To Undermine and Subvert

I've been back in graduate school for a while now, and this summer I'm taking an English literature course. The syllabus states that one of the course objectives is to "undermine and subvert" the traditional narratives of "American hegemony and mythology." In both the objectives and the description of the required research paper, it is made clear that we are to use post-structuralist approaches to the readings.

Post-structuralism, according to the All-Knowing Wikipedia, is associated with theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Jean Baudrillard, and Julia Kristeva. Wikipedia continues:

In the post-structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader replaces the author as the primary subject of inquiry. This displacement is often referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author, though it has its greatest effect on the text itself. Without a central fixation on the author, post-structuralists examine other sources for meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.). These alternative sources are never authoritative, and promise no consistency.

This is apparently typical in English literature today.

Friday Night AMV

Ain't nothing to it. Ha!

Redistribution that works

From Thomas Sowell remarks in 2012:

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity. . . .

Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.

Sturgill Simpson in the News

He's got an ally in NPR, it looks like, as they've covered him several times. Good.

California Primary Takes New Importance

Bernie could win it all if Republicans cross over and vote for him in California, which some of you might want to do. He has his problems and downsides, but he is at least an honest man.

Anti-Racist?

No offense, but I'm not at all convinced this isn't backwards.

The Democratic Party has become, to a significant extent, an anti-racist party. The Republican Party has not.

In an anti-racist party, politicians who demonize historically discriminated-against groups are either forced into retirement or, at the least, forced to apologize. Obviously, what constitutes bigotry is not always self-evident. But if many of the members of a historically discriminated-against group perceive something as bigoted, that’s usually a good hint.

So, which Democratic leaders have been forced to retire for having made racist remarks? Who's the Democratic Party's Trent Lott?

Lott was the Senate Majority Leader. There's no way that a Democrat of similar standing will ever resign for making bigoted remarks, and it's not because they don't make them. I'm not going to reprint the remarks at those links, but if you need proof of the claim, follow the links.

The Republican Party has been effectively more anti-racist than the Democratic Party by the standard of actually forcing its leaders to resign over racist remarks. They may do this because they think racism hurts them more -- as David French says, they're sensitive to the charge that they're shot through with xenophobia. Being 'on the right side' gives Democrats cover to act out without consequences. Joe Biden or Harry Reid can say things that would cause a Republican to wither on the vine, and nothing happens to them at all.

The reason that party leaders are not endorsing Trump right now is precisely because they are appalled by him. Some of it may be tactical, but some of it is not. It's also tactical to try to claim that Democrats are the anti-bigotry party. The evidence does not support this conviction.

Governor Deal's Veto Statement

I have been harshly critical of Governor Deal for several years, for what I take to be good reasons. Nevertheless, in the interest of fairness, I want to put his veto statement in front of you. It is thoughtful and rooted in the right way: in an understanding of the Founding and the traditions of our nation. I don't think he has understood the argument of his opponents, or else he is raising a straw man by suggesting that his opponents' position can be characterized as a demand for an absolutely unrestricted right to keep and bear arms. No one is proposing eliminating restrictions on violent felons keeping and bearing arms -- indeed, the NRA worked hard to help get Project Exile passed into law.

However, leaving the straw man fallacy aside, he has an argument that I will present for your consideration. It's a long piece, so I'll put it after the jump.

Bernie Sanders: Clinton Runs a Money-Laundering Scheme

Nice to see that the Senator from Vermont is still punching. Also nice to see that Vox can't quite explain the charge away.

Well, That's Encouraging

In an article on the lies around the Iran deal -- which were truly infuriating to behold -- an explanation of why they get away with it.

As Rhodes admits, it's not that hard to shape the narrative. "All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus," Rhodes said. "Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."

Are You Kidding Me?

Headline: "Spies Worry Candidate Trump Will Spill Secrets."

Oh, that's a great reason to consider voting for Hillary Clinton, who is currently under investigation for exposing thousands of classified documents through unsecured email on a ramshackle private server.

David French is Right

He is right about the problem, and also about the solutions.

First, it is absolutely vital that conservatives stay firm in their opposition to Trump. For at least a generation, the Left has been arguing that American conservatism is shot through with racism, sexism, and xenophobia. And now millions of Americans will face the difficult task of rebutting charges of hateful bigotry while supporting a man who gives aid and comfort to avowed racists, incites violence, and can’t even consistently disavow the Klan. Trump is the destroyer of conservatism, and he will taint all who take his side....

Fifth, the best solution for rolling back the extraordinary growth, power, and increasing corruption of the federal government is the convention of states, the Article V remedy for a runaway president and an out-of-control Congress. If two-thirds of states submit an application for a convention to propose constitutional amendments, then any proposed amendments can be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures — circumventing the federal government entirely.

