Ice Updates

I'm seeing reports of 700,000 people being out of power, but fortunately for me I am not one of them. Nevertheless last night I stayed up late preparing for the possibility of the intense cold that's coming getting here without us having any power (as still may occur: more freezing rain is on the way this afternoon). I created a little 'yurt' structure out of tarps tacked up to contain the warmth from the wood-burning furnace, lined the floor with blankets, and dug out extra warm clothing for everyone. Hopefully we will be fine. 

As the 'other' ICE story continues to develop, the Washington Post today is running a video analysis that shows that the victim had in fact been disarmed by police before they shot him ten times. 

I want to take a moment here to praise the officer in the grey jacket who handled the disarmament: he was the only one in the videos who gave the sense of acting with professional collectedness and good judgment. He kept focus on the only thing that mattered and took immediate steps to resolve that problem and reduce the threat of lethal force being necessary. If everyone had behaved as well as he did, this would not have happened. 

The New York Times has a similar analysis: 

Video of the encounter shows Mr. Pretti, a U.S. citizen who had a permit to carry a firearm, stepping between a woman and an agent who was pepper spraying her. Mr. Pretti is then hit with pepper spray before a group of agents pin him down, restraining and disarming him. Agents then fired shots into his back and motionless body.

Trump officials immediately labeled Mr. Pretti a domestic terrorist, claiming without offering evidence that he had been out to “massacre” federal agents. They have underscored that he had been armed with a handgun, but video of the encounter verified by The New York Times shows that Mr. Pretti never drew his weapon.

I wonder how much of this is going to turn out to be a function of inadequate training. In a chaotic situation, you do tend to devolve to your level of training. The Trump administration, in its rush to field a much larger ICE force, has cut the training of ICE agents from 21 weeks (five of which was Spanish language, all of which has been cut) to 6 or 8 weeks (sources differ). 

For contrast, Marine Corps bootcamp is 13 weeks, and that's just basic training: only after that do you really begin training for your job. 0311 Riflemen then go on to another 14 weeks at the School of Infantry, while those with specialized roles in the infantry do that and then also another month -- just to be basically trained as what is commonly called a "grunt" who follows the direction of experienced NCOs in action. 

Watching the video, I am struck by how badly trained the agents seem to be. Their use of tools like pepper spray is ineffective; their beatings are also not properly targeted to effectively stop their target, so that even at 8 to 1 they were never quite able to subdue him. Aside from the one agent in grey, whose mind seemed to be working, they gave the impression of being scared and unable to perform effectively. I suspect a lot of the bad decisions made here were the result of them simply not having the training or experience necessary to perform well under stress.

I have expressed concerns about having a masked force that can't be effectively held to account; here we see that from the President on down there is a movement to refuse to hold them to account. But the accounting shouldn't stop with the agents. The conditions that allowed this kind of thing to happen began with some bad decisions from on high to cut training requirements, which haven't been rethought in spite of multiple tragedies or the clear evidence of intense political opposition by many American citizens. 

Who has the standing to bring such accountability? In Minnesota the attorney general is Keith Ellison, whose corruption and partisanship are watchwords. The governor likewise, in addition to which he is the same Tim Walz who lied about his military service for years. The Federal administration is lining up to avoid it (not for the first time: remember when the government just bulldozed the site after the Waco massacre?). There is no one at the state or the Federal level I would trust to treat this matter fairly, which is of possibly even greater concern than the continued existence of a barely-trained, masked, armed force being sent out into charged conflicts on a daily basis. 

In such a situation, like the agent in grey did, the thing to do is to calm down and act rationally to reduce the threat. Many people at all levels have an opportunity to do this, both in and out of government. It would be good to think about what each of us can do in that regard. 

Safety first

I used to resent all the anti-lawyer articles and jokes, but I've been largely won over.

Modern corporate training is built to produce a checkbox, not a mechanic. Modern consumer documentation is built to win a deposition, not to teach you anything. Modern “how-to” media is built to monetize attention, not to transfer skill. Those are three different poisons, but the lawyers are the one that made the first two mandatory.

And you can see the societal consequences everywhere. Repair literacy collapses. Trades become credential-gated while simultaneously deskilled. People lose the ability to reason from symptoms to causes. Everything becomes a black box serviced by a priesthood. Machines become disposable because maintenance is treated as unauthorized tampering. The consumer gets trained into passivity. The worker gets trained into compliance.

Ice and ICE

We are on the verge of what looks locally to be a major ice storm; we have been told to expect to lose power, possibly for several days (5-10 days being the order of magnitude of the worst predictions; hopefully it'll be better than that). I have a generator, but only a gasoline powered one, so if that happens we'll only have short bursts of power and internet. Maybe it won't, though; or maybe if it does the power company will get to us more quickly than they worry that they will. It's good to be prepared; we're well-stocked with food and firewood. 

By the time this particular emergency has passed, I hope we have clearer information about the ICE shooting today. It looks and sounds outrageous, but early reports are often wrong: I do share the sentiments in the cautionary note put out by The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus: 

[The Caucus] describes itself as an 'unapologetic defender of the Second Amendment,' released a statement saying it was 'deeply concerned' by the shooting and calling for an investigation by state and federal officials. It noted that many facts remained unknown.

"Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms — including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights,” the group’s statement said. “These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed, and they must be respected and protected at all times.”

I'm inclined to say that ICE should be abolished like all Federal police agencies: the general police power is one the Founders intended to belong to the states, though they granted the Secret Service authority to combat counterfeiting and similar specialized offenses fairly early. I had hoped to start the abolishing with the ATF, but if you're going around shooting lawfully-armed American citizens -- a nurse with a carry permit, at that, meaning that his background would have been fully investigated and that he had no criminal record -- you could quickly and justly rise to the top of the list.

But we'll see what facts develop over a few days. For now, I have more immediate problems locally. Good luck to all of you in the storm's path. Keep warm. 

Patriots of the Caribbean

Utah Senator Mike Lee and Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett introduced legislation in December to make privateering great again with the Patriots of the Caribbean bill. (It's amusing to me that they both represent landlocked states.)

Here's maritime historian and privateer Sal Mercogliano's analysis of it:

Maria from Germany

Maria from Germany on X.

German, but very similar video to the Amelia videos. I wonder if it will catch on there.

I didn't know about the German outlaw Schinderhannes (Johannes Bückler).

Vengeance in Iran

A story out of Venezuela confirms that the US was assured of internal help to oust Maduro. 

The question of the day is: who's playing that role in Iran? If you haven't noticed, we now have substantially more firepower in theater than we did before the Gulf War or the Iraq War. Iran also breaks the last link to the West and Africa for China's Belt and Road project -- the Russia-based one was cut by the Ukraine war -- just as Venezuela cut  China's main cord to the Americas. I don't get the sense that most commentators understand this, but as crazy as this team is, they're rolling it all up. 

