A Catholic Question

Dad29 is asking about whether exorcists should be featured prominently; he thinks so. In addition to his argument, there's another angle on the question that this survey brings forward:

This 'all religions are mostly after the same basic truth' idea is one that G.K. Chesterton wrote about extensively. For example:

There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach.... They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.

Even if one were not a believer, I think that one could usefully divide religions agnostically into 'ones that might be true' and 'ones that are definitely false.'  Even once you do that, though, eliminating the obvious falsehoods like (say) Mormonism, you're still left with a great deal of difference in what the teaching is. Christianity and Buddhism are two of the more defensible religions, and as Chesterton explored at length they have very different basic claims about reality and what a good soul should desire and strive to obtain -- so different, indeed, as to be 'eternal life united with God' versus 'an end to suffering through extinction'! 

There is no way that both of those claims can be true. Both could be false, but they simply cannot both be true. Likewise Christianity versus Hinduism: is life fundamentally meaningful or meaningless? Is the soul real and loved, or is it just a passing dream that will be forgotten when the Great God awakens? 

Exorcise that, if you can. 

Honky Tonk Sunday

I guess my memory is better than that. 

"Assault Knives"

Nobody seems to know if this is real or parody; I've seen it cited on both kinds of pages lately. 

As a longtime student of the Riddle of Steel, I have to admit that I don't know what an 'assault knife' might be. It's apparently twice as dangerous as a Rambo knife, though! 

I do recall that the UK went through a thing about "Zombie-style knives" a while ago, which apparently is defined in law as 'the kind of knives you see in Zombie movies.' I assume some equally precise definition is at work here. 

Half-Ton Van

I just did a video/music post, but what the hell, let's have two of them.

This reminds me of an older song.

Unrelenting Policy

Since I was doing a Paint Your Wagon clip recently, here are a couple more. Sadly, the frontier is closed for the moment.

Certain motorcycle rallies still resemble this, however. We have more women, which is one of the advantages of not being on the wild frontier. 

UPDATE: In the first video, Lee Marvin responds to an assertion of disagreement with, “I don’t want to hear about it.” That’s a novel concept today! A fair one though: I’ve considered my position adequately for my satisfaction, and I’m not interested in new ideas on the topic. For those of us with steel in our beard, or other hair, a fair assessment. 

The Wrong Dose of Medicine is Poison

Even if you are inclined to take psychological therapy seriously -- especially if you are, I suppose -- you should be mindful of the dangers of excessive intake. 

Imagine losing five years of contact with one of your parents and not getting contact back to make amends or work things out. A cancer diagnosis sometimes offers a runway, but a heart attack often does not. 

Sorting Out (by) Faith

Via Hot Air, a plea from a defender of Palestinian Christian communities. 

[A] number of... Palestinian Christian leaders assured me that they need our love and prayers—but they also badly need practical support if Christianity is not to die in our lifetime in the land that gave birth to our common religion....

The same holds true in Bethlehem (the City of Bread), where not only the French and Polish orphanages but the wider Christian community are literally depending on the Salesian Bakery for their daily bread. Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, jointly administered and run by a coalition of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Roman Catholic Church, stands empty. The Franciscan hostel beside it is shuttered, as are the nearby rows of souvenir shops, while Manger Square is so empty it might as well be in a ghost town.

The all-Christian town of Taybeh, a little over an hour’s drive past Ramallah to the north, is likewise on its last legs. The Khoury family have shuttered their hotel, their beer factory is running at a loss, and, like for the rest of the village, settler roadblocks and vandalism stop them from accessing their crops. Faced with all this, Christians continue to flee via Jordan to claim refugee status in Portugal.

There is probably nothing that can be done to save them, speaking pragmatically. This strikes me as being partly a consequence of the war begun by Hamas with its October 7th blood magic, which designed to use mass human sacrifice as a prayer to Allah for a final reckoning with Israel. They seem to be getting their prayer answered, by whomever it is that answers such prayers; it is likely that this conflict extends beyond human hands, and that its final outcome will not be subject to our opinions but to higher judgments. Everything associated with Hamas, including "Palestine" and anything that chooses that name for itself, is likely to be brought under that judgment. So I guess; but it is not for me to say, or even to know for certain, in matters such as this. 

However, I am also reminded that this process has been ongoing for quite some time. Wars intensify and speed it -- the Iraq War, for example, led to the destruction of several Christian and Jewish communities in Iraq as well as the subjugation of other religious minorities. At the Aristotle University in Thessalonica, a recent conference pointed out that the shrinking of Christian communities is part of a trend more than a century long -- or longer yet, if you want to go back before the establishment of Islam, which provoked a great shrinkage through conquest and forced/coerced conversions.  

Likewise, Jewish communities across the region have shrunk by approximately 99% in the last century in the Arab countries plus Iran. The 1978 Iranian revolution is part of that story, but mostly it's a reaction by Muslims to a century of relative weakness -- they are attempting to purge the land clean of those who deny the truth of their religion, and they tend to hit the Jewish communities because they are weak and vulnerable to the kind of force that Islamic militants can bring to bear. That's true of Christians and other minority groups as well; it is less true of the Kurds, but even they have been subject to intense violence from ISIS and other Islamic militants as well as from nation states like Iraq (under Saddam), Iran (periodically), Turkey (very much still today), and Syria (under Assad -- the new government at least for now is trying to play nice with the Kurds). 

In that sense the current war is just another war, another accelerant thrown onto a long-burning fire. The real question is to what degree that fire will spread to Europe -- or Detroit -- rather than how it will eventually burn itself out in the Middle East. 

No Communities In Any Community Rooms

The vote was last night; on consideration, they decided not to allow community meetings in the Cashiers community room either. Only official agents of the state/local government may now use the spaces.

It's odd to me to see the Republicans on the side of restricting the access in this way, because in the 2nd Amendment debate this is the position they reject: 'only agents of the state may be trusted to deploy this liberty responsibly.' The idea that only agents of the state can be trusted to keep and bear arms is in obvious and outright defiance of our tradition of self-governance and human dignity. 

