Exemplary Punishment

There is a standing philosophical debate about exemplary versus retributive punishments. The sentences handed down yesterday against the ANTIFA cell in Texas -- 100 years for shooting a gun aimed at the ground, thirty years for moving a box of literature connected to the attack -- are versions of exemplary punishment, i.e., punishments that are meant to 'make an example' to deter others. 

Exemplary punishments are favored by some philosophers as the only moral form of punishment, because they think that retributive punishments do not work. Retribution on the other hand has Biblical warrant, famously 'an eye for an eye,' etc., so especially Christian philosophers have often suggested that it is moral to punish someone only for their own crimes/sins, and not for those of someone else -- especially crimes (or sins) that haven't even been committed yet, and may never be at all!

My favorite philosophical theory on retributive punishment -- not because I advocate for it, but because I love retelling it to see people's faces -- is Kant's theory. Kant especially loved capital punishment, which he advocated for a very great many things. One of those things was rebellion against your sovereign, as he was very much a law-and-order kind of guy. In the Metaphysics of Morals, he talks about two Jacobites who come to trial for their rebellion -- which sufficed, for him; the details didn't matter beyond that they were rebels. (For those of you who want to look it up, this is in Ak. 6:334). 

Kant said that the judge ought to offer each of them the choice between death or lifelong slavery. He imagines that one chooses death and the other slavery. The one who chose death should receive his wish and be put to death, because he is "acquainted with something that he values more highly than life, namely honor, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not at all." The one who prefers slavery should be denied his will, because he has proven he is unworthy of the honor of having his will respected: he should also be put to death. 

Hegel was also a retributionist; he thought that treating a man as a man by punishing him only for his own actions was just, whereas punishing a man to deter others was like "raising a stick at a dog," i.e., treating the other men as if they were animals to be intimidated rather than men to be respected. The use of the first man as a mere instrument rather than as an individual worth respect offended both. 

Hobbes is mostly a retributionist, but he allows that a valid secondary choice is to correct others liable to the similar offense. 

Those are all Modern thinkers, in the philosophical sense of the term -- Hobbes is really Early Modern. Among the Ancients, the exemplary punishment is the usual standard. Plato advocates for it the Protagoras as the only valid reason for imposing punishment.

If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong, only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention...

Likewise in the Gorgias and the Laws, the latter of which we went through at length together once. The Stoic position is similar, advocated by Seneca in (De Ira 1.19). Aristotle's discussion in the EN, which we also went through together, spells out retributive punishment explicitly, but also allows for deterrence and for restorative punishment as alternative forms. 

Not that it has only ancient advocates; deterrence/examples live also in J.S. Mill's utilitarianism, Bentham's as well (Rationale of Punishment).

I'll do a follow-up post later, I think, examining what I said about the issue in my commentaries on the Laws and the EN. For now, I just want to raise the matter for our discussion. What do you think about it?

Follow-up to Prior

The last post was more than long enough, and attacked the basic problem of 'what is wrong with this coherent argument about fairness?'. However, the Clovis example reminds me of an interesting fact about the Beowulf.

Clovis asks his warriors for a gift of honor at the end of a successful fight. He does not simply lay claim to a share of the treasure that is not warranted by the equal law governing their unequal society: "I ask you, O most valiant warriors, not to refuse to me the vase in addition to my rightful part."

The one soldier who refused him obeyed their law about division of spoils, but also then refused the king a requested gift -- he denied him an asked-for honor, which is to say that he imposed a shame. It was this, I think, that Clovis was revenging with his later murder of that soldier in a shameful manner, imposing a shame on him in turn. The entry does not mention, however, if Clovis later paid a blood-price to the soldier's family, as is highly likely. Fairness and unfairness were not the only issues in that society; the honor requested and the shame of being publicly embarrassed had to be addressed as well.

In the Beowulf, which holds up the title character as the very model of honor, we get demonstrations of what contemporary societies thought ideal behavior looked like. Having come to help the Danes with Grendel (in order to repay a debt of honor to Hrothgar incurred by Beowulf's father, who had enlisted Hrothgar's aid to help settle a wergild dispute of his own), Beowulf defeats first Grendel and then, when it proves necessary, Grendel's more powerful and magical mother. In doing the latter, he discovers and wins a great treasure. 

What does he do with it? He gives it all to Hrothgar.

Beowulf spake, offspring of Ecgtheow:

“Lo! we blithely have brought thee, bairn of Healfdene,

Prince of the Scyldings, these presents from ocean

Which thine eye looketh on, for an emblem of glory.

Beowulf had come, after all, to help Hrothgar and settle his father's debt of honor. He keeps nothing for himself. Yet Hrothgar recognizes that this 'gift from the ocean' is too great on top of the fight Beowulf has borne, and creates a new debt of honor on him. He repays this by giving Beowulf presents of his own, rich ones; and later, when Beowulf would leave him to return home, parting gifts as well. Hrothgar declares that all the old feuds are forgotten, and the two peoples united in friendship by this mutual exchange which will bring further visits and exchanges and growth and prosperity.

Unferth, a thegn of Hrothgar's who had not been able to defeat the monsters, gives Beowulf his sword as a gift -- an honor that repays the shame Unferth likely felt at having been unable to do the deed himself. Beowulf's acceptance of this redeems Unferth's incapacity, and restores the honor he might otherwise have lost by not being part of the story of Grendel's defeat.

On the return home to his own king, Hygelac, Beowulf is met by the coast guard to whom he gives a sword as a gift; then, on arrival to the king, he gives the king all that Hrothgar had given him as gifts to his own king, thus eliminating any chance that Hygelac would see Beowulf's newfound wealth as a potential threat to their relative positions. But this is also not the end of the exchange, because Hygelac then gives Beowulf great gifts in return for the substantial honor that Beowulf has shown to him by this free-handedness with what he had won. These gifts include manors and establishments that will produce wealth, placing Beowulf higher in the structure of Geat power because he has proven he can be trusted to keep faith with his king. Indeed, after Hygelac's death and then the death of his son, Beowulf arises to the kingship himself. 

This mode of gift-giving looks unbounded and without economic logic to modern eyes: Beowulf was the one who had earned the 'presents of the ocean' through combat; why give it to Hrothgar, who had already received much by having the monsters killed? One present, perhaps, but all of it? Then too with Hygelac, who had perhaps contributed by allowing Beowulf to go on the trip rather than insisting he stay at home; but did he thereby deserve all of the spoils of the venture? In freely giving away everything and keeping nothing for himself multiple times, Beowulf places his fate in the hands of men who are the very sort of men that the author of the 'fairness' piece would suggest ought to be expected to take unfair advantage, being already in positions of social power and authority. It looks illogical and uneconomical.

