Why Did People Like General Flynn?

In the process of working through a theory on why Flynn was railroaded, Lee Smith of Tablet magazine gives a good account of what people like me liked about him.

Flynn had enemies at the very top of the intelligence bureaucracy. In 2014, he’d been fired as DIA head. Under oath in February of that year, he told the truth to a Senate committee—ISIS was not, as the president had said, a “JV team.” They were a serious threat to American citizens and interests and were getting stronger. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers then summoned Flynn to the Pentagon and told him he was done.

“Flynn’s warnings that extremists were regrouping and on the rise were inconvenient to an administration that didn’t want to hear any bad news,” says former DIA analyst Oubai Shahbandar. “Flynn’s prophetic warnings would play out exactly as he’d warned shortly after he was fired.”

Flynn’s firing appeared to be an end to one of the most remarkable careers in recent American intelligence history. He made his name during the Bush administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers in the field desperately needed intelligence, often collected by other combat units. But there was a clog in the pipeline—the Beltway’s intelligence bureaucracy, which had a stranglehold over the distribution of intelligence.

Flynn described the problem in a 2010 article titled “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” co-written with current Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger. “Moving up through levels of hierarchy,” they wrote, “is normally a journey into greater degrees of cluelessness.” Their solution was to cut Washington out of the process: Americans in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan needed that information to accomplish their mission.

“What made Flynn revolutionary is that he got people out in the field,” says Shahbandar, who served in Iraq under Flynn in 2007-08 and in Afghanistan in 2010-11. “It wasn’t just enough to have intelligence, you needed to understand where it was coming from and what it meant. For instance, if you thought that insurgents were going to take over a village, the first people who would know what was going would be the villagers. So Flynn made sure we knew the environment, the culture, the people.”

Influential senior officers like Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal credited Flynn for collecting the intelligence that helped defeat al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007. In 2012, he was named DIA chief.

Eli Lake has an allied piece in Commentary as well.

Flynn did some good stuff in bringing the voices and warnings of the guys in the field forward. Smith's wider thesis is that fear of an audit of the intelligence community by a man who knew it well caused that community to back the outgoing Obama administration's play to destroy him. Maybe that's right; maybe not. It's not ridiculous as a theory, though.

The Best the Government Can Do

The SBA proved incapable of running the 'paycheck protection program,' and Congress' massive spending didn't manage to adequately fund it; economic disaster 'loans' may or may not materialize; unemployment seems to be hard to come by if you can get the systems to work at all; the IRS is apparently unable to process tax returns in a timely manner even though they're getting far less of them than usual. The FDA and CDC screwed up their basic jobs nine ways to Sunday, and hampered private efforts to find ways to test.

The one thing that the government has done that has worked is suspending itself. Suspending regulations let truck drivers get where they needed to be faster, suspending liability laws (via things like the Defense Production Act's temporary nationalization of meat plants) allows businesses to continue to operate. The best the government can do is to stop doing.

Which makes this move the right thing to do. You want job creation and economic growth? Shut down the regulatory agencies as hard as you can.

Poll Watching = Voter Fraud

So says the NYT.

"Take Yourself to Work Day"

A Michigan entrepreneur is defying what may well be America's worst governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

In an interview with PJ Media, the business owner described Whitmer’s executive orders as “in a word, ludicrous.”

“Tell me how liquor, the lottery, and marijuana are essential while rakes, brooms, and paint aren’t,” Kiilunen said. “Tell me how it is safe to walk with a large crowd in Wal-Mart but not in a hometown business.”

The NY Post reports that Governor Whitmer is in talks with the Biden campaign about becoming the Vice Presidential nominee, which could easily make her President of the United States soon.

Weird Numbers

Americans seem prepared to walk into socialism, but approve of Trump's handling of the crisis? These are huge majorities for the most part for universal healthcare, universal basic income (at least for the duration of the crisis), and more help for those who may have become unemployed.

It's too bad for Democrats that Bernie didn't win. This could have been his year.

By the way, @AVI, one of my progressive friends just used the phrase "billionaires hoarding Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth" in a conversation about the American response.

Yes, But...

Alan Dershowitz on forced vaccination:

"Let me put it very clearly," Dershowitz said. "You have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree. You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business."

The famed law professor added that if the disease in question is not contagious — for example, cancer — a person can refuse treatment.

He continued, "[But] If you refuse to be vaccinated [for a contagious disease], the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor's office and plunge a needle into your arm."

"You have no right to refuse to be vaccinated against a contagious disease," Dershowitz added. "Public health, the police power of the Constitution, gives the state the power to compel that. And there are cases in the United States Supreme Court."

The 'but' is that I notice he didn't name the case. He's not wrong, but the precedents are not necessarily settled if they run deeply counter to the current sense of the American people. I think a lot of Americans would dissent from the Buck v. Bell SCOTUS ruling, from the Progressive era, that gave the state wide power to sterilize you against your will. For one thing it runs directly into the teeth of the reproductive rights movement. Although that is mostly about not reproducing, the logic of it is that reproduction is a kind of sacred and personal thing with which the state should never interfere.

So it may be that the smallpox era ruling would stand up today; but it also might be that it would not. People had a lot of faith in government's ability to do good in the early 1900s. That's not true today, and it's not true for reasons that are sometimes well-founded.

To See Ourselves as Others See Us

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

-Robert Burns, excerpt, "To a Louse"

Writer Jill Filipovic begins to wonder about possibly considering at least talking about reopening. This essay, from a progressive feminist to her audience, begins with a very large amount of throat-clearing to make sure she isn't misunderstood as one of those people.

This is common. In the comments to Tex's post below, I modified the article about 'what women are like' vs. 'what men are like' to replace the sexes with political labels. It turns out that the substitution very neatly fits the kind of descriptions you'll hear in Ms. Filipovic's piece.

"... progressives were found significantly more appreciative of art and beauty, were more open to inner feelings and emotions, more modest in playing down their achievements, and more reactive, affected by feelings, and easily upset. Progressives, on average, were more, outgoing, attentive to others, sensitive, aesthetic, sentimental, cooperative, accommodating, and deferential, warm toward others, showing selfless concern for others, sympathetic, enjoying company, and straightforward and undemanding. Conservatives, on average, were more reserved, utilitarian, unsentimental, dispassionate, and solitary.”

We do have the advantage that Robbie Burns wished 'some Power' might give us: we are able to see exactly how others see us. This is true for both men and conservative women. I'm sorry to say that you do not please them much. Perhaps you can free yourselves, as Burns thought, from airs of dress and gait, if any of you have any; but the big question is freeing yourself from devotion.

A Reasonable Point from Michelle Goldberg

I don't often encounter arguments from her that strike me as reasonable, but here is one:

...it’s a mistake to treat the growing ideological divide over when and how to reopen the country as a matter of class rather than partisanship. The push for a faster reopening, even in places where coronavirus cases are growing, has significant elite support. And many of those who face exposure as they’re ordered back to work are rightly angry and terrified.

Because here’s the thing about reopening: It’s liberation to some, but compulsion to others. If your employer reopens but you don’t feel safe going to work, you can’t continue to collect unemployment benefits.

I know of a case in which a woman whose mother was high-risk because of age and disease was called back to work, and she had to choose between quitting / losing her job / going on unpaid leave, or risking infecting her mother. Unemployment benefits end right away, so if she takes the former path she's joining the 25%* of America who are currently out of work. If she takes the latter path, she's getting paid but every day she's risking her mother's life. It's a tough situation.

