Trotto

Trotto:

Eric often tells me, and rightly, that we live in an age in which the great things are there for those who have an ear. Here is one who has.

Get Some, Marines

The Taliban's No Good, Very Bad Day:

Get some, Marines. Our hearts are with you.

Detritus

Alchemy:

One thing that strikes me on returning to America is how much garbage is on sale. Every city and town is covered with malls and shopping centers. Some of this stuff is more expensive than other stuff, but oddly, almost none of it is actually of high quality. The expensive stuff at the high-dollar mall in Atlanta is better than the cheap stuff at the truck stop, but it still isn't of the best quality.

It's not just that you can buy a better hat than you can buy at the mall; it's that the hat is so much better than what they sell that it's not in the same class. If you need a hat, then, you'd not go to any of these stores -- not malls, not truck stops, not shopping centers, not any place where you can buy things in person. You'd order it online or by mail from a craftsman.

You see people in these stores shopping with great intensity -- women in particular. I don't wonder at the teenagers or the twenty-somethings buying clothes, because presumably they are still establishing a wardrobe. However, you see women far older than that shopping with the same intensity. They must have closets full of clothes already.

I occasionally buy new clothes, when old ones wear out. That doesn't seem to be the reason they are buying these clothes, though; and in any event, the clothes are of the same low-quality as everything else. You can buy well-made dresses and tailored suits, but not here; and if you want rugged work clothes for knocking around in, these are not for that either.

What they appear to be doing is not searching for clothes, but searching for meaning. They are searching for a way to look that will make them feel a certain way. It is as if they think that looking and feeling a different way might make them actually be what they want.

The clothes need to be cheap and disposable, because the feelings change so quickly -- tomorrow she may need a different feeling, another skirt. The expensive ones are merely targeted at a wealthier market: for that market, they are just as disposable.

That is why they buy so many clothes, and why the clothes are so poorly made. The thing being bought is not the physical object at all. They are only talismans, like the hair of a frog. The real thing desired is the spell they want to work: the transformation, for a moment, into something else.

We spoke a while ago about the use of aesthetics to renew society. If you can capture the aesthetic in music and art, you can renew the world: but if you can then capture it also in clothes, you might be able to reach this entire group of people.

This also solves the funding issue, as large cultural movements require vast sums of money.

Now what we need is the poet, the artist, and the designer. What is the vision of beauty that they might chase, long enough for us to begin to introduce them to these better ways? For beauty underlies everything -- it is the vision of beauty that you follow that defines you.

It is also there -- in the consistent pursuit of a vision -- that the real transformation is possible. These pieces of poorly-made fluff have a power, if they are linked to a vision that can make you chase it far enough. A man who chases questing beasts, or fairy maids, will often find himself in elfland. So it is with other visions, if you dare to chase them far enough.

What, then, is the vision? Or are there several? What would move you in the right direction, and might move others? It is important to think about this, because it is the starting place.

Russian Pagans

Paganus:

The Latin word from which we derive "pagan" means something like 'of the countryside' or 'rural.' There are a few left:

More than 50 worshippers gathered in a sacred grove on a hot June afternoon outside the village of Marisola. The crowd, mostly women dressed in national costumes and colorful headscarves, stood on a glade opposite a spruce where men were busy conducting prayers.

The congregation kneeled while the men under the spruce, dressed in suits, white felt hats and linen towels cast over their shoulders, said prayers in a low, monotone murmur.

They prayed to Osh Kughu Yumo -- Mari for "Great White God" -- who was being revered that day as Agavairem, which means both deity of creative energy and the feast marking the end of spring labor.

The women lined up in the grass in front of piles of thick homemade pancakes, white cheese, dumplings and brown kvas, the fermented rye drink. Pots and kitchenware were adorned with burning candles, as was a makeshift table in front of the spruce.

This is not one of the "neopagan" faiths that have cropped up since the 19th century. Those were inspired by the Romantic movement in literature and music, which sought to infuse meaning into life through soaring emotion. This one is simply an old way, that has survived in a very rural region.

The Christian priests in the area have tried to sort out their own thoughts on the relationship between the faiths. The Russian Orthodox priest says he lets them come to church, and even be baptized, but believes they are lost souls who cannot be saved. The Lutheran they interviewed said that the problem wasn't that they weren't Christian, but that they weren't Russian: "Many Mari do not want to go the Orthodox church because it is perceived as quintessentially Russian. We, however, can offer worship in their own language."

Yet it is the poet they interviewed who spoke best, as poets will.

