The Unity of the Virtues

One of the things that has been debated since ancient times is whether the virtues are a collection of things, or a whole. Socrates, who argued that virtue was a whole (and a form of knowledge that -- somehow -- could not be taught) argued the point with the famous Protagoras in the dialogue of the same name. [I will annotate the speakers for the convenience of the reader.--Grim]

Socrates: And has each of [the virtues] a distinct function like the parts of the face;-the eye, for example, is not like the ear, and has not the same functions; and the other parts are none of them like one another, either in their functions, or in any other way? I want to know whether the comparison holds concerning the parts of virtue. Do they also differ from one another in themselves and in their functions? For that is clearly what the simile would imply.

Protagoras: Yes, Socrates, you are right in supposing that they differ.

S: Then, I said, no other part of virtue is like knowledge, or like justice, or like courage, or like temperance, or like holiness?

P: No, he answered.

S: Well then, I said, suppose that you and I enquire into their natures. And first, you would agree with me that justice is of the nature of a thing, would you not? That is my opinion: would it not be yours also?

P: Mine also, he said.

S: And suppose that some one were to ask us, saying, "O Protagoras, and you, Socrates, what about this thing which you were calling justice, is it just or unjust?"-and I were to answer, just: would you vote with me or against me?

P: With you, he said.

S: Thereupon I should answer to him who asked me, that justice is of the nature of the just: would not you?

P: Yes, he said.

S: And suppose that he went on to say: "Well now, is there also such a thing as holiness? "we should answer, "Yes," if I am not mistaken?

P: Yes, he said....

S: Well then, Protagoras, we will assume this; and now supposing that he proceeded to say further, "Then holiness is not of the nature of justice, nor justice of the nature of holiness, but of the nature of unholiness; and holiness is of the nature of the not just, and therefore of the unjust, and the unjust is the unholy": how shall we answer him? I should certainly answer him on my own behalf that justice is holy, and that holiness is just; and I would say in like manner on your behalf also, if you would allow me, that justice is either the same with holiness, or very nearly the same; and above all I would assert that justice is like holiness and holiness is like justice; and I wish that you would tell me whether I may be permitted to give this answer on your behalf, and whether you would agree with me.

P: He replied, I cannot simply agree, Socrates, to the proposition that justice is holy and that holiness is just, for there appears to me to be a difference between them.... I admit that justice bears a resemblance to holiness, for there is always some point of view in which everything is like every other thing; white is in a certain way like black, and hard is like soft, and the most extreme opposites have some qualities in common; even the parts of the face which, as we were saying before, are distinct and have different functions, are still in a certain point of view similar, and one of them is like another of them. And you may prove that they are like one another on the same principle that all things are like one another; and yet things which are like in some particular ought not to be called alike, nor things which are unlike in some particular, however slight, unlike.

S: And do you think, I said in a tone of surprise, that justice and holiness have but a small degree of likeness?

You can see the issue. If the virtues are not in a sense the same, then justice and holiness -- or any two virtues -- are completely different. That is clearly wrong, as it requires that we say that it is never just to behave moderately, nor is it just to behave immoderately; nor is it courage to behave with self-control, nor is it courage to behave without self-control. The division makes no sense at all.

But the unity is a problem, too. It is clearly the case that the virtues do not come to be as a unity, as everyone knows someone who is brave but not wise, or wise but not brave; just in his dealings with others, but not moderate at the dinner table; etc. If the virtues were one, then to have one would be to have them all.

I think that the virtues are like the parts of a house, so that they are all part of a whole, but they have to come to be in a certain order. You can't put the roof on first; you have to have a foundation before you can put up walls. There's a little bit of variability in the order -- you could put up two walls and then a roof, if you wanted. Each virtue has a different purpose in a way, in that the roof provides shelter from the sun or rain while the walls provide shelter from the wind, but they are also all unified in a common purpose of providing shelter. This seems to address how virtues can be unified without losing either their different character or their capacity to exist separately in a given person.

Yet this isn't fully satisfying either, as it would seem as if you could say more than I can say about what precisely is the foundation of virtue, which ones come next, and so forth. The capstone virtue -- the roof -- might well be Aristotle's magnanimity; yet others might argue it is justice. Aristotle says that both are, in a way, complete virtue. I think magnanimity is the stronger candidate, as it crowns complete virtue with the activity of using that complete virtue to pursue the most honorable things, whereas justice (in its character as lawfulness) compels you to do the right things rather than making you desire to do them. Still, you see the point: you could argue either way, and if my view is right, it ought to be able to draw out something more specific about the order.

In any case, I was thinking of the question because of a scandal at Berkeley involving the philosopher John Searle. I think we were just discussing his Chinese Room thought experiment recently. Most philosophers take the ability to think clearly and come to deep philosophical insights as a fairly high degree of virtue; the ability to control one's sexual urges is supposed to be a more basic virtue, expected to come about earlier. And maybe it did; Searle is 84, and perhaps is less capable (or less willing) to behave himself now than when he was younger (as well as less famous and powerful). Or perhaps the ability to think clever thoughts isn't such a highly-placed virtue, but something more like athletic ability (which only some can attain in any great measure, for reasons that have nothing to do with virtue). Then the virtue to actualize one's native capacities may not be so very great; only a bit of discipline and practice, combined with a great deal of natural talent. Developing self-control over deep impulses could be much higher and harder than developing the self-control necessary to practice things one finds enjoyable and to which one is naturally inclined, which would account for why so many great athletes also end up demonstrating a lack in this area.

Alternatively, perhaps the view that these virtues come about in any kind of order is wrong. Perhaps you can just have some of them without others. But it does seem odd to say that you could be just without being capable of moderation, or be wise without being capable of self-control.

UPDATE: Speaking of Searle, here is a recent interview with him, with a heartwarming headline.

My precious

About sums it up for me.

Sure, I know, Republicans had a narrow majority, and they could only pass something through the Senate by reconciliation, which imposes limitations. But the thing is, Republicans don't hide behind the vagaries of Senate procedure during campaign season. Trump did not win the Republican nomination telling rallies of thousands of people, "We're going to repeal and replace Obamacare — as long as it satisfies the Byrd rule in the judgment of the Senate parliamentarian!"

What's so utterly disgraceful, is not just that Republicans failed so miserably, but that they barely tried, raising questions about whether they ever actually wanted to repeal Obamacare in the first place.

Honky Tonk Rock

This piece comes from a list of ten similar pieces compiled by Rolling Stone. They describe them as Mike Ness' "country-punk covers," although in this case it's just a honky tonk version of a song Ness wrote himself. Unlike the others in the list, then, it's not really a cover.

Speaking of Rolling Stones, that band did one of these things too. Here's their honky tonk version of "Honky Tonk Women."

The Sword in (Late Medieval) War

John Clements of ARMA writes.

On the Lapse in Political Virtue

David French is quite right.

Best Thing Under the Circumstances

The Republican-led health care act was hideous, and we're better off without it. Someday we'll get the Federal government out of health care, but this didn't even pretend to do that. Someday we'll get to price transparency and fee-for-service instead of an insurance model, so we can have true markets. This bill didn't do that either. It didn't do anything I'd want done to try to fix the way we pay for health care, but it would have propped up all the worst features of the current system.

Hopefully the Trump administration learned that Congress is a co-equal branch that can't be just ordered to support a policy whether it makes sense or not. Failing that, hopefully at least Congress learned that about itself today.

They can take their time and get it right, or they can just repeal O-care with a one-year delay to give time for alternative solutions appear, either at the state level or from the market itself. Or they can do nothing and hope it all falls apart someday on its own, which would still be better than this. Under the circumstances, killing this bill was the best idea.

