Freedom of Speech in Peril

Some of these results are more disturbing than others, but the worst of them are quite disturbing.

Some of the shock value comes from the difference between the headline and the actual question asked. "Is supporting racists' free speech the same as holding racist views yourself?" is, strictly speaking, a logical question: you can determine the answer by building a truth table. Obviously they are not the same thing, and it would be deeply alarming to have a majority or near-majority come back saying that the clearly false proposition was true. What the survey actually asked was whether supporting racists' free speech was "as bad as" holding racist views. That's a different proposition. It's sad, in America, to see that so many people view defending freedom of speech to be actively immoral if the speech is bad. All the same, it's not a logical problem; it's a disagreement about whether freedom of speech is a good.

I think there's a similar issue with the question of whether "disrespectful" people do or don't deserve free speech rights. The actual question asks not about "disrespectful people," but about "people who don't respect others." That's not quite the same thing; you can be disrespectful in some senses without failing to respect the humanity of the person you're addressing disrespectfully. For example, you might be correcting them. Your disrespectful speech is then pointed at their actions, which are not necessarily respectable, and not their humanity. Someone who "does not respect others" is guilty of not respecting their humanity, which is a stronger offense. (For a Kantian, it is the basic moral offense.)

All that said, this points up a very deep division on a very basic and classically American right. That's a problem however you cut it.

Scary, Scary Halloween

What's the most terrifying thing you can be this Halloween? A white guy with a pickup truck that has a Gadsden flag license plate on the front.



The very stuff of nightmares!

In Health Insurance News...

This August I was forced off my existing plan again, so I bought another plan from Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Georgia. Yesterday, I was informed by mail that this plan will be canceled at the end of December, due to changing regulations. I will need to find a new plan by January 1.

Some on the left sometimes claim that the economy functions because of the reliability of the regulatory regime created by good government. This idea is demonstrably false: even though economies are improved by having a few good government measures like enforceable contracts, economic activity originates before governments and survives their collapse. Go out on some frontier, and you'll find people trading what they have for what others have that they need; go to a failed state like Somalia, and you'll find the same thing.

Still, the capacity of government regulation to provide stability and reliability is supposed to be one of its selling points. "HA!" SAYS I. I've never seen instability in a market like this. In addition to plans being ruled legal and illegal willy-nilly, there is the even greater issue of price instability. My costs have already quadrupled with the plan I started on in August. I can't wait to see how much more I'll be expected to pay for roughly the same health insurance next year!

Son of Ugly

That's what "MacLeod" means, you might not have known.

Mabinogion- Mapping Welsh Myth and Legend

Somehow or other, my wanderings about the internet brought me across this map- a beautifully rendered watercolor of Wales in the myth and legend of the Mabinogion. 

Now, I must confess, my knowledge of Welsh myth and legend is sparse to say the least, mainly echoes through Tolkien and what little knowledge I have of Arthurian legend.  I was completely unaware of the Mabinogion, but will say that this artwork has piqued my interest.

The artist is Margaret Jones, and she has done a fantastic job with this map, and is apparently also the illustrator of an edition of the Mabinogion.  The poster itself doesn't seem to be widely available but it is out there (I found a couple of places) if you want it.  I just might have to get one myself.

Who Could Have Predicted This?

Instapundit is right.

The people who thought that was a meltdown haven't spent enough time around the folks who were making the arguments. It was never a stretch to say that they'd be after Washington and Jefferson as soon as they got rid of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson -- Virginia secessionist slaveholders all. Actually, if you view American history primarily through the lens of slavery, Stonewall Jackson may have been the best of the four. Washington isn't going to get a break: his slaves fled to the British for protection.

Al Gore Too?

Maybe this "Me Too" thing was worth doing after all, just to make clear the scale of this problem. It's starting to look like this bad behavior is rampant in places of power -- now Al Gore is being accused by multiple women. I suppose finding out that both halves of the Clinton administration are guilty is unsurprising, given that the boss sets the tone for the workplace. Nor are Republicans well placed to say much, I guess, with Trump at the head of the party.

Do you suppose that the worst people seek power, or that the power makes them worse?

NINA

From Newsweek, anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice of the sort you haven't seen in decades.

Once the biggest names, faces, and voices on television were Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, Murrow, even John Chancellor and Dan Rather, all sober, serious Americans—and all Protestants too.

Now we have angry loudmouths with names like O’Reilly, Hannity, Buchanan, and, lurking back there with his Cheshire smile, the dissolute but scary Bannon.

Yet no one has noticed this obvious fact, and the sheer lack of attention may be the most important thing about it. Why has the ascent of a bunch of people who in an earlier period might have been called Micks drawn no notice at all?

The piece isn't really coherent; the author can't decide if it's important that these guys are all Irish, or if in fact they aren't very Irish. That allows him to finish on the PC note of 'embracing Irishness,' which is apparently really about being a Communist.

Congress Is A Law Unto Itself

Congress forbids staffers from pursuing lawsuits about office harassment without committing to months of "counseling" first. They're also required to subject themselves to a mediation process to try to settle the business out of court.

No doubt that process produces far better results than the transparency and accountability of an open court would. I mean, that's what I would expect, wouldn't you?

"Fair Market Value"

I'm always suspicious of attempts to determine a 'fair market value' for properties other than by seeing what they'll bring on the market. What if we determine that the market itself isn't fair?

Just a few months ago, Lopez had a contract in place to sell her 1,200-square-foot home for $265,000 so she and her daughter could move to a bigger house nearby.... Just days before the home closing, Lopez was told her home was part of an affordable housing program that Denver created in 2003.... That meant [her home] could only be sold to buyers who qualified as low income....

Lopez could only sell her home for $186,000, $79,000 less than her buyers were prepared to pay, because the city only allows its affordable housing homes to appreciate 5 percent a year.

She's been ordered to relist the home in 30 days for no more than the mandatory maximum price. By the way, the city has been taxing her on the full value of the house -- not the 'value' they insist she's required to accept for it.

Poll: Only 51% of Democrats Support Investigating Trump

Meanwhile, nearly two thirds of respondents felt that the current investigations into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia are hurting the country more than helping. Only 51% of Democrats felt the investigation was helping, with the other 49% arguing it was hurting.

Interesting Point

The point that drew my attention occurs early. Christina Hoff Summers: "It looks to me as though the way society used to police and monitor the lives of gay people, now it's moved to heterosexual males. They are under constant criticism and surveillance, and their normal sexuality has been pathologized."