Perhaps outside of a work of literature, the kings would have behaved more like Clovis than like Hrothgar or Hygelac. Yet in the poem, where the ethic is being spelled out purely and on its own terms, honor provides an answer to these problems of economic grasping. Each recognizes the honor being done him and repays it fairly -- fairly, not disproportionately to his own advantage according to a notion of 'fairness' that is derived from the system's own extant inequalities. At least in the poem, honor proves to have an economics and a logic of its own, one that leads to Beowulf reigning in peace and stability for many decades. His people love him; nations abroad respect him whether they love him or fear him.

And so there is peace, until the dragon comes.

Justice as Unfairness

AVI has posted an interesting challenge, an article that strikes me as making a coherent but wrong argument; yet saying just exactly why it is wrong is the interesting and challenging part. It also plays with examples with which I am well-familiar, such as the diyya, an Islamic form of the wergild/weregeld that I have written about many times because we used to help negotiate them in Iraq as a means of trying to bring peace in tribal disputes that were contributing to the insurgency. 

The basic thesis is stated here: 

Fairness does not come from external principles that exist in the universe and bind us. Fairness norms are human solutions. They are the rules for playing the game of life properly and agreeing on everyone’s due in society.

Fairness norms allow people to avoid having to haggle all the time in real life and to agree quickly on how to split rewards and costs in their interactions. But they can work in practice only if they are not too far from what people could actually claim using their raw bargaining power in a hard-fought bargaining process. Only norms that are broadly in line with actual differences in bargaining power will tend to last.

The immediate problem with that thesis is that it does itself do what it claims it cannot do: it defines fairness, i.e., as "playing the game of life properly and agreeing on everyone's due in society." If this is a universal truth across all of the various societies covered, then there is a philosophical universal at work; the fact that different societies have come up with different ways of agreeing about how to address that universal is actually evidence against the idea that "fairness does not come from external principles," i.e., external to the facts about a given society. If every society develops some idea of fairness in spite of their substantial differences, there probably is -- indeed almost certainly must be -- something external to the facts of any given society driving that project.

The second problem with the thesis arises from the examples. Since I started with the diyya, I'll begin this part with it too. He's arguing that fairness norms essentially ratify existing imbalances in social bargaining power, and points to the fact that in Iranian law (his example, but Islamic law generally) a woman's life is worth half the compensation of a man's. It is true that women have less bargaining power in Islamic societies and under Islamic law; a woman's testimony is also worth half of a man's. Yet the diyya is not the only such system historically, and the value of free women compared to free men has not always disfavored women even though presumably women always had less bargaining power in the era.

This effectively made killing a celibate priest as expensive as killing a nobleman, a useful incentive for communities tempted to settle disputes with the local clergy through violence.

Women of childbearing age occupied an unusual position. The Salic Law valued a free woman who had begun bearing children at 600 solidi, triple the price of a free man, reflecting the community’s loss of future population.

Note that those arguments about why the price was set where it was are assumptions of the modern author, and that they are in direct conflict. If the concern was with future population, a celibate priest would be worth less, not much more. Still: the priest in that society had a very high bargaining power, being able to draw on the authority of the Church as its representative locally in an era of great Church power. One who was powerful enough that he could retain his position even though he was known not to be celibate presumably had greater bargaining power, though, not less: if the author's thesis were correct, he should command more compensation, not less, but the facts say otherwise. And the valuing of a free woman at three times the rate of her husband is not likely a demonstration that she had three times the bargaining power in society! Yet it was the case. 

This points to the second problem, but I'll go through another one of his examples before stating it. He opens with an example of king Clovis killing a soldier after that soldier enforced the (actually perfectly equal in spite of differing social/bargaining positions) Frankish rule about distribution of captured war treasure. The conclusion the author draws is that this shows that the equal rule couldn't survive in an unequal society. The example is contingent, however; if the soldier had survived Clovis' attempt and killed the king in revenge, he might well have been rewarded by being elevated to the kingship himself by his fellows (the same ones who had, after all, accepted his rebuke of the king earlier). Then we would be reasoning from the example that the equality demonstrated by the rule was so persuasive, even in an unequal society, that violating it allowed you to rebuke kings or, in extreme cases, kill and replace them (which is, by the way, the story of how the fictional Conan the Cimmerian became king by his own hand -- a story from a much later time).

The author of the original piece is a behavioral economist, not a philosopher nor a historian. He is attempting a philosophical project from historical examples. The problem with doing that is that the two disciplines are diametrically opposed to one another: history is concerned with stating the particular facts that actually happened; philosophy is concerned with the universals (such as this notion of 'fairness,' which appears in at least some form from Aristotle's 'justice as fairness plus lawfulness' to Iranian diyya to Saxon wergild to American payments for wrongful death or dismemberment). The attempt to straddle that line with economics is closer to the historical project, but the historical facts are in a sense accidents that might have gone this way or a different one as far as we know. The universals are found where, regardless of which way the facts happened to go, we still find the same themes emerging. 

Fairness and its relationship to justice is one of those things. I think it is probably true that those who occupy powerful bargaining positions are able to use their bargaining power in part to get the people around them to ratify their unfair position. The fact that they always feel the need to do so, with tools like laws or by purchasing social praise from journalists, or from skalds or scops or poets, or by purchasing masses from priests or commissioning praise-plays from playwrights, shows not that fairness is defined by their power. It shows that they are universally keenly aware that the unfairness makes their position perilous, and are always in every society seeking to shore it up. 

So what is fair, regardless of the facts of society? That was a question asked by John Rawls in the last century in his famous 'Veil of Ignorance' thought experiment. It's not an experiment that can actually be performed successfully, only imagined as a way of thinking about the problem. If you could pull people from different societies, times, and places, and put them through this 'veil' so that they were temporarily unaware of the facts of their society, and ask them to devise fair rules for any society -- knowing that any society would have inequalities of these kinds, but not knowing where they would fall -- what kinds of rules would they devise? 

Rawls wrote a long book about the idea that 'justice JUST IS fairness,' but if you read it he ends up smuggling back in Aristotle's idea that you need laws to enforce people treating each other the way that virtuous people would do by free choice. Thus, after the whole long thing you end up all the way back at the beginning with Aristotle. But there's your universal: two thousand years of law and economics and philosophy, and we always end up in the same place.

