Speaking of Flynn, newly released handwritten notes say Obama personally ordered an investigation by “the right people” and Biden brought up the Logan Act. This looks like a political hit job on the incoming NSA, directed by the President himself — and after the Crossfire Razor investigation showed Flynn not guilty of illicit Russia connections, and while Comey was declaring that the call with the ambassador looked legitimate.
UPDATE: More from The Federalist.
Flynn Case Ordered Dismissed
Appeals court rules no more shenanigans. I expect there might be at least one more, though.
A Shame on our Nation
Another statue:
A few weeks ago, Tadeusz Kościuszko’s monument was vandalized. President @AndrzejDuda begins his visit in #WashingtonDC by paying tribute to a proponent for the abolition of slavery, a distinguished son of #Poland, and hero of the American Revolution. We remember your sacrifice!They have a right to wonder why we have let the name of their beloved son be slandered.
Statues of the World, Unite
Recent destructions include:
* Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant who spent almost his whole adult life as an anti-slavery activist, and who was also a Union officer that died at Chickamagua at age 33.
* Lady Forward, a symbolic sculpture of progress made by a female sculptor in the 1890s, during the early phase of the suffrage movement in the US. (Or, if you prefer, "the symbolic gatekeeper of an almost all white capitol that legislates in racism" whose destruction shows "the extent of white fragility".)
Planned destructions include:
* The Emancipation Memorial, erected after the Civil War solely with donations from freed slaves; Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address at its dedication.
This last one is interesting both for the gall of the protesters in putting their opinions before actual freed slaves and Douglass himself, but also because they announced their intent to demolish it days in advance. They're going to come for it on Thursday at 7 PM local time. That means that (a) it's an obvious trap, and also (b) they can't pretend that the selection of this statute was a mistake made in the heat of the moment.
What sort of a trap? That's an interesting question. Probably they are hoping to draw an aggressive response they can film and then use as propaganda against the government. However, if I were preparing the government response, I would take care to surveil the site for snipers and the placement of IEDs targeting responders.
You could also steal a march by arresting these people today; they've publicly confessed to conspiracy to destroy public property.
* Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant who spent almost his whole adult life as an anti-slavery activist, and who was also a Union officer that died at Chickamagua at age 33.
* Lady Forward, a symbolic sculpture of progress made by a female sculptor in the 1890s, during the early phase of the suffrage movement in the US. (Or, if you prefer, "the symbolic gatekeeper of an almost all white capitol that legislates in racism" whose destruction shows "the extent of white fragility".)
Planned destructions include:
* The Emancipation Memorial, erected after the Civil War solely with donations from freed slaves; Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address at its dedication.
This last one is interesting both for the gall of the protesters in putting their opinions before actual freed slaves and Douglass himself, but also because they announced their intent to demolish it days in advance. They're going to come for it on Thursday at 7 PM local time. That means that (a) it's an obvious trap, and also (b) they can't pretend that the selection of this statute was a mistake made in the heat of the moment.
What sort of a trap? That's an interesting question. Probably they are hoping to draw an aggressive response they can film and then use as propaganda against the government. However, if I were preparing the government response, I would take care to surveil the site for snipers and the placement of IEDs targeting responders.
You could also steal a march by arresting these people today; they've publicly confessed to conspiracy to destroy public property.
Arms & White Samite Update
After three go-rounds and multiple print proofs, I think the paperback is correct at last. (If any of you should find a printing error, please let me know because I can correct it.) The cover has been adjusted again, and it seems good enough to be re-issued for publication.
So if you wanted one, here it is.
So if you wanted one, here it is.
Daily bafflegab report
The best I've found so far today is in an ABC report on the Seattle Mayor's announced plans to work together with others to de-escalate and implement community wishes and expand our consciousness and like wow man:
These people wouldn't know a business plan if it ate them for breakfast. They've heard of a business start-up before, and they think that something must stand between a stalwart would-be local "home-grown" business entrepreneur and fabulous success, followed by buying a home, raising a family, and paying a lot of local taxes. They gather that what most such hopeful young idealists lack is something called "cash," a/k/a what bloodsucking capitalists call capital. They aren't in a position to give startups any cash, because sadly the local tax structure is such that an Economic Development sales tax slot was previously eaten by some other sales tax, and they've hit the ceiling on that. They know ad valorem tax abatements probably won't fly. What to do?
They're going down the usual road: appoint sub-committees to chase grants for business incubation. I must say, they have an extremely firm grip on where the grant money is and how to advance relentlessly toward putting their hands on it: talk about community needs and workforce development and leveraging strengths and light, clean industry and diversification and resilience. What they don't seem to understand is that an entrepreneur has a product to sell, to people who want it and have money to spare from other wants to spend on it, and a business plan for how to finance production and sales until he can turn a "profit" (eek), plus an iron determination to work himself half to death pulling the whole thing off.
When real people with capital to invest see a structure like this, they sometimes write checks in return for a share of the potential future profits. It's called capital. The county doesn't have any, and neither do any of the sub-committees. They're not even going to grab the grant money and use it as capital; all the money will go for studies and salaries of indispensable chairmen and directors to study business incubation.
But at least they didn't spend the meeting talking about centering voices and having continued dialogue on how to reimagine business incubation and every other aspect of our society.
Durkan said she has met with community leaders, local organizations, protesters, businesses and residents in recent weeks, and there will be continued dialogue on how to reimagine policing itself as well as "every other component of our society."
"Racism is a living, breathing organism," she said. "It permeates our society in so many ways, and we can only undo racism and begin to undo the trauma and injustice by really centering the voices of the people who are affected."I had a pretty good dose yesterday, too, in a county commissioners meeting in which an inordinate amount of time was spent discussing subcommittees and action plans devoted to the mystery of what they like to call "entrepreneurship incubation."
These people wouldn't know a business plan if it ate them for breakfast. They've heard of a business start-up before, and they think that something must stand between a stalwart would-be local "home-grown" business entrepreneur and fabulous success, followed by buying a home, raising a family, and paying a lot of local taxes. They gather that what most such hopeful young idealists lack is something called "cash," a/k/a what bloodsucking capitalists call capital. They aren't in a position to give startups any cash, because sadly the local tax structure is such that an Economic Development sales tax slot was previously eaten by some other sales tax, and they've hit the ceiling on that. They know ad valorem tax abatements probably won't fly. What to do?
They're going down the usual road: appoint sub-committees to chase grants for business incubation. I must say, they have an extremely firm grip on where the grant money is and how to advance relentlessly toward putting their hands on it: talk about community needs and workforce development and leveraging strengths and light, clean industry and diversification and resilience. What they don't seem to understand is that an entrepreneur has a product to sell, to people who want it and have money to spare from other wants to spend on it, and a business plan for how to finance production and sales until he can turn a "profit" (eek), plus an iron determination to work himself half to death pulling the whole thing off.
When real people with capital to invest see a structure like this, they sometimes write checks in return for a share of the potential future profits. It's called capital. The county doesn't have any, and neither do any of the sub-committees. They're not even going to grab the grant money and use it as capital; all the money will go for studies and salaries of indispensable chairmen and directors to study business incubation.
But at least they didn't spend the meeting talking about centering voices and having continued dialogue on how to reimagine business incubation and every other aspect of our society.
Iconoclasm
This story about destroying Jesus and Mary statues and stained glass windows has actually been developing for a good part of a week to my certain knowledge; I was watching a woman argue that Christianity's use in colonialism meant that Christianity itself was impossibly wrapped up in white supremacy. Shaun King is at least only interested in destroying 'white Jesus' (and Mary, and priceless artworks dating back many centuries). That woman wanted to eliminate Christianity per se for practitioners' crimes against wokeness.
