Two For Today

Battles Lost and Losing:

The American Knife and Tool Institute (AKTI) finds itself, today, in a difficult position. It wants to draw your eye to a sweeping power grab by the Federal government to regulate even the pocketknife you might normally carry -- by redefining it as a switchblade, even though it has no switch.

Yet it is hard to get people to see that this is a serious danger; after all, it is an arcane rule-change, not a legislative process; and it is by a portion of the government that has no normal reason to be of concern to Americans, namely the Customs service; and anyway, it's so obvious that my knife is not a switchblade, how could I possibly be concerned about it?

Well, on another topic, were you concerned about the EMTALA? Neither was I. In fact, I don't recall having ever heard of it until today, when I read this piece by GruntDoc, at the recommendation of Doc Russia. He is explaining why doctors are doing so little to try and stop ObamaCare, even though it will plainly destroy both their ability to make a living and also lead to government rationing.

When the monstrosity of EMTALA was enshrined the battle against universal health care was lost. How is the argument even made that we do not have universal care now? And how can one argue that there is a problem with access? I have not been able, ever, to turn a patient away from the ER.

You can be a murderer, an illegal alien, or a John Doe, pick up the phone, call 911, and get all your care (up to and including all manner of surgery) right away at the ER and never pay a dime. Why in God's name would we physicians, as a group, have any other belief than that the battle is lost and was lost some time ago.

Also, even though we have swallowed the bitter pill of universal care (without any legislative disincentive to abuse the system having survived scrutiny) our feeble attempts to bring even a small amount of sensibility to our tort system have been crushed in their infancy by the legal community, most often the American Trial Lawyers Association (and their willing accomplices in the congress).... [W]e are not allowed to deduct the cost of this free care we give away, conservative estimates place it at $150k per year per Emergency Physician, and we are taxed in the highest bracket.

The lawyers and lawmakers are strangling us all. It's gotten to where it is more than a full-time job just to keep track of the new regulations that the government is constantly dreaming up to impose on our lives. If you spent all day every day doing just that and nothing else, you still would need to hire help.

Chastity

Chastity:

Along the way to defining 'right drinking,' Scruton imagines what he calls "true chastity" for an analogy. This is a concept worth considering entirely separately from the concept of right drinking, though (perhaps because of my own continued 'chastity' from both drink and other things, occasioned by General Order #1) the analogy between a temporary abstinence from sex and from drink seems reasonable to me.

What he argues is that chastity is best taught (to those who are not priests) as a way of whetting the appetite, so that you may enjoy the deepest and fullest experience of the thing when the time is right. Sex is not something to be avoided, but rather, something that is best when it is joined to love and to commitment.

That is what true chastity consists in, and it provides one of the deep arguments in favour of marriage or, at least, in favour of the constraint upon sexual appetite that is offered by love, that it makes sexual enjoyment into a personally fulfilling habit.

Chastity in this light becomes, not an avoidance of something that is pleasurable, but a means of deepening the experience. In this way it is placed in the realm appealing to those who want to "live best, and love deepest" -- in a word, it becomes romantic.

That suggests Scruton has hit the truth of the thing.

Vine and Virtue

Virtue and Vine:

Roger Scruton has a piece on the virtue of drinking. He is aiming at the Aristotlean balance between vice ("vicious drinking") and avoidance (which he probably improperly renders as 'Puritanism').

If alcohol causes drunkenness, they think, then the sole moral question concerns whether you should drink it at all, and if so how much. The idea that the moral question concerns how you drink it, in what company and in what state of mind, is one that is entirely foreign to their way of understanding the human condition.

This puritan legacy can be seen in many aspects of British and American society. And what is most interesting to the anthropologist is the ease with which puritan outrage can be displaced from one topic to another and the equal ease with which the thing formerly disapproved of can be overnight exonerated from all taint of sin. This has been particularly evident in the case of sex. Our parents and grandparents were concerned — and rightly concerned — that young people should look on sex as a temptation to be resisted. However, they did not see chastity as a preparation for sexual enjoyment: in their eyes it was precisely the enjoyment that was wrong. As a result, they made no real distinction between virtuous and vicious desire. The whole subject was taboo and the only answer to the question of sexual urges was "Don't!" The old idea of chastity as a form of temperance eluded them. Yet what Aristotle said about anger (by way of elucidating the virtue of praotes or "gentleness") applies equally to sex. For Aristotle it is not right to avoid anger absolutely. It is necessary rather to acquire the right habit — in other words, to school oneself into feeling the right amount of anger towards the right person, on the right occasion and for the right length of time.