That said there are definitely class issues at play. It's just that all the members of one class aren't on the same side. As always, I feel for the working class men and women whose interests are rarely fully considered. I don't object to raising this set of concerns for them at all. We probably should consider an exception for people who live with high risk candidates (defined, perhaps, as people over 65 who have a complicating illness). Perhaps we should consider lowering the retirement age to 55 for Social Security and pension purposes, so that people whose parents are in the high-risk age zone will be more likely to be able to retire if they want to do so. Their jobs can then provide room for some of that 25%* to find new employment. Perhaps people who came into this crisis in working class careers should be prioritized for extra help retiring if they want to do so.

I'm open to suggestions. There's no reason we can't make some adjustments to help ensure the worker who wants to work can get back to it, and the ones who have rational concerns are protected or at least have their concerns mitigated.

* See comments.

Please Do Not Shoot People for Not Wearing Masks

This means you, Kar... I mean Jennifer.

“As a concerned carry-permitted gun owner, if you refuse to wear a mask and try to come within 6 feet of me or my family, I will exercise the same constitutional rights to shoot you.”

[Later in her 'apology':]

“I am in a profession where the threat of someone approaching me not wearing a mask while in the midst of a pandemic is equivalent to the threat against my life. Just as it would be if they approached me with their gun drawn and pointed at me....

“Bioterrorism is, however, a real threat and refusal to prevent and/or the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents by not wearing a mask during a global pandemic is a clear example. I am sorry if my words were offensive or derogatory in any way. My concern and compassion for human life got the best of me.”

Yes, we are all overwhelmed by your concern and compassion for human life.

I notice that Hillary Clinton is also helpfully painting conservative protesters as "domestic terrorists." I'd wager any stakes that Dr. Jennifer was a Hillary supporter.

Welshmen Yield

A young man dressed up as a knight was accosted by armed police -- in Wales they aren't all armed -- because of his foam sword.

From this mythological lake the Lady gave Arthur his magical sword Excalibur, but this knight had his very own excalibur and it was this apparently deadly medieval weapon that caused local concern leading to three machine gun wielding cops swooping down on the curious knight.

It turned out that the medieval knight was not the ghost of King Arthur, but it was 20-year-old Lennon Thomas, a Dungeons and Dragons and history enthusiast who has since admitted he perhaps suffered a lapse in judgement bringing his sword out into the public domain, but in his defense he told the police that he was “simply enjoying a walk in his armor....”

As one would expect from a highly-trained knight versed in the ways of “war craft”, the righteous and good Sir Lennon Thomas exuded total fairness in the face of three really highly-trained warriors armed with truly-deadly machinery, by admitting that he “had a lapse in judgement on the sword part.” And looking back at his experience at the edge of the Welsh lake, Lennon added that “perhaps bringing the sword wasn’t such a good idea, as from a distance it does look realistic.”

Combined with the Canadian stormtrooper incident, the British part of the Anglosphere looks worse and worse. The fact that he "admits" that he was wrong is positively "I love Big Brother" territory.

Dropkick Murphys To Perform Free Concert

They did this on St. Patrick's Day -- the 17th of March, when all this was still somewhat new -- and they're going to do another free concert on the 29th.

I saw them live in Atlanta a few years ago now. They were great live.

Antidepressant or Tolkien?

An amusing quiz.

Love in the time of COVID-19

From an Althouse commenter, exasperated by a particularly fatuous New York blog about ZOOM dating and the prospects for tentative post-lockdown romance:

It was a dark and stormy night. I opened the door and, at last, he was there. I had never seen him but I recognized him at once as if his heart wore some strange emblem on his sleeve. His dark eyes burned into mine and in voice strangely distant he said my name - "Mabel!" "No," I said, my voice choked in the same, strange distant way, "No, I'm Noemi, Mabel lives next door if you call it living when she can't get herself a bootleg haircut. She...." "It is you," he said in the same distant voice, "I have seen you from afar on the cameras and I can no longer wait." Strong figures tore at my mask and I heard it rip. "No," I screamed, "No, you may be infected, toxically masculine or a Trump supporter, which is worse, I don't know!" My mask fell to the floor. Fire seemed to run over him and he came closer. I heard him shout "You, it is you, at last." My senses swayed and yearned as avid lips sought mine to garner sweetness and the last thing I felt was a burning sensation spreading like fire through my loins of desire. When I came to, the pizza man was gone and the pizza was cold and crushed in its box where it had fallen between us as he grabbed for his money. He'd taken his money and gone. Took a hefty tip, too. I guess that little game of sending for pizza and claiming that I was Noemi, not Mabel, the girl next door and that the pizza guys were getting it wrong because of the masks, is over. Never mind.

Old Norse Poetics

I really enjoy listening to poetry in Old Norse or Old English; I have a copy of the Beowulf in the original. It's fun to see how much you can follow.

Here's an example with 'facing' English, so that you can more readily track which parts you followed.

The Shopping Cart Theory

Do you return your shopping cart when you are done with it? I'll bet you do if you hang around here.

Motte-and-Bailey Feminism

Reason suggests that the retreat from the 'believe all women' position to 'believe women who accuse Republicans' is an example of an informal fallacy.

In truth, believe-victims activists have been making generous use of the motte-and-bailey fallacy. This is a form of argument in which a person makes a strong, unreasonable, and indefensible claim—the bailey—and then falls back on an uncontroversial claim—the motte—when challenged. With "believe victims," the bailey position was something like what Biden and Clinton said: Presume that each and every alleged victim is telling the truth. The motte position is closer to this: Respect and support alleged victims, and don't automatically discount what they say. In the wake of Reade's allegations against him, Biden has unsurprisingly retreated to the motte.

This is a topic that Slate Star Codex has treated repeatedly over the years.

I'm not sure it's properly speaking a fallacy so much as an objectively dishonest rhetorical strategy. A fallacy is an error in logic; informal fallacies occur in ordinary rhetoric, which isn't usually amenable to the strict logic in which formal fallacies occur. You can get a formal fallacy in rhetoric, it just doesn't happen much: but if I make a claim that P -> Q, !P, therefore !Q, I've made a formally fallacious argument. If I argue that you're a bad person therefore you can't be right, that's informally fallacious. In both cases, I'm making a claim that doesn't follow from the premises.

The motte-and-bailey is only an error if you don't notice that you've shifted your goalposts substantially. Otherwise, it's a lie. Reason also uses the term 'gaslighting,' which I learned from Tex, and which is a form of intentional deception.

So the question is whether or not they notice their own shift. Maybe not; progressivism is based on fervently asserting beliefs in things that you probably have to know are not true, e.g., that all people are per se "equal" (rather than possessing one form of political equality). Maybe at some point you just don't notice that you've shifted from really saying 'believe all women!' to 'don't just dismiss women'; or from 'it is sexist not to build systems biased in favor of women' to 'feminism is just about equality!' (And which equality, again?)

Eric Hines accuses me of being too generous to my opponents. Perhaps I am; but I do see a lot of self-deception in humanity. I think many of these people really are in error rather than intentionally lying; I think they really can't see outside the lies on which they've founded their lives and their vision of justice. It's a big problem. It's hard to reason with someone who is lying to themselves all the time about the very questions you're treating, especially when (as here) they have gigantic social support systems to reinforce the lies and to protect them from having to grapple with the fact that they are engaged in a (self?) deceptive practice.

Home cooking

I made chicken and dumplings this week, loosely following a recipe from my late aunt's elderly East Texas housekeeper. The soup is simplicity itself: boil the chicken until the meat is barely done, then remove the pieces, debone whatever comes off easily, and set the bite-sized meat aside. Throw the bones back in and boil some more, adding salt and, if you like, mirepoix (diced carrots/onions/celery). This part takes an hour or two, depending on your patience and how intense you like your broth to get. Reserve the skimmed schmaltz, not worrying about snagging some broth with it. You'll want a cup or so of a roughly half-schmaltz/half-broth mixture for the dumplings.

