There were two things I admired greatly about William F. Buckley, Jr. The first was that he could cut to the bone of a problem in one swipe. The second was that he wrote Latin into his work without explanation or apology. With a little phrase in italics, he would tie an issue of the day to two thousand years' tradition -- and send many a reader to learn a little bit more about just what that tradition contained.
He did this so frequently that he was asked to write the introduction for a book of useful Latin phrases, Amo, Amas, Amat and More. In it he lamented, as Tolkien did, the abandonment of Latin by common education; and increasingly, even by priests and doctors. The common language is now English, of course, and English is as noble and its history even more interesting -- but there is yet a power to the Latin, which was spoken by Caesars and saints, and sung by soldiers and merry scholars alike.
We may have to use it more here, if only to provide some small mortar to the foundations of the West.
Of course National Review has numerous words, but they are not alone. Reason magazine pays tribute as libertarians, and Cassandra as well.
Mr. Buckley
PACOM
Pacific, in both senses of the term. NPR interviews CDRUSPACOM, Admiral Timothy Keating.
Saudi Harems
God, and the Tourist Board, need you to marry. Lots.
Here’s an official plan submitted to invigorate tourism in Saudi Arabia: Marry four women, domicile them in corners of the kingdom, travel to visit each during the year, and — boom — you’ve stimulated airline business, hotel occupancy, and car rentals. This was submitted by none less than Hassan Alomair, director of self-development in Saudi Arabia, at a Jeddah conference for the development of internal tourism.Saudi Arabia: as always, out on the forefront of social experimentation.
The project combines piety with efficacy by uniting Sharia’s entitlements to multiple wives with economic stimulus, Mr. Alomair argued. Sharing the dais was the female dean of the school of literature at King Faisal University, Dr. Feryal al-Hajeri, who remained silent as he prescribed his harem-induced economic scheming.
Not so with the readers and bloggers on the Saudi daily Al Watan’s website, which lit up on February 12 with commentary. “Why not make it four cows? He can fly around to milk them,” one said. “If that is the mentality of our director of self-development,” another asked, ”how are the others in that department?” There was plenty of accord with Mr. Alomair too. Some saw his idea as a “pillar” for building a true Islamic society, a “refuge” for unmarried Saudi women, and a “cure” for a widening spinster phenomena.
Crowds Iran
In Iran, at least, the people are more decent than the law.
It happens every day on the streets of Tehran: a police squad grabbed a young woman for dressing immodestly. But this time, the young woman fought back: and a crowd defended her and attacked the police.As well they ought.
Emptiness
Obama has a signal advantage, that is also a signal problem: he is empty. He is the first Presidential candidate to attempt, successfully so far, the strategy that is now usual in getting a Supreme Court Justice approved. He is a stealth candidate.
It is fairly clear that his rhetoric, lofty but without specifics, is serving as a vessel. Many are pouring their hopes into that vessel, imagining it to be full of whatever they want it to contain. Other people are pouring in their fears.
Hillary Clinton has started to try and force his hand by pushing several lines of attack; this is the wrong approach. It will not work because (a) voters, as a whole, cannot and will not follow several lines of attack at once; and (b) it will therefore be easy for him to simply step aside of the arguments, not respond to them, and carry on giving speeches about Hope and Brotherhood.
A vicious, but strategically sounder, approach is to pour just one very bad thing into the vessel, to see if he spits it out. If he does not, he owns it and -- it being the one thing people can now know about him -- it can destroy him; if he does, then you have at least forced him onto the record, and can press him to define just what he does believe if it isn't what you suggest. Getting further and further details from him, you can tie the debate down to actual facts, rather than empty rhetoric.
This appears to be the approach his political opponents from the right have settled upon. The attacks against Obama are in one sense absurd to the point of being offensive. Yet, in another sense they seem perfectly fair: if he is to have the good of being unknown and undefined, he must also have the bad. If he does not want to be defined by his opponent, he can tell us for certain who he is.
Is this Obama?
Or is this?
Or is neither? Are both costumes, as seems likely? Then who is he really?
I don't mean to be vicious; I read Richardson's anecdote also.
But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"More than anything, that leads me to believe that Obama is probably a pretty decent guy, deep down. The flag-pin thing is silly. His mother clearly was a Communist; that doesn't make him, as Spengler put it, "a mother's revenge against the America she despised."
His wife has a lot of rage against America; that doesn't mean he does. My wife and I disagree about a few things, even a few fairly basic ethical issues (like the morality of suicide). Obama's wife and mother don't necessarily define him.