Somehow when it's the 1st Amendment, though.... 'you can't allow the community to rent the space from the county because then those weirdos will do something we don't like in a government building, which might give the impression that the community as a whole approves of it' turns out to be the logic, and locking it down to government agents only the accepted response. 

Admittedly the Democrats have the inverse contradiction going on, so it's not like they're better -- it may be that they're worse, because 2A liberties are even more fundamental than 1A ones since they get at your ability to enforce your dignity rather than merely express it. However, it remains a striking contradiction. 

Ah, Another Prince

Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way. He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were “too emotional” to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of her office.

During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until he left office in 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor....

His temperament is coming up as he is on the verge of replacing Democratic candidate Graham Platner[.]

Washington Post, so there's probably a paywall -- thus the longer quote. 

Probably he doesn't have Nazi tattoos though, so I guess he meets at least one objective standard for being an improvement. Still, don't they have any guys over there who don't act like this?  

"Five Cups"

When you say "up to five cups of coffee," do you mean a measuring cup, or my cup?

Wooster-Chester

The Mexicans have figured this one out. 

Offside

From xkcd.

"Workers Deserve More"

I generally agree that working men ought to receive fair, even generous pay -- that is orthodox, though less common in practice than it ought to be. 

Still, I'm a little mystified about how this plan has anything to do with improving outcomes for workers. "Workers deserve more! Step one, abolish the Senate." 

What?

All the Gold in California

Don't know how much gold is still in California. But, once, it was the promise of individual liberty.

Ignorance is Part of the Product

We all recall President Obama's speech guy explaining to a noted journalist that, unlike when they got started, journalists now are all 27 year olds who "know nothing." Apparently, at the Washington Post that now qualifies you to write a review of The Odyssey. [Long quotes because it is paywalled, and you shouldn't pay for what follows.]

We can discuss later whether my education was merely eclectic or an utter catastrophe, but somehow, having successfully avoided the spoilers for nearly 3,000 years, I went into an early screening of “The Odyssey” with no idea of what it was about.

I mean, ok, everybody's upbringing is different... but wasn't there someone at the Post who could have taken this assignment who wasn't completely ignorant of the subject? 

But hey, sure. Let's have a review by the girl who literally does know nothing. It'll be objective, or something. 

But first: what even is “The Odyssey”?

“The Odyssey” is a massively long poem.

Look, probably the rest of the audience actually does know a little bit about the Odyssey. You might be able to skip some of the preamble. She did skip part of it; she says she wrote and deleted 'several paragraphs' about disputed concepts of authorship among scholars, which I assume she found out about middle-school style five minutes before her deadline but thought she was qualified to discuss at length.

“The Odyssey” is a thing you can buy tickets to, and we’re going to talk about the movie, I promise; this is the journey part of the story.

You know, this does read like a middle school book report. The research is similarly exacting throughout. 

Some of Nolan’s casting choices immediately became controversial. He cast Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong’o, one of the most beautiful women alive, as Helen of Troy, one of the most beautiful women alive... He cast Elliot Page, a transgender man, as one of about a hundred Greek soldiers, and this also ticked off a horde of commentators because, I don’t know, they are weird cashews.

I didn't think much of their complaints either. They probably knew who Odysseus was, though.

“The Odyssey” is a meditation on aging, Amy Poehler suggested to Matt Damon in a recent episode of her podcast, “Good Hang.” “The Odyssey” is a meditation on PTSD, Matt Damon suggested back, while also informing her that “The Odyssey” made him go gluten-free. “The Odyssey” is about “the urgent desire to get home and to belong somewhere,” according to scholar and translator Daniel Mendelsohn; it is about “what it means to survive violence, and what it means to come home,” according to scholar and translator Emily Wilson; it is, said Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy, “a journey of the soul.”

So now we are gathering celebrity opinions about the meaning of the poem because they were available on podcasts? Somehow a couple of actual scholars made their way into her field of attention, and thus the book report. 

“The Odyssey” is — and let’s be serious movie people for a moment — absolutely astonishing.

Yes, by all means. If this is what 'serious movie people' look like, we can surely all be one if we choose. Maybe I'll be one tomorrow. Why not? "To hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

After sitting in the theater, gobsmacked as the credits rolled, I felt strongly that I had come into the story in exactly the right way: completely ignorant.

Can I tell you whether the screenplay diverted from the original text in matters of importance? I cannot. If it did, it wouldn’t have bothered me. A colleague revealed that her 12-year-old was irritated by the absence of a scene involving the God of Wind which is, apparently, quite important in the original text, and that girl definitely went to a better middle school than I did.

You should have had her write the review. We'd have all been better informed if you had. Child labor laws, I guess. 

Justices say 'Whee!'

The Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii secedes from the Supreme Court of the United States, or so I gather from this rant in which they declare they will 'take no guidance' from Federal cases because they think the US is becoming a worse place.

Next up, the Hawaii Supreme Court explains that federal due process rights "keep sinking" so they'll take "no guidance" from federal cases. And here is where the attacks go from odd to deranged. Accusing the Supreme Court of "imperious ideology", it goes to other areas of law...

"The Roberts Court sees only white." The Hawaii Supreme Court follows with more Callais and Allen v. Milligan to accuse the Supreme Court of racism. It accused the Supremes of misinterpreting the Equal Protection Clause.... Now election finance and redistricting. Citizens United, Rucho v Common cause, Presidential immunity, and a recent (minor) election spending case. It's like they put their least favorite cases into Claude....

Now for the page revealing the cause is the tantrum. Wolford v. Lopez and Hawaii's attempt to evade the Second Amendment. It was stymied. These justices are not happy. In a spoke -word-poem style list of grievances, they attack the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence. Wild!

As with all the rest of this stuff, it's not the first time it's come up. In fact, sometimes it works.

Unlike more notorious attempts by states to reject or nullify federal court decisions, these state laws and decisions remain in effect. How can this be?