The dumplings are the pie-dough sort, not the biscuit-ball sort. The old recipe called for flour, Crisco, and hot water, but I always use the skimmings from the boiled chicken instead. They're full of flavor now, so why waste them? The proportions aren’t critical: just add enough to make about two cups of flour squishy but just firm enough to roll out on a large floured board. Adding an egg is nice. This week’s improvement was to roll out the dough as thin as I could, then cut it into small squares and stretch each little square with my fingers before I tossed it in the soup to boil. Adding the egg may have helped with the stretching, which got them thin enough for the first time: nearly translucent. They sort of spring back in the boiling stage, but when they’re done they have a nice texture, not thick enough to be doughy in the middle.

While the dumplings are boiling, which doesn't take long when they're thin, maybe 10-15 minutes, add the cooked bite-size chicken back in, with a bit of vinegar to taste. Lacking vinegar, you can substitute anything sour you have handy, such as lemon juice. Just balance the salt and acidity until it tastes rounded. I didn't mention pepper because I don't care about it, but it wouldn't hurt to add some. Ditto herbs if you like them. Tarragon is good. Skim the soup again once the dumplings taste done, as they will have yielded up most of the schmaltz you mixed into them.

Some people like chicken and dumplings to be creamy, so you can add milk or cream. I don't, but I don't see how it could hurt.

The whole dish takes only chicken, water, flour, and salt, plus some kind of tartness from anything handy, an optional egg, and optional onions/carrots/celery or pepper and herbs. As a bonus, I can usually get a couple of bowlfuls of over-cooked chicken shred from the bones after their second boil, which the dogs love, or you could feed it to whatever foxes or raccoons may live nearby. The dogs like the schmaltz, too.

Right on Schedule

They need to get started now to have the impeachment trial in late October.

A Gym in New Jersey

Opening in defiance of the governor's order, a gym is visited by the police.



Well done.

An Interesting Challenge

A vacation from politics.

‘Off the Books’ Spying at Treasury Dept

So reports The Ohio Star.

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department regularly surveilled retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s financial records and transactions beginning in December 2015 and well into 2017, before, during and after when he served at the White House as President Donald Trump’s National Security Director, a former senior Treasury Department official, and veteran of the intelligence community, told the Star Newspapers....

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family...

The whistleblower also claims the Justice Department didn’t go through the formal steps to authorize this.

Vulnerable hardest hit

It occurs to a Guardian pundit that, just as COVID-19 hurts the vulnerable the most, so does the lockdown.  Duh.  Everything harms the vulnerable the most; that's what "vulnerable" means.

It doesn't necessarily follow, as the writer argues, that "vulnerable" is best defined as his favorite SJW categories:

This pandemic is an X-ray, exposing the racial and class inequalities of our society.

It's fair enough to note that people without safety margins of all kinds are far more likely to be swallowed up in severe disruptions. COVID-19, however, is unusual in its extreme focus on the elderly, which, unfortunately for the Guardian, can't easily be shoehorned into the SJW worldview. No amount of Marxist thinking will solve the problem of a disease whose median age of case fatality is around 80, or whose deadly impact falls in over 99% of cases on a group comprise of the elderly and/or those with fairly severe medical challenges. At most, the carnage in nursing homes might make us want to re-think how we warehouse the elderly of all races and classes.

You can make a class argument out of the disparity in certain kinds of illnesses, especially those related to obesity (such as heart disease and diabetes), but the argument isn't as persuasive as a lot of people seem to think. When you have to blame "food deserts" for obesity among people who supposedly are too poor to eat, you're really reaching.

Turns out I'm a guy

I know, these studies are about averages and can't be expected to apply to every individual, as I'm always saying.  But everything on the man list rings bells with me, while I can barely hear the siren song from the woman list--though most of the latter began to have more appeal to me after the age of about 60:

Vanderbilt University psychologists, studying middle-aged men and women who were high achievers in math, having an IQ of 140+, received quite different responses from males and females to statements about preferences: Men emphasized freedom of expression and ideas, merit pay, a full-time career, invention, taking risks, working with things, lots of money, stating facts in the face of resistance. Women emphasized part-time careers, for a limited time, working no more than 40 hours a week, flexibility in work schedule, friendships, community service, socializing, and community.

Beethoven on a 15 String Harp Guitar

We haven't had much music lately. Here are some lovely pieces on an unusual instrument.

Siberian Unicorns

An interesting beast that I had not heard of before.

Created Equal on PBS Tomorrow

The documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words will be showing and streaming on PBS May 18 at 9 EST / 8 CDT.

I saw this in the theater when it came out and really loved it. It is a biography of Thomas, but as the title implies, he does a lot of the talking himself.




Although the whole documentary was interesting, one of my favorite parts was seeing then-Senator Biden try to spar with Thomas during the confirmation hearings. It was comical.

Reynard

A neighbor has been feeding a gray fox, or perhaps I should say a vixen.  We saw her taking food from the neighbor's hand.  She comes every evening.

Gray foxes can climb trees as readily as a cat.  We have few if any red foxes here.

Killed by Bureaucracy

They were taught all through their educations and careers that the most important thing was not to discriminate. So when the moment came when the most important thing of all was to discriminate....

Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski: Open Up & Forget the Whole Thing

A contrarian view from the 20-year head of the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science.  One might even say a curmudgeonly view.

"You're no friend of this court!"

I'm so old, I can remember when federal courts didn't think it was a good idea to troll for issue advocacy in the form of amicus briefs.

Some of you may recognize my title from a Heinlein novel.  He had a good grasp of the law, and liked to set up vignettes in which an honest judge lost patience with conspiracies and courtroom shenanigans, especially when officious intermeddlers were shown the door.  In the scene I'm remembering, an oily legal hanger-on type is asked to explain his presence at a trial, and answers, "Who, me?  Amicus curiae, Your Honor."

The Costly Failure to Update Sky-Is-Falling Predictions

Sean Trende over at RCP has a very good article looking at coronavirus predictions that didn't pan out and the social cost of the failure of experts and media sources to acknowledge and update their reporting.

As part of this, he covers predictions on the re-opening of several states, including Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin, and how they were wrong.

It's a good one-stop page for showing people the facts of the case as well as how predictions were wrong, and would be useful for arguing for opening up. I'll be sending the link to people I know, so thought I'd share.

David Reaboi on America

As part of an interview he's given, some thoughts on America:

America’s weakest national security link is our disunity. We’re no longer in agreement about the most fundamental questions underpinning the regime—including who we see as allies and who we consider adversaries on the world stage. While there was always an insistent and vocal part of the American Left that agitated for our enemies during the Cold War, the mainstream debate consisted of how best to deal with the Soviet Union as an evil rival.... [But now] I don’t think another nation in history has been so thoroughly despised by its own elite class. Now, because these are our society’s elites, they have the power to change the character of the country, to finally wrest it from both the traditions of its founding and the citizens who still believe in those traditions. And they’ve largely done that; they’re just now trying to neutralize the last holdouts. That struggle is the disunity we’re seeing....

There’s an essential question many friends and I ask, when discussing a potential ally: “Does he know what time it is?” That is, does one have the ability to be unsentimental and realistic in assessing our current situation. Does he understand the predicament we’re in, with a left that’s already marched through the institutions? Does he accept the impossibility or the extreme unlikelihood of “returning” to anything resembling even the America of the 1990s? I think that grappling with these questions is a prerequisite for more than leadership, going forward; it really should be the minimum of what makes someone a political voice worth hearing at this point.

I know Dave, who is something of a pessimist (as he would admit himself). That predisposition is worth keeping in mind when you ponder his thoughts. But he's also both a 'wise guy' and a smart guy, who definitely does 'know what time it is.' Watching the Flynn story, and the larger Trump/Russia story unfold, it is clear that the institutions of this nation have been turned against it. Perhaps that started during the Obama administration; perhaps that was the point of acceleration. I wonder how right he is that it just won't be possible to fix.