The main reason we should do it is not global-strategic, though there are global-strategic reasons that might suffice independently. It's definitely in the US national interest. Also, it's personal. The President gave his word that he would protect the protesters, and Iran murdered them by the tens of thousands. There must be an accounting for that. The world we live in only respects strength and honor. If we don't keep our word we show neither. 

Radicals in Virginia

Virginia is a pretty state; I lived there for two years in the early 2000s, and travel through there often. The Shenandoah region is full of busy little cities and long stretches of open road. If you have more time, the Blue Ridge Parkway stretches out of North Carolina into Virginia, formally terminating at the gates of the Shenandoah National Park but actually continuing through the park as the aptly-named Skyline Drive. 

It is a shame to see what's happening there now that they have given the Democratic party full control over the state's mechanisms. I think it's striking that one of their 'day one' bills was to forbid election audits and hand-recounts of machine-counted ballots. 

The blue cities keep pushing not just to consolidate their wealth and power, but to destroy the culture of the more traditional parts of the states they dominate. Every time they gain power, the cities press for abortion until the moment of birth (to include partial birth), DEI programs to re-educate the population (witness the day-one attacks on VMI), and of course the most expansive gun control they can squeeze through (in defiance of the Supreme Court as well as the state's traditional laws).

It's always sad to watch. 

Physical Rhetoric

It's purely a demonstration for effect, but the results are clear enough. This kind of physical 'rhetoric' should put an end to some of the crazier verbal rhetoric, but it probably won't. 

Threats & Lies

Two local newspapers, the Sylva Herald and Ruralite as well as the Smoky Mountain News, have jointly published an article in response to threats they have received. The threats cite other threats, in an ongoing controversy about whether -- I am not making this up -- the local public library should remain in its inter-county system or become independently managed by the county.

This is, in fact, the hottest political controversy in the county and has been for some time. 

The anonymous email claims “these individuals encourage agitation and unprofessionally mock duly appointed FRL board members and elected county commissioners. Such unethical behavior seriously undermines the Sylva Herald’s credibility and opens this newspaper up to legal ramifications and public embarrassment.”

I do not share the opinion that mocking the duly elected county commissioners in any way damages one's credibility. 

“YOU MUST CEASE publication of all falsehoods, slander, and spin,” the email continues without offering an example. “The Sylva Herald must CEASE ALL COLLUSION WITH EXTREMISTS. Period. Furthermore, Dave Russell and Beth Lawrence should resign immediately. Dave Russell doesn’t even live in Jackson County and regularly disregards objective truth while concealing facts. He has also been caught red handed by his own words making threats.”

The newspapers went ahead and published a list of the alleged extremists; I am sorry to report that I didn't make the cut. One who did is Antoinette MacWatt, the widow of a local Marine Corps veteran and a supporter of staying in the existing public library system -- obviously an extremist viewpoint, having a strong opinion about a public library. 

“This is your only warning. We will not respond to you,” it reads. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

All I can figure is that the Republican side -- obviously aligned with the ones sending these anonymous emails -- has decided that the controversy is working for them in the local elections, or else has figured out some way to grift off control of the very limited budget associated with a local public library. If they've managed the latter they must be quite clever, a cleverness quite masked by their chosen mode of communications. 

Chess is Haram?

Pretty much everything about Islam, that false religion built around a false prophet, is at least a little bit crazy. Mormonism is just that too, though, and nobody really gets upset about Mormons (more coffee for the rest of us). I knew that very good things like dogs and bacon and beer were haram ('forbidden'), but today is the first time that I've heard that chess is. 

Apparently it mostly is, though there are some schools that consider it permissible as long as it doesn't cause you to gamble or miss prayers or anything like that. I suppose one could gamble on a chess game, although I have never heard of anyone doing so. 

Don't get me wrong; I don't hate Muslims or Islam or anything like that. I've met some very good Muslims, some of whom even kept to these ideas about haram and halal at least for themselves (and for the most part). I don't have any problem with people living however they choose, as long as they don't try to coerce others into submission. 

Chess, though? That seems like maybe the 'wise scholars' just weren't all that smart and got their feelings hurt. Chess is a great game, one that reliably rewards careful and deep thought.

Breaking Up NATO?

If Trump insists on acquiring Greenland regardless of Denmark, Europe, or the Greenlanders' desires, one possible outcome could be the end of NATO. Is that intentional on Trump's part? Is that part of what this is about?

Would getting the US out of NATO be a good thing for us? NATO has been such a fixture that I've never given it much thought. It could save us a lot of money, at least in the short term with base closures, withdrawing troops deployed to Europe, etc. Also, given most of Western Europe's insistence on being colonized by Islamist settlers, having lax immigration requirements for travelers and immigrants from Europe may well be a security risk. On the other hand, I've generally assumed that allies are helpful at least in intel sharing and that they maintain a certain stability that is good for us. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe Trump doesn't care about that anymore.

I can see how NATO may have harmed Europe, allowing them to ignore their own defense and their own people and instead to go crazy with their globalist dreams, but I don't know that that's the case. It would seem to fit a common conservative critique of welfare undermining independence and work ethic, though.

What do y'all think? Is Trump trying to get us out of NATO? Would that be a good thing? Or am I just way off base with this?

The Schismatic Archbishop

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who has the Catholic Church's authority for the US military, has endorsed the disobeying of orders by soldiers whose conscience is offended. 

We've talked about this periodically through the history of this blog, most recently when some Congresscritters decided to endorse the position. Sometimes it is morally proper to disobey orders, especially if those orders are shockingly immoral, this being the legal standard that came out of the My Lai massacre. Other times inferior officers give orders that are unconstitutional, which should be disobeyed because they are inherently mutinous. 

Too, one of the ways in which Medieval political philosophy was superior to Modern political philosophy lies in the division of the temporal authority from the spiritual. You couldn't get to totalitarianism when the King and the Pope were competing sources of ultimate authority; both always had a claim on loyalty, and yet their interests differed sufficiently that even when they happened to align broadly there was a tension between them. Liberty finds its home in the tension between powers, which is why the American system of dividing powers between the branches of the Federal government and between the Federal government and the states has been so conducive to a life in which liberty remains possible. 

Still, how surprising to see the Church come down on the side of defying authority. Well, in a way; in another way he is endorsing the sovereignty of the King of Denmark. He is, however, suggesting that Americans who have taken an oath of obedience to the President of the United States and the officers he appoints would be morally qualified to forswear that oath. 

“Greenland is a territory of Denmark,” Broglio told the BBC Sunday. “It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”

Asked whether he was “worried” about the military personnel in his pastoral care, Broglio replied: “I am obviously worried because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”

“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a [M]arine or a sailor to by himself disobey an order,” he said. “But strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order, but that’s perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation — and that’s my concern.”