But I would like to know what does. If he is going to be President, as is not unlikely -- the field has narrowed quite a bit of late -- we need to know, and now, not next January.
For Cricket
Cricket asked if we'd like her to drop in and share some things from an attorney, who wrote a book called "The Moral Basis of a Free Society." This post is to permit a space for that discussion.
Canterbury Map
Since we were talking about Chaucer a few days ago, and apropos of a discussion at Cass' place, here is an interactive map by a very clever undergraduate student of English lit. It shows where in the journey each of the tales would have been told, provides a short summary of the tale, and the names and backgrounds of the characters involved.
Neat.
Pledge Pin
Mr. Juan Cole finds a few people who seem to think a pledge pin is a uniform. H/t Commie.
Heh - Hill 44
I was reminded of the old joke when I ran across the all-pink site HillaryIs44.org, a webside devoted to her quest for the Presidency. Now, you'll recall that I endorsed her in the Primary, but leaving that aside, it appears she isn't doing too well in the polls just now. What do the folks at Hill44 say about that?
[D]uring the many times Hillary Clinton has been unfairly attacked by Big Media, Democrats supporting Obama have rejoiced. That treachery by Democrats and allies will never be forgotten.This, of course, is a large part of why she is doing so poorly. It's not that Hillary and her staunchest supporters are all hateful, nasty people bent on vengeance; but they sure give that impression sometimes. It's hard not to want to vote for Mr. Sweetness-N-Light by comparison; at least you don't fear he'd have you shot the minute you disagreed about something. The impression that Hillary might is not undone by the fact that one of their categories for posts, along with "Edwards" and "Health Care," is "Scum".
Of course, there's another reason. On the sidebar, they have a link called "Why Hillary?" and another called "Why not Obama?" Here's what that latter page says:
Coming SoonIt better be pretty soon. :)This page is under development and will be uploaded soon.
LT G makes a pit stop and goes. Back. Out. There.
Things aren’t right here, anymore. Or maybe we’re the ones who aren’t right, anymore. I don’t know. Either way, it’s time to go. Time to go back out there. Where the Wild Things Are. Where the paranoia is justified. Where we now know comfort. Where we ride and die and die to ride and ride to die like every scout before us intent on making his way home or making his way to Fiddler’s Green, and no other options exist. Where we fixate on an edge we can’t describe or even prove exists, but feel every time we leave the wire because it sends our senses spinning into a poisonous clarity only the transcendent and reckless drug addicts should ever have to comprehend. We don’t do it for the thrills, though. And we don’t do it for our country, either. Not like we thought we would. We do it because we’re doing it and it seems like we’ve always been doing it so we will continue to do it for the same reason. Only the simplicity of that statement matters. We continue our movement back out there. Where we belong.
Way to channel Paul Baumer. I think I'm beginning to worry about the LT. Well, at least his mom knows what's on his mind. I guess that's something.
Control
Two articles from Arts & Letters Daily today, each in its way on a defense of the heavens.
The first holds against space-based weapons, in the wake of this week's satellite shootdown. They argue at length, but the argument is undone by the very quote from Sun Tzu they themselves provide:
In war, do not launch an ascending attack head-on against the enemy who holds the high ground. Do not engage the enemy when he makes a descending attack from high ground. Lure him to level ground to do battle.It will done because it must be done; war will not end, yet the advantage to be had here is one that could stop a war. It could perhaps stop many, as the US Navy has stopped many by ensuring the freedom of the seas so that smaller nations need not fight each other for their commerce; as the US Army has sat through sixty years of peace in the lands around its bases in Germany. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
—Sun Tzu, Chinese military strategist, The Art of War, circa 500 B.C.
The other article is on the Crusades. I think often of the Crusades here, in the land of minarets and fortifications, sandstorms and military-issue Bibles. In the scant spare time I have, I am rereading Ivanhoe.
Apparently I'm not the only one to think of it. Unfortunately, not everyone sees clearly where the parallels stop. In the interest of seeing the lessons of history properly learned, I will reprint a section of this critique by Roger Sandall at length.
Hitchens however regards the opportunity as too good to pass up, and on page 35 drags the Iraq War into the argument. The gist being that there’s nothing to choose between Christians and jihadis, and that the modern atrocities of the latter could be seen as a delayed but appropriate response to “the bloodstained spectre of the Crusaders”.In fact, even that was not enough. It was the envoys from Constantinople -- the second Rome, the capital of Constantine the Great. In 1095, the Turks had advanced into the lands controlled by Constantinople, and the city sent to its sister Rome for help.
