Lies & Statistics

The Surgeon General of the United States has issued another attempt to distort the public's understanding on the danger of firearms. FPC dismantles it.

Essentially, in order to achieve the desired result -- "firearms are the leading cause of death for children" -- the government (a) included adults, both 18 and even 19 years old, and (b) excluded children who had not reached their first birthday. Including the latter pushes firearms way down the list even with the inclusion of the adults as "children," because there are several causes of death for infants that exceed the whole total for firearms. 

Likewise, the majority of these firearm deaths are gang members shooting each other with illegal weapons. That doesn't really crop up with true "children," but begins in the teenage years. Keeping the lights on for 18 and even 19 year-olds allows them to finally cobble together enough deaths to (barely) exceed automobile accidents. 

Leaving out the fact that most of these deaths are with firearms that are already illegal also tints the imagery towards their desired goal of more gun control; in fact, the illegality of the weapons shows that gun control has already failed. Enforcing the existing laws would suffice, if they could manage to do that. If they can't even manage to do that, what good are new laws going to be? 

Well, those laws would disarm ordinary people -- and that, as always, is the real goal of all these lies and statistics. 

Ancient Cave Signs

Constant Striving

Small Numbers

The Washington Post notes that the US Postal Service is helping the government spy on your mail.

Postal inspectors say they fulfill such requests only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.

Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved, according to the data. Postal inspectors recorded more than 312,000 letters and packages between 2015 and 2023, the records show.

I yield to none in my disapproval of government spying on its own citizens. Nevertheless, these figures are shocking mostly because they're tiny. There are 335,000,000 Americans, more or less.  They found 60,000 requests over 8 years. Check my math, but I make that approximately 0.00223%. 

All things considered, that's remarkably restrained given that the Postal Service basically never turns them down when they ask. Of course, it could be that they don't often bother to ask because people don't often plan crimes by mail (though perhaps any prospective criminals among you should, given their relative inattention!). 

On the other hand, your mail would be a reliable indicator if you were "in the military, or religious." Apparently that's a matter of concern these days.

High Costs of War

 An excellent point by Luttwak (h/t Instapundit).

Today, however, with the average fertility of women across Europe less than two and still falling — the EU average was 1.46 in 2022 — there are no spare children.

The extreme case here is China, with its fertility rate of 1.1. President Xi is, by all accounts, a bellicose man who enjoys threatening war against Taiwan. And yet, curiously, in 2020 he took eight months to reveal that one PLA officer and three soldiers had died during the fighting on India’s Ladakh frontier. During that period of official silence, the families of the four were re-housed and provided with welfare payments or better jobs; the officer’s wife who taught piano in a village school was elevated to the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, with a new house to go with it. Each of the four also became the subject of dedicated media campaigns, which portrayed the youngest as cinematically good-looking and the officer as so conscientious that, up in cold Tibet, he would wake up before his soldiers to prepare hot-water bottles for them. Later, the names of the four were added to many highway bridges to remind all of their sacrifice.

Why the grand acts of remembrance? The answer is demographic. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, imposed in 1980 with the abundant use of forced abortions, the four deaths extinguished eight family lines.

Emphasis added. I only have one child, by fate rather than policy; if he were drafted and killed at war, it would end my family line. I only have one cousin in my father's line; he has one son as well. We're only two sons away from my grandfather's line being extinguished. 

Under those circumstances, how important is Taiwan? Quite a bit, really, and more important yet is control of the sea lanes nearby; but those are the concerns of nations, not families. Not our family's, and not Chinese families'.  

Aristotle held that the polis is an outgrowth of the decisions of families, not (as modern political theory has it) of individuals. When the interests of the families as a whole comes apart from the interest of the polis, the political project is in grave danger of being fundamentally illegitimate. It seems this new demographic reality has changed us, but the archaic political systems at work here and in Europe and in China all date to the era in which National Glory was something for which children could be sacrificed. 

Sword of the Mountain Man

Mountain Man Jim Baker’s sword has been donated to a museum focused on his life. That’s a Sharps rifle in the picture also. 

Honeymoon

Grim’s Mead

It’s commonly claimed (perhaps falsely) that the word ‘honeymoon’ refers to a month after the wedding in which honey mead is drunk in celebration by the newlyweds. Twenty-five years ago mead was hard to find! It’s enjoying some popularity now, but at the time we were married the only production mead was a brand called Chaucer’s that was only available as a speciality item in major cities. It’s not hard to make, but I didn’t know how, so our honeymoon involved no mead. 

Our silver anniversary, however, saw us broaching a bottle of my own concoction. My wife pronounced it to be “a very good batch.” 

Solace

Somehow I have never been familiar with this famous piece, the Emperor Concerto, which I stumbled on recently in a movie soundtrack. Other than recognizing it as Beethoven, I couldn't place it. Now I can't stop listening to it and can't wait for the piano sheet music to arrive by mail. This is the second movement, the Adagio. Look at the transport on the faces of the performers.

A Day of Some Local Importance

Twenty-five years ago today my wife and I were married at Amicalola Falls. In the ensuing years she has not accompanied me on all my adventures, but most of them; and when I have gone on ones too far or too dangerous, she has been the one I could trust to keep the home front secure in my absence.

Three years to the day later, we spent our third anniversary in the hospital as she gave birth to our son. He is twenty-two today, now studying emergency management by day and taking firefighter certification courses by night. I am very proud of him.

Today is also the summer solstice, aligning our personal time-keeping with that of the heavens. I hope you all have an excellent day today.

Bump-Stocks: A Compromise

After the Supreme Court struck down an unconstitutional ATF rule, Democrats in Congress tried to fake a vote to pass legislation banning them.

Democrats tried to force a voice vote on the bill to ban bump stocks, a tactic often used by both parties when they know that they don’t have the votes to pass legislation but want to bring an issue to the Senate floor. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, would ban the sale of the devices, similar to the rule issued by President Donald Trump’s administration after a gunman in Las Vegas attacked a country music festival in 2017 with semiautomatic rifles equipped with the accessories.

The Supreme Court ruling was not that these devices enjoy Second Amendment protections, but that the ATF rule process effectively stole legislative authority from Congress. If Congress did pass such a law, it would probably survive review: as I wrote at the time:

They're not good technology, making the rifle less accurate and unstable. I don't think it meets any the tests SCOTUS has set up for this: it's not a weapon that serves a viable military use suitable for militia service (US v. Miller), nor is it in common use for lawful purposes (it's uncommon), nor is it part of any sort of historical or traditional understanding of the right to bear arms (it's a gimmick mostly used to play on the range).

