Fire on the Mountain

From yesterday's ride.

The Straightaway

 

The only section of this road straight enough to photograph more than one curve. 

Plato's Parmenides X, The One V: The End

This will be the final post on Plato's Parmenides. (If you missed the last one, take a moment to note that Parmenides gives a formulation of Newton's First Law of Motion in it). As in the last couple of posts, I'll give the text after the jump with occasional remarks. 

What Does "Heresy" Mean Anymore?

The matter came up yesterday, although I was disinclined to raise such a divisive question on Easter Sunday.

On Easter Sunday, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) — pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the same church Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored — tweeted a message that subverted the gospel of Christianity and preached utter heresy, rejected by Christian churches for more than a millennium.

“The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves,” Warnock tweeted.

In the year 1326, Meister Eckhart was called before the Inquisition -- the "only theologian of the first rank to be tried for heresy in the Middle Ages" -- beginning a prosecution that would outlast his life. Several of his teachings were deemed heretical, but he was not himself deemed a heretic. There is an ongoing process about rehabilitating those doctrines that you can read about at the link; but the Church has held that he, himself, needs no rehabilitation because he was never condemned. 

Eckhart avoided condemnation as a heretic through the simple defense that heresy is an act of the will, and he did not will to be a heretic. Rather, he had taught the truth to the best of his understanding; if he was wrong, he was open to correction, and would recant anything found to be in error. Pope John XXII issued a bull after Eckhart's death noting that defense and his recantation, and condemning the doctrines but not the man.

It is easy enough to say, then, that Warnock is probably a heretic by the Eckhart standard, i.e., that he has been informed of his error but continues to teach it. So, however, are all Protestant churches by the Eckhart standard, e.g. on the question of transubstantiation; and as far as I know, accusations of heresy are not regularly floated. 

Within the Protestant context, which Warnock occupies, it's not clear to me what even would be a standard for heresy. By what authority does one Protestant tell another that they are a heretic, and what is the standard for such an accusation to be justified? Who judges such a case, and by what standard? 

As with other theological questions, the contemporary age seems to have drifted away from the old answers. Sometimes this is for the good, and sometimes not, but I'm not sure how anyone besides the Church would even consider (let alone adjudicate) an accusation like this one today; and even the Church appears to have let the matter slide for the great majority of cases. 

Female Privilege

Last week a Pakistani legal immigrant, working hard for Uber and his family, was killed in the District of Columbia. He died when he was tasered by two teenage girls, which they did in order to steal his car. Neither one being old enough to drive, they unsurprisingly wrecked the car shortly thereafter; he was clinging to the door trying to save his car from being stolen. He died shortly thereafter. No one rendered any aid to him in the video of the incident. One of the girls worried, though, that she had left her phone in the wrecked car. 

Today, only about a week later, the justice system has already disposed of the case: the girls will endure no prison time, and will be entirely free of court supervision by age 21.

Under D.C. law, one of the girls was young enough that she couldn't have been tried as an adult, but the other was not. I can't imagine two teenage boys murdering someone while carjacking him, showing no remorse and rendering no aid, and it not being treated as an adult crime if possible. The speed with which this case was resolved in their favor is stunning to anyone familiar with the criminal justice system.

UPDATE: On the other hand, perhaps in the present circumstances it's unfair to send any women to prison. 

More on Excess Deaths

JAMA claims that suicide actually declined last year; deaths from overdoses etc. were up by 20,000. Reason reports; link to the JAMA study is there if you want the raw study. 

Some Thoughts on the Easter Celebration

It's always struck me as odd that Easter, as a holiday experienced by human beings, was so much less a cultural event than Christmas. It is liturgically the much more important feast, indeed the greatest feast of the year; but whereas our whole culture bends itself towards Christmas for a month every year (even in this more secular age), Easter has never been as big an event.

At Christmas we have grand feasts -- meat pies, every kind of cake and pastry, and as the song says, 'Hail to Christmas/ once a year/ when we may drink/ both ale and beer.' At Easter there is usually just a ham and some candies. At Christmas there is a huge festival of gift-giving; at Easter, children (only) get an Easter basket filled with fake grass and fake eggs, with more little candies or trinkets. At Christmas we sing Christmas Carols at Mass, and pageants involve the children merrily as shepherds or angels; at Easter, the services are interminable and children are forced to endure uncomfortable and unpleasant Easter costumes they will never wear a second time, but which they are nevertheless enjoined from playing in because they might get grass stains on the pure-white outfits. 

For a long time I thought it was just a kind of accident, or perhaps a pagan inheritance; we could have given gifts at Easter instead of Christmas, but the old pagan holiday of the Winter Solstice was the big gift-giving holiday, and that transferred. Christianity was hampered in its choice to celebrate the spring instead of the winter because the existing cultural assumptions were too hard to transform. 

I have come to realize, though, that the facts of the world inform this more than human culture. Christmas (or whatever Winter feast) comes right after the slaughter and harvest, when fresh meats and other good things are far more widely available. October was the season for the brewing of the best ale of the year, as we know from Robin Hood stories; those were readily on hand for the holiday. Also, the coming of the snows and the cold weather meant that there was less to do outside, so there was time on hand to commit to a big celebration.

This time of year we are still a long way from First Fruits. The winter stores are drained, and what remains needed to be stretched out -- summer was often the hungry time in the old days. A ham, cured last year, was the last festival item available; the alternative was to slaughter an Easter lamb, newborn just this year, to enjoy fresh meat. But that was quite a sacrifice, as you would be giving up the meat from the larger animal that would come later, as well as its wool. A poorer community, or those coming off a bad year (like last year!) could hardly afford it. 

Thus on Easter we dress in fresh clothes, eat more sparingly of lesser foods, and give smaller gifts. But it is in the Springtime that the hope of new life comes, warmth returns to the world, and green begins to spring anew. The time of year better fits the Gospel story, dramatically; and it is perhaps for this reason that the divine decision was made to orient the liturgical year to the physical one in this way.

Except that only works for the Northern hemisphere, and Jesus lived near the equator. I've never been to the Southern hemisphere. Is Easter there more like our Thanksgiving in how it is celebrated? I don't know. 

And Easter

 

No kids, so no Easter egg hunt, but I dyed some eggs for a centerpiece anyway, as a handful of neighbors will join us for Easter lasagna.

Easter

 

The Martyrs of Easter

As you celebrate today, spare a thought for your fellows in China. 

A Holy Saturday Meditation: CS Lewis Predicted Our World

Jared Whitley argues the proposition. Just one of his examples:

“Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! — by being left behind.”

Screwtape must be grinning at headlines about public schools eliminating gifted programs, knowing how much this hurts the segment of society most likely to build it up: the middle class. 

His closing example is good, too.

It is a troubling matter. If there remains any society opposed to the actual practice of slavery and genocide, it is surely this one; its self-criticisms on this score are so intense that it often misses that it has not engaged in either for a hundred years, and also that other nations are actively practicing both right now. Yet in this, as in all else, it has been turned from the apparently noble purpose to the destruction of the very forces that might be aligned against those evils. Evil somehow profits where it is actively pursued and also where it is apparently actively resisted. 

Holy Saturday is the day of the complete triumph of evil, at least to all appearances. Today is Holy Saturday, but not only today.

Bee Stings

 Sad: Day Of Remembrance For St. April O’Fool Reduced To A Day Of Pranks

Commercializing Christian holidays is, unfortunately, all too common. What was once a day of celebration marking a significant development in church history turns into a secular day for drinking, collecting candy, or getting a new Xbox.

April Fools' Day is no exception. The world celebrates this day by pranking each other, making fake announcements on the internet, and other such tomfoolery. But we Christians know the true meaning of the holiday, as we somberly recall the brutal martyrdom of St. April O'Fool in 723 A.D. ...

