Don't Walk "Curbside"
Every few years we see another round of stories about how progressive women really wish there was more of that chivalry stuff, whatever it might be. This year's iteration is from the New York Post, which interviews people who are similarly confused.
In a liberal city like New York, swimming with single women wishing they weren’t, one could assume Mark wouldn’t have a problem finding a mate. And while he dates and recently had a couple of short-lived relationships, Mark remains single. He’s trying to understand why.“I’m really open-minded and cool about gender stuff on dates, but I always feel like I’m walking on eggshells,” Mark told me. “If I pay for dinner, it signals I don’t value my date as my equal so I’m super casual about it all. If she wants to pay or split it or whatever, that’s fine with me.”I told Mark that, despite his best intentions, his egalitarian dating style could be the problem that’s holding him back. While some women balk at any hint of traditional male gender behavior, more lament the loss of chivalry. I’m one of them. I find it attractive when a man plans our first few dates and knowingly walks curbside when we’re together. It signals he wants to protect me from passing traffic or errant puddle splashes.“When I was a kid, my mom told me to always walk curbside, but I assumed my generation of women would think it’s too old-fashioned,” Mark told me. “Now, I’m really confused.”
The 'curbside' thing was a modification of an older walking custom that is more appropriate. During the early 20th century, men adopted this 'curbside' stance as a way of presenting themselves as shields from the inevitable puddle splashes when cars came along the muddy roads that the cities often still had. It was charming at the time, but no longer is appropriate. Modern American cities (at least) have reasonable drainage except in serious storms.
Rather, you should resume the ancient fashion of always walking on the right side, whichever way the curb is. This is to keep your swordarm free, in case you need to draw a weapon in defense of the lady. With spiking crime rates in cities across the country, this is of renewed importance. (Occasionally this might be reversed for the left-handed.)
Many now choose to arm themselves with handguns instead of blades, and these days quite a few women arm themselves too. Still, if you want to present yourself as the primary protector, prepare to protect her from the far more serious (and, these days, increasingly probable) threat of violence and crime.
Get 'em while you can
It probably will put you on a terrorist watch list, but if you still want to own a Lego U.S. Capitol set, better hurry. Amazon claims the manufacturer has discontinued the item, and the price just hit the roof like it was a Dr. Seuss book.
The on/off switch
After the 2020 election, a tweet that caught my eye said something like, "I don't know for sure that the election was stolen, but I know they couldn't have made it look any dirtier if they'd tried." This thread makes the same point at greater length, and closely approximates my own views. We're in a new place.
This is profoundly disorienting. Many [election skeptics] don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true.
... They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence.
... The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process.
Open Range
More on the Imagination and Sexuality
AVI posted a piece yesterday that references a discussion we had here a couple of weeks ago. The issue, which we are discussing in terms of the new digital 'reality' that the young occupy, is that sex that is disembodied becomes alienating.
Today, while trying to find an old discussion of Open Range that I wrote years ago, I came across a very similar problem in Hegel's work from the 19th century.
The claim begins in paragraph 448, on the mental faculty of attention. The issue of attention is that you are free to give it, or not; and therefore, if you are to have a passion, it is because you have chosen to give it your attention.But what is the thing to which you are giving your attention? It is an idea: and, therefore, it is your idea. After all, it exists in your mind, and the thoughts you have are your own. He offers an example:Thus we know, for example, that if anyone is able to form a clear picture to himself, say in a poem, of the feelings of joy or sorrow that are overwhelming him he rids himself of the thing that was oppressing his mind and thereby procures for himself relief or complete freedom. For although by contemplating the many aspects of his feelings he seems to increase their power over him, yet he does in fact dimnish this power by making his feelings into something confronting him, something that becomes external to him. Goethe, for instance, particularly in his Werther, brougth himself relief while subjecting the readers of this this romance to the power of feeling.The book he mentions, The Sorrows of Young Werther, sparked a wave of suicides across Europe. The title character is a suicide, killing himself over losing his love.Why was his love worth dying over, though? She was an idea -- that is to say, she was not just a girl, with all the problems any individual girl might have. She was an ideal girl: it was his mind which had made her an ideal that was worth dying over.We remember here our discussion around Chaucer's A Knight's Tale, and the objection raised by female readers that the young knights didn't know -- and therefore could not love -- the lady at all. Hegel seems entirely subject to that line of attack.
Here we have exactly the problem that the digital youth are running into, yet in an embodied reality that ought to prevent it. The problem is that they leave the realm of the physical -- where sex is straightforward -- for the imaginary. Being free of the digital world, their imagination is at least tied to their idea of a being they first encountered as a physical being. In chasing after their own idea rather than the actual girl, though, they lose both the girl and their will to live. Apparently this was common enough to have sparked 'a wave of suicides across Europe' when the works of imagination were novels rather than digital pornography.
At the time I wrote the discussion of Hegel I was still trying to decide if he was on to something, as the ideal gives us aspiration. I am now ready to pronounce upon that. The ideal can point the way to perfection only in the way that art can perfect nature (as Aristotle says). It must begin with what is given by nature, and only seek to perfect what nature has not made perfect.
Hegel's concept is that the physical and the ideal only appear to be different, and in fact all physical things will turn out to be ideas in a higher mind to which we are striving to return -- God, in a word. Even if you are inclined to that model, the nature of the physical things should still be prioritized as already extant in the higher mind, whereas your own imaginations are still the work of your still-lower mind.