It's perfectly tenable; I imagine they would be detained in Fort Leavenworth for some time, those two words sharing as their root the Latin tenere, "to hold." Holding the position would lead to one being held for having held the position. A soldier refusing orders because the sovereign of a different nation has a different opinion about the matter is not going to work out congenially, however.

A New Take on an Old Problem

 This puts a new twist on an old question-

Arms & the Protests

In this video, an angry screaming mob assaults a man and forces him to remove his shirt because it says the word "Freedom." A keffiyeh-wearing protester advises the man, "Take it off and you won't get hurt." The protesters here clearly feel empowered to engage in actual violence.

Other groups of protesters in Minnesota have begun bringing long guns to the protests. Notice that the hysteria is quite absent from these scenes: guns clarify the seriousness of the situation. There's no room for playing around. You're too close to the fire. 

It's kind of an inversion of these few lines from Orthodoxy:

We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea.  So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries.  But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice.  They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

All that wild misbehavior comes from a lack of fear of consequences. Their faces are covered; the governor is on their side; and no one at all is armed, least of all the victims. All those things are walls protecting them from the fall. Remove the walls, and the song shall cease. 

Meanwhile, a commenter here notes the irony of a forthcoming arrest on MLK Day. That too is an interesting juxtaposition: his protests were both peaceful and polite, at least on the side of the protesting group. Likewise, Dr. King's protests were more effective. 

In any case, that group of protesters is not likely to evade consequences. I certainly wouldn't want to have drawn the personal attention of Harmeet Dhillon as a prosecuting attorney. "Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long time," she said. From what I have known of her, I expect she means it. 

Super 8A

Apparently the Secretary of War is serious about cleaning up the Pentagon's DEI act. The lawsuits alone will outlast the Trump administration, but it's a noble effort to try to undo some of the most ridiculous chicanery in Washington. 

Dragging

Amelia

If you haven't yet heard about Amelia, you might be surprised when you see her. She's a purple-haired, choker-wearing young woman who doesn't immediately strike me as someone who would be right-wing coded. Normally, if I saw someone with purple or blue hair, I might think they were left-wing coded; young women are notably more left-wing than other people; and a choker as a necklace tends to at least shade at lifestyles that are less than conservative-aligned. Nevertheless, when you encounter this cartoon you'll find that she is stridently right-wing. 

This is apparently what soccer lovers call an 'own goal' by the UK government. 

You can play the game she stars in here, if you like. It's ridiculous propaganda that deserves the outcome they are getting. 

Oops!

UPDATE: Readily adaptable to many formats, it turns out. She can even be educational. 

One of Ours, All of Yours

A corollary to the recent talk by the Secretary: what does this slogan mean?

Some of you may be aware of accusations that the phrase had Nazi origins; others may also know that this claim was widely rejected even by the mainstream media on research and reflection. All that is taken as read, but: what was it intended to mean? 

The link above it doesn't help much: it leads to Homeland Security's "Worst of the Worst" page about criminal aliens, but it doesn't add any information or context for what is under discussion here. 

It's a potentially powerful slogan if it means something, but in order to know what or whether it does we'd need to be clued in on some important matters. Who constitutes "ours"? Americans? DHS personnel? Some other group? Is it a warning to cartels not to target Homeland Security personnel? Is it a warning to protesters not to do so? Or does it intend some entirely different meaning? 

Likewise, who constitutes "yours"? The aliens at the link don't seem to belong to any body that might be considered an organized group. Is it a threat targeting cartels? American protest groups? What is she talking about? 

I'm not leveling any accusations except regarding the complete opacity of the attempted communication. You might think that, given how quickly opponents will rush to misconstrue Trump administration communications, some thought might be given to clarity of expression. Their opponents are going to construe the Betsy Ross flag as neo-Confederate, after all; but that one is clear and easily understood. Nobody is going to take that accusation seriously. 

This, it's much harder to guess what they even meant to say. It's clearly a threat, but who is being threatened, and on whose behalf? I have no idea, only guesses about what might be intended. 

Sarabande

I really like this Pentangle group from the Lai du Cor post below.

The most famous piece called "Sarabande" in the West is probably Händel's, although Bach did one as well.

The Western baroque forms are derivative of another form, the traditional zarabanda dance.

The Jesuit priest Juan de Mariana thought it indecent, describing it in his Tratato contra los juegos públicos (Treatise Against Public Amusements, 1609) as "a dance and song so loose in its words and so ugly in its motions that it is enough to excite bad emotions in even very decent people". A character in an entremés by Cervantes alluded to the dance's notoriety by saying that hell was its "birthplace and breeding place" (in Spanish: origen y principio).It was banned in Spain in 1583 but was nevertheless still performed and frequently cited in literature of the period (for instance, by Lope de Vega).

 So in other words, a very good dance. Festive, one imagines. 

Lai du Cor

AVI found a great song by a group I'd not heard of before. In the comments I mentioned the source for the magical horn that reveals false lovers: it's a pretty neat Anglo-Norman Arthurian poem called Lai du Cor from the 12th century. There's a summary of the tale and its lessons here. 

It's not one of the better-known Arthurian stories in our time, but it was very popular in its day. 

That’s Not How It Works, Kristi

Secretary Noem says that US citizens “ should be prepared to provide proof” of our citizenship. 

First of all, we don’t even issue a “proof of citizenship” ID. The closest thing is a passport, which most Americans don’t have. If you’re in the Global Entry trusted travelers’ program, they issue an ID that mentions your citizenship too, but that’s by-the-way to the point of the program. Even fewer Americans are enrolled in that than are holders of passports. 

Your driver’s license definitely avoids mentioning your citizenship. Real ID compliance means that it’s on file somewhere, but not in a way you can carry around with you. A voter registration card should be proof of citizenship, but we all know very well that it isn’t. 

So is the idea that we should all be carrying notarized copies of our birth certificates everywhere? What is she even talking about?

Second, I’m old enough to remember when movies and television regularly featured police who demanded “your papers, please,” to people walking down the street. Sometimes these were East Germans; sometimes they were Soviets. Sometimes they were Nazis. In Casablanca, they were the police of occupied French territories collaborating with the Nazis. 

What they never were was the good guys. Even as the bad guys, they never wore masks. 

This isn’t how America works. However, how about a demonstration of American-ness in lieu of the nonexistent identification cards? I have a very clear idea of how an American would respond to such a demand. Nothing is more American than telling a government agent to stuff it and to mind their own business. Defiance of overreaching authority in the name of liberty should be sufficient evidence; if such a one isn’t an American, at least they have the right makings to be. 

UPDATE: On demands for identification in general.

Propaganda

The Chinese probably intended this to look bad. The only weak thing in the video is the Chinese singing, though. 