However, there's good reason to oppose the ratchet effect of increasingly banning things until Americans are less free than once. I could accept adding these devices to the list of those things controlled by the National Firearms Act, but in return we should get something back that we'd rather have. 

I think the obvious choice for a trade is the suppressor, often called the "silencer." The suppressor improves the function and safety of the weapon. Because they lengthen the barrel, they improve both accuracy and power. Because they reduce the noise, they reduce the risks of hearing loss associated with practice. 

They should be protected under the Second Amendment under two of the three tests. They have a clear militia function: the US military uses them, and so you can see a clear use for militia in similar roles. That satisfies Miller. They are in common use for lawful purposes -- they are so valuable that many people go through the trouble of obtaining one through the National Firearms Act regulatory structure. The only test not clearly satisfied is the Bruen test, because we do have about a century of historic tradition of them being regulated by the state. However, if Congress passed a law changing that, there's no reason they shouldn't.

Although I oppose the National Firearms Act in principle, legislation is generally an act of compromise. Here's one that seems reasonable to me: swap suppressor/silencers for bump stocks in an alteration of the National Firearms Act. That would not ban bump stocks, but make them available only under stricter regulations and with high taxes; it would, in return, allow suppressors to be sold more freely than they are currently. We would not be participating in the ratchet effect, but trading something better for something worse. 

As a compromise of the sort that Congress used to do when it was a more serious organization, that makes sense to me.

New Waylon Music

This is the most exciting news I’ve heard in ages. 

Pride and Tolkien

The other day AVI was writing about pride, in the Christian conception that it is a sin rather than the American elite's concept that it is a virtue. (This is, I reminded him in the comments, "Pride month"!)

Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about this subject. As readers know, a major part of Aquinas' work was adopting Aristotle's ethics to Christian practice and theology. Here is an area where it might seem that Aristotle and Christianity come apart, though: for as readers of this blog also know, Aristotle's capstone virtue was Magnanimity, which is the virtue of those who use all their other virtues to pursue 'that which is most honorable.' This is actual, complete virtue, and it is the virtue of the best people who deserve the most honor. 

To do that which is most honorable is to merit high honors; and to seek to merit high honors is surely prideful, since it sets you above others who deserve less. The Latin word for pride is "superbia," meaning that you think you are better than others. But this man really is better than others, and strives to be so. In doing so, he not only becomes better than others, he becomes the best kind of person. This is really a virtue, too, because it creates an excellence in one's self -- and it also improves things for everyone else, who benefit from all the excellent things being done that merit their respect and gratitude. 

Aquinas gives a fairly straightforward answer that aligns magnanimity not with pride but with humility, which might at first seem surprising. The sin of pride is to seek not that which is most honorable, but things beyond what reason tells us is most honorable. To seek that which is best and most honorable, but not beyond what one ought to seek, is humble -- and therefore humility and magnanimity are almost the same thing. 

An analogy to Tolkien will make this puzzle become clear. It was the humility of Gandalf that kept him from taking the Ring and striving for the power of Sauron. In this way, however, he was also doing what was most honorable for a being of his station -- he, indeed, was the only one of the wizards who actually remembered and kept to his assigned mission. In this way he is the most praiseworthy of his order, which is magnanimity realized. He strove always for what was best, and never strove to go beyond his place in the created order. 

Saruman by contrast shows pride. Appointed to a higher position than Gandalf, to be the White Wizard and the leader of the Order of Istari and the White Council both, he strove to seize the Ring. His pride was his downfall, and led him not to deserve the highest praise but to deserve shame and condemnation. 

Honor is therefore a reliable guide to virtue, just as Aristotle says. It may be surprising that a desire for honor turns out to be compatible with humility, but the literary example shows that it is indeed. 

Hunting’s Over

Freedom for the other guy, too

HotAir on the ignorance of workers who overestimate their leverage with people who can walk away.

We have created a generation or two of profoundly ignorant people who think that they don't have to create value in order to extract it from others.

Fire Fighting Flyers

 This looks like fun!

Pickup Truck Song

He Does Not Listen

I will credit the artist once I figure out who it is. 

UPDATE: I got up early and split a load of firewood with my son, then made the egg breakfast from the post below. After that I took my son and dog to run some errands in the pickup truck. Then we had a traumatic injury call we ran together, as my father often did in his day. Now we’re going to have a great dinner of my chili and some tamales my wife whipped up while we were on the call. 

So a very fatherly day, in any event. 

Grim’s Egg Bites

Speaking of the chickens, here’s a breakfast dish I’ve developed because of the surplus of eggs. This dish quickly uses up eight. The three of us eat all eight in one sitting, my wife taking two, three each for my son and I. 

It’s a quick recipe to pull together. 

Preheat oven to 400 F. Grease the muffin baking tin; line with small, street-taco size tortillas.* Add one-half slice American** cheese, then one tsp. sausage***. Crack one egg into each. Sprinkle with herbs,**** and then bake for 20 minutes. 

* They come out nice and crispy this way, but a better version can be made with pastry. It’s more trouble, and this is intended to be a quick breakfast food. Do what you prefer. 

** Or any melting cheese; today I am out of American cheese, so I’m using Swiss. 

*** I use raw Hot Tennessee Pride. You can use anything. It cooks in the same time as the eggs. I tested this with a meat thermometer the first few times to be sure. You may substitute cooked sausage if you want. 

**** This step plus the choice of sausage/cheese gives easy variations: you could use Mexican oregano, chipotle, chorizo and Queso Chihuahua for a Mexican flavor, or Italian sausage, mozzarella, and basil for an Italian flavor. 

Lincoln’s Favorite Chicken

Cowboy Kent Rollins is a chuck wagon artist with a line of seasonings and videos. He’s given to adaptation of traditional recipes to easier substitutions for contemporary audiences— here he offers boneless, skinless chicken thighs as a substitute for starting with a whole (live?) chicken. If you keep chickens like we do, skinning them out is easier than plucking them and deboning them is not hard nor with practice slow. If not, use the substitution. 

Now at one point you might think he says that this dish is made with margarine, but he really says "marjoram," the herb. Margarine is demonstrably ahistorical. Margarine wasn’t invented until 1869, in a French competition to try and find a low price substitute for butter for the army and lower classes. Don’t use the stuff here or at all. I find that birds won’t eat it if you put it out like you would suet, and the internet says it's not good for them because it lacks the kinds of fat they need even if you can get them to eat it. I would suggest never using it, but definitely not in a historical recipe. 

