago I discovered Joe Bob Briggs, who was at that time on the Movie Channel doing a thing he called "Drive-In Theater." He taught me to appreciate a class of Americana that is sometimes difficult to admire. I can't help but think that this movie, made by Ranger Up and Article 15 clothing, is really perfect for him.

If you want to see it, though, you're going to have to do a little work. Because it is unrated -- and apparently violates so many taboos that they are sure they couldn't get an R rating if they submitted it -- they are distributing it through Tugg. That requires you to find a theater near you where there is a showing scheduled and reserve tickets. The showing will only happen if they sell enough tickets to make it worthwhile, though, so you have to recruit others to come see it with you.

Given that this is a blood-soaked, gory Zombie movie starring foul-mouthed veterans, William Shatner, and Danny Trejo, that might be harder or easier depending on who your friends are.

Ravens of Long Tieng

One of the "Ravens" of the covert war in Laos has just died. Captain Alfred G. Platt, long retired from the Air Force, was awarded the Silver Star as well as other decorations for his service. He was later one of the American Legion Riders, China Post 1.

It's a good moment to remember what these guys did. Here's a documentary about the Ravens.

Prince dead at 57

I suspect most here might identify more with Merle Haggard than Prince, but many folks didn't really know the man very well.  Not that strange, because he was fairly reclusive and not given to self-aggrandizing.  So influential was he, that upon the announcement of his death, MTV did something that they have never done before.  They ceased all ongoing programming and ran wall to wall music videos (apparently, it only takes the death of a music icon who is not David Bowie to get them to play music videos again).

He certainly was an odd man, with bizarre taste in clothing.  But what you may not know is that he was a deeply religious man (Jehovah's Witness).  One who lived with crippling pain resulting from bad hips that he refused to get treated because it would require him to violate his beliefs (JW's don't allow transfusions, and there was no way to do a double hip replacement without them).  While some speak of suffering for their beliefs, he literally did.  And Prince Rogers Nelson (yes, Prince was in fact his given name) was also a rarity in both Minnesota and the music industry.  He was a Republican.  And a fairly conservative one.

There have been many tributes for him over the past 24 hours, but I particularly like this one, and I hope you will too.

Knowing and Horses

One of the pieces that stood out for me in the Vox piece on smugness was the following line:

Knowing that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder.

It occurs to me that there are two ways you can go wrong here. One way is that you could know something that isn't so. Hillary Clinton was just giving a speech on the 'epidemic' of gun violence in America, when in fact gun crime like all violent crime is near an all-time low. It's been cut roughly in half over the last two decades. Still, let's take this statistic as completely accurate for the sake of argument.

The other problem is that you can know this without the knowledge determining a course of action. The author suggests that the knowing realize that such a mathematical proof should determine them to avoid guns. After all, you're then trading a high-percentage threat for a low-percentage threat. That's smart gambling, right?

While I don't know whether or not this figure is really correct, however, I do know that accidental discharges are very dangerous. Crime rates out here in the country are even lower than the national average, although help would be a very long way away if I were to call for it. So, is there any other way to address the dangers of guns without purging guns from my life?

Sure there is. There are lots of ways to limit the dangers of firearms. Of course, the knowing don't know them because actually knowing about guns -- rather than knowing the sexy statistic -- is unfashionable. There are a number of ways to limit the dangers of firearms ownership. For example, you can keep guns and ammunition separate (easily done with, say, an AR-15 whose ammunition comes in detachable magazines). If the firearm is not loaded, it won't go off. Since loading it is the work of a second, you can keep a rifle by your bedside at night and a magazine of ammunition in the nightstand drawer without much sacrificing your ability to bring the rifle to bear if the low-percentage intruder actually does show up.

You can select a single-action revolver as a carry gun instead of a semi-automatic pistol. You can religiously practice the four rules of gun safety, which overlap in such a way that obeying even one of them should reliably prevent tragedy. You can do a lot of things to address the high-percentage danger without sacrificing an option for dealing with the low-percentage danger.

Of course, to do these things you'd have to know the four rules of gun safety, or the difference between single-action revolvers and double-action revolvers (or either and a semi-automatic).

In addition to that, I have another thought, which is that even a utilitarian calculus should take into account the pleasures as well as the pains.

Another thing I know is that riding a motorcycle is not just 30 but 85 times more likely to get you killed than driving a car. Does that mean that the smart play is to purge motorcycles from your life? What about horses? Horses are damn dangerous.

But would you miss out on them?

How much more, then, the joy of being a man of the old fashion? Of being strong, of upholding the weak, of being protector rather than protected? How could you walk away from that at any price?

She Has Worshipers?

It's a strange day when there are two insightful pieces criticizing the left from left-leaning journals. Camille Paglia slams Hillary Clinton supporters in Salon:

As a lifelong Democrat who will be enthusiastically voting for Bernie Sanders in next week’s Pennsylvania primary, I have trouble understanding the fuzzy rosy filter through which Hillary fans see their champion. So much must be overlooked or discounted—from Hillary’s compulsive money-lust and her brazen indifference to normal rules to her conspiratorial use of shadowy surrogates and her sociopathic shape-shifting in policy positions for momentary expedience.

Hillary’s breathtaking lack of concrete achievements or even minimal initiatives over her long public career doesn’t faze her admirers a whit. They have a religious conviction of her essential goodness and blame her blank track record on diabolical sexist obstructionists. When at last week’s debate Hillary crassly blamed President Obama for the disastrous Libyan incursion that she had pushed him into, her acolytes hardly noticed. They don’t give a damn about international affairs—all that matters is transgender bathrooms and instant access to abortion.

She's just getting warmed up, too.

Cop Light Bling

This is arguably the worst music video ever made.

There's a good point, though. Even where it isn't required by law, you should move over and not hit emergency services of any kind when they're operating by the side of the road. As the son of a volunteer fireman who often worked car wrecks, I am grateful that somehow nobody accidentally killed my father when I was growing up.

Tell Us How You Really Feel

I saw one of these signs not too far from the house. If somebody in this neck of the woods will spend $30 to express this sentiment, it's deeply felt.

My favorite political sign this year continues to be this one:

I'm a big fan of the Hillary for Prison signs, too.

