Plastic Brains

A thesis that I, like most parents, devoutly hope is true.

Meanwhile, evidence points to your family environment having no bearing on personality. Twins who are reared in a family are not more similar than twins reared in different families. “Adopted siblings are basically no more similar in personality than any two strangers in the street,” he adds.

Parents might bristle at this idea, but it doesn’t downplay the importance of upbringing. Family environment contributes to our behaviour, our character and the way we adapt to the world, Mitchell notes, “so parenting has a major contribution”.

“Though our personality stays the same, our behaviour does change with our experience,” he says. Neuroscientists now view the brain as far more plastic than once assumed. It shifts with experience, much like a muscle changes with exercise.

I suspect that most parents believe otherwise, which is why we go to such lengths to try to raise our kids right. Every parent makes mistakes, though; everyone misses opportunities that are evident only in hindsight. Some of our strategies, even adopted with the best intentions for the child's socialization or success, end up looking worse in retrospect.

Still, it's a nice thought: your work might help them develop analogously to exercising helping their muscles develop, but the basic structure is going to stay the same no matter what you got wrong. It's not that what you do doesn't matter. It's just that you end up a lot less responsible for the end result than you may fear.

And to some degree, so do they. You can only exercise muscles you were born with, after all. If your son or daughter just isn't the person you'd hoped they'd become, well, to some degree it may not be your fault or theirs either. It may just be they were born to be someone else.

If the study is true, of course. I have to be suspicious of it just because I'd like for it to be.

A Beard Song

Same band as last night. There's a bit of language, but you're all spirited folk.

Asylum Claim Rejected After Conversion to Christianity

Britain’s immigration department has been condemned for citing violent Bible passages as the basis to reject an asylum claim by an Iranian national who said he had converted to Christianity because it was a “peaceful” religion.

The Home Office — which is responsible for handling immigration, security and law and order — used verses from the books of Leviticus, Exodus and Revelation in an attempt to argue that Christianity was hardly “peaceful.” The asylum seeker’s application was denied on Tuesday....

[T]he Home Office used extensive quotes from the Bible, such as “You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you,” from Leviticus, as evidence against the asylum seeker’s claim about Christianity.

“These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge,” read a rejection letter Mr. Stevens shared excerpts from online.

The thing is, this guy was an asylum seeker from Iran, which forbids conversion to Christianity. He will certainly be subject to violence from the state on his return, in the name of Iran's state interpretation of Islam. His experience of Christianity and Islam are surely relevant to his interpretation, which it is his right as a human being to come to on his own.

As for whether Christianity is peaceful or violent finally, well, Chesterton pointed out that its detractors make either case as fits their agenda. "It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did."

Predictions

We were talking about this a while ago, as I recall.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/10/chinas-50-lane-traffic-jam-is-every-commuters-worst-nightmare/409639/

Eric Hines

Independence, Live and On Time

Theresa May has reportedly made peace with a no-deal Brexit next week.

Satire, or No?

Headline #1: ""The 'Burn It Down' Democrats."

Headline #2: "Candidates Propose Changes To Fix Flaw In Constitution That Allows Republicans To Be Elected."

Black Flag Cut Down

The last ISIS stronghold has fallen.

Troops here are now bringing down the black flags of ISIS. The flags no longer fly over the town, instilling fear.

The last five days, Fox News has witnessed the last major offensive up close -– with U.S.-backed SDF forces attacking ISIS from three sides, pushing the fighters back, house to house, then tent to tent, against the Euphrates River.

Egyptian Iconoclasm

Why do so many statues from ancient Egypt have broken noses?

Gaslighting Success

I've heard this so many times that I actually had come around to believing this story about 'very fine people.'

"Haters"

Facebook might turn on you, warns Joe Bob Briggs.

Multiverse

An article in Forbes argues that the multiverse is inevitably real, given cosmic inflation and quantum physics.

Some Good Kipling, Thanks to James

James mentioned this poem in the "More toxic masculinity" comments. I had never read it before, and it seems fitting for the Hall. It's almost a hundred lines, so I'll put it below the fold.

All American Polka

Shades of Helen, Georgia.



Happy Spring, killers.

UPDATE: If you'd like a live version, here it is.

Genocide Poetry

Headline: "The word 'cowboy' is now equivalent to genocide."





I don't have decent words to reject the foolishness anymore; maybe none of us do. Harder words might follow, or harder acts. In general I prefer violence to discourtesy: one might have adequate reason to kill a man without wishing to insult him.

I guess they don't get that. It's a hard road they're mapping out for themselves.

Equinox

Red flags

I've been following with interest the controversy over Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft, without being able to make out whether the aircraft or pilot training is the biggest problem.  HotAir's Jazz Shaw published a startling piece this morning reporting that the Lion Air flight that went down last year had narrowly escaped almost exactly the same fate the day before.  They were saved by the coincidental presence in the cockpit of an off-duty co-pilot who correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disconnect the malfunctioning flight control system.