Christianity is Irrelevant

So argues this writer, who is quite pleased about it:

I’m excited the North American church is dying. Christians not having the influence we once had in the 1900s gives me great hope. For the past 100 years we’ve had a lot of cultural converts. Everyone is a Christian because they grew up in Texas. Or they go to church. Or their mom and dad raised them that way. Hell, according to the U.S. census 70% of Americans identify as “Christian.” But the vast majority of those responses are nothing more than cultural identification, not Christianity. I imagine that’s why so many people despise Christians. Their belief is cultural, and no one intends to follow the man they claim governs their life, so we end up this giant homogenous blob of hypocrites that judge and condemn people, instead of looking like they did in 165 AD. Instead of rushing to the aid of others, or paying for pagan burials like our ancestors did, we have half-hearted followers who run rampant through the streets of social media pointing the finger to everyone except themselves.

The reason I’m excited about the shift is because as the cultural converts die, vibrant Christians will take their place. Churches will be smaller and stranger to the public, but they’ll be healthier.

Last night I watched another '70s counterculture movie -- Vanishing Point, which has an awesome Dodge Challenger as its real main character -- and was reminded of how 'small and strange' that version of Christianity is. It's really strange, but not really bad: the "Long Haired Friends of Jesus" in the song (and movie) Convoy.

It's true that I meet fewer and fewer young people who recognize obvious Biblical references in movies or television. "That's Ecclesiastes," I'll tell them, and they kind of seem surprised that something so cool could have come out of the Bible. We none of us control any of this, and what is going to happen will happen. Still, there is some reason to hope that it won't all be bad.

The Guy Who Got Ben Rhodes' Job

The Atlantic has a piece on him, which a friend of mine who is quoted in it describes as fair and accurate. The guy's name is Michael Anton, and you probably read an article he wrote during the election last year.

We traded up, in this respect at least.

Air Assault in Raqqa

U.S.-backed Syrian Arab forces landed on American military helicopters with Apache gunships flying overhead.

The indigenous forces were accompanied by U.S. special operations “advisors,” the spokesman added.

“It takes a special breed of warrior to pull off an airborne operation or air assault behind enemy lines,” said Col. Joe Scrocca “There is nothing easy about this – it takes audacity and courage. And the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) has that in spades.”

There's something you don't see every day.

UPDATE:

Related.

How the Irish Were Always White

David Bernstein, in "Sorry, but the Irish were always 'white' (and so were Italians, Jews and so on)" over at the Volokh Conspiracy, touches on a topic that relates to my own past research.

The relevant scholarly literature seems to have started with Noel Ignatiev’s book “How the Irish Became White,” and taken off from there. But what the relevant authors mean by white is ahistorical. They are referring to a stylized, sociological or anthropological understanding of “whiteness,” which means either “fully socially accepted as the equals of Americans of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic stock,” or, in the more politicized version, “an accepted part of the dominant ruling class in the United States.”

Those may be interesting sociological and anthropological angles to pursue, but it has nothing to do with whether the relevant groups were considered to be white.

Here are some objective tests as to whether a group was historically considered “white” in the United States: Were members of the group allowed to go to “whites-only” schools in the South, or otherwise partake of the advantages that accrued to whites under Jim Crow? Were they ever segregated in schools by law, anywhere in the United States, such that “whites” went to one school, and the group in question was relegated to another? When laws banned interracial marriage in many states (not just in the South), if a white Anglo-Saxon wanted to marry a member of the group, would that have been against the law? Some labor unions restricted their membership to whites. Did such unions exclude members of the group in question? Were members of the group ever entirely excluded from being able to immigrate to the United States, or face special bans or restrictions in becoming citizens?

If you use such objective tests, you find that Irish, Jews, Italians and other white ethnics were indeed considered white by law and by custom (as in the case of labor unions).

Some of my graduate research in history involved looking into Irish immigration to the US from the 1830s to 1850s and the nativist response to it. At the time, the Irish were considered white even by the Anglo-Saxon Americans who opposed them. Race was understood quite differently then than it is now (as Bernstein points out later in the article), and the idea that the Irish were not white when they arrived uses today's race and ethnic studies definitions and projects them onto American society in the past. It has nothing to do with how Americans in the 19th century viewed the Irish and everything to do with how race and ethnic studies researchers view race today.

One factor that Bernstein does not touch on, probably because it is not widely recognized, is that nativism in America prior to the Civil War was not about immigration per se but rather religion. The nativists had no problem with many other immigrant groups coming in, but they had huge objections to Catholic immigration.

Read nativist writings and over and over you will read about how Catholics can never be true Americans because they owe their final allegiance to the Pope, whom nativists often depicted as a foreign prince. As millions of Catholics poured into the US, they developed a separate Catholic school system, avoiding one of the main ways immigrants were assimilated in the North. There were legal battles fought over whether states could mandate that schools use the Protestant version of the Bible (it wasn't questioned that they could mandate study of the Bible). The separate school system and various other Catholic social organizations that sprang up seemed like an effort by the whole population of Catholic immigrants to avoid becoming American. That's why the "nativists" (an epithet invented by their political enemies) called themselves "native Americans" and formed the American Party. As Catholics became important voting blocks in Northern cities and began to exercise political power, the nativists began to view mass Catholic immigration as an invasion by a foreign power.

All of this built on centuries of anti-Catholic sentiment in England which came to America early on. The Puritans, after all, wanted to purify the Church of England of all its Catholic aspects. Anti-Catholic bigotry was probably the oldest kind of bigotry in the American colonies, and it continued into the new nation. I've read that at the Constitutional Convention there was a debate over whether Catholics should be allowed to vote. The winning argument was that there were so few of them in the nation that it couldn't hurt anything to let them vote. That began to change with Irish immigration during the famines.

No Problem, Boss

A teenage boy was told by school leaders that he had to “tolerate” undressing in front of a female student and to make it as “natural” as possible, according to a blockbuster lawsuit filed in a Pennsylvania federal district court.

You might think that teen pregnancy is something to be avoided. No worries, mate: the female student identifies as male, so he couldn't possibly get pregnant.

"Reasons to Vote for Democrats" Becomes Amazon #1 Best-Seller

Earlier this month we looked at the insightful book Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide by Michael J. Knowles with its amazing reviews. It looks like the book has reached #1 best-seller status on Amazon.

 

It currently has 1747 reviews and a 5-star rating. Since the book is almost entirely blank, that's an interesting feat. It does apparently have a real bibliography, though, which makes me curious ... Is it worth six bucks to see what's in the bibliography? I guess I could keep it at the office to annoy co-workers with, too ... 

The reviews really are worth reading, if you haven't been over yet.

Terrorism as Boredom

So, today there was another terrorist attack in London, involving ramming people with autos as has become usual. The attacker was exactly who you'd expect, and indeed he was exactly who authorities expected, because as usual they admit he was known to them before hand. The head of police in London said, as usual, that we should keep an open mind and not assume anything about motives (from this guy they already knew about), but also that we must take time to remember the stress that this puts on Muslim members of the community, who are especially prone to feeling unwelcome at times like this.

It's so routine now. This time the Prime Minister was nearly within arms' reach of the attack, but so what? You can always get another Prime Minister. They're just as disposable as everyone else. The important thing is that no one jump to conclusions about that thing we already know about.

Insanity Abounds

So, just this week, we had a hearing in Congress in which the FBI director admitted that someone -- probably on Team Obama -- had committed a serious felony by leaking FISA warrant information.

Democrats: 'You're trying to change the subject!'
Republicans: 'This is a serious crime!'

Today, the head of House Intelligence revealed FISA warrant information to the press.

Democrats: 'This is a serious crime!'
Republicans: 'You're trying to change the subject!'

Do any of you in Washington care about national security at all?

UPDATE: I wonder how much of this turns on 'need to know.' The President has whatever security clearance he needs, ex officio, but he doesn't necessarily need to know everything. Normally there's nothing he wouldn't 'need to know,' but a collection effort targeting him and his companions for possible action might qualify. Now the Congress might really 'need to know' that, because they have legitimate oversight purposes.

The press has neither the clearance nor the need to know. Does the citizenry need to know? Most wouldn't have the clearance, so it's an irrelevant question. Until it isn't, because the formal structures begin to fail and there's no hope but a recourse to the People.

Reflections

Did you ever wonder why artists painted such obsessively realistic still-lifes, including shiny objects?  Apparently because it's simply an absorbing task to trick the eye into seeing distorted reflections by using only flat color.  This is the newest Chrismon I've completed:

Originalism vs Textualism?