There remains an open question about whether we shall be allowed to convert to a more acceptable faith, perhaps one of the gay-and-trans-friendly versions of Islam, certainly not Orthodox Judaism; or whether, as in Communist China, we are required to become Scientific Atheists in order to maintain our social credit.
If you are interested in social credit. Maybe it's not the kind of treasure that's really worth having.
There remains an open question about whether we shall be allowed to convert to a more acceptable faith, perhaps one of the gay-and-trans-friendly versions of Islam, certainly not Orthodox Judaism; or whether, as in Communist China, we are required to become Scientific Atheists in order to maintain our social credit.
If you are interested in social credit. Maybe it's not the kind of treasure that's really worth having.
Well You Shouldn't, Obviously
Reason: "The CIA Can't Protect Its Own Hacking Tools. Why Should We Trust Government Privacy and Security Proposals?"
"Social Science" and Racism
A test with the imprimatur of the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara, which purports to help you reveal your racism to yourself, is a better example of why these 'social science' field are frauds.
Let us count the ways.
1) Scientific tests should seek to eliminate all but one variable; you control the rest so you can be clear on what has changed. This test, instead, varies its language in ways that muddy what it is measuring, e.g., asking about 'it is offensive' only some of the time, and 'it is okay to...' on other occasions.
2) That ambiguity is made much worse by the fact that 'okay' is an almost endlessly ambiguous word. It can mean anything from "yes" to "I understand" to "enough already!" to "I will do that," and many other things besides. So when you ask people to what degree they agree that 'it is okay to... X' you need to spell out what kind of 'okay' you mean.
For example, is it okay to insult a President? Well, it's legal, unless you are a serving military member; it may be morally permissible even where it isn't legal, in cases where the President may really deserve the words; it may be virtuous even where it isn't legal. Or do you mean that it's 'okay' in the sense of being socially acceptable? It is highly acceptable to insult the current president in some crowds, but completely unacceptable to insult the previous one in similar terms.
3) When they ask about what is offensive, there is no objective fact of the matter about that. People get offended, and people are different. Is the question whether I think a thing is or ought to be offensive, or whether I think that there are people somewhere in my society who would be offended (or that they ought to be, or ought not to be)? If the test cannot avoid these ambiguities, how could it pretend to be offering an apples-to-apples comparison across the responses of different readers? The readers may well have thought they were answering meaningfully different questions.
4) We begin to unravel the real purpose of the exam when we realize that answering "no opinion" counts against you every time. Having no opinion is always treated as evidence of racism. The only answers that won't count against you are the extreme ones -- double thumbs up or double thumbs down -- provided you select the correct one of those options.
5) This is not a test of racism, in other words, but a test of your knowledge of the content of an ideology. You might have no opinion about a question because you haven't thought about it before; that wouldn't be evidence one way or the other about your internal racism. What you are being tested on is having developed the right opinions, and knowing to express them as strongly as possible when asked for them.
6) In that sense the test involves the sort of demand for successful mind-reading one sometimes encounters in bad emotional relationships: if you didn't know this was a problem, that is a proof that you're wrong because you should have picked up on it. If you didn't know what I meant when I said something ambiguous, that is proof that you aren't thinking about this the right way. You should have known what I meant.
7) Finally, a lot of the questions are about fictional cases, where presumably the moral stakes are a lot lower. These cases are run into the same index as cases that affect actual human beings, as if there were an equivalence between real and pretend cases.
Yet in spite of all of this, the test is very proud of itself and its team.
Let us count the ways.
1) Scientific tests should seek to eliminate all but one variable; you control the rest so you can be clear on what has changed. This test, instead, varies its language in ways that muddy what it is measuring, e.g., asking about 'it is offensive' only some of the time, and 'it is okay to...' on other occasions.
2) That ambiguity is made much worse by the fact that 'okay' is an almost endlessly ambiguous word. It can mean anything from "yes" to "I understand" to "enough already!" to "I will do that," and many other things besides. So when you ask people to what degree they agree that 'it is okay to... X' you need to spell out what kind of 'okay' you mean.
For example, is it okay to insult a President? Well, it's legal, unless you are a serving military member; it may be morally permissible even where it isn't legal, in cases where the President may really deserve the words; it may be virtuous even where it isn't legal. Or do you mean that it's 'okay' in the sense of being socially acceptable? It is highly acceptable to insult the current president in some crowds, but completely unacceptable to insult the previous one in similar terms.
3) When they ask about what is offensive, there is no objective fact of the matter about that. People get offended, and people are different. Is the question whether I think a thing is or ought to be offensive, or whether I think that there are people somewhere in my society who would be offended (or that they ought to be, or ought not to be)? If the test cannot avoid these ambiguities, how could it pretend to be offering an apples-to-apples comparison across the responses of different readers? The readers may well have thought they were answering meaningfully different questions.
4) We begin to unravel the real purpose of the exam when we realize that answering "no opinion" counts against you every time. Having no opinion is always treated as evidence of racism. The only answers that won't count against you are the extreme ones -- double thumbs up or double thumbs down -- provided you select the correct one of those options.
5) This is not a test of racism, in other words, but a test of your knowledge of the content of an ideology. You might have no opinion about a question because you haven't thought about it before; that wouldn't be evidence one way or the other about your internal racism. What you are being tested on is having developed the right opinions, and knowing to express them as strongly as possible when asked for them.
6) In that sense the test involves the sort of demand for successful mind-reading one sometimes encounters in bad emotional relationships: if you didn't know this was a problem, that is a proof that you're wrong because you should have picked up on it. If you didn't know what I meant when I said something ambiguous, that is proof that you aren't thinking about this the right way. You should have known what I meant.
7) Finally, a lot of the questions are about fictional cases, where presumably the moral stakes are a lot lower. These cases are run into the same index as cases that affect actual human beings, as if there were an equivalence between real and pretend cases.
Yet in spite of all of this, the test is very proud of itself and its team.
Why Use This Test?The fraud is bigger than the test; the real fraud is that these people have been taught to think of what they are doing here as valid, reliable, professional work. They're the real victims; probably they each paid tens of thousands of dollars into this fraudulent scheme. They'll be paying off that debt for decades, and look where it got them.
1. Free....
2. Validity and reliability. Empirical testing and factor analysis has shown the validity of the Racism Test. The evidence has been published in scientific journals and has good scientific validity.
3. Based on peer-reviewed research. The present test is based on peer-reviewed research, as published in notable scientific journals and conducted by professional researchers at the University of Maryland and University of California Santa Barbara.
4. Statistical controls. Test scores are logged into an anonymized database. Statistical analysis of the test is conducted to ensure maximum accuracy and validity of the test scores.
5. Made by professionals. The authors of this free online test are certified in the use of numerous psychological tests and have worked professionally with personality and psychological testing.
SlateStar Down
The New York Times brought about the destruction of one of the great blogs.
The second reason is more prosaic: some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. And I recently learned that someone on SSC got SWATted in a way that they link to using their real name on the blog. I live with ten housemates including a three-year-old and an infant, and I would prefer this not happen to me or to them. Although I realize I accept some risk of this just by writing a blog with imperfect anonymity, getting doxxed on national news would take it to another level.That is most disappointing. We are in a moment in which great works of art, and here the humanities, are destroyed by mobs (or in this case a reasonable fear of the mob). The Times should be ashamed of its role here, insofar as they are capable of shame.
When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he said that it was New York Times policy to include real names, and he couldn’t change that. After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. If there’s no blog, there’s no story.
Do Not Trouble the Ghost of Andrew Jackson
Protesters / insurgents tonight met up with a stronger response than they were expecting. The President is idly mentioning that this targeting of Federal monuments is a serious felony, which you might not have realized from the last few weeks.
I read that the Old Guard hopefully issued bayonets and ammunition when this first started. Andrew Jackson would approve.
I read that the Old Guard hopefully issued bayonets and ammunition when this first started. Andrew Jackson would approve.