Yet even that kind of perfecting is highly problematic when the object of the imagination is someone else and not yourself. You might look at yourself and draft ideas for more perfectly achieving the highest expression of your nature; that is virtue. You might have similar ideas about how someone else could more perfectly achieve their nature: that may not be virtuous, but domineering. A parent might rightly try to help their child in places, but even there a child who does better by being pushed is not necessarily developing the internal drive to perfect themselves. A girl who does not quite live up to your ideal of love and beauty may not really be any of your business at all, and is certainly not obligated to try to attain your ideal for her (which she cannot even access, since it is only in your imagination and she has no access to that).
It seems like this philosophical error has led to a lot of human misery over the centuries. The digital has made it worse by making the idealized/imaginary seem more real and more immediate, and by removing the helpful influence of natural things like pheromones and embodied reality. For Hegel, this should have been an improvement, another step towards the realization that the ideal is actually real. Waves of suicides -- then and now -- strongly suggest that it is not. You cannot think your way to God. You cannot even think your way to love.
Dominique, notre père, combattit les albigeois
Were any of you Singing Nun fans? That line in an otherwise cheerful ditty always made me think of Albigensians locked up in a church and burned.
À l'époque où Jean Sans Terre
D'angleterre était le roi
Dominique, notre père, combattit les albigeois
Trying again: Fuller Brush Man
Babylon Bee has good suggestions for how to get rid of the Vaccine Evangelist who comes to your door.
I found decades ago that a polite and painless way of getting rid of anyone at my front door was to smile pleasantly and explain that I don't discuss [whatever] with people I don't know well. It goes along with Miss Manners's advice to answer impertinent questions with "How soon do you need to know?"
* I have no idea how Blogger could have let me sign in as Grim . . . ?
In Praise of James Jackson
Well known to long-time readers of the Hall is James Jackson, hero of the Revolution and even more heroic in the early American era. Sadly he is not well known outside of students of Georgia's history, but his example is one that we could very much use today as we try to contest corporate domination of what was meant to be a government of, by, and for the people.
Human Events has just kindly published a few thousand words on the subject. Hopefully James Jackson's name and example may become better known to the people of our United States.
"What Happened to You?"
Andrew Sullivan is often asked this question, he says, but would like to reverse the polarity.
The CRT debate is just the latest squall in a tempest brewing and building for five years or so. And, yes, some of the liberal critiques of a Fox News hyped campaign are well taken. Is this a wedge issue for the GOP? Of course it is. Are they using the term “critical race theory” as a cynical, marketing boogeyman? Of course they are. Are some dog whistles involved? A few. Are crude bans on public servants’ speech dangerous? Absolutely. Do many of the alarmists know who Derrick Bell was? Of course not.
But does that mean there isn’t a real issue here? Of course it doesn’t.
Take a big step back. Observe what has happened in our discourse since around 2015. Forget CRT for a moment and ask yourself: is nothing going on here but Republican propaganda and guile? Can you not see that the Republicans may be acting, but they are also reacting — reacting against something that is right in front of our noses?
What is it? It is, I’d argue, the sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites. It has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation. It is, in essence, an ongoing moral panic against the specter of “white supremacy,” which is now bizarrely regarded as an accurate description of the largest, freest, most successful multiracial democracy in human history.
[Aside: Derrick Bell was the guy who founded what is most properly called CRT (although the demands to know what 'is really CRT' are a motte-and-bailey tactic). His most famous work isn't merely theoretical, it's actually fantastic -- not in the sense of being excellent, but in the sense of being a made-up fantasy story.]
Sullivan goes on to diagnose the issue as the transformation of the elite ideas of 'social justice' into a rejection of liberalism -- not just 'whiteness' or America or the Founding, but a rejection of the whole 300-year liberal project as itself a form of racism and oppression. That, he says, has big consequences in a nation that was founded precisely to pursue those classical liberal principles.
He doesn't want to go so far as supporting Republicans, of course, who are obviously "a nihilist cult" (and who are ironically, for nihilists, devout believers in God and country). He'd like some fellow Democrats to maybe step back from the pit, is all. But at least he's seeing the pit, recognizing a descent into the abyss.
Fake News Today
BB: "To Combat Transwoman Dominance Of Women's Sports, Olympics Adds Competitive Child Birthing."
That's a great idea, really.
Pattern Recognition
The question doesn’t mince words. Straight out, people were asked: “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The media ‘are truly the enemy of the people?'”
Thirty-four percent strongly agreed, 24 percent somewhat agreed, 13 percent somewhat disagreed, and 23 percent strongly disagreed.
Allow me to reframe this for emphasis…
When voters were asked if the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” only 23 percent strongly disagreed.
The plurality strongly agrees; the majority of 58% agrees at least somewhat.
I think of the way in which journalists were hotly opposed to Ronald Reagan, and compare and contrast that to how things have become since Obama's term.
Obama's people didn't respect journalists at all -- recall his speech dude Ben Rhodes describing journalists as children who "literally know nothing" -- but they did enjoy almost complete submission from the press. In hindsight this was surely because of the proto-woke clarity that Barack Obama could not be criticized without one becoming subject to claims of racism that would be enforced by the whole social class of which journalists were a part.
It got much worse under Trump. As Angelo Codevilla points out -- in an excellent piece that questions Trump's worth as a future leader, and identifies his core failures -- Trump provoked a 'ruling class' consciousness to emerge. Journalists consider themselves to be a part of that class, though they are now even more obviously its abject servants than they were during the Obama administration. I note that the Codevilla essay is carried at no less than American Greatness, a journal whose very name was inspired by Trump's chief slogan. It is healthy to see criticism of the man there; indeed, it is exactly the kind of thing that a healthy journalism does (and ought to refute the pretense that Trump's popularity is the kind of cult of personality sometimes associated with fascism).