In a discussion below, there was a thread about how originalism is inferior to textualism. The second, as described, sounded to me like a subset of the first. Judge Gorsuch seems to think they're the same thing:

[The] second point I would make is it would be a mistake to suggest that originalism turns on the secret intentions of the drafters of the language of the law. The point of originalism, textualism, whatever label you want to put on it–what a good judge always strives to do and what we all do–is to understand what the words on the page mean, not [to] import words that come from us, but [to] apply what you, the people’s representatives, the lawmakers, have done. And so when it comes to equal protection of the laws, for example, it matters not a whit that some of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment were racists–because they were–or sexists–because they were. The law they drafted promises equal protection of the law to all persons… I think that guarantee… is the most radical guarantee in all of the Constitution and maybe in all of human history.

"Tribal Epistemology"

In which Vox hits upon the truth, but thinks it applies to the other side.

I mean, by all means read it -- some of their allegations against our side are serious, and you should prove them wrong by considering them fairly. It is amazing, though, to see them come right to the very edge and not ask, "Hey -- do we do this too?" The closest approach to that is an assertion that the problem disproportionately affects Republicans, which is at least a wave in the direction of the idea that it might sometimes appear on the left as well.

In Praise of Hierarchy (and Bureaucracy!)

Several leading philosophers, including Kwame Anthony Appiah, have a piece calling for a reconsideration of how important these things are.

Appiah is on my radar for his work on honor, which I think is incomplete but nevertheless interesting. Honor is like hierarchy in that relatively few thinkers today want to spend much time praising it, perhaps for similar reasons.

Susan Rice on Honesty and the White House

The Washington Post decided to publish an article by the least credible person in America on the importance of White House officials speaking the truth. They seem to be completely oblivious to the irony of having Susan Rice lecture us on this question.

Credibility is the currency in rhetoric, and Rice could not be less credible than she is. However, there's more to life than rhetoric. Philosophically, it is improper to dismiss her simply because she is a hypocrite who is manifestly guilty of the same offense -- or an even worse one, as her lies were carefully planned. That would be the logical fallacy of tu quoque, combined with the fallacy of ad hominem. She might have a point, even though she's a horrible person and a hypocrite.

And, indeed, she does have a point. Honor holds the world together. Truth is a force multiplier. Those things are true, whoever says them.

More Cultural Appropriation

I think they may be appropriating us, actually, but whatever. Maybe that's all to the good.



If you don't know the artist, she went on to be somebody. Cultural appropriation was a big part of that.

Just for Fun

Celebrity deaths

Belatedly apropos of the late lamented Chuck Berry:

What Originalism Puts at Risk

CNN published this, so I assume they must think it's plausible.

I figured it would say things like, "It could force the transfer of Social Security and Medicare to the states, as there is no obvious Constitutional warrant for the Federal government to run things like that." Or "Great Society Programs." Or "the EPA, already under threat from the Trump administration."

What it says instead is that originalism is about taking rights away from minority groups. That's either a complete misunderstanding of what the philosophy is about, or else it's a willful slander of the first order. The rights of minority groups are protected by explicit Constitutional language. Insisting on the original understanding of, say, the 14th Amendment is a way of preventing rights from getting watered down.

So too with originalism pointed toward the Bill of Rights. The way that rights get washed away is very often by sliding words into new meanings. Originalism is a stronghold against that move: it insists that, if you want to strip away the right, you have to actually go through the Article V process. Nothing else but that process will do, ensuring that decisions to alter basic rights must enjoy very broad public support.

My guess is that the misunderstanding -- if it is that -- is created by the reality that the original Founders didn't trust everyone equally, especially with what we have come to call "voting rights." However, that misses the point: the Founders didn't consider voting to be a right in the same way that free exercise of religion or free speech was a right. They thought that citizenship was a kind of office. Like any office, it should be filled only by people who have shown they are qualified for it. That's why they imposed things like property tests, which demonstrated 'skin in the game' as well as a kind of practical economic independence. The last was important because they doubted that those who were wholly dependent on someone else could really reason independently of that interest, which meant that giving votes to servants (say) would really mean giving extra votes to the landlord.

Originalism does not threaten to restore that idea of citizenship, because the concept of voting rights was created through explicit Constitutional actions such as the ratification of the 15th Amendment. An originalist couldn't rule in favor of a return to the earlier conception of citizenship even if he or she thought it was a better idea, just because of their commitment to originalism.

This should be better understood. Originalism is the only mode of interpretation that should be supported in a candidate for the Supreme Court. Otherwise, the court exists not to apply the laws chosen by the People in accordance with the Constitution, but to make new laws and alter the Constitution. That is no proper role for the Supreme Court, not even when they vote unanimously.

"The Coding of 'White Trash' in Academia"

A lady named Holly Genovese has some thoughts.

I bought The Professor Is In by Karen Kelsky, a terrifying book full of blunt (and much needed) advice about navigating the academic job market. While the author gives outspoken advice about the struggles of the job market, particularly for women, she also implicitly argues for the importance of hiding one’s class. She wrote about clothing and makeup and speaking patterns in women. Around the time I read this book, I realized that I, for a lack of a better term, code “white trash.” I have bad teeth, frequently say “ya’ll” and “how come,” and have a habit of running around South Philadelphia in a Dale Earnhardt Jr. t-shirt. It is one thing to have your hometown judged by your peers, but it is quite another to realize that qualities you possess, habits born of a lifetime that you don’t even realize you have, make you read as unqualified or unfit for your chosen profession.

But you can’t go home either, as they say. The more formal education I acquired, the larger the gap between my family and I became.

Enforcing Standards

Two different right-wing media personalities got suspended tonight, one for backing up the President's claims of a wiretap, and one for a philosophical difference that is widely shared by millions of Americans -- even some conservatives.

Both suspensions are defensible, even though they are in another sense completely opposed. One is backing his side in apparent absence of facts; the other is differing from her side, in a place where complete facts would be inadequate even in principle. Moral reason doesn't turn only on facts, after all: tell a computer all the facts about a case, but give it no moral rules, and it might not even understand that you were asking it a question. It certainly would not have any method for coming to a reasonable answer.

It is good for organizations to enforce standards, as it is good for people to uphold ideals. Which one of these seems best to you? Does either seem wrong? Can you say why?

The Comey/Rogers Hearing

The headlines I'm seeing everywhere: "FBI confirms Trump campaign being investigated for Russia ties! Trump's wiretapping lies refuted!"

The actual news, as far as I can see, is that the FBI confirmed an investigation into something by someone having something to do with Russia, but refused to comment.

Then, the FBI and the NSA chiefs both confirmed that a number of serious felonies had definitely been committed.

NUNES: Would an unauthorized disclosure of FISA-derived information to the press violate 18 USC 798, a section of the Espionage Act that criminalizes the disclosure of information concerning the communication and intelligence activities of the United States?

COMEY: Yes[.]

...

COMEY: All FISA applications review by the court collection by us pursuant to our FISA authority is classified.

GOWDY: The dissemination of which is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison?

COMEY: Sure, dissemination -- unauthorized dissemination.

GOWDY: Unauthorized dissemination of classified or otherwise legally protected material punishable by a felony up to 10 years in federal prison.

COMEY: Yes. Yes, as it should be.

Gowdy's second line of questioning, which is too long to excerpt, went through a list of candidates for the honor of having committed that felony.

So, in the Russia matter, it may yet prove that someone connected in some way to Team Trump did something wrong. However, it is definitely the case that at least one person in high position committed serious felonies -- and the list of people to investigate is not all that long. Most of them were ranking political appointees in the previous administration.

This is the point at which a smart, thoughtful opposition would ask itself, "Do we really want to have this fight, or might we quietly reach an accommodation that would let all this slide into the rear view mirror?"

I doubt that is what is going to happen here.

Sauflied

A sauflied is a drinking song, in the same way that the Nibelungenlied is the song of the Nibelungs.