"You should not put too much significance in this," Dudina explained. "Our people have lived with the Russian church for generations, but our faith is older."

Christianity, she said, had not entered Mari rites, but rather the rites had entered Christianity. "There are so many pagan traditions in Christianity. Look at the Christmas tree," she said.

I remember another poet who felt that way:

He kept the Roman order,
He made the Christian sign;
But his eyes grew often blind and bright,
And the sea that rose in the rocks at night
Rose to his head like wine.

He made the sign of the cross of God,
He knew the Roman prayer,
But he had unreason in his heart
Because of the gods that were.

Even they that walked on the high cliffs,
High as the clouds were then,
Gods of unbearable beauty,
That broke the hearts of men.

And whether in seat or saddle,
Whether with frown or smile,
Whether at feast or fight was he,
He heard the noise of a nameless sea
On an undiscovered isle.

DEVO + Neil Young.



Yeah. I didn't believe it either.

Cuts

Cuts:

So I'm learning what's been going on back here in the states while I've been gone. I see we're discussing health care:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

That has a very familiar ring to it. It's precisely the government's plan for Social Security, Medicare, and Federal pensions:

Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities.

So why don't we change to the corporate-style accounting method?

The White House and the Congressional Budget Office oppose the change, arguing that the programs are not true liabilities because government can cancel or cut them.

That article was originally published in 2007, so this is not new. The government's standing position is that the "national debt" problem is not a serious issue, because they can always simply decide not to pay. No one can make them.

So, having paid ruinous FICA taxes and income taxes all your life, many of you will soon reach retirement to discover that the government has defrauded you. Only it's not fraud, you see, because they make the rules. The new rules will say it's OK that they break their word.

That's not new, but this is:

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

It's longstanding practice for Congressmen to vote for bills they haven't read. This is the first time, though, that I've heard of them voting for one that actually can't be read.

Back when "Campaign Finance Reform" was on the table, the Congress wrote a bill that both parties agreed was at least partially unconstitutional; the President signed it into law, although he also agreed that it was not constitutional. Both branches deferred to the SCOTUS to work out which parts were (and weren't) actually constitutional, rather than doing their duty themselves. SCOTUS, in turn, deferred to the legislature and the President.

All three branches set aside their duty, and so we obtained new restrictions on the freedom of speech, and political speech: the one kind of speech the Founders were most interested to protect.

Now the House is repeating the error, voting for a law that it hasn't read, because it can't be read. Someday people will go to prison for violating the new regulations and restrictions in this bill: they will be deprived of their homes, their families, and their liberty.

When they get to court, why can't they say that they were deprived of their right to due process? If the police or the prosecutor had been as inconsiderate of their duty as Congress is being, we would throw such a case out of court.

Isn't the writing of the law a part of the process? Are there not, therefore, minimum standards for the officials entrusted to exercise that power?

A New Adventure

A New Adventure:

One of the luckiest men in the world has proven his luck again. He deserves it, though -- I hope you all will stop by to give him your very best.

Crusader's Return

"The Crusader's Return"

1.
HIGH DEEDS achieved of knightly fame,
From Palestine the champion came;
The cross upon his shoulders borne,
Battle and blast had dimm’d and torn.
Each dint upon his batter’d shield
Was token of a foughten field;
And thus, beneath his lady’s bower,
He sung as fell the twilight hour:—


2.
“Joy to the fair!—thy knight behold,
Return’d from yonder land of gold;
No wealth he brings, nor wealth can need,
Save his good arms and battle-steed
His spurs, to dash against a foe,
His lance and sword to lay him low;
Such all the trophies of his toil,
Such—and the hope of Tekla’s smile!


3.
“Joy to the fair! whose constant knight
Her favour fired to feats of might;
Unnoted shall she not remain,
Where meet the bright and noble train;
Minstrel shall sing and herald tell—
‘Mark yonder maid of beauty well,
’Tis she for whose bright eyes were won
The listed field at Askalon!


4.
“‘Note well her smile!—it edged the blade
Which fifty wives to widows made,
When, vain his strength and Mahound’s spell,
Iconium’s turban’d Soldan fell.
Seest thou her locks, whose sunny glow
Half shows, half shades, her neck of snow?
Twines not of them one golden thread,
But for its sake a Paynim bled.’


5.
“Joy to the fair!—my name unknown,
Each deed, and all its praise thine own
Then, oh! unbar this churlish gate,
The night dew falls, the hour is late.
Inured to Syria’s glowing breath,
I feel the north breeze chill as death;
Let grateful love quell maiden shame,
And grant him bliss who brings thee fame.”

From Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott.

"And within a while it dawned."

Camel Dressage

Some Cavalry Videos:

Bthun sends a couple of remarkable videos. You knew that the great desert tribes had sometimes ridden to war, not on horses, but on camels. Would you like to see a camel who has been trained in the cavalry's arts?



That's something you won't see every time you go to the horse show. And it's real, which I doubt is true of this variation:



The other one he sent doesn't embed, but some of you -- especially a certain person I know who loves Rocky Mountain horses -- will enjoy this.

Vrroom

Vrroom:

Mark Steyn notes the political success of fascists in Europe:

[I]n the western half of Continental Europe, politics evolved to the point where almost any issue worth talking about was ruled beyond the bounds of polite society. In good times, it doesn’t matter so much. But in bad times, if the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones....

On the day of the European elections, the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein responded to my observations about his recent column accusing Tamilphobic Canadians of racism. “I wish,” sighed Mr. Goldstein, “Steyn would spend more time disagreeing with what racists say and less time defending their right to say it.” But that’s kind of a crowded market for a pundit to get a piece of the action in. I mean, Canada surely doesn’t need one more delicate flower shrieking “Racism!” at every affront to the multiculti pieties. That hypersensitivity is what’s helped deliver more and more of the European vote to “fringe” parties. You want to talk about immigration? Whoa, racist! Crime? Racist! Welfare? Racist! Islam? Racistracistdoubleracist!!! Nya-nya, can’t hear you with my two anti-racist thumbs in my ears!

Already, the European political class is congratulating itself at holding the tide of neo-nationalism to the low double-digits.

We do it a little differently in America. Remember Prohibition? How about when our betters decided that there was no legitimate dissent from the 55 mph speed limit:

[T]he newly imposed 55 mph speed limit was actually slower than the quickest average speeds of point-to-point travels of Erwin George "Cannon Ball" Baker in the first half of the 20th century. In 1933, Baker drove coast to coast in a Graham-Paige model 57 Blue Streak 8, averaging greater than 50 mph, setting a 53 hour 30 minute record that stood for nearly 40 years. If this could be done by a single man driving on bad roads and through villages, a team of two or more experienced (and even professional race) drivers, driving a modern car on safer and wider intersection-free highways that bypass towns, should be able to do it quicker without taking unacceptable risks apart from getting a speeding ticket, by cruising at 90 to 100 mph.

Another motivation was the fun involved, which showed in the tongue-in-cheek reports in Car and Driver and other auto publications worldwide.

The initial cross-country run was accomplished by Yates's son Brock Jr., Smith, and friend Jim Williams beginning on May 3, 1971. The first running was done in a 1971 Dodge Custom Sportsman van, called the "Moon Trash II". The race was run four more times, on November 15, 1971; November 13, 1972; April 23, 1975; and April 1, 1979. The most remarkable effort certainly was by American racing legend and winner of the 1967 24 hours of Le Mans, Dan Gurney, winning the second run in a Ferrari Daytona. Dan himself put it best, saying: "At no time did we exceed 175 mph."

The natural American response to tyranny is defiance. The tyranny of the "delicate flowers" -- and indeed, they are capable of tyranny! -- is best met with a sort of joyous defiance.

Steyn is a master of it. We'll need more of that spirit in the years to come.

Tolk?

"Tolk"?

A list of reasons someone likes Tolkien:

3) The Watcher in the Water

Dude. That totally was cool. I mean, say what you like about him, Tolk gives good monster.

Hm.

Subcreation and the old Northern heroism (subdivided betweens reason 1 and 2) are indeed good reasons to admire the work, however.

Men & Women & Work

Men & Women At Work:

Cassandra has a good post today on women and the workplace. Her aside in the comments is also an interesting conjecture:

Men's wages have stagnated over the past generation, while women entered the work force for the first time.

Coincidence? I wonder.

I think there may be two things going on here:

1. A man who has a wife at home FT caring for home and family is freed up to focus his time and attention on his job. He also, as the lone wage earner, has more pressure to succeed.

2. Suddenly flooding the market with workers who don't negotiate for their salaries may well have had a depressing effect on the incomes of men.

I recall an earlier post at VC discussed the claim that women don't negotiate for salary, on average. (I am sure, however, that our friend Texas99 is a vigorous exception to the rule. :)

In any event, as Paul Ibrahim points out, it's no surprise given the difference in men's brains:

Being male, Caplan writes, “has 15.7% of the effect of a Ph.D. in economics[.]”

It's science.