It is exactly that kind of criticism that is gone in the current period. The Biden administration finds that journalists are its allies, propping up his regime as hard as they can. They are doing so clearly out of service to this new class consciousness; they are of and for that class.
What is that class of and for? To say whether they are truly the enemies of the people, you'd need to answer that question. The top of the class is composed of alumni of a particular consulting firm, The Intercept reports: WestExec Advisors, founded in 2017 by Obama alumni, has provided 15 top officials including the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence. A look at the Secretary of State's work between the Obama and Trump administrations is even more telling about what they are of and for: he was paid as a consultant by "AT&T, defense contractor Boeing, shipping magnate FedEx, and the media company Discovery as a WestExec founding partner. He worked for Big Tech pillars Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Uber. He helped niche companies like speakers bureau GLG, art seller Sotheby’s, and biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. Blinken also lists clients that are global investment firms and asset managers, like Blackstone, Lazard, Royal Bank of Canada, and the multinational conglomerate SoftBank[,]" The new DNI had "clients like Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Open Philanthropy," the latter being an NGO with ties to Facebook, whose NGOs also paid for all that 'election fortification' in swing states and counties. The journalists come from a lower tier of the same institutions -- elite colleges, international corporations, and NGOs aimed at transforming America.
The ideology they espouse is the now-fully-formed wokeness, which is deeply hostile to America and to all of its traditions. This is true not only of the journalist servant class, but of the class of public sector unions -- especially teachers, for whom wokeness in the form of CRT is the lens through which all subjects must be taught. The military leadership is committed to it; the intelligence agencies are also (as you should expect, say our Marxists, because the CIA has been dividing other nations along race and ethnic lines for decades).
One might well say that they are, then, for something that is against America -- at least as America was understood even in Reagan's time, even in Clinton's. They are of a class rather than the people writ large. It is a class that intends to rule and dominate the rest of the people, and thinks of itself as separate from and better than the ordinary people of the country.
So it appears the majority is right, more or less. One can quibble about tone, but not substance.
The Fuller Brush Man
Babylon Bee has good suggestions for how to get rid of the Vaccine Evangelist who comes to your door.
I found decades ago that a polite and painless way of getting rid of anyone at my front door was to smile pleasantly and explain that I don't discuss [whatever] with people I don't know well. It goes along with Miss Manners's advice to answer impertinent questions with "How soon do you need to know?"
More tales from the floodplain
A sliver of the Texan99 intermittent pond at flood stage. In a very dry year that's prairie all the way across. The surface area right now is probably 3 acres, but it's shallow at this end. That's good, because the gators like to stay in the deeper part off the left, near the road.
The sidewalk in the lower right corner adjoins our downstairs porch at ground level; this picture was taken from the upstairs porch on the living-floor level. Because the perspective is flattened, you can't see that the water would have to rise another foot or two to hit the sidewalk. Even with another 3+ inches last night, the pond level seems stable. Rain is in the forecast for another couple of days, but maybe not as extreme as it has been all this week.
Although my laptop arrived apparently unscathed on Tuesday, it did develop an alarming internal clicking noise after some lightning yesterday. It's old enough to be out of warranty and beyond the maximum coverage of Apple's tech support contract, so I decided to take the plunge and order a new one. Apple amused me by promising delivery today, a prospect I declined to take seriously, but we'll see! Roads are closed all over the coastal region today. Nevertheless, the trucks can drive through some pretty high water, so as long as the sorting facilities are operating, they may work miracles, depending on where the laptop is coming from. I was actually surprised not to be told there would be a long wait on delivery, as I'd been hearing that anything with a chip in it was a problem. Must have been in stock somewhere.
Our septic field is underwater, never an ideal condition, but it's so situated that it doesn't drain either to the house or to the pond, and it probably will be fine in a few days once the rain stops. Nothing really fazes a septic system as long as solids don't get into the tiny perforations in the leachfield pipes; I understand that if those get plugged up, you just abandon those pipes and lay in a new drainfield. This experience highlights the wisdom of the rules requiring so many feet of distance between the field and either the house or the pond. Septic tanks are more environmentally defensible than almost any municipal system, as long as you can ensure that, when flooded, they don't start draining into a public waterway.
Fatherless
I missed this when it was new in December, but it remains relevant. That fatherlessness is a root cause of all sorts of harm is well known; but this author, Mary Eberstadt, expands in a powerful way.
The explosive events of 2020 are but the latest eruption along a fault line running through our already unstable lives. That eruption exposes the threefold crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and patria, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.
This unified theory of Fatherlessness is more useful than the one that focused on the individual human father alone.
From First Things, which in its current print edition has an interesting piece on demons. The Grey Mouser would approve of such attention to demonology.
High water
We've had almost 17 inches of rain in the last 2-3 days. We're very flat and coastal, so the good news is that the water rises slowly and can't carry anyone away, but the bad news is that it simply rises and stays there a long time, because there's not much of a gradient for it to drain off onto. Luckily we're not dealing with a storm surge.