DB: HVT Disappointed to be Raided by Rangers Instead of SEALs

Aminullah, who has countless books and films on the elite naval special operations forces, says being raided by a bunch of guys he had never heard of was a big let down....

"It's b******t. SEALs raided my brother's and cousin's houses just last month," he said. "They're probably gonna write books about that.... And seriously, my mother could graduate from Ranger School with a cloth over her eyes — which there is at all times — because she would be beaten otherwise."

RIP Chuck Berry

I'm sure in the long series of musical deaths of 2016, you probably saw this image:

This time, there's a genuine violent connection.



Chuck Berry was one of the greats, though, as Richards himself says at some length in the clip as a whole. We were lucky to know his work.

A Lack of Faith

Yours is disturbing.

The lengthy recitations of large numbers of perfectly objectionable presidential statements about Muslims coexist with a bunch of other textual indicia showing not merely that the judges doubt Trump’s secular purpose but that they doubt the good faith of his purpose at all—indeed, that they suspect that he is simply lying about his own motivations....

Imagine a world in which other actors have no expectation of civic virtue from the President and thus no concept of deference to him. Imagine a world in which the words of the President are not presumed to carry any weight. Imagine a world in which far more judicial review of presidential conduct is de novo, and in which the executive has to find highly coercive means of enforcing message discipline on its staff because it can’t depend on loyalty. That’s a very different presidency than the one we have come to expect.

It’s actually a presidency without the principle that we separate the man from the office. It’s a presidency in which we owe nothing to the office institutionally and make individual decisions about how to interact with it based on how much we trust, like, or hate its occupant.

Left-leaning judges now feel about the President the way that conservatives did after Lois Lerner, in other words: we no longer trusted a word of their explanations about their conduct, but believed our eyes about what their real intent and purpose was. One of the reason that the email scandal dogged Clinton so much was that the IRS has already burned the bridges of public trust on mysteriously-vanishing email records, inexplicable failures to back up servers as required by both law and contract, and an administration-led legal process that somehow just never found anyone accountable even when it couldn't avoid admitting that something had been done wrong.

That's how you got Trump in the first place. Congress wouldn't step up and do anything to stop this stuff, so people on the right picked someone who seemed unconstrained by norms of civility or honor.

A failure of respect for the institution of the President will be followed, almost immediately, by a failure of respect for the office of judge. Those positions cannot function without respect, except through the raw exercise of power. And power, frankly, doesn't get you all that far. It's a very big country to try to rule by force.

This Man Never Eats a Hot Meal

Friday night MMV

Stumbled across this; not a bad use of the song. I didn't see the movie, but I probably don't need to now.

A St. Patrick's Day Roundup

From the Hall's 2012 archive, here is a list of several good Irish tunes appropriate for the holiday.

"Campaign Pledges Haunt Trump in Court"

So says the NYT, correctly enough for a change. It's a major change in jurisprudence, as up until now campaign rhetoric has been off-limits for judicial interpretation. The idea is that it would be bad for democracy if politicians couldn't speak freely in election campaigns, out of fear of being constrained by courts after-the-fact.

On the other hand, it also makes a kind of sense. Trump has been taking his campaign promises relatively seriously compared to previous presidents. It may be the reason that judges have been so willing to wink at campaign rhetoric in the past is the sense of, c'mon, it's just talk for the rubes. Nobody's seriously going to do that stuff in office. They just have to say it to get elected.

What happens when somebody comes along who maybe really is going to 'do that stuff in office'? It's easy to understand the panic. Nothing terrifies a cynic more than sincerity.

Nevertheless, I think Powerline has it right (previous link):

The states’ argument is in essence that Trump is a bigot, and thus his winning presidential campaign in fact impeaches him from exercising key constitutional and statutory powers, such as administering the immigration laws.

I kind of like the idea that you could elect a partial-president, one whose powers are limited by the flaws in their character. As a purely theoretical idea, it would be great if people who had the right virtues to execute the powers well were the ones entrusted with those powers. If someone without the right virtues was elected, it would be great -- in theory -- if the powers were temporarily entrusted in someone else who had those virtues.

However great this idea is as a pure theory, it's completely impossible in practice. There is no mechanism for making it work other than forcing the executive branch to completely relinquish the relevant power for as long as Trump is president. It's not that, since Trump is a bad guy in certain ways, the courts will delegate the powers to someone else they do trust -- Mattis or whomever. It's that America, not just Trump, would lose the capacity to make national security decisions based on immigration for four years.

That's unworkable. Many people might argue that other bits of campaign rhetoric make Trump unacceptably dangerous as commander in chief. (Indeed, one person who made that argument repeatedly was Hillary Clinton.) So does that mean the courts should prevent him from taking any military actions -- meaning, that America should stop defending herself for four years? Maybe just against the Muslim world, plus China, if those are the areas where Trump's rhetoric was especially explosive?

Obviously that isn't acceptable. Neither is it workable for every executive policy to have to satisfy each of the several hundred Federal judges out there in order to go into effect. This is going to cause problems, though, because the judges appear to be committed to the idea that they should have that power.

"St. Patrick Was An Immigrant"

The Irish PM intends to slam Donald Trump, but ends up defending Ben Carson.

St. Patrick's 'immigration' to Ireland came at the hand of Irish pirates, who kidnapped him from his family's estate in Britain and sold him to work as a slave tending sheep. Is that 'immigration'? Well, in a way; in the way that Carson (and Obama) used the word.

A Sadly Predictable Outcome Awaits

Headline: "Venezuela has a bread shortage. The government has decided bakers are the problem."

UPDATE: "Speculators who hide the bread from the people."

Why doesn't that happen in America, I wonder?

Wearin' o' the Green

My great-nephew, not only Scots-Irish on our side but half genuine Irish via his immigrant Dad, who has the adorable accent and everything.

Cleaning Up History

Josh McKoon, whom longtime readers may recall from previous yearly sessions of the Georgia Legislature, has decided to spend some time cleaning up old segregationist language passed by earlier legislatures.

The resolutions themselves are purely symbolic, but the Columbus Republican said they have no place in Georgia’s code.

One would rescind a 1958 resolution that censured President Dwight Eisenhower for federalizing the National Guard to enforce integration at Central High School in Little Rock. The resolution said Eisenhower “sacrificed the honesty and integrity of our highest executive office on an altar of political expediency to appease the NAACP and other radical, communist-sympathizing organizations.”

A second would roll back a 1956 resolution that criticized the Justice Department and FBI for “flagrant invasion” into local affairs with an investigation of a black man convicted in a controversial trial of raping a white woman. He was later executed.

And a third targets a 1956 resolution adopted in the wake of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which Georgia lawmakers declared “null, void and of no effect.”

UGA Study on Hispanic Buying Power

The University of Georgia has just produced a study that claims to show Hispanics in America have a buying power that exceeds Mexico's entire GDP.

NYPD Calls for Federal Cash

The Trump budget, which is causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth, has a lot to like about it if you are one of us who really wants the Federal government to stop doing a lot of things. Some of those things are worth doing, of course: but it isn't the Federal government who ought to be doing them. Case in point.

“Under the president’s proposal, nearly all federal funding to the NYPD would be eradicated. This funding is absolutely critical. It is the backbone of our entire counter-terrorism apparatus,” NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill said during a press briefing....

The White House budget proposal states that it reduces or eliminates $667 million for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) programs "that are either unauthorized by the Congress ... or that must provide more measurable results."

The blueprint lists the Homeland Security Grant Program as an example of a program requiring "more measurable results." The program had more than $1 billion in overall funding in 2016, according to FEMA's website.

For a billion dollars, I would certainly like to see measurable results. The larger point, though, is that it should very rarely be the case that a local police department -- even the NYPD -- should be Federally funded. There are two levels of government between the NYPD and the Feds. New York is a tremendously rich city, the home of Wall Street and many millionaires. It can't pay for its own police department? The state of New York can't make up whatever shortfalls remain?

If taxes need to go up, raise taxes. Once we've cut the Federal government down to size, especially if we ever manage to tackle entitlements, there should be plenty of room for taxes at the state or local level to go up a bit.