This turns into an eleven minute conversation, some parts of which are more interesting than others. Camille Paglia's point that her generation fought for the right to risk being raped is phrased in a controversial way, but she's right: the focus on winning freedom for young women in her era was being fought against a protective instinct from colleges. I remember my mother talking about her college campus in just the way she does: that the women had to sign in and out, and be in by a certain hour.

The 'microaggression app' sounds unpleasant in the extreme.

JFK Assassination Declassification

The UK Independent has a live update page.

Meanwhile, the DB gets its licks in.

"Gasp!"

The NYT on Chief of Staff John Kelly:

For all of the talk of Mr. Kelly as a moderating force and the so-called grown-up in the room, it turns out that he harbors strong feelings on patriotism, national security and immigration that mirror the hard-line views of his outspoken boss.

Strong feelings on patriotism, you say? In a White House Chief of Staff? National Security, too?

I can see people worrying about immigration. Kelly's DHS developed a hard-core strategy of proving to illegal immigrants that they could rely on no safe havens anywhere in America. You see stories like this one about a 10-year-old cerebral palsy patient that Border Patrol agents followed to the hospital, and then arrested as soon as she was released. Clearly the intent is to communicate that there will be no mercy for illegal immigrants, and that they have to fear showing up anywhere: the hospital, court, school, anywhere at all. The government can't deport 11 million people, or 20 million people, and it doesn't even know if the true figure is 11 or 20 million people. If it can make living in America sufficiently terrifying, however, it might convince them to leave on their own.

Those are the hardball tactics that I'd expect from a Marine assigned to enforcing immigration law given the exigent existing circumstances. We'll simply never get back to an enforceable state of affairs otherwise: the choice is between hardball tactics or accepting this mass illegal immigration as a fait accompli. A lot of people will nevertheless be put off by the hardball play, as most people prefer feeling generous and kind rather than cruel and merciless.

You can't properly damn Kelly for taking this tactic if you are also one of those who supported the Obama and Bush II era policies that made this the only choice on the table. If Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush had done their job to ensure that the laws were faithfully executed, we would not now be in a case in which the only options are "accept that the law has failed" and "restore effective enforcement by horror." That is of course what we'll hear, though, because the idea is supposed to be that the law itself was always wrong; not enforcing it was always right. Enforcing it emphatically in ways that scare people is even worse than enforcing it gently in ways that allow many people to slip through the cracks.

Still, for what it's worth, that's how we got here. Kelly's DHS is doing this because literally the only alternative is accepting the 11 or 20 (or 30 or 40) million people who came here illegally. He was hired to get a handle on this problem, and this approach is the only functional way left on the table. The people who made that reality bear a lot of the blame for the fact that this approach has been chosen by their successors.

The Dark Continent

I never get tired of stories about people on safari into flyoverland, trying to understand the mysterious natives.

My own county is convulsed right now with hurricane destruction.  Although our house came through with flying colors, nearly every house in the county was damaged to some extent; a surprising number were totaled.  Not very many businesses are back up and running yet.  The county estimates that it's lost about 25% of its revenue base, a combined effect of devalued real estate and a huge hit to hotel/restaurant surtaxes and business sales taxes.

Naturally the County Commissioners have chosen this critical time to go full Nanny-State with construction permits, ostensibly in order to placate FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program.  The timing is not ideal, given that FEMA appears to be universally loathed here.  Citizens were surprised to learn that it's difficult to qualify for FEMA benefits unless you're broke and uninsured.  Even if you seem to qualify, the application requirements are arcane or, at least, beyond the abilities of most broke and uninsured people.  Facebook has been boiling with horror stories.  I haven't run into anyone yet who got flood insurance benefits.  We suffered very little from rising water, almost entirely from high winds.

Nevertheless, we discovered (to the discomfiture of those small-governmentistas among us who should have been paying closer attention) that the Commissioners Court adopted a floodplain administration plan in early 2016 that instituted a construction permit process for the county's unincorporated areas.  On its face, it's not too horrible, in that it applies only to new construction or to repairs or renovations expected to cost at least half the value of the original structure.  Unfortunately, the Commissioners are now inexplicably taking the position that it applies to all repairs.  Naturally, this drives me nuts, not only the intrusion but the inability of a governmental body to think sensibly about whether they're really going to administer permits for everyone who needs to replace a window pane for the rest of time.

I'm very curious to see whether the citizens will put up with it.  The Facebook response includes a good bit of sensible outrage that nevertheless is disturbingly leavened with a certain amount of "but gosh, everybody should be forced to build properly, and naturally only the government can make that happen."  More to the point, because the Commissioner for my precinct just announced she will not stand for re-election in 2018, I have to decide whether to file for her position by the December 11 deadline.  This is not a job I want.  Still, I've always said that if you don't like who occupies most political offices, you should be willing to run for office yourself.

I'm trying to look at it as an experiment in whether residents of a largely unincorporated area of a deep-red Texas county are committed to small government.  If they're not, I'll be disappointed and less hopeful about the future of our freedoms, but at least I won't have to serve.  If I run and win, I won't be able to out-vote four other Commissioners, but I can make my voice heard, and I can certainly publicize their actions in a way that's actually calculated to reach the citizens, as opposed to meeting bare-minimum standards under the law.

Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guilt

Peter T. Leeson, professor of economics at George Mason University, has an interesting explanation of why trials by ordeal may have worked well. He starts out:

The only ones who know for sure whether a defendant is guilty or innocent are the defendant himself and God above. Asking the defendant to tell us the truth of the matter is usually useless: spontaneous confessions by the guilty are rare. But what if we could ask God to tell us instead? And what if we did? And what if it worked? 

For more than 400 years, between the ninth and the early 13th centuries, that’s exactly what Europeans did. In difficult criminal cases, when ‘ordinary’ evidence was lacking, their legal systems asked God to inform them about defendants’ criminal status. The method of their request: judicial ordeals.

He then explains how it could have actually worked. Pretty nifty, though whether his explanation is true or not is another matter, I suppose.

Mistakes Were Made

How do you get to the point in your professional life in which you have to write the following sentences? "Over the last few days, I have reflected on my appointment of H.E. President Robert Mugabe as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for NCDs in Africa."