UNICEF: Expect 1.3 Million Child Deaths From Economic Shock

There’s no real reason to think that this model is any better than the climate models; it’s possibly no better than the coronavirus models, although the virus was novel and this problem is old. For what it’s worth, though, it is another consideration.

Why are you conservatives so obsessed with Russia-Russia-Russia-Russia-Russia?

Brian Stelter wonders.

A Debt Repaid

The Irish answer their history.

Oh Dear

“Open Memorandum to Barack Obama.”

Curiouser and Curiouser

Judge Sullivan has decided to appoint a retired judge to act as de facto prosecutor in the Flynn case, since the Department of Justice refuses to prosecute it. That is not just highly irregular, I think it's unheard of. I've certainly never heard of it being done, although sitting Federal judges have tremendous power.

It certainly will make the appeal interesting if Sullivan decides to sentence Flynn instead of accepting the recommendation to drop the charges.

UPDATE: Apparently he's also appointed a prosecutor to see if Flynn can be charged with perjury for entering a false guilty verdict. That, actually, might be the one crime of which Flynn is really guilty; although a lot of other people are guilty of coercing him and concealing it from the court, which doesn't seem to have sparked the judge's interest.

I'm beginning to think that it will be hard for Flynn to receive a fair trial, even at this late stage.

Arms and White Samite Update

I finally received copies of the paperback today. I am extremely disappointed in their quality. The formatting I spent a week trying to get right came out wrong nine ways from Sunday, and for some reason the cover has a pink rather than a white dress. It definitely isn't pink in the painting, not even a little, and was color-adjusted to match the white text (which did come out correctly).

So if any of you purchased a copy of the paperback, I apologize for the quality. I am pulling it off of Amazon as a physical book. I have no idea what happened, but the quality is too poor to ask anyone to spend money on it. Feel free to return it and ask for a refund, because these books are too badly made to be worth anything. You can read the same story on your Kindle.

Fake News Today

BB: California Police Attempt To Arrest Elon Musk's Holographic Decoy As Real Musk Escapes On Rocket To Mars

DB: Generals who failed to defeat Taliban explain how to kill a virus

TO: Damning Report Finds White House Ignored Skeletal Horsemen Galloping Through Sky As Early As January

Manhood and the Virus

We have all read that men are more likely to die than women from this virus (women hardest hit), but it turns out that low-testosterone men are more likely to die than men with high T levels. Exercise may be protective, although that's more along the lines of 'it usually is' than 'we know for sure that it is in this specific case.' Sunshine destroys the virus and your body uses it to protect you by producing Vitamin D, which is generally effective as an anti-viral.

Things are looking pretty good for weight-lifting motorcycle-riding men.

Nursing home carnage

At least, a nationwide tally of the nursing homes' share of COVID-19 deaths.  Powerline has been reporting for weeks that over 80% of the virus's deadly toll in Minnesota occurs in nursing homes, and that the median age of decedents has been steady for some time at about 82 years.  That percentage turns out to be high; most states are hovering more around the 50% mark.  I've read that the nationwide median age is in the high 70s, though information on that score is scarce.

The column for daily deaths is heartening, at least for some states, such as Texas, which seem to have cracked the code for opening the economy while concentrating protection on the most vulnerable elderly.  Nursing homes in the cluster of states near New York are still suffering badly.

Scrolling down the page at that same site will bring you to an economic report card for the 50 states, which demands a balance between the challenge of the local death rate and the speed of re-opening.  New York gets a "C," which might seem generous considering how locked down it remains, but it gets credit for having such a severe outbreak to contend with.  Texas gets a "B," despite its fairly benign lockdown and rapid re-opening, because its outbreak has not been severe enough to warrant more stringent measures.

Theremin

H/t Joe Bob.

Waiting

More Than 2,000 Former DOJ Personnel Sign Letter Opposing Dropping Flynn Charges

It calls for Barr's resignation and for the court to reject the DOJ motion to dismiss.

There is no recognition that anything in the prosecution may have been amiss.

I have only tangentially followed the Flynn case, but where I have it has been through right-wing-ish blogs, so at first glance it seemed bizarre not to acknowledge at least some impropriety in the prosecution. But maybe not; I guess what the left and right consider as the truth in this case are two very different stories.

Here's the gist of it:

Now, Attorney General Barr has once again assaulted the rule of law, this time in the case of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Subsequent events strongly suggest political interference in Flynn’s prosecution. Despite previously acknowledging that he “had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” President Trump has repeatedly and publicly complained that Flynn has been mistreated and subjected to a “witch hunt.” The President has also said that Flynn was “essentially exonerated” and that he was “strongly considering a [f]ull [p]ardon.” The Department has now moved to dismiss the charges against Flynn, in a filing signed by a single political appointee and no career prosecutors. The Department’s purported justification for doing so does not hold up to scrutiny, given the ample evidence that the investigation was well-founded and — more importantly — the fact that Flynn admitted under oath and in open court that he told material lies to the FBI in violation of longstanding federal law.

Make no mistake: The Department’s action is extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented. If any of us, or anyone reading this statement who is not a friend of the President, were to lie to federal investigators in the course of a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation, and admit we did so under oath, we would be prosecuted for it.

Interestingly, all of the names of the signers are published on the same site, so you can browse through them if you care.

Faking Courage & Uneven Trainability

AVI posted what I take to be a response to the post about teaching virtue, laying out some principles for his view of things. I'll let his words stand on their own, but I do want to circle back on two of the points that he raises.

The first one is that courage (and other virtues) can be faked by applying pressures that end up compelling people to behave as they would if they had been brave. Aristotle describes this as an aspect of justice, which uses laws to compel people to behave as if they were virtuous even if they are not.

Now, the laws prescribe about all manner of things, aiming at the common interest of all, or of the best men, or of those who are supreme in the state (position in the state being determined by reference to personal excellence, or to some other such standard); and so in one sense we apply the term just to whatever tends to produce and preserve the happiness of the community, and the several elements of that. The law bids us display courage (as not to leave our ranks, or run, or throw away our arms), and temperance (as not to commit adultery or outrage), and gentleness (as not to strike or revile our neighbours), and so on with all the other virtues and vices, enjoining acts and forbidding them, rightly when it is a good law, not so rightly when it is a hastily improvised one.

Aristotle goes on to say something about this that I think is easy to misunderstand.

Justice, then, in this sense of the word, is complete virtue, with the addition that it is displayed towards others. On this account it is often spoken of as the chief of the virtues, and such that “neither evening nor morning star is so lovely;” and the saying has become proverbial, “Justice sums up all virtues in itself.”

It is complete virtue, first of all, because it is the exhibition of complete virtue: it is also complete because he that has it is able to exhibit virtue in dealing with his neighbours, and not merely in his private affairs; for there are many who can be virtuous enough at home, but fail in dealing with their neighbours.... While then the worst man is he who displays vice both in his own affairs and in his dealings with his friends, the best man is not he who displays virtue in his own affairs merely, but he who displays virtue towards others; for this is the hard thing to do.

Justice, then, in this sense of the word, is not a part of virtue, but the whole of it; and the injustice which is opposed to it is not a part of vice, but the whole of it.

That could easily be read to say that fake virtue is just as good as real virtue; and that a state that manages to compel everyone to do the right thing is just as good as a state in which people chose to do the right thing without compulsion. A thorough reading of the Nicomachean Ethics shows that Aristotle cannot possibly mean that. The whole of the work is built around developing one's character so that one is a fit judge of what is right and wrong, and the kind of person who will do the right thing.