What is the right balance for the consumption of alcohol? He invites you to consider:

The practice of buying rounds in the pub is one of the great cultural achievements of the English. It enables people with little money of their own to make generous gestures, without the risk of being ruined by them. It enables each person to distinguish himself from his neighbours and to portray his individuality in his choice of drink, and it causes affection progressively to mount in the circle of drinkers, by giving each in turn the character of a warm and hospitable friend. In a way it is a moral improvement on the Greek symposium, where the host alone appeared in the character of the giver, and also on the common room and the country house. The round of drinks enables even the speechless and the downtrodden briefly to receive the thanks, the appreciation and the honour of their neighbours....

When people sit down together in a public place — a place where none of them is sovereign but each of them at home — and when those people pass the evening together, sipping drinks in which the spirit of place is stored and amplified, maybe smoking or taking snuff and in any case willingly exchanging the dubious benefits of longevity for the certain joys of friendship, they rehearse in their souls the original act of settlement, the act that set our species on the path of civilisation, and which endowed us with the order of neighbourhood and the rule of law.

Although there is some rather playful anthropology at work in the piece, it's hard to argue with that particular note. I look forward to having the occasion to enjoy such companionship, once I have left behind a land and a life that is dry in both the physical and metaphorical senses of the term.

Scruton quotes a few poets in his discourse. There are many good ones! Among my favorites is this stanza of Chesterton's:

Feast on wine or fast on water
And your honour shall stand sure,
God Almighty's son and daughter
He the valiant, she the pure;
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.

So, to day is June 6th.

65 years ago today, a whole lot of American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers stormed Fortress Europe.

General Eisenhower called it a 'great crusade'. It probably was.

He'd probably get into big trouble using those words these days, though.

Scratch four flattops!

So, today is June 4. I have read that the Japanese intended to rename Midway "The Glorious Month of June" after they captured it.

Things don't always work out the way they were planned, which is a lesson that apparently has to be learnt over and over again.

The US Navy won that battle, but it was not a sure thing. Battles never are.

If people out there want to 'read more about it' (assuming they have not already) I will heartily recommend Jonathan Parshall's and Anthony Tully's "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which is an absolutely amazing piece of historical writing, dissecting the battle from mostly the Japanese perspective. You will not think about the battle same way again after reading this book, I will guarantee that.

But today, let us remember Admiral Fletcher and the brave crews of the USS Yorktown, USS Enterprise and USS Hornet and all the rest. For as long as there is a US Navy, we will remember their deeds this day.

On Prostitution:

Cassandra, that delightful woman, has once again deleted a discussion thread just as I was beginning to enjoy it. :)

We had settled the issue of shooting abortion doctors to my satisfaction, but I hadn't had time to engage the prostitution question at all. I left it alone initially because it doesn't strike me as being all that hard or troubling. I suppose, though, that I might explain why; and since I can't do it there, we may as well discuss it here.

I think Cassandra had the largest part of it in her appeal to human dignity: that it is wrong to let people be treated as commodities. Why is it wrong? Aristotle said that there are some people who are natural slaves, and as I get older, I think that's really true: but not chattel slaves. I mean that I think he was right to say that there are some people who really just want to be taken care of, and are willing to do whatever they're told in return for not having to worry. They will trade whatever they must, including freedom, including their dignity, to obtain whatever such promise of 'I will care for you' that they can find.

As a nation consecrated to liberty, and therefore to dignity, we should always oppose such a mindset. The American way is surely to call people to lift up their eyes and their hearts, and to claim the dignity and liberty that come from self-reliance.

Too, and more, the Western tradition is unique in the world in its value of women. Perhaps the single greatest difference between our culture and the Middle East's, or China's, is not the difference in Christianity or Islam or Confucian social principles. Rather, the greatest and most obvious difference is the development of the culture of high respect of women by men that characterized the nobility and knightly classes of the High Middle Ages, and which came to characterize the whole of the aristocracy, gentry, and eventually the middle classes over the next centuries. Though never universal, the ethic of chivalry was rightly described in the introduction to the works of Chretien de Troyes as the cult of the West.

So far as we know he was the first to create in the vulgar tongues a vast court, where men and women lived in conformity with the rules of courtesy, where the truth was told, where generosity was open-handed, where the weak and the innocent were protected by men who dedicated themselves to the cult of honour and to the quest of a spotless reputation. Honour and love combined to engage the attention of this society; these were its religion in a far more real sense than was that of the Church.