There are a couple of acres of pond next to our house. The pond level seems to be just about topped off, as there's reasonable drainage across our road through a ditch that eventually empties into the nearest bay. The culvert at the road gets maxxed out if the rain comes down too intensely, as it has been doing--that incredible tropical downpour that seems like buckets emptying over your head--but the worst we've had to deal with is water deep enough to accommodate fish over our driveway. Our house is up on stilts; even the ground floor, which is a garage, appears to be in no danger of taking on water. I wish I could say the same for all of the homes in the county. We have homes set at elevations not more than a few feet above sea level. My foundation is at 17 feet, which is like a mountain around here, and then our living areas are on stilts a full floor above that.
There are fish and turtle and alligators and water birds all over the streets and ditches.
Midnight Basketball for the Sedentary Generation
The NYPD has a hot new idea to lower spiking crime rates: traveling video game trailers.
Transportation Difficulties
So the other day the Ford's engine suddenly lost power, and the speedometer stopped working. I nursed it back home and researched the problem. It could be several things. but is probably that the onboard computer went out. I can put in a new one (or maybe even one out of a junkyard) and reprogram it, I learned, with a laptop-linked FORScan system. So I went to town in my Jeep to get one.
On the way to town, the Jeep's clutch suddenly blew out. Probably just a hydraulic line, but it couldn't shift gears and was quickly unable to continue. So I had it towed to a shop for repairs, arranged a ride home, and now have two vehicles down.
Of course I have motorcycles, so I'm not stranded. Still, after the holiday's quiet I suddenly find myself thrust back into the world of difficulties. It is what it is.
No service
I'm slowly learning to use an iPad instead of a laptop, but it ain't easy. I foolishly left my laptop behind in my hotel last Thursday at the end of a trip to South Padre for required annual Commissioner training hours. I spent the first day and a half trying to get movement out of somnolent hotel employees who don't seem quite to grasp the potential for tips--it's safer to live on salary and go by the book. When I finally got my laptop into the hands of FedEx Friday afternoon, the fun really started. It was supposed to go by overnight, guaranteed delivery by 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, but for some reason they put it on a plane to Memphis, where it sat for many hours. Then it went to Ft. Worth, then to San Antonio early Sunday morning. The holiday weekend shut it all down, so there it remains. In theory it will go to Corpus Christi tomorrow morning (Tuesday) and be trucked out to my house sometime later. All this for a four-hour drive from South Texas to Rockport.
I'm old enough to remember when FedEx gave pretty good service. I think I might actually have done better with the U.S. mail on this one.
Independence Day Images
The Veterans' Exempt flag is hard to hang because the canton needs to go the same way as it would on an American flag, but that puts it out of order with all the other flags. The American flag is hung at its own right, with its canton on its own right.
David Mann, 1990 Centerfold 
Reprise in Full
Originally from 2015, but worth reposting this year.
THE SPIRIT OF REBELLION
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, Magna 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:
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.
Today we celebrate men who fought underneath the American flag, but we celebrate them with the certain knowledge that the defiance -- the spirit of rebellion against any authority that transgresses its due and proper limits -- that the defiance of tyranny is the real thing to be celebrated. It is not the accidents but the essence of the American revolution that deserves our devotion.
That goes for this and for all administrations, all branches of government, all foreign tyrants and all wicked powers.
It may seem as if Americans are not still made of that stuff. The flag I started with is the flag of the old Veterans Exempt, a militia that fought in the War of 1812 even though it was made up of veterans of the American Revolution who were too old to be drafted. The last two images are from contemporary veterans' groups. I've seen each of them posted online in the last few days.
The right people should rejoice. The wrong should beware. You know who you are. You know where you stand.
Happy Independence Day.
Beware Old Glory
People might think you're a Republican or something.
Only fools yield symbols as powerful as that to their enemies. That point is obvious enough that even the NYT is getting it.
At its 1777 inception, the flag’s very design signified unity, the joining of the 13 colonies, said John R. Vile, a professor of political science and a dean at Middle Tennessee State University.Politicizing the American flag is thus a perversion of its original intent, according to Professor Vile, who is also the author of “The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes In U.S. History, Culture and Law.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”
So don't.
Standard American
The band is new to me, but they've got a respectable name: "Gunnar and the Grizzly Boys."
What interests me about this song is not that it valorizes the usual kinds of Americans -- truck drivers, firefighters, blue collar mechanics, veterans, etc. -- but that it valorizes older men. The band is young, but everyone they portray as their models are at least middle aged. Vietnam Veterans are in their 70s now.
That is very sensible and healthy, but it's out of order with our society as it has been really since the Vietnam Veterans were young. How does a young man learn how to be a good man? Naturally, they should look to the old men who were.
Boys Having Fun
You've all heard this song a million times, as have I. That said, the video they apparently filmed back when they were first performing it is new to me. The first nearly two minutes isn't that interesting -- just performance of the piece -- but after that you get some great footage.
Riding motorcycles! Jumping motorcycles! Wheelies! Riding horses! Fast cars! Blowguns! The American flag!
Pretty good entry to the Fourth of July weekend.
A Mousetrap in the Twenty-First Century
The invention of the mousetrap does not date from our days; as soon as societies, in forming, had invented any kind of police, that police invented mousetraps.
As perhaps our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is a mousetrap.
When in a house, of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret. Four or five men are placed in ambuscade in the first room. The door is opened to all who knock. It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the HABITUES of the establishment. And that is a mousetrap.
The apartment of M. Bonacieux, then, became a mousetrap; and whoever appeared there was taken and interrogated by the cardinal’s people. It must be observed that as a separate passage led to the first floor, in which d’Artagnan lodged, those who called on him were exempted from this detention.