A Small Matter

Nobody's thinking about Syria right now, but there is a little complication in US policy there. 

Congress is nearing a vote on the Pentagon’s request to send $130 million in military assistance to armed groups in Syria fighting the Islamic State, but changing dynamics on the ground could weaken the program’s effectiveness and dampen the Trump administration’s efforts to improve ties with Damascus.

The Counter-ISIS Train and Equip Fund has disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars since 2014 to pay salaries, provide weapons and train vetted partner forces fighting ISIS — primarily in Syria and Iraq.

But in Syria, the organizations that the fund was intended to support, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces, are in the process of integrating with the formal Syrian military, which is overseen by a government the State Department still formally designates as an SST — a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

The SDF are mostly Kurdish peshmerga militia, highly effective fighters with longstanding relations with US Special Forces; 5th Group particularly has ties with the Kurds going back to the era when Saddam was firmly in charge of Iraq. The Syrian leadership were linked to al Qaeda quite directly until not that long ago, but seem to have broken free of that and established a surprisingly decent attempt at ending internal divisions and unifying the long-fractured country. However, they are still on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. 

It's not an insurmountable problem; a similar thing came up in Libya during the Obama administration, when they wanted to back the anti-Gaddafi rebels who were also al Qaeda affiliates. The State Department had them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and had to go through the process of rescinding that designation. That proved manageable; but there is an additional workaround that you can probably imagine for yourselves, the one that was being employed in Benghazi. That was of course why we had a consulate in Benghazi staffed by a high-level official with a nearby "Annex." Still, to get the official money soon to be approved by Congress there they have to go through the motions of doing it.

Solstice

That's quite a hat. 

The article is paywalled, but the photo caption says, "Kefan Wang (4th generation Shaman of Liaoning Province, China) dances as visitors enjoy the sunrise at Stonehenge Credit: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images." I would guess that makes Wang a Manchu shaman, a very small and not well-known branch of Chinese folk religion. I have no idea what connection such a one would have to Stonehenge, but we still don't fully understand what the builders were doing there. 

More photos from Stonehenge, here.

Mississippi John Hurt

Grim got me started listening to Jimmie Rodgers and I've been exploring the early 20th century for other musicians like him. Although the style's different, Mississippi John Hurt (1893-1966) is a very worthwhile listen. Of course, I loved the blues long before I loved country, but Hurt is country blues, so there's something for all of us in his music.

He grew up the son of ex-slaves sharecropping the land they had been slaves on. In the 1920s he got a deal to record some of his music, but it didn't sell very well and then the Great Depression hit. He went back to sharecropping. In the 1950s the folk music revival hit and musicologists discovered his recordings. Eventually, one of these musicologists found him on his farm and he started touring and recording again in the early 1960s. He's known for old-time, folk, blues, spirituals, and country, though it seems he most often gets labeled country blues.

Here's a good spiritual:

Here's some live blues:

Two Arthurian Recommendations

1. The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

The King Arthur Trilogy is a worthy retelling of the Arthurian stories for a younger audience, Amazon listing it as for ages 9-12. At several multiples of that age, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. She based her version on primary sources but, like any good storyteller, has added to and shaped the stories, weaving them into a coherent whole. In particular, she is skilled in her presentation of the characters in the story, while remaining firmly within the tradition. This is the best introduction to the whole of the Arthurian stories I've found. After reading this, someone new to the stories will have a good grasp of the essential elements and story lines and will be well-prepared to tackle more complex versions of the stories.

Sutcliff retold a number of other classical stories for this age group. I believe that her Black Ships before Troy has become the standard introduction to the Illiad for younger readers in much of the classical education and homeschooling community, which she follows with The Wanderings of Odysseus. She also has Beowulf, Dragon Slayer. I'll be adding these three books to my "read for fun" list.

2. The Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of the Merlin

The Daily Wire has made a 7-episode series from the first two of Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle series of novels. It focuses on the bard Taliesin and on Merlin's life up through being advisor to Uther and setting the stage for Arthur.

Overall, I thought it was very well done. The production was as high quality as I've seen in any TV series, the acting was good, the story is well-told, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Two possibly unique aspects of the story is that it weaves in Plato's story of Atlantis as background and it presents Merlin as a Christian wizard, though still with one foot in the pagan world.

My only complaint is that near the very end Merlin experiences a severe internal conflict which is just difficult to show on screen and so comes across a little flat. A possible solution might have been to add a couple of imaginary scenes running through Merlin's mind to show that conflict. That said, overall, it was an excellent show and I'll watch it again.

Alas, it is currently only available by subscribing to the Daily Wire. I got a discounted one-year subscription and have been enjoying it. They have a number of conservative movies and a number of programs on history, mythology, and of course tons of political talk, their bread and butter. They also have a number of conservative-friendly children's shows. For me, it was worth a one-year subscription, but I doubt I'll re-up.

Here's the trailer:

Metal Mariachi

Why not?

Rainer Maria Rilke Poems

The late 19th & early 20th century Austrian poet Rilke was recommended to me by a literature professor, so I gave him a try. Here are a few I thought were worthwhile. In this collection, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Rilke mostly gives us snapshots or vignettes with a single focus. His work was influential on a number of 20th century poets you might have heard of, such as Robert Bly, M. S. Merwin, and W. H. Auden.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Alas, Babylon

Eight airmen dead after a B-52 crash. We’ve been flying the same planes since before any of us were born, on the same mission. They are the wall that keeps the world. 

Some Brief Remarks on "Peace"

As I said at AVI's place, I tend to think that this "peace deal" is just an attempt to push the matter off until after the midterms, and that it doesn't really matter what it says because neither side intends to keep the promises being made. It is probably to our national dishonor that we are led by a man whose word doesn't mean anything, but we all know that it doesn't, so why worry about it? The horse is out of the barn; it'll come back or not in God's good time. For now, it's out of our control -- it's not like the other side has honorable men or women to offer as an alternative. 

The one thing that should die with this peace, however, is the idea that Israel in some way runs the USG. My Israeli contacts are livid. They feel completely betrayed which, in fairness, is what the United States generally does to its allies. That's how you know you're a US Ally in good standing: you get betrayed by this government or the next one, usually sequentially. That also is probably to our national dishonor, but it is at least a demonstration of some kind of self-governance: we can't have permanent promises because we actually do change at least the top dressing of the government once in a while. The unwashed underwear, by which I mean the bureaucracy, tends to go unchanged decade after decade; but some top-level policies get reversed as the pendulum swings. 