This attitude is widespread. Moreover, as Paul Stenhouse points out in a valuable recent study, “The Crusades in Context”, Hitchens’ “bloodstained spectre” is absurdly seen as the result of unprovoked Christian aggression. It is claimed that “five centuries of peaceful co-existence” between Muslims and Christians were brought to an end by deranged sword-waving Soldiers of the Cross, terrorising, killing, burning and sacking decent, respectable, peace-loving Muslim communities.
More than this, the Crusaders are being presented in schools as the original terrorists. As a Year 8 textbook in the Australian state of Victoria has it: “Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists … Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?”
No it wouldn’t be fair. Nor would it be true. In the story Paul Stenhouse tells, the 463 years between the death of Muhammed in 632 AD, and the First Crusade in 1095, were extremely dangerous for Christian Europe. Instead of peace there were unrelenting Islamic wars and incursions; Muslim invasions of Spain, Italy, Sicily and Sardinia; raids, seizures, looting of treasure, military occupations that lasted until Saracen forces were forcibly dislodged, sackings of Christian cities including Rome, and desecrations of Christian shrines. And be it noted: all this went on for 463 years before any Christian Crusade in response to these murderous provocations took place.
Sixteen years after the death of Muhammed, in 648 AD, Cyprus was overrun. Rhodes fell in 653, and by 698 AD the whole of North Africa was lost. In 711 Muslims from Tangier crossed into Spain, set their sights on France, and by 720 AD Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt in 732. As Gibbon emphasised, only the resistance at Poitiers of Charles Martel in 732 saved Europe from occupation, and arrested the Muslim tide.
From 800 on, incursions into Italy began. In 846 a Saracen force of 10,000 landed in Ostia, assaulted Rome, and sacked and desecrated the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul. In 859 they seized the whole of Sicily. After capturing a fortress near Anzio, Muslim forces “plundered the surrounding countryside for forty years”. In southern France at the end of the ninth century they held a base near Toulon from which they ravaged both Provence and Northern Italy, and controlled the passes over the Alps, robbing and murdering pilgrims on their way to Rome. Genoa was attacked in 934 and taken in 935. In 1015 Sardinia was taken, occupied, and held my Muslim forces until 1050.
In 1076 the Seljuk Turkish capture of Jerusalem finally exhausted the patience of Islam’s victims in Christian Europe. Only then were concerted moves begun to drive back the infidel, launch the First Crusade, and retake Jerusalem.
Rome agreed, and asked for men to ride to her defense, and to begin to push back against these incursions. So they left their homes, knights and barons, and went instead to war in distant lands.
Were they right? The folk of their day, like our own, were divided. Even good hearted men of the cloth sometimes could not see the purpose.
"What took the honest knight from home? or what could he expect but to find his mistress agreeably engaged with a rival on his return, and his serenade, as they call it, as little regarded as the caterwauling of a cat in the gutter? Nevertheless, Sir Knight, I drink this cup to thee, to the success of all true lovers."Others saw further; whether they saw clearly is a debate that could fill many books.
UN: Disappear!
You've probably seen the story from InstaPundit. This is a genuinely bad idea that people in power get from time to time. It says more about the UN and Google than it does about the journalist.
Mounting a Camel
I haven't tried this method myself, but I can't see anything wrong with it:
Brain power
FuturePundit had an interesting piece yesterday, which goes back to our theoretical debate about what pills you might take to deal with your spouse having an affair. There may be one, he suggests:
What does the future hold for love? Greater knowledge of a phenomenon very often brings with it the ability to manipulate and control it. I expect the development of drugs and other treatments that cause people to fall in and out of love and to recover more easily from lost love.But why fight for love anyway? Only because you're wired too, the studies suggest -- you're almost doomed to a long, miserable slide:
Some people will choose to immunize themselves from love by using treatments that prevent the love process from developing in the first place. A person with history of heart breaks might decide that the possibility of a new love is just too painful to bear. Or someone who wants to devote their time to career might decide to innoculate themselves from the risk of romantic distractions. Still others of a more cerebral sort will decide that love is just a costly cognition distorting evolutionary vestige that they are best off without.