I think conservatives can demand of our elected representatives a pledge to impeach and remove Trump, should he be elected, at the first sign of illegality or abuse. It would be healthy to formalize opposition to Trump in this way. For one thing, it would put him on notice that he will have no leeway as President. For another, it would help draw a distinction between Trump and those conservatives down-ballot that would minimize the damage to conservatism as a philosophy. It would be a firm expression of disapproval combined with a positive remedy. It would be a rejection of his viciousness, especially towards women, which I expect will only intensify in its ugliness as he campaigns against Ms. Clinton.

"Want To Feel Like A Man? Act Like One."

Not the worst advice.

Al vs. Marcy

Trump proved that many of the party’s moderates and establishmentarians hate the thought of a True Conservative nominee even more than they fear handing the nomination to a proto-fascist grotesque with zero political experience and poor impulse control. That goes for the prominent politicians who refused to endorse Cruz, the prominent donors who sat on their hands once the field narrowed and all the moderate-Republican voters in blue states who turned out to be #NeverCruz first and #NeverTrump less so or even not at all.

Finally, Trump proved that many professional True Conservatives, many of the same people who flayed RINOs and demanded purity throughout the Obama era, were actually just playing a convenient part.

This is the Nathan Deal lesson. What I think Douthat gets wrong is the idea that voters didn't notice. Trump's appeal was that he really wasn't one of the party elite. He really is someone they can't control. His wild, outrageous statements serve as proof that he isn't under anybody's control. No handlers would have let him say the things he's said.

So the general election is set. If you're wanting a preview, here it is:

The Sea Rises Higher

For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

End of the World

With Ted Cruz gone, there is no happy ending to this race. The best hope now is Trump plus impeachment of Trump. Otherwise, catastrophe.

Nathan Deal is 2 for 2

With today's veto of campus carry, Nathan Deal -- Republican Governor of Georgia -- reminds us of why the Republican Party is about to die nationwide. People turn to folks like Trump because the professionals have shown that they cannot be trusted. In this election, Governor Deal has personally betrayed the people who voted for him with vetoes on the two issues they cared most about: the Second Amendment, and religious freedom. The Legislature passed strong, considered legislation on both grounds. Nathan Deal personally killed them both.

When the party dies at the polls in November, and we face decades of a Supreme Court that simply rules conservative opinions unconstitutional, know that it was because of continual betrayals like this. Nathan Deal was once a good man, but his time in Washington with the Republican elite ruined him.

Please Don't Do This

The American Family Association(!) has decided to send male activists into women's bathrooms at Target.

Don't do this. It's such a bad idea. It's completely out of order with the values you are supposed to represent, and it's wrong to violate your own values to make a point.

Snowden on Secrecy

He doesn't provide a convincing explanation of why he only leaked US secrets, and not those of America's enemies. However, it is possible to sever that question -- the one that suggests he is guilty of treason -- from the basic argument that constitutional freedom requires occasional unauthorized leaks. Especially where the government is engaged in unconstitutional behavior, sometimes (he argues) bringing the matter before the public is the only hope for correction.

"A Dark Time in America"

Dennis Prager writes:

Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.

According to Pew Research, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem “hate speech.” Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 said they agreed that offensive statements could be outlawed.

According to a series of Harvard polls, 47 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 believe that food, shelter, and health care “are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them.” That means that nearly half of our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life’s basic necessities. More than half of young Americans do not support capitalism — the source of the prosperity they enjoy and the only economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.

When young Americans see pictures of the Founders, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history. They see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled “privileged”) and owned slaves.

The belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based — a view held by every American Founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history — is reviled outside of conservative religious circles and held by fewer and fewer Americans. The view that male and female are distinctive identities — one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history — is being obliterated. One is deemed “a hater” just for saying that one believes that, all things being equal, a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother.

The ideas that America should be a “melting pot” or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company....

In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray.

Masculinity Is Not About Women

I can see why, in a discussion led by Paglia and Althouse, women would be the focus. I don't object to women being the focus of a discussion between women. I just think this is the wrong way to think about the problem they're interested in thinking about.

Paglia: "[M]asculinity is constantly being eroded, diminished, and dissolved on university campuses because it allows women to be weak."

Althouse: "In my way of looking at it, "allows" is the wrong word. I think we need to consider whether masculinity is constantly being eroded because it serves the purpose of making women weak."

So, here's the problem with both of these statements: masculinity has nothing to do with whether or not women are weak. It can enable weakness in women. It can also enable and support strength in women. Or women can become strong on their own, or not.

Let me give you an example. Last week I was out riding my motorcycle, and I came across a bull calf who was out in the road. Naturally, I stopped and chased him out of the road -- loose cattle are a danger to cars as well as motorcycles, and I felt it was my civic duty to help resolve a danger to the community.

Protecting the community from a danger is only part of my duty in a case like this, though. There is also a 'Golden Rule' duty to try to help the livestock owner recover the animal. I would certainly want someone to help me if I had livestock who got out on the road, so I ought to help others.