There must be strong pressures to put the cone of silence over near-misses like this. Still, how would you like to be the guy who didn't speak up, or the guy who squelched his report?

Bad Times at the El Royale

I saw this movie on the recent trip. I found it highly engaging. It is the kind of movie in which a set of secrets are buried at the beginning, and their revelation creates interference patterns with each other. It is also beautifully shot, with an ear for music.

Some of you might enjoy it.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that some might be concerned that the priest character heralds the usual abuse of Catholicism and/or Christianity in the mouth of Hollywood. Without wanting to give away any secrets, I think you may be pleasantly surprised by the handling of that matter.

Objective

A quantum experiment is said to "call into question whether or not there is objective reality."

It doesn't really do that. What it does do is suggest that objective reality may somehow contain two sets of apparently contradictory facts. If so, that is itself an objective fact about reality. It's a confusing one, to be sure; it may well reframe some of our thinking and discussions. However, it still would happen to be an objective description of reality.

"Do you really want to jump? Do you?"

Politico likes to talk about what a great idea it would be for progressives to pack the Supreme Court.  HotAir responds:

Eh, why not? All the cool kids are talking about it for 2021, according to Politico, without any apparent worry about what might happen in 2019 and 2020.

* * *

So why wait on this terrible idea? Let’s do it now. Donald Trump should announce that he has nominated six justices to the Supreme Court to expand it to 15 seats. With a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell could get them all confirmed by the end of the summer at the latest.

* * *

This is not a Swiftian Modest Proposal-esque satirical suggestion. I’d like to see Trump do it — but not to get those seats added to the Supreme Court. If Trump tries it, Congress would move heaven and earth to block him from succeeding at his court-packing plan, and that would be a bipartisan effort. We’ll have more later on the bipartisan project to curtail the National Emergencies Act after Trump’s border-wall declaration, but this would generation an outrage of an order of multitude higher. Legislation to limit the Supreme Court to nine seats might even pass on unanimous votes, or at least far more than would be needed for a veto override.

Executive emergency

Congress is finally starting to think about whether the problem is that it doesn't like this president or that president, or maybe instead that it should quit handing over its functions to the executive branch with a big red bow tied on them:

The existence of the NEA is inexplicable anyway. Winston Churchill’s observation that “bad kings make for good law” was utterly confounded in 1976 when a Democrat-controlled Congress passed this power usurpation to a Republican president. Gerald Ford had assumed the office two years earlier after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace for having abused the power of his office in numerous ways. One would have assumed under those circumstances that the Congress elected after that fiasco would have special care in preventing further executive abuse, but perhaps only if one was entirely unfamiliar with the impulse of Congress to avoid doing any of its own work.

The Return of Grim

This time, I sought different mountains.

Wyoming is interesting country. I'll be out there more often, I think.

More toxic masculinity

HotAir observes that with this guy, the drinks are on us for the rest of his life.

Smart kids/dumb kids

A Popular Mechanics series sorts through cliches and social prejudices distorting choices in education.  Are liberal arts programs fancy-pantsy hotbeds of sophomoric socialist posturing?  Are votech programs mind-numbing economic dead ends?  Do both sorts of programs bilk unsuspecting parents, students, and taxpayers out of increasingly mountainous piles of tuition that will never be reflected in paychecks?

To judge purely from the lifetime impact on earnings, many of our preconceptions don't pan out.  None of this answers the question whether we should be focusing on more than lifetime earnings, but before families and taxpayers incur big IOUs on higher education strategies, it's at least worth looking at.  I'm no fan of federal regulations in education, but I wouldn't mind seeing schools have to show wage outcome data before they get federal funding.  Pay for your own operations, and you can experiment with whatever academic philosophy suits and your customers.

I really enjoy Popular Mechanics articles.

Communicable violence

A Quillette article about the Christchurch shootings draws a parallel between the printing press and the internet as innovations that ushered in sectarian clashes:

The disruptive nature of the internet has been compared many times to the disruption caused by the printing press. And the frightening realisation one has when making this analogy is that the printing press precipitated hundreds of years of religious warring. We do not yet know what will be the long-term impact of the internet—obviously, it will be both good and bad, and most likely the upside will vastly outweigh the downside—but we must also be prepared for a fragmenting of our societies, and continual fracturing along ideological and tribal lines.

Here at home, I continue my experiment in local politics, relying heavily on the internet for communication. At this week's public meeting the county attorney was inspired to suggest that the County Judge ask the bailiff to restrain me from speaking further. The Judge wisely ignored her and contented himself with bringing debate to a close by the usual procedures and calling a vote.

