A Ruling!

A Ruling!

Articles posted by Arts & Letters Daily are usually worth the time it takes to read them. Today, for example, there was a debate between two scholars of feminism, one of whom has been challenging that the other's data is a collection of garbage. The other -- one Nancy K. D. Lemon (presumably Dr. Lemon but never so titled in the article) -- makes the following defense. The particular item they chose as the focus for their dispute is somewhat amazing:

In regard to the rule of thumb, for example, she asserted that Romulus of Rome, who is credited in my book with being involved with the first antidomestic-violence legislation, could not have done this as he was merely a legendary, fictional character, who along with his brother Remus was suckled by a wolf.

In fact, Plutarch and Livy each state that Romulus was the first king of Rome. He reigned from 753-717 BC, and created both the Roman Legions and the Roman Senate. He is also credited with adding large amounts of territory and people to the dominion of Rome, including the Sabine women. The modern scholar Andrea Carandini has written about the historic reign of Romulus, based in part on the 1988 discovery of the Murus Romuli on the north slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome.

Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers (whose biography states that she is a doctor, though she is also not given a title in the piece) disputes that idea.

Essentially everything in Professor Lemon's response is wrong.

She confidently informs us that Romulus actually existed and ruled Rome from 753-717 BC. That is preposterous. She cites Livy and Plutarch as sources. These first-century writers did not claim to be offering historically accurate accounts of events that took place some 700 years before their time, but openly professed to be summarizing beliefs, myths, and legends that had come down through the ages. She also cites the contemporary Roman archaeologist Andrea Carandini—a maverick figure who discovered what he claims might have been a wall of a palace that could have belonged to Romulus. As the July/August 2007 issue of Archaeology politely notes, his suggestion "represents a sharp break with two millennia of scholarship."

Well, it happens we have an expert on Roman history here among us. Mr. Blair, will you kindly give us a ruling on this dispute?

Congress

A Unique Honor:

"You know, this Congress comes home covered in a certain species of achievement. By the time the next elections roll around, it seems likely they will not only have spent more money than any other Congress in history, it's possible -- likely even -- that they will have spent more money than all the other Congresses combined."

"[Passing laws you have not read] is perilously near treason."

Bill Whittle, on the matter of the day.

Debate Update

Debate Update:

Things are not going well!

FreedomWorks’ August Recess Call to Action encouraged grassroots citizens to attend Congressional town hall meetings and listening sessions. We asked everyone to voice their opinions and communicate their opposition to the President’s proposed hostile takeover of the American health care system. Apparently, the very act of showing up and having an opinion is, in effect, to act like a “thug.” Opposing President Obama’s policy agenda on health care is, in and of itself, unacceptable, and has no place in our democracy. Bottom line: it’s “disgusting,” according to our friends on the left.

We didn’t know this. Evidently, we also didn’t know best practices in a respectful, dignified policy debate, but our leftist friends were kind enough to “take FreedomWorks to school”, so to speak.

Specifically, “school” included phone call blitzes from MoveOn.org and the AFL-CIO that jammed FreedomWorks phone lines and filled up staff voice mail boxes. Callers’ consistently used profanity, vulgarity, ever-popular references to “Nazis” and “brown-shirters,” racial slurs targeting an African-American staffer, and even veiled threats of violence and bodily harm.

Making a point about the unity of first and second amendment rights is this fellow, who lawfully brought a gun to a place where the President would be speaking. I personally think it would be healthy if the government trusted rather than feared its citizens, but the relationship should work the other way according to Ezra Klein.

What we're seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It's distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not require an explicit detailing of the "institutional checks" that will prevent one partner from beating or killing the other. In a healthy relationship, such madness is simply unthinkable. If it was not unthinkable, then no number of institutional checks could repair that relationship.

Is it unthinkable? Consider today's Day By Day.

The White House is actually hiring union thugs to attend rallies to counterprotest. Those thugs have actually attacked American citizens, describing those citizens as terrorists. The White House response, after the attacks, praised the union's efforts, while making no reference to the attacks and no attempt to cool their behavior.