The Russia / Uranium Story

It didn't get a lot of attention, but the story about Russia buying up a lot of America's uranium is back in the news. Unexpectedly, it looks as if the Russians used clandestine bribery to advance their interests. Unexpectedly, the Clinton Foundation was a major recipient of such bribery. And shockingly, the same Robert Mueller who is running the investigation into Russia/Trump was assigned to handle the Russia/Clinton business. Mysteriously, in the earlier case, the fact that the Russians were bribing everyone neither resulted in charges nor stopped the sale.

FIRE Brings Us a World Without Hate Speech

Zach Greenberg over at FIRE tells us where we can see what nations without hate speech are like and why banning hate speech isn't a good thing, even for the people who think they want that. It's a good argument with lots of support linked.

Measures of Effectiveness

I don't understand how anybody listened to John Kelly yesterday without developing a sense that he was talking about deep, sacred things before which we should pause with reverence. Perhaps the sacred itself is terrifying: certainly, it looks as if what he said scared some.

That shows it was a powerful speech, I suppose.

Things We Do Not Understand

Men are at risk of death, especially from lung failure, if they receive a blood transfusion from a woman who has ever been pregnant. Women show no increased risk whether or not they have been pregnant. Nobody knows why.

Sacred Things

More from Joe Bob Briggs

After a career in movie-making, he's learned a few things -- things he finds himself alone in saying out loud.

Sometimes, I am prone to point out, we don’t need a strong female character for this.

We might, in fact, need a weak female character for this particular story. Or, more likely, we’ll need a complex person for whom the words “strong” and “weak” are relative or irrelevant because she’s, you know, a human being.... I could go scene by scene through the complete works of Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, and Marilyn Monroe and make notes in the margins of their scripts that would read something like this:

strong moment
weak moment
neither-strong-nor-weak moment
strong
weak
moderately strong
moderately weak

...on and on, ad infinitum, because all three of those women have played multiple roles with multiple points of view that can’t ever be summed up by the words “strong female character” or “weak female character.” You could do the same with male characters. Superman is not interesting unless Kryptonite exists.

As always, there's a lot more at Taki's place. Some of it relates to this new Arthurian adaptation of the story of Lancelot du Lac. (But see also here.)

UPDATE: Joe Bobb is bringing a cultural lesson north:

Growing up in Little Rock, Ark., John Bloom knew lots of people who figured they’d never leave. “At least once in your life, you need to go see New York, or Europe,” he’d tell them. “It’ll change your perspective.”...

Now he encourages friends living on the Upper West Side to visit Little Rock, or Mississippi: “Spend a weekend in Jackson. Go to a Baptist church. Your view is getting kind of narrow." ...

To that end, he’ll bring his midnight clip show, “A History of the Redneck in Film,” to the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 4. Though he’s presented the show periodically over the past 10 years or so, this is the first time he’s brought it north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a public service, he says, half-joking.

Rednecks are one of the last safe groups to portray as villains for Hollywood, he argues. Most every movie needs a villain.

Happy "World Turned Upside Down" Day!

According to the All-Knowing Wikipedia, on this day in 1781, "British forces led by Lord Cornwallis officially surrendered (pictured) to Franco-American forces under George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, ending the Siege of Yorktown."

Painting by John Trumbull

 

This Seems Like A Big Deal

Samantha Power claims that all those unmasking requests made 'in her name' weren't made by her. Now these are NSA documents, highly classified, and in several cases the names of the individuals unmasked were leaked to the press (also illegal). So if she's telling the truth, somebody (or multiple somebodies) were filing fraudulent requests to violate high levels of classification at least sometimes for political purposes.

A cop I used to know down here in Georgia once told the story about how a bunch of teenagers camping down by the river had been target shooting beer cans for fun. When he arrived, they tried to explain that the gunshots he'd heard had really just been fireworks they were setting off for fun. Now, in those days, possession of fireworks was illegal -- shooting a .22 on your own property was just fine. So their excuse got them into a kind of trouble that the truth would have avoided, just because it sounded to them like fireworks should be less of an issue than guns.

Maybe Power screwed up in the same way today. Could be she lied about this, not realizing that this claim makes the situation very much worse than if she'd just admitted to unmasking people using her lawful authority to do so.

Or maybe we've just found a rathole. Either way, Power turned this into a story today.

A Bike for Henry

So, I don't do charity appeals very often at all; you can give or not as you like, and I won't ask. But a friend of mine who does a lot of mission work knows a guy in Nicaragua whose motorcycle wore out. He works for Ruby Ranch, itself a charity helping local kids. They'd like to buy him a new bike so he can get up and down the territory to help the kids. Nobody's made a better appeal to my very limited charitable nature in a long time. So I sent some money, and I figured I'd pass it on to you. Do what you like.

"How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America"

A warm review of a controversial new book.

Hafþór Blows the Gjallarhorn

The NFL is having a tough time right now -- College ball fans will note that UGA is #3 and undefeated, for those seeking an alternative.

But there are some things left to like in the pro game.

It is Blasphemy to Vote for My Opponent

Indonesia does democracy a little differently.

Mr. Basuki, 51, who is ethnic Chinese and popularly known as Ahok, was the incumbent governor and was handily leading in opinion polls over Mr. Anies and other candidates when he was accused of violating a blasphemy law by citing a verse from the Quran in a speech in September 2016 to argue that it was acceptable for Muslims to vote for a non-Muslim candidate.

Hard-line Islamic groups held large street protests — one of which turned violent — demanding that he be jailed or summarily executed.... He was convicted by the North Jakarta District Court on May 9, three weeks after being defeated in a runoff by Mr. Anies, who is Muslim.

While Mr. Anies was not publicly accused of orchestrating the street protests against Mr. Basuki by Islamic radicals, he did openly court their support and flaunted his own Muslim credentials in campaign advertising.

So it's blasphemy for a non-Muslim to cite the Koran as an authority? Imagine if he'd cited the Bible.

A Surprising Lack of Sympathy

You are probably aware of the "Me Too" campaign currently trending on social media, in which women are supposed to post those words as a hashtag to show that they've been subject to sexual harassment. I'm surprised at how little sympathy it is eliciting in my heart. People who have long read Grim's Hall know that I am the sort of man who sometimes is sympathetic to women's suffering. This time, though, I'm not feeling very moved at all.

It is because, I realize, these same people who are "Me Too"ing all over the place are the ones who have been chiding me and my culture for my entire life for our relationship to women. I come from a culture of ritual courtesies between the sexes. Women are "ma'am" from the time they are toddlers until they die. Strange men are "sir." Doors get held open. Chairs get pulled out. And all I ever hear, these last decades, is how this kind of formal courtesy is demeaning. It puts women on a pedestal, it doesn't take them seriously as human beings, it sets up 'power relationships' that get analyzed to death. These expressions of respect that my culture engages in are supposed to be canonical expressions of Patriarchy and the oppression of women. It's the whole thing that had to be destroyed, and they've been at the work of destroying it hammer and tongs for decades.