White House Fight Night

I went to UFC headquarters last time I was out in Vegas. It's quite a thing, really. 

I have heard that the President slept through part of it, but the man is 80. He should sleep. 

There Is No Such Thing as Intelligence

So claim "other psychologists." 

Not serious ones, I imagine, though serious psychology strikes me as a philosopher as a sort of joke. Psychology's history is mostly philosophy of mind without the possibility of falsification; I am told it's gotten better of late, but the replication crisis doesn't inspire a lot of faith in that assertion. All things equal, though, let's assume 'not the more serious psychologists.'

One of the very replicable findings about at least one measure of intelligence -- reading comprehension -- is that girls get it faster than boys. My elementary school broke the law (such differences already being forbidden) by sorting classes by reading comprehension level, so we had what the kids knew as and referred to as the 'high' 'middle,' and 'low' classes of intelligence. Since I learned to read well fairly early, my classmates were 26 girls and 3 boys, plus myself. The effects of that approximately 9-1 ratio, combined with alphabetical arrangement of students, were that I learned to talk to girls early. This has been an accidental but entirely beneficial outcome, as human beings sort by sex and by age cohort more than is rational. My friendships with women and with people much older than myself have been especially enlightening. 

But it's not true, not remotely true, that anyone can learn anything. Try teaching anything. You'd think that one wouldn't get headway among educators, but somehow it has.

The Communist Supercar

No, it's ironic, but it's no joke. 

BYD said the Denza Z featured “shattering high performance” with over 1,000 hp and the ability to sprint from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in less than two seconds, it didn’t reveal specifics.... 

[New details show] the four-seat EV roadster is slightly larger than the Porsche 911 and closer in size to the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe. The Denza Z is more powerful than both, with the 911 Turbo S delivering up to 701 hp and the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe offering up to 1,153 hp.

BYD’s electric supercar can reach a top speed of 217 mph and weighs 5,842 lbs (2,650 kg) for the hardtop version.

The Denza Z will be available with a soft top and a souped-up track package that gains a massive rear wing spoiler.

Nearly six thousand pounds moving at over two hundred miles an hour is a lot of F=ma. That Mercedes is closer to three and a half. Wonder how good the spoiler is? How about the brakes? 

It's strange to see luxury goods coming out of a Communist country; being consumed there by connected elites, certainly, but actually produced there? It seems like that should hardly be a priority in the Five Year Plan. 

Well, what do I know? I'm not a Communist. 

Memories of a young Marine

I think I may have mentioned here some time ago that my uncle, late in his life, gave an interview to preserve his memories of taking Okinawa, including seeing Japanese residents throwing their infant children off a cliff and killing themselves, for fear of what they'd been told the Americans would do to them. This is the transcript, quite brief. When they left Okinawa they expected to be sent to Japan to do more of the same, but worse. Then suddenly the war was over. My uncle was born in 1922, so he was 20 when he joined up and 23 or so at the time he recounts here. He died in 2013, aged 91. The first his children heard of these experiences was when he gave the interview in 2005.

Proper Hate

I had been told that hate was always wrong; apparently that's not operative any longer.

SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here’s how to properly hate him

There are competing schools of thought about the accumulation of wealth, among them the anarchist claim that “property is theft” and the Gordon Gekko theory of greed as a star-spangled virtue.... The more compelling argument against billionaires has to do not with the ethical implications of the extreme inequality that they arguably promote, but with the adverse real-world consequences, which you don’t have to be a fire-breathing Marxist to acknowledge. There is plenty of evidence that extreme inequality produces inferior and even perverse social outcomes.... But if [Elon Musk is] a stain on capitalism, it’s not because of his wealth. It’s because he exemplifies the idea of government as the plaything of plutocrats who shamelessly bend public policy toward private advantage. It may be difficult to excite class warfare in a culture that worships wealth, but people like Mr. Musk make it a whole lot easier.

Those aren't useful instructions; the headline writer has misled us. It's just griping. 

The good argument in favor of billionaires -- trillionaires, now -- is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world's richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.

Concentrations of political power are always pernicious, and wealth is one way that power can be concentrated. To say that we got lucky is to acknowledge that it could have gone the other way; indeed, it has done, as with several rich men who might be named. 

If you were wanting the promised instruction on how to hate properly, however, here is Chesterton:

         "Up on the old white road, brothers,

          Up on the Roman walls!

          For this is the night of the drawing of swords,

          And the tainted tower of the heathen hordes

          Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,

          Leans a little and falls.

          "Follow the star that lives and leaps,

          Follow the sword that sings,

          For we go gathering heathen men,

          A terrible harvest, ten by ten,

          As the wrath of the last red autumn—then

          When Christ reaps down the kings.

          "Follow a light that leaps and spins,

          Follow the fire unfurled!

          For riseth up against realm and rod,

          A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod,

          The last lost giant, even God,

          Is risen against the world."

          Roaring they went o'er the Roman wall,

          And roaring up the lane,

          Their torches tossed a ladder of fire,

          Higher their hymn was heard and higher,

          More sweet for hate and for heart's desire,

          And up in the northern scrub and brier,

          They fell upon the Dane.

Wandering into a Minefield

The Swedish athlete mentioned yesterday:

Many people helpfully explained that “some items are stolen more than others.” That’s true! And it’s a very reasonable question to ask. 

Forbidden Speech

A man in Scotland writes, but has to channel it through an American because he is now forbidden to say it aloud.

Once upon a time, North America was effectively Britain overseas. The colonists were Britons. They had British rights, British liberties, British privileges. Magna Carta. The Bill of Rights 1689. Around seventeen other Constitutional Statutes still technically in force.

Then King George decided Americans had lost their right to keep arms for their own defence, and that taxation without representation was perfectly acceptable. The rest, as they say, is history. The United States of America was born, and its citizens kept all of their old British rights and added God-given ones on top of them....

In 1920, Britain introduced its first serious Firearms Act. Before that, Britain had fewer gun restrictions than Texas.

Understand why it happened. It was not about crime. It was about preserving the Executive from its own people, specifically from any possibility of the kind of popular uprising that had just remade Russia. Protecting the ruling class. Nothing more, nothing less.

The constitutional safeguard of the citizen militia has also effectively been erased. It is almost impossible to find in Britain today.