Disney Ordered To Pay Reparations To Longtime Star Wars Fans

Parents Disguising Kids As Illegal Immigrants So They Can Receive In-Person Teaching

Arkansas Passes Controversial Bill To Ban Chopping Off Kids' Legs If They Think They're A Mermaid

Sesame Street Introduces 'Todd', A White Male Muppet Who Is Blamed For Everything

In New Sesame Street Episode, Elmo Joins Antifa And Torches Local Businesses

In Push For Diversity, Military Canine Units To Give Equal Opportunities To Chihuahuas

Trigger Warning

So this song features violence against women. It's Jerry Jeff Walker, though, so we can reason that he probably means it as a joke -- much as in his more famous song, "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." Still, when I played it for my wife, she was like, "What did he just say?" We don't get that kind of thing around here. 

Really, it's a surprisingly inappropriate song that can only be justified in the name of comedy. Probably for that reason, I'd never heard it before this week, when Spotify came up with it in its weekly recommendations. (These have been surprisingly non-PC on a fairly consistent basis; if my social credit score is based on what Spotify thinks I'll like, I'm definitely doomed.) 

I'm passing it on to you in the spirit of resistance to cancel culture, over-sensitivity, and the glorious freedoms of speech and expression. You're warned, and you're adults. Do what you want.

Arete, Boys

 You've either got it, or you don't.

From an often excellent comic called "Existential Comics." I think the author may be a Communist, but definitely also a philosopher. 

Now do basketball scholarships

After reading the Stasi-cancel tweet Grim referred us to, I scrolled down and read the next few entries, including this lame-brained cartoon:

It reminds me of the absurd dust-up over that poor 18-year-old Baltimore kid who was being made to go back to 9th grade because someone discovered he couldn't read. His mother was upset, not because he couldn't read, but because he couldn't get a diploma, which was bitterly unfair to him.

If we think of standardized testing as a way to hand out tickets to redeem for an equitable share of government largesse, then all we care about is whether the test is equally easy for everyone to pass. If we actually want to know whether students have learned something, it doesn't bother us that the test may reveal that some have and some haven't. It won't even be a fatal flaw in the test if we discover that some of the students are inherently able to learn the topic while others aren't.

Should an elephant and a fish be able to climb a tree as well as a monkey? Probably not, but then why would we put them all in a school designed to teach students to climb a tree? If anything, that cartoon is about silly choices in curricula. Once you put tree-climbing on the curriculum for whatever reason, then the last thing you should be thinking about is whether it's unfair to give a fish an "F" on a tree-climbing test. There's nothing wrong with the test.

Babylon Bee and the Letter "X"

 

Plato's Parmenides IX, The One IV

Again, I'll put this past the jump.  Just to remind you, this is a very extended discussion in which Parmenides proposes to talk through both sides of every part of the question. So the traps get run one way: "What if the One is not?" And then the other: "What if the One is?" Problems abound on every side. At this point the problems are going to start looking familiar, because we found them running the traps the one way; you'll see the same problems arising if we make the contrary assumption about the One.

With any luck we'll get through this in one more post after this one. 

"The Disintegration Directive"

I hate Twitter, but sometimes it's the place where important things get said. This thread on how cancel culture resembles less Mao's Cultural Revolution than a practice of the East German government is worth considering. 

As far as I know the government does not employ a Stasi-like secret police to harass ordinary citizens, although the actions against Trump core allies like Roger Stone looked rather similar. Yet there do seem to be cadres in our institutions and cities, which was a major similarity to the Cultural Revolution and its Red Guards. 

Someone else voices my usual rant

 From Hugo Gurdon, Washington Examiner editor-in-chief:

In 1985, singer Bob Geldof was interviewed backstage at London’s Wembley Stadium about the massive Live Aid rock concert he’d organized . . . raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia . . . .

At this moment, the greatest triumph in his already successful career, Geldof remarked with a note of bitter irony that Live Aid involved “the privatization of compassion.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. “Privatization” had become a dirty word in the left-wing lexicon, as industries previously taken over by socialist governments were released from central control and sold to the public as businesses quoted on stock exchanges.

Geldof’s comment struck me forcefully at the time, for it was the precise opposite of what I took then and still take to be the gem-like truth stated by columnist T.E. Utley that one of the cruelest aspects of socialism is that it delegates compassion to the state. Socialism encourages individuals to think caring for their neighbor is not their responsibility but is, instead, a function of government.

Socialists often suggest that private provision of help for the needy is a failure of the state. [Senator Bernie] Sanders has spoken disdainfully of charity, as have many unappealing politicians elsewhere. They regard the care of others through individual acts of kindness as demeaning the recipient because they believe or at least declare that goods and services received should be taken as a right rather than accepted as a gift. One also suspects that socialists dislike charity because it places a claim on them as individuals, which they’d rather shrug off.

Eudaimonia is Not Therapy

I was going to leave this article alone, even though it addresses something I've been wondering about, until the last paragraph. The subject is the infusion of therapy-speak into everyday life. 

It's from the New Yorker, so 'everyday' means 'everyday upper-middle-class-and-higher life within certain fashionable communities.' Still, I know at least one person who services such a community, and runs a business doing it centered on Facebook and Instagram. She is all the time telling her clients how important it is to "heal" their "trauma." As far as I can tell her clients are at least relatively rich white women. Maybe some of them genuinely have trauma, but it seems to be the kind of stuff the article talks about:

During this exchange, Twitter served me an advertisement that urged me to “understand my trauma” by purchasing a yoga membership. Ridiculous, I thought. I’m not a sexual-assault survivor. I’ve never been to a war zone. But, countered my brain, after four years of Trump and four seasons of covid, are you not hurting? The earth is dying. Your mother issues! Your daddy issues! A clammy wave engulfed me. My cursor hovered over the banner.

So, as I said, I was going to leave it alone. After all, I don't want to beat up on fragile people, and these people are genuinely so fragile that they think they are being traumatized by living the life of a wealthy white woman in the better neighborhoods of the richest country on earth. There's definitely something wrong with them, but it isn't "trauma." Pointing out that their entire worldview is fundamentally unhealthy might seem like I was beating up on the weak.

But then that last paragraph:

Therapy seems to have absorbed not just our language but our idea of the good life; its framework of fulfillment and reciprocity, compassion and care, increasingly drives our vision for society. Writing this piece, I thought especially of the Greek concept of eudaimonia, or human flourishing. Some might call it blessedness. In any case, it seems worth talking about.

No, you thought wrong. 

Eudaimonia is often translated as "flourishing" or simply as "happiness," but the real thing it means is being fully engaged in pursuing excellence with all your vital powers. Now she says she's never been traumatized because she's never been to war; but in fact, war is the closest thing I've seen to eudaimonia.

Aristotle says that the goal of ethics is eudaimonia, a state of happy flourishing that you find when all of your vital powers are aligned in rational activity. More, he says, to fully experience this state you need a community that is set up to support it. The military deployed comes much closer to attaining Aristotle's ideal than anything else I've seen in the world. Everyone is working together towards some strategic good. They all have different jobs, but those jobs must align. Thus, there is constant rational communication and consideration of how to align different fires on a target, or different staff sections on a mission. This 'small, close knit' community is also a community that works together toward some goods that they pursue together through rational activity.

War being war, as Clausewitz says, 'everything is simple, and the simplest things are hard.' Thus, one needs all of one's vital powers in alignment to accomplish these goals. It is a very engaging sort of life.