UPDATE: While there, I saw this clip about Greenland. (A bit of profanity, for those concerned.) An audience member claims about the prior sale of the American Virgin Islands that “there was a Trump back then too” who “used the same tactics.” That would be Woodrow Wilson. 

Wilson was incredibly powerful during his tenure, having both Congress and the Supreme Court reliably on his side. This enabled numerous real abuses like the Sedition Act and the Espionage Act. However, I understand the sale of the Virgin Islands to have been something that the Danes themselves wanted to do. They wanted to unload them because they couldn’t afford them, and they were motivated to do it quickly, before America joined the war, to protect Danish neutrality. Motivated sellers often don’t get the best price. 

Ruthless duty

Sigurd Yves Larsen, a longtime family friend from before my birth, a close friend of and professional collaborator with my father, has just died at the age of 92. He was born in Brussels in 1933. What I never knew until today is that when Germany invaded Belgium (he being then only 7 years old), his father left his wife and three young children in order to join the Resistance. For the rest of the war they had no idea if he was alive or dead. His wife set out on foot, with all three children, the youngest in a pram, to traverse the entirety of France and try to cross the border to Spain, only to be turned back. They spent the rest of the war in Belgium, then were reunited with the father in 1945. The whole family emigrated to Brazil, then soon to the United States. My father's friend became the head of the physics department at Temple University, and even after retiring, kept working on physics problems I'm told include second virial coefficients, gas thermodynamics, and few-body systems. He had been frail in recent years, but remained in reasonable health until a mercifully brief final illness in the last couple of weeks.

His family journey through France on foot was no isolated case; millions of people were on the road, facing bombs and strafing by the Germans. Per a combination of Grok and Wikipedia: the mass exodus of civilians during the German invasion of Western Europe in May-June 1940, known as "L'Exode" in French history, involved an estimated 6-10 million people fleeing southward from Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and northern France as the Wehrmacht advanced. This included nearly two million Belgians who crossed into France within days of the May 10 invasion, driven by panic and memories of World War I atrocities, creating overcrowded roads clogged with families on foot, bicycles, horse-drawn carts, and occasional vehicles—all moving amid military traffic heading in the opposite direction.

German Luftwaffe aircraft, particularly the infamous Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, frequently targeted these refugee columns to sow terror and disrupt Allied movements. Stukas would dive steeply with wailing sirens to strafe and bomb the slow-moving crowds, causing widespread casualties and forcing people to dodge attacks while hiking among thousands. These assaults were tactical, exploiting the vulnerability of mixed civilian-military convoys to create blockages and panic.

As impressed as I am by his courage and dutifulness in joining the Resistance, it seems unimaginably harsh for him to leave his family in the circumstances, especially considering that one of his wife's grandparents was Jewish. Still, when men have to go war, they have to go to war.

Home on the Range

This story out of Wyoming reminds me that when I was a kid we had a guy who would ride his horse to the VA  (which was the only place you could get a drink, it being a private club in a dry county). The deputies all knew he was coming home drunk, but the horse knew the way and got him home reliably. He was just accepted as one of the local characters. I don’t know if he was a WWII or Korean War veteran; I was just a child, but I remember dad laughing about it with the other firefighters. 

Iran on the Brink

There have been protests for nearly two weeks, and tonight's looked especially fiery: but this is the pivotal moment. The head of the exiled Pahlavi dynasty has called upon the police and military to join the protests and protect them in return for amnesty from the revolution -- for themselves and their families, a dire note rather appropriate to Middle Eastern politics. 

If it works, it's the point of no return. I may not have to go to Iran after all. Too bad, in a way. A man can't get into Valhalla sitting home. 

I will be back in DC next week, for meetings about... things. I have a very full schedule, so blogging will be light. 

Multitudes & Swarms

One of the complains of the Declaration of Independence was that the king had set up a "multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance." 

I thought of that today when I saw the very long list of UN and other organizations and charters from which we are withdrawing, almost all of which will have been paid for principally by US taxpayer dollars.

Grand Strategy

Usually military operations distinguish between three levels of planning: in descending order, strategy (or strategic), operational, and tactical. There is great glory in being at the tactical level, as it is closest to the fire. Yet the greatest tactical brilliance is not especially likely to succeed without the support of operational planning that gives it the tools it needs; and the best-planned operations are pointless if they do not serve a strategic function. 

Above all this, and not generally included because it is not a military function, is grand strategy. It is just the next level up: the alignment of all the powers of a government in support of its strategic goals. 

I've been thinking about the raid in terms of grand strategy, and I've come to the realization that what appeared to be inexplicable decisions by the Administration actually do serve grand strategic aims. It was possible to kill Maduro instead of capturing him; it was possible to send him to Guantanamo Bay (as indeed he did pass through there). It was possible to take him to Montgomery, Alabama to face charges; instead they took him to the Southern District of New York, which has been the most actively hostile of all districts except possibly DC to Donald Trump. It was perhaps not possible to construct a plausible indictment, but the administration appears to have produced a very weak one. It's likely, because of venue and weakness of the charges, that Maduro will walk. 

But it doesn't matter, does it? He's not going back to being "President of Venezuela." The strategic goal of changing the regime, in one way or another, has been reached already. If he gets a fair hearing in court and is turned loose, he's just some guy. The grand strategic goal of proving that the American system is fair and decent is advanced by that.

The judge chosen to rule over this trial has been repeatedly willing to rule against Trump, both in and out of power. I don't mean to suggest that he is prejudiced; the rulings all look reasonable to me, at least defensible and measured. Trump, by losing in court and turning Maduro loose and unharmed, would actually win a grand strategic victory. It's not like Maduro could plausibly return to power, not with his Cuban bodyguard destroyed: they were the only things keeping him in power, his only security against a coup.

So turn him loose; let the system find that we never plausibly had the authority to do this, and that the US can't reasonably claim jurisdiction. The process is the punishment, we often say when American citizens are ruined by prosecution but found Not Guilty on examination; our strategic aims were already achieved.

That's terrible, in a way; but how does it compare to how China or Russia would deal with a dissident? 

New York is so Doomed

You probably saw the story about the lady on Mamdani’s team declaring that property rights “especially for white families” will change to become “more collective.”

You should also read her deleted messages from X.com. 

So if I own something and the government forces me to accept a “more collective ownership,” i.e. my ownership of the thing drops from 100% to 50% (or less), or from 35% to 10% (or whatever), that seems to be a matter clearly defined by the jurisprudence around the Takings Clause. It’s not that the government can’t do it, but it is that just compensation is owed. 

In her earlier remarks, you can identify the solution she intends: she wants to lower real estate values in New York City, both to discourage landlords from investing there and presumably to lower the amount that just compensation might embrace. 

It’s amazing how clear the historical evidence is about how this all works. Another thing we learn from her is that she’s motivated also by intense hatred. That of will hurt people is not a small price to pay in striving for the glorious utopia: hurting people in New York is actually a major part of the payoff for her. 