So, I went to the nearest farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman of about 85 appeared, and I explained the situation. She got her daughter -- a woman in her mid to late fifties, I should think -- and the two of them agreed it was certainly their young bull and that they needed to deal with it. Neither of them had any idea how.

"My husband's gone to Mississippi," the younger woman explained. "He won't be back until Friday."

Now, this is cattle country in rural Georgia. There's plenty of masculinity in the men who work livestock. Here are two women, though, who had allowed the men in their lives to do the hard work of dealing with the cattle to such a degree that they honestly didn't know how to move an animal in the direction they wanted it to go. If they had any rope, they didn't know where it was. It took an hour and a half to push that bull calf back into its fence with the rest of it herd, while trying to keep the herd from coming out through an open gate.

This is not necessary. Had my wife been there, she could have helped me move the animal and we'd have done it in a few minutes.

What's the point of this story? The strength of the man has little enough to do with the strength of the woman. I don't doubt that the cattlemen who were off in Mississippi are manly enough. But their manliness if anything supported the women not learning to do this sort of work, even though they were part-owners of a herd of cattle. They never developed the muscles or the skills because they never had to: their husbands did that sort of thing.

Would you get stronger women if you made the men weaker? I doubt it. Nor is strong masculinity a bar to strong women, as my wife proves. She was a tough girl when I met her, and our years riding along together have not weakened her any.

What I think is that the business of making strong women has nothing to do with men or masculinity one way or the other. A weak man might mean that a woman had to be stronger in order to carry the weight he wasn't carrying. Or it could do what Althouse and Paglia both think it does, which is allow for (or usefully produce) weak women.

But it's not really a question about the men. There's not necessarily a close relationship between masculinity and the strength of women. Masculinity is about the strength of men, which is a good in itself. It's worth pursuing even if it does nothing for women at all. Nor does attaining it excuse women from developing their own character, skills, and capacities. Strong women are not, as these two ladies argue, functions of the strength of the men. Strong women have to be built independently. For the most part, they have to decide to build themselves. Providing them with the right kind of man is not going to do any part of the work.

Good News, Bad News

South America is looking a lot like it's going to need some sort of American intervention. That always goes well, and hardly ever produces generations of resentment.

Still, there is good news:

The encouraging news from Latin America is that the leftist populists who for 15 years undermined the region’s democratic institutions and wrecked its economies are being pushed out — not by coups and juntas, but by democratic and constitutional means. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina is already gone, vanquished in a presidential election, and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff is likely to be impeached in the coming days.

Government Makes Everything Worse

Via Wretchard, every industry touched by government gets worse. The graph points to one specific example, the massive increase in administrators in health care over the last decades. Like any other product, your health care gets more expensive the more salaries have to be paid to produce it. If you were just paying the doctor, the cost would be whatever the doctor thinks his time is worth, plus the cost of any medicines, tests, or supplies. If the doctor needs an assistant, her time has to be factored into the cost as well.

(An aside: I just employed that new academic standard of alternating the genders of pronouns to refer to nonspecific persons that Jason was asking about the other day. Notice how it looks exactly like an offensive assumption that a doctor would be male and his assistant a woman? But if you turn them around, the alternative construction will offend other people just as well. It's a terrible answer to the question of replacing 'he' as the universal standard for a person of unspecified gender. I think the old standard is better, but even the ungrammatical "they" for a singular individual of unspecified gender is better than this.)

So if the doctor needs four assistants to manage all the paperwork, now you're paying five salaries for however long the doctor is seeing you. Even if the other costs remained flat, your bill has to be several times higher than it was just to cover the needful salaries of the administrators.

Regulation does this across the board because there are always costs of compliance to regulations. Everything gets worse the more you regulate it.

Take a Closer Look

Andrew Sullivan thinks this is a Platonic moment:

And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.

And so, as I chitchatted over cocktails at a Washington office Christmas party in December, and saw, looming above our heads, the pulsating, angry televised face of Donald Trump...

Wait a second. Who better fits this description, Trump or Clinton? Let's break it down into its elements.

1) Being given over to pleasures and whims, especially food and sex.

2) Reveling in 'the nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.'

3) Attacks the rich and promises to fight for the poor, even though he (or she) is actually very much part of the wealthy class.

4) The wealthy elite seek a way to appease him or her.

5) Promises to cut through the paralysis and 'get things done.'

6) Offers a relief from democracy's choices.

7) Pledges to take on the elites above all.

Now I'll grant that (1) is a far better description of Trump than Clinton. But what of the rest? Is Trump "nonjudgmental"? That's not something I've heard before.

As for 3 and 4, who's the one who keeps promising to take on Wall Street even though she has grown quite wealthy? Who is the one who is paid off with massive speaking fees by the wealthy elite? By vast donations from oil-rich states who wanted to curry her favor as Secretary of State?