Income Flat for Most Americans

Flat for decades, but declining since 2007. The headline is that this explains Trump and Sanders. It's a general problem for someone like Clinton, who is running as the establishment candidate. That's a hard sell right now, even if you didn't have her high personal negatives.

What's more difficult to explain is the delta between President Obama's personal approval ratings, and the right track / wrong track polling. If more than sixty percent of Americans regularly think the country is heading in the wrong direction -- currently over two-thirds -- how is the person normally credited with the greatest personal responsibility for the direction of the nation still about 50/50? George W. Bush's low was 25%, which closely tracked the 23% low for the "right track" figure toward the end of his presidency. You'd expect Barack Obama to be in the same territory. Why isn't he?

If I were to venture a guess, it would be that people aren't telling the truth about how they feel about his performance. Perhaps many people aren't even telling the truth to themselves.

A Very Good Piece from Vox

No irony here, and no sarcasm. This is a self-critical look that deserves respect for its clear-sightedness. If we had more of this reflectiveness, we would have a better political culture.

Skippy's List

I can't believe this has never been linked here. (Maybe I just couldn't find it.) So, without further ado, here is a link to and brief excerpt of the "List of 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the US Army."

Explanations of these events:
a) I did myself, and either got in trouble or commended. (I had a Major shake my hand for the piss bottle thing, for instance.)
b) I witnessed another soldier do it. (Like the Sergeant we had, that basically went insane, and crucified some dead mice.)
c) Was spontaneously informed I was not allowed to do. (Like start a porn studio.)
d) Was the result of a clarification of the above. (“What about especially patriotic porn?”)
e) I was just minding my own business, when something happened. (“Schwarz…what is *that*?” said the Sgt, as he pointed to the back of my car? “Um….a rubber sheep…I can explain why that’s there….”)

To explain how I’ve stayed out of jail/alive/not beaten up too badly….. I’m funny, so they let me live.

The 213 Things….

2. My proper military title is “Specialist Schwarz” not “Princess Anastasia”.

7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.
8. Not allowed to add pictures of officers I don’t like to War Criminal posters. [He was an illustrator in a Psyop unit ... ]

33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.
34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.
35. Not allowed to sing “High Speed Dirt” by Megadeth during airborne operations. (“See the earth below/Soon to make a crater/Blue sky, black death, I’m off to meet my maker”)
36. Can’t have flashbacks to wars I was not in. (The Spanish-American War isn’t over).

83. Must not start any SITREP (Situation Report) with “I recently had an experience I just had to write you about….”

202. Despite the confusing similarity in the names, the “Safety Dance” and the “Safety Briefing” are never to be combined.
203. “To conquer the earth with an army of flying monkeys” is a bad long term goal to give the re-enlistment NCO.

205. Don’t write up false gigs on a HMMWV PMCS. (“Broken clutch pedal”, “Number three turbine has frequent flame-outs”, “flux capacitor emits loud whine when engaged”)

Texas to Talk Secession

It's an increasingly reasonable idea, which explains its increasing visibility. Just consider the possibility of a Clinton victory in November and its effect on the Supreme Court, which would mean the death of the Constitution as an instrument limiting Federal authority. Would you want out of a union governed by an unlimited Federal government?

Well, maybe not: resistance is still possible through impeachment, which can reach Supreme Court Justices as well as Presidents. Likewise, resistance is possible through state-driven Constitutional conventions.

All that said, escape would look like an increasingly attractive option for anyone who could manage it.

Another Lose/Lose Proposition on Clinton Emails

This should be fun.

In a motion filed Tuesday, attorneys for Vice News reporter Jason Leopold formally protested the classified declaration the FBI filed offering U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss additional details about the ongoing FBI investigation into how classified information wound up on Clinton's private server, which hosted the personal email account she used in lieu of a government one during her four years as secretary of state.

Leopold's attorneys argue that the Justice Department violated normal legal protocol by failing to seek advance permission from the court or notice to the other side before filing the unusual "ex parte" pleading.

"Because Defendant submitted the declaration ex parte for in camera review without prior permission from the Court, or opportunity for Plaintiff to be heard, there is no public record justifying the need for such secrecy of the portions that are not classified, or for the court to rule on the lawfulness of the Defendant’s nondisclosure," lawyers Jeffrey Light and Ryan James wrote.

The protest gained some traction late Wednesday afternoon when Moss ordered the Justice Department to file publicly a redacted copy of the secret filing or "show cause why" that isn't possible. He gave the government until April 26 to do that.

So, either the Justice Department has to prove that classified information was indeed present... or it has to provide an account of why it would be too damaging to show it in open court. That should make it really fun when it comes time to explain why they aren't prosecuting her.

Boom of the Month Club

A great idea for the man who has everything, but can always use more ammo for it.

Fauxcahontas on Mrs. Clinton

Oh, the humanity.

No, Of Course We Can't Compromise

But if we could, pretty much every Republican would be OK with this. Even as a Democrat of the Jacksonian faction, I have to say that I can see some virtues in this proposed design.

How Much Astroturf is Out There?

A woman named Candace Owens accuses the "Gamergate" fantastic duo of staging a "sexist, racist" attack on her. If she's telling the truth about her evidence, and I have no way of knowing one way or the other, she's got a strong case.

Men, Misogyny, and Gaming. Retrospectively, that was the one thing that was apparent in every single message I received, even down to the e-mail addresses used... My initial suspicion was that Zoe perhaps tipped the gaming community off and they were now coming down on us: hard. However I exited that suspicion when I received this anonymous e-mail that morning, alerting me of a 4chan.org planned attack to debunk our kickstarter efforts... It was another male. He was tipping me off, and simultaneously threatening me against continuing our campaign. He said he “wasn’t doing it to warn [me]”, and yet clearly, “he” was. But that wasn’t what stood out to me.... What stood out to me was the fact that this e-mail came in to my personal e-mail address.... which I had only given to Zoe when she reached out to me via twitter.

The argument here is that a few people -- perhaps as many as twenty -- are operating a vast network of fake online identities. It looks like the ringleaders portray themselves as radical feminists, but the fake identities they're leveraging are presented as men. Men who are racist, sexist, and hateful. Men who, in other words, exemplify the charges being raised against 'men' by these same women.