I understand that the NYPD's counterterrorism division provides an important service. However, they work for the city of New York. That's who should pay them. It makes no sense to push the cost off onto the American taxpayer more broadly, nor is 'providing funds for local police' anywhere to be found in Article I, Section 8.

A Word from The Spokesman of Marines United

We've considered various takes on this USMC photo-sharing scandal. It turns out the group has appointed a spokesman, who would like to address concerns about his organization.

The headline is unfair to his argument, I think: it suggests that he is opposed to women serving. That's not actually what he said at all.

Murder is illegal on the streets of America, but people still do it. So sexual crimes are still going to happen in the military regardless of how they [Pentagon and Congress] try to clamp down on it or revise [policies]. It’s still going to happen and at that point, I don’t really question the physicality of women. I question the logistics of the Marine Corps and if they will be able to keep up with it...

“Sen. Elizabeth Warren was a prime example, pushing for a co-ed boot camp and she questioned the commandant on why we’re not doing that,” he told the Daily Beast. “So I think it’s coming down from civilian leadership and I think the Marine Corps should stand up for itself and say, ‘Look, we have been winning wars for America since 1775. Why should we continue to change the wheels when they’re not broke? We need to look at American defense first before looking at integration.”

This would be a strong point if and only if the complications of integration are going to be long term problems and not (as with racial integration) short term problems; and if and only if those complications are going to make the Marine Corps less effective as a fighting force. Are either of those 'if and only if' criteria implausible?

Paglia in Tablet

This is a fairly compelling interview at times. This part sounds to me a lot like some of Tex's regular points:

The Industrial Revolution, a capitalist phenomenon, created low-level jobs for women that allowed them for the first time to be truly self-supporting, freed from economic dependence upon father or husband. Over the past century, women have gained access to higher-status jobs, many with real power and authority over men. But the main issue is that men and women are working side by side in the workplace in a way they have never done before, except in outdoor field work during the agrarian era. This is something new in human experience, and I believe it is destabilizing sexual relations in ways that we have scarcely observed, much less analyzed.

First of all, too much familiarity may undercut sexual passion. When mystery goes, so does the sizzle. Second, despite a brief fad in the 1970s for the asexual uniform of John Molloy’s “dress for success” look, affluent women professionals today (with their svelte skirts and pricey Louboutin stilettos) are clearly still using their own sexual appeal to gain power in the workplace—while at the same time oddly forbidding male co-workers to notice or, Venus forbid, comment (which would spark an instant kangaroo court). What I have been saying throughout my work is that sexual tension and conflict may be built into human life (by virtue of women’s monopoly over procreation) and that women, in order to be truly free, must stop relying on the bureaucratic regulatory state to manage their relations with men. Men too have an inherent right to be free—to think and express their own views and desires without women’s hectoring oversight and censorship. However, the workplace must remain a neutral zone, where the professional (and not the personal) should rule.

Keeping the workplace 'neutral' may be impossible, though, if she is right about her broader argument. Sexuality is at least partially irrational, arising without will from the subconscious. Control over expression can be rationally determined, at least sometimes and to some degree, but stripping it completely out of any area of life may be a bridge too far.

Especially this is true for the young, I think: past a certain age it is easier to set aside. The young need jobs too: indeed, they need them more, as they lack the stored or inherited wealth of the older. And we need them to have jobs more, too, if we expect them to pay for their elders through various entitlements or public pension programs.

You can tell people in their 20s and early 30s that they have to act completely asexually in the professional environment, but telling them that it is obligatory doesn't make it attainable. At minimum, you need to support them with standards that minimize the temptation to think sexually about those with whom they share a workplace. Yet even the military, considered as a workplace, has failed to do this. How will the civilian workplace manage what military discipline has failed to accomplish, or even in many cases to find the will to attempt?

Rights for Rivers

New Zealand has just granted legal personhood to a river.

In a world-first a New Zealand river has been granted the same legal rights as a human being....

On Wednesday, hundreds of tribal representatives wept with joy when their bid to have their kin awarded legal status as a living entity was passed into law.

“The reason we have taken this approach is because we consider the river an ancestor and always have,” said Gerrard Albert, the lead negotiator for the Whanganui iwi [tribe].

“We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that from our perspective treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it, as in indivisible whole, instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management.”

The new status of the river means if someone abused or harmed it the law now sees no differentiation between harming the tribe or harming the river because they are one and the same.

Unborn children in New Zealand do not enjoy legal personhood, but rivers do. Got it.

UPDATE: A piece from my cousin, who is a pro-life doctor, on why unborn children might plausibly be extended legal personhood.

Bygones

Not bygone.

This is Inefficient

Want to shoot down an off-the-shelf drone that cost a few hundred bucks? Why not use a $3 Million Patriot missile?

If anybody wants a better answer, I know a falconer who can train eagles to take the things down. I don't know what the range of an eagle is compared to a Patriot, but I figure it's got to be good enough to kill a drone.

Trump to Honor Andrew Jackson, American Muscle Cars

Pony car lovers will celebrate the change in fuel efficiency standards.

After the speech, Trump will head to Nashville, Tennessee, to lay a wreath at President Andrew Jackson’s tomb to mark what would have been Jackson’s 250th birthday, before holding a campaign-style rally in the city.

Trump will tour Jackson’s home, according to Howard Kittell, president and CEO of the Hermitage mansion. Jackson has enjoyed something of a resurgence thanks to Trump. During the campaign, some of Trump’s aides took to comparing him to the former president — a fellow populist outsider who took on a member of the Washington establishment and ran a campaign railing against corrupt elites.

Trump mused during his first days in Washington that “there hasn’t been anything like this since Andrew Jackson” and hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.

At least in terms of American muscle cars, maybe we are going to Make America(n) Great Again.

Speculative Fiction

Today's claim that Steve Bannon is a "white supremacist" turns on his praise of a work of speculative fiction, The Camp of the Saints. I have never read this book, so I can neither praise nor condemn it. However, the description and excepts make it sound like it falls squarely within a genre of books that includes some highly celebrated on the Left: The Handmaid's Tale, for example, or 1984, or Brave New World, or Fahrenheit 451.

Each of these includes awful images of a highly undesirable future, for the purpose of criticizing present trends with dangerous conclusions. According to Wikipedia, for whatever that's worth, this piece was written in 1973, and was widely praised by intellectuals at the time of its publication. That it is of lasting interest more than forty years after its original publication suggests there might be something to the book; that it provokes such discomfort among its critics, likewise.

I haven't read it. Perhaps it's awful. Still, what an odd ground for criticism. The quite-Left American Library Association organizes a "Banned Books Week" every year, and maintains a part of its online store devoted to banned and challenged books.

Yet here is the alleged proof of Bannon's evil: "He likes a disapproved book."

A Problem with Chesterton's Fence

In general, I agree with G. K. Chesterton's principle here:

Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from Chesterton’s 1929 book The Thing: Why I am a Catholic, in the chapter entitled "The Drift from Domesticity": "In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

There are a couple of problems here. The first is that, over time, the reason a very useful institution was created may get lost so that no one really knows why it was created or how exactly it is useful, or it may have developed empirically over centuries or millennia to be the best way of doing things but no one ever fully articulated the reasons why. When the modernizer challenges it, the conservative isn't ready with a good explanation, and the modernizer then assumes there isn't one.

Another issue is that Chesterton's statement of his maxim assumes the conservative (i.e., "more intelligent") reformer has the power to stop the modernizer, but that's often not the case. Often in society both put their arguments out there and a bunch of fence-sitters cast the deciding votes.

As a result, some important American institutions have been torn down in part because conservatives seemed unable to adequately explain their purpose. When they tried to preserve them, they seemed tied to dead traditions, stupid, or bigoted. Decades later the negative effects of the destruction become apparent; in hindsight we can see the purposes of those institutions fairly clearly, but we can't go back in time to deliver our now-learned retort.

Some human institutions, like government, are consciously created and we have something like the Federalist Papers that explains them. However, some are not consciously created. They developed empirically, by accumulated experience, over many generations. That's what living tradition is, the accumulated experience and wisdom of a culture.