Otherwise I think you might like this. There's an alternative recipe here which is similar and likewise does include the butter, and that one cites its source in case you're wondering about the historical basis of all this. Cowboy Kent is not bad in spite of these occasional lapses; he does sometimes bury a cast iron Dutch oven in the ground in the old way. Some concessions probably make it easier for contemporary audiences to actually get around to trying these things out, too. 

A Courtroom Win

Today, Firearms Policy Coalition announced a major legal victory in its Mock v. Garland lawsuit challenging the Biden Administration’s “pistol brace” ban rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In the decision, United States District Court Judge Reed O’Connor granted summary judgment in favor of FPC and its co-plaintiffs and issued a final judgment and order vacating the ATF’s rule. 

Congratulations to the FPC's team of young, energetic lawyers. 

The Biden administration has been inclined to wide-reaching, unconstitutional 'rule changes' that are attempts at actual legislation without the bother of consulting Congress. They are being effectively challenged by FPC, Gun Owners of America, and sometimes the NRA.

As they point out in the full press release, the Biden ATF just transformed millions of Americans into felons without consulting their constitutional representatives. This one (of several similar maneuvers) is dead for now. The government can appeal, of course, if they want to transform this into a SCOTUS ruling instead of a circuit court one.

UPDATE: Another one, this time from SCOTUS itself. This one was the 'bump stock' ban; the other one was the 'pistol brace' ban. 

Both of them turn on the same basic logic, which is that an administrative rule change can't fundamentally alter the law: they have to go through Congress to legislate. That's good news. 

In spite of the similarity of the technologies, both being attachments to the stocks of firearms, they're quite different in character. I wouldn't necessarily oppose a bump stock regulation enacted in a reasonable way. They're not good technology, making the rifle less accurate and unstable. I don't think it meets any the tests SCOTUS has set up for this: it's not a weapon that serves a viable military use suitable for militia service (US v. Miller), nor is it in common use for lawful purposes (it's uncommon), nor is it part of any sort of historical or traditional understanding of the right to bear arms (it's a gimmick mostly used to play on the range). I could see adding it to the National Firearms Act, so that Americans who wanted one could have one but only with the additional steps (and costs) involved.

The pistol brace, by contrast, helps especially disabled Americans to use a militia-quality firearm in a more stable and accurate way. It should enjoy protection even under Miller's logic, which is the most restrictive. 

However, the court is quite right to prevent the bureaucracy from just rewriting the law as if it were a representative, legislative authority.

UPDATE: Ironically, the abortion pill win is also a victory on similar grounds of restraining the government's dictatorial authority: here the court actually restrained its own, which is an impressive feat. Clarence Thomas often notes that the court rarely asks if it has the legitimate authority to do a thing; it just assumes it does. This time they didn't do that, and even though the subject is the tragedy of abortion on demand, it's good to see the court recognizing that even it has proper limits it should not transgress. 

All these Flags are False

We should all be delighted at the successful stopping of a planned mass murder in Atlanta, not just because the murders were prevented but because the information operation the murders were intended to effect was stopped also.

Officials say their investigation began when Prieto told a man at a gun show that he wanted "to incite a race war prior to the 2024 United States Presidential Election."...

As reported by the indictment, Prieto said he wanted to target a rap concert because "there would be a high concentration of African Americans" and planned to leave confederate flags after the violence and to shout phrases like "KKK all the way."

I'm struck by how no one in this story is who they claim to be. A man using a fake name who isn't a Klansman intended to pose as one, enlisting the aid of a man who was an undercover Federal spy -- a 'confidential human source' who spies on gun shows for the Feds. The CHS carried on these conversations with him "over several years," growing increasingly alarmed at the murderous wishes he expressed. So he introduced him to an actual undercover agent, who actually got him to confess to the murderous plans and try to enlist them to participate in the fake Klan attack.

“The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a f*****-up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now?"

When this 58 year old man was a kid, Jimmy Carter was the governor of Georgia, so that probably isn't as true as he believes it to be. Not that he sounds like a man of good judgment or clear reason.

Not a great judge of guns, either. 

PRIETO stated he preferred to use two rifles and a bolt-action sniper rifle because it was more accurate. PRIETO suggested the CHS and UC should use an AK-platform weapon, as AR variant rifles were less reliable.

That hasn't been true since the Vietnam era.

In any case, I'm happy that this kind of attack was stopped from happening. 

I'm also happy that the Klan is so weak these days that people have to fake them because there's not much of a real one left. Once upon a time if you wanted the Klan to stage an attack you'd start  by joining the Klan; these days you couldn't find a branch of them to join. 

That's a genuine improvement we should try to build upon. Fortunately starting a race war is probably out of the question; just another bit of bad judgment in his tangled mind. 

Life can turn on a dime

War Never Changes

Technically these are unregulated, even by the Biden administration.

"200 Shells"

The counterargument they like to make is that firearms are so obviously dangerous that you don't need to understand them to know that we need fewer of them and with more regulations. Still, the refusal to learn even the most basic facts about them before calling for regulations is a commitment to ignorance that is sometimes stunning to behold.

Hold the Phone

What a concept!

This oppressed majority has, finally, found an ally in the form of a bar in Idaho called Old State Saloon, which recently went viral for celebrating “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month”. On Mondays in June, “any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer”…

Idaho is a long way off, but I was there last year… 

Using hostages as a pretext for rescue

"Some things are so stupid, you have to be a UN official to say them."

Banana Republic

Chiquita held responsible for killings by the guerrilla groups that they bankrolled. If this keeps up, we will all end up paying for our crimes. 

Monday Night Music

Merle tells a funny story about Chet Atkins at the beginning of this.

Of course the Tennessee Ernie Ford version is great, but this next one is good as well. The thing's over at about 3:30 or so. I don't know why whoever posted this on YouTube left 2 minutes of nothing on the end.

The girl in the back playing bass, looking like she's tickled to be playing on stage with her dad or something, is actually Tal Wilkenfeld out of Australia who's recorded with a lot of big names (Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Toto, Todd Rundgren, Macy Gray, Dr. John, Trevor Rabin, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, Rod Stewart, John Mayer, Sting, Ben Harper, David Gilmour, Pharrell, Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, Lee Ritenour, Hiram Bullock, Susan Tedeschi, and Hans Zimmer, according to Wikipedia). I had no idea who she was.