So now they want me to feel their pain about the rude and aggressive behaviors they find themselves subject to? Well, I don't harass anyone. I don't endure it in my presence. I was trained that way as much by my mother as by my father, who had been taught by their parents, as their parents before them. This latest round only hardens my convictions that they were right all along. Those who went about breaking the world my ancestors made are reaping what they sewed and, if they want to reap otherwise, they'd better think about changing what they're planting.

The Vikings Stopped on Watling Street

A long-recognized gap turns out to have a less-than mysterious explanation. First the mystery:

The north-south divide has been the butt of jokes in Britain for years, but research has shown the Watford Gap, which separates the country, was in fact established centuries ago when the Vikings invaded Britain....

Adams was struck by the absence of Scandinavian placenames south-west of Watling Street, the Roman road that became the A5. “There might be one or two names, but I don’t think there are any, and there are certainly hundreds and hundreds north-east. Clearly the Scandinavian settlers stopped at Watling Street,” Adams said.

And then the explanation:

“I began to notice that all the rivers’ sources stop pretty much on the line of Watling Street. North-east of that line, all the rivers flow into the Irish Sea or the North Sea. South and west of it, they all flow into the Severn or the Thames.”...

“These days, we’re unaware of which way rivers face and where they flow out to. It doesn’t make any odds to us. We just put bridges over them. But, for most of history, such things have mattered. Your natural trading routes are along rivers and all the medieval monastic estates used the rivers as their arteries of power. So clearly the geography of power has always mattered … Geographically, it slaps you in the face as soon as you figure it out.”

I have always thought that people who really love a place show it when they understand the way the rivers flow. But that is dependent on the modern sensibility, in which it really doesn't matter to you which way the rivers flow for the most part. You'd only need to know if you cared about the place. For much of history, and never more than for the Vikings, where those rivers go was a big deal.

I don't often recommend video games, but if you want to get a sense of this, try this historical semi-simulation. It's not super cheap -- you have to buy the base game plus this add on, or else one of the extended editions that includes it. Still, it's got a pretty good map of the western part of the Viking world.

Pavlovian Discourse

Since I've made similar arguments regarding terms like liberal, conservative, right, and left in American political discourse, I thought I'd link this article by Theodore Dalrymple on discourse in European politics. It begins:

Some words in the press are used not only for purposes of shorthand but also as Pavlovian bells to get the ideological saliva running. They have only to be printed or uttered for thought to cease, and since thought is often painful and poses the danger of arriving at unwanted conclusions, such words offer protection against such pain and discomfort. Among them, for certain people, especially in Europe, are poverty, liberalism and austerity (the list is far from exhaustive). 

He discusses each term in turn as used in Europe. The paragraph on poverty applies equally well on this side of the pond, I think.

Dancing shoes

Make you wanna dance:



Sometimes a songwriter comes up with a killer riff.  You know you're in good hands with those first four beats.

What Mitch McConnell could do

I'm not a Mitch McConnell fan.  Kim Strassel, however, makes a good case that he did an outstanding job keeping judicial slots open under President Obama and continues his winning streak in getting the same slots filled with conservative jurists under President Trump.  It probably shows what he could be doing on other conservative issues if he actually cared about any of them.  In any case, I'm glad he cares about this one.

Almost Home

I'll be back later today; just about eight hours' ride left in front of me. In the meantime, enjoy this piece by Joe Bob Briggs. It's at TakiMag, so there is some intentionally offensive language; that's how they roll over there. All the same, there are some very good points made about what is keeping some classes of Americans out of work.

But it gets worse. Ex-cons are not even the most forsaken job applicants.

Single moms with two or more children—forget about it.

These women apply for the lowest-paying jobs in America—manicurists, theme park employees, food servers, packagers at mailing centers, laundry workers, dishwashers, cafeteria workers, maids, tollbooth clerks—and constantly lose out because they have all these special needs. They need flexible hours. They need weird schedules. They need time off on short notice when their kids get sick....

What’s really ironic is that the people who are trying to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour are the same people who say, “Mexicans will do jobs that Americans don’t want.”

Get rid of the illegal Mexicans and see how fast that wage goes up to $15 on its own, no government intervention needed.

But, of course, that would require caring about the single mom, the ex-con trying to straighten out his life, the lonely elderly guy who wants to go back to work, the diabetes patient who needs a wheelchair because of his swollen feet, and the guy who finally kicked drugs and needs to start over.

Read the rest over there.

Joe Bob's answer -- that eliminating illegal labor will force people to hire them, and accommodate their needs -- is not obviously wrong. At least for that subset of jobs that can't be outsourced or sent overseas, if you want the work done, it costs what it costs to do here. You might even employ a few people you didn't really want to, because they have some problems they need to figure out how to work around.

One of the best conversations I had on this trip was with an Iraq buddy I hooked up with for a lunch to celebrate his birthday. He's talked two of his three kids out of going to college, and gotten them into trades. They're pulling good money during apprenticeships, and looking at nearly six figures once they finish. He plans to semi-retire in a few years by setting up a company where he arranges the work that they do, and takes a percentage for his work arranging their work. Everybody makes out, and nobody is saddled with student loans.

It's not obviously insane.

West Point's Cadet Prayer

This has been referenced here and other places recently, so I thought it might be good to read the whole thing.

Cadet Prayer

O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of Human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.

Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretence ever to diminish.

Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.

Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.

Guard us against flippancy and irreverance in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance, and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer.

Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point in doing our duty to Thee and to our Country.

All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of all.

AMEN

Honor and Duty Dying at West Point

"Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won."

 So says the Cadet Prayer, consistent with the best West Point tradition.  Unfortunately, it seems that this ideal is on the rocks, and the recent revelations of goings on at West Point are but the tip of the iceberg- and the rot runs deep.

The good LTC (Ret.) Robert M. Heffington (yes, that same LTC that wrote up Cadet Rapone) has written an open letter revealing the deep and profoundly troubling problems at West Point in the last decade.  He documents an institution a shadow of it's former self, stripped of any real sense of honor or duty, and that has left him- and he is himself an alumnus- considering that the institution should perhaps no longer remain open.  You can read the letter here, but be warned- it's deeply troubling in it's implications about our military, our government, and in truth, our society.