The audience as instrument
Bobby McFerrin riffs on the Tom Hanks floor-piano toy scene, while instructing us on the pentatonic scale.
Tesla in Texas
Some weeks back, Elon Musk threatened to move at least some Tesla manufacturing operations to Texas, having lost patience with the California COVID program. He's reported to be well advanced in negotiations for a site in Austin that might add 5,000 local jobs. As usual, there's a bidding war, perhaps pitting Austin against Tulsa, Oklahoma, for tax concessions.
I'm not generally a big fan of buying business with personalized tax breaks, but this article mentioned a concession that might make the usual tawdry bargain worth it: Musk is devoted to the "direct sale" model, while Texas is still wed to the dealer-protection racket. Musk would demand an exemption from that law, if not an outright appeal. Get that camel's nose right under the tent, I say, and start shoving.
Also, it would be fun to watch Austin progressives try to reconcile their conflicting views about Musk--job creator! Gay! Hostility to COVID submission! Non-approved social views! Rich guy!--not to mention their approval of "clean" cars and suspicion of factories.
I'm not generally a big fan of buying business with personalized tax breaks, but this article mentioned a concession that might make the usual tawdry bargain worth it: Musk is devoted to the "direct sale" model, while Texas is still wed to the dealer-protection racket. Musk would demand an exemption from that law, if not an outright appeal. Get that camel's nose right under the tent, I say, and start shoving.
Also, it would be fun to watch Austin progressives try to reconcile their conflicting views about Musk--job creator! Gay! Hostility to COVID submission! Non-approved social views! Rich guy!--not to mention their approval of "clean" cars and suspicion of factories.
This should be interesting
Yesterday police tried to answer a call in the Seattle Open-Air Faculty Lounge about a shooting that killed one and put another in the hospital in critical condition, but they're turned back by a mob.
Today, I see flag-waving bikers are headed for our newest experiment in brotherly love and tolerance here in the Amerika.
Today, I see flag-waving bikers are headed for our newest experiment in brotherly love and tolerance here in the Amerika.
Flavortown, Ohio
A petition.
Midwest cuisine must have gotten a lot better than I remember if that's even a serious discussion.
Midwest cuisine must have gotten a lot better than I remember if that's even a serious discussion.
Formulas
"The image does not reflect our values" is a handy way to justify acts of symbolic extirpation of whatever group happens to be in the crosshairs on a given day, without having to explain any tortured so-called reasoning. In the beginning of an iconoclastic movement, people make at least a token effort to explain that an image is stereotyped or otherwise insulting. Now all that's necessary is to mutter "image" and "values," then destroy the thing while giving the stink-eye to whoever is presumed to have been associated with erecting it in the first place, or perhaps to anyone who objects or even acts befuddled about the rationale for its destruction.
It's important to conduct these ritual destructions quite often, according to increasingly bewildering standards, in order to keep everyone off balance and remind them who makes the rules.
It's important to conduct these ritual destructions quite often, according to increasingly bewildering standards, in order to keep everyone off balance and remind them who makes the rules.
The DACA decision makes no sense
I've read it now, and I've read the dissent. The majority opinion is baffling. The dissent is written in an English I can understand and seems to be making straightforward points.
Juneteenth
If you happen to be one of the very many Americans who have never even heard of this holiday before, here's a writeup explaining it. It's a pretty obscure holiday until this year; although I've been aware of it since 1992, when I moved to Atlanta for school and encountered it there, I've gone several years at a stretch without hearing or seeing it mentioned.
Still, this year may be the year it becomes mainstream among Americans.
Still, this year may be the year it becomes mainstream among Americans.
Good Treasons
George Washington's statute was destroyed in Portland last night, a logical development of the current effort to purge America of America. Allahpundit writes:
Washington and Jefferson were on the right side, almost. Lee's side was wrong. Yet that still isn't the right view of Lee, and it could be that the right view can't be had at this hour. Lee fought for Virginia to keep it from being destroyed. Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley is a practical example of what Lee feared, which fears caused Lee to take up arms to protect his home. Perhaps Lee was wrong there too; if he had taken command of the Union forces, as offered, he might have been better able to protect Virginia from men like Sheridan and Sherman. He was, as he has often been charged, too Napoleonic in his understanding of war; Sherman and Sheridan fought the way the Russians fought Napoleon, only they got to lay waste to the land of their enemies rather than their own. Lee never thought to do likewise to Pennsylvania or points north, to his moral credit but his strategic loss.
The North won because it was willing to do things that are now formal war crimes, war crimes they repeated against the Lakota and Cheyenne -- indeed, the same men repeated them. They repeated them against the Apache and others. Once Washington is purged for his embrace of slavery, they'll come from Lincoln and Grant. They'll come for Sherman and Sheridan. They'll come for the whole roster of the late 19th century for its brutality against the Native Americans, and also against the labor unions. And then they'll come for the 20th century too.
This whole project is a sort of treason itself, as a matter of fact. It's a levying of war against America by destroying everything that ever was America. There will never be a rock strong enough to hold against this tide, because America is and always was made up of human beings -- and human beings do wrong, all of us do. No one has clean hands.
We have to learn to live with that. The ones who are setting themselves up as judges of their ancestors won't have clean hands either; they too will rule with fire and war, as indeed they have already begun to do where they have managed to gain a foothold. There is no future of natural right and flourishing human liberty on the other side of their victory, should they gain it. There is only the show we have seen so many times before.
The problem he isn't grappling with is that Washington and Lee weren't just alike in having slaves; or in fighting for a system that preserved slavery; or in being Virginians; or in being generals of armies. They're also alike in being secessionists, i.e., traitors from the perspective of the governments they fought against.Some of the skepticism about removing Confederate tributes is due to southern cultural pride but I suspect most of it outside the south springs from the understandable fear that lefties who come after Robert E. Lee today will come after George Washington tomorrow. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was toppled just a few days ago in Oregon, in fact. If the left insists on bundling the Founding Fathers together with the Confederate leadership and making racism, including slaveholding, the disqualifying factor in honoring influential Americans of the past then the public will feel it has no choice but to protect that entire bundle. We’re not giving up Washington and Jefferson, period. But if treason against the United States is the disqualifying factor then the Confederates can be unbundled and discarded.If these people can’t or won’t distinguish between a monument to someone *despite* their view of slavery and a monument to someone *because of* their view of slavery then the righteous cause of purging the country of tributes to degenerate traitors will derail.
This nation came out of a long tradition of beneficial treason, good treason, treason in the name of the best of the human condition. It was born of the tradition that fought King John at Runnymede and compelled from him the Great Charter of Liberties, Manga Carta Libertatum. It is out of the tradition that produced the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland, in defiance of yet another tyrannical English king, which stated that "It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself." The Scottish national motto was Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, which means, "No One Touches Me With Impunity," or if you like, "No One Messes With Me Without Getting Hurt." That sentiment was also given in Scotland, as later in Alabama, in the words of John 20:17: Noli Me Tangere, usually translated "Touch Me Not," but also:Rooting out treason won't save America, because America as a project began in treason. What is important is to distinguish the good treasons from the bad ones. The good ones are the ones that advance the cause of natural right and human liberty; the bad ones are the ones that seek to violate natural rights, as the Marxists do but as the Confederates also did, or human liberty, as the Marxists think they don't but really do, and as the Confederates certainly did.
The values of this new nation are rooted in the principle of rebellion against authority. They are the values of a people who do what they think is right, and will hand you your heads if you try to force them to kneel to your judgment instead of their own. The Founders considered the philosophy of the Greeks. They considered the history of the Romans. They took stock of their reflections on the righteous judgment of God. Then they pledged their fortunes and their lives, and their sacred honor, and did what they had decided was right without fear.