We have discussed this topic before, at length: I am thinking especially of here and here, for example -- anyone who wishes to engage the discussion anew may wish to familiarize themselves with the debate, as several of us have fairly hardened positions on some of these issues.

One of those discussions was on the occasion of Governor Palin's run for office, pondering what it would be like to have a woman who could be loved from afar -- in the sense of the poetic tradition of which Chretien was a part -- in our national consciousness.

Alas, we never found out because it was decided instead that we should all hate and despise her. It was not enough to edit her interviews, but to frame her inexperience on the national stage so that it appeared to be idiocy. Having done this on national "news," the same networks let loose their comedians to hammer it home. So effectively was scorn and mockery deployed against her -- even after she was a good sport about it, showing up on Saturday Night Live in some clever self-parody, and extending to Tina Fey the offer of free babysitting -- that the tactic now seems to be acceptable toward any conservative woman.

This is not only about women, mind you, but about men as well. The audience for these poems about love and honor were not children: these were no nursery rhymes. They were stories for a fighting class, who embraced life in the knowledge that they might not long enjoy it. It is a poetry of urgency: how to live best, how to love deepest.

A man who knows how to love has no reason to care about prostitution; what use is it? What he wants is a love to guide his dreams and his steps, and to lift him up for his short span into the highest realm for men.

To be such a man is to want such women. Where will you find them, if you let them be scorned?

Heraldry, IV:

I mentioned 2/1 Armor had just returned home to Germany. Here is some of the heraldry they left behind.







Sadly, the last one requires this note: three soldiers from the 47th FSB died overnight in Germany. Having so long suppressed their hearts to better prepare for the dangers of war, they were overcome by the sudden joy of liberty. All of us who were once young men know that there were times when we did as recklessly, as it is the way of young men; only fate spares us to mourn. Requiéscant in pace.

For Grim:

Storm that fort!

Looks like the Russians remember too.

Heraldry III

Heraldry III:

This one's for Eric.







I think that heraldry is a lot like poetry: the best of it comes from the most strict traditions. It is in testing yourself against the form that you push your limits.

Heraldry, Part II: Task Force Dragon

At various times, units of different sizes have held the distinction of being "task forces" here. "Task Force" can mean one of several things -- "Task Force Troy" is the counter-IED unit, for example -- but when assigned to a combat arms unit it denotes which level of command is considered the "ground owning" unit. When I was in Iraq the first time, it was with "Task Force Marne," a division-sized element commaned by the 3rd Infantry Division headquarters.

As you can see from the heraldry below, "Task Force Dragon" was a brigade-sized element (the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division). They have since left Iraq; the current "Task Force Dragon" is a battalion-sized element (1-63 Combined Arms Battalion, also part of 1st ID). That means the battalion owns the land, and the brigade and division commands support the battalion commander's efforts.



The motto, "Bellate Impavide," is "Fight Lustily!" or "Wage War Fearlessly!" Here is a milblogger from that unit, on their long-awaited final day in theater.

Here are two more from that period:





It is good to remember.

Heraldry, I

Heraldy, Part I:

One of the things I admire about the US Army is its devotion to the traditions of heraldry. The US Army's College of Heraldry has made a few "innovations," which is too bad -- I wonder if the 4th Infantry Division knows that the diamond-shaped shield is traditionally reserved for women? -- but on the whole it has preserved an ancient and noble custom.

The base where I am currently has had a lot of units pass through it. I took a longer than usual walk to the DFAC today in order to capture some of the better heraldry. I'll post a short series as I have time.



I like this example because it shows the classical heraldry as well as a more interpretive form. It also has the heraldry of the 1st Armor Division ("Old Ironsides"), to which TF Ram belongs.

North Korea Tests Second Nuclear Device, Fires Short-Range Missiles

Korea made its second test of a nuclear explosive on Monday and declared it was more destructive than the first, an advance that is likely to embolden Kim Jong Il's regime in rebuffing calls by the U.S. and others to halt its weapons program.

The country also launched three short-range missiles, including one from the same site from which it fired a long-range missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean seven weeks ago.

It never quite starts where you expect it to.

Right now, it seems Iran is the focus of the Obama administration's nuclear worries.

East wind, rain.

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese ruling party panel is to propose that pre-emptive strikes against enemy bases be allowed despite the country's pacifist constitution, Kyodo news agency said on Monday, weeks after a North Korean missile launch.