I see a lot of stories like this via InstaPundit, whom I assume is raising them for the same reason I'm raising this one -- not to assert that this kind of thing is the usual condition, but to ask how common it is. How many of these claims of oppression are created by the very people claiming to be oppressed to justify their narrative?

Some, obviously. Not all of them, equally obviously. The fact that we're asking the question raises the danger of the availability heuristic: are we overestimating the incidence because, now that we're looking for it, we're seeing it everywhere? The legitimate cases we're not looking for are still out there, but at the moment these cases we're looking for are prominent in our minds.

Candace Owens thinks she has a solution, at least a partial one.

The Founders and the Shadows

In popular history, clandestine operations, and their control by the executive, are a cancerous growth that began in the 20th century with the so-called “imperial presidency” and the rise of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. This is fiction. Unfortunately, this fairy tale account of American history is gospel in far too many quarters. It was accepted as fact by the Church Committee in the 1970s, resurrected again in the majority report of the Iran-Contra Committee in 1987, and now finds renewed life on the libertarian right. As Jefferson noted, for the founders, the “laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger,” overrode traditional standards of conduct or any written law.

USMC: Actually, Women Won't Have To Do Pull-Ups

Back in the Grand Old Days of Commandant Amos -- you know, 2012 -- the Corps was going to do away with special tests for women. Women wouldn't have to do as many pull-ups as men to get as good a score (and promotions are based in part on PFT scores). But they would have to do at least three pull-ups to stay in the Marines.

Now, well, no.

The plan never made it off the ground, though. Data collected in 2013 found that 55 percent of female recruits couldn’t meet the minimum requirement. A study of 318 female Marines found that the women could complete 1.63 pullups on average. Roughly 20 percent of those Marines could only hit three pullups if they used their lower bodies in a[n illegal] "kipping" motion....

“I think this is a great way to implement the change as it gives an incentive to increase a score without the fear of failing the PFT," Col. Robin Gallant, II Marine Expeditionary Force’s comptroller, said of the proposal. "As women work on them to increase their score, they can be confident that they won't fail a PFT. I think this is a huge benefit and I'm glad it might become a reality."

It is a huge benefit to whom, exactly? To the Corps? Or to those women who can't meet the minimum standards that we were assured would never be lowered? I can see how it's a huge benefit to them to remove the danger of them failing just because they can't pass the test.

Doctor Jones, Call Your Office

A major step forward in Chinese history and philosophy, thanks to tomb robbers adventurous archaeology.

Waco, Plus Badges

A huge difference in this deadly clash between motorcycle clubs -- one of them, the Iron Order, is a police-oriented club. The clash was broken up without recourse to rifles, which could be explained by any number of factors.

Less easy to explain away: the DA is declining to file any charges against the Iron Order members who started the fight and fired the first shot.

UPDATE: Denver PD asked for first degree murder charges, DA refused.

Quit Describing Her Accurately!

On the heels of yesterday's journalist asking Bernie Sanders if he isn't making Donald Trump's argument by telling the truth about Hillary Clinton's campaign financing, the Wall Street Journal points out that the effect of Sanders' critique is to paint Clinton as a uniquely corrupt figure according to Democratic Party standards. They are the party of campaign finance reform. If Clinton and Trump win their respective nominations (which is still far from certain, especially since we have yet to hear from the FBI), they will be taking an electorate that sees corporate money as the root of all evil into an election with the worst possible standard-bearer. How do you ask the committed progressives and liberals, as opposed to the patronage racketeers, to vote for the very emblem of Being In The Pocket of Wall Street?

It's having an effect. Trump is further ahead among Republicans than Clinton is among Democrats -- she's under the 50 percent mark in a two-person race, and it's tightening.

UPDATE: Not that she's doing Herself any favors with her inaccurate descriptions, either.

UPDATE: The New York Post is claims she's lowering expectations.

Priorities

From the Duffel Blog:

“When he said the name ‘Operation Hajji Stomp,’ you could have heard a pin drop in the briefing room,” said one officer present at the meeting. “The BC [battalion commander] lost his... mind, screaming about local sensibilities and a complete lack of understanding for basic human decency. It was pretty bad.”

Generational Appropriation!

Actually, when you put it that way, you realize that this is the only way we ever raise children who aren't complete barbarians. If kids didn't steal from their parents, we'd have to start civilization over from scratch in every generation. Maybe that 'cultural appropriation' thing is similarly valuable?



A tip from the comments: up the playback speed to 1.25 and hear the difference between rockabilly and psychobilly.

Waco Update

According to this source, 13 of 16 entrance wounds in the Twin Peaks "biker shootout" case were in the .22 caliber range. Well, .22 caliber -- or 5.56mm, the chambering of the rifles the police were using.

The interpretation is that the police shot almost everyone. That's a stronger claim than I've heard from the ballistics so far, but one that has been corroborated by witness accounts. Of course, the witnesses were all arrested, and face felony terms just for being there -- even the ones who didn't have a gun or shoot a round, given that the prosecution has decided to prosecute this as an organized criminal 'association.'

We Like Our Time Out Here

Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Act To Get Vote in the House

Not Senator Cruz's bill, but the House version of the legislation looks like it might get a vote according to Uncle J.

American relations with the Brotherhood date, by the way, to the Eisenhower administration. President Obama's apparent view is that the Bush administration screwed things up by turning against the Brotherhood. I wonder what effect the law would have if passed with enough votes to overturn the obviously-forthcoming veto?

Brazil: The Future of America?

As we watch the Brazilian impeachment proceedings -- if you missed it, the lower house voted for impeachment by a larger-than-expected margin -- it's interesting to note how similar the South American nation looks to the evolving United States model. The Washington Post has decided to name the sides "pro-government" and "pro-impeachment," although the impeachment is being voted by a part of the government. In a way, their naming convention makes sense. On the one side, there are those for whom government is something they want more of in their lives. They are, as here, mostly ethnic and racial minorities -- plus women, who are disproportionately likely to think of the government as an engine for voting themselves benefits that will ease their lives.

On the other side are people for whom the real issue is that the government is totally corrupt. For them, and they like here are mostly white, the real issue with the government is trying to get it to stop engaging in a benefits-and-patronage racket. They think that impeachment is important as part of a reform process, with the hope of crafting a new government that does less but more lawfully. Of course they are the ones, their opponents would point out, for whom the system tends to work.