The reason is simple enough: the Supremacy Clause is not a binary switch. Without complete preemption, our system of federalism leaves room for state law to supplement or stand alongside federal law. States often use that freedom to depart from federal law by passing laws or issuing judicial opinions that explicitly reject specific opinions issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hawaii is going to find it very hard to get away with that on these 2A issues, where the state's insistence would amount to pre-empting Federally defended rights in order to assert powers explicitly ruled unconstitutional. There's probably quite a lot of ground, however, where they can simply refuse to listen to the Federal courts at all. 

Vegetarian Animal-Lover...

...one of whose favorite books turns out to be, I learned today, Uncle Tom's Cabin. The recent Sons of Confederate Veterans' presence in the Veterans' Day Parade on the 4th has occasioned another of the endless attempts to convince everyone that there's only one correct way to think about the Confederate Flag. 

However, in Germany...

However, as a cultural historian writing on transnational fascism, I see the [apparently not-uncommon in Germany flying of the Confederate] flag as part of a longer history of German nostalgia for the American antebellum South. Germans’ identification with the region stretches back, paradoxically, to the very book that helped bring an end to that era of slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”... 

This hazy romanticization was undergirded by racial prejudice, which found in Stowe’s depiction of Tom as a “happy slave” a justification for racial hierarchy. Though “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was originally cultivating sympathy for Black slaves, by the early 20th century it was invoked by both German progressives and conservatives as proof of Black inferiority and as a justification for colonization. An introduction to a 1911 German edition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” describes how “the Negroes are undeniably an inferior race, and, now that they have been freed, are widely perceived to be a plague in the United States.”

Bettina Hofmann, a professor of American studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, argues that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” introduced racial terms to the German language that foreshadow the Nazi race categories. However, as she qualifies, “it would be an anachronism to accuse Stowe of having paved the way for Hitler’s thoughts on race.”

Still, it remains a dim possibility that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had at least some influence. Stowe’s novel was, after all, one of Hitler’s self-proclaimed favorite books.

You can't make this stuff up, really you can't. 

UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Croatia…

Gentlemen, No Communities Here! This is the Community Room!

In the ongoing local saga of the feud over the public library, the county commissioners are proposing to stop the community from using the community room.

The new policy states the room would be limited to library and county government uses only. The move is a part of the larger effort by Jackson County officials to establish new policies for the county’s two public libraries since its official exit from the Fontana Regional Library system that went into effect July 1....

The large community room was touted as one of the new JCPL Complex highlights during the capital campaign for the project between 2007 and 2009. Friends of the JCPL volunteer and retired school librarian Antoinette MacWatt said the room restrictions sting particularly hard given how integral the community was in fundraising for it. In total, community members raised over $1.8 million for the JCPL Complex project, while the county provided the remaining $7 million needed to renovate the historic 1914 courthouse.

“That’s something that’s been, really, a point of pride for this community that we were able to raise that much money,” MacWatt said. “It feels a little bit like a slap in the face.”

Since the other $7MM was also provided by the community, in the form of taxes, you can see why people might be a little annoyed at being told that they can't use a room that was built for the express purpose of providing a community room. 

Note that this does not apply to all libraries in the county, however. Just the one in the problematic blue city of Sylva. In the upscale vacation-and-second-home town of Cashiers, there will be no restrictions. The Smoky Mountain News has the good grace to call this 'puzzling.' 

Part of what is so puzzling about the new restrictions proposed at the JCPL is that no such restrictions are proposed in the draft policy for the community room at the Albert Carlton Cashiers Community Library that was also presented to commissioners at last week’s meeting.

In the proposed Carlton Cashiers library policy, there are no restrictions on who can rent out the community room for any permitted uses, including meetings, private celebrations, art shows and “other similar and appropriate uses approved by the county manager,” though library and county government employees would be prioritized over other groups.

No one is really puzzled about this. As I've mentioned, the library has been the #1 issue locally for years and multiple election cycles now. The Republicans who have taken over the county commission view the Sylva library as dangerous to the moral health of the people of the county, likening the regulation they think it needs to the alcohol board's control of the sale of strong spirits. Part of what drove the current commissioners to seek office was a desire to destroy the library as a source of what they see as moral rot.

The Cashiers library, by contrast, is in a very rich part of the county surrounded by golf courses and gardens. They are so comfortable there that this is where the Republican party held its debates during the primaries, even without the threatened ID checks and pepper spray for errant Democrats who might try to attend.

These feuds are getting to the point that they're destroying the goods the institutions were set up to create or preserve. However, so far people seem to prefer to blame the other side and concentrate on winning than to figure out how to restore the goods. 

The Odyssey Is Just a Travel Guide to Dining in the Med

 So here are some recipes and food parts of the story.

What a trip, though.

Ancient Fires

A site in the Levant offers extensive evidence of long-burning communal fires. 

On The Odyssey

The forthcoming movie treatment of Homer's epic has generated a lot of commentary, from most of which I dissent. I thought, for example, that Elliot/Ellen Page would have been an excellent choice for Achilles in the Odyssey, as in the Odyssey Achilles is dead. We don't meet Achilles in the Odyssey, we meet the Shade of Achilles. The treatment is largely a meditation on the passing of mortal glory for a hero who was once thought the greatest of men, and has now been unmanned by death. Though Page's situation is different, the actor is better fit than many to fill such a role. 

I do agree with this Chronicles suggestion that you should probably encounter Homer's Odyssey itself before seeing the movie. I dissent a bit from the suggestion as to how.

I’d like to urge those interested in the film to read An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, a 2017 memoir by Daniel Mendelsohn. Of course, you can also read Homer’s The Odyssey itself. Yet if you are looking for a brilliant exploration of the ancient poem, An Odyssey can’t be topped. 

Over the course of my life I've spent a lot of time with Odysseus, both in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also as Plato treats him in the Lesser Hippias and the Laws. I agree with the suggestion to pursue the encounter; not to read anything. 

Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are works of oral epic poetry. They are meant to be heard, not read. You will find them shockingly more engaging if you listen to an audiobook version aloud rather than trying to sit down with a huge tome and read it. If you develop a taste for the form, as I did in my youth, I recommend The Singer of Tales by Albert Lord, based upon the research of his mentor, Milman Parry.

There is a lot of discussion about which translation into English is best; much recent commentary dislikes the 'feminist' translation referenced by the director, although I have frankly heard good things about it from academics I know. Dad29 recommended a different one a few years ago, which I reviewed very briefly. I retain my opinion that the Fitzgerald is the best in English. Here is an unabridged audiobook: it is ten hours of your life, well-spent.

If any of you are interested, here are some things I've written at the Hall on the topic:

The debate within the Lesser Hippias, which is also in praise of disagreeable men like myself.

A discussion of Odysseus' invocation by Plato in the Laws.

Also from the commentary on the Laws, a comparison of Conan and Odysseus -- as well as a discussion of piracy!

More Mottes and Baileys

Since I know several of you don't read Instapundit, here is something they linked overnight on variations of the Motte and Bailey fallacy, as identified by the originator of that very useful term. 

Harmeet

Hall favorite Harmeet Dhillon gets a nice writeup at Hot Air, covering several of her (many!) current activities.

EN I.3 and the ICE Shooting Deaths

In the discussion of the post below on ICE shooting two more people recently, Thomas Doubting expressed concerns that the media treatment of ICE meant that we can't expect the matter to be handled fairly in the press. That turns out to provide a practical example for the application of Nicomachean Ethics (EN) I.3, which I cited frequently during the discussion of the EN. 

To some degree the United States is transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society. Mostly it remains high-trust across its breadth and depth; but in certain cities now everything is locked up to prevent theft, and in politics there is deep distrust between factions. There are many costs to such a transition, and one of them is on display here. People on the right do not trust that ICE will be portrayed or treated fairly, and worry that the protests against it and obstruction of it create additional dangers that may sometimes merit (even lethal) force; people on the left do not trust that ICE will behave morally in any case, suspect it is recruited from bad people to begin with, assume any statements from the Trump administration or any of its subordinate agencies are lies, expect evidence to be hidden (or planted!), etc. 

As a result, the only way to address any of these shootings in a way that might gain broad public support for a proposed change is to conduct a thorough investigation, assemble and evaluate the evidence, and then publish the findings. Responsible people thus always call for this (Senator Collins did so in this case).

However! Because such an assembly, evaluation, etc., takes so very long, people who just want to avoid accountability and carry on misbehaving also call for such investigations. By the time the process can play out, ten or a hundred or a thousand more things will have happened. The public will have forgotten the details, also the urgency, and nothing will end up getting done. Thus, both the responsible and the irresponsible settle upon the same course of action; and the result is that nothing changes. 

The resolution of a problem like this lies in the principles expressed in I.3. 

Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions... We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline.... it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits[.]

So too here. When it comes to legal accountability for the shooter, of course the agent is entitled to a full investigation and -- should immunity be suspended -- a fair trial before a jury. In the subject matter of applying criminal law to past actions, that is the appropriate standard.

When it comes to deciding whether we need a safety stand-down to go over lethal force law in detail with ICE agents for a couple of weeks, with practical exercises and considerable reinforcement about the rights and laws protecting the people on the streets, we do not need such an investigation. That subject can be decided on the basis of the probability, inferred from repeated observations of this type, that such lessons would be wisely applied. The subject matter here is a current ethical decision about the best way to proceed given multiple fatal shootings of unarmed civilians by armed agents of the state.

Likewise a reconsideration of how long agents remain in training before they are deployed, armed and immune, on our streets; likewise, a reconsideration of whether immunity is a wise policy in these cases at all. 

The application of criminal law to a particular case is not the same subject as an ethical consideration about whether or not to call for a stand down for further training. A different level of certainty is appropriate to the decision. 

UPDATE: To their credit, DHS officials seem to have reached this conclusion independently.

Community Standards Differ

Via X. You probably know both songs, and some of you probably even know all the words to both songs. They are of course "Rocky Top" and "Copperhead Road." (Yes, it's an official state song, Tennessee's 11th. Home of Nashville and all that.)

Against Terror, not Arms

Here is a useful post going back to 1328. I want to pull just that one thread of it for today:

Go back to 1328. The Statute of Northampton made it illegal to go armed in public “to terrify the King's subjects.”1 This wasn’t a gun-control law in the modern sense. It's actually the origin of a distinction courts are still arguing about today: the difference between carrying lawfully and carrying to menace. (We'll come back to this. It shows up by name in the Bruen decision, 700 years later.)

Here's the statute:

Item, it is enacted, that no man great nor small, of what condition soever he be, except the King's servants in his presence, and his ministers in executing of the King's precepts, or of their office, and such as be in their company assisting them, and also [upon a cry made for arms to keep the peace, and the same in such places where such acts happen,] be so hardy to come before the King's justices, or other of the King's ministers doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs, markets, nor in the presence of the justices or other ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their armour to the King, and their bodies to prison at the King's pleasure.

As the Wikipedia article points out, this was originally written in Anglo-French, the language of the court. It was really written as 'ne de chivaucher ne de daler arme.'

Now here's what Bruen said about that.

    To begin, respondents and their amici point to several medieval English regulations from as early as 1285 that they say indicate a longstanding tradition of restricting the public carry of firearms. See 13 Edw. 1, 102. The most prominent is the 1328 Statute of Northampton (or Statute), passed shortly after Edward II was deposed by force of arms and his son, Edward III, took the throne of a kingdom where “tendency to turmoil and rebellion was everywhere apparent throughout the realm.”... At the time, “[b]ands of malefactors, knights as well as those of lesser degree, harried the country, committing assaults and murders,” prompted by a more general “spirit of insubordination” that led to a “decay in English national life.”...

 The Statute of Northampton was, in part, “a product of . . . the acute disorder that still plagued England.”... It provided that, with some exceptions, Englishmen could not “come before the King’s Justices, or other of the King’s Ministers doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers, nor in no part elsewhere, upon pain to forfeit their Armour to the King, and their Bodies to Prison at the King’s pleasure.”...