In 1941, the Roosevelt administration expected, that if war broke out, the Japanese would attack the Philipines first.

People don't always do what you expect them to.

Oh, and happy Memorial Day to all.

Game Theory:

Let's play a game.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”…

The industry says that the proposals will force banks to issue fewer credit cards at greater cost to the current cardholders.

You’re already helping to pay off deadbeats’ homes. Why not help free them up to rack up some more credit-card debt too?

I gather the theory is that people who work hard will continue to work hard, even though they are now benefitting much less and paying the freight for people who don't. Yet we know from game theory that sometimes ultimatums get rejected:

The ultimatum game is a game often played in economic experiments in which two players interact to decide how to divide a sum of money that is given to them. The first player proposes how to divide the sum between the two players, and the second player can either accept or reject this proposal. If the second player rejects, neither player receives anything. If the second player accepts, the money is split according to the proposal. The game is played only once so that reciprocation is not an issue....

In many cultures, people offer "fair" (i.e., 50:50) splits, and offers of less than 20% are often rejected. Research on monozygotic and dizygotic twins has shown that individual variation in reactions to unfair offers is partly genetic.

To say that this arrangement is at least "partly genetic" is a way of returning to the concept of "natural law." Humans in many cultures will flatly reject an unfair split of free resources: A and B are both getting something for nothing, but B would rather get nothing at all than get only 19% while A takes 81%.

That's in a case where A is dividing spoils which are free to both parties -- neither one has any ownership of the spoils until they are divided. In the current case, A is proposing to take property that belongs to B and divide it between them. Because A controls the political branches, he is in charge of setting the terms of the division.

B, however, still has an option available, as the Randians keep reminding us. Doc Russia explores the question in depth.

It's still a good game. Many of us may have a lot more time to enjoy life, in the near future.

Cannibals!

One of the interesting sections from the paper we've been discussing is the Turkish view of the Franks as cannibals:

Other Muslim accounts note that the Franks not only killed civilians, but they tortured them to extort treasure and even ate them. According to Maalouf, Christian sources confirm that the Franks boiled and grilled adults as well as children so they could eat them. The local population quickly spread word of the atrocities that the Franks committed against the population of Ma’arrat. These stories reinforced the already prevalent image of the Franks as subhuman and further vilified them. What enemy could be worse, even in medieval times, than cannibals?

“They [Franks] aroused a mixture of fear and contempt, quite understandable on the part of an Arab nation which, while far superior in culture, had lost all combative spirit. The Turks would never forget the cannibalism of the Occidentals. Throughout their epic literature, the Franj are invariably described as anthropophagi.” Muslims equate the conduct of the Franks during this siege to their true nature and eventually used this example to igncooperation between rival princes and emirs. In the near term, the conduct of the Franks benefited their campaign. In the long term, their conduct would eventually contribute to the loss of the war.

That reminds me of Sir Walter Scott's introduction to his Crusader novel, The Talisman. It's too long to quote in full, but treats Richard the Lionheart's alleged cannibalism:

"The swarte vis [Black face] when the king seeth,
His black beard and white teeth,
How his lippes grinned wide,
'What devil is this?' the king cried,
And 'gan to laugh as he were wode.
'What! is Saracen's flesh thus good?
That never erst I nought wist!
By God's death and his uprist,
Shall we never die for default,
While we may in any assault,
Slee Saracens, the flesh may take,
And seethen and roasten and do hem bake,
[And] Gnawen her flesh to the bones!
Now I have it proved once,
For hunger ere I be wo,
I and my folk shall eat mo!"'

Sir Walter has an explanation for how he believes the rumor arose. It all reminds me of Roman Polanski's Pirates, in which the starving captain is trying to catch his last-remaining crewman to eat. The crewman scales the mast of their little boat, and as the captain is chopping down that mast, yells down:

"Cannibalism is a mortal sin! You will burn in hellfire!"

The captain pauses for a moment to consider that, and answers:

"What about Confession? What do you think Confession's for?"

Chop, chop.

Crusade

Crusaders:

I know the officer who wrote this. Good man.

Enjoy this, Grim!

That was a good king!



via American Digest, who brings up in his own way, my point about technology and entertainment, but muses why poetry isn't what it used to be. Interesting read, that.

Monkeysuits and Manners.