Wednesday Evening Blues

Distributed intelligence

The hive brain has let me down.  I was watching a medium-old BBC series called "Doc Martin" on Acorn TV (a good value on the net), when I found myself in a Cornish wedding scene thinking, "That's a better wedding band than the run of the mill.  In fact, I like that song.  What's that song?"  Since I could get a few lyrics, I was confident the answer would be, as usual, a Google search away.  Instead, what I got was a lot of hits to sites with people saying, "I was watching a wedding scene in that old show Doc Martin . . . ."  No one ever did figure out what the song was, though the consensus was that it was sort of close to another song and might be a variation.  Some band had its shot at the spotlight and missed.

Snippet of reggae-like song begins about 3:30, but if you like the whole scene you might try Acorn TV.



And the song it resembles:

ISIS surrender?

I admit, I've been paying almost no attention at all to the news.  Someone mentioned a large ISIS surrender to the Kurds, and a Google search of those words does yield a fair number of stories about it.  Would the rest of you say it's been getting much coverage?  I must really have been under a rock.

In Las Vegas Shooting, Was the Medium the Message?

Mark Steyn posted an interesting theory from a reader:

1. His long planned and carefully executed purchase of a virtual armoury of unprecedented scope and scale guaranteed that very armoury would inevitably become the central focus of the media.

2. His assiduous removal of evidence of any tangible motive also removed the possibility that the news cycle might move on from guns - simply the means of the killing - to considering the more interesting issues of motive and message - be it political or economic or environmental or anything else.

3. This man was a highly methodical and systematic thinker. Nothing in the scenario that unfolded was left to chance - even down to positioning cameras to surveil the corridor. It is therefore inconceivable that this was all done in this precise manner for no reason. That there is no message.

But of course there is indeed a message. It only happens to be implicit instead of explicit. That message is 'guns'. And that message is being trawled over every minute of every day on every network in America. Given the nature of the man and the facts this is not a chance outcome. On the contrary given the known facts it is indeed the only possible outcome. An outcome so obvious that anyone given the full story beforehand would have predicted as inevitable.

4. The people he chose to kill supports the hypothesis on 'guns'. Country and Western fans are virtually guaranteed to own or at least to defend the ownership of guns. By a certain logic this provides the gunman with two sound moral positions (because it is not beyond possibility he has a conscience):

First - While killing a very large number of innocent people is an horrendous crime it is nonetheless entirely justifiable - in moral terms - if it causes a restriction on guns. Because such a restriction would - it is widely held - save innumerable lives in the long run. There is no evidence for this but it is still a widely and passionately held belief.

Second - Since the people he is shooting are actively or passively defenders of guns and an obstacle to gun control they are by definition responsible in part for all the people who have been and continue to be killed by guns.

It makes as much sense as anything else I've read on the topic, though there is no hard evidence for it so far.

On the Road Again

Be gone most of the week.

Underpaid Girl

When last we discussed "Fearless Girl," the Wall Street statue of a girl staring down a bull with apparently no sense of physics, I was defending the proposition that the statue might be thought improperly derivative of the work of another artist. It turns out it's also a hypocritical attempt to distract from the fact that the contracting firm doesn't live by the values it supposedly espouses.

But hey, that's par for the course.

How to Write a Dressing Down

I think you're all familiar with the subject of this particular dressing down- the recently infamous commie Cadet- but this conclusion from a sworn statement from LTC Robert M. Heffington may just have you breaking out in applause.  I wouldn't change a word.

At best, Cadet Rapone’s online ideological screeds reveal the philosophical infatuations of a precocious adolescent, rather like a high school boy who cannot stop spouting off about Nietzsche.  The “misunderstood” and “persecuted” young genius shouts truth to power by cobbling together ideas and quotations popping up in chat rooms or on Facebook walls, certain that his provocative and shocking proclamations will, based solely upon their vehemence and sarcasm, demonstrate both the profound sincerity and the unassailable correctness of his viewpoints.  This phase tends to be ephemeral, the erstwhile young firebrand eventually emerging from the self-adulatory fog after eye-opening encounters with equally brilliant people articulating cogent, well-supported, and entirely contrary arguments, or having gained sufficient life experience to illustrate the fundamental interpretive emptiness that renders any strictly Manichaean worldview emotionally unfulfilling and analytically bankrupt.  At worst, however, Cadet Rapone’s statements bespeak either a severe mental or psychological disorder, or a genuine commitment to values and ideals wholly at odds with those of West Point and the Army.  If the former is true, he is dangerously unbalanced, and therefore not suited to military service.  If the latter, is true, he is a coward, and a hypocrite who refuses to discontinue his association with an institution that, as he sees it, is a tool of an inherently unjust, immoral, and imperialist state.  He may at some point grow out of this phase, but the Army does not have the luxury of allowing him the opportunity to sort out his beliefs while charged with the sacred duty of leading American Soldiers.

If you're interested in what led to this conclusion, the rest is available at Bring the Heat.

'Have the White Supremacist Government Disarm Us!'

A pretty good point, really.

The US government is systemically racist and, through it’s inaction, seems willing to allow innocent, black citizens to be murdered by its police force. Furthermore, the judicial system is often rigged to protect the evil, racist officers by never punishing them for those murders. Additionally, the very same government is now in the hands of a fascist, incompetent criminal who, not only hates blacks and Latinos so much that he is willing to let the latter die of starvation and thirst rather than deliver humanitarian aid to them, but also calls the former “Sons of bitches” for protesting the racist country he oversees....

Maybe it’s me — and I have only my own perspective from which I can analyze this — but if I really thought this country was so evil and so racist and could fall into the hands of an incompetent fascist… I’d want to hang on to a few guns. And if I thought that government was either so incompetent or so evil that they would let their citizens starve during a crisis like a hurricane, again, I think having a few guns in that kind of scenario would be a wise thing. And, I certainly wouldn’t want that evil, fascist, incompetent and racist government to determine who could and could not arm themselves.

It's actually a little stronger than this phrasing, because "its police force" and "the judicial system" are aspects of the alleged racist, white-supremacist government. So the argument really isn't that 'by inaction' the US government is permitting murder, which then the judiciary gets away with not prosecuting fairly. The argument is that the US government engages in systematic murder as a part of its social control against blacks. Keeping them permanently aware of being immediately subject to murder by police at the slightest provocation is supposed to be an important part of our social structure. Far from a passive thing that happens because we have low-quality police, this is (on the forwarded analysis) a structural feature of the American system.