If you keep reading, you find the criticism against the Administrative State that Weber mentions (see commentary on the sidebar). It overwhelms self-governance and replaces it with raw power. 

For our German Visitor

Here was the song he was running down the road.

The song sets it up as a reference to an older piece, though, and it is.

Here's a version with Merle Haggard, to link it up with our more usual era.

A German Travels the South

Apparently there's a soccer series going on right now that has brought a bunch of foreign soccer players to America. Soccer is not an American game -- it is the least interesting and exciting of the many variations of games with uninterrupted play ranging from one side of a field to another attempting to score goals. Americans have several better variations that we play, including indoor ones like basketball and hockey. Cherokee Stickball is another game of this sort. All of these are faster-paced and more interesting, so we don't much pay attention to the soccer version; I'm not quite sure why they've having the games here this time. 

However, what I have been enjoying is the joyous reactions of one of the traveling Germans to things he's been finding across the South. These things are well-known to me, and it's nice to see how much fun he is having. 

For example, here he is attending one of these games at a Southern-style university stadium (Auburn, as it happens). He is astonished by this experience. 

Before that, the hotel receptionist gave them a ride to the stadium because it was raining.

Before that Chattanooga; dinner at Chili's; visiting the beautiful mountain lakes. 

Before that Georgia; Brasstown Bald (it is in fact an alpine rainforest around here, by the way); American fast food; tubing on the Chattahoochee; Helen; Waffle House; Stone Mountain.

Interspersed among them, scenes driving down the long American highways listening to country radio.

Last night they visited Buc-ee's and ate dinner on stacks of deer feed corn.

It's nice to see someone taking such evident pleasure in visiting the South. 

UPDATE: Apparently there's a Swedish player having a similar experience in the Mid-West.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

A named fallacy, but:

A fallacy doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that logic can't guarantee truth preservation. Fallacious reasoning could produce a true conclusion; it's just that the truth is empirical or accidental rather than guaranteed by the form of reason.

Cats & Dogs Living Together

In retrospect, Belfast was probably the wrong place to pull this. 

UPDATE: New terrorist group 'just dropped,' as the kids say.

You were saying........ https://t.co/7VVuU1scbb pic.twitter.com/Hr2OzF7D9h

— Not A Number (@myhiddenvalue) June 9, 2026

A Britina Looks on Texas Manhood

Now, for the record, I haven't said anything about James Talarico: the only mentions of him here have come from Texan99, who is as advertised a Texan and whose business this candidacy therefore is. If I were to say something about him, it would be to question not his manhood but his theology; not his testosterone but his sense. However, it is true that some folks like Colonel Kurt* have mixed those critiques.

In Texas, they picked a white male Democrat who makes Tim Walz look like Sylvester Stallone—he’d be particularly excited about the getting oiled-up part. James Talarico could be kindly called gender ambiguous, but there’s no real ambiguity. He’s a male in the way that Boone’s Farm is a wine.

Talarico, of course, also allowed them to try the Christian grift. They know about as much about Jesus followers as they do about dudes. It was kind of hilarious how they were completely blind to the fact that all his stuff about Jesus is heretical blasphemy. It was beyond their comprehension that there might be different kinds of Christians—in this case, Christians who are Christian as opposed to pseudo-Christians who subscribe to whatever kind of Unitarian pinko baloney this little demon spews. The fact that he thinks meat is murder doesn’t help, and until Graham Platner’s latest revelations, Talarico’s laughable attempts to convince us that he was down with a hot Latina chick—she was not hot and there was no way they were down to anything—were the funniest meme in American politics.

I think the good colonel is on stronger ground in his criticism of the choice of Platner, to whit, that their view of men is so toxic that his own extreme toxicity made him seem authentic to them. That's a genuine blindness arising from their bubble and their worldview. Something like that is going on with Talarico's version of Christianity, if it is indeed a version of Christianity; but it's a very big tent, as no less than Chesterton pointed out. 

Still, this female Briton has some harsh words for American judges of manhood. (Also a great line: "I recommend watching the clip of Watters and Miller in full, because Miller has the kind of natural comic gifts that usually persuade people to forsake a career in stand-up and become a funeral director instead.") 

She comes around to the idea that the two criticisms are linked: that the debate over the theology is also a debate over the kind of Jesus people are imagining. How muscular a Christianity? In Texas, I would have imagined a fairly muscular one. Less so in other places; it's a big tent. 

UPDATE: Perhaps they're on to something, actually. Collins leads among voters until they are informed of Platner's scandals -- then he takes a commanding lead.

Shockingly, when voters are informed of sexual assault rumors, Platner improves, leading by 8.1%

This confirms suspicions that Democrats may be looking for their own Trump. Even more surprisingly, 75% of voter age 18-29 support Platner after being informed of the rumors.

'This confirms... that... may be' is a bad formulation. That remains a theory; this might be evidence for that theory, but not confirmation. 

However, it does suggest that Platner's viciousness is being taken as a strong positive by previously undecided voters. What is surprising is that many who were going to vote for Collins switch; maybe an accused sexual abuser with Nazi and male-rape fantasies is exactly what they've been looking for? That seems like the thing they've been railing against for a decade. If you can't beat 'em, I guess the Democrats are thinking.

* That Kurt article uses the word "normal" seven times. I've met Colonel (R) Kurt Schlichter through our mutual friend Jim Hanson, and Kurt is a wild and crazy guy. How strong his claim on the idea of "normality" is I would consider an open question; certainly not normal in the sense of ordinary. Why would you want to be that? 

I'm not myself, not nearly; what is wanted is to be exceptional in some good or virtuous way. That isn't normal: the ordinary course which gives rise to the norms is to make exceptions to the exceptional standards to allow for an easy, humane middle way that ordinary people can achieve. Getting there is easy, but it isn't especially good. It shouldn't be something to take as the proper end of an action or a life, a fact these two gentlemen know well since both have numerous exceptional accomplishments each.

An Asheville Run

I hadn't been to Asheville in a long time. For some reason I kind of felt like it today.

The road out there is nice, anyway.

Devil's Courthouse, which you probably are familiar with by now.

This one is called the Pounding Mill Overlook. That's Looking Glass Rock in the left foreground. 

Same shot with a filter to alter the sky color, so you can zoom in and see how far the rippling mountains extend.

They must have known I was coming! This was happily located right across from my favorite pizza joint, The Mellow Mushroom.