Wisdom, though, can be ineffable. Sometimes you know something is right, but you cannot intellectualize why. That is the problem in miniature: How can we tell the difference between ineffable wisdom and baloney? It's a difficult problem.

Plato vs. Aristotle

Joel Gehrke gives an interesting review and discussion of Arthur Herman's The Cave and The Light: Plato versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization over at the Federalist.

Herman sets out to show that the debate between these two thinkers, who lived about 400 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, provides the distinctive, even governing, feature of Western civilization.

“One path – Plato’s path – sees the world through the eyes of the religious mystic as well as the artist,” he writes in The Cave and the Light. “The path of Aristotle, by contrast, observes reality through the sober eyes of science and reveals the power of logic and analysis as tools of human freedom.”

Western civilization depends on both for its vigor, according to Herman. “It’s the constant tension between these two ways of seeing the world – the material versus the spiritual, the practical versus the insightful-intuitive side – it’s the creative tension, like the drawing of a string of a bow, that creates the dynamism that’s been so characteristic of western culture throughout its history,” he said ...

I enjoyed the review and the book sounds pretty good, though Gehrke points out some problems with the argument.

You Might Pack A Separate Sock

I mean, I always carry one pair of extra socks when backpacking just to sleep in. One more additional single sock would not be the end of the world.

Maddow Gets Played

So Donald Trump's 2005 tax returns just 'show up' in one of her people's mailboxes, with no names attached. And she gets all excited, goes to press with it, and -- it just so happens -- team Trump is ready to release the documents themselves that afternoon in order to scoop her. And then she goes over the top, of course, trying to tie this to various conspiracy theories. Then the returns prove mainly that he paid a massive amount of taxes that year, hundreds of times more than the average taxpayer will pay in a lifetime of paying taxes.

I'll bet I know who mailed those tax forms to Maddow's assistant.

And now Trump is immunized against the whole "show us your taxes!" issue.

"Are We Raising Racists?"

Since this article appears in the New York Times, I guessed before reading it that the answer was "Yes." It turns out that the answer may be, 'No, but we should be.'

Parents of black and Latino children have long made thoughtful choices about when and how to engage in difficult and nuanced discussions about difference. Studies show that such parents are two to five times more likely than whites to teach their children explicitly about race from very young ages to counter negative social messages and build a strong sense of identity.

Is that really what you want me to do? Raise my children to think "explicitly about race" and to have a "strong sense of [racial] identity"? Have you thought this through?

I Certainly Hope This Is True

Attack on the administrative state allegedly planned by Trump's legal team. That might go a long way to restoring the Constitutional order.

The Chieftains

Tonight, at the University of Georgia, the greatest remaining Irish band came to play. They are celebrating their 55th year of playing as a group, which might lead you -- as it did me -- to expect the concert to be a sort of sober greatest-hits affair, suitably slowed down to respect the needs of aging performers.

I was wrong. They were off the chain. In a lifetime of going to concerts, symphonies, and shows, I have never seen their equals.

For the encore, following a standing ovation, they did a Medieval piece from Brittany called "Andro." Dancers who had come to join the concert, just kids from a local school, came out and formed a "snake dance" line with the Chieftains' own dancers. It wound through the audience, pulling in anyone who wanted to join. All these old hippies with beards who had come to see the show joined in, holding hands, dancing up and down. The Chieftains ensemble's performance was joined by the Atlanta Pipe Band, with a sextet of Great Highland Bagpipes paired to military drums, perfectly blended into their work -- apparently without rehersal, as the Chieftains just rolled into town and had a wedding to go to last night.

The whole was a performance of high energy and spirit from first to last. I wish I could recreate any part of it here, but no recorded performance of theirs even implied to me how powerful their live performances really are. What a treat to see them after all these years, and to find them so strong.

Tenth Amendment Lawsuit

The state of Tennessee is suing over the refugee resettlement program, arguing that it violates the Tenth Amendment.

Given all the areas where the Federal government is manifestly violating the Tenth Amendment, they had to pick this one to test the principle? I suppose one could argue that the Federal government has the power to admit anyone to the United States that it wants to do, but that states can't be required to participate in resettlement programs. Still, this has to be the least clear case for reasserting the Tenth that I can think of given that the Federal government does have a legitimate, outward-looking role to play here.

Are You Kidding Me?

This is the sort of news story that should never get published. Freedom of the press is a cherished value. All the same, publishing the details of a secret unit's training exercises can do no good whatsoever, and might get some fine Americans killed into the bargain.

We Apologize for Providing Your Refuge

A small town in Iowa has forced its high school students to apologize for wearing red, white, and blue attire to a sporting event. "The Valley High School students' USA-themed attire was seen as offensive because some of the rival school's players were from refugee families."

Oh, well, instead let's wear colors to celebrate whatever place was so hellish that you fled halfway around the world to get here.

Longing for the Klan

The Washington Post would just love it if Southerners would play along with their script by demonstrating a resurgence of racism. This story from Dahlonega -- home of Georgia's military college, North Georgia University, and a place where I have spent many of my days -- shows how much they want this.

They actually did figure out the real story, if you read far enough -- they just put it in paragraph twenty-five.

By evening, though, people had found out who was really responsible: It was one of their own, an 84-year-old white woman named Roberta Green-Garrett, the owner of the building in question who lives in a brick mansion with four white columns on a hill overlooking the town.

Offering no explanation and declining to speak with reporters, she had told town officials that she had allowed the banner to go up and might try to put it up again. She had been seeking permission to build a hotel on the square, and people speculated that it was all an audacious ploy to embarrass the town into approving her plans.

That's basically the whole story. There's forever been this one a guy who runs a booth in one of the antique/thrift stores who is a Klan fan -- in addition to ordinary antiques and Confederate flags it used to be you could buy old copies of Song of the South from him, because Disney wouldn't sell them to you any more.

Then there's this one 84 year old woman, who would like to be even richer than she is, but the town won't go along with her hotel plans. So, here's a way she can pressure the town government. 'Don't like the Klan signs? Well, I can think of a way to convince me to stop approving them.'

I guess that "Town in Georgia Has Two Bad People" wasn't enough of a headline to justify flying somebody down here, though, so they put in 24 paragraphs of 'atmosphere' in front of it, and what looks like another hundred paragraphs of '...and people were really upset' behind it.

But it's not a story, not really. It's just these two very old people, only one of whom actually cares about the Klan in the slightest degree. The other one only cares about herself.

Crusaders

In World War One, a group of Crusaders in chain mail appeared to ask how to join the war. It happened in Georgia, of course.

Say it Ain't So

Another federal judge has scalded the unprofessional conduct of Justice Department lawyers inside the Civil Rights Division.... Now it's unprofessional behavior and bigotry toward the South[.]

...

"[T]hey entered these proceedings with arrogance and condescension. One of the Department’s lawyers even exhibited her contempt for Texas and its representatives and her disdain for these proceedings by regularly rolling her eyes at State witnesses’ answers that she did not like, and she amused herself by chewing gum while court was in session.

It was obvious, from the start, that the DoJ attorneys viewed state officials and the legislative majority and their staffs as a bunch of backwoods hayseed bigots who bemoan the abolition of the poll tax and pine for the days of literacy tests and lynchings.

Why, I can't imagine. Well, frankly, what I can't imagine is them doing anything else.

The Riddle of Steel

I've Been Chewed Out Before

The Navy punished the SEALs who flew the Trump flag from their Humvee.

According to the documents, the commanding Seals officer directed a teamwide remedial training on safe convoy operations and partisan political activity.

Yeah, I've seen that movie.

Jury Rules on Malheur Militia

A jury refused to convict on any Federal charges in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge case last year. This year, on a different set of charges, the jury came to a split decision. The decision is a little strange, but at least one felony conviction came back against each participant -- even though the minor players seem to have gotten off worse than the leaders, and people who plainly did the same things were sometimes convicted and sometimes not.

Njardarheimr

A Viking re-enactment society in Norway is building a Viking village in a truly beautiful setting.