The controversy was over the "agenda packets" that are distributed to department heads and commissioners in preparation for each meeting. I had proposed that the county should resume the traditional practice of distributing the agenda packets to the press and the public as well, instead of making them file an open-records request and wait until at least two weeks after the meeting.  Even the local paper is taking an interest, which is surprising, given that the editor normally is rather a cheerleader and averse to controversy--but of course, he resents suddenly being denied access to the packets before each meeting. The voters, for the most part, would like to see more transparency, which is of course why they elected me.

I spend a lot of time answering forum comments about how all this procedure is supposed to work.  I explain why, even when I'm disappointed by not winning support for a proposal, the really important thing for me is the freedom to post an item on the agenda and debate it in open session. After that, we decide what we decide, and then the voters evaluate our performance. There's an odd perception that, when an elected official has discretion to control a policy, that means his decision is not subject to scrutiny or comment. Obviously I take a different view.

The presence of the internet makes the scrutiny and comment more immediate and widely accessible. The discussion can get heated and, like all impromptu unmediated public discussion, can veer off-course and demonstrate how disconnected and ill-informed some voters are. Still, they're what we've got. I just plug away at presenting the facts and try not to let even the most outrageous comments lead me into snippiness or sarcasm--no easy feat for me.  Flawed as internet arguments are, I prefer them to an information lockdown.

OPM

Strange lessons

A Powerline article observes that progressives wasted no time blaming the actions of a self-confessed New Zealand eco-fascist who admired communist China on the usual omnipotent villain, President Trump.  Then it draws a different lesson:

From a policy standpoint, the only lesson that can be drawn from the Christchurch massacre is reflected in the difference in the casualty totals between the two attacks. Forty-one were killed at the Dean Ave. mosque, the first one that was targeted, where the murderer had plenty of time and at one point returned to his vehicle to reload. There were only seven killed at the Linwood mosque because one of the worshippers was armed:

A second shooting happened at a mosque in the Linwood area of the city.

One Friday prayer goer returned fire with a rifle or shotgun.

Witnesses said they heard multiple gunshots around 1.45 pm.

A well known Muslim local chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off.

He was heard telling police officers he was firing in “self defence”.

Keynes

With seemingly half the country flirting with Modern Monetary Theory again to explain how to finance the Green New Deal, I'm enjoying reading articles from the Mises Institute site, including this one describing the origins of the Keynesian fad.

You don't have to have an IQ above 100 to be able to torpedo Keynesianism. You just ask these questions.

1. "Where did the money come from that the government spends into circulation?"

2. If the government runs a deficit, which is what Keynesians recommend in recessions, it did not get all of its money through tax revenues. "Did the borrowed money come from private lenders or from the central bank?"

3. "If the money came from private lenders, what would the lenders have done with their money if they had not loaned it to the government?"

4. If the money did not come from private lenders, then it must have come from the central bank. "How does money created out of nothing create wealth?"

These are really two questions. (1) "What would lenders to the government have done with their money if the government had not offered the promise of guaranteed repayment?" That money would have been spent either on consumption or production. This raises a second question: (2) "Why would either of these options be worse for the economy than spending by government bureaucrats?"

Money isn't value. Money is a promise of future value.  Money has value if the promise is credible.  Value in an economic sense is what people do or make that other people want badly enough to trade something for.  Value is not the same as virtue, though virtue can influence what someone wants.

Economic vs. political crises

On the Mises site, a response to a critique of libertarianism. First, Daniel McCarthy asks:

Does a libertarian even care whether Islam displaces Christianity or China displaces America, as long as there are no tariffs on steel? You might not have freedom of religion or freedom of speech in the post-Western future, and those cheap consumer goods won’t be so cheap any more, but a libertarian will rest content knowing he fought to import as much foreign-subsidized steel as possible. This is why I consider libertarianism to be every bit as much a suicidal ideology as left-liberalism. In some ways it is even more so, as libertarians are more oblivious than left-liberals to the consequences for themselves of hewing to their ideology.

Jeff Deist answers:

Here is a classic mischaracterization of political liberty, captured so well by Frédéric Bastiat in his famous quote: "every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." Of course libertarianism per se can't answer the civilizational questions of our day; of course economics per se can't make us moral or ethical, much less strategic. Libertarianism is a narrow legal doctrine dealing with the justified use of force in society, a doctrine that makes no exceptions for state actors. Economics is a social science which studies how human actors choose among scarce means to achieve ends.

Rahm has a point

Rahm Emmanuel on election strategy:

Earth to Democrats: Republicans are telling you something when they gleefully schedule votes on proposals like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a 70 percent marginal tax rate. When they’re more eager to vote on the Democratic agenda than we are, we should take a step back and ask ourselves if we’re inadvertently letting the political battle play out on their turf rather than our own. If Trump’s only hope for winning a second term turns on his ability to paint us as socialists, we shouldn’t play to type.