Some window glare in this shot, but it's a skeleton riding a motorcycle shop in an outfitting store featuring knives and other wilderness goods.

A common sign. The small print warms my heart. I wish I believed they really meant it: nothing is more authentic to these mountains than resistance to Federal agents, whether moonshine agents or otherwise. I fear they'd be the first ones to hand you in to a Democratic administration. Maybe not though!

It was a very pleasant afternoon with only a short visit downtown, and a long ride in the countryside each way. One of the things I don't hate about Asheville is how small it is: it's a real city for a few square miles, and then you're in the country again right away. It's crazy in town, but it's only a few miles back to freedom when you're done taking the sights. 

Death is Cheap

As I occasionally mention, if unborn Americans count as Americans then abortion is the leading cause of death of all Americans. In Canada, it's getting to be "suicide," which in this case is really the government killing its own citizens. So far, they've sort-of been getting permission -- albeit often extorted by a refusal to provide other treatment for painful conditions for very long periods of time, so that if you won't take the 'suicide' you will be left to suffer for many months or years. 

Sounds like they've come around to the idea that there's still more money to be saved.

We noted that, “From a government bean counter’s perspective, the more suicides the better.” (See “Canada Shows The Gruesome Side Of Socialized Healthcare.”)

This week, we came across a study published in the OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying that “explores the potential economic savings from expanding medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Canada.”

What would the country save, the authors ask, if the program were expanded “to include vulnerable groups that cost the government more than they contribute in taxes”?

These include “individuals with severe mental health issues, the homeless, drug users, retired elderly, and indigenous communities.” The researchers looked at “both voluntary and non-voluntary scenarios.”

Emphasis added. It's just a theoretical study, of course. Nothing to worry about.

Hey, wasn't some female politician ruthlessly mocked -- some lady from Alaska -- for warning about "death panels" empowered to make decisions about when you cost too much to deserve treatment? Something about how government-run health care might lead to that? Palin, maybe her name was. Sarah.

Well, that's ancient history I guess. This is the exciting new world:

Lo and behold, the savings are significant — up to nearly $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years if Canada went the “non-voluntary” route.

“For example,” the authors note, “for the retired elderly population, the savings could be $54.2 billion in the voluntary scenario or as high as $1.2 trillion in a non-voluntary scenario.” There’s even more money to be saved if the state dropped the requirement that doctors administer the drugs and let the work be outsourced.

Sure, that makes sense. No reason you'd need to be a doctor to kill somebody. Anybody can do that. I've seen it done. 

Room 101*

Given how much suspicion of Israel there is on the Left and the Right today, you'd think this would be comforting. [Probably paywalled; NYT]

Israel and the United States have long known, and tolerated, that each was spying on the other. But an intensified Israeli effort to learn about U.S. positions in talks with Iran has crossed a line, according to some American officials... 

Another report, written by the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military intelligence offices and focused on earlier events going back several years, said that the counterintelligence threat level posed by Israel had been increased in recent weeks to the top level, from high to critical. The report, to which the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency contributed, outlines various efforts by Israel to spy on American military personnel and government officials.

Assuming the report is accurate, which seems likely enough, the threat level was already assessed as "high," and is now "critical." Formal reports were drawn up about it, and action taken within the CI infrastructure. That doesn't quite line up with the popular view of our government as crawling to obey Israeli orders. I tend to think that the Israelis are a bit over their skis on Iran, having used up a substantial quantity of their intelligence advantages there as a set of favors to back American action. It'll take them years or decades to recover those advantages if they need to do.

* The title is a Roman Numeral joke; 101 is "CI." When I was at CENTCOM, they had decided to rename their Public Affairs to 'Communications Integration,' giving them the same initials as 'Counterintelligence.' You should have seen people's faces when somebody from Public Affairs would drop by to chat and some yeoman would inform the officer in charge that "CI is here to talk to you." 

Defense Department Greatly Reduces Religious Support

From Military.com:

Military.com has learned that the Department of Defense, for the first time in almost 10 years, has dramatically reduced its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180... decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War and signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness[.]

Under Secretary Tata has a serious military service record, so I don't take him to be doing the usual political trolling here. He has some sort of serious purpose in mind. I haven't seen the memorandum, so I don't know how he justified this shift.

I find it noteworthy that of 31 recognized religions, 22 are Christian variations. Islam -- which has Sunni and Shia sects, for example -- gets only one; Judaism gets only one;  rather astonishingly, Agnostic remains a recognized religion even though it isn't actually one, as does "No Religion." There is a catchall "Other Religions" code that presumably will be applied to everyone who has been registered as one of the 180 formerly-recognized religions, so just because their faith will no longer be recognized by the military doesn't mean that they'll be forced into one of the remaining categories. 

My guess is what they are trying to cut down on is chaplain training hours, but that still makes it strange that you'd have 22 specific variations of one religion and one or none for the others, even faiths with large numbers of practitioners worldwide like Hinduism, Islam, or Judaism. 

What will be of significance to me is if the VA follows up by removing the emblems of belief of the no-longer-recognized religions from eligibility for military headstones. 

Shel Silverstein Poems

I imagine that these are familiar to some or all of you, but they're fun nonetheless.

Falling Up

I tripped on my shoelace
And I fell up—
Up to the roof tops,
Up over the town,
Up past the tree tops,
Up over the mountains,
Up where the colors
Blend into the sounds.
But it got me so dizzy
When I looked around,
I got sick to my stomach
And I threw down.

Sick

“I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ’pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is . . . Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

And here's a song Shel wrote, though it's more famous sung by Johnny Cash.

Alexander Muse has been publishing excellent essays this year. On Iran's purported victory lap:

[A] closed strait [of Hormuz] is a chokehold on Iran’s own windpipe, because the overwhelming share of Iran’s trade and oil exports must pass through that same water.... A chokepoint you can obstruct but cannot profit from, defended by a navy that no longer exists, is not a lever of power. It is a siege, and Iran is on the losing side of it.

... The essay’s hidden premise is continuity, an Iran picking up where it left off, only leaner and bolder. Compare the two trajectories honestly. The Iran of the road not taken had a maturing missile and drone industry, a rebuilding air-defense network, an intact ring of proxies, and Hormuz leverage backed by a genuine fleet, all of it shielding a nuclear program as it advanced toward a survivable deterrent. The Iran of June 2026 has a defense-industrial base gutted by 90%, a navy measured in decades of repair, proxies severed and fending for themselves, an economy in freefall, and a command structure Cooper described as “shattered.” The first Iran was being built. The second is being salvaged.