Hemingway: Commie Spy

Apparently he even had a KGB code name -- "Argo."

Fortunately, he wasn't any good at it.

DB: "Black Hawk Down" Reboot

Changes to the original story include adding a number of LGBTQI+ soldiers to the cast who try to make friends with enemy fighters instead of shooting them, while Medal of Honor recipients Master Sgt. Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Shugart will be played by Chinese actors....

Still, the film will include nods to the original film [including] a version of the compelling speech given by the character "Hoot," who explains why he serves in the Army at a time of war.

"When I go back home, people ask me, 'why do you do it, man? Why? Are you some kind of war junkie?'" the character says in the new film. "I just tell them no. War is a terrible thing and nothing good ever comes from violence."

I imagine it'll do as well as the Ghostbusters reboot.

Incitatus

It's never a good sign for the IRS when the judge's very first step is to compare their conduct to Caligula's.

Batman Meets Galadriel

Understanding the Left in One Picture

I Guess If You Were Going to Play One Leningrad Cowboys Song for Lent

... it might be this one.

But probably not these ...

The Political: Not So Personal

Hot Air looks at a study on the recent campaigns for President, and it finds that Hillary Clinton's was run in almost entirely personal terms. Oddly enough, the Trump campaign was far more policy-oriented both in its positive message and its criticisms of its opponent's.

The CIA's Bad Week Continues

This will do wonders for American-French relations.

Be grateful the lights are on

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist with a conservative bent.  From Maggie's Farm, this is a lovely short clip in which he explores the idea that life includes a good bit of irreducible suffering, and maybe our job is to quit pretending there's a world in which that won't be so if everyone stops oppressing us, and if we can finally fractionate down to the very last citizen exactly where we all fit on the oppressed-victim spectrum so we can calculate the reparations we are due.  Then we can get to work trying to pull ourselves together and make small, incremental improvements in how we act.  We can control whom we oppress, in other words, though we can never control who oppresses us--only our response to them.

Best Amazon Reviews EVER

Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide

The blurb:

The most exhaustively researched and coherently argued Democrat Party apologia to date, "Reasons To Vote For Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide" is a political treatise sure to stand the test of time. A must-have addition to any political observer's coffee table. "Thorough" --Ben Shapiro, nationally syndicated columnist and New York Times bestselling author

Here are a couple of shorter reviews:

A phenomenal piece of literature. Knowles really captures the heart of the reader with his background as a black, gay Grammy and Oscar award winner. A must read for all Americans. And liberals, too. -- Amazon Customer

I gave it four (4) stars. While I appreciate that I was able to read the whole book AND make it to my local "Day Without A Woman" protest by 10:30 am, the cover contains an American flag and American flags are a trigger for me. The ass who thought it would be a good idea to put the American flag on the cover forced me to retreat to my safe space for a half-hour to compose myself. I ended up being late and I didn't get my favorite spot at the protest. -- Mandyesque

Here's a snippet of one of my favorite longer reviews, by Coriolis:

A few years ago, as I was studying for my master's degree in engineering, I had the inspiration to sit in on a Women's Studies lecture. Never in my academic career have I been so profoundly affected. Truly, the depth of logic, critical thinking, and openness to challenging views displayed by the professor was unlike any other educator I had ever encountered. Having been exposed to the quality of scholarship one can only find at my university by auditing one of its Women's Studies lectures, I knew I would never be able to truly comprehend the subject because of my thrice-be-damned white cis-gendered male heterosexual privilege. Wallowing in full-time employment and chained to my role in the patriarchy as a husband and father, I had given up on ever truly grasping the profound moral and philosophical core behind the modern social justice movement, progressives, and those who understand the true worth of pursuing diversity for its own sake. ...

There's nearly 1,200 reviews right now. This should be days of good reading.

We Should Encourage This "Day Without Progressive Princesses" Phenomenon

It was interesting perusing the comments to Grim's post about this year's International Women's Day strike. Although I hesitate to offend any regulars at the Hall, let me suggest you are viewing this event through a certain, well, myopia.

You see, when all of these Progressive Princesses (and I use that title with its full measure of royal respect), these Social Justice Warrior Womyn, are absent, it leads to reflection on the part of those of their co-workers who suffer a certain lack of Progressivity or SJ Warriory-ness. Yes, this denial of Progressive Princess presence engenders a certain bittersweet sensation somewhat reminiscent of ... well, vacation.

In their absence, one feels the weight of freedom, the sense that it might be possible in some plebeian utopia to discuss world affairs out in the open, like free men and women, without triggering tearful displays of reality denial at the words "President Trump," or snippy reminders that some of us feel deeply oppressed, or the sotto voce jokes about incipient fascism that we're not supposed to hear but are. It makes one pensive.

So, allow me to suggest that we ... empathize with these courageous Womyn Warriors, praise them, even. Suggest, if we may, that they make this a quarterly event, even a monthly one, because womyn are worth it, yo!

Well, no, we couldn't join them; we are too mired in the internalized oppression of the patriarchy, you see. We could never do that! But we are inspired by them! In fact, because of the obvious strength they displayed with their absence, we even felt a little tug to break free ourselves ...

Responsible Blue-State Government

The Rhode Island Statehouse is full of drunk legislators doing shots inside the capitol, newly elected Providence Democratic Rep. Moira Walsh alleged this week....

“I am probably gonna get in a lot of trouble for saying this but the drinking, it is the drinking that blows my mind. You cannot operate a motor vehicle when you’ve had two beers, but you can make laws that affect people’s lives forever when you’re half in the bag?” she said. “That’s outrageous.”

When asked to clarify if lawmakers are drinking during session Walsh demurred, though she did say they took shots together on the floor on at least one occasion.

“Dude they put shots on our desk for the Dominican Republic day and we all just did shots on the floor,” she offered.

Rolling Stone: This Russia Story is Dangerous to the Press's Credibility

The magazine that gave us Hunter S. Thompson has begun to publish queasy second-thoughts about all this Russia stuff.

This is the former Director of National Intelligence telling all of us that as of 12:01 a.m. on January 20th, when he left government, the intelligence agencies had no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and the government of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Virtually all of the explosive breaking news stories on the Trump-Russia front dating back months contain some version of this same disclaimer....

Setting all of that aside, look at the techniques involved within the more "legitimate" reports. Many are framed in terms of what they might mean, should other information surface. There are inevitably uses of phrases like "so far," "to date" and "as yet." These make visible the outline of a future story that isn't currently reportable, further heightening expectations....

These constructions are an end run around the [NYT']s own reporting standards. The Times by itself could never have run that "explosive" Steele dossier, or mentioned the "embarrassing videos" – because the dossier material can't be confirmed....

[W]hat if there is nothing else to find?

Reporters should always be nervous when intelligence sources sell them stories. Spooks don't normally need the press. Their usual audiences are other agency heads, and the executive. They can bring about action just by convincing other people within the government to take it.
In the extant case, whether the investigation involved a potential Logan Act violation, or election fraud, or whatever, the CIA, FBI, and NSA had the ability to act both before and after Donald Trump was elected. But they didn't, and we know why, because James Clapper just told us – they didn't have evidence to go on.

Thus we are now witnessing the extremely unusual development of intelligence sources that normally wouldn't tell a reporter the time of day litigating a matter of supreme importance in the media.

There is a real danger to the press in proving the spirit of Trump's accusations against it: that it is an enemy, if not of 'the People,' certainly of him personally and his administration in general. Credibility is the currency, and the media's is in grave danger here. If it becomes obvious that they allowed themselves to become the willing puppets of administration opponents within the security state, the press has a lot to lose.

I Love This Plan

We've heard the sanctimonious "Blue States pay more in taxes!" arguments for more than a decade now, and of course the moralizing about how Red States are full of losers is old hat. Still, the actual plan here is wonderful.