 Respondents argue that the prohibition on “rid[ing]” or “go[ing] . . . armed” was a sweeping restriction on public carry of self-defense weapons that would ultimately be adopted in Colonial America and justify onerous public-carry regulations. Notwithstanding the ink the parties spill over this provision, the Statute of Northampton—at least as it was understood during the Middle Ages—has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791.....

 The Statute’s prohibition on going or riding “armed” obviously did not contemplate handguns, given they did not appear in Europe until about the mid-1500s.... Rather, it appears to have been centrally concerned with the wearing of armor....  

 The Statute’s apparent focus on armor and, perhaps,  weapons like launcegays makes sense given that armor and lances were generally worn or carried only when one intended to engage in lawful combat or—as most early violations of the Statute show—to breach the peace.... Contrast these arms with daggers. In the medieval period, “[a]lmost everyone carried a knife or a dagger in his belt.”... While these knives were used by knights in warfare, “[c]ivilians wore them for self-protection,” among other things. Ibid. Respondents point to no evidence suggesting the Statute applied to the smaller medieval weapons that strike us as most analogous to modern handguns.

I mention all this because North Carolina to this day has a law that exactly mirrors the 1328 statute's language. I saw a guy was charged with it locally just the other day. The caselaw here shows that the state courts consider the issue to the be terror, not the arms, and so much so that they've convicted people for 'going armed to the terror of the public' in the absence of arms. Arms in North Carolina are commonly lawfully carried, and require no permit except in the case of concealed arms (which are normally forbidden entirely, excepting only handguns for those with a permit). 

You see people carrying arms here all the time; I do myself, like the Medievals a knife in my case. That's not illegal. It's explicitly legal. What's not legal is to go armed for the purpose of terrifying the community. That part has exactly the sort of long heritage in law that the Bruen decision sets up as a legitimating condition for proposed legislation. 

Two more ICE Shooting Deaths

You probably heard about the one last week in Houston, but this morning there was another one in Maine that has mostly received local coverage so far. 

It does seem like there are a lot more of these shootings that, say, shootings by other Federal agencies. Some of us raised the issue that training was being abbreviated in order to build the ICE agent numbers rapidly, and that it raised the danger of such things happening. Details are too few in the most recent one yet to know if that was the case, but I think given the frequency and scale it's worth asking the question again. Are they getting adequate training for this task before they're being sent out there, and them with Federal immunity to boot?

Fulton County

Atlanta is suddenly invaded by hundreds of FBI agents.

Viking Invasion

Although I'm not watching any World Cup games, I am enjoying the cultural production that's coming out of it all, whether it's the Tartan Army marching on Fenway Park, travelers' tales across the US, or short AI movies like this.

It did not quite turn out that way, I hear.

Hallelujah Trail

Since I mentioned Charley Crockett very approvingly just a bit ago, I thought I might also highlight this story. Many of you will likely approve of it. 

Self-Proclaimed Devil-Worshiping Duo Twin Temple Say They Were Removed From Charley Crockett Tour Due To ‘Our Satanic Imagery’

There are more interesting reasons to drop an opening act, but not many. Self-proclaimed satanic doo wop duo Twin Temple revealed this week that “The Hallelujah Trail” country singer Charley Crockett booted them from a planned opening slot on his tour next week because of their Satan-hailing image.

“Today we were informed that Charley Crockett has decided to remove Twin Temple from his upcoming shows next week due to our Satanic imagery,” [Twin Temple said]...

“Unfortunately, that means we will not be able to perform for you next week as planned. We are really disappointed as we were looking forward to getting back out and seeing you, and also what it means as far as bringing different types of people and music lovers together,” added the rockabilly/soul group whose songs include “Lucifer, My Love,” “Sex Magick,” “Burn Your Bible,” “Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy” and “The Devil (Didn’t Make Me Do It)” and whose most recent album was 2023’s God Is Dead.

I mean, you could hardly be clearer. Even Billy Joe Shaver said that the Devil made him do it the first time. Charley has confirmed the allegation, rather firmly.

I don't know if Charley means his song title to be reflective of the late 1960s movie, but if you've never seen it, The Hallelujah Trail is a fantastic comedy. I love it a great deal in spite of its ridiculous and insulting but very era-normal treatment of Native Americans. There was a time when I was called Oracle by a well known military unit that I won't name to avoid their embarrassment. (There was no whiskey involved for me: General Order #1. I was just good at telling them what was going to happen in the next week or two.) 

The parts I love best aren't even about that; they're about the struggle between women activists and the US military, which was already evident even at that era. It's beautifully explained and rendered, and not with any hostility to either side.

It's a great movie.

Fear of Arms

The British prime minister was given an engraved Turkish revolver, as were other visiting NATO leaders who were at the recent conference in Ankara. He left it in Turkey to be destroyed rather than bring a gun back to the UK. 

Wretchard points out: 

Gifts of presentation swords and guns (or other firearms) between heads of state have a long history in diplomacy. These items symbolize honor, alliance, martial prowess, cultural heritage, or goodwill between mighty warriors.

In rejecting the present Starmer made a negligable contribution to the reduction of firearms risk in the UK, but he sent a strong and largely negative symbolic message to the world at large and to Russia, China and the Muslim nations in particular. It conveys what Britain has become and the watching world will behave accordingly.

In addition to this, rejecting a symbolic gift from another nation is an insult. It is similar to but much worse than refusing to take the tea or coffee offered by a tribal leader when you come into his tent. Weapon-gifts are especially honorable because they transcend the offer of peace symbolized by the hospitality of tea, and convey that you are respected as one who can be trusted to be armed as well. The nation of Britain is humiliated by this action, whereas a nominal ally who needed to be reassured is insulted. 