Unmasking the Administrative State

PowerLine has a brief review of John Marini's "Unmasking the Administrative State," with this quotation from the introduction:

In a constitutional system, the powers of government are thought to be limited; in the administrative state only resources are limited.

Want to raise your Victim Value Index? Blow something up

The Sultan of Knish explains how to trade your ability to modulate the violence of a slice of your rainbow for a seat at the political table.

Progressivism is a revolution in slow motion, and revolutions need revolutionaries. Disruption is more than just grievance, it's violence. Those who are willing to ruthlessly attack the status quo clearing the ground for revolution are the ones who go to the head of the line and the dais of honor on top. A little murder and mayhem, and progressives will trot out "moderate" versions of the murderers and mayhemists, usually linked to them, and offer to represent them and tamp down the violence in exchange for meeting their demands.

Anyone who is shocked that the left would make common cause with Islamists has forgotten the Black Panthers. From the left's point of view they are doing the same thing by bringing on board a group with some revolutionary energy and a willingness to overthrow the system. Associating with them gives the left some revolutionary cred and the supposed ability to turn the violence on and off.

* * *

September 11 and its aftermath is why Muslims have gone to the top of the Victim Value Index. The left may swear up and down that they are interested in Muslim civil rights, but if the Muslims were Sikhs, they would merit a place somewhere in the back. Before Muslims began prominently blowing things up in the United States, the left barely paid any attention to them. Once they did, they began outweighing every other group in the country because killing 3,000 people is the gold standard of revolutionary mayhem.

Why should you have to be a citizen to vote?

Seems unfair, doesn't it?  Next step:  allow absentee voting by non-citizens.  It's really hard for some of them to get here, and they encounter unconscionable delays at the border.

Six Democrats crossed the aisle to support this week's GOP-led House "motion to recommit" to clarify that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote in federal elections:

Brindisi-NY

Cunningham-SC

Horn-OK

McBath-GA

Schrader-OR

Van Drew-NJ

One Republican broke party ranks to vote against it:  Justin Amash (Michigan). Republicans not voting were Crawford (Tennessee), Dunn (Florida), Rodgers (Washington), Rogers (Alabama), and Stivers (Ohio). Democrats not voting were Clay (Missouri) and Sean Maloney (New York).

Motions to recommit are rhetorical devices. The minority party is given one last word on a bill, which typically is phrased as a "but of course we don't really mean XYZ" statement. They are often submitted at the last minute and look like a soundbite for political ads. Two of the defecting Democrats, however, told reporters they didn't mind voting for an opposition soundbite if they agree with it.

Did Amash support illegal voting, or was he opposing the gamesmanship? I take him for a libertarian-maverick type who adopts eccentric positions like opposing federal funding to address the Flint water-poisoning crisis. He probably doesn't really favor voting by non-citizens, but might easily reject a tactic that offended him.

Redactions and transparency

We're having a small dust-up in my county over redacting routine documents that traditionally have been supplied to the public in advance of commissioners court meetings.  Redaction is a tactic I remember well from my days of practicing law; in the hands of the unscrupulous it is nothing short of wholesale hiding of documents under the guise of needing infinite time to review them for privileged information that must be painstakingly protected.  I view with favor any reasonable attempt to remove genuinely confidential information before publishing a document.  I view with suspicion any redaction project that drags on endlessly and results in the withholding of potentially explosive disclosures.

In a lawsuit, the interesting point often comes when one side manages to get the sealed documents in front of a magistrate for a private review.  Counsel who have been hiding damaging facts by mischaracterizing them as privileged can be unmasked this way, and their credibility permanently damaged.

I read these articles with interest, therefore, about Devin Nunes's surprisingly successful though frustrating campaign to combat strategic redactions in the Russian collusion saga.

I will be traveling until after St. Patrick’s day.

Illusions of Progress

The LA Times is very critical.

President Trump, now in the third year of his term, is struggling to maintain the illusion of accomplishment as some of his biggest promises remain unfulfilled.

...diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un collapsed in Vietnam last week...

No new miles of any barrier have been built during his presidency and a Republican-controlled Senate is poised to join the Democratic-controlled House in rejecting his declaration of a national emergency to pay for an installment.

Also, Trump is lately hailing progress in trade talks with China as if a landmark deal were imminent. Yet... In another blow to Trump’s trade promises, on Wednesday the Commerce Department reported that in 2018 the U.S. trade deficit grew to $621 billion, a 10-year high, and the gap with China set a record — defying the president’s vows to reverse the trend.... unlikely to include any enforceable end to China’s practice of requiring American companies to transfer technology and intellectual property to Chinese partners as a condition of doing business in the country....