It may well be that the broader society lacks a number of things that these smaller, close-knit and rationally ordered communities offer. Are these goods we can replicate? Certainly: any number of organizations could be set up to pursue goods in this way, although they will not all be as fully engaging of all of one's vital powers absent the extremes of war.

Are they goods that we do replicate? No, not really, not for the most part.

You develop tight knit friendships at war -- and then, if you study philosophy, you notice that Aristotle's ethics ends with a long discussion of the importance of friendship. 

If you want to find eudaimonia, stop ever going to therapy. Stop focusing on your problems, whatever they are. The only thing to do with death -- and whatever you disliked about your childhood -- is to ride off from it. Go join the local volunteer fire department, and work with them putting out fires or saving lives in medical emergencies. Study philosophy and argue about Truth and Justice with friends over beer. Take up an extreme sport with a good community that supports each other. Ride motorcycles. Ride horses. Learn a martial art and practice it intensely. 

Do everything you can except dwelling issues of 'care' and 'sensitivity' and all the 'hurts' and 'trauma' you've suffered. Stay away from anyone who tries to convince you that you're a suffering victim, or who is willing to treat you like one if you ask -- or so you'll pay them to help you dwell on your 'problems.' Dwelling on your problems is in fact the problem. Do great things instead.

Cause of death

The Chauvin trial is at last underway, with excellent daily reporting from PowerLine. The defendant is fortunate enough to have drawn a judge who takes his job seriously, almost alone in a city that appears unified in its desire to make this a show trial against an unjust society. As a result, to my amazement, the opening arguments largely stuck to the issue of what exactly it was that killed Mr. Floyd. After a disgraceful piece in the local rag arguing that the trial was a "vessel into which a splintered society places its rage, anxieties and hopes"--pretty much a recipe for lynch law--the same paper actually ran a fairly reasonable piece this week trying to sort through the conflicting evidence on the cause of death. It's hard to imagine how he got it past his editors.

If this were a civil case, it would be difficult to sort through the relative weight of the various contributing factors to Mr. Floyd's death. The picture is intolerably complicated by a fatal dose of fentanyl. I try to imagine how I'd view the evidence if it were myself being arrested, or someone from my own social circle that I knew and loved. Would I be thinking, "The person you're arresting is in clear medical distress; why are you so cavalier about the risks?" Or would I conclude that, if you resist arrest and act crazy and have to be restrained, then it turns out that you're dying of an OD, then it's just a slow-motion suicide by cop? Looking at it from the opposite perspective, if the defendant in this trial had for some reason forcibly administered the fatal dose of fentanyl to Mr. Floyd, then tried to argue that what really killed him was a knee on the neck, wouldn't I scoff? Wouldn't I reject the argument that the fentanyl wasn't all that dangerous, because Mr. Floyd, an addict, had such a high tolerance?

In a civil trial, the jury might be allowed to allocate percentages to the liability of the various people who created dangerous conditions, which in this fact pattern might well result in a very high percentage being allocated to the decision to swallow the fatal evidence of fentanyl. In a criminal trial, however, the jury has to resolve any reasonable doubt over whether Mr. Chauvin's actions were the effective cause of death. It can't help much that the jury will be allowed and/or instructed to take into account that there can be multiple causes of death, or that a potential fatal treatment can be considered the cause of death even if someone else (including the decedent) had contributed a cause of death that either took effect seconds before the action of the criminal defendant, or would have caused death within seconds in any case.

The only certain conclusion I can draw is that I wouldn't want to live there, and I certainly wouldn't want to serve on a police force in that city. It's a mystery how they keep a police force together at all. Frankly it's hard to see how such a broken city survives.

Heroic Materialism

Raven mentioned this series, and this is the conclusion of it. 

He says at the end that the collapse of Marxism -- a little over-eager, sadly -- left us with no alternative but "Heroic Materialism." By this I assume he meant that we should endeavor to live boldly and virtuously according to the ancient pattern, but with no belief in any metaphysical beings or realities that might reward such virtues in an afterlife. We should do well because doing well led to physical prosperity; and if it didn't, quite, we should work harder, because working harder might. But ultimately it is heroic because it is a fight without hope; and worse, without faith.

       "Night shall be thrice night over you,
         And heaven an iron cope.
         Do you have joy without a cause,
         Yea, faith without a hope?"

God save us from that; and only a god can. The Greeks built their great temples to divinity, not to materialism. They would not have built them if they had not believed. The Cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built to a God who was believed in because of the best arguments of Athens, and the best poetry of Jerusalem.

Where comes anything without a cause, joy or any other thing? Where comes faith in a thing you don't even hope to be true? 

It is Holy Week. What better time to ask these questions?

Plato's "Hidden Theorem on Distribution of Primes"

While I was trying to remember where Aristotle says the thing about primes that Parmenides said, I came across this paper. It argues that the 5,040 number in Plato's Laws (which you will remember from the long series on the Laws here over the winter) hides a secret theorem. 

I'm not sure about that, but read it for yourself if you like. The full text is there, and it's short.

Against Karl Popper

I've always liked Popper's answer, but hear them out. First, what is the answer?

Popper was struck by Einstein’s prediction. “Now the impressive thing about this case,” he wrote decades later, “is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind.” Had the measurements found Einstein in error, Popper said, the physicist would have been forced to abandon his theory. Popper built his demarcation criterion around the bravado of wagering against refutation: “One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”

Second, what was the answer meant to contrast?

All demarcation criteria are designed to exclude something. What Popper really wanted to do was to show why psychoanalysis and Marxism were not scientific. Those theories had been widely understood as “scientific” in his Viennese milieu because of a logical empiricist theory called verificationism. According to this view, a theory is scientific if it is verified by empirical data.

From my perspective, successfully excluding Marxism and psychoanalysis from science justifies the project. However, others have disagreed, and not only Marxists and psychoanalysts. 

First, it is difficult to determine whether you have actually falsified a theory....  Not so fast. How do you know that your experimental result was accurate?

That's a terrible objection. Falsification is about whether or not the theory could in principle be falsified. The fact that it may be hard to do is quite different from the objection to Freud's theories, wherein a man who e.g. didn't appear to have any Oedipal concerns would just be said to be suppressing or projecting them or whatever. Marxism, too: Lenin wrote a book about how Marx's theory's failure to materialize was just a further proof of how right he was about the evils of capitalism. These theories aren't falsifiable because they let you just tell another story about how they were right all along. 

Yes, the instrument could be wrong; do it again. But if there's not a fact of the matter that could falsify a theory if known, it's not science.

The second problem with Popper’s proposal has to do with the actual demarcations it gives us. The very minimum we should expect from a demarcation criterion is that it slices the sciences in the right places. We want our criterion to recognize as scientific those theories that are very generally accepted as hallmarks of contemporary science, such as quantum physics, natural selection, and plate tectonics. At the same time, we want our criterion to rule out doctrines such as astrology and dowsing. Popper’s falsifiability standard is not especially helpful in this regard. For starters, it is difficult to present the “historical” natural sciences, such as evolutionary biology, geology, or cosmology—those fields where we cannot “run the tape again” in the laboratory—exclusively in terms of falsifiable claims. Those sciences provide persuasive explanations of nature through the totality of a narrative chain of causal inference rather than a series of empirical yes-no votes. Popper thus inadvertently excludes important domains of contemporary science.

I would argue that this is also a terrible objection. To say that you want to "slice the sciences in the right places" indicates that you think you already know where the slices should be made. Actually, Popper raises an important objection to theories even from these widely recognized fields: they aren't doing quite the same thing as the sciences that can provide replicable testing, and their theories remain rather more theoretical as a consequence. They're not in the same category as Marxism, but maybe that only means that there is Hard Science, and then degrees of distance from it. I'm inclined to score this Popper 2, objections 0 so far.