The guys over at Instapunk have an interesting post concerning the recent White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Since class warfare has been initiated, I'm prepared to defend the unpopular position of, well, class. Since it's been entirely forgotten by all sides. Just not by me.It interests me that conservatives are struggling with why they were offended by the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. On the one hand, they know they were offended by Wanda Sykes's monologue and by the fact that Obama laughed at it. On the other, they think they're trying to be fair, trying to put it into perspective, not getting all bent out of shape by it because Ann Coulter is mean too, etc. Oh, and yeah, they're above it all somehow. Or just plain tone-deaf. Which?

It is an interesting read, and at the end, they note something about GWB that I knew all along.

Obama's War.

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2009 – Citing the need for new thinking and new ideas in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has recommended President Barack Obama nominate Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the new commander of NATO and U.S. forces there.

Gates announced at a Pentagon news conference today that he has requested the resignation of Army Gen. David McKiernan, currently the commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal currently serves as the director of the Joint Staff.“I believe that our mission [in Afghanistan] requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders,” Gates told reporters. “Today, we have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership is needed.”

Gates also announced his recommendation for Army Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, Gates’ senior military advisor, for a new position under McChrystal as deputy commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

From some other people I've looked at around the blogosphere, this seems to be the triumph of the COIN officers over the "Conventional" officers. Or something like that. Or maybe not.

Time will tell.

McKiernan was fired though. You don't 'ask' people to resign. Even I know that.

AL Daily

Well, Now:

Here's an interesting -- if unproven -- theory:

[T]he painter Vincent van Gogh did not slice off his left ear in a fit of madness and drunkenness in Arles in December 1888. His ear was severed by a sword wielded by his friend, the painter, Paul Gauguin, in a drunken row over a woman called Rachel and the true nature of art.

It's remarkable how big a difference that one detail would make in our understanding of the man.

Madness

Madness:

The Independent writes:

[W]hat, if anything, could possibly link minds that gave the world the theory of relativity, great surreal art, iconic comedy, and songs about surfing?

According to new research, psychosis could be the answer.... "There is now a feeling that these traits have survived because they have some adaptive value. To be mildly manic depressive or mildly schizophrenic brings a flexibility of thought, an openness, and risk-taking behaviour, which does have some adaptive value in creativity. The price paid for having those traits is that some will have mental illness."

Research is providing support for the idea that creative people are more likely to have traits associated with mental illness. One study found that the incidence of mood disorders, suicide and institutionalisation to be 20 times higher among major British and Irish poets in the 200 years up to 1800. Other studies have shown that psychiatric patients perform better in tests of abstract thinking.

Wise research, I suppose, to have discovered a fact that any slight student of archaeology or anthropology could have told them. Madness is not only adaptive but widely sought by those societies living at lower levels of technology, whose lives are more keenly balanced between survival and destruction. It is the rare society that did not have some form of mystical vision-seeking, based on suffering or drugs designed to take the mind out of its normal function.

In the West, this took the form of the cults that used ergot beverages, which have been discovered sealed in jars of the greatest antiquity.

A mild madness is merely a way of seeing reality differently. Give a man an alphanumeric string to remember: 24E7Y21P93Q. Then give him a word of the same length: BACCHANALIA. The mind can hold the one only with care and repeated effort: the other it seizes at once.

For a mild autistic, however, the two things may be equally easy to remember. That means that, if we could control that particular form of madness, we could access that function when we needed it. There is really no reason the one set of data should be easier to remember than the other; it is just the way the brain normally works. The brain could work otherwise. What is wanted is the ability to control it, and apply the talent we need.

Likewise, other forms of madness may drop walls to perception. Sometimes these walls are very useful: it can be helpful not to realize how dangerous it is, for example, to drive a car. Dropping that particular wall, as happens sometimes to those who suffer severe car wrecks, can be disabling in normal life. It is best that we can't normally understand just how perilous it is to push a heavy piece of metal to a speed of sixty miles an hour. Yet there may be times when such perceptions are useful, if they can be had for a while. If you could show your teenage son a vision of the thing for just a moment, it might save many a fine young life.

Creativity and madness are surely linked. That means there is a price: if we have bred to have a certain number of Einsteins, we have also bred to have a certain number of gibbering madmen who suffer and can not help themselves. More control is needed, which perhaps will come with greater understanding of the physical mechanisms of the brain.

Models based on an assumption that "normality" is a goal to be striven for, however, are not helpful. What is wanted is not a "normal" mind. What is wanted is the right mind, at the right moment.