Turns out Los Angeles Does a Pretty Good Independence Day Too

I certainly enjoyed seeing Grim's posts around Independence Day, and while I've done a few small town Independence Day events and enjoyed them thoroughly, Los Angeles actually has a pretty good time on the Fourth as well- in fact, it turns out you can see it from space, and it's spectacular:

NASA was kind enough to post this little video on X, which is where I caught it.

We live in the hills, so with the high fire danger we don't launch any fireworks ourselves, but we can go up our back hill and have a nice view out over the city and we watch the neighborhood below put on a show for us all night long.  Started before sunset and didn't end until well after midnight.  The dog's aren't so keen about it, but we enjoyed it.

For once I had something to be proud about living here in L.A. and had to post this.

He is Out, Actually

So I hear. The Party is not letting him choose his replacement. 

A nice moment of actual standards. We had to go a very long way to find the wall, but it’s there. 

It’s The Thing

If it’s got a steel guitar anyway. Funny story about that. Hawaiian thing. No obvious reason why it became so central. 

This one is solid. Boy knows what he’s doing. 

The Blue Ridge

Girl seems to understand the region.

When Veterans Have Kids

Or, at least, when Mat Best & the BRCC crew have kids ...

A Lost Documentary on the Crossing of the Delaware

"What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon."

-- Napoleon Bonaparte (although he was probably quoting Bernard le Bovier de Fontanelle)

Addendum to the Previous

 

America

The beautiful. 

Independence Day, 250th Edition

Dillsboro all out for the veterans' parade.

Some of the local veterans parading.

I was just mentioning the Confederate flag thing and the local pride in heritage; sure enough, a group of them came out to march. Technically, by act of Congress, Confederate soldiers are considered American veterans for certain purposes.

Happy children celebrating in the tremendous heat.

A gingerbread cupcake at the Legion hall.

The Legion gave me a nice challenge coin after the run, too.

It was dangerously hot today, so much so that on the ride back I realized it wasn't safe to continue my ride. Fortunately I was along the beautiful Tuckasegee river, so I climbed down the bank and swam until I was cool enough to resume the ride. I also soaked my shirt so it would help keep me cool for the rest of the ride.

Quite a day. The pork butt came out beautifully thanks to my wife, who took over the smoking so that I could go ride with the Legion. We did a flag replacement ceremony in Robbinsville, the last town before the Dragon. We rode through the Nantahala Gorge to get there, which is a bit out of the way but beautiful. I’d never met these people before, but they put me in the tail gunner position based I guess on the firmness of my handshake. First time I’ve ridden tail for a group ride. I hope I did a good job. 

The article on Robbinsville claims that the mean daily maximum temperature in July is 83. That mean was somewhat exceeded today.

Independence Day

Have a happy one, warriors. 

UPDATE: I got the pork butt on before dawn. It smells just like old hickory out there.

Freedom Barbecue

I'm going to smoke a pork butt for the Independence Day feast. 

I made some Christmas barbecue sauce given the significance of the occasion. This batch was thinned partly with coffee and partly with chicken stock, since I had plenty of chicken stock and not a great deal of coffee. I was also out of molasses, so I added extra dark brown sugar -- which, in commercial sugars, differs from white sugar only by the addition of extra molasses. That's now how it worked historically, but these days they render it all to white sugar and molasses, and then make light or dark brown sugar by putting some molasses back in. Cheaper and easier that way.

I'm also going to smoke some Andouille sausage tomorrow, and a snakeskin hat band I made after Conan's recent run-in. Only a little smoke for the latter, to help preserve and waterproof it. 

Yoda: "No, There Is Another."

At the NY Post today, Eric Metaxas declares the American revolution to have been 'the only one in history that worked.' 

That's wrong, but his examples aren't the wrong part. 

Take the French Revolution, which began just a few years after our own Revolution, and was championed by some of the figures involved in our Revolution — like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. They all seemed to think it would be a happy reprisal of what happened here. It was anything but that, ending in a nightmare bloodbath of terror.

What went wrong? Just like us, the French decided they didn’t like the idea of monarchy. So they beheaded their king and queen. But the radicals didn’t stop there....

Then there are the even worse nightmares of the Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions in Russia and China.

OK, fair as far as it goes. But the American revolution stood on the shoulders of at least two earlier revolutions that had worked: the revolt against King John by the barons who fought him at Runnymede, which produced Magna Carta; and the Scottish Revolution led by William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, which produced a free nation that taught the Pope to accept that men could choose their kings. 

Revolution is a risky business, to be sure. Aristotle spends a good part of the Politics explaining how states grow unstable with an eye towards avoiding revolutionary moments. They often end up being destructive.

Not always, though. The one that just occurred in Syria ended a despotic Baathist regime and at least for now seems to have moved in the direction of a better society -- the al Qaeda-linked leader seems to be moderating pretty fast, making deals with the Kurds and the Israelis alike to try to reach a more stable society. The Vietnamese revolution against the French and then us, which we thought would turn them into another Communist hellhole, actually came off all right: the Vietnamese nation is now one of our better friends in the region. The Irish revolt of 1916 produced a nation that is pretty OK, even if they did send condolences on the occasion of Hitler's death. The recent revolt in Northern Ireland's Belfast is healthy, and might help push the whole UK in a better direction eventually. 

Sometimes it's the only way to fly. The Declaration sets the terms out clearly: "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it... Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes... But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

Emphasis added, though little needed. Not only a right. Sometimes, a duty.

Georgia Gets a Hard Look

The FBI has made a priority investigation out of the 2020 election there. The article treats it as an open question that might go either way; readers of the Hall know that the matter was settled some time ago, and the remaining question is one of responsibility. 

It would be encouraging to see actual consequences for this sort of thing, even for an anarchist. That a political system should be corrupt is no surprise, but watching the powerful gleefully get away with it while the press proclaims that "there is no evidence" of the corruption is -- probably intentionally -- disheartening. For those who believe that government can be a positive good, it is even more important to see consequences for this.

1976 versus 2026

There are many things I really like about 70s culture: Outlaw Country, Shovelhead choppers, proto-Metal and Punk rock, Smokey and the Bandit and its predecessors, The Muppet Show (in spite of its periodic pretenses, which were at least fresh and not so exhausted then). 