The situation with inclusion is even worse. The difficulty was sharply expressed by philosopher of science Larry Laudan in an influential article from 1983. Popper’s criterion, he wrote,

has the untoward consequence of countenancing as “scientific” every crank claim that makes ascertainably false assertions. Thus flat Earthers, biblical creationists, proponents of laetrile or orgone boxes, Uri Geller devotees, Bermuda Triangulators, circle squarers, Lysenkoists, charioteers of the gods, perpetuum mobile builders, Big Foot searchers, Loch Nessians, faith healers, polywater dabblers, Rosicrucians, the-world-is-about-to-enders, primal screamers, water diviners, magicians, and astrologers all turn out to be scientific on Popper’s criterion—just so long as they are prepared to indicate some observation, however improbable, which (if it came to pass) would cause them to change their minds.

OK, that one's better. Popper's criterion may not be sufficient to exclude fields that are easily falsifiable because they are crazy. We might need to address that objection to have a proper definition of hard science. That seems to be the evolving position, and it's not that hostile to Popper: he said something important, but he may have mistaken that something for everything.

Other approaches might prove more successful. Philosopher and former professor of biology Massimo Pigliucci, for example, has suggested that the problem with falsicationism is its one-dimensionality, not its effort to establish clear criteria. Perhaps we could add more dimensions that correspond to the heterogeneity of scientific practice. 

You Don't Say

Theroux gets that readers might perceive him as cranky, but he thinks the problem might be with the readers. 

Paul Theroux gets older.

His new novel tells the story of Joe Sharkey, an aging North Shore surfer... Sharkey feels acutely that he is being overtaken by younger surfers with big endorsements. For him, surfing was a way of life, an existence centered on catching waves, a commitment to the ocean.

Theroux sees surfing as a metaphor for his own life.... like the surfer past his prime, he is not immune to feeling forgotten, to the sense that the world has become hostile to the pure joy of the waves. There’s a fear of being overlooked, unread.

“I was once a hot shot, I was once the punk,” Theroux said. “And anyone who has once been a punk, eventually you’re older, and you see the turning of the years as it is."

Well, he has had more attention than most; and more wealth and success, too. But there is still a kind of universality to the experience of growing older.  

This looks like fun

"Conservatism" is No Longer Enough

A provocative and worthy piece at The American Mind, by Glenn Ellmers.

Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.

I don’t just mean the millions of illegal immigrants. Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country, and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture, are—politically as well as legally—aliens. I’m really referring to the many native-born people—some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower—who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

That's a very grave problem statement. Is it just? I wonder about the percentage -- "certainly more than half" may be overstating the numbers -- but it is certainly true of some percentage. Percentages aside, too, it seems to be true especially of the part that occupies all the seats of power: in government, both elected and the bureaucracy; in corporations; in the media, to include news, social media, and entertainment; and, at the moment at least, even in top positions of the military. 

Sad times for MIT

I kept reading aloud Townhall excerpts from this extraordinary MIT paper to my husband, who kept insisting that it was a hoax. It does sound as though someone were auditioning for the Bee, and sailing very close to the wind.

[C]alling for increased media literacy can often backfire: the instruction to ‘question more’ can lead to a weaponization of critical thinking and increased distrust of media and government institutions . . . . [C]alls for media literacy can often frame problems like fake news as ones of personal responsibility rather than a crisis of collective action. . . . [Anti-maskers] value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over "expert" interpretations. . . . As a subculture, anti-masking amplifies anti-establishment currents pervasive in U.S. political culture. . . . Data literacy, for anti-maskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia . . . . Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.

The solution?

Convincing anti-maskers to support public health measures in the age of COVID-19 will require more than ‘better’ visualizations, data literacy campaigns, or increased public access to data. Rather, it requires a sustained engagement with the social world of visualizations and the people who make or interpret them.

"Social," posited as an alternative to data literacy and explained as a "sustained engagement with the social world," remains a little fuzzy to me. Shaming? Censorship? Police raids? How I hope this turns out to be a Sokal hoax.

Holy Week

If any of you are Jews, Passover was I understand yesterday; I hope your holiday was satisfying. For Christians, of course today is Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. (If we have any Muslim readers, I note with surprise that Ramadan will also fall at nearly the same time this year, beginning on the 12th of April. A sacred spring for us all, this year.)

This is the occasion of one of my favorite stories from scripture. Probably I am guilty, like many, of focusing too much on the parts that appeal to me personally. I love the story of Jesus riding an unbroken colt, though. This is Luke 19:28-36:

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.” 35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 

You try riding an unbroken colt sometime, and see if it's as easy as that for you.  

A Good Day for Strongmen

At the Central Georgia’s Strongest Man competition today, resumed after COVID, a man named Shannon Willits finished his courses and then perished. The best of us can hope for no better. He died in competition after finishing a set of heavy farmer’s walks carries and an immediate heavy bag carry. Most people couldn’t do either, given all the time in the world. 

A fit and worthy death. God send us each such when our time comes. 

Plato's Parmenides VIII, The One III: Time

This is a long section, so I'm going to put it beyond a jump. It's important to note at the beginning that this dialogue was written before almost any of the philosophy of time. Aristotle wrote one of the most important pieces on time in the ancient world, Plotinus another, and St. Augustine wrote another one. None of that thinking was available to Plato or to Parmenides. We saw in the preface to this series that Zeno appears to have believed that time, like space, was atomic in nature; Aristotle rejected both, but his rejection has not yet appeared. 

There are a lot of philosophical problems about time. One of them is the status of things (like ourselves) that seem to be extended in time. I can remember existing yesterday. Does that me still exist somewhere? For Zeno, the answer might be yes: there might be a 'time atom' (or rather a whole series of them) in which yesterday me still exists, and permanently (and changelessly). Or it might be 'no,' just as easily: that only the present time atom exists, neither one before nor one after. Both views admit of his apparent theory that change is impossible: the first view for the reasons we've already seen, as about the arrow that must be frozen in time because at any atom of time it is frozen; the second because, if only the current time atom actually exists, there is nowhere to move from or to move towards. 

Lacking a built-out philosophy of time this bit is quite difficult to follow. It is at odds with the way that we tend to think about time. The basic problem is that the one cannot be many, but if it exists through time there will be a part of it that is younger than itself (i.e., the part that existed yesterday) and a part that is older (i.e., the part that will exist tomorrow). The One cannot, then, be in time. This is another reason it can neither 'come to be' nor perish.

You Don’t Say

NCO: Most soldiers thought extremist training was a waste of time. 

Sweden

Preliminary data from EU statistics agency Eurostat compiled by Reuters showed Sweden had 7.7% more deaths in 2020 than its average for the preceding four years. Countries that opted for several periods of strict lockdowns, such as Spain and Belgium, had so-called excess mortality of 18.1% and 16.2% respectively.

UPDATE: Sorry about that; I posted this from my phone, and the mobile version of the Hall didn't show me the formatting error.  

Neighborhood Ordinance: No Whining

Austin immigrants versus “toxic masculinity,” plus an awesome Caddy.

In honor of our heroes, some Tejano music you can blare as loudly as you wish. 

9th Circuit: "What Do You Mean, 'Bear' Arms?"

Hawaii has a law that permits you to carry firearms, provided you obtain a license from the state that requires you to establish that you have an "urgent need" for such a firearm. A man named George Young applied for such a license, but the state was not satisfied that he proved the urgency of his need to carry one. He just wanted to carry a gun in case he needed to defend himself, but had established no reason to believe that it was likely he would need to do so. They thus turned him down, and he sued. 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld them in doing so, but gone rather farther. They assert that Americans have no right to carry weapons in public at all. 