Washington and Jefferson were on the right side, almost. Lee's side was wrong. Yet that still isn't the right view of Lee, and it could be that the right view can't be had at this hour. Lee fought for Virginia to keep it from being destroyed. Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley is a practical example of what Lee feared, which fears caused Lee to take up arms to protect his home. Perhaps Lee was wrong there too; if he had taken command of the Union forces, as offered, he might have been better able to protect Virginia from men like Sheridan and Sherman. He was, as he has often been charged, too Napoleonic in his understanding of war; Sherman and Sheridan fought the way the Russians fought Napoleon, only they got to lay waste to the land of their enemies rather than their own. Lee never thought to do likewise to Pennsylvania or points north, to his moral credit but his strategic loss.
The North won because it was willing to do things that are now formal war crimes, war crimes they repeated against the Lakota and Cheyenne -- indeed, the same men repeated them. They repeated them against the Apache and others. Once Washington is purged for his embrace of slavery, they'll come from Lincoln and Grant. They'll come for Sherman and Sheridan. They'll come for the whole roster of the late 19th century for its brutality against the Native Americans, and also against the labor unions. And then they'll come for the 20th century too.
This whole project is a sort of treason itself, as a matter of fact. It's a levying of war against America by destroying everything that ever was America. There will never be a rock strong enough to hold against this tide, because America is and always was made up of human beings -- and human beings do wrong, all of us do. No one has clean hands.
We have to learn to live with that. The ones who are setting themselves up as judges of their ancestors won't have clean hands either; they too will rule with fire and war, as indeed they have already begun to do where they have managed to gain a foothold. There is no future of natural right and flourishing human liberty on the other side of their victory, should they gain it. There is only the show we have seen so many times before.
Local Currency to Help Citizens and Save Small Businesses?
Tenino, WA, is printing its own currency to help local businesses. The town set aside $10,000 to back their local currency and are issuing it as a form of welfare for townspeople having trouble making ends meet during the pandemic. A key point is, only local businesses accept the currency. So, it helps two demographics.
Apparently, a lot of towns did something like this during the Great Depression. The article has an interesting history of the phenomenon.
Apparently, a lot of towns did something like this during the Great Depression. The article has an interesting history of the phenomenon.
Turns out COVID doesn't know how to tell why you're in a crowd after all
Houston protestors are starting to report COVID cases now. Newsweek's approach is priceless: starting with the brave declaration of one sufferer that she doesn't regret her courageous stand for an instant, and continuing with the Houston Mayor's explanation that it's too soon to blame the protests for the new outbreak, because the Texas governor "packed people into bars and restaurants."
The only thing they left out was some sniffing over the bitter clingers who plan to attend the Bad Man's Tulsa rally.
The only thing they left out was some sniffing over the bitter clingers who plan to attend the Bad Man's Tulsa rally.
Wild Atlanta
The Atlanta police in zones 3, 4, 5, and 6 are not at work tonight. That’s the core of the city, minus only a couple of rich Republican zones in the north.
Guess we will know more tomorrow about how much the city needs them. Fire dispatch is down too, reportedly.
Guess we will know more tomorrow about how much the city needs them. Fire dispatch is down too, reportedly.
Fake News Today
Another Felony Murder Charge in Georgia
This time against the officer who killed Rayshard Brooks. I stand by my earlier assessment of felony murder as a tactic by prosecutors hoping to avoid a trial. However, there is a twist in this case. The D.A. is a Democrat in a runoff election, and thus has a powerful incentive to charge aggressively in order to ensure the Democratic primary base in that heavily-black district will vote to re-elect him.
Going for a capital charge has a potentially huge downside if the officer defends himself rather than pleading to avoid the death penalty. You almost certainly can't convict an officer who shot a suspect while carrying out an arrest against a subject who had violently resisted for the underlying felony, without which you can't convict on the capital crime either. If these elevated charges go down in court, the Atlanta Police will face another riot.
Does the jury then convict to avoid the riots, and send an officer of the law to his death? That would be unprecedented in my lifetime, but so is much that we are seeing today.
Going for a capital charge has a potentially huge downside if the officer defends himself rather than pleading to avoid the death penalty. You almost certainly can't convict an officer who shot a suspect while carrying out an arrest against a subject who had violently resisted for the underlying felony, without which you can't convict on the capital crime either. If these elevated charges go down in court, the Atlanta Police will face another riot.
Does the jury then convict to avoid the riots, and send an officer of the law to his death? That would be unprecedented in my lifetime, but so is much that we are seeing today.
Don't Know Much About History
As the comments point out, this comes on the heels of Tim Kaine declaring -- on the floor of the US Senate -- that the United States invented slavery, which is itself of a piece with the argument that the states had invented 'marriage' by passing laws to regulate the immemorial practice.
Destruction and Desecration of Statues
This is not our first rodeo, so I have a developed position on destroying statues: I'm always against it. I don't care who put the statue up, and I don't care why. Preservation of art is a worthwhile project even if only for future historians, who will want to be able to encounter the art and examine the expression of values by ancestors they no longer otherwise know how to approach. The Taliban was wrong, ISIS was wrong, and we're wrong to be doing it now.
I can appreciate efforts to 'recontextualize' statues, for example by putting up plaques that explain what you take to be the problems with their depiction. That's useful to future historians as well as current citizens, and it deepens the discussion across the generations about what the right values are.
Extreme cases may even permit the relocation of statutes from highly public places to museums or warehouses. Removing Nazi statues certainly may be justified; removing horrid modern art to make way for works of genuine beauty certainly is. Even these things should not be destroyed, though, at least not works of art that entail actual working and/or actual art.
Just as there are extreme cases that may justify removal, though, there are also paradigm cases in which desecration or destruction is especially wrong. The cause of human liberty was advanced a long way by Robert the Bruce and the Declaration of Arbroath, as has been frequently remarked here; and as far as I know, there is with the Bruce no admixture of tyranny (as there is, in the case of slave-owning, with Jefferson or Washington, two of Bruce's few near-peers in the cause of human liberty). The argument that his heart being taken on Crusade after his death was the mark of some sort of racist bias versus Muslims is ridiculous. "Race" wasn't a concept important to the 14th century; religion was, and the Muslims were waging war just as hotly on the Christians as vice versa.
It may be hard to say where to draw the line, but it wherever it is right to draw it is somewhere safely distant from Robert the Bruce.
I can appreciate efforts to 'recontextualize' statues, for example by putting up plaques that explain what you take to be the problems with their depiction. That's useful to future historians as well as current citizens, and it deepens the discussion across the generations about what the right values are.
Extreme cases may even permit the relocation of statutes from highly public places to museums or warehouses. Removing Nazi statues certainly may be justified; removing horrid modern art to make way for works of genuine beauty certainly is. Even these things should not be destroyed, though, at least not works of art that entail actual working and/or actual art.
Just as there are extreme cases that may justify removal, though, there are also paradigm cases in which desecration or destruction is especially wrong. The cause of human liberty was advanced a long way by Robert the Bruce and the Declaration of Arbroath, as has been frequently remarked here; and as far as I know, there is with the Bruce no admixture of tyranny (as there is, in the case of slave-owning, with Jefferson or Washington, two of Bruce's few near-peers in the cause of human liberty). The argument that his heart being taken on Crusade after his death was the mark of some sort of racist bias versus Muslims is ridiculous. "Race" wasn't a concept important to the 14th century; religion was, and the Muslims were waging war just as hotly on the Christians as vice versa.
It may be hard to say where to draw the line, but it wherever it is right to draw it is somewhere safely distant from Robert the Bruce.
Oh the Humanities
Trauma from George Floyd's death will result in students receiving higher grades... at Oxford.
Congratulations to West Point
They have graduated their first Sikh female cadet. Normally these “first!” stories don’t interest me, but I am glad to see the military availing itself of the opportunity represented by Sikh culture.