The need to compel people to act in the right way is made necessary, rather than desirable, because of the acknowledgement of the second point from AVI's essay that I want to bring around: not all people respond to the training well. Every Marine goes through training designed in part to help them habituate courage; many respond well to it, partly because they are self-selected for wanting to become brave warriors. But not everyone does, not even in the Marine Corps. There remains additional selection processes for particularly dangerous duty (not just in the USMC; Airborne school in the Army is more about habituating courage than about actually conducting offensive operations). Some wash out; others find that the experience of being forced to do brave things eventually does make them brave. Others were brave when they got there, and only refine the quality through training.

AVI puts it this way (the 30,000 foot language is perhaps why I thought of Airborne school):

The people discussing Aristotle and virtues this late in the day wondering whether such things can be taught and reflecting over their own experience, are simply not a representative sample. Aristotle and Aquinas and others writing about virtue, discipline, and courage may have had every intention of writing for and about humankind in general. However hard they try to stand aloof and view the human condition from 30,000', they can't.

Both Aristotle (and therefore Aquinas) and Plato are aware of this problem, however. In fact, it is part of Protagoras' response to Socrates' challenge about the children of great men not always being very good themselves, in spite of having good parents and careful training:

Suppose that there could be no state unless we were all flute-players, in such sort as each was able, and suppose that everyone were giving his neighbor both private and public lessons in the art, and rebuked him too, if he failed to do it well, without grudging him the trouble—even as no one now thinks of grudging or reserving his skill in what is just and lawful as he does in other expert knowledge; for our neighbors' justice and virtue, I take it, is to our advantage, and consequently we all tell and teach one another what is just and lawful—well, if we made the same zealous and ungrudging efforts to instruct each other in flute-playing, do you think, Socrates, that the good flute-players would be more likely than the bad to have sons who were good flute-players? I do not think they would: no, wherever the son had happened to be born with a nature most apt for flute-playing, he would be found to have advanced to distinction, and where unapt, to obscurity. Often the son of a good player would turn out a bad one, and often of a bad, a good. But, at any rate, all would be capable players as compared with ordinary persons who had no inkling of the art. Likewise in the present case you must regard any man who appears to you the most unjust person ever reared among human laws and society as a just man and a craftsman of justice, if he had to stand comparison with people who lacked education and law courts and laws and any constant compulsion to the pursuit of virtue, but were a kind of wild folk such as Pherecrates the poet brought on the scene at last year's Lenaeum....

So now, Socrates, I have shown you by both fable and argument that virtue is teachable and is so deemed by the Athenians, and that it is no wonder that bad sons are born of good fathers and good of bad, since even the sons of Polycleitus, companions of Paralus and Xanthippus here, are not to be compared with their father, and the same is the case in other craftsmen's families.

Protagoras makes some good points here. He acknowledges that some are naturally more fitted than others for the art he wants to teach, and that thus it is only to be expected that results are uneven even with the sons of good men. He is not on very solid ground in assuming that flute playing is a good analogy. Flute playing is a techne, the kind of knowledge that most obviously can be taught. The question actually is whether virtue represents a kind of knowledge that can be taught, or something else. Protagoras attempts to strengthen his position with the talk of untrained 'wild folk,' who stand in the analogy like people who have never handled a flute. Won't ordinary Athenians be more just than wild people, since they have all been trained in the art of justice (i.e., forced to live by laws that make them act as if they were virtuous)?

The answer may well be "No." Protagoras isn't referring to any actual 'wild folk,' but only to a poet's representation of such. In fact it is certain that any folk will have standards of justice that they train their youth to respect, even barbarians (a word the Greeks gave us because the Semites they encountered spoken a way that sounded to them like 'bar bar bar'; thus 'barbar-ians'). Herodotus made much of the training of the Persian youth, which was apparently excellent, as were other of their customs.

Next to prowess in arms, it is regarded as the greatest proof of manly excellence to be the father of many sons. Every year the king sends rich gifts to the man who can show the largest number: for they hold that number is strength. Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone---to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth....

They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies. If a Persian has the leprosy he is not allowed to enter into a city, or to have any dealings with the other Persians; he must, they say, have sinned against the sun. Foreigners attacked by this disorder, are forced to leave the country: even white pigeons are often driven away, as guilty of the same offence. They never defile a river with the secretions of their bodies, nor even wash their hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers.

In spite of this, the Persians were notoriously tyrannical, cruel, and wicked by our own moral standards.

I shall stop again, as this is once more a good spot to allow those of you interested in the discussion to pause and consider, and express your own thoughts.

Unashamedly stolen from Ace

In response to a comment about the murder of a jogger/burglar in Georgia, I said:

I don't care whether he was burgling every house on the block. Chasing him down in a vehicle and then shooting him was not their job.

I was promptly accused of virtue signaling and casting aspersions on Southerners as racists.

Yes...I claim the mantle of virtue here, and wear it proudly. We are a nation of laws, and vigilantism does not belong in America. As for the imagined suggestion of racism? I am not a mind reader...I have no idea whether racial animus had anything to do with this killing, and nobody else does either. But, a reflexive defense of murderers because they are White and the victim is Black is just as bad as screaming racism every time a Black man is killed.

link

The safe road

Benjamin Franklin penned an all-purpose letter of recommendation while in France in 1776:

The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another, equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another. As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend him, however, to those civilities which every stranger of whom one knows no harm has a right to; and I request you will do him all the good offices, and show him all the favour, that on further acquaintance you shall find him to deserve.

I took this from a "juvenile" biography of Franklin published in the early 20th century.  They had a different idea back then what children might profit from reading.  If the seedier stories about Franklin's private habits are true, those were left out, but there was no bowdlerizing of the politics.

The Tale of a Cherokee Highlander

John Ross.

Jason Ubych of Tain and District Museum and Clan Ross Centre, said: “John led the struggle by the Cherokee people against forced and brutal relocation from their homeland in 1838, a story that has many similarities to the clearances in the Highlands being perpetrated at the same time.”

UPDATE: As I reflect on it, this really should be read together with Tex's post below. Ross is a clear example of a man acting on family (and, by extension, tribal) ties to rein in the worst impulses of the state. He suffered with his people, but he helped them lessen the harms to which they were exposed, and was right there with them to help them survive the ones he couldn't avoid.

Recalcitrant families, benevolent states

As Glen Reynolds says, who knew a conservative backlash could cancel a progressive event demonizing homeschooling?  Somebody had better get to work on a law about that kind of dangerous speech.

Chesterton wrote about the importance of the family as a bulwark against state coercion in "The Superstition of Divorce," in which he also ridicules the principle of unlimited personal liberty as "all windows and no wall":

The ideal for which [the family] stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started. It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state. Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is, anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king. This is the only way in which truth can ever find refuge from public persecution, and the good man survive the bad government. But the good man by himself is no match for the city. There must be balanced against it another ideal institution, and in that sense an immortal institution. So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen.

Subsidiarity

One size doesn't fit all.

[T]here is one large group of the elderly for whom the issue is simpler: retirees who live on their own in rural, small-town, and small-city America. It is easy for most of them to take care of themselves, and they needn’t be rich to do it. We (for I fall into that category) don’t need to go to a workplace every day. We don’t need to use public transportation. Nothing requires us to eat in restaurants or, for that matter, requiresus to have close interaction with anyone. Does quarantining the entire population give us some additional measure of protection? Perhaps at the margin, though I would like to see some hard data proving that point. But I submit that we elderly who live on our own can make ourselves “safe enough” unilaterally, through the precautions within our control. What proportion of the elderly am I talking about? Calculating that number would take some digging, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what it is if we want to make sensible policy? And that brings me to my main point:

The relationship of population density to the spread of the coronavirus creates sets of policy options that are radically different in high-density and low-density areas. ... The sensible thing for government to do about the pandemic in a small town or small city is different from the sensible thing for government to do in a big, crowded city. ... [T]oo many people in high places, in government and the media, have been acting as if there is a right and moral policy toward the pandemic that applies throughout America. That’s wrong. Disaggregating policy choices to reflect local conditions is essential.