Bitter

Bitter:

So, the APA has come up with yet another way in which you might be crazy. Last time it was something to do with spending too much time on internet games, but now you might be bitter.

No one could accuse the American Psychiatric Association of missing a strain of sourness in the country, or of failing to capitalize on its diagnostic potential. Having floated "Apathy Disorder" as a trial balloon, to see if it might garner enough support for inclusion in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the world's diagnostic bible of mental illnesses, the organization has generated untold amounts of publicity and incredulity this week by debating at its convention whether bitterness should become a bona fide mental disorder.

I yield to none in my disdain for this whole branch of pseudoscience; but just as I was warming up to this article exposing the weakness of the evidentiary claims, it took an odd turn.

Now I grant that there's a lot of anger and bitterness out there. Part of it, I'd wager, is targeted appropriately at a Republican administration that managed in eight years to bring a largely healthy economy to its knees.

I'm sorry, what?

Do we need to give additional reasons for bitterness at that outcome? The Bush administration managed to lead the country into a protracted, illegal war, based on trumped-up evidence; ignored memos that said the country faced credible terrorist threats; locked up large numbers of suspects afterwards without trial or due process; lied to its citizens about the widespread use of torture; eliminated every sensible, necessary check on financial regulation to prevent a fiscal meltdown; mocked the facts of climate change; and dithered as Hurricane Katrina devastated a large city.

What were we talking about, again?

Heaven knows, there are reasons enough to be bitter about the untold number of opportunities squandered, the problems that have escalated in their place, and the crises now with us that were once entirely avoidable.

But when justified anger at such incompetence is discussed as a sign of mental illness, it's borderline insulting[.]

Oh... kay.

The author turns out to be a professor of literature -- which is an academic discipline at least more rigorous than psychology -- and an author. The book he wrote was called Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.

I am struck by the comparison with Ms. Warner's article, which we discussed below. In her case, it was not "shyness" but "anxiety" that defined her experience with life.

There is something going on here. I wouldn't suggest it was a "mental illness," not just because I wouldn't want to be insulting, but because I don't believe that it is. The only "mental illness" I believe actually exist are the ones with physical, observable causes, which can be corrected. That's an illness, and part of the proper field of medicine. What we're talking about here is not illness, with a medical solution, but something else.

What we're talking about here is not part of the mind, but of the psyche -- which, so many have forgotten, is not the mind but the soul. These are people who have lived lives of remarkable peace and plenty, in a land now ruled by their preferred and chosen officials and policies, and who yet find themselves ruled by fear, by shyness, and by anxiety; and therefore by a kind of seething anger, which is the natural compliment of fear.

What is needed is not a diagnosis, nor a drug. It's a way of learning to live boldly; and a way of embracing joy, even if destruction lays overhead. "Take thou, and strike! The time for casting away is yet far off."

It is your hour. I am managing to enjoy it; why shouldn't you?

Water Maids

Water Maids:

SO THEY RODE till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand. Lo! said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that they saw a damosel going upon the lake. What damosel is that? said Arthur. That is the Lady of the Lake, said Merlin; and within that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damosel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword.

Anon withal came the damosel unto Arthur, and saluted him, and he her again. Damosel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword. Sir Arthur, king, said the damosel, that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it. By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask. Well! said the damosel, go ye into yonder barge, and row yourself to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask my gift when I see my time.

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur

Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood. Firelight he saw,
beams of a blaze that brightly shone.
Then the warrior was ware of that wolf-of-the-deep,
mere-wife monstrous....

'MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-sword of Eotens, with edge of proof,
warriors' heirloom, weapon unmatched,
-- save only 'twas more than other men
to bandy-of-battle could bear at all --
as the giants had wrought it, ready and keen.
Seized then its chain-hilt the Scyldings' chieftain,
bold and battle-grim, brandished the sword,
reckless of life, and so wrathfully smote
that it gripped her neck and grasped her hard,
her bone-rings breaking[.]

The Beowulf

Then from the yelling Northmen
Driven splintering on him ran
Full seven spears, and the seventh
Was never made by man.

Seven spears, and the seventh
Was wrought as the faerie blades,
And given to Elf the minstrel
By the monstrous water-maids;

By them that dwell where luridly
Lost waters of the Rhine
Move among roots of nations,
Being sunken for a sign.

Under all graves they murmur,
They murmur and rebel,
Down to the buried kingdoms creep,
And like a lost rain roar and weep
O’er the red heavens of hell.

Thrice drowned was Elf the minstrel,
And washed as dead on sand;
And the third time men found him
The spear was in his hand.