“My grandfather was an armor officer in the Indian army, so I grew up hearing about tanks and his recollection of fighting in the mountains of northern India," Narang told Task & Purpose. “Everything he told me grew my interest in the military … he embedded that culture of service and giving back to your country.”That is the kind of thing I wish more Americans of all stripes felt.
Treat it as an unplanned donation
Or an attack of undocumented shoppers.
Someone is going to have to sit these children down and teach them some of life's long words.
Someone is going to have to sit these children down and teach them some of life's long words.
Biological Sex & SCOTUS
Interesting logic at work here from Gorsuch.
The author of the piece has another bit of logic to advance.
"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex," Gorsuch writes. "Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."That's really plausible; the only issue is that mere statutory law should not be able to override constitutional protections for religious liberty. An Orthodox/Catholic/Muslim employer who declines to employ gays because they don't wish to provide material support their spouse is acting according to an ancient religious doctrine in each case. They're not motivated by mere animus, but by an attempt to live according to orthodoxies that are being declared illegal here -- exactly what Amendment One forbids.
The author of the piece has another bit of logic to advance.
To be clear, the court could deliver one of greatest legal protections for gay and transgender workers specifically because it acknowledges a fact deemed heretical by the most vocal woke activists: Namely that biological sex is real.
For years, the wokes have attempted to cancel everyone from right-wing trolls to liberal scientists for pointing out that biological sex is a scientific reality, one that specifically validates gay and transgender folks as a distinct class. And now the court has decided that because of that distinction, they're a protected class.... This is a victory for gay and transgender people, and hopefully one that puts to bed this hysterical canard that acknowledging the reality of biological sex is somehow hateful or dangerous toward transgender folks.
Emergency Lockdown
It is clearly a mistake to have given the government the idea that it can order people into house arrest for their own protection any time it decides to issue an emergency.
Second, what is the legal mechanism for issuing lockdown orders to the community via Twitter? All Americans do not use Twitter; I wouldn't use it myself if I weren't required to do so. It's a poisonous hole of a website that any reasonable person would be wise to avoid. If one should encounter police, could one be arrested for violating a Twitter order? Is there some other mechanism for issuing these orders? Is there an adequate lawful basis for allowing the police to constrict basic rights on their own, without consulting even the governor, let alone the legislature?
Third, I hope the bear had a nice romp through the empty town streets.
Shelter in PlaceFirst of all, black bears are really not very dangerous at all. If treated with respect, they will generally not harm anyone and will move along in their own good time.
At the request of Lower Makefield Township Police Department, all residents requested to shelter in place due to a black bear sighting. Specifically the Yardley Hunt Development residents. If sighted please call 911 immediately. The Game Commission is en route. pic.twitter.com/sFNzk80Vyt
— Lower Makefield (@LMTPD) June 14, 2020
Second, what is the legal mechanism for issuing lockdown orders to the community via Twitter? All Americans do not use Twitter; I wouldn't use it myself if I weren't required to do so. It's a poisonous hole of a website that any reasonable person would be wise to avoid. If one should encounter police, could one be arrested for violating a Twitter order? Is there some other mechanism for issuing these orders? Is there an adequate lawful basis for allowing the police to constrict basic rights on their own, without consulting even the governor, let alone the legislature?
Third, I hope the bear had a nice romp through the empty town streets.
To Be an Independent Mind in the University is Not Tolerated Today
There's an open letter going around, apparently from a professor in the history department at UC Berkeley, and it's not what you'd expect. It's a very well thought through, careful, and serious letter about the current issues of race, policing, and the black community, and I highly recommend reading it (Pastebin deleted it, but the internet is forever). As you might expect, it's not been well received by the rest of the UC Berkeley History Department, apparently:
Of course, that it wasn't well received is unsurprising, but that the *department* would openly come out and tweet a condemnation, and claim it goes against their values- without stating why or how- was a bit of an eyebrow raiser to me. It's perhaps the most anti-intellectual thing I've seen in the University wars and the shutting down of the right on campus. Typically, they do this via individual counter opinions and student uprisings, or bring in outside agitators to shut down campus speakers, or some other proxy. To have a department come out like this is a bit shocking honestly. Though the ability of anything like this to shock me diminishes by the day as we see more and more like actions.
Up the Militia in Minneapolis
The police being useless and on track for dissolution, armed citizens secure their neighborhoods.
A Speedbump on the Road to Revolution
Truck drivers say they won’t deliver to cities that disband police departments.
Tough luck, Minneapolis! I’m sure you’ll come up with a suitable substitute for food delivery. Of course you could go the capitalist route and pay more until people are willing to dare the risk. Probably citizens won’t mind the increase in food prices as much as they’d mind starvation.
Unfortunately embracing capitalism would defeat the purpose of the revolution.
Tough luck, Minneapolis! I’m sure you’ll come up with a suitable substitute for food delivery. Of course you could go the capitalist route and pay more until people are willing to dare the risk. Probably citizens won’t mind the increase in food prices as much as they’d mind starvation.
Unfortunately embracing capitalism would defeat the purpose of the revolution.
Joe Biden on "Juneteenth"
In fairness, a lot of people don't know what "Juneteenth" is. I did my undergrad studies in downtown Atlanta, which was the first time I'd heard of it. It wasn't a celebrated holiday in the mountains, but it was a big deal in the city.
Also, the conflation of the holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and the completely separate (and much later) Tulsa massacre isn't exactly his fault either. His surrogates are complaining that it's racist of Trump to give a talk in Tulsa on 19 June. Somebody probably tried to explain that to him, and he just didn't follow the details of the explanation.
Trump probably doesn't know why 19 June is significant either; and may well not have heard of the Tulsa massacre either. These men are 70+ years old, and their educations won't have focused on such things the way contemporary education does. Americans were still being taught that their country was a beacon of hope with noble principles in those days.
It's just strange to see an old man like Biden trying to play in the grievance culture war he plainly doesn't understand. He knows he's supposed to accuse his opponent of racism; that's been part of the playbook for decades. It's just the need to know all these intersectional details that's confusing him.
Also, the conflation of the holiday celebrating liberation from slavery and the completely separate (and much later) Tulsa massacre isn't exactly his fault either. His surrogates are complaining that it's racist of Trump to give a talk in Tulsa on 19 June. Somebody probably tried to explain that to him, and he just didn't follow the details of the explanation.
Trump probably doesn't know why 19 June is significant either; and may well not have heard of the Tulsa massacre either. These men are 70+ years old, and their educations won't have focused on such things the way contemporary education does. Americans were still being taught that their country was a beacon of hope with noble principles in those days.
It's just strange to see an old man like Biden trying to play in the grievance culture war he plainly doesn't understand. He knows he's supposed to accuse his opponent of racism; that's been part of the playbook for decades. It's just the need to know all these intersectional details that's confusing him.
A Small Correction from the Lancet
A major journal of medicine, the Lancet once made a massive and obviously political estimation of the death toll in Iraq. By pure coincidence, the error correlated with the US presidential re-election race of George W. Bush -- in fact it was published just days before the election.
This time, the election correlated with a massive error by the journal is the Presidential re-election of Donald Trump. The error? A little thing, really. Just a complete retraction of the paper the published on the dangers of hydroxychloroquine for COVID patients. Small stuff, hardly relevant.
This time, the election correlated with a massive error by the journal is the Presidential re-election of Donald Trump. The error? A little thing, really. Just a complete retraction of the paper the published on the dangers of hydroxychloroquine for COVID patients. Small stuff, hardly relevant.
Ground Glass Pizza
Not one of the most desirable toppings, but the National Guard was served it anyway. Fortunately years of eating Army cooking and MREs had made them immune to irritants in the stomach lining.
Happy Birthday, Schlock
Schlock Mercenary is 20 years old. The artwork has gotten better, and the storylines have developed with the kind of depth that can only occur with a long run. Recent years have been sadly marred by wokeness, which has diminished the overall quality as it does everywhere it appears. Still, the core story remains interesting.