Speculation

It's getting harder to argue that we lack the manpower and other resources to pursue burglars, if we can spare a couple of squad cars to go after hardened criminals violating the six-foot rule. Which is more speculative, the idea that a repeat offender might escalate if you fail to lock him up after several failures, or the domino effect from some scofflaws sitting on the beach?

“You can’t sit outside and watch the sunset because you might breathe on a butterfly that will carry your germs to a tree with lemons that might be picked by a child to make lemonade for his grandma, and she’ll die!”

"Only God Can Save Us"

That sentiment is typically expressed by priests and preachers, but there's a philosophical case for it that goes back to Socrates (who was speaking of another god, or at least thought that he was). This time the speaker is Elijah del Medigo, who may or may not be a priest since the name is a pen name, but begins with a poem excerpt by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

...Our decades of overconfident liberalization and globalization have come back to bite us, Wilks argues, and we have now hollowed out American society to the point that the smallest tasks are too much for us: “We now find ourselves unable to stick ear straps onto face-sized pieces of non-woven medical fabric at industrial scale.

Decades of stagnation, offshoring, and complacency have caught up with us, and all of our institutions have failed to prevent the coronavirus from crippling the nation. Our physical decay can no longer be ignored.” He is right: decades of complacent management have not so much left a chink in our armor as fully stripped it off. Decline is a choice, as Charles Krauthammer said, and American bureaucracy has been choosing it for decades.

This is exactly the same thing that 9/11 revealed, which caused me to write the following motif into my own poem, which was written on the very day:

At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.

In the poem, the red-rust mail was well-forged though ill-tended, and proves adequate to the task. Our institutions responded to 9/11 well in the first charge, rapidly deposing the Taliban and sending al Qaeda into hiding. Special Forces learned to ride horses in Afghanistan; Rangers took the peaks at Tora Bora; Marines deployed by helicopter into a land very far from any sea. The world learned that we were capable of a great deal of force, rapidly and unexpectedly.

Yet the institutions failed as soon as they shifted from finding new ways to respond to an emergency back to the more comfortable operation of the bureaucracies. The Afghan mission adopted a bureaucratic Big Army approach to a mission that had no possibility of success, and which has been pursued without success for nigh-on twenty years. The Iraq War was won by the invasion force, lost by the poorly-handed occupation, won again by the Surge force adopting a new model of counterinsurgency that forgave and adopted the Sunni Awakening, and then lost by the State Department that failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement and forced a rapid and too-early withdrawal.

Innovation is possible when the emergency grows dire enough that the bureaucrats loosen their grip, but doom returns as they reassert it. The American state has succeeded, where it has, by voiding its rules: truckers can drive further and faster, the FDA can let people make tests who know how without months of regulatory grind, and our food supply can be secured in a similar manner. If we simply void the rules and let people find solutions, solutions can be found. The enemy is the state; the ossified institutions themselves are causing the harm.

Georgia Re-Opening Going Well

So far, at least, so good.

How a Feudal Lord Handled the Nazis

I didn't know this, but there were actually a few genuine feudal lords during the 1930s. The last of these, the Isle of Sark in the English Channel, was a fief ruled by a hereditary lord until 2008, when it was democratized. There is still a lord, but now it's a more ceremonial role.

This article is about how Dame Sybil Hathaway, the Isle's feudal lord, handled the Nazis taking over her fief. It's a good story. Too bad her autobiography is out of print.

China's On the Ballot

Wretchard.

China won’t give up its formerly dominant supply chain position without a fight. Beijing has been quick to reopen even as Western politicians debate over whether it is safe to emerge from lockdown. “Analysts at Morgan Stanley suggest businesses are unlikely to take the opportunity to tilt parts of their manufacturing operations away from China, at least for now. They said cash-starved companies currently lack the funds to invest in new operations and tinker with existing supply chains. At the same time, Chinese assembly lines have been swift to bounce back, even as other economies remain in lockdown.”...

The adage “take the high ground” applies to politics and it’s puzzling why the Democrats didn’t take ‘Reshore Hill’ and become the champion of returning jobs to America before Trump did. Instead reflex pushed them into instinctive opposition, tending to disculpate China and demand even longer lockdowns, even to their potential detriment.

Vote no on China.

Phase I Pie

First restaurant food in just over two months, tailgate pizza from a local joint just re-opened. “Local” means it’s a 40-minute drive (or ride) from the house.

This one’s called “The Duke.”

John Wayne would appreciate it.

A Real ‘Lord of the Flies’

It’s a much better story.

A Summary of Recent History

Representative Jim Jordan has published a piece in the Federalist entitled "A Look Back On The Russia, Mueller, And Flynn Investigations." It is worth the time it will take you to read it.

Arbery Shooting

My virtue-signalling left-wing friends have been raising Cain over a shooting back down in Georgia, where two former police officers (who happen to be father and son) shot and killed a jogger. The shooters were white, the jogger was black, and the shooters appear to have taken him for a burglar and tried to make a citizens' arrest. That's legal in Georgia, provided that you bring the arrested before a magistrate in very short order.

The jogger grappled with one of them, who was holding a shotgun. The other one shot him, as he had taken up an elevated covering position by standing in the back of their pickup truck.

Generally this is being portrayed as a white-supremacist-hate-crime. Perhaps it was, although so far I haven't seen any evidence suggesting it besides the fact that they are white and the dead man was black. I am instantly struck, however, by the fact that they would probably not even be charged if they were still cops. 'Suspect grappled with the responding officer, and was going for his gun. Backup officer applied necessary force to ensure arresting officer was not killed in a struggle over the gun. Suspect died of wounds.'

In fact I suspect they will be cleared at trial for just that reason. A struggle over a gun with a suspected criminal poses an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm of just the sort that the Georgia self-defense laws permits. A third party may use lethal force to save the life of another so threatened. Since the dead man had a criminal record that did include burglary, and the shooters were former law-enforcement, my guess is the jury will break their way if they aren't convinced to take a plea bargain. At worst they'll likely get a mistrial; they may well be acquitted.

That said, what really happened here is probably what AVI was talking about: reversion to training. They did what the police are trained to do, and I can't imagine charges being brought against two police officers who did exactly the same thing. Here's a case in which training can actually work against you, because as your role in society changes over time, old training remains part of your state of character. A man is dead because of how they were trained as police officers.

Avoiding the Perjury Trap

Another big thing that happened yesterday was the opening of a lot more HPSCI documents from the Trump/Russia hearings. Ace has been doing yeoman work in pointing out that, over and over and over again, people who were publicly proclaiming Trump's guilt privately testified under oath that they had no evidence whatsoever.

Well, that's what oaths are for. Too bad this wasn't made public way back when. Might have saved time and money, but it would have also disabled a politically useful argument, so there was no way it could happen.

Phase 1

Governor Cooper's office has put together a Twitter thread that is reasonable, cautiously optimistic but straightforward about the risks. I'm trying to be patient with this process, which I think is overly cautious but which is clearly well-intentioned. Let us hope it goes smoothly.

Ted Cruz Gets a Haircut

In another stunning reversal of fortune, the Dallas hairdresser who was jailed for operating her salon has been freed; the governor has issued an executive order banning jailing of people for violating mere executive orders as opposed to laws; and a Senator dropped in for a trim.

Oh. O.

So the President is entitled to know pretty much whatever he wants to know, however, his personal attention is limited. To discover that he is personally aware of specifics from a FISA intercept is significant.

More Biden News

Tara Reade's ex-husband mentioned that she was sexually harassed by her boss in a court filing that has come to light.