-Alexander Dumas, Père, The Three Musketeers
Catholic Churches Burning in Canada
A rash of church burnings in Canada continues with the destruction of another church in Edmonton.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, previously told CBC News there are "mixed emotions" about the Catholic Church among Penticton Indian Band members.Phillip said some members of the community have "an intense hatred for the Catholic Church in regard to the residential school experience."
What they're talking about is the recent discovery of 751 graves of children located at government-funded boarding schools, which were largely staffed by nuns and priests. The story is being told in Canada (and in the United States in certain circles) that this was a kind of Catholic colonialism and genocide against Native Americans.
“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on a First Nation people,” said Chief Bobby Cameron, of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial federation of Indigenous groups. “The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous,” he said.... A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2008 to investigate the residential schools, called the practice “cultural genocide.”
However, undermining that narrative is the fact that there is an exactly parallel story in Ireland. There, the issue is just said to be that there were high levels of child mortality in the early 20th century.
The discovery confirms decades of suspicions that the vast majority of children who died at the home were interred on the site in unmarked graves, a common practice at such Catholic-run facilities amid high child mortality rates in early 20th-century Ireland.
Naturally, the Biden administration is rushing to investigate American-based schools from the same period to see if any more bodies can be found. Expect this to be a productive field of inquiry since it hits all the right notes: anti-American, anti-Catholic/Christian, with just the right tone of oppression, allegations of racism, and colonialism.
UPDATE: Another reason this narrative has legs: the Chinese government is pushing it as a hedge against its own current practice of actual genocide against the Uighur and cultural genocide against the Tibetans.
Excess Deaths Among the Young
A subject we've discussed occasionally is the topic of a Bloomberg article.
Musical Sophistication
Recently under discussion, here are some examples from the 1930s and 1940s of music that is more complex than what you are likely to hear today.
It might be difficult to say if these are more or less sophisticated than the medieval styles; that probably requires a lot of theoretical framework that I do not have in place. If long-time commenter Piercello happens to be around, he can perhaps provide some of that: it is in his area of expertise.
FBI Violating Constitutional Rights of "Domestic Extremists" Since Election
Trump was still president when they started routinely violating the Constitution in pursuit of his supporters.
[T]he FBI has continued to perform warrantless searches through the NSA's most sensitive databases for routine criminal investigations, despite being told by a federal judge in 2018 and 2019 that such a use was an unconstitutional breach of privacy.The FBI focused many of its warrantless searches - commonly referred to as backdoor queries - on suspected 'far-right' domestic terrorists, The Daily Beast reported.It's unclear from the heavily-redacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court report whether the FBI uncovered any criminal extremist behavior or made any arrests resulting from the searches.
UPDATE: Microsoft executive testifies that they provide clandestine surveillance of Americans to the FBI without a warrant thousands of times a year.
The Ride
Asheville was perfectly pleasant today. I saw three cops, or one and a half percent of the remaining force, all hanging out together near downtown.
But man, what a ride today.
That was from the way home. I’d have taken a photo on the way in, but it would have just looked like the inside of a cloud.
Crime and its Accidents
Apparently the huge spikes in crime are starting to worry some folks. Not because of the suffering associated with the crime; because of the politics.
I'm going to Asheville tomorrow, where fully a third of the police department has resigned. Asheville is currently twice as dangerous as the national rate, making it now one of the more dangerous cities nationwide. There is beginning to be some comment among the politicians there too.
Council members also heard a presentation from APD Chief David Zack regarding various categories of crime in the city. He noted that Asheville’s number of violent crimes, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, was about 45% higher in 2020 than in 2011.
Am I worried about riding into Asheville? Of course I am not. These will step widely around me. It is not the strong who suffer from increases in aggravated assault, robbery, or rape. The traffic is more dangerous to me than the criminals.
But I also have only one vote, and thus my opinion can be disregarded by the powerful. Those who live in fear have many votes, provided that elections can be returned to a ground where the votes of the people really matter.
Bardcore
A style of remixed music of which I've just become aware is "Bardcore," a playful attempt to re-imagine contemporary songs in a medieval style. All are limited by the fact that contemporary music is not as sophisticated as medieval music actually was; but they do have the advantage of being played on beautiful acoustic instruments and, if sung, sung by people who actually know how to sing.
You'll find a lot more if you follow this first link to YouTube. Many of them are of truly contemporary pop music, which is too terrible to sample. I'm going to pick one where the original is actually at least a little interesting. Here's a Bardcore version of an Iron Maiden tune.
Here is Iron Maiden's original.
And here, just to compare, is a random selection of medieval music. This isn't even a fair introduction; there are whole genres of this stuff, from polyphony and chant to chansons and ballads. This is a fun selection of instrumentals similar to what the Bardcore kids are trying to imitate.
UPDATE: A piece from 2020.
Honesty from the Washington Post
Amid the constant gaslighting, how refreshing to see a fully honest fact check.
In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare war. But there is another element of that clause that might seem strange to modern ears — Congress also had the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” What’s that? These were special waivers that allowed private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it. The “letter of marque” allowed a warship to cross into another country’s territory to take a ship, while a “letter of reprisal” gave authorization to bring the ship back to the home port of the capturer.
Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle.
A Generation Lost in Latin America
Deep into the second year of the pandemic, Latin America is facing an education crisis. It has suffered the longest school shutdowns of any region in the world.... Millions of children in Latin America may have already left the school system, the World Bank estimates. In Mexico, 1.8 million children and young people abandoned their educations this school year because of the pandemic or economic hardship, according to the national statistics agency.