Other bad behavior by the administration is less worrisome, like stacking town halls with cute little plants and selling out Medicare to Big Pharma. Hiring union thugs, though, crosses one of those lines of trust. It's not unthinkable now that a union ally of the President's might come bust your teeth, because you had the temerity as a citizen to carry a sign protesting government seizure of control of our health care. Following as it does government seizures of our banks and auto industries, some people want to protest: but they find allies of the President physically threatening them if they do.

Nancy Pelosi said it's un-American to try to drown out the opposition.

I have a memo from SEIU Local 2001....

“Action: Opponents of reform are organizing counter-demonstrators to speak at this and several congressional town halls on the issue to defend the status quo. It is critical that our members with real, personal stories about the need for access to quality, affordable care come out in strong numbers to drown out their voices.”

The relationship between citizen and government has passed the point at which it's "unthinkable" that "one party" might "beat or kill" the other. Both sides have reasons to fear actual violence.

Let's look at the reasonable fears of the President's supporters, too. It appears there has been an increased use of the fellow's favored Jeffersonian rhetoric. The rhetorical point Jefferson was making was honest enough: he believed, based on his own experience and a reading of English history, that liberty could only survive if it was regularly defended. Such defenses took the form of cyclical wars: his own Revolution, the Jacobite wars, the English Civil War, etc., all the way back to the wars against King John that established the Manga Carta.

Such violence was easy for Jefferson to contemplate coolly, having just finished his own generation's participation. On what might prove to be the front side of such a cycle, it's hard to be as sanguine. Some are worried, noticing the increase in death threats against this President. They are worried enough to declare that the law should be set aside:

Now, this guy is carrying a legal weapon, says NBC News' Ron Allen. The local chief of police has no objections. Open carriage of licensed handguns is legal in New Hampshire, and the man is standing on the private property of a nearby church (!) that has no problem with an armed man hanging around.

But let's be clear: anyone watching the mounting rage over, of all things, health care — perhaps one of the most boring and complex policy subjects — has to worry that these people are going to try to kill Barack Obama. That's not an extrapolation from unhinged rhetoric, or a partisan reading of the imagined intentions of our political enemies. It's a rational reading of the anticipated behavior of a man who brandishes a gun at the location where the president is expected to imminently arrive while holding a sign that openly advocates his assassination. And the astonishing, breathtaking, maddening fact that he hasn't been violently taken to the ground by large men wearing suits and earpieces is an open encouragement to anyone else so inclined to give it a shot.

Now, I understand the fear. I regret that the author is so frightened of his fellow citizens that he refers to them as "these people," and suspects them of plotting murder. I hope that we can change that sense in the future.

Nevertheless, notice that the call here is to void the law entirely. It doesn't matter what the state law is; what the local police think; what rights the man may have under state and Federal constitutions; or what the property owner wants. It makes no difference that a handgun is no threat to the President's convoy anyway, as it is armored far above the level a handgun could penetrate, and guarded by men with M4 carbines, body armor, and endless backup immediately available. The man should have been taken down, the argument goes, and violently. The fact that he wasn't is worrisome -- apparently more worrisome than a rank violation of the law by Federal agents would be.

Here's some good news: The Secret Service, and the local police, did the right thing. Their obedience to the law in no way resulted in any threat to the President, as they were aware of the man and quite capable of dealing with him. Nobody trusted anyone else: the man didn't trust the unions, the Secret Service didn't trust the man, the President doesn't trust the protesting citizens. Everyone was anticipating violence from the other parties involved.

Nevertheless, the system worked. The rights of the people were respected both by law enforcement and by the unions, the President came and went without incident. Trust wasn't necessary. It's a wonderful thing, but something that we can't always expect to have. Therefore, the system doesn't require it.

Ezra Klein is wrong. The system we have isn't predicated on trust. It's predicated on checks and balances, and the assumption that tyrants and bad-actors will sometimes be in charge. Every part of the system works this way, not just the relationship between Congress and the Executive, or the two and the Supreme Court. The government isn't required to trust its citizens: it's permitted to defend itself from any who rise up against it, as the Constitution gives it explict permission to suppress rebellions, and the Secret Service has authority to perform its noble and nonpartisan duty.