Justice Department Drops All Charges on Flynn

A stunning reversal; they didn't even wait for Judge Sullivan to rule on whether he could withdraw his guilty plea. This is not the end, though. The DOJ prosecutor has withdrawn from all of his cases, not just this one, and there is doubtless more to come.

UPDATE: I want to say that I am really pleased and encouraged by this outcome. Last week's Brady material establishes that the FBI never thought he was guilty of anything, after a very thorough counterintelligence information produced "no derogatory information" in any of the several methodologies employed. They were going to close the case, until they were ordered to hold it open so that a perjury trap could be attempted. If the witnesses about the original 302s are accurate, even that shouldn't have worked because the original 302s said that the agents didn't think Flynn was lying to them, just wrong on a couple of points.

I always liked Flynn because he was willing to take on the intelligence higher-ups on the word of the guys on the ground. An officer that will both listen to and fight for his guys is as good an officer as you can ask. He has been shamefully abused by the government he served long and well. I generally never hope to see anyone sent to prison, as I hate to see a free man reduced to a slave. Those who abused him, though, have spent their whole careers sending other people to prison. They broke the laws they enforced on others. For them, I can only say that it would be a sort of poetic justice if they should have that hammer fall.

Can Virtue be Taught?

AVI responded to yesterday's short essay with a post of his own, questioning whether habituation is in fact how one develops virtues like courage.

Thinking about that, I think it is only partly true. It is not the mere experience of danger and risk that teaches, even to those who are alert and seeking to draw lessons. An example: early in my career at the hospital it was common to be working an understaffed unit. Just before I arrived, they had finally made it policy that no one was to work a unit alone. Not all psychiatric patients are dangerous, but enough of them are that they required physical intervention to restrain them. They can be assaultive, out-of-control, or so intensely self harming that they attempt to run into wall, cut themselves with whatever is handy. When you are alone in facing this and you know that you can get hurt badly, but your job is to keep everyone safe, it is frightening. Yes, you are still alone, because someone has to get to the phone, or is on break. Especially tough on night shift when there aren't even that many people in the building to help out. You were left with the intervention far more often if you were male, also. The adrenaline rises, clouding your judgement, and memories of past injuries, especially from this same patient, rise as well.

This was part of my job for seven years, and then an occasional part for ten years after that. I experienced that fear many times and worked to contain it. Yet even though I was paying attention and trying to draw lessons from the experience, or trying to emulate those who seemed to be doing better, I don't think I improved much. Not until about year five, when a new type of training come in, did I feel I was making progress. It was not mere habituation, but specific training that mattered. I imagine Aristotle might partly agree if I explained it to him.

This is one of the most consequential questions with which the Greeks wrestled. The issue makes up the core of several of Plato's dialogues. In fact it is the heart of Socrates' conflict with the Sophists, who claimed that they could and did teach virtue.

The first issue is whether virtue is a sort of knowledge, or something else. If virtue is knowledge, then it should be teachable. Plato enjoyed irony, so in the Protagoras he has Protagoras argue that he teaches a kind of virtue that is not knowledge; he has Socrates argue that virtue is a kind of knowledge, but can't be taught. Socrates makes clear the irony that they're arguing two impossible positions in the ending of the dialogue.

There are several good reasons to think that virtue is not a kind of knowledge, however. One of them is brought out in the Laches, which is specifically about trying to teach courage by practicing the martial arts, with teachers who went about Greece showing students techniques they had developed. The techniques can definitely be taught; in fact the word 'technique' is rooted in the Greek word techne, which is a species of knowledge-as-art that can definitely be taught. This word is also the root of our word "technology," and Socrates' favorite example of it is shoemakers. They definitely know something because they can not only make a shoe, they can also explain exactly how they do it, exactly why each step makes sense, and they can teach it to others. Teaching the martial arts is like that too.

Teaching courage, though: well, Socrates says, if it is like that we should be able to say exactly what it is we are wanting to teach. Can you define courage in an unassailable way? None of the participants in the discussion could, even though they were all men who had displayed courage on the battlefield (including Socrates, who was a war veteran famous for his conduct in a rear guard action during his youth). All possessed courage, but none could define it. That suggests that the virtue is not knowledge, at least not techne, and calls into question whether it is teachable.

What else might it be? It might be an inherited quality. The Greeks didn't know about genetics, but they knew that sons resemble their fathers in many ways. But (as is brought out in the Protagoras) the sons of good men often aren't as good as their fathers. Socrates points out that successful fathers who have displayed virtue not only often produce inferior sons, they do so even though they spend a lot of money and effort on trying to educate their sons. If virtue were inheritable, wouldn't it be the case that the sons of virtuous men were reliably better than others? If virtue were teachable, wouldn't these efforts bear fruit given that they are practiced on the most promising stock, i.e., the sons of the best men?

Aristotle's answer is that virtue is not a form of knowledge exactly, but a state of character. The way one develops that character is by practice, so that it become habituated. (This is not quite the same thing as a "habit" in the English sense, as this essay examines.) One changes one's character by practicing the right thing until one does it without having to think about what the right thing is. The argument that one reverts to one's training, then, isn't just an argument that Aristotle would accept; it is in fact his position.

This only partly solves the problem, of course, since we have to figure out what 'the right thing' is in order to train ourselves to do it. That still seems like needing a form of knowledge, not just practice and training: someone has to know. If there is someone who does know, then virtue is at least rooted in a sort of knowledge that can be taught. Even if that is true, knowing what virtue entails in this way does not satisfy the condition for having virtue; one still has to practice until doing the right thing is habituated. This is Aristotle's explanation for a problem that bothered Socrates: if virtue is a form of knowledge, then knowing what is right should entail always doing what is right. Yet people often know what is right but do something else.

The idea that virtue is any sort of teachable knowledge is a problem for the reasons given above, and for other reasons Plato explores. It's a very sticky question, and a highly consequential one. I will stop here to let you all consider this, and express your own thoughts.

Uh-Oh

An essay by a Harvard professor of constitutional law has prompted a lot of elite conservative thinkers to begin musing on new non-originalist ways to interpret the Constitution to 'help the common good.' At the same time, a new think tank called American Compass wants to re-examine the use of government to 'help': "HELPING POLICYMAKERS NAVIGATE the limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security."

The reason to support originalism wasn't because it was useful, but because it is true. A law is passed to do something specific, and it shouldn't be re-interpreted later to do something else even if a judge can creatively read it that way. The legislature should pass a new law to do the new thing, if they think it's worth doing; the old law should be repealed, if they no longer think it worth doing. That's empty of content about ideology.

As for government's ability to promote the common good, I've never been more skeptical of it than I am today. Government should be treated as a necessary evil, but an evil for certain.

In Song and Story 7

Harry O’Donoghue opens this latest with a time capsule view.

Once Upon a Time on a Motorcycle

AVI's post of yesterday got me thinking about a trip I took with my son up the Blue Ridge Parkway on the back of a bike.  This blog has been around long enough that I can simply go back and link the post I wrote at the time.  It was a motorcycle camping trip in which more or less everything went wrong.  The weather was far worse than advertised, the campsites were not open as expected, the Forest Service roads to the campsites were made slippery and dangerous by the rain, and those roads ran by perilous gorges.

It's a good story, and in fact one of the most treasured memories of my son and me.  We still talk about it regularly.  Shared hardship often builds good memories, and one's character is often the result of having survived your bad decisions. I did listen to 'the experts,' too. I had followed the weather reports closely. It's just that the experts were wrong.

That said, I do remember that my wife tried to get me to reconsider taking that trip.  She said to me, "If you get your son killed doing this, you will never forgive yourself."  I knew that was true when she said it, but decided to do it anyway. 

What I said at AVI's place yesterday was this:

I suppose my own tolerance for risk is dangerously high; hopefully I’m better at recognition of risk. Perhaps not.