As for 5, who is the one who promises to be a "Progressive who Gets Things Done"? That was her big line from the first Democratic debate (that and being an enemy of Republicans).

Which of the two is promising to strip choices away from the democratic legislatures of the land? That's been the modus operandi of Clinton's faction since Roe v. Wade. It's how they've proceeded on all moral questions, in pursuit of this 'nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.' They have marched so far and so fast that whole sections of moral legislation are now declared to be unconstitutional, so that no democratic mechanisms can touch them.

As for the last one, which one is running as the candidate who will take on the 'one percent'? Which one is running as the candidate who will take on illegal aliens? They're not the elite.

Trump is a problem, but he's not the only problem. There's a demagogue in each of these races. Sullivan is clear on the danger Trump represents, but he is blind to the peril on the other front.

A Very Good Question

H/t Instapundit, a question about eugenics:

[Author Adam] Cohen takes [Catholic] opposition for granted, never exploring the meaning or roots of natural law and why it drove the church to quash sterilization in states such as Louisiana and New Jersey. Rather than confront sterilization on moral or philosophical grounds, Cohen bases his opposition on scientific grounds: Carrie Buck had a sixth grade education, sterilization alone couldn’t eliminate “feeblemindedness,” Jews, it turns out, are pretty smart (they just didn’t know English when the eugenicists gave them IQ tests). It is convenient that eugenics makes for crappy science, but what if it had checked out?

What if it turned out to be true that you could substantially improve humanity by forcibly sterilizing large groups of people? According to US Supreme Court precedent, it's totally constitutional for the government to forcibly sterilize you.

So if it's legal, and the science showed that it worked, would it be moral? Not according to natural law theory, but today the left rejects that -- and it does so on what it takes to be scientific grounds. Specifically, natural law theory looks for purpose in nature, and the current leading theories in biology reject that things evolve for reasons. It's all random. There is thus nothing that is "unnatural" in the sense that it could be said to violate some sort of "natural law" -- not blinding the eyes, nor deafening the ears.

If the Constitution and the law do not protect you, and the science is on the other side, should we simply accept the morality of such practices? The Church says no, but a religious moral law cannot be the foundation for any American laws under the current reading of the anti-establishment clause. What protection remains? Merely the fact that science hasn't quite worked out how to do it yet?

The Gov't Hates Transparency

Over at Real Clear Markets, Tara Helfman writes of how the government fought tooth and nail to avoid discovery in a Fanny/Freddie case.

Wanna Go See a Movie?

Update: Looks like no one's interested, so I'm making other plans. Maybe next time.

The team that put together Range 15 is having one last push to fund their soundtrack before the movie is released on June 15. As an incentive, there are a number of perks for different levels of donation, from $10 on up, but the one I'm interested in is a private screening at Ft. Hood (bottom of the sidebar) with Mat Best, Nick & Tom from Ranger Up, Rocco, Tim Kennedy, Jarred (I should probably know who he is, but I don't) and some other cast members they didn't name but whom we should all assume will be awesome. Plus, it would be a real pleasure to meet and hang out with folks from the Hall.

That donation is $150. The date is just given as "May," so I assume if anyone wants to do it, we should probably decide sooner rather than later. UPDATE: Reading through their blog, it looks like May 14 at 8:30.

If you're up for it, let me know in the comments and we'll work out the details.

Trailer:

Update 2: If you can't go to this, it will be in theaters June 15th.

The Cathedral of May

A day celebrated here each year, as the fullest glory of springtime. The long and painful summer is coming, and fast, but for now there remain some good days ahead.

I've only seen one hummingbird this year, so far. The wife is worried that they might have had some sort of die-off event. I wonder if the truth isn't just that the flowers are so rich this year that so far they have seen no need to approach the feeders.

UPDATE: Many people are reminding me that today is also the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. Another thing to celebrate!

The Most Honest Speech of the Year

According to Vox, the only time Obama's really honest with us is when he pretends to be joking.

Self-Defense is Not the Issue

A blogger called Justin Curmi is writing about the Bill of Rights. He proposes an interesting lens: that controversies about the Constitution be re-evaluated in the light of the Preamble's "Five Aims." The blogger apparently has dyslexia, so let us excuse minor errors in spelling and grammar. He says that we should ask of any proposed reading the following questions:

Does is promote Justice?
Does it ensure domestic Tranquility?
Does it ensure the common defence?
Does it promote the general Welfare?
Does it secure the Blessings of our Liberty and Posterity?

So when he gets to the 2nd Amendment, he finds that there is clearly a right to keep and bear arms. However, he says, these arms should be kept only for the purpose of revolution. Self-defense should be illegal.

The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights. In addition, one’s mental capacity is a major factor in deciding whether a man or woman has the right to have a firearm.