I was left thinking of the interview Bernie Sanders recently gave in which the journalists asked him if he wasn't making Donald Trump's argument by pointing out that Hillary Clinton has accepted all this oil money. No, he said, he is complaining that the system is corrupt. If that makes Clinton corrupt, then almost every politician in America is corrupt.

Just as in Brazil. And just as in Brazil, for many -- Clinton's faithful legions of voters -- that fact is wholly beside the point. Corruption is just another way of transferring benefits and graft to supporters. Who cares if it's done through legal means or shady ones? What matters is that the benefits flow.

How depressing.

Cultural Appropriation!

Kenya sings country. They're no Merle Haggard, but it's not the worst set of covers I've ever heard.

The Good Lord Giveth and Uncle Sam Taketh Away

The 9th

So, I can't remember quite how I came to this, except that I wanted to hear the Ode to Joy. This is the first time I've seen it represented in English among the singing. I'm sure it's been done before, but I didn't ever think to look up what the words meant.

They are right to make much of the fact that Beethoven shared this without ever having heard it. I notice how the chorus sits there, silent, for an hour. The orchestra is spent, worked through all their paces. It is a majestic symphony well before any of them stand up to sing. And then a man stands up and says above the orchestra: 'No, not these sounds -- something better, and more joyous.'

"A British Politician Said..."

The headline would have been much more informative if it had begun, "Nigel Farage said.."

Didn't a couple of those other Presidents actually fight wars against the British, though?

BreachBangClear: Eating Tacos is Racist

On the scourge of cultural appropriation, with special guests the Three Amigos.

So, I kinda get where the people complaining about this are coming from. I think the real issue isn't the adoption of cultural mores or values, though, but only "appropriation" in the sense of making a mockery of them. Southern cuisine in my lifetime has been much improved by sharing with Mexican cuisine, which I don't view as 'appropriation' but as a very valid and appropriate sort of learning-from-each-other. Texas' excellence is in part a function of the way in which Anglo and Mexican cultures have rubbed up against each other, and rubbed off on each other, for a long time.

On the other hand, I'm not actually all that offended by the genuine 'appropriation.' I find it a little pathetic, at most. Sometimes, the attempts can really be deeply amusing.



These Swedes don't really understand any of the symbols they're leveraging, but you can tell that they're really excited about them. If you are Native American, you might be offended by the appropriation of the hoop dance. But maybe not: maybe you, like me, would find it too laughable to be genuinely offensive.

To be fair, the defenders of the idea that this sort of thing is deeply wrong would say that I am freer to find it funny because there's no power relationship between me and Sweden. Native Americans, or Mexicans, have more to fear from having their symbols appropriated by powerful white cultures. That's the argument, although it's a little attenuated: the Swedes aren't any more dangerous to the Navajo than they are to me, not really. You have to elide them into a group called "whites" for the argument to make any sort of sense. But if we're all one culture, we 'whites,' how could it be that they so clearly don't understand the white American cultural markers they're trying to leverage either? That argument doesn't really make sense.

UPDATE: Related: Apparently the standard for what constitutes a "physical attack" has changed since I was younger.

"Is ‘Higher Education for All’ Based on a Lie?"

Well, yes.

Nietzsche worried that universities would become glorified trade schools focused on skills training that served only the state. He also claimed that Germany’s higher-education system was also coddling young people in to a false belief about their uniqueness. German Gymnasien teachers encouraged their students to express themselves in their essays and university professors shied away from embracing models of excellence.

Education... is about discipline, about subordination to models of excellence that exceed the self. In his bombastic and over-the-top rhetoric, the philosopher describes a pedagogical system that was increasingly anxious about acknowledging this and instead peddled the lie that all students were equally capable.

In case you thought Nietzsche was wrong about everything.

What is the Purpose of America?

There was a reason this country came to be, with the particular political order it had. States were an important part of that vision. The author seems to object to their continued importance because they complicate central planning of the economy. Is having a centrally planned economy an important part of the American vision? It seems to me that the resistance to a centrally planned economy in America was an important protector of the liberty, the protection of which I take to be the real purpose of the government. That the states frustrate central planning is evidence of their continued importance, it seems to me.

Violating Taboos

The Washington Post discusses a study in which teenage boys who play games that include killing women become less sympathetic towards women who are portrayed to them as real-life victims of violence.

In the "Grand Theft Auto" series, one of the world’s top-selling video game franchises, players can have sex with women and then kill them....

[A] team of social scientists asked a group of Italian high school students to play one of three kinds of games: one that rewarded violence against women ("Grand Theft Auto"), one that promoted violence without degrading women (a portion of the "Half Life" series) or one that featured good, clean fun (a pinball or puzzle sequence).

After participants played their game for about 25 minutes, they answered questions about how they felt about on-screen characters. Did they identify with the mobster in "Grand Theft Auto?" Did they connect with the alien-battling scientist in "Half Life?"

The researchers then showed each student a photo of a bruised girl who, they said, had been beaten by a boy. They asked: On a scale of one to seven, how much sympathy do you have for her?

The male students who had just played "Grand Theft Auto" — and also related to the protagonist — felt least bad for her, the study found, with an empathy mean score of 3. Those who had played the other games, however, exhibited more compassion. And female students who played the same rounds of Grand Theft Auto had a mean empathy score of 5.3.

What researchers seem to be ignoring in this study is that there is a very strong Western taboo against violence targeting women. We have special laws to protect women against violence even though almost all violent crime is against men. We treat the relatively rare instances in which women are victims as especially bad, from a moral and legal perspective.

Ask the question another way: how much violence in video games do you suppose is targeted against men? My guess is that the answer is "far and away most of it," which the #2 position being held not by women but by monsters -- aliens and zombies and whatnot.

If you work against that taboo by encouraging young men to think of women as legitimate targets for violence, you can expect that some of the protection that women enjoy from violence is going to wane. Presumably these social scientists want you to know that video games like GTA are very bad because they allow young men to treat objects represented as women as legitimate targets for violence.

The dark irony is that these same people are, of course, the ones pushing for women in the infantry.

They're the ones who want co-ed boot camp, where young Marines and Soldiers will train in conducting physical violence not against virtual images of women but actual young women.