If that is what you believe -- and arguably, such a system really did exist in the Jim Crow South -- why on earth would you give up your guns to that system? You should join these political figures in thanking the NRA for defending your capacity to stand up and be free.

Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down

In the song, of course, 'shot me down' just meant 'left me without explanation.' Quentin Tarantino used the song in the opening to Kill Bill, where a more literal shooting-down was intended.

The question implied by the thing Ms. Sinatra was responding to ought to be answered by her reply. The NRA keeps Americans safe by preventing firing squads run by Cultural Revolutionaries. The NRA's main job isn't 'keeping people safe,' but defending the American way by ensuring that Americans have access to the tools and the training to defend it. Along the way, though, that can help keep people safe.

Trump to "Wipe Out" Puerto Rico's Debt

That will be a huge move, if he follows through on it. I am not sure if he has the power, though: can a President (note indefinite article) wipe out the debt of a US territory? Can Congress, other than by paying it off? What's the mechanism for that?

DB: WWII Vets Gather to Be Reminded to Check Their Privilege

These guys at the DB hit some winners sometimes.

The few remaining survivors of “The Greatest Generation”, who fought and bled in defense of democracy and freedom during World War II, were reminded to check their privilege today at a ceremony at The University of California at Berkeley.

The annual ceremony, sponsored by the Marginalized-Victims-of-Repressive-Oppression-by-White-Male-Capitalists-Over-Six-Feet-Tall-Student-Campus-Alliance (MVROWMCOSFTSCA), was intended to “send a message to all World War II veterans,” the group’s Facebook page said, “that no matter how many of your friends died right before your eyes, the fact that you were even there, only worried about dodging bullets and not violent speech, shows just how privileged you really were.”

Moonbeam Cinnamon Smith-Mustafa-Rodriguez-Gluten, the group’s organizer, shouted into a handheld loudspeaker at the dwindling crowd of aging veterans, noticeably smaller than last year’s group.

“You old, rich, privileged white men have no idea what the daily fight on the streets is like, what the struggle against an oppressive regime bent on domination is actually like,” she said.

The Great Tree of Life

An interesting representation of the evolutionary frame as we currently believe it to have happened.

Tank!

We were just talking about that movie the other day. Now this:

Wealthy homeowners in one tiny Fort Worth suburb say their neighbor’s decision to park a World War II-era tank in front of his multimillion-dollar home is making them nervous.

At least that’s what attorney Tony Buzbee, a history buff who purchased the WWII tank for $600,000 earlier this year, learned when his neighborhood homeowners’ association sent him a letter saying the tank “impedes traffic” and causes a “safety issue” and “serious concerns for neighbors."

It's all right. If the movie is any indication, the tank provides an important hedge against corrupt Southern law enforcement officers.

DB: Rudyard Kipling gives your weekend safety brief

‘Fore ya drink yerself stupid
Well, stupider than ya are
Make sure ya got a DD
‘Fore gettin’ in the car
Make sure you ain’t drivin’
On this your career’ll ‘inge
Make sure the cherry has the keys
On porter and pie you’ll binge

...

(Yeah, there are three more stanzas, but not as good as one would have hoped for Kipling. I actually suspect an imposter wrote it.)

France to Enter Permanent State of Emergency

President Emmanuel Macron has pushed for the bill to follow through on a campaign promise to end the state of emergency.... Lawyers and activists have warned that the legislation would essentially make all the state of emergency measures permanent.

It would turn warrantless property searches and house arrests into common police practice. Banning protest marches, shutting down places of worship suspected of sharing extremist views and electronic tagging for surveillance purposes are other powers police would be granted under the legislation.

You Can't Trust People

I'm always suspicious of these 'see something, say something' efforts. They always seem to turn out like this.

In April, the Trump Administration launched what it called the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, with a stated mission to “provide proactive, timely, adequate, and professional services to victims of crimes committed by removable aliens.” But internal logs of calls to VOICE obtained by Splinter show that hundreds of Americans seized on the hotline to lodge secret accusations against acquaintances, neighbors, or even their own family members, often to advance petty personal grievances.

They're targeting Trump in the article, because of course they are, but 'if you see something, say something' was an Obama-era phrase, adopted by the Feds in 2010. They even trademarked it, as if the government had something to fear from copyright infringement. It was part of the "Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative," which could hardly be a more ominous name. I'm guessing "Spy On Your Neighbor" must have been taken.

Ah, Yes, the "2nd is Racist" Argument Again

This nonsense first came around in 2013, in a better and more developed form. It's still wrong; militias were used for very many purposes, from resisting Spanish incursions from Florida to protecting settlers from Native American raids. The militia didn't have just one purpose, in other words; it was the most effective security available to a frontier civilization not yet possessing the means for sustaining a large police force, and having very good reasons to suspect the wisdom of maintaining a large standing army.

In an environment in which terrorist violence arises in many contexts and without warning, the militia still plays a role in national self-defense. Even with well-organized and effective police, there is going to be a delay in response. Sometimes -- not last weekend, but very often -- an armed and disciplined citizenry can find and fix such terrorists until the police can respond.

Of course, as you all noted the last time around, gun control really does have demonstrably racist roots. Indeed, the NRA was founded in part to help freedmen defend themselves in the post-war South.

Viking Deforestation to be Reversed

The Outer Hebrides are going to be restored to an earlier condition, thanks to a project by Scotland.

High-Powered, You Say?

Among the guns and ammunition police found the in the room being used by Paddock were some high-powered rifles considered capable of penetrating police armor.

These are also just called "rifles."

DB: Female Infantry Bring Big Changes

A recent Department of Defense study on infantry units revealed that gender-integrated units smelled 237% better than non-integrated units....

Male unit members denied any changes in habits that could have led to the differences, though one was seen kicking a bottle of body spray under his rack as the research team inspected living spaces.

“Nah man, I mean Ma’am, I ain’t changin’ my style just cause we got girls around now. It’s probably all their scented lotions and soap and junk that you smell,” said Cpl. Juan Suarez.

“Yeah, they’re always leavin’ that Moonlight Path shower gel and Warm Vanilla Sugar scrub all over the unisex head, but I have NOT used it,” said his rackmate, Cpl. Steven Walsh, whose skin had a curious soft glow.