Will anyone learn this time? Sadly, the historical evidence is pretty clear about that too. 

An Unusual Message

If any of you are seeing this message this morning, that's Romanian. I think it's a product of my VPN service, but the servers I am getting it on are based in North Carolina and Tennessee. I switched to the Atlanta server and it went away, as it does when I connect without VPN. 

Weird.

More Puzzles About The Laches

The questions raised by the Laches about what we're really trying to inculcate in our warriors, soldiers, and sons have clear parallels from our own day. We don't have the parable about the smart pig that Socrates raises, and our poetics about brave animals are somewhat different. But the puzzle about exactly what we are trying to build is still relevant. 

LTC David Grossman wrote what we probably all know as 'the parable of the sheepdog' in his book On Combat (which is a fit companion for his work On Killing). The parable is featured in the movie American Sniper, but it isn't actually old enough for Chris Kyle (who was approximately my age) to have heard it as a child as depicted. However, there's a very similar saying usually cited as being from Heraclitus, who was a pre-Socratic philosopher. 

Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, 80 are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.

So to return to the puzzle we finished the Laches with, what is the quality you're looking to teach, or train, or habituate -- and since it isn't, apparently, skill at arms or tactical proficiency, how do you get the benefits of those without hurting the real virtue you wanted? 

When I was spending a lot of time with the Third Infantry Division's headquarters unit in Iraq, I learned from their division historian that they had been part of a pilot program when the American Expeditionary Force was being developed for World War I. Sharpshooters had been a regular feature of military units since at least the American Revolution, and in Europe since the Napoleonic Wars, but for the most part training in rifles didn't try to make each soldier a sharpshooter. It was thought that this was a quality similar to the one Heraclitus was describing: an in-born skill or capacity that couldn't be taught to most people. Instead, European armies tended to teach formation fire, clusters of fire, or by WWI the use of machine guns to mitigate the need for human accuracy with volume of fire. 

The Third Infantry Division decided to train each soldier to shoot with significant accuracy. This worked very well, as it turns out: the German divisions they encountered outnumbered but were repulsed by them.

With nearly twice the personnel in the region than their enemies, the German forces could still counter the Allied forces in Reims, but French troops obliterated German forces in the area while taking little damage amongst their ranks. As this staged attack went on, German units were working their way up the Marne River, until they encountered the 3rd ID.

A frenzied fight, known as the Second Battle of the Marne, ensued with 3rd ID holding their ground against an overwhelming German force. Despite throwing tremendous assets at the Allies in this region, the German Army’s only success was capturing the city of Mezy, which lies along the Marne River. However, by July 17, the Allied forces were able to seize back the city before the enemy could advance into Paris.... The 3rd ID proved to be a cornerstone of the defense of the Marne River and the entire region. The division’s valiant stand against a large German force marked a turning point in the war. This proved to be the last time the German Army was on the offensive during World War I. As a result of their heroics during this battle, 3rd ID troops came to be known as the “Rock of the Marne” and their motto “Nous Resterons Là” (We Shall Remain Here) were cemented.

So this is Aristotle's point about professional soldiers -- he meant mercenaries, as opposed to citizen soldiers -- being more successful because they understand more about what to do in the case of the battle. It does seem like there's a skill being trained here that is useful, which is why we still spend so much time and energy on professional military training. We have managed to overcome Aristotle's concern about professionals electing to abandon their posts because they understand that their position is hopeless by creating a class of citizen soldiers who are also professional soldiers. (The Spartans had done something like this too, even in Ancient Greece.) They will die for their country's honor and interests if they must, but they still receive the benefits of professional military education. 

However, Heraclitus' point also stands this examination. Yes, the training helped many men in the 3rd Division. Yet the most famous soldier of that conflict was the 82nd Division's Alvin York -- a man whose skill at arms came from rural Tennessee, not the 3rd Division's pilot program. You can't make a man like Alvin York; nor was he trying to do so himself. He wanted to be a conscientious objector, not a fighting man. Somehow he proved to be the one Heraclitus was talking about in spite of undertaking no program to try to become so. 

We have spent a lot of time trying to understand what qualities such people have, and whether we can predict who will turn out to have them. LTC Grossman's books are some of the best of these efforts. Yet it is still a mystery: and whether there is something here that can be taught or cannot be is still not fully understood. 

The Laches

The very first dialogue of Plato's that I ever read was the Laches, which is often also called "On Courage." The recent events remind of why even non-philosophical men can see the value of courage in this and every generation. It's fairly short, and I feel like running through it tonight.

The subject of the dialogue is education of the young to be courageous, which it proves that none of the men present can do: at the end they must all admit that they don't know what courage even is. After Aristotle's EN, you know why: Socrates was treating the virtues as a species of knowledge, and this gives rise to puzzles about why then they don't always admit of precise definitions and can't always be taught, as knowledge should be capable of being. We can't always even teach our sons the virtues no matter how much we wish to do so -- and that, how to teach your sons to be courageous, is the subject of the discussion.

Plato uses his dramatis personae to highlight the problem in several ways. Lysimachus was the son of a very good general (strategos, obviously a cognate of 'strategy'), Aristides, who commanded at the Battle of Plataea. This is a clear example of a son who should have had the right kind of education if his father could teach the virtue. The second is another famous son, Melesias the son of the powerful and successful Thucydides (the political leader, not the historian). This Thucydides had reorganized Athens into a powerful naval power that dominated its era, striving against the famous Pericles for leadership. Nicias was a prominent general in his own right during the Peloponnesian War. He had noted victories and arranged a statesman-like peace with Sparta (which bears his name, so much was he the author of it). Laches was another general commanding during the Peloponnesian War: both he and Nicias would die in it. Socrates, as readers of this blog know, was a noted war hero himself -- his respect was high enough among these men that they ask his opinion on the topic of how to educate their sons to be courageous men.

After the jump, I'll go through the arguments, but I want to give my own opinion on why the dialogue ends in aporia, the state of admitting that you don't really know. I think this was often Socrates' goal, because it is only when you get to that point that you really begin to think. Thinking is hard work and expensive calorically, so for the most part we use heuristics, resort to familiar paths or old sayings or stories that we think have a relevant moral. It's only when you exhaust all this that you really start to struggle with a problem.

Aporia, then, should often be the goal of a serious inquiry. Here you can see how, though Socrates nor Plato ever succeeded in figuring out that the error lay in assuming that virtue was a species of knowledge, the challenge eventually prompted Aristotle's alternative. That was satisfying enough for two thousand years: but if the challenge had not been so severely pressed by Socrates, over and over, it might never have provoked the insight.