They're the ones who want to break sex down into "gender," and then tell you it's not real but just some sort of social construct. We should treat men and women exactly the same, unless it's a man who wants to be treated like a woman, in which case we should make special efforts to make sure he feels we receive him as feminine.

But yeah, tell me again how horrible the video games are. Tell me how sexist it is that they expose virtual women to violence, just like they do virtual men.

I'd be only too happy to endorse a taboo that protects virtual women from being depicted as objects for violence. I'd just like to see the same courtesy extended to actual women.

"Some Observers Have Not Ruled Out"

Interesting phrasing.

Insurers say they are losing money on their ObamaCare plans at a rapid rate, and some have begun to talk about dropping out of the marketplaces altogether....

While analysts expect the market to stabilize once premiums rise and more young, healthy people sign up, some observers have not ruled out the possibility of a collapse of the market, known in insurance parlance as a “death spiral.”

"Some observers" apparently means almost all of us, and "have not ruled out the possibility of" means "completely expect."

Pinky & the Brain read Pulp Fiction

Tar-And-Feathers Day

If you're inclined to view April 15th as a fit occasion to reconsider the Sons of Liberty's approach to excise men, Gadsden & Culpepper have your shirt on sale.

Would You Pay Extra For American-Made?

In addition to Allahpundit's points, I wonder how the poll would have looked if it had been framed toward the majority of people in this country for whom even $50 is an outlandish price for a pair of pants. It's hard for me to imagine much of America outside of the coastal cities ever drops that kind of cash on jeans. Would I pay $85 for a pair of pants made in America? No. Would I pay $50 for a pair of pants made in America? No. I typically buy my jeans at the thrift store, where I pay ten bucks or less for them. I'm planning to wear them out quick with hard work and play, so I don't think of them as an investment into which I'm prepared to sink much money.

Apparently 30% of respondents to the poll said they'd pay the eighty-five bucks to wear American-made jeans, though.

Take Care of the Roots of Liberty

An extended argument about the roots of our Constitutional law that is just the kind I appreciate: one that attempts a deep understanding of the pre-American British history out of which the Constitution grew.

Solidarity, Baby.

Workers of the world, unite!

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders paid an impromptu visit to a Verizon workers’ picket line in Brooklyn on Wednesday after being endorsed by New York City transit workers as he tried to wrest a bit of union support from rival Hillary Clinton.

The Brooklyn-born Sanders addressed an enthusiastic crowd of striking workers from Verizon Communications Inc as “brothers and sisters” and thanked them for their courage in standing up to what he characterized as corporate greed.

It was a scene tailor-made for the U.S. senator from Vermont, who has focused on income inequality in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders is trying to catch up with Clinton, the front-runner, in Tuesday’s primary in New York, a state both candidates have called home.

Workers cheered as Sanders criticized the mammoth communications company for wanting to take away health benefits, outsource jobs and avoid federal income taxes, calling it “just another major American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans.”

Popcorn.

"Sexual Racism"

So, as you may know from being exposed to left-leaning American culture, your sexuality is the single most important way in which you express your life and identity. Nothing is more important about you than the way in which you choose to love -- they mean physically love -- others. In no way can you be criticized for choosing to love many people ("No slut-shaming!") or few people ("Respect asexuals!"), members of the same sex or of the opposite sex or both (though you may be criticized for still speaking as if there were "two" sexes).

However, an important distinction has been discovered: you can be criticized for being racist in your sexuality.

Christian Rudder, co-founder of OKCupid, looked at data on online dating — who people messaged, who they matched with, who they responded to, and so on — and found a few patterns. "There is kind of a systemic racial bias pretty much in every dating site I've ever looked at," he said. "We found that 82 percent of non-black men have some bias against black women. … And Asian men get the fewest messages and the worst ratings of any group of guys."

So now if you want to be virtuous, you really need to be sexually active with people of various different "races." Tell your spouse it's in the service of morality.

If this follows the pattern of other innovations in civil rights, we will next hear that we are to be criticized for being selective based on our preference for same- or opposite-sexed partners. To be a really moral person, you need to sleep with everyone equally.

What could possibly go wrong in such an enlightened system?

Lois Lerner, Call Your Office

What could go wrong with this brilliant plan?

Clinton & the Kremlin

The "Panama Papers" reveal a possible Russian intelligence connection to some of Clinton's top bundlers. It's smoke rather than fire, of course: the bank only sometimes handles funding for Russian intelligence operations, and even if they have bribed or suborned Clinton's bundlers that doesn't mean she herself is suborned.

Nevertheless, it raises important questions given Clinton's handling of things like foreign weapons sales to governments that donated heavily to the Clinton foundation, or transmission of national security secrets in the clear on an unsecured private email server. If I were an investigative journalist, I'd be very inclined to dig right here.

RIP "Dewey" Clarridge

I don't know how many of you know the name, but he was a man. I had the honor to know him, and will miss him. We were quite different in age, but he was a friend of mine.

Back on Station

I realize I've been gone for a while, with a minor break about half a week ago. I'm back now, and should be on station for a bit.

Building Your Own Echo Chamber

In which a progressive is shocked by support for the NRA, and somehow realizes why.

DB: Pentagon "Pretty Sure" It Can Ditch FM 3-24

How much of this is satire?

The Pentagon’s top spokesperson said he was “pretty sure” the military could ditch the manual used for counterinsurgency, since it plans to fight all future wars against conventional armies that wear uniforms and use known tactics.

“Listen, COIN is over,” spokesperson Col. Steve Warren said. “There’s really no possibility that terrorists will some day take over large swaths of areas of the Middle East and quickly change their tactics against a conventional foe they are fighting.”

“We need to pivot to the Pacific already,” he added...

“We don’t know where or when our next war might be, but we can be pretty sure it won’t be in Iraq or Afghanistan, because, well, despite tens of thousands of troops fighting in those countries, those don’t technically count as wars.”

A new church building

Our new church building is going to be beautiful after all--all it took was for the old architect to retire.  We lucked out in our new one.

More on Merle

A little late to the RIP-fest:

Nothing Says 'Girl's Empowerment' Like A Headscarf You'll Be Beaten for Not Wearing

Sesame Street's heart is in the right place, no doubt. And, in truth, a hijab is downright "feminist" in the context of Afghanistan, where the conservatives insist on a full burqa if women are not to be beaten or executed.