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved all the panel’s judges.

“We can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense,” the majority wrote, claiming that the Second Amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home.”

“The power of the government to regulate carrying arms in the public square does not infringe in any way on the right of an individual to defend his home or business,” the judges wrote.

This seems to be the evolving position on the Second Amendment from the statists in response to Heller. 'Ok, maybe you have a right to own a gun that we can't completely reject,' they say, 'but only at home.' The District of Columbia will now let you own a gun, to be kept at home, registered with the police; you may not even possess ammunition for it without that permit. You may also not carry it anywhere without an additional license that they are under no obligation to provide you. (They also have a list of handguns you're allowed to buy if approved to buy them, which is called the "List of Handguns Not Determined to be Unsafe," and a list of guns you're definitely not, which they call an "Assault Weapons" ban though it appears to have been constructed largely based on scary appearances.)

So they are responding to the "right to keep and bear arms" somewhat like Ms. Clinton asking whether she was being asked if she had wiped her server with a cloth. "Yes, you can keep it at home; but bear it? What on earth could that mean? Like ride around on a bear with it? That sounds horribly unsafe."

Addendum to Part VII

Though I'm going to leave the discussion of whether our approach to relations is better than the Greeks for another day, I would like to say some things about how we handle it in logic.

There are different ways that contemporary symbolic logic tends to handle relations like the kinds Parmenides was discussing in the previous post. I'll walk through just one. Let's say that we wanted to express a likeness relation such as "All crows are black." It would look like this:

∀x(Cx⊃Bx)

That is read, "For every x, if x is a crow then x is black."

Notice that this relationship does not include any actual crows, only a variable x. It is a statement that describes every object in the universe, most of which will fail to be crows. Those things that satisfy the crow condition will, if the statement is true, also satisfy the black condition.

It is possible to talk about an actual crow. Let's say object a is a crow. (Variables are from the end of the alphabet, whereas letters taken from the beginning of the alphabet are constants. That is to say that x or y could be anything, but a is a particular something.) Now you can test the proposition, because if Ca is true and Ba is false, then the proposition is false. It only takes one counterexample to falsify a universally quantified statement like the one above (the upside-down A is the universal quantifier).

So one way we can talk about relations between objects is to use the capital letter to indicate a class of things. All of those things are automatically related to each other by being members of the class. 

That doesn't actually solve the problem Parmenides is raising, though, because you still need two things at work to express the relation. Let us say that a is not a crow, but the One or really any Form that is a unitary idea. Being a pure unity, it is just a and not Fa. A genuinely pure unity cannot admit of likeness in this way either.

It also, it turns out, can't admit of unlikeness on this model because you'd have to say that a was not a crow, and that requires three concepts working together: the constant, the class, and the negative operator. (¬ Ca). The pure unity does not admit of either the ¬  or the C, because if it did, it would no longer be just one idea but multiple ideas.

It actually seems like the Form of a Crow would be C, though, not a. After all, it is x's participation in C that makes it a crow. Now you might say that the One is "O," and any x might participate in it without changing it. So you could have Oa and Ob, where a and b each participate in the One without being the One. This addresses Parmenides' concerns somewhat, because whether any x does or doesn't participate in O, O remains singular and unchanged by the participation or lack thereof. 

Viewed that way, contemporary symbolic logic depends upon Platonic forms. So too does mathematical logic, and therefore math itself. 

Plato's Parmenides VII, The One II

We continue from yesterday.

Neither will [the One] be the same with itself or other; nor again, other
than itself or other.

How is that?

If other than itself it would be other than one, and would not be
one.

True.

And if the same with other, it would be that other, and not itself;
so that upon this supposition too, it would not have the nature of
one, but would be other than one?

It would. 

Then it will not be the same with other, or other than itself?

It will not.

That part was straightforward: the One is not the same as anything else, because it's itself and not the other thing (whatever that thing might be). The next part is trickier. 

Neither will it be other than other, while it remains one; for not

one, but only other, can be other than other, and nothing else.

True.

Then not by virtue of being one will it be other?

Certainly not.

But if not by virtue of being one, not by virtue of itself; and if
not by virtue of itself, not itself, and itself not being other at
all, will not be other than anything?

Right.

Neither will one be the same with itself.

How not?

Surely the nature of the one is not the nature of the same.

Why not?

It is not when anything becomes the same with anything that it becomes
one.

What of that?

Anything which becomes the same with the many, necessarily becomes
many and not one.
True.

But, if there were no difference between the one and the same, when
a thing became the same, it would always become one; and when it became
one, the same?

Certainly.

And, therefore, if one be the same with itself, it is not one with
itself, and will therefore be one and also not one.

Surely that is impossible.

This argument that pure unity cannot admit of 'sameness' is going to end up being a problem for Plato and even for Socrates, because the unity he is seeking is supposed to explain something else. The idea was that largeness was supposed to have a Form, and that Form was the thing that somehow produces the sameness by virtue of which all large things are large; or all good things are good. If the kind of unity Parmenides is describing cannot even admit of 'sameness' to the degree that it can be said to be 'the same as itself' the whole concept is going to be unworkable. This is sort of the third man problem in reverse: instead of producing an infinite number of additional forms, it can't even produce one additional thing. If that's true, it can't do what Socrates proposed it should do. 

The One cannot be the same in part, also, because the concept of sameness requires a concept of difference; and that is two things (in addition to itself). Once again, the idea of a unity produces a trinity. (See the comments to yesterday's post for further discussion). If the One is a kind of mind, this realization is itself productive: of that which is different, and sameness, and then a space between them for similarity and difference. The Neoplatonists will explain creation -- including the creation of the Platonic Forms -- in terms of the way that the thinking of the One ends up producing everything else. 

Parmenides is not going to make that move; he's going to block it by trying to show that the One not only cannot be the same as another, it cannot even be like another. 

And therefore the one can neither be other than other, nor the same

with itself.

Impossible.

And thus the one can neither be the same, nor other, either in relation
to itself or other?

No.

Neither will the one be like anything or unlike itself or other.

Why not?

Because likeness is sameness of affections.

Yes.

And sameness has been shown to be of a nature distinct from oneness?

That has been shown.

But if the one had any other affection than that of being one, it
would be affected in such a way as to be more than one; which is impossible.

Why is it impossible? Because motion and therefore change in the unity have already been shown to be impossible.

True.

Then the one can never be so affected as to be the same either with
another or with itself?

Clearly not.

Then it cannot be like another, or like itself?

No.

Nor can it be affected so as to be other, for then it would be affected
in such a way as to be more than one.

It would.

That which is affected otherwise than itself or another, will be unlike
itself or another, for sameness of affections is likeness.

True.

But the one, as appears, never being affected otherwise, is never
unlike itself or other?

Never.

Then the one will never be either like or unlike itself or other?

Plainly not.

The Archangel Michael's name is translated in a way that captures the Judeo-Christian-Islamic sense of this difficulty. "In art St. Michael is often represented as an angelic warrior, fully armed with helmet, sword, and shield, as he overcomes Satan, sometimes represented as a dragon and sometimes as a man-like figure. The shield at times bears the inscription: Quis ut Deus, the translation of the archangel's name, but capable also of being seen as his rhetorical and scornful question to Satan." The difference between God (or the One) and everything else is so categorical that it does not admit of likeness. 

It seems stranger to say that it does not, then, admit of unlikeness: it seems as if everything is unlike God, both categorically and in degree. Partly that is because we think differently than the Greeks here. Aristotle will divide the world into substances and the attributes they have. A relation, then, is a kind of attribute of a substance. If X and Y are related, X has attribute a which is 'is like Y,' and Y has attribute b which is 'is like X.' Xa and Yb thus produce the relationship, which is not 'real' in itself (i.e., it is not a substance); it is a product of their similar but distinct attributes.