The dialogue opens with a discussion many of us have also had: whether or not training in a martial art improves courage and fighting ability, or if it is a sort of showmanship that leads to false courage (the latter is at least sometimes the case: we often mock this kind of martial art as 'bullshido'). Here the martial artists have been putting on an exhibition of fighting in armor.

Richard Fernandez on the Air Defenses

Wretchard is making the same point I was thinking about earlier, but better and with greater detail.

Venezuela had a Russian-supplied integrated system focused on protecting Caracas and strategic sites. This included long-range, medium-range, short-range, and point-defense systems, supplemented by anti-aircraft guns and fighter interceptors. 

They had around 12 batteries of S-300VM (approximately 1–2 divisions sapid effective against aircraft, cruise missiles, and some ballistic threats up to 200–250 km. Medium-range: Buk-M2E (SA-17 Grizzly) systems, with 9–12 batteries up to 45–50 km. Medium/short-range: S-125 Pechora-2M with dozens of units for low-to-medium altitude threats.  Short-range/point defense:  Tor-M1/Tor-M2E (up to 10 systems in some reports) and possible Pantsir systems. They had 5,000 MANPADS Russian Igla-S for low-flying threats like helicopters and cruise missiles. 

Anti-aircraft artillery: Over 400 pieces, including 200+ ZU-23-2 23mm twins and 114+ 40mm Bofors L/70 (some modernized). 

Aerial component: Su-30MK2 Flanker fighters (around 20–21 operational) for interception, with limited F-16s (few airworthy due to maintenance issues). 

All that proved useless or was neutralized on January 3, 2026 practically instantaneously.

He is always worth reading. 

The Glorious Revolution

In 1688 the heretofore subjects of the English King James II elected to remove him from power, as of course they had a right to do. This is generally known as "the Glorious Revolution" because it was relatively nonviolent (not quite completely so, but surprisingly so). 

Thomas Macaulay's account of the Revolution in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second exemplifies the "Whig history" narrative of the Revolution as a largely consensual and bloodless triumph of English common sense, confirming and strengthening its institutions of tempered popular liberty and limited monarchy. Edmund Burke set the tone for that interpretation when he proclaimed: "The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty."

Today's revolution was even less bloody than that, apparently; I haven't heard any casualty figures from the other side, but we seem to have lost no ships and no fighting men. That's shocking given that the raid was conducted with helicopters over a nation with many, many surface to air missiles. That, combined with the surprise and the lack of leaks from "government sources speaking anonymously because they lacked authority to talk to the press" suggests that some genuine progress has been made since the Afghan withdrawal in military leadership and coherence. 

However, it also suggests a strong performance by the clandestine service. While of course I can't prove it, the striking likelihood is that our clandestine service under the present leadership is more capable both of penetration of a hostile regime and of keeping its own secrets. 

Let us hope this all remains as bloodless as possible.

UPDATE: The NYT reports some 40 Venezuelans may have died in the action; they also confirm a successful and lengthy clandestine operation to map and prepare for the raid.

In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela with a plan to collect information on Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, whom the Trump administration had labeled a narco-terrorist.

The C.I.A. team moved about Caracas, remaining undetected for months while it was in the country....  It was a highly dangerous mission. With the U.S. embassy closed, the C.I.A. officers could not operate under the cloak of diplomatic cover. But it was highly successful. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that because of the intelligence gathered by the team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate and even what pets he kept.

That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

The result was a tactically precise and swiftly executed operation that extracted Mr. Maduro from his country with no loss of American life, a result heralded by President Trump amid larger questions about the legality and rationale for the U.S. actions in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking.  

Although we usually talk about the Abbotobad raid as a military raid, officially the SEALs who carried it out were placed in the temporary command of the CIA for the purpose. This was to cover a legality: the legal authority to do it isn't military, but the Agency's. You may remember a similar plot device in the movie Sicario, where the Agency has to get a fig leaf of an FBI agent in order to establish a 'joint task force' that can operate inside the United States (normally, CIA employees aren't armed inside the United States except for training, and to provide security and such; and indeed, relatively few of them are armed even outside of the borders; in the movie, CIA SAD (now SAC) wanted to run an operation just a bit within the border, so they needed a fig leaf). 

I keep expecting to learn that some similar legal fig leaf was deployed here -- there was an FBI agent along on the raid, apparently, which is being described as a law-enforcement matter in pursuit of indictments in US Federal Court. So far, however, I haven't read of that being the case; the NYT piece says the FBI HRT was there in case he was needed to negotiate a surrender. It would only be a fig leaf in any case, but I'm surprised if it were omitted because it's the kind of thing that is usually done by the lawyers.

"Possession of Machine Guns"

It is a very strange casus belli, to claim that a foreign leader broke our laws in his country. Of course, the NFA is itself an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment which should have no legal force in any event: thus, there's even less reason to try to enforce it on a foreigner in his own nation.

The War Powers Resolution doesn't seem to forbid this since the action began and ended so quickly -- well within the timelines the law sets up. That ship probably sailed with the Libyan overthrow in any case; Secretary of State Clinton quite openly declared the Obama administration wasn't going to bother with it. 

This sets up a kind of loophole, I guess, presuming that you can win your wars quickly enough. Many a war has begun under the presumption that it would end quite quickly -- it is said that picnickers came out to watch the first battle of Manassas (also known as the first battle of Bull Run). Not every war expected to be short and easy has turned out so.

The Women of Iran

I’ll go to this war, if he means it. I’ll die in it gladly.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

It’s probably fine for Manhattan, collectivism instead of rugged individualism. Well, no, it’s not. But it’s their problem rather than ours. 

I was surprised to realize that I cared about New York City on 9/11. Maybe I don’t, still. 

Hogmanay

Happy New Year.

Imagining the Alternative

It's easy to complain about the things that a given administration gets wrong; they're actual, after all, and their mistakes therefore have consequences. Still, it's helpful to think on how things would have gone wrong had the other side won, too. I feel obligated to write in opposition to the many things I disagree with; but I would have disagreed even more, I expect, had things gone the other way. 

A mild self-reproof: it's hard to remember how much worse it could have been, since it isn't. It's important to try to keep it in mind all the same.

Requiescat in Pace, Ms. Bardot

Openness to New Experiences

AVI sometimes accuses me of this, with fairness. Today for our late Sunday breakfast I made applewood-smoked bacon and fried eggs, but I decided to try DL Sly's take on biscuits (see the comments to the Southern Biscuits post). Just to be fair to Lodge Cast Iron's Dutch oven cookbook, and because I was making bacon instead of sausage, I decided to try their recommended packet gravy as well. I baked the biscuits in a Dutch oven, pictured.