Still... c'mon.

Some Democrats Have That Fantasy, Too

Headline: "Hillary Clinton Mocks ‘Republican Fantasy’ That She’ll Be Put In Handcuffs."

Drinking water

Via Maggie's Farm, a promising development in producing fresh water from saltwater.

"Look, I'm Just Like You!"

Who raised this woman? I've know six-year-olds who could pour a better beer. Teaching them how is one of those things a man is supposed to do. It goes with the other common-sense teachings you learn at that age.

The True and the Beautiful

Claire Berlinski is trying to understand the collapse of architectural standards in Paris after the Second World War. (H/t: Instapundit.)

I need to make the case that my judgments about this aren’t arbitrary. I’m saying something more objective about beauty than, “I like building A but I don’t like building B.” So I need to start with a robust theory of aesthetics. Here’s what I need it to do:

It needs to be able to tell us, in some detail, why Building A is more beautiful than Building B. These principles should be broadly applicable to all buildings.

It would be useful to show that these principles may broadly be applied to the idea of “beauty,” generally.

I’d like to explore the idea that it’s at least reasonable to associate “the beautiful” and “the morally good.”

This point must be based on evidence, the nature of which must be defined. So, for example, I want to look at the criminogenic quality of ugly buildings, and the way people tend to get sick and die sooner when they live in and among them.

I've never been to Paris, so I can't speak with much authority on the beauty of the buildings there. However, I can tell her why the beautiful and the good used to be thought connected. Here is an old post:

Htom asked for a break to put his thoughts in order before we reconvened on the subject of levels of reality -- that is, whether a thing can be "more real" than another. Here's St. Augustine on the subject:

Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: "We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!" And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was thou, O Lord, who madest these things. Thou art beautiful; thus they are beautiful. Thou art good, thus they are good. Thou art; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as thou their Creator art. Compared with thee, they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to thee. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with thy knowledge.

That gives us two 'levels' of reality: God, and creation. The original claim of Mark Twain's suggested that a human creation could -- if it were also true and beautiful -- be "more real" than other things that were part of God's creation.

Confer with Tolkien's idea of sub-creation, and his creation myth in the Silmarillion. Human nature has a capacity to seize upon the True and the Beautiful as they are in other things. We can separate them intellectually from the things they are in, and think about why they are beautiful. We can take things that are imperfectly beautiful, and imagine how to make them more so. We can, in our arts, make them actually more beautiful.

The Twain discussion tracks to this earlier post, and this one. Twain's subject was Wagner's opera, which he criticized intensely -- but his admission undoes all the criticism.

If you can make art that is more real than nature, then you are refining something found in the natural world. That is what Aristotle suggests art exists to do: to perfect the natures of things. You start with the good in the world, and perfect it. Nature might provide shelter in a cave. Men taking shelter in such caves made them places for worship by decorating their walls with other beautiful scenes found in nature. Such a cave begins to be improved by being made more perfect, and thus -- this was Twain's insight -- more real.

A cathedral is just an artificial cave, in a way. Notre Dame is more real because it is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it more perfectly realizes the goods that it was brought into being to serve.

Break: Goodnight, Merle

A sad day for the nation. I'd say for 'the country,' but this is no time for puns.











I'm sorry to see him go. He was one of the last of the Outlaw Country greats.

UPDATE: I don't know if this story about Merle's last show is true. However, it is coherent with this news report about that show.

UPDATE: A young Merle Haggard does impressions of the singers who were great in those days.

Merle Haggard, RIP

Merle Hazard

I don't even know what to say about this ...

Hat tip to Greg Mankiw.

Kolejka

This game came up in a discussion on another site, and I thought the Hall would enjoy it.

Here's the description from Amazon:

Kolejka -- Queue -- Boardgame

by Instytut Pamici Narodowej

Get in a queue with your family in front of a store and experience a rush of genuine emotions! The board game Kolejka (a.k.a. Queue) tells a story of everyday life in Poland at the tail-end of the Communist era.

The players' task appears to be simple: They have to send their family members out to various stores on the game board to buy all the items on their shopping list. The problem is, however, that the shelves in the five neighborhood stores are empty.

The players line up their pawns in front of the shops without knowing which shop will have a delivery. Tension mounts as the product delivery cards are uncovered and it turns out that there will be enough product cards only for the lucky few standing closest to the door of a store. Since everyone wants to be first, the queue starts to push up against the door. To get ahead, the people in the queue use a range of queuing cards, such as 'Mother carrying small child', 'This is not your place, sir', or 'Under-the-counter goods'. But they have to watch out for 'Closed for stocktaking', 'Delivery error', and for the black pawns the speculators standing in the queue. Only those players who make the best use of the queuing cards in their hand will come home with full shopping bags.

On the product cards are photos of sixty original objects from the Communist era. The merchandise includes Relaks shoes, Przemysawka eau de cologne, and Popularna tea, as well as other commodities that were once in scarce supply.

The neighborhood also has an outdoor market but the prices there are steep unless, of course, you manage to strike a deal with the market trader. In this realistic game you really have to be savvy to get the goods. Are you brave enough to confront the everyday life of the 1980s?

Appropriately, the game is only available from 3rd party sellers and the lowest price is currently $473.46.

On the Road

Gone walkabout for a few days. Should be back late this week.

Pokey LaFarge's Tiny Desk Concert

Political Correctness as the End of Moral Relativism

So, we usually talk about PC as an outgrowth of moral relativism: you can't criticize any other culture without causing offense because you can't suggest that any culture is better than another. A new article in the Atlantic says that, actually, that's a perfectly serviceable non-relative ethic by itself. The harsh punishments of pro-PC activists are an enforcement of a non-relative ethic against the non-PC.

The subjective morality of yesterday has been replaced by an ethical code that, if violated, results in unmerciful moral crusades on social media.

A culture of shame cannot be a culture of total relativism. One must have some moral criteria for which to decide if someone is worth shaming....

This system is not a reversion to the values that conservatives may wish for. America’s new moral code is much different than it was prior to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Instead of being centered on gender roles, family values, respect for institutions and religious piety, it orbits around values like tolerance and inclusion. (This new code has created a paradoxical moment in which all is tolerated except the intolerant and all included except the exclusive.)