“People are perfectly aware he lies all the time and that he boasts and probably delivers only on a fraction of those things. But because so many Americans have become deeply cynical and think that no politician ever delivers on their promises, they may discount what he promises but still think that that is a better bet than politicians who don't promise anything.”

Mounk added, “It’s essentially, ‘Well, he didn’t really bring back manufacturing jobs, but he tried.’”

The biggest one of all is the promise to get immigration under control. Illegal immigration is at record levels, most of them now families rather than singles likely to return home later. The Trump administration has been forced to return to catch and release policies as the courts forbid them to do anything else except for family separation, and the Congress moves to cut the number of beds for detention anyway.

One might in justice say that everything he promised to fix is worse.

It isn't cynicism about politicians keeping promises that is preventing him from 'paying a price,' though. It is that everyone can plainly see that he is the only one actually trying to fix these things. As the article notes, the Republican Senate is planning to void his emergency declaration -- even as the Republican Senate failed to pass Obamacare repeal during the first two years of his term. The Democratic House is fully committed to mass immigration, to the point of trying to eliminate ICE in order to prevent any future deportations.

For two years, Republicans had undivided control of Congress as well. Where is e-verify? Where are sanctions for employers of illegal workers? Where are those miles of wall, which might have become a budget item before now?

If President Trump pays no price for his failures, it will be because we can see that the whole government -- both political parties, and the entrenched bureaucracy -- are striving against him at every turn. It's not "at least he tried," it's that he's nearly the only one who isn't trying his damndest to do the things we don't want. For all his flaws and failures, about which this page has hardly been silent, where is the better alternative?

Do I wish he was more successful at all this? Yes, I do. Do I blame him? Only occasionally -- the DPRK issue, for example, more than the others. Often his successes are miraculous, given that the whole government is working to stop him.

Bread lines

Jeff Tucker reminds us that supply-demand imbalances can be cleared by long waiting times instead of price hikes, where monopolies prevent the natural expression of prices.  In this case, the monopoly is the natural effect of a tiny number of specialized workers who know how to repair antique clocks.  In part because they're proudly "not in it for the money," prices don't go up, new repairmen don't enter the market, and people wait years to get their clocks repaired.

Missed Days

March 4th was National Grammar Day, apparently ...

So when is National Vocabulary Day, huh?

Word.

In Chicago, the first Monday in March is Casimir Pulaski Day, in honor of the immigrant Polish cavalry officer who became known as "the father of the American cavalry" during the Revolution. There is also a federal observance for him on October 11, which is the day in 1779 when he died in the Siege of Savannah.

What else have we missed recently?

Intersectional Popcorn

Democratic House resolution to defuse the Omar controversy postponed, as several of the young left activists turn on Nancy Pelosi.

"Nancy Pelosi is a white feminist. White feminists are white supremacists. Nancy Pelosi is a white supremacist."

This is working out well. By all means continue this path of identity politics and 'intersectionality.'

Lee Van Cleef

"The Bad" was a pretty good guy.

Van Cleef took his high school diploma early, at 17-years-old, so that he could enlist in the United States Navy in 1942.

After basic training he attended the Naval Fleet Sound School where he trained as a sonarman. Van Cleef was first assigned to submarine chaser USS SC-681 and spent the next 10 months looking for German U-boats around the Caribbean. He then joined USS Incredible, a minesweeper of 530 tons.

One of the most dangerous moments for him happened during the invasion of southern France, in which the USS Incredible was attacked by numerous German Human Torpedoes.

Van Cleef found himself in a life-threatening position though his courage and skill not only saved him but he was also awarded the Bronze Star for his service.

From January 1945, the minesweeper operated out of the Soviet base at Sevastapol, Crimea, to clear mines in the Black Sea. Next stop for the USS Incredible was Palermo, Sicily and then Norfolk — before finally reaching Pearl Harbor.

Odysseus at the Mast

Scientists discover a shipwreck far below the surface that looks very much like the one on a famous vase from ancient Greece.

"Nothing" Is A Wide Country

An editorial piece:

Nothing is more incompatible with Jewish thought and history than Peterson's deliberate insensitivity to the effects of hate speech. The political correctness he and other conservatives malign has, rightly, raised the social and political cost of prejudice - and not yet far enough

I don't especially care about Petereson, and I don't have any special insight into Jewish thought or history, although I have read some of the major philosophers -- Maimonides and Gersonides, say. Even from my very non-privileged perspective, though, I'd say that I can think of a few things that would be more incompatible. Denial of God, for example; denial of the covenant with Abraham; materialism.

That last one's kind of important. Lots of materialists around these days. But sure, let's focus on raising the costs of unpopular speech. That'll work out great for religious minorities.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

The Syria two-step continues.

Antisemitism Done Right

If you're going to be Antisemitic, don't be coy about it and leave people in doubt about how you really feel. Go all out, like these Belgians.