[The uranium] ... sounds like a card Tehran still holds. It is closer to a noose. A stockpile is not a deterrent by itself. A deterrent requires a survivable means to build, conceal, and deliver a weapon, and an air-defense umbrella to keep the effort alive long enough to matter. Iran has lost all three. Nasr himself warns that ordinary Iranians increasingly see the bomb as their only shield. Precisely so. A hollowed-out state whose last available move is a dash toward a weapon it cannot protect is not safer for having the material. It is more exposed, because that dash is the single act most certain to summon the finishing blow the regime has so far been spared by President Trump.

Endorsed

Some of us get both the Seax and the Dirk, I would think. 

It's sad that there was a murder, but the carrying of a Kirpan is one of the best features of any religion. I strongly hold to approximately the same values as undergird that practice, even if I don't share their religious context at all.

Jokes on the Occasion of Pride Month

If any of you happen to be gay, allow me to convey that I don't have anything against it; indeed, the longer I live with a woman the more I can see the appeal. It's just not in me, you know? 

That to the side, there are some great memes this year for marking the occasion.

UPDATE: Ok, jokes are always fraught, but c'mon. Some of this is funny stuff.

The primary-defector pool that doesn't follow through

I recommend Alexander Muse's substack. This is a thoughtful article about the very slight impact on a general election of a bitterly contested primary fight, which is instructive in the case of Cornyn vs. Paxton. Frankly, not even Cornyn himself is urging the absurd choice of a Talarico (give me a break) vote in protest against the impervious horrors of a Paxton victory.

Lonna Rae Atkeson’s seminal paper “Moving Toward Unity” in American Politics Quarterly found that supporters of losing primary candidates revert to the eventual nominee at predictable rates as the general election approaches. Jeffrey Lazarus, writing in Legislative Studies Quarterly, established that the apparent correlation between divisive primaries and weaker general-election performance is not causal at all, but a joint product of candidate quality and pre-primary expectations. Fouirnaies and Hall at Stanford in confirmed that in base-state seats with partisan leans above 7 points, the measurable divisive-primary penalty is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Texas leans R+10 to R+13. It is the cleanest possible case for the proposition that the primary will leave no footprint on the general election.

But the historical record is where this argument lives or dies. The frame is simple. The runner-up’s coalition comes home. It has always come home. The mechanism is what political scientists call partisan reversion, and it has been visible in every contested base-state primary of the modern era.

It Is Time for Us to Become Poets

For the Sake of a Single Poem, by Rainer Maria Rilke

… Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough) – they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else-); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars, – and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves – only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

Waterfall

I own a waterfall. Waterfalls in this part of North Carolina are so commonplace that they didn’t even mention it when we bought the property. It wasn’t on the listing; it never came up in the sale. Only after we’d closed did the former owner say, “Oh, by the way…”

It’s a pretty spot in the summertime. 

Cathead

People dig in to these so fast I can’t even get a picture before the biscuits are gone! I hope my grandmother would be proud of them. 

The Wickwick solution

Steven Green doesn't think Big Glenn deserves to be scuttled, but suggests that NASA's SLS probably does. The damage to Amazon from the launch explosion does, however, appear to be dramatic. Not all rocket companies are equally adapted to failure as a learning mode.

Travels in Appalachia

My passage through the Tennessee mountains went smoother than that of certain German prisoners of war. Of course, I know better than to trespass on Granny's property.

Tennessee Highway

The only downside to the recent trip to Tennessee was how very hard it is to get there from here and vice versa. We went out by US 64, which was fine except that then you have to pass an unnatural barrier in the form of Chattanooga, which currently has hundreds of thousands of semis every day trying to pass through. I've never seen it without a massive traffic jam, but this time it took three hours to get through the city because one of those semis had wrecked on the interstate and was blocking one of only two lanes where it was. 

Ah, beautiful Chattanooga.

The other main route across the line is I-40, which...

The project to repair the eastbound lanes of I-40 washed away in Haywood County during Hurricane Helene is progressing on-time, but the heavy lift has really just begun. When Helene tore through Western North Carolina in 2024, it inundated the embankment supporting the highway so vital to interstate commerce, washing away about a million cubic yards of rock and dropping the eastbound lanes into the water below.... 

state officials and project supervisors said the project is scheduled to be completed — or at least close enough to fully open both the eastbound and westbound lanes — by fall 2028.

That's a solid four years of construction; it's another three-hour crawl through the gorge if you want to go that way. 

We came back through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which can also be quite slow especially when sightseers spot a bear. It's shady and cool, though, especially once you come up towards Newfound Gap. 

Prosecutorial Nullification in VA

A small minority of prosecutors in Virginia have stated that they will not prosecute violations of the "facially unconstitutional" 'assault weapons' ban.

In a letter addressed to the County Sheriff shared with 29News, Powhatan Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Cerullo said “significant” parts of that law are “facially” unconstitutional, citing, in part, the famous Heller ruling.

“The provisions mentioned above place both my office and yours in an untenable position,” Cerullo wrote. “We can either honor our oath to preserve the Constitution, or enforce statutes which are clearly unconstitutional.”

In a public letter, Pulaski Commonwealth’s Attorney Justin Griffith wrote that he will not take “law abiding citizens as of June 30 and criminalize that same behavior on July 1.”

“The General Assembly just really overstepped,” van Cleave said. “What they passed in one year, other places would have probably taken a decade to do all of that. But they just crammed it down everybody’s throats.”

The state government says they expect prosecutors to enforce the laws whether they agree that the laws are constitutional or not.  

UPDATE: Virginia State Police announce they have reinstated mandatory background checks on private sales of firearms, despite a court order requiring them to desist. GOA is suing them for contempt of court. 

Memorial Day

Amidst ten days of constant rain, a brief break in time for the ceremony. 

American Legion Post 104 conducts its annual memorial. 

The Library Dance Continues

I've mentioned the public library issues locally before now; it continues to be the flash point driving the culture war in these mountains about here. The local newspapers, which claim to have received threats driven by the Republican political faction, are reporting: you can account for that matter in how you read the coverage.

When Jackson commissioners on May 5 reviewed a draft document outlining the framework of a new county library board upon departure from Fontana Regional Library system, Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper, clad in a Turning Point USA T-shirt, was quick to express her central grievance: “I don’t think [a board member] ought to have a library card.” 