Ecuador lost an estimated 90,000 primary and secondary school students. Peru says it lost 170,000. And officials worry that the real losses are far higher because countless children, like Maicol, are technically still enrolled but struggling to hang on. More than five million children in Brazil have had no access to education during the pandemic, a level not seen in more than 20 years, Unicef says.
As the article points out, Latin America has for some reason been hit especially hard by the pandemic; with less than 10% of the world's population, it has 30+% of the deaths. Some of that is doubtless a record-keeping issue; statistics from China are assuredly unreliable, as all official information from China. Still, it must be informing the discussion about the wisdom of lockdowns.
Nevertheless the cost is exceedingly high. In addition to the increases of poverty and even starvation at the margins, millions of children are losing their chance to receive the kind of basic education that would give them a chance. Their children and grandchildren will suffer for decades from what has been done in the last year or so.
Train as You Fight
The old ways are not forgotten:
"A Co 2/121 48th IBCT and the Canadian 48th Highlanders initiate an ambush with bagpipe"
Thunder in the Smokies
Maggie Valley. Not the greatest rally ever, but it’s good to see people getting back to life.
A beautiful Shovelhead, named after the distinctive Harley engine. The engine is cast iron, and it was the last one Harley made that you could tear all the way down at a campsite or in a hotel room with a tool bag. The downside was that you probably had to.
Mascots abound.
One of the Mad Max bikes.
We Could Use a Few Warrior Bishops...
Politics and the Digital: A Theory
Now this is a thesis worth discussing.
Theorists of technology are becoming the most significant sources of political ideas; theorists of politics are becoming incapable of understanding significant technological ideas.Unschooled in perceiving the development of digital technology for what it is, political leaders now frenetically throw around appeals to concepts—slogans, “values,” “ideals”—that have come unglued from the reality formed by our surrounding digital environment.... [These] destabilizing trends raise (significantly) two linked issues, one more abstract and one more particular. First, is the Western political tradition obsolete? Second, is America, because of its regime, worth the trouble of trying to preserve?
It's a longer argument, but if any of you are drawn into it I'd like to discuss it with you. Just to raise one point that he only briefly mentions, digital pornography seems to me to be at the back of this explosion of genders. In the digital world, and only there, these things can seem as if they have some reality: it might carry a kind of sense to say that one is a 'pansexual otherkin,' because as a search term that (and maybe only that) reliably hooks you up with content that floats your boat. The digital space creates its own reality, and people who live more or less exclusively in it can come to believe that reality is more meaningful than the physical one.
That kind of thing leads to a basic disruption of the categories of ordinary life in the physical world, especially when it passes into political organizing. Whereas it was once obvious that one is male or female -- indeed, one's physical body knows what it is and broadcasts it to everyone else via pheromones -- the departure from the physical reality into the digital one creates an alienation and detachment from the physical constraints.
Yet the digital identifiers don't carry meaning the way the embodied reality does.
Whiteness is evil, but deprogram the evil, and whiteness is empty—hollow, meaningless, obsolete. We already see the same experience at work with maleness: deprogram the evil that defines it, according to the vanguard Left, and what is left is a disgusting, disenchanted neuter. Take away fatherhood (patriarchy), priesthood (molestation), military or law enforcement service (racism), business leadership (capitalist greed), and what is left is a civilization of post-boys, autogynephilic, cripplingly awkward, knowingly purposeless....
This leads to a politics, but not one of equality as you might expect. Discovering all previously powerful categories to be empty in the new reality, you might think they would simply be jettisoned in favor of a kind of perfect equality: everyone is the same, they just have different tastes. As the article goes on to explore, that is not at all what is happening; perhaps, the author suggests, America can salvage what is becoming in the minds of our youth.
Federalist 46 on the Present Question
Do you need F-15s and nukes to move against the government, or might rifles do in a pinch? The 'blood of patriots and tyrants' bit that Joe Biden is rejecting is from Thomas Jefferson, so let's see what James Madison has to say.
The only refuge left for those who prophecy the downfall of the state governments, is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the states should for a sufficient period of time elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the states should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.
OK, well, Madison got that one wrong.
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the state governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield in the United States an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.
I've seen this argument floated as recently as this week. How many brigades can be fielded, given that it will take several per city? Having controlled the cities, how will you ensure the food and other logistics that would be required to sustain them will be coming from the countryside? Could you control the countryside instead with the relatively small number of troops under arms, even if they all chose to obey orders rather than revolt against tyranny?
Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Ah, yes. That's come up this week as well.
And it is not certain that with this aid alone, they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors.
Madison thinks it's not going to be close. Maybe some of that political prudence I've been suggesting to the government would be wise after all.
Buck Dancing
If you're not from the Appalachians, you may not know about Buck Dancing. Here's an old gentleman demonstrating.
Some Useful Outlets on the Right
A general problem facing people on the right who are concerned about the direction of the nation is that most of the power in media lies with their opponents. Even on the right, there is a sharp division; older once-powerful publications like National Review are not as vibrant as once. They still manage sharp criticisms, but their positive program is limited. Thus, I would like to lay out a few places where I think vibrant thought on the right is still occurring.
Human Events was once Reagan's favorite journal of conservative opinion. It has since ceased to publish a print edition, and changed hands a few times. The current leadership is young, daring, and willing to entertain ideas that are both radical and yet aimed at the best in the American tradition. They also have an aggressive editorial staff and process, which aims at ensuring quality of published pieces. That's unusual these days by itself.