Political polarization by county

Maps of the U.S. showing the intensity of the disdain with which Republicans view Democrats, and vice versa, by county.  My own little county is pretty mild.  Florida and South Carolina really stand out as polarized next to their neighbors.

Mountains to the Seas

I'm more of a mountain man, but I can definitely appreciate this initiative.

Seasteading was conceived more than a decade ago out of libertarian enthusiasm for the possibilities of improving governance through an explosive proliferation of new polities. Building modular floating "land" on the high seas, its advocates argue, would increase our ability to escape the depredations of existing governments.

Yeah, I can see it.

BB: Voting is Self-Defense

"I don't particularly love the party I usually vote for, but hey! They're a little less likely to one day outlaw my faith," he told a friend... "I don't really care to win the culture wars or anything. But the candidates I support tend to be slightly more prone to just leave me alone."

At publishing time, Christians who abstained from voting were silently thankful that people like Michaels are willing to do the dirty work of voting in self-defense.

Swords in the News

Shades of Burnt Njal.

A man with a sword was shot and killed by police in Mount Holly on Saturday after he set a home on fire, jumped from the second story and tried to run away, multiple media outlets reported.

Mongols MC Keeps Patch

A Federal judge has ruled that the government's attempt to force the motorcycle club to stop wearing its trademark is unconstitutional under two separate amendments.

Nearly two months after a federal jury decided that a notorious motorcycle club must forfeit the rights to its trademarked emblem, a judge on Thursday nullified the verdict, finding that seizure of the intellectual property was unconstitutional.

In a 51-page ruling, Federal District Judge David O. Carter said the government’s strategy of trying to devastate the Mongols motorcycle club by confiscating its treasured Genghis Khan-style logo would violate the group’s First Amendment right to free speech and the excessive fines clause of the Eighth Amendment.

That may be the first echo of the recent unanimous SCOTUS decision barring excessive civil asset forfeiture schemes. The First Amendment grounds were expected, but that application of the Eighth is new. This effort to prosecute the club at the club level was more successful than some previous efforts, however, as several individuals were convicted of specific crimes. Those convictions were upheld.

They may be viruses, but they're our viruses

Sometimes you gang up on the bully, sometimes you conscript him into service.

Hot bird water

A new cartoon for the Aspergerish among us:  strangeplanet.  I'll never be able to call it chicken soup again.

What Do You Call A "Gender-Fluid" Monarch?

I'd say "a queen" (*rimshot*) but really that's not good enough for royal protocol. Maybe for a while they can make do with "His or Her Royal Highness, the Prince or Princess of Such-and-So."

Woke

If you don't know Titania McGrath -- who insists she is not satire -- you are missing out. Here is an interview with a woman who might, or might not, be the brains behind her.

Prison Reform

Van Jones has a good point. Don't just read the soundbite caption. It's worth listening to his full commentary.

African Methodists Fight For Biblical Sexuality

An interesting story via Instapundit.

Contrast with this story about Michelle Malkin, where the progressives at tech firms are working to elevate ancient religious norms over modern American ideas of liberty.

How Dare You Allow Her To Defend Her Friend?

It's racist, because she's black, I guess? Allowing a black woman to defend a white man against a charge of racism is using her as "prop," which proves that he's racist; whereas, of course, using a white man to defend a white man against a charge of racism is to be dismissed as mere white privilege (or "supremacy" or something). And of course, if you don't defend yourself at all, well, surely you'd rebut it if you could, so the charge must be true.

These rhetorical games are getting old fast.

Gun Control Bill Up in House

If you're inclined to call your Congressperson, the vote is today on the universal background check bill. Almost all gun sales are already subject to background checks; this would criminalize private sales between individuals, so that the government had a record of every single transfer. This would be used only for the good, of course, and never to build a database for confiscatory purposes.

UPDATE: Post hoc ergo propter hoc is an informal fallacy; but the timeline is interesting.

UPDATE: Cam Edwards points out that, should this bill become law, a battered woman who borrowed a gun to defend herself would be a criminal -- and on conviction, would lose her right [UPDATE: See comments] legal permission to own a gun.

Travel Guide

I've been to quite a few of the red areas on this new map of the world's most dangerous destinations.

Not all of them, to be sure. Road trip!

Once More on Reparations

...then I'll step back.  (Note: cross-posted from my blog)

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate wannabe and Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants us to take our dark history seriously.

We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences, including undermining the ability of black families to build wealth in America for generations.  We need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Absolutely.  The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination.  