This is not a terribly-well considered position. First of all, the right to defend one's self is fundamental to the first of the five aims -- the promotion of justice. How can it be just to ask someone to suffer assault, rape, or murder so that they do not deny their murderer or rapist the right to a fair trial? In fact, the right not to be murdered or assaulted is more basic than the right to a fair trial before being punished for one's murders or assaults. This can be seen by a simple thought experiment: in an ideally just world, no one would receive a fair trial for murder because no one would commit murder. However, in the same ideally just world, everyone would have their right not to be murdered actively respected. Thus, the right to a fair trial only comes into play when something has gone wrong. The right not to be murdered is merely a statement of what the ideally just condition would be.

Nevertheless, self-defense is not the real point of the 2nd Amendment at all. The real point of the 2nd Amendment is just what it says -- the security of a free state. A distributed defensive capacity among the citizenry is the best guarantee of a free state, and the state of freedom, against several common threats. It represents a better defense against many forms of terrorism than other options, such as massive surveillance of the population or a vast increase in police controls, because it better respects the state of freedom. It also means that terrorists (to include mass shooters of any stripe) have a harder time predicting where they will encounter resistance.

Thus, the carrying and use of arms defensively ensures all five of the "Five Aims." It promotes justice by reducing the incidence of violations of justice like murder and assault. It helps to ensure domestic Tranquility by making crime more dangerous and costly, which reduces crime rates. It is all about the common defense. The reduction in crime and increase in justice promotes the general welfare. And, compared with increased government control of our lives, it protects our free state against common dangers in a manner more consistent with securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

When you stop your own murderer, it's only by-the-way that you're defending yourself. What you're really defending is the common peace and lawful order. You're doing a just and good thing that will improve the whole society. It is always right to defend a citizen from being murdered, after all. It's merely incidental that the citizen happens to be yourself.

A Brutal Assessment

A book review of a new history of Clinton and Obama's time together is not complimentary. Well, not to the subjects of the history. The review is quite complimentary of the book.

There are many in-depth books dealing with individual aspects of U.S. foreign policy in recent years, but for a single work encompassing the Obama administration’s engagement with the world, it is hard to imagine one better. From the Arab Spring to the resurgence of Russia to the Iran nuclear deal, Landler reveals a president obsessed with making history, and a secretary of state weighing every move in light of her personal advancement. Really, “Alter Egos” could just be called “Egos.”

...

The president liked running foreign policy out of the West Wing, Landler explains, and “Clinton had trouble penetrating Obama’s clannish inner circle.” That inner circle was devoted to finding symbolic, legacy-building opportunities for the boss. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s foreign policy whisperer, regarded outreach to closed societies such as Cuba as “exactly what a history-making president like Obama should be doing,” Landler writes, and threw himself into secret negotiations with Havana. Obama saw the Iran nuclear agreement as a once-in-a-generation achievement and pursued it accordingly. And he fretted that historians would remember him for the wrong thing. “I don’t want to be just remembered as the drone president,” he said to a top adviser in 2012.

Obama's disastrous legacy in foreign policy has grown more and more clear as we have neared the end of his presidency. It's easy to see why. If one's motivating foreign policy principle is self-aggrandizement, everything else is to be sacrificed so that you can have a complimentary footnote in the books to be written after you die.

The irony is that, in fact, history will remember Obama as the president who unraveled the world and left it on fire. And the drone president, of course.

Another CAS Option: Erik Prince's "Thrush"

War is Boring describes it as a "fighting crop-duster." But if the enemy has no air force -- and no MANPADS, as Eric Blair notes -- why wouldn't this be a smart idea?

Oh, Come On!

Fortune: Only one in six F-35s can take off in recent testing exercise.

Friday Night AMV

A State Alchemist has to be hardcore.



This series was interesting in that its' magic had a real cost.

Motherhood is Service

In response to this foolishness about 'me-ternity leave,' I just want to link to a post from 2009. That's why we do it this way, and not some other way.

SFC Martland Update

Good to see the Army do the right thing by Green Beret Charles Martland. Spreading core American values like not raping children is well within the mission of the US Special Forces.

I say "core American values" rather than "universal human values" because, while you'd think this was the sort of thing people would just understand, Afghanistan proves that it isn't quite.

Boy Shoots Home Invader

A young man in Alabama, aged 11, shot a home intruder near Talladega. Something similar happened when I was growing up. I described the case eleven years ago.

In those days, Forsyth County was entirely rural. In the southern and eastern parts, it was cattle country, with green and rolling pastures being the main feature of the land. In the northwestern part of the county, it was timberland, and forestry was the main industry. A modestly large county, nevertheless there were often only two deputy sheriffs on duty at any shift. There was no other law, and not much need for any, but on the rare occasion that anything bad happened -- whether a fire or a car wreck or whatever -- they called out the volunteer Firemen to lend some extra, uniformed hands.