Do any of you remember when TV stations went off the air around midnight and the last thing they'd play was the national anthem?

Bonds at home

I've been unusually ill, just when my husband has been down and out as well. I have also been lifted up in the most extraordinary way by my community.

Greg injured his back, then suffered first-onset a-fib problems, perhaps by coincidence, perhaps in reaction to oral steroids. A hospital stay with him later, I came back home with a bug. Apparently just as I was most clogged up with garden-variety bronchitis, I got a lungful of nasty garage-cleanup dust in connection with our plans to build out a ground-floor apartment in the garage under our house-on-stilts. Though I don't normally suffer from asthma, I suspect my airways were shrunk down to a point where the dust was the exact size to trigger spasm. Weeks later, I've only just now managed to open up my spasmed airways.

Meanwhile there are all these rescue dogs! And Greg really needs to limit movement and therefore to be waited on hand and foot. I had a dog-walker who unfortunately has a day job that got crazy busy, and in addition she fell ill. I advertised for more help, though, and not only did I snag some great workers, but several people insisted on helping out gratis. One I'd never even met before, but she knows something of my rescue work and does a great deal of it herself. On the whole it has been a profoundly heartwarming experience.

Today I am feeling very nearly normal, but still taking it easy until I'm sure my airways won't seize up again.

All the recent dogs rescued in extremis continue to do well, also an enormous boost to the spirits. There is a great deal to be grateful for.

Bonds

“The blood of your children is mixed with ours. This is an unbreakable bond.”

Am Yisrael Chai.

World's Fair 1982

Lileks is on about the World's Fair today.

It’s been decades since a World’s Fair last made a mark on the American imagination. Knoxville held one in 1982, and while a few may remember its landmark symbol—the Sunsphere—most Americans would look at a picture of the thing and think it was a failed Vegas attraction. The ’82 World’s Fair was a “specialized Expo,” dedicated to a particular theme—in this case, energy. 

I attended that fair! I don't remember it the same way because I was still a child; for me, the most memorable thing beside the Sunsphere was a WWI-fighter themed ride, which I loved because of Snoopy and the Red Baron. The fighters were done up as Sopwith Camels and Fokker Triplanes, in a series that allowed them to be dogfighting each other, strongly suggesting that the architect had the same vision that my youthful self had as well.

Many years later I met my wife under the Sunsphere for the first time. We had 'met' online earlier in a Tolkien appreciation group, long before meeting someone you had first encountered online was considered a safe thing to do. Unfortunately for me the local security was not clear on why I'd be standing around below the landmark, and tried to warn her off that some scary guy was hanging around with no better explanation of why he was there than that he was going to meet some woman he'd 'met online.' 

We'll be 25 years married later this month. 

Gandalf Bewildered

Hot Air quotes "Gandalf" -- actually the actor who played him -- as criticizing Trump's rhetorical skills. I understand exactly where he goes wrong because I did it myself.

 'Trump is an absolute bewilderment. I haven't seen him live. But he's one of the worst public speakers there has ever been. Whether he’s reading a script or not, it’s so patent what he is.”

I've always read transcripts of speeches rather than listening to them live because I wanted to understand the arguments being made, without being affected by the rhetorical flourishes. If you read the transcript of a Trump speech, it's almost incoherent. If that's what "Gandalf" is doing, I completely understand where he's coming from.

Yet the first time I heard Trump speak in 2016, at an airport where I couldn't get away from the monitors, I realized that he was definitely going to win. At the time the polls said he was 95% certain to lose. Nevertheless, I was sure about it. 

The style transposes as incoherent because he's in dialogue with the audience. He constantly stops, interrupts himself, begins a new line of inquiry based on the feedback he is getting. As a transcript you can't understand what he even thinks he is talking about. As a member of the audience, it's obvious. 

He is in fact an excellent rhetorician just because he's not on a script. He talks with people rather than to them. It's so different from ordinary politics that it just doesn't make sense until you immerse yourself in it once, and then it is clear why and how it works.

Another Song

 

[UPDATE: Some of the visuals in this YouTube version of the song are erotic and may be unwelcome to some viewers. I didn't realize that when I posted it; I was just looking for the song.]

Naturally “king” and “mountain” together produce other sentiments in me. 

It's All Going to Pot

The money follows the student

This is a good round-up article about the recent smashing success of the school choice platform in Texas and the likely effects in other states. Some rare good news.

"No Evidence"

In an article about Biden's D-Day speech, the Washington Post has this paragraph:

Trump has sought to spin around concerns about his authoritarian instincts by accusing Biden of acting like a dictator or undermining democracy. He has repeatedly accused Biden of spearheading political prosecutions, though there is no evidence of White House involvement in the four criminal cases against Trump.

This has become a favorite locution since the 2020 election, about which we were endlessly told that there was "no evidence" of fraud or bad practices. In fact there is nearly endless evidence about it; what there wasn't was a formal inquiry that could turn evidence into proof. This is because courts resolved questions on issues like standing or timing, avoiding evidentiary hearings. But we never had proof that Saddam stole his 97% victories either; we just had evidence, evidence of exactly the same kind as we have about 2020.

As for these trials, there is also evidence that the Biden administration is involved. 

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating a top prosecutor on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Trump for his past work as a senior Justice Department official during the Biden administration. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is demanding that Attorney General Merrick Garland turn over records related to the employment of Bragg prosecutor Matthew Colangelo amid a "perception" of coordination. 

The Post knows about this, because they wrote a story claiming to debunk what they described as a "theory." 

Among them: the idea that President Biden’s Justice Department was involved in the successful Manhattan criminal prosecution of Trump. (Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts last week.) Trump has long blamed Biden for this prosecution, without any evidence.

The evidence that Garland didn't dispatch him to assist is, by the way, that Garland denies it. Of course you should believe the word of a public servant like Garland, or any FBI or ATF agent for that matter. So there's no evidence for the 'theory,' but Garland's denial is firm evidence. 

It's science, you know. Political science.

80 Years On

AI Cowboy

Out at the Cowboy State Daily, regular columnist Rod Miller had an AI produce this week's column after studying his style. 

I've been considering that as an experiment, but I can see from his results that it's not quite time yet.