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who ruled that Dred Scott, a free black man in the north, must be returned to the ownership of his owner—and who further ruled that blacks could not be citizens of the United States because blacks were not fully men.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its demand for the States Right of holding slaves, slavery over which the nation had to fight a bloody civil war to end because of Party intransigence.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its creation, the Ku Klux Klan, which it used to terrorize newly freed blacks—and any who supported them—in the aftermath of the Party's lost overt slavery policy.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Jim Crow Laws, designed explicitly to keep blacks from voting.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of segregation, resumed in full under President Woodrow Wilson (D), who actively resegregated the Federal government after it had been steadily integrated following the Civil War, a policy for which Wilson insisted blacks should be grateful for the "protection," and which continued apace in schools under the fiction of "separate but equal," which included all public spaces, and which extended even to sections of buses, drinking fountains, and rest rooms.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of destroying black families by enacting "welfare" laws that paid single mothers but not intact families, making it fiscally useful, if not wholly immoral, for fathers to absent themselves.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of deliberate, overt racial (and gender) discrimination in its "affirmative action" policies that give special treatment based, ultimately, on skin color and/or gender.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of undermining the ability of black families (such as they're allowed to exist) to build wealth by keeping them trapped in Party's welfare cage with the designed-in welfare cliff that prevents welfare recipients—most of whom are minority recipients, with most of those black—from getting a new job or a pay raise that would put them above an income threshold that would cut welfare payments by more than the pay raise.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark present of identity politics that seeks to give special treatment to particular groups of Americans—which is nothing more than segregation modernized.

The Progressive-Democratic Party does, most definitely, need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Eric Hines

Getting Around the Electoral College

NPR reports on the popular vote movement:

Democrats in Colorado and New Mexico are pushing ahead with legislation to pledge their 14 collective electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote — no matter who wins each state.

The plan only goes into effect if the law passes in states representing an electoral majority. That threshold is 270 votes, which is the same number needed to win the presidency. ...

So far, 11 states — including New York, California and New Jersey — have joined the effort along with the District of Columbia, putting the effort 98 votes short of its goal.

Colorado appears poised to join as the 12th state. The state legislature passed the bill Thursday, and Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign it. In New Mexico, the legislation is awaiting consideration in the state Senate after the House approved it earlier this month.

There are questions about whether this would be constitutional or not, but the argument is that the Constitution leaves it up to the states to decide what to do with their electoral votes.

"Love and Marriage"

Headline: "New Viking Study Points to “Love and Marriage” as the Main Reason for their Raids."

Umm... well, let's hear him out.

The practice of marrying more women allowed the eligible bachelorettes to have high expectations about their future husbands, and impoverished or underprivileged men didn’t fit the criteria.

So it's the poorer, less powerful men who need women.

In order to raise their chances of getting married, young Viking men joined the raids, hoping to enrich themselves. Sometimes, they even kidnapped Celtic women on their warrior “voyages.”

"Sometimes" to such a degree that Iceland's population descends, according to recent genetic studies, from "Norse men and Celtic women."

Well, I do keep reading arguments, both by men's rights activists and certain kinds feminists, that marriage is a form of slavery...

No, look, this is simple. Slaves were one of the main things raiders of this era -- not merely Vikings -- wanted. Unlike the slavery we think of in American history, however, pre-modern and ancient slavers -- like ISIS today -- wanted female slaves. Males were typically killed, although men caught young enough were often castrated and sold as eunuchs in certain parts of the world (the Muslims in Spain did a huge trade here).

One of the underappreciated qualities of the Western European High Middle Ages is that it eliminated chattel slavery, though not until after the Viking Age (but around 1300, even in fringes of Medieval Europe like the Scottish Highlands). Unfree labor persisted, as for example in serfdom, although that too diminished as the feudal system began to give way to town-based market economies over the period. The driving force wasn't economics, though, it was Catholic moral arguments against enslaving fellow children of God. The idea was that there was a pure equality at work among all our fellow human beings: God had made each of our souls, after all, and loved them each equally. It therefore could not be moral to enslave another.

Chattel slavery was reintroduced in the Renaissance, as Portuguese sailors captured and discovered trade routes to Africa that allowed them new opportunities for rich trade as long as they were willing to trade slaves on one leg of the voyage. The whole apparatus of color-conscious racism was built out of a desire to avoid the Medieval arguments against enslaving fellow children of God by trying to create a middle category between humans and animals (who could of course be owned).

But if we are talking about the Viking Age, we're talking about the pre-Christian period in the north. The later Catholic arguments had not been developed and wouldn't have been persuasive to a non-Christian people in any case. They were still doing what the Greeks had done at Troy, and as ISIS does today: take what your right hand can control, and rule it.

Is That A Debt, Or A Gift?

Mike helpfully calculates in the comments to the last GND post, "$94 trillion comes out to about $261,111 per person in the US." For a household of three, then, you'd be on the hook for $783,333 -- and American household net worth was only $81,850 in 2014 according to Census data.