The chief difference in Sly's family biscuits and mine is the lack of any kneading or folding. As a result, the biscuits are very much like my mother's spoon biscuits: my grandmother, who taught me, was my paternal grandmother; my maternal grandmother never made biscuits because she made them for my maternal grandfather one time when they were first married and he laughed at them, so she never once made them again for him again in her entire life. (He taught me to make bacon; my paternal grandmother made it daily, but it’s his method of baking it in the oven that I use.) As a result, my mother's biscuits were learned after she married and was majoring in home economics in college (apparently a thing one could do in those days; she later transferred her major to education and became a career teacher).

These biscuits are excellent for gravy-and-biscuits because the zero kneading and folding means that they have almost no gluten in them. They are thus extremely tender to the fork. They are less suitable than mine for making an egg-and-bacon sandwich, as they lack the fluffy layers that keep them from falling apart as easily. Depending on the meal plan, however, they might be a great choice.

The packet gravy was not a good recommendation: I stand by my earlier condemnation of it, now on empirical grounds. It is not a third as good as the from-scratch sausage gravy, and it isn't even particularly easier to make because you still have to mix the packet with cold water before then stirring it into boiling water. If you're going to do that much, go all the way and have the full and delicious experience. 

Still, you know, you try new things and some of it works, some of it doesn't. The biscuits were great; the packet gravy was not. Live and learn. 

A Conversation at Whitewater

I met a British lady on the trail at Whitewater Falls. We spoke because she complimented my patience with her in taking photos of the thing, and I thanked her for her compliment and then told her the bit about the two overlooks being in different states even though they’re only about 170 yards apart just as a fun piece of trivia about where she was. 

She was struck by that, and then asked me where Cherry Point was. I was surprised by the question, since it is all the way across the state on the coast. “It’s very far,” I said, pointing east. “That way, about five hundred miles. The Marine Corps has an air station there.” 

She said she knew that, because she had a son stationed there cross-training with the USMC in flying fighters. Her husband had been a Marine for 24 years— Royal Marines, of course— before he retired. When he died, she said sadly, indicating the Kabar on my belt, the government had made them turn in all his knives and shotguns. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “We have a different policy here, as you might know.”

She then waxed positively about Trump’s rebuke of London’s mayor, a subject about which she had a great deal to say in agreement. I was surprised to hear someone from overseas speaking so positively about Trump, who doesn’t go out of his way to ingratiate himself with Europe. 

Just an anecdote, of course, but a striking interaction. I hope she enjoys the rest of her visit. 

Balsam Lake, Christmas Day

Lots of good motorcycle weather lately. A rare Christmas present! It’s ending soon; next week is going to have weather in the teens again. 

Balsam Lake in the Nantahala National Forest. Bald eagles nest here to breed in warmer weather. 

Whitewater in Late December

Whitewater Falls, as viewed from ~100 yards inside South Carolina.

The same waterfall about 100 yards back inside North Carolina.

Lake Jocasse far below in South Carolina.

Christmas

May God grant you all a fine feast and a peaceful celebration on this most glorious of days. Thank you for being my friends and companions, which is itself a great gift. 

“Contemplate This…”

UPDATE:

Told you (see comments to the post below this one):

Intel Alert, Christmas Eve

 

NORAD Tracker

Southern Biscuits and Gravy

An early gift I received this year was The Lodge [Cast Iron Company] Book of Dutch Oven Cooking. It's a very thoughtfully constructed book for the most part, with insightful tips on how to use a Dutch oven, how to build the best kind of fires for them, how to dig a bean hole the right way, what woods are best, etc. However, one page of recipes -- 'Southern biscuits and gravy' -- is ridiculously bad. Every part of the biscuit recipe is wrong, and the gravy recipe directs you to mix a package of a particular brand's gravy mix with water!

So, since I share recipes sometimes, here's my recipe for biscuits and gravy. This sort of thing causes fights among Southern cooks, as it is a matter of great pride to do it right, usually meaning -- as indeed I do mean -- "the way my grandmother taught me." Any of you who are Southerners whose family recipe differs are not hereby declared wrong; I have room for a diversity of opinions (and please leave your own version in the comments). This one is from the mountains of Tennessee, as you'll intuit from the brand recommendations: White Lily is located in Knoxville, and Tennessee Pride is from Nashville (their 'farmboy' character has appeared on the Grand Ol' Opry).

Southern Biscuits

2 cups White Lily Self-Rising flour (or White Lily regular flour plus baking soda and powder, if you prefer; but White Lily for certain because they are the only flour that produces soft enough biscuits because they use 100% soft winter red wheat, which will make tender biscuits).

1/4 cup bacon grease, reserved from the last time you made bacon (my grandmother made biscuits and bacon every morning)

3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk (i.e. whole milk plus a bit of lemon juice, wait five minutes after combining before mixing)

Combine until moist. On a well-floured surface knead not more than five-seven times, fewer if you can mange it. (Kneading produces gluten, the protein that makes bread stiff; biscuits are meant to be soft and tender.) I like to press the dough out into a layer, fold a quarter of it onto itself from each end, and then fold the two parts at the middle of the dough so it looks like you're closing a book; this will create layers. Cut into biscuits with a knife or biscuit cutter. Bake at 450 until they are golden brown on the top; remove and brush with melted butter (or I often use a refrigerated stick of butter, as they will be hot enough to melt it).

Gravy

First, make a pound of sausage (Tennessee Pride Hot is the family favorite here). In the grease thereof, make a roux; typically I mix two tablespoons of flour (all purpose is fine for this) with about a half a cup of cold water, then add it to the grease and mix. Thin with whole milk (not sour or buttermilk) and then cook until it thickens again. Salt and black pepper to taste. 

A Warm Day in December

Aggression

The discussion of the war crime of aggression has been long; it is still perhaps of interest. I’m going to post a series of photographs of philosopher Michael Walzer’s arguments about it.* I don’t intend this as an endorsement of his position, only an attempt to inform our discussion with what might be called the standard position of contemporary Just War Theory. 

Marriage among the Young

AVI linked an interesting discussion of the forces pulling young people away from marriage. The study attempts balance, but I think it is broadly describing the value of marriage in terms of female happiness. It's ready to grant the value of feminist criticisms of marriage's fairness and desirability; the counterpoint the study makes is that all the data on happiness, as opposed to fairness, points to women being very much happier if they marry.

Our research at the Institute for Family Studies routinely reveals that the women in America who are forging the most meaningful and happy lives are married mothers. In fact, married mothers are nearly twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives as their single, childless peers.

And while marriage rates increasingly fall along ideological lines, female happiness doesn’t: the newest data show that married liberal women with children are now a staggering 30 percentage points more likely to say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy” than liberal women who are single and childless. What’s even more striking is the trend among prime-aged women 25 to 55: happiness among single, childless liberal women has plummeted since “the Great Awokening” of the last decade while it remains high for their peers who have managed to marry and have a family. The tragic irony is that the very group of women who are most likely to think marriage and family are an obstacle to happiness—women on the left—are less happy than their peers on the right, in part, because they are less likely to be married with children.