They're wrapping up the basic arc of those two decades too, for those of you who followed along. If not, and if you're inclined to binging comics, by all means start at the beginning. The early years especially were a lot of fun.
They're wrapping up the basic arc of those two decades too, for those of you who followed along. If not, and if you're inclined to binging comics, by all means start at the beginning. The early years especially were a lot of fun.
Warlords in Seattle
As expected, autonomous anarchy was short-lived. I'm not opposed to anarchist free zones, not at all; but they're going to need to think through the self-defense issues. You can't set up a new way of life without defending a space in the world for it. The most obvious way to fail is to be overrun, either from the outside or from strongmen on the inside.
Maybe next time.
Maybe next time.
The One Night Hotel
Two good voices. Landry sounds like a cross between Townes Van Zandt and Gordon Lightfoot, while his duet partner, Brandi Carlile, reminds me of Bonnie Raitt.
Chicago melts down
Chicago's mayor and aldermen are reduced to swearing at each other and asking difficult questions like, "How in the world are we going to get businesses to rebuild in war zones when we seem to have no plan?"
Some of the neighborhoods are starting to implement their own plans:
Some of the neighborhoods are starting to implement their own plans:
Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th Ward) told Lightfoot he was worried that the looters would attack homes where many people have guns and concealed carry weapons.
Ald. Ed Burke (14th Ward) said he was concerned that residents would take matters into their own hands and become vigilantes.Seattle's down the tubes, too.
Catastrophe
A friend brought me a copy of Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character by E. B. Ramsay. I was reading through it tonight, and wanted to convey one of its stories. A young man was translating the Iliad and his teacher rebuked him for using the word catastrophe. That word is Greek after all, and the task was to translate. The boy proved unable to give a good translation in rhyme.
His teacher said this reminded him of his all master. The old man had been prone to using big words that the parishioners might not know. One of them was ‘catastrophe.‘ So when he heard himself say it, he explained that catastrophe meant the end of a thing.
The next day, some boys pranked the old man by attaching a piece of bush to his horse’s tail. The horse was a good one and didn’t spook, and thus the man never knew of it until he got into town. Then he was made aware by a woman from his congregation who came up to him and said, “Pardon me sir, but there’s a bush tied to your horse’s catastrophe.”
His teacher said this reminded him of his all master. The old man had been prone to using big words that the parishioners might not know. One of them was ‘catastrophe.‘ So when he heard himself say it, he explained that catastrophe meant the end of a thing.
The next day, some boys pranked the old man by attaching a piece of bush to his horse’s tail. The horse was a good one and didn’t spook, and thus the man never knew of it until he got into town. Then he was made aware by a woman from his congregation who came up to him and said, “Pardon me sir, but there’s a bush tied to your horse’s catastrophe.”
Fennario
What will your mother think, pretty Peggy-O,
What will your mother think, pretty Peggo-O,
What will your mother think, for to hear the guineas clink,
And the soldiers marching before you, O?
New USAF Chief of Staff
Senate confirmation was 98-0. He had three thousand hours in fast movers, and several significant command tours.
Freedom and Protest
Asheville is reporting ongoing fatalities from the virus, but "chiefly concentrated in nursing homes" according to a print article I read earlier today. Meanwhile, the nation has emerged from lockdown to intensely populated, dense protests over issues that have been known issues for decades, and which by most available measures have been improving anyway.
I wonder how much of this nationwide protest movement is an expression of the desire to be free of lockdown? For months people languished at home, watching their lives fall away, longing for friends and companionship. Suddenly it's OK to get out and be with everyone you wanted to be with, provided only that you join one of these marches. All restrictions are lifted! Just join the throng.
People who had come to believe that enjoying any little liberty was tantamount to manslaughter are suddenly able to feel virtuous about going out and being with their friends. All it takes is a little submission: take a knee and pledge your loyalty to Wokeanda, Forever.
It's no wonder they're having such success. They opened a door to repressed desires, and made it a virtue to express them -- so long as you express them just this way.
I wonder how much of this nationwide protest movement is an expression of the desire to be free of lockdown? For months people languished at home, watching their lives fall away, longing for friends and companionship. Suddenly it's OK to get out and be with everyone you wanted to be with, provided only that you join one of these marches. All restrictions are lifted! Just join the throng.
People who had come to believe that enjoying any little liberty was tantamount to manslaughter are suddenly able to feel virtuous about going out and being with their friends. All it takes is a little submission: take a knee and pledge your loyalty to Wokeanda, Forever.
It's no wonder they're having such success. They opened a door to repressed desires, and made it a virtue to express them -- so long as you express them just this way.
By their Fruits
By coincidence, I was rereading the end of The Ballad of the White Horse the other day. After a book-length epic poem, Chesterton allows his King Alfred the Great to sum up the lessons he wants his contemporary readers to take.
In some far century, sad and slow,I suppose he thought that's where he was in 1903, or he wouldn't have written a book about it. It certainly sounds familiar today.
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.
"They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands....
"They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred's days,
When pagans still were men....
"By this sign you shall know them,
The breaking of the sword,
And man no more a free knight,
That loves or hates his lord.
"Yea, this shall be the sign of them,
The sign of the dying fire;
And Man made like a half-wit,
That knows not of his sire.
"What though they come with scroll and pen,
And grave as a shaven clerk,
By this sign you shall know them,
That they ruin and make dark;
"By all men bond to Nothing,
Being slaves without a lord,
By one blind idiot world obeyed,
Too blind to be abhorred;
"By terror and the cruel tales
Of curse in bone and kin,
By weird and weakness winning,
Accursed from the beginning,
By detail of the sinning,
And denial of the sin....
You Guys Like Music?
Check yourself vs. our current position. It's just a Terminator remake, from 1990, but it has a lot to say about where we are, and where they thought we'd be. The radio announcer says it'll be 110 downtown; and you know, it sometimes almost is, in July, in some towns even on the east coast. In 2016 when the DNC was in Philadelphia it was 108. I know because I was there. But we're not in anything like the constant dust-storms.
I guess there was an almost-hit song from the soundtrack.
Who Do You Think You’re Fooling?
D-Day was the biggest ANTIFA rally in history! Also, Winston Churchill was an intolerable racist who should receive no public honors.
UPDATE: Even Gandhi?
UPDATE: Even Gandhi?
Buildings and Things that Matter
The Philadelphia Inquirer has removed its top editor over a column he approved entitled "Buildings Matter, Too." You can still read the column, but it now has an eleven word headline.
She had a good point, the column's author, and the editor did his job by selecting the piece for publication and drawing attention to it with a punchy headline. In today's atmosphere, however, that's enough to have ended his career.
UPDATE: The Cultural Revolution continues, this time at NYT.
Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?...Indeed the damage in multiple cities is evident already.
“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.
She had a good point, the column's author, and the editor did his job by selecting the piece for publication and drawing attention to it with a punchy headline. In today's atmosphere, however, that's enough to have ended his career.
UPDATE: The Cultural Revolution continues, this time at NYT.
Book Update
I received a proof today of the second attempt at getting a paperback version of Arms and White Samite. Thanks to Douglas' help, and the patience of the cover artist, most of the problems are fixed. There remain a few persistent issues that will require more work and another proof, but in a few weeks we might have a final version.
It is already much better, though. It's just not right.
It is already much better, though. It's just not right.
Right to Peaceful Protest
It’s too important to be limited by virus mitigation, but only if the cause is good enough. Don’t take my word for that; here are nearly thirteen hundred public health experts asserting it.
“Money quote: ‘This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.’”
“Money quote: ‘This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.’”