The ability to manipulate love medically will inevitably lead to misuse via surreptious reprogramming of the love state of others. Someone who wants to ditch their mate will be tempted to surreptitiously deliver medicine that will cause the mate to fall out of love. Or imagine the case where a suitor is rejected because the object of their love is in love with someone else. Inevitably some suitors will look for ways to surreptiously deliver a medical treatment that will cause the object of their love to fall out of love with someone else and thereby open up the possibility of forming a new love bond with them.
For a certain few people, however, love can last:Psychologists studying relationships confirm the steady decline of romantic love. Each year, according to surveys, the average couple loses a little spark. One sociological study of marital satisfaction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Penn State University kept track of more than 2,000 married people over 17 years. Average marital happiness fell sharply in the first 10 years, then entered a slow decline.Think about all those people becoming steadily less satisfied with each other. The outcomes of natural selection are cruel.
Brain scans show the perpetually in love as different than the masses. Those people in long term relationships who profess to still feel very excited about their partners have more intense brain activity in the ventral tegmental area of the brain just like the newly fallen in love do.Now, what all this means to FuturePundit is that you can save marriage with a pill -- in theory, you can make everyone experience the continuous love that now only a few know.Days after Mrs. Tucker's brain scan, Dr. Brown, the neuroscientist, sat in her book-lined office looking at the results. "Wow, just wow," she recalls thinking. Mrs. Tucker's brain reacted to her husband's photo with a frenzy of activity in the ventral tegmental area. "I was shocked," Dr. Brown says.
The brain scan confirmed what Mrs. Tucker said all along. But when she learned the result, she too was a bit surprised. "It's not something I expected after 11 years," she says. "But having it, it's like a gift."
The scan also showed a strong reaction in Mrs. Tucker's ventral pallidum, an area suspected from vole studies to have links with long-term bonds. Mrs. Tucker apparently enjoyed old love and new. In the months since, Dr. Brown analyzed data from four more people, including Ms. Jordan, who also showed brain activity associated with new love. The study is ongoing, and more volunteers are being sought.
What is interesting to me, though, is how counterintuitive the findings are. I don't mean counterintuitive only to me -- that is, "not what I'd expect." I mean, counterintuitive to everyone.
For me, it seems odd that the vast majority of marriages experience a sharp drop in happiness over the first ten years. For others, love isn't what it is for me. They and I use the same word, but we don't experience the same thing at all. Yet the science bears it out.
For the others, the concept that you could continue to love someone forever was the counterintuitive part -- but again, the science bears it out. What is genuinely unimaginable for most is simple truth for some.
I can honestly say that anyone I've ever loved, I still love. That's apparently extremely unusual, which I would not have expected. By the same token, others whose brains work the normal way find that they couldn't imagine the way I feel at all. To the psychologists and neuroscientists running the study, such things are -- their words -- shocking.
The thing to remember about all this? If you say to someone, "How do you feel?" and they answer, "I am in love," you still don't know how they feel. They use the same word you do; but the word alone won't tell you. You have to see them ride the river a while to know for sure.
District work period
Hope you had a good holiday, or if you prefer, "district work period."
Dogs & Media
Cassandra snarls at poor little Uno, the beagle who has captured all our hearts:
Last year about this time, the media said they didn't report the good news in Iraq because they couldn't find any good news. Now, there is more good news than bad, and yet they seem to have gone largely silent. Why is that?Unlike the puppy-haters at VC and elsewhere, I am glad to see dogs receiving their proper attention. What we need to do is find a way to get the celebrities off TV, so there is time to report on both Iraq and dogs.Unlike the Wednesday CBS and NBC evening newscasts, ABC's World News highlighted a favorable development in Iraqi political progress as anchor Charles Gibson gave 20 seconds to: "Overseas, in Iraq, a breakthrough for the country's government that has been so often criticized. Iraq's parliament approved three contentious, but crucial, new laws long sought by Washington. The laws set a budget for 2008, grant amnesty to thousands of detainees and define the relationship between the central government and the provinces."As Oh Bloody Hell, who sent the Editorial Staff this item, so aptly put it:
A month ago, on January 14, Gibson was also the only broadcast network evening newscast anchor to cite how "Iraqi lawmakers have put their differences aside and agreed to allow some members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to take government jobs. It's a key benchmark sought by the United States."
The CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News on Wednesday night both found time to report on how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates broke his arm in a fall on ice and how, for the first time, a Beagle (named "Uno") won "Best in Show" at the Westminster Dog Show. Gibson, who broadcast from Philadelphia, the site of the dog show, managed to note the development in Iraq as well as Uno's win."News about *a Beagle* vs. Important *positive' news on Iraq. Which one gets air time? Need you ask?"