American vs. UK Political Divisions

An interesting comparison. I had not realize the numbers were like this. As the numbers in the paragraph below indicate, you can get references for these figures at the link.

In the US, the number of Americans identifying as liberal reached a record high of 24% in 2015 in comparison to the conservative 38%. [1] Britons are almost evenly divided between left and right. [2] Women are generally somewhat more likely to be left-leaning than men [3] but very many are not. 47% of African Americans identify as liberal and 45% as conservative. [4] In the UK, the Conservative party claimed 33% of Black and Middle Eastern voters in comparison to Labour’s 52%, with Black Britons being most likely to vote Labour, whilst among the Asian community, Hindus and Sikhs are more likely to vote Conservative and Muslims to vote Labour.[5] British LGBTs are as likely to be right-wing as left-wing [6]whilst American LGBTs are much more likely to be left-wing,[7] almost certainly because of the religious nature of the American right and its implications for LGBT equality.

Calls for Firing

So, the Vegas situation has at least yielded some hard evidence of something we were debating last week. That discussion got surprisingly heated, but perhaps this is a good occasion to simply show that the thing being discussed does in fact happen.

On this occasion, a CBS reporter wrote on Twitter that she had little sympathy for the victims because they were the kind of people who oppose gun control, or, as she put it, "Repugs" who were "gun toters." This led to calls for her to be fired, echoed across the right-wing side of Twitter today, which led to her in fact being fired by CBS.

I am as I said willing to forgo this kind of vengeance for expressing unpopular sentiments; maybe we even would benefit from a rule protecting private political expressions from employer reprisals. But either we would, or we would not; there can't be two standards. This time, a left-leaning journalist ended up having to play by the one most often applied to the right.

No Joy in the Cumberland Gap

41-0 Bulldogs, first shutout of Tennessee since 1994. My many relatives in Tennessee are quiet tonight.

A Communist Insults Mattis

Article 88 only applies to commissioned officers, one of which a certain young buck became this May. His insult towards the Secretary of Defense is timestamped after that. It's a pretty open and shut case, especially for a guy who was kicked out of the Rangers for standards. The 10th Mountain Division, his current unit, will have every reason to see him as a threat to good order and discipline and punish him appropriately.

That's not what I wanted to talk about.

What I want to talk about is RedState's closing argument.

Officially, Rampone might be ruined anyway, as he also insulted Vice President Mike Pence on Twitter as well, calling him “a f**king medieval, cold-blooded killer."

Negative. "F**king medieval, cold-blooded killer" is a compliment. Mike Pence should be proud.

Religious Tests

Jeff Flake thinks that Republicans need to speak out against Roy Moore's idea of a religious test for public office. Republicans certainly can do what they want; I certainly oppose religious tests for public office. But why would anyone think that it was important to speak out against it? The prohibition of such tests is actually in the Constitution.

Thus, no amount of talk from a presumed Senator Moore is going to add a religious test for public office unless he can persuade enough people to amend the Constitution. If he can do that, then the test would presumably be legitimate. But he can't, of course; you probably couldn't get 75% support for the idea in Alabama, let alone 75% support from the several states.

Rather than raising the profile of the issue, I would simply dismiss it as silly if asked about it and not speak to it if not.

Symbols pro and con

This mildly amusing cartoon, posted at Maggie's Farm, made me wonder whether the distinguishing factor is whether someone objects more to spurning an ideological symbol or to venerating it.

I, too, would resist being required to venerate a symbol I objected to.  To the extent that someone feels he is being pressured to express a political or religious view not his own, I have considerable sympathy for a discreet refusal.  Opening ceremonies at my public grade school included both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer; I cheerfully said the Pledge, without ever giving it much thought, but stood silently through the prayer.  I can't imagine what the school would have had to do to force me to join in the prayer.  Nevertheless, it didn't occur to me to raise a furious fist, spit on the floor, or go stand in the corner.  If I had tried any such thing, my parents wouldn't have backed me up, even though my father despised religion pretty openly.  Your religious views are your own, he'd have said, but that doesn't mean you get to insult your neighbors.  Don't make public theater out of your resentments unless you're serious about starting a fight, and then don't whine about the results of the fight.

By the same token, if I see someone making an obeisance to a Che banner, or a Communist flag, or a Satanic ritual, I'm not going to shoot them to make them quit, though I do reserve the right to separate myself from them socially, refuse to patronize their store, buy their books,  watch their TV shows, root for their sports victories, and so on.  They are free to do the same to me if they don't enjoy watching me put my hand over my heart when the Stars and Stripes are being honored.

My sense of the Progressive flashpoints lately is that they instinctively side with someone who breaks ranks and refuses to solemnize a traditional piety.  It's understood that such a stance signals a courageous refusal to go along with fascist orthodoxy.  They're also primed to feel threatened when someone venerates nearly any symbol; even if the symbol was innocuous yesterday, the whole fun is in being among the first to discover a lurking impurity.  Maybe the stitching on the flag was performed in an Asian sweatshop; maybe a past adherent of the creed once owned a slave or attended a church that wouldn't ordain women or gays.  It's so much fun to notice the clay feet of any idol that they've lost sight of what used to be an ordinary reaction to the desecration of a beloved symbol.  I'm trying now to think of Progressive protests over the desecration of one of their own sacred cows.  When such a thing happens, it tends not to take the form of an attitude to a physical icon.  The problem usually consists of symbolic action, like refusing to bake a cake.

Missing Tolkien's Point

It's nice to see that he's still read approvingly, all the same.

Consider the invaluable depiction of what we might call "small patriotism" in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: "Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people," Tolkien wrote in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring. They are hospitable, nosy, and contentedly devoted to their home, the Shire.

This love of home is not born of naïveté but clear-eyed commitment to community. "I should like to save the Shire, if I could," the hobbit Frodo muses as he prepares to embark on his quest, "though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them." Yet at the thought of departing, Frodo adds, "I don't feel like that now. … I feel very small, and very uprooted, and well — desperate."

Frodo does not love the Shire because it is the best country in Middle-earth. It does not boast the striking scenery and deep knowledge of the elven kingdoms, or the security and wealth of the dwarves, or the cosmopolitanism and architecture of the cities of men. The Shire does not have to be the best, for it is already home and already good in its own way.