So this one day, just about six miles from my own childhood house, a couple of fifth grade kids were returning from their afternoon's sport: shooting their .22 rifles. It was probably target shooting rather than squirrel hunting, but either was a common passtime. They came out of the backcountry and onto their red-dirt road, and started walking home.

Passing a neighbor's house, they saw a couple of men they didn't recognize taking things out of it and loading it into a strange car. The two boys -- fifth graders, now -- yelled at the strangers to demand an answer as to why they were taking their neighbors' stuff. One of the men pulled a gun, and shot at them.

Well, he missed. They didn't, returning the fire with their rifles and getting him through the stomach. He and his friend panicked, but found themselves cut off from their car by the fusilade. One of the boys ran down a powerline cut to get to a bigger road, to flag help. The other tried to keep the strangers pinned.

The two strangers managed to break into a truck that was at the house they were robbing, and they went barreling down the road. However, the kid who went for help found some, and soon the Volunteer Fire Department had cut off all the local roads. By the time the deputy got there, Volunteers were standing in the middle of the roads with shotguns. Nobody had to go get one -- they were in the truck gun rack, in case they were needed.

After the two men drove off in the stolen truck, meanwhile, the other kid went home and informed his family of the robbery. They, along with their other neighbors, got into their trucks and went hunting. They recognized the stolen truck easily -- it belonged to their neighbor, after all -- and ran it off the road. The wounded man gave in at once, but the other one tried to escape into the woods. They chased him down and beat him with sticks until he surrendered.

Eventually, word of this got back to the deputy, who headed over to collect the prisoners. He, poor fellow, missed all the excitement but still got to write the report.

I'm told that was the last robbery in that end of the county for quite a little while.

Fifth graders are typically about eleven, I think.

Just War and Polite Philosophy

A professor of philosophy from Brown University, one Nomy Arpaly, argues that philosophy justifies rudeness in much the same way that war justifies violence.

It is a big part of moral behavior in ordinary situations not to kill people. Yet the morally healthy inhibition against killing people has to be lost, of necessity, in war—even in a morally justified war. It is a big part of politeness—not in the sense of using the right fork, but in the sense of civility—in ordinary situations not to tell another person that she is wrong and misguided about something she cares a lot about, or that she cares about being right about. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say it’s a big part of politeness or civility not to correct people. Yet the civilized inhibition against correcting people has to be lost, of necessity, in a philosophical argument.

The way she frames this is in terms of 'inhibition loss,' whereby one 'loses' the usual inhibition against killing/rudeness, and thus is in danger of losing other inhibitions along the way. She thinks the position of women in philosophy can be substantially improved simply by limiting the amount of rudeness in the discussion to 'no more than what is necessary,' in much the same way that Just War prohibitions against indiscriminate killing are helpful in preventing wars from being worse than they must be.

My experience is that polite philosophical discussion is not only possible, it's the case -- unless by "rudeness" you mean the odd thing she is framing as rude, the questioning of people's beliefs. Philosophy conferences are sometimes heated, but usually are extraordinarily polite. Philosophy conferences are also a great place to see things questioned all the way down to the ground. You will see people's entire belief systems destroyed in front of an audience, at times, but almost never in a way we would ordinarily describe as rude. It's only rude if you think it's improper to destroy ideas people care about. Sometimes, though, they're bad ideas.

Indeed, Arpaly's own work questions two of philosophy's most basic assumptions, the centrality of reason to morality and of deliberation to reason. Her opening example makes more sense if you read it in the context of that questioning.

I’ll never forget the old guy who asked me, at an APA interview: “suppose I wanted to slap you, and suppose I wanted to slap you because I thought you were giving us really bad answers, and I mistakenly believed that by slapping you I’ll bring out the best in you. Am I blameworthy?”.

When he said “suppose I wanted to slap you”, his butt actually left his chair for a moment and his hand was mimicking a slap in the air.

This turns out to be a highly relevant question, if desire ought to override reason in the way she is arguing it sometimes should. The prohibitions against violence (including all the ones in Just War theory) are rational principles. They arise not in the heat of the moment, but from abstracting away from the real situations of war to try to find ways in which these situations are alike. Those ways in which many different situations are alike are called "universals" by most philosophers -- I often say they are, properly speaking, analogies -- and the universals are rational objects. The reason we can craft general rules governing very different wars in different times and places is because of rational deliberation of this kind.

The assumption that such rationally derived rules should govern these interactions is just what she is questioning: sometimes, instead of favoring rationally derived rules, we should listen to our desires. She is proposing a system for doing that and suggesting we would be better off, at least sometimes, if we followed our hearts. Thus the question: what if my heart leads me to violence? Doesn't allowing desires to override rationally-derived rules weaken protections against violence, especially in cases where her proposed system seems to justify substituting desires for the rules derived in rational deliberation?