By the same token, citizens are not required to disarm themselves and submit to beatings by hired union thugs in order to exercise their rights of assembly and petition. If you're going to insist on fielding union thugs whose clear and stated intent is to disrupt protests, you have no right to complain when citizens avail themselves of lawful Second Amendment rights in defense of their First Amendment rights.

It is for just such a moment as this that these checks were created. The hope is that they will prevent a war, by ensuring that both sides have something to lose by starting one. As someone who deeply hopes to see no more violence arising out of this business, I hope that both sides will begin to back away -- but it is both sides that need to do so. The White House, having money, power, and informal armies of "purple shirts," has to back off if they want to see rhetoric cool on the side of the citizenry. If they don't want citizens to feel they need a gun to attend a protest, they ought not to take steps making it likely that a citizen might receive a beating for attending one.

We could yet reach Jefferson's cycle, if the escalation continues. These checks and balances, though, are letting it operate relatively smoothly even at this high level of tension and distrust. Compared with what similar levels of tension and distrust look like elsewhere, the American way looks pretty good.

Best. Whiskey. Ad. Evar.

Good job there, Bobby.

(via American Digest)

Death Panels

Death Panels:

One of the fairest and most reasonable points that I've heard ObamaCare proponents make is that there is already "rationing" in our current system; it's just that the rationing is handled by the market, and particularly by the insurance companies. This lies at the heart of the claim that they are the "villains" of the story, because they make money while choosing who lives and who dies.

A lady speaks here with passion and fury about the death of her mother.

I’ve been part of a death panel conversation. I know about death panels.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can't imagine what it's like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you.

Unfortunately, we are not facing a choice of saving people or letting them die. What we are facing is the choice of who will decide when they die.

The fact is that those impossibly large numbers don't change when the government is picking up the tab. The only difference is that it will be a government official who has to decide whether or not to pay, instead of you. You will be spared going into that room; but in return, no one who loves your mother will be consulted.

The result may well be the same in any case.

A loving child might possibly sell everything to pay for a mother's extra week of life. Then again, even a loving child might believe that their mother wouldn't really want them to lose everything. They make a decision in pain, and out of love.

The bureaucratic solution that is proposed has no love, and no place for love. Love is not a metric that it can understand, account for, or factor into decisions across a broad number of cases. If you are going to have a system in place that makes reasoned decisions for millions of people, emotions have to be left behind.

Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

That's what Mrs. Palin was writing about, and what bothers her. It is a system forlorn of love, where the decisions are as sterile as the room in which they are made.

Jesus the Horseman

The Horseman:

Lars Walker's blog, which I've been reading since I discovered that he had one, contains a review by one of his co-bloggers of Your Jesus Is Too Safe. I hadn't heard of the book before, though I suppose the only book about Jesus I've ever read besides the Bible is The Everlasting Man. Still, the review was interesting:

He doesn’t spend much time describing poor views of Jesus, like Hippie Jesus or the inhuman Flannel-graph Jesus. He touches on them in the context of healthy views on Jesus’ role as a shepherd, a judge, a prophet, a king, and many others.

As to which, how about Jesus as horseman?

Saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither.

What happens when you sit a colt that no man has ever ridden before?

It's not safe, that's for sure.

Another Victim

Another Victim:

The PA shooting we discussed below had another victim: the theology of permanent security. Ideas have consequences, and if you teach that salvation is irrevocable no matter what you do after... well, you understand the point. His long-time preacher is said to be "really broken this week." Small wonder.

The same problem exists with predestination, which lies at the heart of the Presbyterian faith in which I was raised. If you're pre-destined, what you do doesn't matter: it may (or may not) be an indicator of how your destiny lies, but you can't change it. So why be good? God made up his mind about you before you were born.

The theology of peril is the best one.

When God put man in a garden
He girt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;

He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
and burn our beards in hell.

The first time I read the Ballad of the White Horse, I thought the theological parts were tedious additions to an otherwise-great war poem. More and more, I realize that they were the most important parts of all.