"Define Racism"
It's a Socratic point, and one that brings us back around to the kinds of problems that Socrates tried to illustrate during his life. (That video in which the discussion was taking place, by the way, is a vivid warning of what kinds of genuinely terroristic tactics are available.)
In the Euthyphro, Socrates is after a definition of piety. Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for murder; he claims that it is pious to do this because his relationship with his father should not blind him to the justice of the prosecution. Socrates suggests this is merely an example of something pious, not a definition of piety itself. Euthyphro decides that piety is doing what the gods love, and impiety doing what they dislike; Socrates presses him to explain whether the pious thing is pious because the gods love it, or whether -- and this is crucial -- they love it because it is pious.
There's a similar problem with racism. A lot of people accused of racism don't actually even believe in race. How can you be a racist if you reject that race represents something biologically real? The answer is that you take (or endorse) actions that disproportionately harm people of some races and not others. Yet this assumes the validity of race as a form of analysis; if race isn't real, why would you try to cash out its effects in terms of the harm 'to races' whose reality you have already rejected?
The best answer seems to be the one floated by Charles Mills and others, which is that race can be rejected biologically but not socially. Socially, race is real even if in fact there are not "races" in any meaningful biological sense. Then, rejecting race as a social phenomenon because you rejected it as a biological phenomenon is a category error, a serious philosophical mistake.
That still leaves us with problems. Given that the social phenomenon is based on an incorrect view of human nature and biology, we might wish to move to a more correct view. Yet because we have to continue to evaluate things in terms of the social account of race, we end up baking that view into our future. We can't leave it behind if we have to carry it with us, and constantly check ourselves against it. How do you build a society without race if you're judging progress by constantly referring to race? It's dead weight, but treated like a lodestone.
The second problem is that the social view is often incoherent, which makes it a poor lodestone anyway. In the discussion linked, the woman is charging racism based on the fact that a man suggested that this kind of violence was unsurprising in Mexico. There are two sets of problems with that.
The first is that Mexico includes people of many different genetic heritages, who are even less plausibly 'one race' than, say, denizens of Scotland (many of whom, these days, are from the Indian subcontinent). The fact is that the Mexican government has been involved in a decades-long fiction about 'La Raza' designed to paper that over. Yet if we can eliminate racism by constructing new races, well, why not start doing that here? Rather than continuing to recognize existing social definitions of race in America, might we not instead follow Mexico and institute a new 'American race' that ignores genetic heritage?
The second problem is that violence in Mexico is unsurprising for reasons that are severable from race, 'race,' or La Raza. If you're unsurprised by a violent assault in a country largely run by extraordinarily violent criminal cartels, well, why wouldn't you be? There's no reason to rope biological commentary into it. Mexico is violent because it is badly governed, especially in terms of the absence of a Second Amendment. The people endure the cartels and their violence not because they are genetically primed to do so, but because they are disarmed. The police are assassinated not because they are inferior or corrupt, but because the populace cannot provide them with effective support. They're too terrified to work with the police because they are kept defenseless.
The second problem, in other words, turns out to be that the incoherence of the definition ends up allowing it to be used in places where the concept is actively damaging to attempts to fix the problem. "It's all racism" suggests the problem is in people having a negative view of the chaos in Mexico, rather than the problem lying in the absence of positive steps to empower the citizens to defend themselves.
In the Euthyphro, Socrates is after a definition of piety. Euthyphro is prosecuting his own father for murder; he claims that it is pious to do this because his relationship with his father should not blind him to the justice of the prosecution. Socrates suggests this is merely an example of something pious, not a definition of piety itself. Euthyphro decides that piety is doing what the gods love, and impiety doing what they dislike; Socrates presses him to explain whether the pious thing is pious because the gods love it, or whether -- and this is crucial -- they love it because it is pious.
There's a similar problem with racism. A lot of people accused of racism don't actually even believe in race. How can you be a racist if you reject that race represents something biologically real? The answer is that you take (or endorse) actions that disproportionately harm people of some races and not others. Yet this assumes the validity of race as a form of analysis; if race isn't real, why would you try to cash out its effects in terms of the harm 'to races' whose reality you have already rejected?
The best answer seems to be the one floated by Charles Mills and others, which is that race can be rejected biologically but not socially. Socially, race is real even if in fact there are not "races" in any meaningful biological sense. Then, rejecting race as a social phenomenon because you rejected it as a biological phenomenon is a category error, a serious philosophical mistake.
That still leaves us with problems. Given that the social phenomenon is based on an incorrect view of human nature and biology, we might wish to move to a more correct view. Yet because we have to continue to evaluate things in terms of the social account of race, we end up baking that view into our future. We can't leave it behind if we have to carry it with us, and constantly check ourselves against it. How do you build a society without race if you're judging progress by constantly referring to race? It's dead weight, but treated like a lodestone.
The second problem is that the social view is often incoherent, which makes it a poor lodestone anyway. In the discussion linked, the woman is charging racism based on the fact that a man suggested that this kind of violence was unsurprising in Mexico. There are two sets of problems with that.
The first is that Mexico includes people of many different genetic heritages, who are even less plausibly 'one race' than, say, denizens of Scotland (many of whom, these days, are from the Indian subcontinent). The fact is that the Mexican government has been involved in a decades-long fiction about 'La Raza' designed to paper that over. Yet if we can eliminate racism by constructing new races, well, why not start doing that here? Rather than continuing to recognize existing social definitions of race in America, might we not instead follow Mexico and institute a new 'American race' that ignores genetic heritage?
The second problem is that violence in Mexico is unsurprising for reasons that are severable from race, 'race,' or La Raza. If you're unsurprised by a violent assault in a country largely run by extraordinarily violent criminal cartels, well, why wouldn't you be? There's no reason to rope biological commentary into it. Mexico is violent because it is badly governed, especially in terms of the absence of a Second Amendment. The people endure the cartels and their violence not because they are genetically primed to do so, but because they are disarmed. The police are assassinated not because they are inferior or corrupt, but because the populace cannot provide them with effective support. They're too terrified to work with the police because they are kept defenseless.
The second problem, in other words, turns out to be that the incoherence of the definition ends up allowing it to be used in places where the concept is actively damaging to attempts to fix the problem. "It's all racism" suggests the problem is in people having a negative view of the chaos in Mexico, rather than the problem lying in the absence of positive steps to empower the citizens to defend themselves.
Headlines from 2020
Slate: “Non-violence is an important tool for protests, but so is violence.”
That’s true, actually, but it does elide the moral question.
That’s true, actually, but it does elide the moral question.
"Rule of Law"
It's pretty much dead now, isn't it? First we had governors assuming emergency powers often in direct violation of the Constitution and their own state constitutions; now we've got widespread support for rioting. Bernie Sanders has an 8 point plan (some of which are very good and reasonable, like ending qualified immunity) that would replace many cops with social workers, and District Attorneys in blue cities won't prosecute rioters.
The other day Minneapolis police managed to ignore rioters but arrest a guy for defending his business from looting and arson. Why should a jury go along with that?
The other day Minneapolis police managed to ignore rioters but arrest a guy for defending his business from looting and arson. Why should a jury go along with that?
An Attempted Coup at NYT
Andrew Sullivan is right about this one.
It's worth noting that all of this chaos is happening in the blue cities and blue states. The target of Antifa and their ilk isn't you and me, it's blue institutions. The NYT is in danger for the same reason that the Minneapolis Police Department -- controlled by Democrats since 1978 -- is in danger. The Hard Left is trying to win control of the left-leaning powers, which in fact control most of America's cities and therefore much of America's wealth.
They might come for us later, or they might decide it's too much trouble especially since they'll have taught police, who might possibly have tried to carry out gun confiscations in red America, that their only friends are in red areas and red states. The hinterlands may be too hard a nut to crack if police won't enforce their laws here, and juries won't either.