Well, except no: the most intolerant and exclusive brands of all can travel under this flag, because they can claim to have been not tolerated or excluded by some previous authority. It remains an anti-Western Western philosophy, a West that blinds itself like Oedipus out of horror at its past sins. In that blindness, it now can see nothing except the ever-cycling vision of the old sins playing out again against the mind's eye.

What happens outside of that mental torture chamber is none of its proper concern.

Fatal Design Flaw in SCAR

Funker530 has video of a professional attempting to reproduce the failure.

The Stanford Review Demands Change

From their first of April issue.

Insh'Odin

Satellite images uncover second Viking settlement in North America.

21 Generals for 5,000 Troops?

There's a politically incorrect phrase we used to use to describe this setup. Something to do with 'chiefs' and 'Indians.' Now, I don't want to fail to respect our Native American brothers and sisters, but I can't help but think of the phrase when I read a report like this.

Exclusive: 21 Generals Lead ISIS War the U.S. Denies Fighting

There are only 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq—about what a colonel usually commands. But for this ISIS war, as many as 21 generals have been deployed. Why?

How does anyone get anything done with that much brass? Well, maybe that's why we somehow aren't winning. I've known a couple of Brigade Commanders who could have cleaned this up, if you gave them their head.

Another Reason to Value Being Long-Married

Cosmopolitan invites four young women to talk with their boyfriends about guns. "Almost all of the boyfriends believe they have the right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment, but their girlfriends don't see it that way."



My favorite is the one who just cannot imagine why anyone would want to own a "death machine." Her boyfriend says, well, you know, you drive a car and they kill just as many people (and about three times as often by accident! More than two thirds of gun deaths are suicides).

I suppose I would have said, "In fact I own many death machines. Wait until you meet my motorcycle."

If she was the sort to really mind saddling up on a death machine, she'd have moved on long before we got to the conversation about guns.

Still, I feel bad for these young guys having to negotiate dating in an environment like this one.



Well, maybe I don't feel too bad for them. It's a hard ride, but at least some of them seem to be working it out.

Did the Hall see this?

This has got to be one of the most amazing stories of wartime survival I have ever read.  Please do yourself a favor and take some time to read the amazing story of a British WWII RAF veteran.

The Dramatic Exception to Nondiscrimination?

Many years ago when I was a teenager, I saw a version of Hamlet with a black actor in one of the leading roles. Knowing that the film was set in Medieval Denmark, I had a moment of being jarred out of the suspension of disbelief necessary for effective drama. However, I made the mental effort to thrust the issue aside and found no problem enjoying the play. Such casting has apparently now become common, and the reaction of viewers is now standard: we have decided not to care.

In fact, it turns out that Medieval Denmark -- if it were much like Medieval England -- probably did have a certain number of people of color in it. Several of the Round Table knights turn out to have been, a fact missed because the Medieval authors didn't make a big deal about it. It apparently wasn't that remarkable.

Nevertheless, one can see that the suspension of disbelief is a real issue for dramatic works. More than that, if a play is really partially about race, the dramatic vision of the whole could make it valid to cast certain roles in a certain way. It might be interesting to do a version of Roots or Tarantino's Django with racial casting reversed, but it makes a certain sense to play the casting straight. I'm not sure it would make sense to fail to take race into account at all: while reversing casting would make a point, you would lose something important to the drama if you gave the sense that race was of no importance in the time period being portrayed. It is the centrality of racism that is the issue, and casting has to reflect that somehow.

I'm thinking about this because the Hamilton musical has come under fire for a casting call asking for only "non-white" actors. There's a question about whether the law can support race-based casting. That's a separate question from whether or not it makes any sense to try to put on a play set in a particular time and place that doesn't take audience expectations into account -- either to smooth suspension of disbelief, or to challenge their preconceptions.

It seems as if the artistic concerns are valid, but they may be illegal. If they were illegal, should there be a nondiscrimination exception for art?

"Oops"

After what the DNC is calling an "error," Bernie Sanders is not on the DC ballot.

There are only 20 delegates at stake, as I understand it. On the other hand, the race is tightening, and Bernie Sanders has passed Clinton in the overall lead among registered Democrats.

As disappointing as this year has been, I think I could be satisfied with almost any outcome that puts paid to the Clinton machine.

UPDATE: From a usually reliable Clinton supporter, Ezra Klein:

[T]he Clinton campaign has come up with the argument that Sanders has somehow crossed a line with his negative campaigning.... This is flatly absurd. The Democratic primary — including the debates — has been substantive and respectful. Sanders has, at times, bent over backward to run a positive race, as when he refused to hound Clinton over her emails. If any candidate has ever proven himself a fair and courteous adversary, it's Sanders. The mockery Sanders's supporters are throwing at Clinton is entirely merited.

This is the Clinton campaign at its worst. The argument isn't just false, it also insults the intelligence of voters.

No one ever went broke doing that.

Knights Templar Cleared of Blasphemy

Seven hundred years ago, the Knights Templar were convicted of blasphemy by the French and the leadership of the order was executed. Historians tend to believe that the real issue was the rich property belonging to the military order, which the French government was then able to claim.

Now, for the first time, the Papal inquiry into the trial is being revealed to the public. The Pope, it turns out, cleared the order of the charges against it. However, he went along with disbanding it for political reasons.

Interesting timing, publicly clearing the old Crusader order at an hour in which many in Europe seem to wish they had them back.

Conan Lives!

Robert E. Howard's conceit for the Conan stories -- and, in fact, for most of his stories -- was that what we take to be the rise of civilization was really a very late period. Civilizations we have never dreamed of had risen and fallen, since before the oceans drank Atlantis.

More and more, it looks like he was right.

Writing did not arrive in this part of Europe for another 2,000 years, so it’s a mystery as to who was fighting whom. A full DNA analysis has yet to be completed, but evidence from teeth indicates that this was no local struggle. Instead, the chemical composition of the teeth show that the men came from many different parts of Europe, some from hundreds of miles away.

One hypothesis suggests that bands of warriors were brought together for a common purpose, in the same way warbands came together in the story of siege of Troy.