They don't really consider the perspective of the young men, whom they chiefly describe in terms of the female complaints against them. They do add some context about how the same forces making young men less marriageable are also making young women so in other ways, which is an attempt at balance, but they don't entertain any of the expected perspectives about how marriage is a bad deal for men.  

I realize that the advocates for that position are often bitter, angry, or otherwise unlikeable figures. However, there's an important aspect of the problem that they have identified, one that is persuasive to a lot of young men. The institution of marriage has inherited very high guardrails to protect the interests of the mothers and children that it is expected to produce. In an era in which women initiate most of the divorces, however, these guardrails have not been rebalanced to protect the interests of the men who join the institution. A man wagers his lifetime capacity to earn a decent living disproportionately, while the odds of him getting to retain access to the children the marriage produces is also greatly unbalanced. There's something like a 50/50 shot that he'll end up without his children while subjected to punishing alimony and child support payments to a woman who decided to cheat on him and leave him. 

The zero-sum-game aspect of any rebalancing on that score means that making marriage more attractive to young men would make it less attractive to young women. That's a hard problem not tackled by the article.

Another serious problem is their treatment of the question in terms of the parents' happiness. Marriage's basic value as an institution is that it sets up an environment in which child rearing is more stable: marriage is not really about the good of the parents but about the good of the children, in other words. That it makes the women happier is well-studied and adequately demonstrated, but also beside the point. The point is that men and women who have sex are likely to produce children, and those children need to be supported, educated, and fitted out to join society over the course of decades. An enduring institution that achieves that most difficult of tasks is necessary for humanity's continuance. 

Thus, this sort of commentary is entirely missing the point:

The nature and content of digital offerings are degrading men’s marriageability and women’s, especially liberal women’s, interest in putting a ring on it. Neither sex is developing the capacity to embrace self-sacrifice or long-suffering commitment, precisely the virtues which marriage requires. They’re also what makes marriage so life-giving, character building and personally gratifying. Psychologists have long documented this paradox: deep, lasting happiness is much more strongly tied to meaning than it is to pleasure. 

No doubt, if you are selling marriage in terms of happiness, "self-sacrifice" and "long-suffering" as requirements are going to make the whole project seem like insanity. It may in fact actually produce happiness as well, but it doesn't seem likely to; and all of us who have been married a long time will attest that self-sacrifice and long-suffering are in fact highly accurate descriptions (both for ourselves and our spouses!).

Very likely the real problem is that the institution is failing because it no longer fits the civilization we've evolved into. I don't know how you sustain marriage in a civilization that treats the children as trivial non-considerations, and the 'happiness of the adults' as the only thing that matters. 

Who gives a damn if the parents are happy? It turns out they will be, more likely than if they remain unmarried; but that's not the point at all. It's just a good thing that falls out of it, as the old virtue of chivalry -- the quality that allows a man to tame a horse and ride it to war -- happens to produce gentlemen who can treat women better than other men normally do. That's good, but the point wasn't the gentle treatment of women: the point was the cavalry. 

By that token, if you don't have horses anymore you won't get much chivalry; and if you don't care about the children predominantly, marriage is going to fail. Slowly, as chivalry did, but surely, all the same.

Cowpens

In a discussion of 'America's art of war,' historian VDH notes: 

[T]hroughout the American Revolution, Patriots exhibited a singular ability to create their own capable military forces ex nihilo. And they ingeniously supplied and equipped local militias in addition to their eventual establishment of a Europeanized and professional army.... [T}he spirited “army” that began the war at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill in 1775 bore little resemblance to the multifaceted and lethal military that defeated the British at Cowpens and at Yorktown in 1781 to end the war.

I've walked the battlefield at Cowpens, which isn't all that far from here. 

It was in fact a combination of untrained militia similar to the Lexington and Concord forces and hardened militia from Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, and Virginia that was key to the victory there. The Continental commander, Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, deployed these forces in an innovative manner, similar to the Zulu "bull's horn formation" that was developed some years later and deployed against (also) the British in Africa. 

Specifically, Morgan deployed the unblooded irregulars in two lines at the very front of his formation, and the hardened militia in two mutually-reinforcing lines closer to his command position. He did this between two rivers, which created a funnel that couldn't be avoided. As he anticipated, the first two lines quickly broke and withdrew in the appearance of a rout. Because they couldn't flee in any direction except towards his stiffer lines, they fled towards his hardened units. This drew the British cavalry into a charge against what they thought was a rout that separated them from the rest of their forces. 

When they hit the hardened infantry, they were defeated in detail -- indeed, slaughtered so thoroughly that the unit couldn't be reconstituted, the few survivors having to be broken up and sent to other units. The Continental forces then charged with bayonets, capturing two cannons, forcing the surrender of a Highlander unit, and causing what remained of the British cavalry to flee and the rest to withdraw in the best order they could manage. 

This followed the victory of the "Overmountain Men" at King's Mountain (the town of which is in North Carolina, also relatively nearby, but the battle a few miles south in South Carolina) and led to the ultimate victory at Yorktown, as this whole wing of the British Army in the South was crippled and had to withdraw to Cornwallis' forces. Quoting Wikipedia:

Along with the Loyalist defeat at Kings Mountain, Cowpens was a serious blow to Cornwallis, who might have defeated much of the remaining American troops in South Carolina had Tarleton won at Cowpens. Instead, the battle set in motion a series of events leading to the end of the war. Cornwallis abandoned his pacification efforts in South Carolina, stripped his army of its excess baggage, and pursued Greene's force into North Carolina. Skirmishes occurred at the Catawba River (including the Battle of Cowan's Ford on February 1, 1781) and other fords. Yet, after a long chase Cornwallis met Greene at the Battle of Guilford Court House, winning a victory but so weakening his army that he withdrew to Wilmington to rest and refit. Later, when Cornwallis went into Virginia, Washington and his French ally Rochambeau, seized this opportunity to trap and defeat him at the siege of Yorktown, which caused the British to seek peace terms with the Americans that would acknowledge the United States' independence.

In the opinion of John Marshall, "Seldom has a battle, in which greater numbers were not engaged, been so important in its consequences as that of Cowpens." It gave Greene his chance to conduct a campaign of "dazzling shiftiness" that led Cornwallis by "an unbroken chain of consequences to the catastrophe at Yorktown which finally separated America from the British crown".

"You Can Still Hunt"

In nearby Canada, allegedly soon to be the 51st state, the 2nd Amendment doesn't yet apply. 

I did see someone comment the other day: "The government will never ban your hunting rifle. They'll call it a 'sniper rifle' first."

Yuletide

The Winter Solstice was today; we are in winter true from about ten o'clock in the morning local time.

Christmas is still a little ways off. The Yuletide starts a few days before the Christmastide.