It's a good question. The fact that she wants to analogize the situation to Just War only makes it a better question. It seems as if a model like hers is going to need very strong rules to prevent licensing violence -- and, by extension, many other kinds of passionate behavior. Otherwise she will have to accept being slapped by someone who really has a desire to do it that is grounded in the right way for her system. Presumably, she is not willing to be slapped. Indeed, she finds even the pantomime of a slapping so objectionable that she's remembered it for years as a clear example of something offensive in philosophy. She is writing a piece specifically to call us not to do such things. To say that another way, she is proposing rules governing desired behavior, to be applied to situations like 'philosophical discussion' in general.

If it does need such rules, though, doesn't that undermine her whole model? Such rules are rational, and are being derived at a deliberative distance. Moral behavior ends up primarily involving containing such desires according to rationally-derived rules that come from deliberation. She just wants different rules, presumably ones that allow for the indulging of desires she approves of more often than is permitted by the rules we have now.

The fact that we can see that comes from the question. It suggests that her basic model is flawed, all the way to the ground. It's an insightful point. I wonder if she has a response, beyond the objection that it was rude.

"This is the fire pit you are looking for"

Another Ancient CAS Plane That Is Better Than The F-35

The real competitor to the A-10 is not the F-35, but the fifty-year-old Vietnam-era OV-10 Bronco.

To test whether the more than 50-year-old plane still had some fight in it, US Central Command (CENTCOM) sent two OV-10s to Iraq, where they flew 120 combat missions as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, with a 99% success rate.... Capable of carrying 3,000 pounds of ordinance, the Bronco can carry an overwhelming assortment of firepower for it’s small size, including either four 7.62mm machine guns, four .50 caliber machine guns, or a pair of 20mm cannons in addition to a loadout of rockets, missiles, and bombs as needed for the day’s mission...

One more fun trick the OV-10 does it drop a 5-man Special Forces ODA out the back.

Quite a bit of video at the link.

It lacks the A-10's survivability, but it does have a lot more flexibility. Boeing has been thinking about restarting production anyway, as it's cheap enough that lots of countries can afford it. As the initial article points out, it only costs $1,000 an hour to operate, compared with $40,000 for an F-15 (another fighter commonly bought by Third World American allies). For sake of comparison, the A-10 comes in at $11,500, and the F-35 at $39,000 an hour (well, or so they say -- when they get them working, we'll see what the cost really is). So the OV-10 is even cheaper to operate than a Predator drone.

"Pillars of Dishonesty"

An insightful comment on the state of the Presidential race.

Let's Have A Song

Yeah, I know it's Wednesday.



UPDATE:

This guy really is good.

Kelpies

Sculptures on the Hebrides, or "he-brides," as they are sometimes mockingly named at Scottish Highland Games.

Of Course Spanking Works

The problem with this study making the rounds is that it assumes that spanking is supposed to generate obedience. Who wants to raise children who are obedient? What we want to raise is children who are self-sufficient and who don't cause us problems. They are children who learn to deal with power structures and pursue their own interests accordingly.

Which is exactly what the study says spanked children are like. They are capable of wielding deception, they are capable of wielding violence in their own interests, and they are capable of pretending to go-along-and-get-along when they aren't in positions of power.

They're Odysseus, in other words.

This is the matter of Plato's Hippias Minor, which treats the question of whether Odysseus or Achilles was the greater hero. The usual position of historians and philosophers is that this is a very unimportant dialogue, with a silly argument, that we might even doubt was Platonic except that Aristotle confirms that Plato wrote it.

That's not right at all. The point is that Plato was teaching the Athens that killed him that Socrates was a kind of Odysseus. Aristotle takes the 'simple' reductio argument of this dialogue seriously enough that he responds to it in the Nicomachean Ethics. This is very serious stuff.

What kind of a child are you trying to raise? An obedient one? Or Odysseus?

Cruz/Fiorina

A ticket we talked about back in March has become a reality today. Good, I suppose. Certainly the best thing left out there.

High-Speed Dalai Lama

He operates, bro.

Apparently he really did say the thing about how it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun. Everything else is just internet awesomeness.

Some appropriate music. And by 'appropriate,' I mean appropriate for this. NSFW.

Another Example of Tex's Kind of "Lesson"

The Pentagon has decided to test the A-10 against the F-35 in the role of close air support, to see which platform really serves the needs of forces on the ground best. Hot Air reports:

First, though, the Pentagon has to get its F-35s working properly. Tritten notes that the latest in a long series of “glitches” involves its radar system, which randomly stops functioning and requires rebooting in flight. That could complicate comparative war-gaming — as well as potentially put pilots and ground personnel at greater risk. It’s hard to run a test between an operational and well-known system and a mock-up.

No, it isn't. Far from 'complicating' the test, I think it simplifies it a great deal.

Something Worth Celebrating: Speaker Hastert Goes to Prison

If only we were as good as holding powerful members of the Executive's party to the law. If only it were as good at enforcing the law on well-connected major donors.