"But we're going to take from the rich, not the average!" No, that data includes the rich. Once you've taken everything they have, and everything everyone else has, you're still not anywhere near where you'd need to be. You're around ten percent of the way there.

The new slogan, though, is that the idea shouldn't be that this spending will create a debt of $261,111 per individual. It is that this spending represents a gift of $261,111 per individual. They're going to make us all rich! Well, richer.

Inflation occurs when more money chases the same amount of goods. The argument here is that, yes, there will be more money -- we're going to print vast amounts -- but that it will also be chasing new goods: railroads, power plants, wind farms, batteries, refurbished houses. Inflation won't be a problem because the new money won't drive up the price of existing goods. It'll all be spent on the new stuff.

That's clearly wrong for elements of the deal like Medicare For All, which is going to be massive new spending on the same health care stocks that are available now. But it isn't clearly wrong for a lot of the GND's spending, which really does seek to create vast quantities of things that do not currently exist. Indeed, one of my major criticisms of it has been that it cannot possibly attain its goal of reducing emissions because we'd need to run the factories day and night to create the stuff they'd need -- cut down millions of trees for railroad ties -- boil millions of gallons of tar for creosote -- build new diesel plants -- vastly increase production of steel and aluminium for trains and windmills -- etc., etc. Carbon production would be through the roof precisely as a result of this plan.

Where, though, is the inflation? Factory workers are going to have new wages from all this overtime, and they're going to be using that wealth to chase existing goods; but maybe not the same goods. Maybe they'd like a new car -- one of the electric ones, no doubt, assuming they can get a government permission slip for it. Maybe they'd like new, more luxurious clothes. (Still not reducing emissions, are we?) It could be that new economic growth would occur rather than inflation, or more likely 'in addition to inflation,' but less than we imagine.

Inflation, such as did occur, would reduce the sting of any debt anyway.

That's the argument that's being made. We should think carefully about where it goes wrong, and how to counter it.

Nullification

NPR is very upset that Washington state sheriffs are flatly refusing to enforce a raft of new, unconstitutional gun control laws.

"It dates back to a movement from the '60s and '70s called the Posse Comitatus movement, that itself came out of the Ku Klux Klan," he says. "That isn't to say that there's a moral equivalence to the Klan and these constitutional sheriffs."

Oh, heavens no! We're just going to mention them in the same breath a few times.

Sheriffs shouldn't enforce unconstitutional laws, and if they do, juries shouldn't convict anyone of violating them.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Stop asking the wrong questions about that Green New Deal, says HuffPo. Ask the right questions.

The Benefit, Not The Cost
Sure, it’ll cost a lot of money. That’s likely to rattle the nerves of self-proclaimed deficit hawks, Democrats and Republicans alike, who will ask the same tired questions: “How will we pay for it?” “What about the deficit and debt?” “Won’t it hurt our economy?” ...

Politicians need to reject the urge to ask “How are we going to pay for it?” and avoid the trap when it’s asked of them. A better question is: What’s the best use of public money? Giving it away to the top 1 percent who don’t spend it, widening already dangerous wealth and income gaps? Or investing it in a 21st century, low-carbon economy by rebuilding America’s infrastructure, bolstering resilience, and promoting good-paying jobs across rural and urban communities?

I notice that this article never actually floats a number for how much this would cost. Money is no object!

But just in case you were curious what the HuffPo economist thinks "we" can afford:

Study: Green New Deal Would Cost Up to $94 Trillion

Justice Does Not Equal Fairness

A group of morons men's rights activists has convinced a judge to make women register for the draft that we don't even have.

On Friday, a Texas judge ruled that the Selective Service System (SSS) violates the Constitution by requiring only men to register for the draft. The court ruled with the National Coalition for Men (NCFM) in a lawsuit claiming the male-only draft constitutes discrimination against men. NCFM's lawyer told PJ Media that even if the SSS appeals, they are likely to lose again. He also suggested the Pentagon will not end the draft, so women may have to register.

If we had a war large enough in scale to require a draft, it would be the kind of major war in which a lot of people die. The way a civilization replaces its dead is through young women. This is, in fact, the only way it can be done. You don't need many men to make the babies, but you do need lots of women. Each woman can only produce one new person a year, excepting twins and so forth, and there's no other way to do it.

For this reason, it is completely irrational to draft young women and send them to war. Is it "fair" that only men have to register? Who cares? In spite of John Rawls and his followers, justice does not simply equal fairness. It has an important rationality component. It cannot be just to require our civilization to do suicidal things. 'The Constitution is not a suicide pact,' but even if it were, that would be a great reason to return to the Declaration model and 'alter or abolish it.'

Somehow the draft existed for the whole history of this country without violating the Constitution, but now once again a judge has 'discovered' that an institution as old as the nation is somehow forbidden by our basic laws. This insanity has to stop.