The above film from 1976 highlights some of the aspects I like a bit less. Still, it does demonstrate a way in which the Carter presidency allowed the left to embrace America in that era that is currently forbidden: if Kamala Harris had won the recent presidential election, I imagine we'd have a version of this today that was being pushed out by official channels. As this one was: this was a product of the US Information Agency. USIA would have been called the propaganda arm of the US government except that the US government formally defines propaganda as "enemy action to..." that the US itself, therefore by definition, can never perform.

Had Harris won, USAID probably would have funded the 2026 version of this instead. 

The present administration has no such professionals on its side, and any remaining within the bureaucracy certainly wouldn't contribute to celebrating America as long as it is led by the enemy: indeed, I suppose that producing such a film now would satisfy their definition of 'propaganda.' So we'll have to make do with individual efforts from "X" instead. 

Any of you seen any good ones? The day is almost upon us. 

Never Change, OK

Oklahoma having a good day. 

The State of Virginia

Today was the day that unconstitutional gun ban was supposed to go into effect in Virginia, except it was slapped with a statewide injunction after a court found that it was likely to be proven unconstitutional in the lawsuit already filed. 

Separately, the DOJ has filed suit against Virginia today over these laws.

Also, SCOTUS just announced they will hear two relevant cases about banning AR-15s in October. 

Oh. Oh, No.

In a year in which socialist candidates are doing so well, competition for Bad Idea of the Year is fierce! However, we might have a winner already by about the halfway point.

Well, one often learns by making mistakes. Or, you know, someone else may learn from observing the experience.

By the way, the flaw in the plan isn't just the guns. It's the 'crash their system' idea. You are talking about people who are very comfortable operating without a system. When Hurricane Helene came through here, it absolutely crashed the system. Every system. The phones were out, the radios were out, the roads were all cut by fallen trees and washed-away bridges. Nobody waited for 'the system' to get fixed and start making things better. By noon I had a chainsaw militia clearing roads made up of every able-bodied man on the mountain and his chainsaw. Even once we began linking up the volunteer fire department and rescue technicians, guys with tractors were clearing roads the county wouldn't get to for days and the state wouldn't ever. 

FEMA? Never heard of her. 

Soco Gap

On Saturday, I rode across Soco Gap between Haywood and Jackson Counties to head down into the Cherokee Boundary Lands. I wanted to visit the casino because it has a Gordon Ramsay "Street Food" court, and I wanted to see what the famous chef's take on street tacos was like. (Spoiler: Gordon Ramsay doesn't know anything about street tacos.)  We got good and soaked, the several of us bikers headed that way, during a wave of cold and driving rain that came across just then. 

Since I was doing 'little known facts of local history' on the main post, here's another one:

In Cherokee, the pass is known as Ahalunun'yi (ᎠᎭᎷᏄn'Ᏹ), meaning "Ambush Place" or Uni'halu'na (ᎤᏂ'ᎭᎷ'Ꮎ), meaning "where they ambushed;" named after the occasion, probably in the mid-18th century, when the Cherokees ambushed a party of invading Shawnees, all of which were killed except for one, who was sent back (without his ears) to tell his people of the Cherokee victory.

I admire the directness of the Cherokee naming convention. My guess is that there were many more ambushes at that gap. It's the natural 'head them off at the pass' location between Maggie Valley and the main homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. It's not far from Big Witch mountain, which is just a bit to the west along the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are many witches in Cherokee mythology; I don't know which one that title means to connote. 

A Theory of Play

I saw this post on "X" and wondered if it was being tremendously unfair, so I went to see what else I could find about it. It sounds like it might be pretty fair in spite of the tone; the commentator on the other side seems to agree about the basic facts.

I looked into it and was surprised to learn that Lego launched the Friends line after years of market research. In 2008, they found that 90% of Lego sets were being sold for boys, despite the fact that they’ve had pretty gender neutral advertising over the decades. That means if they could find a way to reach out specifically to girls, they could practically double their sales. They studied how girls and boys built and played with castle Legos, and they found that boys built the castle and then enacted battles in front of it — the castle was just the backdrop. The girls built the castle and then were disappointed that there wasn’t anything going on inside of it where they wanted to enact their stories. They also learned that the girls were more interested in smaller projects, and that they were more likely to want to see themselves in the minifigs. And thus “Friends” was born, with hearts and butterflies and pink and purple colors and listed on the Lego website under the category of “girls.”

The second set of comments, which is the one I quoted, is from a site dedicated to science and skepticism from a feminist perspective. She still has some objections to the idea of gendered sales of "girls" toys and "boys" toys, and wants boys to be more comfortable trying out pink and purple and flowers. I kind of think we have probably chased that particular rabbit as far as it'll run, and the question now is what we do instead. 

But I'm no longer in the toy-buying market, and won't be again until and unless I get some grandchildren.  

Othering English

I was listening to someone talking about "othering" this morning, and I realized that part of the reason to avoid jargon is to avoid the baked-in weights it brings. A more usual reason is that you can't speak to anyone outside of your niche if you are captured by the jargon and can no longer express your thoughts without it. That will limit your ability to persuade anyone who isn't already part of your esoteric area of thought. Speaking plain English lets you speak with everyone who understands English.

Yet when you start trying to express what 'othering' might mean in plain English, you discover quickly that right away you lose the judgment that it is necessarily bad. In fact, even as a philosophical concept it isn't bad: it only became assumed to be bad when Critical Theory built out an argument that was adopted into theories of racism and colonialism. More basically, the idea of recognizing that some things aren't you is a necessary part of figuring out what is you, and thus what is yours. Recognizing that some things aren't yours is a necessary part of admitting to some limits on yourself: mind your own business means discerning what is, and is not, your business. Accepting limits on your own grasping will is an ethical value of the first rank.