Thus, you can see how from the Greek perspective it makes sense that the One, being a pure unity, cannot admit of a relation such as 'is unlike Z.' Being a pure unity, it cannot carry any attributes -- not sameness, not difference, not like nor unlike, neither red nor blue.

Our metaphysical approach to relations is different, such that it seems illogical to say that A is not like B, and also not unlike B. Whether or not our approach is better is a topic for another day. For now, keep it in mind as Parmenides runs through several more apparent paradoxes. 

Again, being of this nature, it can neither be equal nor unequal either

to itself or to other.

How is that?

Why, because the one if equal must be of the same measures as that
to which it is equal.

True.

And if greater or less than things which are commensurable with it,
the one will have more measures than that which is less, and fewer
than that which is greater?

Yes.

And so of things which are not commensurate with it, the one will
have greater measures than that which is less and smaller than that
which is greater.

Certainly.

But how can that which does not partake of sameness, have either the
same measures or have anything else the same?

Impossible.

And not having the same measures, the one cannot be equal either with
itself or with another?

It appears so.

But again, whether it have fewer or more measures, it will have as
many parts as it has measures; and thus again the one will be no longer
one but will have as many parts as measures.

Right.

And if it were of one measure, it would be equal to that measure;
yet it has been shown to be incapable of equality.

It has.

Then it will neither partake of one measure, nor of many, nor of few,
nor of the same at all, nor be equal to itself or another; nor be
greater or less than itself, or other?

Certainly.

Well, and do we suppose that one can be older, or younger than anything,
or of the same age with it?

Why not?

Why, because that which is of the same age with itself or other, must
partake of equality or likeness of time; and we said that the one
did not partake either of equality or of likeness?

We did say so.

And we also said, that it did not partake of inequality or unlikeness.

Very true.

How then can one, being of this nature, be either older or younger
than anything, or have the same age with it?

In no way.

The next argument changes grounds from the previous series, so we'll proceed with it in the next post. 

The Devil “Gender Neutrality” Dealt Fatal Blow

The Army admits that it has to score women differently from men if it wants women to be able to pass. It also eliminates the requirements for job specific roles, or that you pass the parts of the test women had trouble with. 

And you will only be ranked according to sex: “The new scoring system will ‘place everyone that passes the ACFT into an individual performance category based off of how well they score relative to their gender,’ tweeted Michael Grinston, sergeant major of the Army.”

Plato's Parmenides VI: The One I

Ok, so let's go through Parmenides' argument in a few stages. It is done in a dialogue, with Aristoteles answering him. I see no alternative but to quote the whole long thing, breaking in at points for discussion. 

Parmenides proceeded: If one is, he said, the one cannot be many?
Impossible.
Then the one cannot have parts, and cannot be a whole?
Why not?
Because every part is part of a whole; is it not?
Yes.
And what is a whole? would not that of which no part is wanting be a whole?

Certainly.
Then, in either case, the one would be made up of parts; both as being a whole, and also as having parts?

To be sure.
And in either case, the one would be many, and not one?
True.
But, surely, it ought to be one and not many?
It ought.
Then, if the one is to remain one, it will not be a whole, and will not have parts?

No.

Now the first difficulty for me is Parmenides' decision to 'cash out' (as philosophers love to say) wholeness in terms of having parts. That seems circular: a part is a part of a whole, but a whole is that which has all its parts together. I would have preferred at least one of these terms to be defined independently of the other.

However, I spoke with a friend of mine who is a mereologist, and he thought it was a reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. His problem was that Parmenides might be confusing spatiotemporal wholes with the kinds of wholes that Socrates' ideas are meant to be. A thought can have parts, even though it has no spatiotemporal parts; if you think through a remembered psalm (to borrow an example from St. Augustine), you think through the first part before the last part. It's divisible without being spatial.

Socrates wants to get from discursive thinking to grasping a unitary idea, though; and Parmenides is exploring whether the idea of a unity like that has sense. What would it be like? Well, it wouldn't have parts; and therefore, it wouldn't be a whole.

But if it has no parts, it will have neither beginning, middle, nor end; for these would of course be parts of it.

Right.
But then, again, a beginning and an end are the limits of everything?

Certainly.
Then the one, having neither beginning nor end, is unlimited?

Yes, unlimited.
And therefore formless; for it cannot partake either of round or straight.

But why?
Why, because the round is that of which all the extreme points are equidistant from the centre?

Yes.
And the straight is that of which the centre intercepts the view of the extremes?

True.
Then the one would have parts and would be many, if it partook either of a straight or of a circular form?

Assuredly.
But having no parts, it will be neither straight nor round?

Right.

These are fairly straightforward consequences of what it is to be a unity like they are exploring, but it is useful because it ends up dismissing several analogies and metaphors. Later philosophers often speak as a circle as a kind of unity, for example; but it isn't this kind of unity. A circle has parts, is a whole, and has features that are definable. The Form of the Good ultimately will not have any of those things.

And, being of such a nature, it cannot be in any place, for it cannot be either in another or in itself.

How so?
Because if it were in another, it would be encircled by that in which it was, and would touch it at many places and with many parts; but that which is one and indivisible, and does not partake of a circular nature, cannot be touched all round in many places.

Certainly not.
But if, on the other hand, one were in itself, it would also be contained by nothing else but itself; that is to say, if it were really in itself; for nothing can be in anything which does not contain it.

Impossible.
But then, that which contains must be other than that which is contained? for the same whole cannot do and suffer both at once; and if so, one will be no longer one, but two?

True.
Then one cannot be anywhere, either in itself or in another?

No.

Where is an idea? We might say "in my mind." Materialists will want us to 'cash that out' as "in my brain." But the brain is a place that occupies physical space; and Parmenides is proving that an idea like a Form, at least, can't be in any place. It therefore can't be contained, neither by a brain nor by anything else material.

That's not a problem for ideas like Augustine's psalm, but it is definitely a problem for any kind of Greek Form -- and especially for Aristotle's, which is supposed to somehow be 'in the thing.' Where is the form of a table? It's in the table, somehow. If the parts of the table are laying on the ground in a heap, you don't have a table. It's when the right order comes to be that the thing becomes a table. For Aristotle, form is a kind of order or structure; and thus it must be in the thing. Yet, as Parmenides is showing, a form can't be.

You can say something here that is quasi-material about the table: the 'form' is a way of speaking about a bunch of relations between the material objects, so that a properly formed table will have electromagnetic force relations between the proper atoms that make it up, such that they allow other objects to be placed upon it at "our level" of organization; the atoms of the book placed onto the table interact with the atoms of the table, etc. Form ends up being supremely complex, but explicable in terms of material relations.

Yet even in that case form is immaterial; the table and book interact as they do only because they've been put in that order, and they were put there for a reason. There's a purpose, a telos, in the construction of the table; and the form of the organization is defined by that. That form isn't in the thing; it is an idea in the mind of the creator of the artifact. If it is a form in that sense, it is closer to Plato/Socrates/Parmenides' sense of a Form; and if so, it can't really 'be in the brain,' either, because it can't really exist in a physical place. It can perhaps be in a mind, but where then is the mind?

Further consider, whether that which is of such a nature can have either rest or motion.

Why not?
Why, because the one, if it were moved, would be either moved in place or changed in nature; for these are the only kinds of motion.

Yes.
And the one, when it changes and ceases to be itself, cannot be any longer one.

It cannot.
It cannot therefore experience the sort of motion which is change of nature?