The hobbits aren't simply symbolic of England, though: they're symbolic of a part of the English country. The "cities of men" were built by the Numenoreans, the Kings of Men, the Dunedain, Men of the West. These are, well, also "English" -- specifically, they are Norman. They are the grey-eyed men who are 'the race of kings,' and who were and (hopefully!) once again shall be the rightful rulers of the free people of the world. The hobbits love them, and are glad to be ruled by them; but, being hobbits, they also hope to retire back from their grand cities to the beloved countryside with its gardens and pubs.

And the Rohirrim, they're also symbolic of England -- this time, of the Anglo-Saxon heritage. They are the White Horse: the great Anglo-Saxon lord Horsa's name just means "Horse." They stand for another period of English history, without which the rarefied Dunedain lines would never regain their throne -- nor would their lesser heirs, the Stewards of Gondor, have maintained their last kingdom as long as they had.

Nor are even the elves entirely unconnected to England. The Edain became the Dunedain through friendship with the elves, and there is elvish blood in the line of the kings of men. Elrond Half-Elven is kin to Aragorn through Beren.

Insofar as any other nation is represented in Middle Earth, it falls away from the glory of England. There probably has never been a "bigger" patriot than Tolkien in the sense that this author means. Nearly every good thing in Middle Earth is essentially English. Tolkien was at the Somme. He knew what he loved, and what it cost, and it comes through very clearly in his work.

Murder by Neighborhood

In the discussion on statistics below, I wondered about trying to recreate the correlation chart by neighborhood instead of by city. I read an article not long ago that posited that the American murder rate is really quite low, outside of certain cities; but, further, that even within those cities the murder rate was quite low outside of particular neighborhoods. It wasn't this article, but this one is the one I can find and it has some good maps.

My hypothesis is that shifting to a neighborhood picture might restore the correlation between violent crime rates and police shootings. I don't know that this is true, but it's the hypothesis that I'd like to test because I think the answer is important. Is there a way to get the relevant data together to try to test that hypothesis?

It is a known issue, of course, that we are dealing with very small numbers and statistical rarity. Perhaps it's not even worth doing, given how little one can really infer from statistics about rare events.

A Familiar Song

That it remains relevant is, I suppose, why I keep hearing it decade after decade.

The vast majority of service members are male, the South is overrepresented, and perhaps most worrisome, military service has increasingly become a family affair....

Families also carry the costs of military service, and surveys indicate military spouses are as likely to have a parent who served as service members today, many of whom already have a child serving as well. This used to be far closer to the norm – with 77% of adults over 50 indicating they had an immediate family member who served, as compared to only 33% of those ages 18–29. These surveys echo the Department of Defense’s own findings that approximately 80% of enlisted recruits have a family member who served, with over 25% noting they had a parent who served. Though it varies from service to service, the trendline in American society is stark.

The most current figures are that the military is 65% white, 80% male, and 44% Southern. When we discussed it nine years ago, the only other region that was over-represented was the Mountain West, and I'll bet that remains true.

It Depends on What the Meaning of "Prevailing" Is

I kind of thought it was the other side that wanted this, but depending on how you define that one word, I guess Brokaw could be right.

NBC News’ Tom Brokaw claimed that President Donald Trump, and “some people on the right,” want “to destroy the prevailing culture in this country” during an interview....

"And I, you know — when I go out and talk to people in the West who are Trump voters, they said, 'We’re still with him. We think it’s your fault, talking about us,'" Brokaw said. "But then they’ll say, 'I wish he would just shut up for a while.' You know, that he ... has to talk about who he is and how great he is."

Well, good for you for listening, Tom. But maybe you should have asked them if they felt like they were trying to destroy the "prevailing" culture, or if in fact they thought that what you were doing was aimed at destroying the "prevailing" American culture.

I think the root of the dispute may be about which culture should prevail, and whether or not it will be necessary to destroy the other one in order to do it.

Medieval Walking

This video suggests that Medieval people did not generally walk around the way we do, but in a 'more natural' way that improves posture. This is taken to be helpful in explaining some illustrations from the I.33 fencing manual, and to be a function of the way footwear of the period seems to have been designed.

The idea isn't that people really 'walked differently,' then, but that the structure of shoes affects how you walk. Our tendency to take big steps leading with the heel is made possible by well-structured shoes that will protect our feet from anything we might step on, and that have adequate structure to accept our weight all at once. Walk around barefoot, and you may walk the way he's talking about -- leading with the ball of the foot, testing the ground before settling your weight.

Well, maybe. It's interesting to think about, anyway.

What to Look For

DHS is supposedly going to be collecting information on social media use by those who would like to enter the country as non-citizens.

Just in case they're wondering what to look for, here are some examples of things they might pay more attention to than previously.

Two Views of White America

One view: white supremacy is everywhere!

Another view: rural whites aren't enjoying very much supremacy at all.

Maybe it's not really about "white" versus others; maybe it's got more to do with other things. But our discourse seems locked in on the idea that race is the most important thing we need to talk about.

"Have You Forgotten?"

AVI's been running a useful series by this title. Here's one I had forgotten: President Obama fired the head of G.M.

Last night, the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, was fired by the President of the United States. Perhaps not “fired” in the strict legal sense – if legalities matter anymore – but certainly fired for all effective purposes. In a statement by Wagoner released last night, the now-former CEO states specifically that Administration officials “requested that I “step aside”’ as CEO of GM.” “And so I have,” he said. No pretense of an agonized decision, no pretending that the board asked him to go, simply that the White House asked him to go and he left.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Mr. Wagoner. Not only did he lead GM into economic ruin, but he led the charge to Washington, D.C. for handouts.... The real concern is not that Wagoner was fired, but that he was fired by the White House and not a bankruptcy judge.

So apparently the President can sometimes call for firings without it being a big deal.

The American Legion takes Hollywood

Well, at least one bar in Hollywood.

The young guns who have seized control of American Legion Post 43 are trying to fuse them together in the minds of a new generation of combat veterans, rebranding their venerable Egyptian Revival building, with its underground Art Deco bar, as “the coolest private club in Hollywood.”

“We have the cheapest drinks, the nicest people, the best-looking bar,” says Post Commander Fernando Rivero, a 42-year-old TV producer who engineered a bloodless coup that overthrew Post 43’s old guard....

Down the road from the Hollywood Bowl, Post 43 has long ties to the entertainment industry. Clark Gable, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan and Rudy Vallee were members. Shirley Temple was an honorary colonel, and photos of her curls stand out in the Post museum amid the machine guns, a dog-tag stamping machine and an Adolf Hitler pin cushion. (Suffice it to say he’s bent over.)

Bugs Bunny's generation would be proud.