Another Stupid Train Idea

The love affair with spending vast sums of money on trains nobody will ride continues. Asheville is in the early (but still expensive!) planning stages of adding an Amtrak spur line for tourism. It'll take many years and cost a fortune, but if all that money is spent we can expect the following travel times: 

Salisbury to Asheville

Train: 3 hours and 35 minutes

Car: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Bus: 3 hours and 30 minutes 

Raleigh to Asheville

Train: 6 hours and 47 minutes

Car: 3 hours and 50 minutes

Bus: 6 hours and 20 minutes 

Charlotte to Asheville

Train: 4 hours and 26 minutes

Car: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Bus: 2 hours and 55 minutes

So it's objectively worse on every option, as well as extremely expensive. (They're not even offering a comparison to flight times: Charlotte to Asheville is a route I fly regularly, and it takes about 30 minutes although you have to factor in security and other things too.) But it's a train, and good people love trains. 

Look, I like riding on trains too. It's peaceful and kind of a pleasant throwback to an earlier time. However, this isn't Europe, and trains just aren't practical in most of America. 

Virtue and Physical Fitness

Occasionally one reads columns like this one that suggest that physical fitness is somehow related to politics. 

OK, this is going to sound a little hypocritical, as I have hard-recommended every activity and pursuit, every wellness wheeze and rejuvenation exercise the modern world has dreamed up.... at some time or another, I have insisted to anyone who will listen that it’s only their failure to incorporate, say, a horse into their weekly schedule that is standing between them and their best self.

As a matter of fact, I have also written extensively about the importance of horses to achieving one's best self. It's been a while since it was a regular topic, but at one time that was a major focus of the blog. What I thought it inculcated was courage, not recklessness; gentleness, and the compassion necessary to understand a very different kind of mind and build trust with it; honor, to ride with other people as well as with your horse; and a capacity for building each of these virtues that can become a skill at building virtue itself. 

She worries that it might bring traits that she finds objectionable in politics.

The mechanism is incredibly simple: you embark on this voyage of self-improvement, and more or less immediately see results. You feel stronger and more energetic, probably your mood lifts, and pretty soon you think you are master of your own destiny. You’re still not, by the way: destiny does not care about your step count. But until that fact catches up with you, which it may never, there you are, high on self-righteousness. You can tell this has happened to you when you start inhaling performatively, like the hero of an Ayn Rand novel.

Inescapably, you start to situate other people’s problems within their failure to be as fit as you. This is particularly true if you don’t know them and they’re just a bunch of numbers. All those statistics – depressed people, obese people, people with IBS – imagine how much better they would be if only they took responsibility for their health, the way that you have.

There's always a correlation/causation issue with things like physical fitness and, say, disease; maybe people who are healthier are more likely to engage in physical activities than those who are less healthy to begin with, say. On the other hand, some causal events like stronger bones from strength training and stronger hearts from cardio are provable, and these seem to have follow-on causal effects on health. Likewise, it's pretty clear that exercise both teaches the body to adapt to stress and encourages it to produce higher levels of its own antioxidants. 

Still, what she's really worried about is that you might blame people for their bad luck if they aren't also physically fit. That's fair to some degree, and something to consider.

On the other hand, she is wrong about the nature of virtue. 

I realise it’s not really a question of an unwitting slide into fascism, hastened by a treadmill. It’s more that there is a fixed amount of excellence in any self, and the more you spend on your biceps, the less you have for your personality. 

It's only true that there's a zero-sum game insofar as you're spending all your time building virtue; then you might be building one sort or another. No one, however, is 100% focused on virtue-building. There's always capacity for more.

Rather, virtue building is a skill that you can learn, and you learn it by practice just like you do any of the virtues. Like many things in Aristotle, this is a matter that is conceptually severable even though as a matter of fact the activities are the same. I mean that you practice horseback riding (say) and you develop skill at horseback riding, but also courage, and gentleness, and the rest. Severably, you are learning how to build virtues by building all these virtues. When you want to build another one, you will have greater skill at the business of building any sort of virtue.

The question of what kind of morals one should have thus also ends up being severable. Whatever kind they ought to be, building the moral virtues to support successful practice of those things is just another virtue you can learn. If you've been developing your skills at virtue-building, it'll be easier and you will likely be more successful. All sorts of physical fitness can help with this (although you should be careful of ones that produce concussions, like boxing, where the negative physical effects on cognition may outweigh the virtue-building). It's good for you all the way around.

Killdozer

How is it that this spectacular event occurred 20 years, and I never heard a whisper of it? You'd think it would have been all anyone talked about for weeks.

Who's the Threat?

Maxine Waters: “I am going to spend some time with the criminal justice system, with the justice system, asking them, ‘Tell us what’s going on with the domestic terrorists. Are they preparing a civil war against us? Should we be concerned about our safety? What is he doing with this divisive language? It is dangerous, and we’re going to have to make sure that we understand, uh, that we’re not at risk with this man talkin’ in the way that he’s doing.'” 

Emphasis added. 

Meanwhile:

INSURRECTION: Anti-Israel protesters burn UC Berkeley police vehicle with ‘incendiary device’ in ‘retaliation’ for arrests. Have you noticed that MAGA people don’t “retaliate” for arrests?

Related: Yale students call for ‘open intifada,’ say activists should ‘escalate disruption’ and ‘paralyze all aspects of normal life.’

Berkeley and Yale students are aspirants to the ruling class, and usually also children of it; they're not a threat even if they actually firebomb police. The ones you've got to watch are the ones who aren't already powerful and privileged. 

UPDATE: Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that those students are part of active subversion on the Soviet model.

Living in the West in 1983, Bezmenov gave a lecture in which he explained “Psychological Warfare, Subversion, and the Control of Society.” It begins:

Subversion refers to a process by which the values and principles of an established system are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the existing social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. It involves a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system, often carried out by persons working secretly from within. Subversion is used as a tool to achieve political goals because it generally carries less risk, cost, and difficulty as opposed to open belligerency. The act of subversion can lead to the destruction or damage of an established system or government. In the context of ideological subversion, subversion aims to gradually change the perception and values of a society, ultimately leading to the undermining of its existing systems and beliefs.

The accompanying chart would seem to locate us in the "destabilization" phase, which last 2-5 years; ours started in 2020 with the BLM protests/riots and the Covid lockdowns (which, one recalls, made exceptions for the BLM protests), and now continues with these pro-Hamas protests. Assuming the chart were accurate, the next phase is 'crisis' (2-6 months) followed by Big Brother cementing its gains into a new, normalized system.

"I am not saying that Bezmenov’s formulation explains all that we are seeing. It clearly does not address all the West’s problems," she writes. "But once I immersed myself in his formulation, many of the topsy-turvy developments in our institutions fell into place."