But what’s really startling historians is that nobody knew North European society was this organized, stratified and warlike so early in history. One researcher told Science magazine “if you fight with body armor and helmet and corselet, you need daily training or you can’t move. … This kind of training is the beginning of a specialized group of warriors.”

An elite warrior class can only exist if someone else is growing the warriors' food and making their weapons and tools. That suggests a degree of hitherto unsuspected stratification of Bronze Age society.

Let me tell you of the days of high adventure.

Scalia: A Failed Democracy

Via D29, an argument from the late Antonin Scalia:

[W]e got to U.S. v. Windsor, the controversial 2013 case in which a 5-4 majority struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).... Justice Scalia had written a blistering dissent in the case, taking the majority to task for agreeing to hear the matter in the first place. “The Court is eager—hungry—to tell everyone its view of the legal question at the heart of this case,” he had written.

Standing in the way is an obstacle, a technicality of little interest to anyone but the people of We the People, who created it as a barrier against judges’ intrusion into their lives. They gave judges, in Article III, only the “judicial Power,” a power to decide not abstract questions but real, concrete “Cases” and “Controversies.” Yet the plaintiff and the Government agree entirely on what should happen in this lawsuit. They agree that the court below got it right; and they agreed in the court below that the court below that one got it right as well. What, then, are we doing here?

It was a good question. The procedural history of the case was utterly bizarre. President Obama had instructed the Department of Justice not to defend DOMA from constitutional challenges because he believed that the statute was unconstitutional. Yet at the same time, the president had instructed other executive agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, to continue enforcing DOMA’s provisions...

I asked Justice Scalia whether, notwithstanding Windsor’s limited precedential value, the threat to the separation of powers from “executive non-enforcement” had grown critical. In the wake of Windsor, had it become easier for the president not only to decline to defend laws that he found objectionable, but to decline to enforce laws that he found objectionable? ... Was there any basis, I asked, upon which the Supreme Court might rule on the constitutionality of executive non-enforcement?

It all depends on Congress, Justice Scalia responded—and “if Congress doesn’t do its job and challenge the president,” he said, “what we have is a failed democracy.” The blow landed. The room fell silent. The moderator called for a break.

There is some speculation, in the wake of his death, that the Supreme Court might "just disappear" as a Constitutional organ. Frankly, I think that would be for the best: its current role as a rolling committee of 9 with the power to amend the Constitution at will has not been good either for the stability of the Republic nor the liberty of the People. There is no reason to believe that the Court will amend its ways, especially not if it obtains a fifth liberal vote. In that case, we can expect to see the Constitution rapidly rewritten so that conservative views are firmly declared to be not only illegal but unconstitutional. It is a road we have already come down a long way.

A restrained Court could play its much more limited constitutional role wisely, but the wisdom resides in the limitations. The Court always runs the hazard of deciding questions one way for the whole of a very diverse nation. To the degree that it does so in "controversies," there is a kind of instability built into the use of the judicial power. The several states can agree to disagree. Citizens who care deeply about a controversy can move to a state that resolves it in a way they find agreeable. Every time the Court undertakes to solve a question once and for all, it damages our Republic's stability by forcing a minority -- sometimes a majority -- to accept that their views are illegitimate and may not be considered by any legislature.

There have been a small number of controversies in our history where such a radical approach was justified. Even in these cases, the use of the power is not guaranteed to result in a wise or just outcome. The Court decided to resolve one such question with Dred Scott.

Can Congress stand up for itself, and reassert its proper role? Would the Court, lacking Scalia, affirm their rights if it did? Or are we already past the gate described in these remarks?

What A Shock

The "Guns at the RNC" petition was started by... a Clinton supporter. I'll wait while you pick your mouth up off the floor.

The thing is, I wouldn't mind at all allowing permit holders to carry at the convention or most anywhere else. This was intended as a "satire" aimed at making us look like hypocrites, but really, there's no hypocrisy to be had on this issue.

That's how I knew this was a false-flag -- it's the kind of petition someone would write who fell for the "NRA bans guns" hoax. There are only two reasons guns aren't going to be at the RNC, and neither of them is amenable to a petition. The first one is the Secret Service, and the second one is the insurance concerns of the property owner.

Cruz / Fiorina?

I liked Fiorina more and more the more I saw of her. Her record isn't impressive, but the job of Vice President is just to spend one's full time training to become President. I could support a VP candidate who lacked the record that a Presidential candidate should have, especially when the Presidential candidate is as young and healthy as Cruz.

So far she says there's no deal, but perhaps there will be one.

National Border Patrol Council: Trump, Please

Effectively a union for Border Patrol agents, this endorsement is surprising. They normally do not endorse candidates, for one thing. For another, it's Donald Trump they're endorsing, not just a Republican but the official choice of Worst Republican To Be Hated Most this year. I find it amazing that a public-sector union would endorse a Republican at all, let alone one so thoroughly painted as a racist hatemonger.

Clearly they are tired of the status quo on the border.

NYT: How About Some Frank Talk, Obama?

It's as if they don't trust him to just do whatever he wants without the approval of Congress or the American public.

When did that start?

In any case, here's a decent book on the subject. You'll recognize some of the authors.

Son Ain't Smart

But you don't have to be smart to be right.

Speaking of Tribalism...

Scottish Jews have their own tartan as of now. This has apparently been in the works for centuries.

The tartan, featuring distinctive tones of navy and burgundy, is a kosher non wool-linen mix which abides by shatnez - the Jewish law prohibiting the mixture of wool and linen in garments.

Religious experts and tartan authorities worked together to come up with a design that represent both Jewish values and Scottish history.... The tartan design features blue and white, the colours of both the Israeli and Scottish flags, with the central gold line representing the gold from the Ark in the Biblical Tabernacle.

The silver is to represent the silver that adorns the Scroll of the Law, while the red depicts the traditional Kiddush wine.

There are seven lines in the central motif and three in the flag representations - both numbers of great significance in Judaism.

So now you know.

In addition to family/tribal lines, Scotland has a number of universal tartans that Jews could have always worn (although I don't know if they abide by kosher laws about mixing wool and linen). There are also tartans for districts, including a number of American states. Georgia's is particularly meaningful given the early history of Scottish Highlanders in making the colony of Georgia a reality in the face of Spanish aggression.