American Greatness is more Trumpist (although VDH publishes there, providing some overlap with NR), but definitely worth following. Julie Kelly (mentioned below) is a voice worthy of attention. She is perhaps the only person who seems committed to fighting for the rights of those arrested regarding the January 6th incursion, initially a dubious proposition made worthy by the inexcusable government behavior in those cases.
I imagine the field has shifted from publications like these to podcasts, but as you all are aware, I hate podcasts. Useful suggestions welcome in the comments.
UPDATE: The Federalist is a good place too, more news oriented than the others but still analytical.
There Are No Rogue Gun Dealers
Having spent my adult life among the community, I can state with confidence that I've never met a licensed gun dealer who fits the Biden description. Statistics bear out that this is a non-issue.
A 2016 survey, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics under DOJ, of federal and state inmates found that the overwhelming majority of inmates who used a gun while committing their crimes didn't buy their weapon from a licensed dealer."Among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source," which includes flea markets and pawn shops, in addition to licensed gun dealers, Department of Justice statisticians noted in a 2019 analysis of that data. Roughly 7% obtained their guns directly from licensed dealers, the analysis noted."Of the approximate 7% that purchased their weapon through an FFL [federal firearms licensee], almost 100% of those sales were completed in compliance with the laws and regulations that govern the sale of a firearm, meaning at the time they purchased the firearm, they were most likely not prohibited from doing so[,]"
I suppose I'd rather they devoted their attention to this issue than others, however, since their renewed attention will produce no substantial changes.
UPDATE: Inconceivable!
Maoist Self-Criticism in US Federal Court
"My lawyer has given me names of books and movies to help me see what life is like for others in our country. I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
That passage is part book report, part white privilege mea culpa submitted to a federal court this month by Anna Morgan-Lloyd... 49-year-old grandmother of five... who has a clean criminal record[. She] pleaded guilty to one count of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building”—but not before she consented to undergo a reeducation exercise at the urging of her court-appointed lawyer....
Her attorney and the government seem pleased with Lloyd’s reformation. “Though she supported the past president in January, she totally accepts President Biden as the leader of our country,” Shaner wrote to the court. “She has worked hard to come to terms with what she believed before January 6th, 2021 and what she has learned since then.”
I suppose it is similar to the fake jailhouse conversions lots of prisoners claim to have experienced while awaiting sentencing. The analogy is not exact, of course; there is a substantial change between 'totally accepting the authority of God' and 'totally accepting the authority of Joe Biden.'
Shame on the government for engaging in this, and shame on the unworthy judge presiding over it.
UPDATE: Julie Kelly points out that, 'in the other America,' 50% of Portland riot charges have now been dismissed. Nobody's being asked to read defenses of America or capitalism.
This is a perversion of the idea of equality under the law, but it is also a perversion of the whole idea of prosecution of violations of the law. Anti-patriots who wish to destroy America are let to go free; patriots are forced to recant their patriotism in order to receive reduced sentences. The government has become its own enemy.
Orwell and Diversity
Judicial Watch announced today that it received 111 pages of records from Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts which confirm the use of “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan.
Emphasis added.
An Enigma Haunts America
Whatever could be behind this mysterious surge in murderous crime, which is striking Democrat-controlled cities all across America? City governments are at a loss. We may never know what is causing this inexplicable thing.
An Insight on Political Violence
This post from Insty tonight is three years old, but the intervening three years have confirmed this insight.
A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch.
We've seen that rheostat function at work over the last year. BLM/Antifa have gone all the way to setting Federal buildings on fire and burning police stations, sometimes lowering to marches that cut off interstates, sometimes raising to beating people in the streets (or even murder).
People on the right are still thinking we'll hold some forensic audits, after which we'll have the evidence to pursue a new round of court cases and legislative actions, maybe some elections in 2022 or 2024. Whereas BLM and Antifa enjoy widespread support on the left, the much-smaller right-leaning groups like the Proud Boys are broadly disdained as drunken yahoos rather than ideological allies.
The switch has still not been flipped. The political right is communitarian. If it flips the switch, it'll flip it all together at once. Church groups and communities, not tiny activist groups, will be the mechanisms. State governments will start lining up with it because, well, what choice would they have?
That's what keeps them up at night, I guess. There's still time, though, for the government to discover a workable prudence that could let us stumble through all this peacefully. Let those audits happen. Let the court cases occur. Legislative processes are functioning even now. Give it time, government. If you don't force the issue through foolish action, in time it will work itself out.
A Jacksonian Party
Here is something I wrote in 2004, a very long time ago. I am less sanguine now than once about our ability to reform terror states -- almost successful in Iraq, but not; never close to successful in Afghanistan. Otherwise, I still think the ideas are basically sound.