Well, or it could be paranoia, which is to be staunchly resisted. But the riots are real enough, and the government continues not to enforce the laws upon them -- though they maintain a weather eye for any counterrevolutionaries that might emerge on the other side. Perhaps that's just a coincidence, though, class privilege playing out as I was discussing in the original post.

Expel New York

Long time blogger Don Surber advocates this -- I assume facetiously -- as part of a clean-up program. He ran a poll at the end that showed supermajority support among his readership for this, and majority support for giving Mexico back California. This is not the first time this suggestion has been made; Business Insider (clearly facetiously) found that seven states might be expelled to general pleasure (and not the ones I would have expected).

On the non-facetious side, Reason magazine found that a quarter of voters wanted to extract their own state from the union. They then polled about everybody else's state.

Of the 17 percent who thought that was a fine idea, there was an overwhelming favorite for who gets tossed from the moving vehicle: California.

Yes, the Golden State was the choice of a whopping 53 percent of respondents who thought yanking a star off the flag would make the world a better place.

New York came in second with 25 percent of votes, and Texas was third at 20 percent.

I don't know why anybody would want rid of Texas. The Reason article also links a very helpful map ranking the states by freedom (New Hampshire is #1: Live Free or Die!).

The thing is, we don't actually have a mechanism for any of this. We have very clear standards for admitting new states. There's no apparent mechanism for releasing states that want to leave, or expelling states against their will. 

A political project of mine is to restore the defunct state of Franklin, made up of parts of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. Franklin would be pose a challenge to New Hampshire's #1 ranking as freest state, as the political culture of Appalachia has little enough use for governments. There is a constitutional mechanism for that, though it's a long shot: it needs approval by both houses of Congress as well as both the NC and TN legislatures. 

A Rainbow Sunset

The Sacred Flame

I suppose we'll continue the Pride Month series as long as it remains interesting. Today's entry is from D29.

So who are the martyrs of Uganda?  Now, that's a story you won't hear in these times, at least not from Fr. James Martin, SJ.

I'd never heard it from anybody, but even left-leaning Wikipedia agrees on the details. 

When preparations were completed and the day had come for the execution on 3 June 1886, Lwanga was separated from the others by the Guardian of the Sacred Flame for private execution, in keeping with custom. As he was being burnt, Lwanga said to the Guardian, "It is as if you are pouring water on me. Please repent and become a Christian like me."

Twelve Catholic boys and men and nine Anglicans were then burnt alive. Another Catholic, Mbaga Tuzinde, was clubbed to death for refusing to renounce Christianity, and his body was thrown into the furnace to be burned along with those of Lwanga and the others. The fury of the king was particularly inflamed against the Christians because they refused to participate in sexual acts with him.

I suppose it's a sort-of equality to recognize that homosexuals can be just as bad as anyone else. In any case, today is the feast day. 

JSOC FTW

"Doesn't appear the DOD ever publicized it."

Yeah, that's how JSOC works. 

Still the King

To round out the Texas Playboys discussions we've had lately, I'd like to point out an album that Spotify introduced to me this week. The whole thing is on YouTube.

"Abhorrent"

Continuing the unexpected Pride Month series, an article (h/t Instapundit) about a university chancellor who lost his job* due to making pornography.

A statement from Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said that Chancellor Joe Gow was terminated on Dec. 27 following a unanimous vote from the UW Board of Regents.

“In recent days, we learned of specific conduct by Dr. Gow that has subjected the university to significant reputational harm,” Rothman said. “His actions were abhorrent.”

UW System Regent President Karen Walsh echoed this sentiment in a statement, saying Gow showed “reckless disregard for the role he was entrusted with,”  and that the board is “alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor.”

The firing comes after it was discovered that Gow had been producing and publishing pornographic content with his wife. The couple posts explicit content on X and porn websites, and hosts a YouTube channel called “Sexy Healthy Cooking,” which shows videos of them cooking alongside other porn actors and actresses.

The couple have also published two books under the pseudonyms Geri and Jay Hart, which they note “are the pen names of a married woman and man who serve in executive positions at two well-known organizations in the U.S.” on their Amazon author biography. 

I'm wondering what the community standard for "abhorrent" is at the University of Wisconsin; maybe D29 can comment on that. Naked cooking sounds pretty mild given the kinds of things that porn now embraces. Obviously I haven't seen their pornography, so maybe it's worse than it sounds. The books they have listed on Amazon sound like endorsements of open marriages, which while definitely not in the spirit of the institution of marriage is still on the conservative side for pornography.

Gow maintains that his actions are protected by the First Amendment, especially since he allegedly did not mention his position with the university during his pornographic work. 

Probably the 1A doesn't protect you from being fired by a private employer for your speech, but a state university is in a dubious middle position. 

* Lost his job as chancellor: as punishment he'll be 'transitioning' into a faculty role, where he can spend more time with students. Somehow this makes sense to people. 

The Sacred Band of Thebes

I wasn't planning on any 'Pride Month' observations, but the Washington Post managed to come up with one that I don't mind to forward. 

The Battle of Tegyra in 375 B.C. proved that the legendary Spartan army could be defeated.

A thousand Spartan soldiers, trained for combat from the age of 7, were returning from an expedition when they stumbled on a much smaller force from the rival city of Thebes. Rather than retreat, the Theban infantry charged, pulling into a close formation and piercing the Spartan lines like a spear. The Spartans turned and, for the first time ever in pitched battle, fled.

The most fearsome military force of its day had been defeated by the Sacred Band of Thebes, a shock troop of 150 gay couples.

This is almost true. The only thing that isn't quite is the description of the homosexual pairs as "gay," which is definitely a modern phenomenon that had nothing to do with their particular expressions. Plato described the ethic, though he was not speaking of the Sacred Banders but of an imaginary force.

Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant so well as love.

Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover. 

The concept here is not necessarily homosexual at all; the idea is that since your lover would be watching you, you would not do any base thing like flee or throw down your arms. You would strive for honor, because you would want to be seen at your best while your beloved was watching.  The beloved could be heterosexual just as well, but in the world before firearms women generally were not going to be effective on the field of armed and armored combat. Yet the basic concern was one of pursuing the heights of honor and avoiding anything dishonorable, which pursuit we know from Aristotle's description of magnanimity to be the capstone of virtue. 