Clearly not.
Then can the motion of the one be in place?
Perhaps.
But if the one moved in place, must it not either move round and round in the same place, or from one place to another?

It must.
And that which moves in a circle must rest upon a centre; and that which goes round upon a centre must have parts which are different from the centre; but that which has no centre and no parts cannot possibly be carried round upon a centre?

Impossible.
But perhaps the motion of the one consists in change of place?

Perhaps so, if it moves at all.
And have we not already shown that it cannot be in anything?

Yes.
Then its coming into being in anything is still more impossible; is it not?

I do not see why.
Why, because anything which comes into being in anything, can neither as yet be in that other thing while still coming into being, nor be altogether out of it, if already coming into being in it.

Certainly not.
And therefore whatever comes into being in another must have parts, and then one part may be in, and another part out of that other; but that which has no parts can never be at one and the same time neither wholly within nor wholly without anything.

True.
And is there not a still greater impossibility in that which has no parts, and is not a whole, coming into being anywhere, since it cannot come into being either as a part or as a whole?

Clearly.

This is a huge challenge: if a Form is a kind of unity, and such a unity cannot have parts, then it cannot come to be in anything. Really, the conclusion here is that it cannot come to be at all. 'Coming to be' is a kind of motion, and Parmenides is going through all the kinds of motion and showing that a unity cannot experience any of them. 

The conclusion is that Forms, if they exist, are eternal; they do not come to be, and they do not perish. They aren't in anything that we encounter in the world. The Forms, thus, belong to another world -- one that interacts with our material, spatiotemporal world in some way, but that is not itself material or spatiotemporal.

Then it does not change place by revolving in the same spot, not by going somewhere and coming into being in something; nor again, by change in itself?

Very true.
Then in respect of any kind of motion the one is immoveable?

Immoveable.
But neither can the one be in anything, as we affirm.
Yes, we said so.
Then it is never in the same?
Why not?
Because if it were in the same it would be in something.

Certainly.
And we said that it could not be in itself, and could not be in other?

True.
Then one is never in the same place?
It would seem not.
But that which is never in the same place is never quiet or at rest?

Never.
One then, as would seem, is neither rest nor in motion?
It certainly appears so.

Questions? Discussion?

A Shopkeeper Remembered

An older lady who ran a shop out on a rural highway out this way died last week. Some of the neighbors were talking about her, telling stories about how she ran the place. I guess she was about 85.

One fellow was on a construction crew that was working in the winter time, and they staged up about her store before going out to work. One of the workers had bought a cup of coffee, and after finishing it decided he wanted another. Now while outside he'd pulled his ski mask down to keep his face farm, at first halfway so he could drink the coffee, and then all the way. He went in to the store without removing it, and this fellow went with him for something he wanted. No sooner had they walked through the door than the old woman intercepted them, shoved a .357 Magnum right between the one guy's eyes, and demanded that he immediately remove his mask. His hands were full, so in order to free them up to do it he handed her the empty coffee cup and the other guy his money.

Another time one of them went in and she had filled these hard candy hoppers she had with a new kind of green jawbreaker. She told him to try one, and when he did it nearly knocked him down. "What is this?" he asked.

"Wasabi candy," she said.

Apparently some of the migrant laborers who'd been coming in to her store had been stealing candy out of her hoppers when they came in. She decided to put a stop to it. It reportedly worked, although I'll bet she put a stop to her candy sales, too. 

America's Disinformation Source of Record

"We know it can't be satire, because it's NOT FUNNY."

Trail Songs

Marty Robbins apparently did this album in a single take, I hear. He is said to have convinced the studio that they had to let him do it because he'd done so many things that they wanted done. Neither they nor he thought it would be a big success, but he wanted to do an Old West album.

The song "El Paso" alone went to #1 on the country chart... and also on the pop chart. That one day's work paid for his whole life, and probably is still supporting his grandkids. It's one of the few dozen songs I can sing from memory, and do, much to the annoyance of everyone but my wife who finds it charming.

Johnny Cash did an experimental 'true West' album too, but it wasn't nearly as successful. Fortunately, he had other songs that did well. I've always liked this piece from it, though.

Also this one, even more, about the old "Wilderness Road." "Boone recommended three essentials for a pioneer: 'A good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.'" 

And this one, which I quote from time to time. "I saw him one day, but I ain't seen him since."

 Appropriately, I did come across a loose horse along a mountain road today. I returned him to his owners. 

Seems like a solid point

Project Veritas’ lawsuit came to be due to The New York Times’ labeling Project Veritas’ investigation into illegal ballot harvesting taking place in Minnesota during the 2020 election cycle as 'deceptive.'

The New York Times defended calling Project Veritas' Minnesota Ballot Harvesting videos 'deceptive' by arguing this was simply an 'unverifiable expression of opinion.'

Project Veritas pointed out this 'opinion' was printed in the news section of The New York Times and the Court agreed: 'if a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader ... that it is opinion.' The Times did not do so, and the Court found this troubling.

As I was reading the other day, "Hey, we were just inserting our unverifiable opinion into the narrative in order to tell you what to think. Don't shoot the messenger!" Next step: depositions of the New York Times reporter and publisher.

They lost me with "vision statement"

In case we needed more reasons to let the education tax dollars (if any there must be) go to parents instead of schools, the public and private version of which should have to compete with each other and with home-schooling, there's this from Zero Hedge:

A proposed curriculum in California for elementary and high school students would attempt to “decolonize” American society with an “ethnic studies” course.

In the course, children will be instructed in Aztec chants to various gods of human sacrifice and cannibalism, asking the gods to make them warriors for social justice.

This is all to help the children “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs” rooted in “white supremacy, racism and other forms of power and oppression.”

For example, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, was traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice. The school children will ask the deity to instill in them “a revolutionary spirit.”

The curriculum’s vision statement admits this is not about education, but rather a “tool for transformation, social, economic, and political change, and liberation.”

Mainstream Extremism

Kyle Shideler points out that the word "extremism" is even more dubious than it appeared the last time we discussed it. 

How the government shifted its “Counter-Extremism” strategy to target the mainstream.

The narrative is here, and it doesn’t like you very much.

In recent remarks before members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, the chief of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency claimed that domestic extremism has become “part of the cultural mainstream.”

Former DHS official and USA Today contributor Elizabeth Neumann agrees: “Far-Right Extremists went mainstream under Trump.”

“Extremists have gone mainstream,” echoes journalist Zahra Ahmad. “Lawyers, realtors and every-day folks make up their ranks.” Ahmad cites a figure suggesting a quarter of Americans hold “ideas incubated by white nationalists.”

Not to be left out, NPR warns that white extremism “seeps” into the mainstream. The Atlantic says the mainstream has gone extremist too. A study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats warns that most January 6 “insurrectionists” were mainstream to the extreme...

That's incoherent, as he points out.

This is not sustainable. The mainstream of a society cannot be extremist. It might be foolish, or misled, or prone to irrational things, as crowds often are. The mainstream of a society might even be immoral or wicked in an objective sense when measured against other societies. But what it cannot be is extreme. An elite, however, can be extremist. An elite’s views may be so outside the mainstream of the society, beholden to foreign ideologies, that their views are unrecognizable to those they purport to lead.

He suggests a 'three cups of tea' strategy for getting to know those mainstream extremists, and figuring out how to work with them instead of against them. I suppose it's worth a try; although as a long-time counterinsurgent myself I can say that what really worked in Iraq was paying them to guard their own houses and communities, while trying to get the central government to treat them more fairly than it was inclined to do. The reason it stopped working was that we left the central government to its own devices, and it immediately resumed mistreatment. 