It's worth noting that all of this chaos is happening in the blue cities and blue states. The target of Antifa and their ilk isn't you and me, it's blue institutions. The NYT is in danger for the same reason that the Minneapolis Police Department -- controlled by Democrats since 1978 -- is in danger. The Hard Left is trying to win control of the left-leaning powers, which in fact control most of America's cities and therefore much of America's wealth.
They might come for us later, or they might decide it's too much trouble especially since they'll have taught police, who might possibly have tried to carry out gun confiscations in red America, that their only friends are in red areas and red states. The hinterlands may be too hard a nut to crack if police won't enforce their laws here, and juries won't either.
Night-Fire Practice
I can hear my neighbors shooting tonight, a fairly impressive array of hardware. It's all too methodical and regular to be any sort of gunfight; they're just practicing and making sure everything is in good order.
They're going to be so disappointed when there's no reason to use all that stuff. These hub city ninjas aren't about to drive out shadowed dirt roads in the high mountains, where one human habitation can't be seen from the next. They'd be terrified by the sight of such an empty road, long before they ever got out to someone's trailer or cabin. Everyone knows what happens to people who go out beyond the Fields We Know into the Wilds Beyond.
It's even in the folk songs: "Once a stranger climbed old Rocky Top, looking for a moonshine still. Stranger ain't come down from Rocky Top, reckon he never will." "Well, I wonder where that Louisiana sheriff went to? You can sure get lost in the Louisiana bayou."
It is an irony that Mad Max (1979) treated the cities as a kind of safe place, with the wilderness controlled by violent motorcycle gangs. It turns out it's the other way around. Police protection doesn't protect. Every night our cities burn with fire, and every night our mountains linger through the long gloam to twilight, fearsome, lonesome, and at peace.
They're going to be so disappointed when there's no reason to use all that stuff. These hub city ninjas aren't about to drive out shadowed dirt roads in the high mountains, where one human habitation can't be seen from the next. They'd be terrified by the sight of such an empty road, long before they ever got out to someone's trailer or cabin. Everyone knows what happens to people who go out beyond the Fields We Know into the Wilds Beyond.
It's even in the folk songs: "Once a stranger climbed old Rocky Top, looking for a moonshine still. Stranger ain't come down from Rocky Top, reckon he never will." "Well, I wonder where that Louisiana sheriff went to? You can sure get lost in the Louisiana bayou."
It is an irony that Mad Max (1979) treated the cities as a kind of safe place, with the wilderness controlled by violent motorcycle gangs. It turns out it's the other way around. Police protection doesn't protect. Every night our cities burn with fire, and every night our mountains linger through the long gloam to twilight, fearsome, lonesome, and at peace.
The Real History of Antifa
Kyle's a good guy, and a careful worker in his field, which is the study of radical organizations. You can trust his findings.
Concerns about Government Power
Some of us have been here for a while, as Ellen Reynolds at the Federalist notes.
Distrust of government is a tradition going back to our founding. “I am not a friend to a very energetic government,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison. “It is always oppressive.”It would be nice if these newly-shared concerns opened a path forward to solutions such as shrinking the size and power of the government -- to include the police agencies. We could even have fewer laws!
As a result, the founders carefully limited the scope and power of the federal government. Since then, conservatives have continued to be skeptical of strong government and big government programs.... But in the last century, liberal progressives have celebrated the expansion of the federal government and its growing power. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of the Left, who transformed the size and function of the federal government, specifically the executive branch, when the Brownlow Committee recommended the creation of the Executive Office of the President in 1937. (Roosevelt’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover, was criticized when he replaced the president’s singular secretary with four aides.) Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, lauded by the Left, dramatically increased the role that the federal government played in Americans’ daily lives.
Under the administration of democrat Lyndon Johnson, federal programs (and their influence and power) expanded again, with “Great Society” initiatives such as Medicare, Medicaid, federal involvement in education, and public housing programs. Certain bureaucratic failures of these programs aside, the Great Society posed another reach by the federal government into Americans’ lives.
Today, a man who was almost the Democratic presidential nominee (twice) advocates for dramatically expanding the power of the federal government. Sen. Bernie Sanders has plans for the nanny state to become the provider of higher education, housing, healthcare, child care, and even high-speed internet. He also wants to erase the constitutional right to bear arms, and plans to pay for his excessive programs by taxing Americans.
For the last hundred years, the Left has been the standard-bearer for the growth of government. And suddenly, they’re reaping the results. They’re horrified at a strong federal government and its power to police its constituents. On behalf of limited-government conservatives: welcome to the club.
The Perils of Gentrification
There is more than one peril. One is that it will bring the Left's rich, white faction into conflict with minority group factions -- such as in this post, "Cats v. Communists."
But perhaps sometimes the friction produces not just conflict but hybrids.
But perhaps sometimes the friction produces not just conflict but hybrids.
Beginning in the 1960s and the ’70s, with the Weather Underground terrorists, and continuing in the 1990s, with “black bloc” vandals traveling around the world to smash office and hotel windows at global financial meetings, there has been a violent subculture on the radical left in the United States and Europe. For the most part, the members of groups like Antifa, the latest incarnation of the violent left, have always been the pampered children of the white overclass. Twenty-somethings who are poor and working class lack the money to buy fancy black ninja outfits and the leisure to spend time plotting in advance of demonstrations....The article is generally down on these spoiled children playing ninja, but sympathetic to the working class that's being supplanted. For those who remain on the fringes of the gentrifying areas, police are used intensively to protect the Cat Cafes owned by children of the overclass. This produces occasional brutality, which produces protests, which the children of the overclass feel very proud about joining and supporting. But they're the ones who are stealing, in the analysis of the poorer members being run out of those neighborhoods. The overclass children are stealing not just the neighborhood itself, but also the right to speak about these issues -- framing them instead in ways that are about the overclass' children's own issues.
What is new about the nationwide riots of the last week that have followed the death of George Floyd is the convergence of these two previously separate streams—traditional urban riots in poor neighborhoods triggered by police-related incidents, and the ideologically motivated vandalism by young white members of the overclass in downtown districts. This convergence is the result of hub city gentrification....
Gentrification explains why there are so many white young adults, both ordinary protesters and anarchist vandals, compared to African Americans in the videos we see of protests and riots in big cities across the United States, compared to images of urban riots in generations past. Thanks to rising rents, young white leftists and liberals have been displacing the nonwhite working class and poor, many of them social conservatives, in places like Brooklyn and Oakland and Austin.
The black poor and working class first had their urban industrial jobs taken away from them by corporate executives in the white overclass who offshored them to Mexico or China. Then they were replaced in their former urban neighborhoods by the hipster children of the white overclass. Now even their grievances like protests against horrific police brutality are stolen from them by their supposed allies in the white overclass and turned into an occasion for virtue-signaling or vandalism by the elite.They're sure too that they're the ones on the right side, the very side of justice.
Oops!
As the Russia hoax unravels, Rod Rosenstein admits to Congress that he wouldn't sign the Carter Page FISA warrant with the facts now in evidence.
A Headline You Don't See Everyday
"Bolivian orchestra stranded at ‘haunted’ German castle surrounded by wolves."
I suppose it's no surprise given the year we've been having.
Test Post #2
This post is also being written in 'the New Blogger,' which I'm told is going to become the default soon. This time I'm writing the HTML code by hand like I usually do.
BB: "Episcopalians Confused By Strange Book Trump Brought To Church."
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, though, was nonplussed, saying she was confused by the strange book Trump had brought to church.... "No real Christian reveres a book like that. Well, maybe the Communist Manifesto or something. But not an old-looking leather book. It looks like one of those religious books, and Jesus wasn't about religion. He was about causing societal upheaval and burning things down."
Some Episcopalians suggested it was a cookbook and that Trump was only offering to bring something to the next church potluck. Others said it was a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, a revered religious text among the Left.There might be some good casserole recipes in there.
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