Unconsidered by Plato is the danger posed to unit cohesion by pairs of lovers who are loyal to each other in a way they aren't loyal to the rest of the band. Likewise, of course, the disruptive effect of introducing sexuality into a close unit like an infantry squad, where competition to be the beloved of an especially desirable soldier could tear the unit apart. (This has been a much bigger problem with the heterosexual soldiers since the introduction of women as well as gays to the military, simply because a single woman attracts almost all the male soldiers, whereas a gay soldier is mostly unattractive to the other males). 

The Sacred Band contested the latter problem by recruiting established couples rather than a free-for-all 'singles' environment. They had an impressive battlefield record, eventually being destroyed by Alexander the Great's forces.

A Diplomatic Embarrassment

The President of the United States announced what he described as an Israeli government proposal for a permanent ceasefire; today the Prime Minister of Israel said the proposal was a nonstarter. 

Either there was a significant misunderstanding, or one of the governments is outright lying. Whichever, it’s an embarrassment that will significantly undermine American diplomacy across the world. 

Spurs

Approximations of Justice

The only sense in which the outcome in the New York trial represents a sort-of justice is that it is an occasion in which the courts are treating a rich man as shabbily as they normally do with poor men. A rich man can't be forced to plea bargain by a poverty that prevents him from mounting a legal defense; as such, he has to be granted the formality of a trial. However, it can be a show trial. 

I'm sure you've all read lists lists of the extraordinary lengths the judge went to in this case to bring about the outcome he got. Now we have to reckon with the spectacle of 34 "felonies" that are really disputes about whether a declared expense should have been categorized in the books as "a legal expense" or "a campaign expense." This isn't even a bright-line issue; paying a lawyer to settle a dispute out-of-court in a way that produces an NDA is the sort of thing that would very regularly be a legal expense. It's the most common of common practices. They might also be campaign expenses, but it's definitely not obvious that they aren't legal expenses. 

So these are debatable even as the misdemeanors the law actually makes them out to be; but they were charged as felonies. On what justification? Because they were supposedly the basis of a conspiracy to commit some third crime. The prosecution didn't bother to say what that crime was for sure. The judge told the jury that they didn't even have to agree on what crime had been conspired, so long as each of them thought that one or another crime had been. 

Based on the word of a convicted perjurer, with the judge suppressing expert testimony to the contrary, the jury has decided to convict on all charges. What is the appropriate penalty for such a mass of felonies? I asked a couple of progressives I know what they thought, and they said, "A couple of nights in jail" or "I would prefer that he be prohibited from running for office, and no jail (or a couple days)." 

For 34 felonies? 

The lack of justice is a sort of justice only because it now applies to at least one rich man as it so often does to the poor. It's almost fair if no one gets any justice, and fairness per Aristotle is one of the two aspects of justice. 

Of course, the other aspect was lawfulness, and that's clearly gone here.

Right of Revolution

In a good but brief post today, Glenn Reynolds quotes the Tennessee Constitution. 

Note the first two sections of the Tennessee Constitution, which dates to 1796 and which Thomas Jefferson praised at the time:

Section 1. That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of those ends they have at all times, an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

Section 2. That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

This was unremarkable at the time of the Framers, when badges of office did not possess a talismanic power.

Quite right.  

God-Given Rights?

I recently read and heard some commentary that used the phrase “God-given rights.” In each case, the commentator was referring to the idea that the origin of our political rights stem from God rather than government. This is not a new idea. In fact, this concept is eloquently asserted in the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence which states that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. However, with all due respect to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration, is this an accurate statement regarding the origin our rights?

If it is, I find no sanction for this idea in the Bible, certainly not in the New Testament. I find no endorsement or explanation of rights that civil society is required to observe or respect anywhere in the teachings of Christ or his Apostles. In fact, 1 Peter Chapter 2, verse 13 specifically tells Christians to submit to every human authority. Slaves are to submit to their masters, even if the masters are cruel.  

This is not surprising because Jesus was clear that his Kingdom was not of this world. Christ is concerned with the state of our soul, not temporal political or legal concerns such as rights. Consequently, I think it is mistaken to think of our rights in society as originating with God.

This does not mean that I believe our rights are a gift of the government, to be removed or restricted as government officials see fit. Rather, our rights came into existence over time through the influence of societal variables such as history, experience, tradition, legal precedent and any number of phenomena that shaped our cultural values. Our rights are a product of our shared societal experience rather than something that was divinely granted. They are a cultural inheritance to be protected.

What is the value or impact of this observation? If rights are the product of a particular cultural experience they will differ from society to society. Different societies will understand and express rights in different ways. That being the case, it is futile if not illegitimate to try to force a particular understanding of rights on another culture. This is one reason why our attempt to force Western notions of rights on Afghanistan and Iraq failed so miserably. Consequently, foreign interventions to enforce a specific rights regime, or remake countries in our image is not only wrongheaded, it’s bound to ultimately fail.          

Some Western Swing

Gringo's been pretty patient with all the Outlaw Country. Let's do some of his favorites.

I like this live recording because it gives a sense of the style of the band at play.

An instrumental of a classic piece, with swing elements.

You may have heard of the Fallout television show, which has become a breakout hit. I think it derives a lot of its force from its use of this kind of classic American music -- including Western Swing -- which is just objectively better than what the kids are used to hearing. It's not even nostalgic for them, because they've never heard it before. The real trick is this: they've never heard anything like it. 

C'est Dommage

The US "relief" pier to Gaza collapses in high seas. The sad thing is that they're going to put it back up.

On the Birthday of Patrick Henry

We were just discussing Patrick Henry in the context context of the flags; today was his birthday. 

In addition to his well-known sentiments in favor of revolution and liberty, he was also a staunch opponent of establishing a strong central government that would overwhelm the states. Jefferson saw the federal government's role as 'looking out' while the states 'looked in,' so that the Federal government would deal exclusively with foreign affairs or disputes between two or more states. Henry realized that it would, instead, form a competing power that would tend toward domination. 

The fate of this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, We, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing — the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. I need not take much pains to show that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic, and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England — a compact between prince and people, with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? Is this a confederacy, like Holland — an association of a number of independent states, each of which retains its individual sovereignty? It is not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government.... It is radical in this transition; our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished: and cannot we plainly see that this is actually the case? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change...

Emphasis added; there is a great deal more to the speech that is worth review. 

As is well known, objections such as his gave us the Bill of Rights, which has been an insufficient but necessary defensive measure. On some occasions it has been successful, and on many occasions it has provided a part of a successful legal defense. 