To say that this is a process of discernment means also that it is a process of refinement. I am now figuring out what I like, and what I don't like. If we were talking not about racism but about, say, wine or fine coffee, we would in fact praise this sort of mindful experience, reflection, and then refinement of our tastes. Kant's Third Critique turns on how to do this well in what he thought was a universal and humane manner. 

That doesn't mean that racism is good, of course. It just means that you now have to explain how this process of recognizing your own limits, of discerning and refining your tastes, can go wrong as well as go right. That's a much more interesting and useful discussion to have; and if you can have it in plain English, you can have it with a much wider audience. 

Intellectual Diversity and Political Tolerance

You can't beat a deal like that.

Biker rallies are intellectually diverse. This one place is selling F*CK TRUMP patches right next to F*CK YOU TRUMP HATERS patches. There is widespread tolerance for varying political opinions, which is probably not what is generally assumed about biker rallies.

You can also buy brass knuckles. Other people's political opinions are generally less threatening when you have a good pair of brass knuckles. 

We're all going to get soaked together anyway.

It’s a racially diverse crowd too. Lots of black bikers up from Atlanta to enjoy the Smokies. The first one I saw was by himself and looked nervous about the Confederate flags*, but I made sure to welcome him so he'd know he was OK. He clearly felt better and, in short order, would have found that he was in no ways alone. We're all Americans up here. 

Usually the Redrum MC comes out, and they’re a Native American/First Nations led motorcycle club (not exclusive; white people can join, but they’re about honoring Native Americans). 

Theoretically this is Outlaws MC territory, but everyone is welcome. I see Outlaws and Pagans and a Hells Angels support club here. It’s just a good time for everyone.

We did get soaked, though.

All together a unifying and memorable experience. 

That one bike with her head turned is especially pretty.

I really appreciate motorcycle culture. People have their heads on right.** The political moment passes; every election is 'the most important of our lifetime.' But in the end, you pick your patch or no patch, sew it on or don't, and we all go ride the eternal mountains together. When all the dry land was one continent, these mountains were still here -- these Appalachians linked to the Grampians in what is now Scotland. They're old, and we're passing. We commune with them and are one with them. 

That's what matters. 

* Locally you see a lot of Confederate flags. This is because the Confederacy won the war here. At the end of the war, Thomas' Legion of Indians and Highlanders compelled the surrender of the last Union forces in the region. The Cherokee Nation declared war on the Union and allied with the Confederacy, for the obvious reason that the Union had been waging war on them since at least President Andrew Jackson, and for the less-obvious reason that they also were a slave-owning power. They joined with Scottish and Scots-Irish Highlanders to form a combined arms force that fought through the entire war. Together, they defeated the Union forces and obtained an agreement to surrender in the local town of Waynesville, North Carolina. As it happened, news of Lee's surrender to Grant arrived at about that same time, so they still held the surrender but reversed the polarity about which side was surrendering. However, the mountain folk were not only never defeated, they won. They remember that they won. The Cherokee often fly the Confederate flag too for the same historical reasons as the Highlanders. 

** Funniest thing that happened today: as I was going to the head, a lady biker with a beer in her hand took one look at me and squared up her shoulders. "Wanna fight?" she demanded. I smiled and answered, "Shore." She put her beer aside, raised her fists, and said, "Let's go!" Then she laughed, tapped my shoulder, picked up her beer and went on about her business. 

Firewood

Conan enjoys this much more than I do.

I usually start in February, and it takes until summer starts to finish. Cut a fallen tree here and there, split it and stack it, a bit at a time as I have time to spend on it. Now it can season all the long summer and autumn, and be fully dry by the time the cold arrives. 

Cash on the Barrelhead

Kind of a catchy song from 1950s honky-tonk. By coincidence I was talking with my wife yesterday on a walk about how she, her first time away from home in the 1980s, had no ability to call long-distance to reach home. My father having been a professional telephone man (and volunteer fire-fighter), I explained that all she had to do was go to any payphone -- remember payphones? -- and press "0," then explain what she wanted to a helpful operator. No one had ever explained that to her, so she was just unable to use the phone service when away from home for her several years at college. 

Not much help now, that explanation! In those days, we employed banks of operators full-time whose job it was to help you navigate that problem. Now a long-distance call isn't even expensive on most phone plans. Overseas ones still can be. 

“Confessions” of a Priest

In the following article, a basic conflict over the idea of natural law is spelled out by one Catholic priest who is competing with others -- including the infrastructure surrounding several Popes. He has support from another priest here. The more important priest, the one who wanted to essentially dispose of the old ideas about Natural Law, is interviewed here in Italian (but translators are easy to find these days).

In an interview... Bishop Vincenzo Paglia claimed a decisive role in the dissolution of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and its replacement by a new academic entity, as well as in the radical transformation of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He also made clear that these interventions were intended to bring about a profound paradigm shift, which—for the first time—he explicitly acknowledged as affecting not only the pastoral sphere but the doctrinal one as well.

According to Paglia, this “very profound” reform entailed, above all, a rethinking of the very concept of natural law. Paglia accused the John Paul II Institute of advancing a conception of natural law understood as a set of immutable principles from which moral norms are deduced. He proposed, instead, that natural law must be grounded in an ongoing historical discernment of subjective and cultural experience. In this perspective, a “theology within history and within people’s lives” must replace what he characterized as the late Institute’s “armchair theology.”

The short quote should suffice to show that this is not a debate limited to the Catholic Church. It is the cultural debate of the last several generations in the West. 

Always a Step Ahead

Wretchard, I mean. 

He usually is.

He points out that this means that the Chinese Communist Party is actually opposed to all the diversity initiatives it has spent so much time and money fostering in the West. So too, of course, the environmentalism; the opposition to data centers to power American AI; the opposition to militarism; to nuclear power.... 

Old Soviet trick, that last one. They just picked it up, but they generalized the lesson. The same part of the West keeps falling for it over and over again. 

Only if the scales ever fall away from their eyes. We're going on three generations now without that happening. If anything the mania seems to be growing, fired by social media propaganda so popular and mind-bending.