Who's going to make sure the central government doesn't do what it's inclined to do this time? We could do it in Iraq because we didn't really have any animus towards any of the Iraqi factions, and could not have cared less about their internal disputes. As such, all sides could respect the US military as a disinterested agent. Who is the reliable third party who can tell our central government to play nice with the parts of the citizenry it despises? 

Sensible cop

I enjoyed reading this blog, which is published by a guy who comments on Astral Codex Ten.

The Chinese People Are Not a Problem, but China Really Is

Vice is stretching quite a bit at points here, trying to make yesterday's shootings in Atlanta evidence of some kind of broad anti-Asian sentiment; and especially in trying to avoid blaming the Chinese Communists for their role in spreading the virus. The Communists disappeared doctors who tried to give warnings to the world, while allowing international travel from Wuhan and elsewhere well after they knew it was a hazard. 

Still, Vice is right that this well-intended sentiment probably should have been thought out more than it was.

During a House Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday, Rep. Chip Roy said Texans “believe in justice” while simultaneously invoking the imagery of one of America’s most unjust legacies.  

“There’s old sayings in Texas about ‘Find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree,’” Roy said Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee meeting. “We take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that. Round up the bad guys. That’s what we believe.” 

On Tuesday eight people were killed and another was injured after a suspect is alleged to have bought a gun and targeted three spas in the Atlanta area. Most of the victims were Asian women.

In principle Roy was expressing anger at the murders, not racism towards Asians; his point was that murderers should be hanged, not that Asians ought to be. However, it's quite right to point out that the quality of justice in our lynching history was ugly at best.

As if Roy’s point wasn’t convoluted enough, it was also patently ahistorical. Lynchings are not, in fact, complimentary to the “rule of law.”  The 1871 “Chinese Massacre” in Los Angeles, in which at least 17 Asian immigrants were hanged, was one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S. history. 

If they'd stopped there, I'd have nothing to say against their argument, but they really shouldn't be using any of this to create defenses for the Communists. 

"My concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric in a free society, free speech, and away from the rule of law, taking out bad guys,” Roy added.

According to Roy, these “bad guys'' include the Chinese government, which he referred to as “Chi-Coms.” ... Former President Donald Trump often referred to COVID-19—which he repeatedly downplayed even as hundreds of Americans died on his watch—as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” Current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this week that there was “no question” that Trump’s statements “led to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair,” and that they “elevated threats against Asian Americans.”

There's no reason that criticisms of the Chinese government, which is actively engaged in genocide and slavery, should redound even against the Chinese people -- let alone Asian-Americans. The People's Republic of China is a tyranny of the first water. There are plenty of good people in China, such as those who have recently been robbed of their cherished freedom in Hong Kong. 

Somehow our national conversation turned this weird murderer in Atlanta into a national problem, one that returns as always to the same themes. It would be good if we could stop trying to view every problem in America through the lens of racism and politics; but that is probably too much to hope for, as it is too valuable for a whole class of politicians. It would be nice if people like Roy would stop stepping in it in ways that give opportunity, but that may be too much to hope for as well.

What might still be avoidable is the new theme of protecting the PRC. They really are evil -- the government, I mean, not the people who live under it. Anyone who spins up a defense of the PRC out of any of these stories about America should be asked why, and challenged on the moral quality of doing so. If you think you oppose slavery, they are slavers. If you think you oppose genocide, they are murdering and sterilizing people today.

The Sons of Liberty

Looking for an old quote from Rio Grande, I came across this old post from 2005. I was so confident when I was young.

Things that go south in a serious way will be met with a serious response. We'll form lawful militias to keep order if the government breaks down under disease or disaster. We'll volunteer for government-led efforts if they need us, or form private companies to take care of the jobs the government can't handle.... What comes, comes, but however hard it is we shall stand and fight it. It is our way, as it is our heritage.

We are the Sons of Liberty. We have nothing to fear. When death comes for us, we will pass into that world of which so much has been written, where there is no fear but love and all love is without pain. If we have done our duty, we will leave behind us those we have bred or trained in the ways of America. They will take up our cause and bury our bones, and our names will be their warcry.

There are names like that written in gold, below. The men they trained will give them voice. They are warriors, heroes, and riders of bulls. Perhaps there is a name like that on your lips as you read this: Washington's? Jackson's? Your father's? Another?

So what is there to fear? Live boldly. This is America, the home of the brave.

God give me the strength to finish as I began. I don't mind to die at any time: even today is not too soon. Only let me die in such a way that this younger me would not be ashamed.

No, Not Consistency!

The Pentagon is worried.

During military training sessions to address extremism in the ranks, some service members have challenged why the Pentagon is not treating the violence during racial injustice protests last summer as equal to the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

That the two events are viewed as equivalent by some troops has caught the Pentagon’s attention in its effort to educate service members that extremist views and activity — on either side of the political spectrum — go against the oath they took when they joined the military, the top enlisted leader told reporters on Thursday.

“This is coming from every echelon that we’re talking to,” said Ramón Colón-López, the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Possibly you should listen, if in fact every echelon is telling you the exact same thing. 

What, by the way, is "extremism," and why is it forbidden? The military has traditionally permitted extreme pacifists to serve, even accommodating them by finding nonviolent forms of service for them to perform. What exactly is the philosophical principle at work here? Thou shalt not depart from commonly held opinions... well, thou might depart X far, but not X+1? Where is the X? What is the 1? 

Exceptions and Rules

LTC(R) Samantha Nerove has an impressive record, as she explains in her recent article for The Federalist.

I couldn’t just barely meet the standards, because that would have given them ammunition to use against me. I had to crush the standards. And I did. I could easily do 100 push-ups in two minutes; got maximum scores on land navigation tests and always sprinted the entire course; and aced 12-mile road marches carrying 55-pound rucksacks (10 pounds more than the requirement). I weighed 120 pounds.

Now I know Sam, so I believe every word of that. What I think, though, is that she makes a great case for accepting her as an exception to an ordinary rule against women in the combat arms. All rules need exceptions, for the same reason that logical proofs don't really apply to physical things. There are going to be exceptional cases, and the rules should be weak enough to make room for things to be what they are.

That said, the ordinary situation is not that women of 120 pounds can or do crush military standards. The Army is having to redesign its combat fitness test because 65% of female soldiers fail it. And those are not recruits, but serving soldiers who have already been subject to the rigors of military discipline for some time.

There are a very few combat arms positions where women are really needed, such as for interoperations with male special operators who need to blend in to a mixed population rather than appearing as a military-aged-male unit. There are some similar positions, especially in medial units and civil affairs, where women can make a big difference in terms of the ability to move in female areas of households especially in the Islamic world. The exceptional cases could fill those out nicely.

For the vast majority of cases, however, it would be wise to adhere to the rule. Pass the test, or give way to someone who can. The Samanthas of the world will continue to crush whatever standards you put in their way, because it's very important to them to do that. They'll excel, and room should be made for them to excel. But the Army isn't made up of only exceptional individuals; like any sufficiently large organization, most of the members will be ordinary. Exceptions should be for the exceptional; a well-crafted fitness rule shouldn't be excepted for a general inability to meet it.

Plato's Parmenides V: The Tell

I've been trying to figure out how to approach the rest of the dialogue. This is where Parmenides is given the ability to speak most directly and plainly, and for himself. For that reason, I am disinclined to add a layer of summary or explication; maybe the best thing is to encounter it directly, with all that has been said before as support.

It's too long to quote, though, and probably will benefit from extended discussion. So let's try it this way: read it yourselves, encountering it directly. Ask any questions you have in the comments to this post. Then let's tackle it in three or four sessions next week.

Phil Sheridan Can Order What He Wants

In case any of you were curious about how the cavalry movie ends, it ends just this way.