Bitter laughter erupted from the audience. 

“I feel like that’s kind of a prerequisite to knowing what’s happening in the library, is to have a library card and be active,” responded Chair Mark Letson.

But Hooper wasn’t backing down.

“Well to me, it’s like, do you make people that’s going to be on the ABC Board know all about liquor?” she asked.

Hooper’s comment analogized two independent bodies not typically ripe for comparison. ABC boards in North Carolina are responsible for “controlling the sale of spirituous liquor.” Library boards do not exist to “control” public access to literature nor are members intended to reflect the will of elected leaders.

This is a news piece, not an opinion piece, by the way.

While serving FRL and JCPL, Richards supported a “juvenile card program” for children ages 15 and younger, requiring “parental consent for use of the library by a minor.” She also proposed a policy to ban “banned book” displays in system libraries. Her motivation to join the board was stated in just three words — “to provide oversight.” 

Martinez also backed the juvenile card program and introduced a motion to curtail librarian reports....Blaine is an anti-LGBTQ+ activist. He backed JCPL’s withdrawal, routinely expressing misinformation in the process. His reasoning for wanting to join the board came in a list of handwritten bullet points: “provide oversight, evaluate budgets, evaluate policies, evaluate programs, perform book challenge reviews.” 

The thing is, the journalists have a point this time even if it's disabling their ability to report dispassionately. It is definitely true that the Republicans locally view the library as a disagreeable phenomenon similar to a liquor store, one that -- if it must be allowed to exist at all -- needs careful regulation and oversight to prevent harm to young people from exposure to toxic contents. Censorship is the whole reason they have been waging this battle, exactly as their opponents contend. There are stark First Amendment issues in the power play they are attempting. 

It is also true, as the Republicans contend, that the prior library governance was running the public library as a platform from which to wage cultural civil war against the values of the local community. That's also definitely the truth, and indeed explicitly in accordance with the American Library Association's published intent for such libraries in rural communities. They are indeed actively pursuing the charge that got Socrates put to death by an earlier revolt: 'corrupting the youth,' i.e. intentionally exposing the youth to ideas that their parents would find horrifying and subversive. 

There doesn't seem to be a compromise position on offer, one that respects the First Amendment and also allows the community to enjoy an undisrupted common peace according to local values and traditions. Both of the sides are, in a way, speaking the truth and correct in their assertions; neither side is promoting an acceptable way forward. Even if they didn't despise each other, it's not clear how they could move forward. 

The most likely outcome will be that the library system collapses locally, because both sides seem to prefer that it be destroyed than ceded to the other side. 

Anthropic & the Pope

Pope Leo announced that the Church and Claude will be working together. 

Man of the North

 

A Quarter-Century Struggle Closes

One of the stories of Red America is how our cities leverage their wealth and power to strive against our way of life. Indiana in the 1980s was one of the most friendly states for gun rights; but since 1999, the city of Gary, Indiana has been trying to sue gun manufacturers out of existence. That fight just ended. 

After a tumultuous 26-year journey through Indiana’s court system, the city of Gary’s historic lawsuit against the country’s largest gun manufacturers has come to an anticlimactic close. 

On May 21, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that it would not hear an appeal from Gary, whose lawyers had argued that a state law aimed at ending the lawsuit was unconstitutional. The ruling means the city’s case is effectively over, with no opportunity for appeal.

“What happened here should shock and terrify anyone wanting to access the courts to seek accountability,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention group Brady[.]

You can see the same thing happening across the country; every Austin, Texas or Asheville, North Carolina is working as hard as it can to try to force its views on the rural parts of the state. They bring in NGOs with deep pockets and lots of lawyers, and try to sue their way to victories they couldn't win through democratic means because the people don't agree with them. It's been the story of politics in Red America for my whole life. 

Climate Change is Canceled

The worst predictions, at least, are being walked back. This is from lefty site Vox: 

The world that [doomsday scenario] RCP 8.5 assumed will never arrive. Global coal use isn’t on a path to quintuple; consumption has largely plateaued after decades of growth. Instead of the global population ballooning to 12 billion people, the UN’s current median forecast projects about 10.2 billion by 2100, with other reputable forecasts putting the number even lower. (All things being equal, fewer people means less emissions.)

At the same time, the clean energy transition moved faster than almost anyone in 2011 anticipated.... 

Was RCP 8.5 ever realistic? One camp of experts, led by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather and energy modeler Glen Peters, argues that RCP 8.5 was plausible in 2011, but was taken off the table by genuine policy and technology progress. The other camp, led by Roger Pielke Jr., argues that the rate of global decarbonization has been roughly linear for decades. That would mean we didn’t actively avoid RCP 8.5; it was just never realistic to begin with.... 

But, of course: 

But even if we’ve averted doom, there is a lot of work to do to secure a safer future....

The entire point of climate scenarios like RCP 8.5 was that there was no one certain future for climate change — only multiple possible futures. Whether or not RCP 8.5 was ever possible, the enormous advances in clean energy over the past 15 years are what made its retirement certain. Now we have new futures before us, waiting for what we do next. 

A lot of us have been very skeptical for a long time about the Climate Doom models. Those of us who have been around long enough remember the earnest Ice Age predictions of the 70s, the Acid Rain of the 80s that was going to melt away all our cities (sadly, the cities are still there), the Hole in the Ozone of the 90s (which closed long ago), the Global Warming that became Climate Change because the data just couldn't be made to fit. We remember the prediction that Glaciers National Park wouldn't have any glaciers by 2020; in 2020, they removed the signs that made the claim.

For me, I was always willing to entertain the idea up until people started using coercion. The Chronicle of Higher Education used to run both the excellent Arts & Letters Daily (they still do, and it's still worth checking out regularly) and a sister site called Climate Debate Daily. The latter faithfully reproduced both studies and stories that argued for climate change, and skeptical accounts that were also based on scientific methods. One day, however, that became impossible in academia: they could no longer allow skeptical voices a place in the discussion. At that point, I decided I knew enough to know that the discussion had departed from reason and become another racket. Using your social power to crush dissenting voices is never the mark of someone who is comfortably correct and on the side of reason; it's the way the weak of mind fight, not the strong. 

Poker Card Shootout, May 2026

I forget what number we're on, but it doesn't matter.

This time I dispensed with the usual Ruger Single-Six, which is a .22 revolver with no recoil, and shot a few ".45 Long-Boys" like I would usually be carrying in practice. Turned out all right.