We give up. You win. From now on, we’ll treat the animating ideal on which the United States was founded—out of many, one—as dead and buried. Federalism, true federalism, which you have vilified for the past century, is officially over, at least in spirit. You want to organize the nation around your cherished principle of states’ rights—the idea that pretty much everything except the U.S. military and paper currency and the national anthem should be decided at the local level? Fine. We won’t formally secede, in the Civil War sense of the word. We’ll still be a part of the United States, at least on paper. But we’ll turn our back on the federal government in every way we can, just like you’ve been urging everyone to do for years, and devote our hard-earned resources to building up our own cities and states. We’ll turn Blue America into a world-class incubator for progressive programs and policies, a laboratory for a guaranteed income and a high-speed public rail system and free public universities. We’ll focus on getting our own house in order, while yours falls into disrepair and ruin.

That's fantastic. In return, let's cut Federal taxes to the bone so that it has the money it needs to take care of the military and its other few explicitly Constitutional functions. That'll leave more money for blue states to redirect to all those local projects.

Frankly, I think much of that spending done in Red States is harmful anyway. The opioid epidemic is paid for by Federal welfare money: poor people can't afford all those pills. However, they get food stamp money that can launder, and they get subsidized pills thanks to Federal medical aid. So ending all those transfer payments would ultimately be of benefit to our society: the transfer payments and welfare schemes often cause harm, however much they are intended to do good. Likewise, I don't worry too much that industry will flock only to blue states (with their high state taxes) and avoid red states (with their far lower ones).

This is what I think of as "true" Federalism -- the Federal government has a few, specific, explicitly stated duties. It has all, but only, the powers it needs to do those few things. Everything else is reserved to the states, or to the people, as the 10th Amendment plainly says.

So by all means, let's get to work on this new idea of theirs.

"Preach what you Practice"

A reasonable point on the virtues of the virtuous:

Murray’s upper-middle-class professionals are not the callous and un-American “Davos Men” of Steve Bannon’s rhetoric. They’re guilty of some mostly benign neglect, but in general their lifestyles are fairly admirable.

They’re disciplined and hard-working. They embrace healthy life habits. They are conscientious parents who get involved in their (bubbled) communities. It’s also interesting to note that Murray sees his upper middle class as a genuine cognitive elite.... In short, Murray in “Coming Apart” seems to regard the residents of “Belmont” as fine exemplars of many core American values. He doesn’t want to see them deposed. He just wants them to try harder to reach out to their less-fortunate compatriots, which is especially critical because “Fishtown” needs some help in this regard....

We don’t have to choose between a theory suggesting that “Fishtown” needs more and better professional and educational opportunities, and one suggesting that Fishtowners need more discipline and better life habits. These claims can easily both be true.

But if they are both true, then we won’t be able to lift “Fishtown” up just by tearing “Belmont” down. Populism likes to lionize the common man, but that wasn’t Murray’s impulse. He wanted the elite to “preach what they practice,” negatively judging Fishtowners’ misbehavior for their own good and the good of our shared society.

It's fair to draw a distinction between decent 'elites' and the "Davos Men" (and women, including especially the recent Democratic candidate for President). But let's not lose the fair criticism, either: how many of these don't preach what they practice? How many preach that the traditional family structure is a kind of trap for women and children, or that marriage is a very fluid concept, or that really it's fine if the best jobs go to strangers overseas? They don't practice this way. They practice as if their marriage and family are sacrosanct, and their children need to position themselves to get the increasingly few good jobs that exist in a changing economy.

They say the popular things to say, not the hard things. If the poor and the weak hear these things from the righteous and successful, how many of them will find the heart to say that the righteous and successful are wrong? Well, they are wrong: not so much in what they do, but very often in what they say. Very often, likewise, in what they consent to their government saying.

Down the Rabbit Hole

A secret Knights Templar cavern, discovered in just that way.

This is a Strange Day for this Argument, Comey

Default powerful encryption "breaks the bargain" between citizens and government, argues the head of the FBI.

I'm pretty sure we just this week had it confirmed that you have backdoor capacities to turn on the microphones in like everything we own, which means that encryption of voice calls is useless. Malware that lets you read keystrokes captures data before the start of the end-to-end encryption process, and if you can seize control of the computer you can read the data on the other end anyway.

Besides, encryption is a branch of mathematical logic. You can't ban it any more than you can ban people from doing math. If you made it illegal to manufacture commercial encryption, anyone with a computer could still brew it up if they bothered to learn how. At least this way you can bribe the tech companies to give you a backdoor or to leave vulnerabilities for you to exploit in the system (as the Vault 7 documents claim your friends at CIA have been doing).

If anyone has a right to complain about the bargain being broken, I would think it was the citizenry. The right to be secure in 'person and papers' without your having to get a warrant seems to be fading in this technological age. If there remain ways of defending yourself from intrusive surveillance, good.

SoA: Celebrating the Kurdish Female Peshmerga

Spirit of America has chosen to celebrate "International Women's Day" with this series of interviews. By virtue of necessity, 40% of the Kurdish fighting force is female as they struggle against ISIS and are surrounded by regional aggressors.

NSA Wiretap Whistleblower: Of Course Trump Is Right

Eat the rich? No, we eat everything.

He's almost twenty years out of date as a man in the service, which either makes this better or worse. If a 36 year member of the service says this is plausible based on nearly 20 year old data, then it's way more plausible today. On the other hand, he's been out of the game for a long time.

Pineapple Pizza

I once bought a friend a pineapple pizza that he didn't eat at all, because he hated the stuff. I meant it kindly.

This happened in Iraq, in 2008 or 2009. My friend was a Warrant Officer in the US Army, and I had recently observed him -- on a trip to Victory Base Complex, where there were multiple Pizza Hut trailers as well as a real-life pizza restaurant on the west side -- to bring back several pizzas, including a Hawaiian pizza. This kind of pizza is not really Hawaiian. It's actually Canadian.

Anyway, I assumed he wouldn't have bought the thing if he didn't like it, so the next time I got over there I brought one back for him. He thanked me very kindly, and never once mentioned that he hated the idea of pineapple on pizza. I only found that out later. I felt bad at the time, although the only sad thing was that I guess the pizza was wasted. He appreciated that I'd tried to do something nice for him, and that was the really important thing.

I personally like very many things on pizza. This attitude is described by the author from the first link as proper to "[o]thers from pizza wastelands such as Australia and Atlanta [who] extolled the virtues of complementing pineapple and ham with even more revolting toppings such as... jalapenos." Why, yes, I would also like jalapenos on that pizza.

I mean, where pizza is concerned, I'm fairly broad-minded.

In any case, I didn't bring this up to offer a binding opinion on the question of what ought to be on a pizza. I was just appreciative of the occasion to remember a friend I haven't ever seen since he boarded a helicopter on FOB Falcon, to rotate back to Germany after a long and honorable service in Iraq. I hope he's doing well.

Anybody 'On Strike' Tomorrow?

I asked my wife if she knew that she was supposed to be on strike tomorrow. She said, "No, what's tomorrow?"

"International women's day," I said.

"That sounds like some UN Commie bull****," she might have said.

"Well, you're supposed to refuse to go to work tomorrow," I told her, "and also not to do any work here around the house. It's a way of protesting Donald Trump."

Her response to that was unprintable.

What about those of you around the Hall of the feminine persuasion? Don't take my ferocious wife to be off-putting. Thomas, who met her recently in Dallas, can tell you that she's a woman of her own mind (as well she ought to be). If you've chosen to strike, that's just fine. Feel free to tell us about your reasons, assured of a respectful discussion according to Hall rules.

Georgia Legislature Update

Religious freedom is dead this year, having been referred to languish until it was too late to act upon. Last year it passed and was vetoed by Governor Deal. Support for religious freedom is even weaker in the legislature this year, while corporate opponents of religious freedom have proliferated.

SB 49, the 'redefine what a knife is' bill, also appears not to have managed to "cross over" to the House by the required deadline. It will not become law.

However, three gun related bills did cross over, and are still in the running. This includes this year's version of Campus Carry, HB 280. You will remember that Governor Deal, who is still the governor, vetoed that bill last year as well. However, Rep. Powell of Hartwell, Georgia, says he believes this year's version addresses the governor's concerns. We'll see, maybe.