If it comes to that, I will start a new party myself--I think we will call ourselves the Jacksonian Party. I mean, of course, James Jackson, and therefore a Jeffersonian party; but people who like Andrew Jackson will be welcome too. It's a big tent for American Classical Liberals, and ought to be able to pull from Republicans as well as Democrats. It will be founded on the real, and honorable, left of American culture: Jefferson's vision, which James Jackson shared, and for which he fought so valiantly.It is that left which does not merely idolize the poor, but upholds them and finds ways to make them powerful. The support of unions is one way. Another is by supporting their right to bear arms, so that they do not rely upon a distant and disinterested state for their personal security or that of their families. Even in the city, the state is distant when the bandit is already in your home. Furthermore, and more importantly, an armed citizen is not merely more independent of the state. He is personally capable of defending the state, the lawful order, and the common peace, wherever he goes. Whether it is felons or terrorists who threaten that order and that peace, he is ready. The disarmed citizen is a ward of the state. The Armed citizen is its guardian. The state is his to uphold.Another matter: we need a renewed focus on the rights and duties of the citizen, so that the poor will understand the power they already have by statute, but have forgotten how to wield. Consider jury nullification. Special interests may write the laws, but we have every right to make exceptions. The powerful and the rich do not sit in judgement over us: we judge ourselves.Another matter: the defense and support of small businesses, who are the "Yeoman Farmers" of the city. No man is freer than he who employs himself, whether it is the owner of his own land, or the owner of his own shop. If we are going to fiddle with tax policy, let's fiddle with it in a way that encourages and supports small businesses and farmers.Another matter: education culture. Private-sector unions are a defense for the poor, but public-sector unions are the enemy of everyone outside themselves. Private-sector unions encourage profit sharing, but there is no profit in the public sector--there is only tax money, which must be drawn from the poor as from the rich, and which is drawn at the point of a gun. Restraining public spending is a civil rights issue. The less money you must send to the government, the more you can use to build your own personal capital, and pull yourself up from poverty.On the same topic, educators should themselves be educated. This should be a real education on the topic they intend to teach, not an education in "educational theory." No one needs that. By the time they are prepared to teach, they have had the most practical education in educating--they have attended twelve years of public school, four years of college, and have at some point had the practical apprenticeship of being an teacher's aide and a student teacher. They have seen education done for more than a decade, have a number of working models in mind, and have practiced the art themselves. What they need is to know their subject matter. We need historians teaching History, and mathematicians teaching math. A large majority of the public is being educated by people whose knowledge of a given subject is no greater than the textbooks they have been assigned. They can't enlarge upon the text, and they can't tell the students when the text goes wrong.In foreign policy: we should recognize that international terrorist organizations actually are subject to an existing international law: the law of the sea. Precisely like the roving bands of brigands and pirates of the 1600s and 1700s, they are organized against civilization, travel through multiple jurisdictions and through lawless areas alike. They are not combatants of any state, and are protected therefore by neither the Geneva Conventions nor the rules of war. Like pirates, they are subject to summary execution by the officers of any nation that comes into control of them; or by interrogation and some more merciful response, if we prefer and at our discretion. This brutality on the part of civilized men is justified for the exact reason it was justified of old: the threat these bands pose to the transportation infrastructure is a dagger at the heart of civilization. We cannot maintain our cities, our populations, our ability to combat disease or famine, or our relative freedom from total war over resources, without the massive but fragile transportation capacity we have developed.This is not idle or of small importance. A small increase in transport costs kills at the margins--for example, aid to Africa is reduced as it is more expensive to transport, but resources are fixed. A large increase threatens civilization itself. Our cities do not contain enough food to feed the populace for more than about three days. That is no problem; more food is coming. But if the ability to transport that food is severely harmed--starvation, and in many regions of the world, disease. A serious disruption could unleash a resource war by nations that see mass starvation if they don't capture food, oil, and other needful things. Such a disruption is possible if these terror groups continue their infiltration of the West, and come into possession of WMD.For that reason, the reform of terror-sponsor states is paramount. So is the reform of failed states that are not necessarily terror-sponsors, but where terrorists are able to travel freely due to bribes of local officials or through outright lawlessness. So long as we can do so while maintaining an all-volunteer force, the United States ought to feel free to act on these places one by one. This has the practical matter, for a Jacksonian party, of bringing liberty and strength to the poor and unfree abroad exactly as we wish to do at home.There are other matters, but this is enough for now.
After another nearly two decades of public education, it may be that there are no longer enough Americans who have any idea what the old values were -- let alone who value them. Yet that does not make those values wrong. It simply reinforces what we already know, i.e., our education systems have failed this country comprehensively.
She Coulda Been a Contender
Meet Kuinini ‘Nini’ Manumua, the woman who spent her young life training to go to the Olympics and would have done so this year except she was replaced by a transgender athlete from New Zealand. Nini was competing for Tonga this year, although she has competed for the USA in earlier youth sports having dual nationality.
Doubtless there's some adjustment for age, but setting the female lifting category to 18-23, I still rate better than 99.99% 'of lifters weighing 240 pounds,' which relatively few women do with a high muscle/fat ratio. That's got to be close to the Olympic level (whereas 98% simply is not, and the best lifters outweigh me by quite a bit anyway).
I too might be able to compete in the Olympics in the squat event, if only I identified as female. Here's the comparison changing out only male vs. female lifts.
Doubtless there's some adjustment for age, but setting the female lifting category to 18-23, I still rate better than 99.99% 'of lifters weighing 240 pounds,' which relatively few women do with a high muscle/fat ratio. That's got to be close to the Olympic level (whereas 98% simply is not, and the best lifters outweigh me by quite a bit anyway).
Better luck in four years. Maybe by then the madness will have passed, and the young lady will still only be 25.
UPDATE: Shows you what I know about the Olympics, which have never interested me. Apparently they don't do the squat at the Olympics. Who'd have thought you'd leave out the most basic strength lift from competition? But it's not a thing.
Here are some women who are squatting at the top of the game, and as I suspected, the top of the game is in the 600-700 pound range. That's absolutely admirable and they work hard to get there, but the top male range is hundreds of pounds heavier. Either let's throw out the sex/gender divisions once and for all, and let the best man win; or let's keep the women's division for women, who are physically quite different.
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