The other side, though, is Aristotle’s point that virtue is cultivated by habituation. In regularly encountering danger while engaging your rational mind, you develop the capacity to perform rationally under threats. This virtue, courage, wins wars and keeps us all free. It is the root of whatever goods liberty provides.

It is true that courage is a virtue even though (as Aristotle himself points out right at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics) courage is sometimes just what gets you killed. The world contains many uncertainties, but on balance courage provides benefits. You can only develop it by running risks to practice the habits.

There’s an acceptable synthesis: the hazards are meant to be encountered in a manner that engages the rational part of the soul. So wear your seatbelt; become skillful at the dangerous things; do the things, but be smart about it.

That's not wrong, but it's also not complete. Even virtues turn to vices if you push them to excess; courage is meant to be the middle position between cowardice and either rashness or what Aristotle calls a nameless vice:

Of the characters that run to excess, he that exceeds in fearlessness has no name (and this is often the case, as we have said before); but a man would be either a maniac or quite insensible to pain who should fear nothing, not even earthquakes and breakers, as they say is the case with the Celts.

The Celts, as you all know well, are R. E. Howard's Cimmerians and the largest part of my ancestry; I have long looked at that passage and wondered to what degree it was descriptive of me. Yesterday I found myself driving my Jeep down a steep and twisty mountain pass in what turned out to be a tremendous thunderstorm, which turned into a hailstorm at the steepest and twistiest part. I saw other drivers had pulled off the flooding road in places, but that Jeep is designed to get through hard roads and I figured that if I just went a little slower and took care I'd make it fine. I did in fact make it fine, but it was objectively perilous. I remember noting the danger and making adjustments for it, but I don't remember feeling afraid. Is that courage, the virtue of skill and preparation and rational adjustment producing success? Or is it the nameless vice of the Celts?

AVI's anger at his friend's recklessness with his (AVI's) life is justified and understandable. My wife's concern was justified and understandable. What I did I thought justified at the time, but now I wonder. Different people probably would come to different conclusions about it; lots of motorcycle riders take their kids on the back, and few come to harm. Other people won't ride a motorcycle even themselves, thinking them too dangerous. Habituating courage can be done in other ways, but if it isn't done in some way it won't be the case that we have courageous people when we need them. Habituating the excess -- either rashness or the nameless vice -- causes harm in just the way that habituating courage brings about good.

In the end we have to judge, as Aristotle says, by the probable outcomes.

There is a similar uncertainty also about what is good, because good things often do people harm: men have before now been ruined by wealth, and have lost their lives through courage.

Our subject, then, and our data being of this nature, we must be content if we can indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and if, in dealing with matters that are not amenable to immutable laws, and reasoning from premises that are but probable, we can arrive at probable conclusions.

The difficulty is that bad results in a particular case do not prove that a vice was in play; acts of true courage still sometimes lead to death. But the fact that a thing worked out well -- that a motorcycle camping trip led to lifelong good memories and a strengthened paternal bond -- also then does not prove that it wasn't a vice of excess, rather than a virtue, that was at work.

I suppose I say all of this by way of confession, uncertain as I am as to whether or not I have sinned; or if I have, to what degree. But for this, and all my sins, I ask forgiveness of the one whose judgment is not uncertain.

Defenestration epidemic

Russian doctors tragically die after accidentally falling out of windows, during coronavirus discussions.  In Texas we used to call this "stealing more chain than you can swim with."

Sheriffs revolt

This Oregon sheriff revolted, anyway, and I'm pretty sure my own Sheriff never had the least intention of arresting anyone for a social-distancing violation.

At last, a union I can agree with

The NY police union is fed up:

New York police have a lot of problems, and people standing too close together in the park is the least of them.

A man with a conscience and a bullhorn

I'm not sure if this video shows quite what it purports to show, because the sound doesn't line up with the picture, but it sure looks like a guy talked police into standing down from confronting Sacramento protestors.  He advised them to call in sick and get jobs with the Sheriff's department instead of the state police so they could sleep at night and look their kids in the eye.

The Hidden Fort of William Wallace

New drone footage helps archaeologists building a model.

Expédition du Mexique

The actual thing celebrated on "Sinko de Mayo" (see Gringo's comment under Tom's post) is the Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla, which was part of a war that lasted longer than the American Civil War but that most Americans have never heard of. This war is referred to by the French as their Expédition du Mexique, in fact the second time they invaded Mexico but the bloodier.

Normally the United States kept the European powers from meddling in Latin America under the Monroe Doctrine, but the French expedition happened to coincide for the most part with the Civil War. It began in 1861 with Mexico telling the French, British, and Spanish governments that they weren't going to pay interest on their debt for a couple of years. The US Navy was busy blockading the ports of the American South, so it wasn't available to keep the French from sending a large-scale expedition to our most immediate southern neighbor.

The war drug on until 1867. The United States began to threaten to get involved as early as 1865, once the Confederacy was clearly broken and victory was only a matter of time. Probably it was American diplomacy that ended the war and secured a French withdrawal. The Mexicans fought a spirited fight, though.

The Battle of Puebla was rare a Mexican victory, which explains why the Mexicans celebrate it. But another Mexican victory actually produced a major holiday for the French military, specifically the famed Foreign Legion. Their most sacred relic and highest holiday came from a 'last stand' battle they fought against the Mexican army until only five Legionnaires were left, who promptly conducted a bayonet charge against the superior enemy forces. A few survived it; the Mexican commander, seeing how few in number the survivors were, declared that the Legionnaires were 'not men, but demons.' The survivors were permitted to keep their weapons and equipment as a sign of respect for their valor, and were given medical treatment -- a sight better than the Mexicans treated our boys at the Alamo.

That’s Governor Justice to You

West Virginia is reopening, and the governor would like to emphasize that you follow the rules.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Or, the Pogues go to Spain ...

Asheville to Begin to Re-open

The last word so far from Gov. Cooper is that he is optimistic that his loosening (but not repeal) of the stay-at-home order will happen as scheduled on May 9. Buncome county, where Asheville is located, says it's ready.

The primary change under Cooper's first phase will be an allowance for limited retail operations. The stay-at-home order will remain in place, but people can leave home for more commercial activities.

Under the governor's plan, Phase 1 would continue for a minimum of two to three weeks. If data trends look promising, the state would move into Phase 2, which includes the lifting of the stay-at-home order and a limited reopening of other businesses and churches with reduced capacity....

“We know that as we increase testing and loosen restrictions we will undoubtedly see an increase in cases," he said. "The goal is to slowly reopen in a deliberate, methodical manner so that the increases in cases is manageable and never overwhelms our local health care systems. We will be monitoring our case count and other important data trends and metrics very closely to anticipate any surge.”

If the reopening begins and there is a spike in cases, health officials will take steps to reimplement restrictions.

So by the end of the month, we still won't be where Georgia was two weeks ago -- at least not on paper. We may at least be liberated from an order that we remain home (with a laundry list of exceptions making such an order nearly pointless).

Cooper's in a difficult position, to be fair. Northam in Virginia has leeway because it is two years before he's up for re-election.
Cooper has to face the voters in November. His core constituency is much more in favor of restrictions than others. If anything goes wrong he will be blamed for re-opening too soon by urban middle-to-upper class Democrats and government/public-union workers; if he doesn't re-open, rural voters will swing heavily against him even if they are normally Democrats. His Republican opponent can run heavily against him in favor of re-opening without consequence, since he won't be blamed if things go wrong. He can simply say that Cooper's team botched something.

On the other hand, Cooper is the master of his fate. He will get credit for things if they go smoothly, and his opponent won't be able to do more than criticize from the sidelines. For all the talk about how this is health and data driven, political calculations play a huge role; perhaps the decisive role.