Seven spears went about Eldred,
Like stays about a mast;
But there was sorrow by the sea
For the driving of the last.

Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

'And near him stood the Lady of the Lake,
Who knows a subtler magic than his own--
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.
She gave the King his huge cross-hilted sword,
Whereby to drive the heathen out: a mist
Of incense curled about her, and her face
Wellnigh was hidden in the minster gloom;
But there was heard among the holy hymns
A voice as of the waters, for she dwells
Down in a deep; calm, whatsoever storms
May shake the world, and when the surface rolls,
Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.

'There likewise I beheld Excalibur
Before him at his crowning borne, the sword
That rose from out the bosom of the lake,
And Arthur rowed across and took it--rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,
Bewildering heart and eye--the blade so bright
That men are blinded by it--on one side,
Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world,
"Take me," but turn the blade and ye shall see,
And written in the speech ye speak yourself,
"Cast me away!" And sad was Arthur's face
Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him,
"Take thou and strike! the time to cast away
Is yet far-off."

Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

Fear

Fear and Hate:

So this was written even as John Bolton ponders an Israeli strike on Iran.

This brief survey demonstrates why Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program is so unattractive, but also why failing to act is even worse. All these scenarios become infinitely more dangerous once Iran has deliverable nuclear weapons....

On the other hand, the Obama administration's increased pressure on Israel concerning the "two-state solution" and West Bank settlements demonstrates Israel's growing distance from Washington. Although there is no profit now in complaining that Israel should have struck during the Bush years, the missed opportunity is palpable. For the remainder of Mr. Obama's term, uncertainty about his administration's support for Israel will continue to dog Israeli governments and complicate their calculations.

Israel is afraid, of a great many things. How reasonable are their fears? Iran is a place proven to be of great capacity for calculation, one that has succeeded in waging war with America on two fronts without actually incurring retaliation. They have been killing us here for quite some time, but aside from rough words from our generals, they have nothing to fear. Certainly our President seems unlikely to endorse any such course as Mr. Bolton suggests, and how they will cross Iraq's airspace without our consent is something they will need to ponder.

Does such a state as Iran really intend to develop nuclear weapons, only and solely to cast away its life in fire? Frankly, it's hard for me to believe, in spite of the suicide bombers they send forth. The truth is that few of the people who orchestrate suicide bombings ever think to carry a bomb themselves. Normally they leave that to others, even at the end of their lives when you would think there was little to lose. They are manipulators, not brave men themselves.

A man can be both wicked and brave, of course: and some of these cap a wretched life with a death meant as an insult to the world. We saw such an attempt this week at the Holocaust Museum, which is tied to this story both by the form of attack -- a suicide, that failed -- and by its target.

Here was an old man who saw every belief in which he had put faith held to ridicule and then discarded. Here was his attempt to draw your eye, just once before he finally died, and to underline what he believed in such a way as you could not ignore it.

Well, a man who is ready to die for his beliefs will be heard. We have heard, and now let him pass from us.

Still, it has frightened. It has frightened some people badly. Cassandra mocks one of them; but while her arguments (Ms. Warner's) are just as bad as Cassandra says, I think we should respond otherwise.

Ms. Warner is easily frightened; she is apparently the author of a book called Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. I recall her too from this column:

She writes about attending a McCain-Palin rally in Virginia. She confesses that she intended to go as a joke, and to mock the attendees -- but she ends up being taken by the kindness of the strangers, their hopes for Gov. Palin, and the evident joy of their lives. It scares the hell out of her.

No, it wasn’t funny, my morning with the hockey and the soccer moms, the homeschooling moms and the book club moms, the joyful moms who brought their children to see history in the making and spun them on the lawn, dancing, when music played. It was sobering. It was serious. It was an education.... For those of us who can’t tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind[.]

Yet she went on in very much the right spirit, recognizing the blinders of ideology and wanting to see past them.

Today's piece was... not of that spirit. Still, remember that now she is frightened not by joyful mothers dancing with their children, but by a hateful killer who has wrought with death a fearful sign.

So we ought to be kind, and recognize that we are looking at panic from a woman who confesses herself to be given to anxiety. Her fear has become hate, but it does not always lie on her so strongly. She has moments, when the fear is on her less, that she tries to do right.

So say to her: Be at peace, lady. We are not your enemy. No arms of ours will be used against you. They might well be used in your defense.

This man has done the last harm he will do to the world. Don't make of him more than he was.

If you must fear, there are real dangers in the world. Fear Iran, perhaps, but we have no power there: it is the hour of another. Yet if called to the task, you know we will come.

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.