He also talked about the danger posed by a central state to the physical defense of liberty. Even today his words bear consideration.

My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength — an army, and the militia of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous: gentlemen cannot be earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence [sic], the militia, is put into the hands of Congress?... Whither is the spirit of America gone? Whither is the genius of America fled? It was but yesterday, when our enemies marched in triumph through our country. Yet the people of this country could not be appalled by their pompous armaments: they stopped their carer [sic], and victoriously captured them. Where is the peril, now, compared to that? Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them. 

I likewise think that America is not ripe for conquest by a foreign power, certainly not a European one but not any one; and it is so not because of the fact that the central government has a strong army and has managed to turn the state militias into a National Guard it can federalize at will, but because the people remain heavily armed and capable of independent action. 

Indeed, this is the chief thing that has kept all of that centralized Federal power from becoming a true tyranny. The lines they wish to cross and do not remain uncrossed because they are cognizant of the limits of their power to control the ordinary people's ideals given the ordinary people's arms. 

That is a partial answer to his concern about whether we have the means to resist disciplined armies given the lack of a disciplined force loyal to each of the states. Like the Bill of Rights, however, it is not a complete defense even if it is a necessary one. 

Advising the Virtuous Youth

I got in last night about seven. It was a 533 mile ride from Arlington back home. Of course I made the same ride in reverse going up, but my thoughts were focused on the events to come. On the ride back I had time to reflect on the ride itself. 

I left Arlington by the George Washington Parkway, then took I-66 west all the way to I-81 in the Shenandoah valley. After that, I rode the Shenandoah valley and then the New River valley to the city of Bristol, which bestrides the border between Virginia and Tennessee. From there I continued west and then south to Johnson City, south to the high wall and crossed into North Carolina there. 

The great rivers I crossed yesterday were the Shenandoah, the Roanoke, the New River, and the French Broad. Lesser rivers include the Watauga and the Tuckasegee.

While I was stopped at the Tennessee Welcome Center, I met a young man who had just purchased his first motorcycle, a Kawasaki Ninja. He was learning to ride and came to me to seek advice. He had bought the bike exactly one month ago, having talked his young wife into accepting the idea of him riding in spite of her concerns. 

I advised him as I did with my own son: to be sure to take the safety course, which would help him develop crucial skills like emergency braking without laying the bike down, and defensive driving. Also, I suggested, he might want to avoid any roads with nicknames like "Snake" or "Dragon" for at least six months to give himself time to build those skills and turn them into internal habits. 

To assure me that he was practicing diligently, he turned his bike on so I could see his odometer. It read 495. "I just bought this bike a month ago," he told me.

I told him, "I'm riding further than that today." That got his attention, so we discussed the ride and then I reaffirmed the importance of him seeking the safety training. I hope that the conversation will encourage him to seek it out. 

Motorcycles are wonderful, but if any young people are reading this and thinking about doing it as well, please do get the training first, and then do the practice necessary to internalize it into habit. As Aristotle says, developing virtue only begins with understanding what the right thing to do is in a given circumstance. Virtue isn't knowledge, he says, but habit: you have the virtue only when you have practiced doing the right thing to the point that you can do it without having to think about it again. 

It might seem odd to describe skill at motorcycle riding as a sort of virtue, because the Christian inheritance tinges 'virtue' with a moral quality that is absent in the case of motorcycle riding. That isn't true in the Greek, though: the Greek word is arete, which means "excellence" and 'the ability to excel' at any practical thing. The moral virtues are like the practical ones, and the analysis holds for all of them. You practice moderation by moderating yourself until it is habitual to do so; you practice horsemanship by riding horses. Here as there, the skill of learning and then developing a virtue is a thing you can learn, and then you can apply that skill across your life. It will help you in everything that you do.

Across Tennessee

The statuary at the welcome center from Virginia on 81, a place which unsurprisingly plays excellent music. 

Looking back at Tennessee from the high wall at Sam’s Gap, the border with North Carolina. 

Riding Back

It’s 8 AM. I left DC at six. I have crossed the Shenandoah and put a mountain range between me and the city. 

I’m stopping for breakfast at a truck stop on I-81.

Prayers answered

This has been a busy dog-rescue week. I had no business taking in another dog, with 3 of my own and 3 fosters already, but the local rescue group took responsibility for a dog in my neighborhood whose "owners" couldn't keep him once he got flea infested and severely irritated their landlord, who didn't allow dogs in the first place. The young couple casually let him stay for the last 9 months after he wandered in during a storm, but I guess they don't know much about dogs. He's shockingly emaciated, every rib standing out, and has heartworms. After the current possessors relinquished him to the local rescue group, they took on the cost of his food and medical care, including plans to treat his heartworms, but won't have a place for him until next week, so I'm keeping him briefly. Lovely dog with lovely manners, no trouble at all.

On Friday, having posted a picture of him, we got word from a woman in a nearby town that she was sure he was her dog. She'd given him away two years ago to a friend of her son-in-law who had a large property and said he could give the dog a better life. Then the son-in-law's friend abruptly disappeared without a forwarding address. The rescue group, which has custody now, is deciding whether the original owner is an appropriate adopter, having once given him up so fecklessly. That owner really would like him back, and I hope she'll persuade the rescue group that she's a safe bet now. She has convincing pictures of him as a puppy and an adult. The dog, a Catahoula-Leopard-Chocolate-Lab mix, is down to 58 lbs. from the 120 lbs. he weighed when the original owner had him.

Also last week, what looked like a Labradoodle was spotted in my neighborhood but not caught up at the time. Word circulated on NextDoor, and because someone in town had found an eager foster mom for him [her, as it happens], I felt comfortable encouraging everyone to bring him [her] to me if he [she] could be induced to be confined. Early Friday morning, a neighbor jogging by my house encountered him [her] and slipped him [her] in my gate. Sadly, I didn't see the neighbor's text message until several hours later, and never caught sight of him [her]. I was afraid he'd [she'd] jumped the fence and moved on. Then a few minutes ago, late Sunday night, up he [she] trotted! He [she] must have been in my woods for the last three days, though I never saw any sign that he'd [she'd] found food that I left out for him [her]. He's [she]s safely ensconced in a kennel overnight with food, water, and a bed. Tomorrow his [her] foster mom will take him [her] . Surprisingly enough, he's [she's]not really emaciated, just a solid matted mess of fur. [Well, fairly skinny, though.] We'll shave that off and let him [her] start over.

New Flag

Jim installed a new flag today.