Still, it's not nothing to see a former Speaker of the House brought to heel for serious violations of the law.

From the Onion

Headline: "Study Finds Controlled Washington, D.C. Wildfires Crucial For Restoring Healthy Political Environment."

More Fun With Physics

My wife was driving and I was passengering on our way back from the store.  As we came over an overpass, the speed limit changed sharply from 50mph to 35mph, with effect directly at the bottom of the hill that was the overpass.  My wife commented that it's hard to decelerate that much on a downhill run of that distance.  I suggested that she not decelerate.

Her response was that there might be a cop with a radar gun, and then came the fun with physics.

I suggested that she accelerate instead of decelerate; after all, once she achieves a certain speed, she'd get past the cop's radar gun before it could trigger.  In fact, the task would be a bit simpler since the cop's radar gun's photons would have to make a round trip over the same distance my wife and I would need to cover only once.

Furthermore, having achieved that certain speed, she'd likely get abeam the cop's radar gun before she'd left the overpass hilltop.  From that, any causality problems ensuing from the cop choosing to trigger his radar gun anyway would be on the cop—textbook police brutality.

As my wife put it, #photonlivesmatter.

Eric Hines

The Candidate For Those Who Respect Women

Headline: "Hillary supporters take down Bernie FB pages in coordinated porn attack."

From the article:

According to eyewitness reports, the pages were flooded with pornographic images in coordinated fashion and then flagged for obscene content, prompting Facebook to remove them.

"We had what looked like a kiddie porn posted in one of our groups today,” said Sanders supporter Erica Libenow, according to Heavy.com. "I reported that one. Seriously made me want to vomit.”

At least one Facebook user linked to the pro-Hillary Clinton group Bros 4 Hillary was reported to have participated in the attacks.

Kiddie porn. How is it that Hillary Clinton's supporters even have kiddie porn to use as a weapon? It's illegal even to possess (and rightly so).

The Devil You Say

John F. Kerry and his wife have millions in off-shore tax havens? That's the least surprising news story of the year.

Vietnam Marines Reuinte to Recreate Surfing Photo

It's kind of a fun photo, even.

It would be two years they would spend together, both in training in combat. Subjected to horrific conditions and intense combat two of them earned Purple Hearts- all of them carried the scars of war.

“We had the tools. We had the training,” DeVenezia said. “But nothing trains you for your first combat. Nothing. Zero.”

Following the end of their 13 month tours, the all went their separate ways and fell out of touch.

It's been fifty years, and they look pretty good all things considered.

On the Perils of Civilian Control of the Military

We all know what the advantages are. They have been drilled into us, and into the professional military, so thoroughly that -- as this author points out -- none of the flag officers have resigned in protest over Secretary Ray Mabus' savaging of the Navy and Marine Corps. The weakness created by Mabus' leadership has proven provocative, as American weakness often does:

In recent days, Russian fighter-bombers have done barrel rolls within ca. 30 feet of our planes and ships inside international waters. Such reckless behavior (no doubt part of Putin's plan to ratchet up the level of intimidation) leaves little to no room for error and focuses one's mind on the possibility of a tragic international incident, even war. But as the Army chief-of-staff testified recently before the Senate Armed Services Committee, if it ever came to war with Putin's Russia, we'd most likely get the short end of the stick.

Such is the state of America's armed forces under Barack Obama and Ray Mabus.

It would be ironic if we fell into war with Russia just because of civilian control of the military -- if the fact that the particular civilians given control understood and appreciated the Navy's culture so little turned out to be the thing that brought the war. It would be a bitter irony indeed.

Bright Flash of Light

It is possible to reason to an understanding of when life begins.

In case you need a hint, though, it turns out that nature provides a big one.

Ents

Wow.

Fantasy economics

A college loses its shirt playing around with expensive, subsidized green energy initiatives. One administrator commented, "They are not a good teaching tool if they are not working.” I disagree.

Status quo

Here's what Europeans say about why all the business innovation seems to be coming from the U.S. The article concludes with the interesting observation that, even in the U.S., the innovation comes disproportionately from first-generation offspring of immigrants.

When Should Felons Have Voting Rights Restored?

Hot Air has a poll on the subject. It's an interesting question, I suppose.

If laws are just, then obedience to the law is an important part of one's duty. Where laws are unjust, disobedience of the law is often obedience to duty. Any violation of the law can be said to be a felony by whoever makes the law; and in a corrupt system, they are likely to make more felonious the most virtuous violations. There will still be thieves and robbers in the worst society, but political prisoners will pay a higher price the worse the corruption becomes.

So, when should felons be allowed to vote? There's no single answer, is there? It depends on whether what they did was a crime that would be universally recognized, or a crime against the politics of the corrupt. They may be morally unfit to ever vote. They may also be your best guides.