Of course, some news agencies find efficiencies:
When Maj. Brian Dennis first spotted a scruffy German Shepard-Border collie mix at a fort in Iraq, the dog wasn't interested in making friends. The dog, who lived in the wild with a pack of canine companions, had already been through a lifetime's worth of pain and neglect. His ears had been cut off as a puppy, and he had been trained as a fighting dog. Now that he was finally free of his tormentors, the dog just wanted to be left alone.Click through for a picture of the Marine Major and the happy hound.
But Dennis saw something special in the dog, which he nicknamed "Nubs," because of his missing ears. It took some time, but eventually Dennis had the dog eating out of his hand. One day, when Nubs showed up one day with a deep wound in his side, Dennis nursed him back to health. Soon, Dennis and Nubs were inseparable.
Sadly, Dennis learned that his unit would be forced to relocate to a new base, and he wasn't allowed to bring Nubs along. As he watched Nubs race alongside his Hummer as his unit drove away from the fort for the last time, he was sure that he would never see the dog again.
But two days later, a familiar face turned up at Dennis' new base: Somehow, Nubs had managed to follow the Marine unit through the Iraqi desert on foot, all the way to their new base – 70 miles away.
"I won't even address the gauntlet he had to run of dog packs, wolves, and God knows what else to get here," Dennis wrote. "When he arrived he looked like he'd just been through a war zone."
"Uh, wait a minute, he had."
Even though it was against military protocol, Dennis' unit felt compelled to give the determined dog a home. They built a doghouse for Nubs, but were soon informed by the military police that Nubs would have to live elsewhere. So, Dennis decided to take Nubs home with him.
This, of course, proves my point. Dogs and Iraq, yes -- Brittney Spears, no.
Rules for Vets
What should the governing principles be in cases like this one?
(This is from State Representative and Afghanistan veteran Rick Noriega, who is currently challenging chickenhawk Senator John Cornyn in Texas. It appears as though the Republican Party of Texas is moving in to "swiftboat" Lt. Col. Noriega - promoted by Brandon Friedman)The fellow goes on to say that he was planning to do it anyway; but while he's at it, he takes several swipes at "cronies" planning a "smear campaign" and "dishonest attacks on veterans."We know where this is going.
The Republican Party of Texas, and by extension, Senator John Cornyn, has requested that I release my military records to them.
The Republican letter is more flowery than a garden:
There are few nobler callings than the call to run for elected office. [*coughcoughcough* Excuse me. --Grim] We applaud your answering that call and wish you the best of luck in your primary against Misters Kelly, McMurrey and Smith.They then provided him with a letter (on Republican Party stationery, even) to sign that would authorize the release of all his records.You have indicated that you intend to make military experience, integrity and transparency the cornerstones of your campaign. We are grateful for your service to this great country and we agree that those that seek higher office should support transparency and openness regarding all of their public service records....
The letter strikes me as an audacious document, and though it is kindly worded, the underlying concept seems unsavory. I don't mean to say that an opponent should never be able to ask after the nature of your service. Especially if you are running "on military service," an opponent might reasonably ask, "Well, what sort of service did you provide?"
On the other hand, the main choice you get in terms of how you serve is if you do. You can buck for certain assignments and so on, but that doesn't mean you'll get them. The military is ultimately in the driver's seat. Your record may not be all that impressive, without it being your fault in the slightest. (By the same token, some candidates could look great on paper, but...)
Making release of your personal records a mandatory condition for running for public office might discourage a good officer with an indistinguished career; or a man with a highly distinguished career who nevertheless did not wish to discuss certain aspects of it. Citations for bravery and valor, in particular, can be the sort of thing you'd rather not talk about. We understand there are a host of reasons for that, some highly honorable and sympathetic.
I'd like to say, then, that it's legitimate to mention that you chose to serve, without necessarily being obligated to sign away all your privacy to every military-generated document about your service. The political process is nasty enough as it is, already far too much about the politicians themselves and too little about the concepts and ideas they want to enact; and even the best of men, perhaps especially them, may not wish to discuss certain things about their past.
There probably is some threshold beyond which it is legitimate for an opponent to ask for at least some records to be released. This particular fellow seems only too ready to sling mud to claim that he's running a pristine campaign that ought to be immune from dirty campaigning; but it should be possible to run one. If we can make it possible, perhaps someone will.