Frightening Video?

"Great, Beautiful Half-witted Men/ From the Sunrise and the Sea."

Almost 100,000 Swedes, many of whom viewed the clip on YouTube, have joined a Facegroup group called “I am scared of the girl in the Apoliva commercial” (“Jag är rädd för tjejen i Apolivareklamen”) in reaction to the film. Several other related groups, both in favour of and against the ad, have popped up on the social media site as well....

The description of the Facebook group reads: “Those of us who have a TV and like to watch commercials can't be bothered to reach for the remote are facing a problem. Apoliva has begun to run a commercial that is frightening. A woman singing a Nordic/Swedish folk song in freezing rain with lightning. I am creating this group for those of us who need somewhere to seek support and talk things out. It's only a matter of time before it creeps into our dreams and terrorises us in our sleep.”

So: fools? Or a very clever marketing campaign?

Good Food:

Tonight I took down an excellent cookbook, and made a bread described by its recipe as:

A Festival Bread
From the Land of King Arthur

I substituted the dried fruit with fresh blueberries, as we have them on hand here.



As you can see, the bread didn't stand uncut long enough for me to get a photograph. But it has a cup of brown sugar and a stick of butter in it, in addition to the blueberries; so that is small wonder.

Miles in Shoes

Miles in Shoes:

The New Yorker begins an article by describing a Southern politician of the old sort.

Big Jim Folsom was six feet eight inches tall, and had the looks of a movie star. He was a prodigious drinker, and a brilliant campaigner, who travelled around the state with a hillbilly string band called the Strawberry Pickers. The press referred to him (not always affectionately) as Kissin’ Jim, for his habit of grabbing the prettiest woman at hand....

Folsom would end his speeches by brandishing a corn-shuck mop and promising a spring cleaning of the state capitol. He was against the Big Mules, as the entrenched corporate interests were known. He worked to extend the vote to disenfranchised blacks. He wanted to equalize salaries between white and black schoolteachers. He routinely commuted the death sentences of blacks convicted in what he believed were less than fair trials. He made no attempt to segregate the crowd at his inaugural address. “Ya’ll come,” he would say to one and all, making a proud and lonely stand for racial justice....

When the black Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., came to Montgomery, on a voter-registration drive, Folsom invited him to the Governor’s Mansion for a Scotch-and-soda. That was simply good manners. Whenever he was accused of being too friendly to black people, Folsom shrugged. His assumption was that Negroes were citizens, just like anyone else.

Thus we begin on a journey of discovery that proves that Folsom was a wicked man. His 'proud and loney stance for racial justice' is proven, by the alchemy of modern thought, to be a kind of evil. The magic begins here:

Folsom was not a civil-rights activist. Activists were interested in using the full, impersonal force of the law to compel equality. In fact, the Supreme Court’s landmark desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended Folsom’s career, because the racial backlash that it created drove moderates off the political stage. The historian Michael Klarman writes, “Virtually no southern politician could survive in this political environment without toeing the massive resistance line, and in most states politicians competed to occupy the most extreme position on the racial spectrum.” Folsom lost his job to the segregationist John Patterson...

It ends here, after a traipse through literary theory and To Kill A Mockingbird:

Orwell didn’t think that Dickens should have written different novels; he loved Dickens. But he understood that Dickens bore the ideological marks of his time and place. His class did not see the English social order as tyrannical, worthy of being overthrown. Dickens thought that large contradictions could be tamed through small moments of justice. He believed in the power of changing hearts, and that’s what you believe in, Orwell says, if you “do not wish to endanger the status quo.”

But in cases where the status quo involves systemic injustice this is no more than a temporary strategy. Eventually, such injustice requires more than a change of heart.

What we are being told here is that the wickedness of the mid-century Southern progressive is that he wasn't a revolutionary. He believed in changing people's hearts, in kindness, in respect to all mankind. He didn't hate enough: because if he'd been the best kind of man, he'd have known he should hate Bull Connor. As the author puts it, in a Mockingbird reference, "[T]he hearts-and-minds approach is about accommodation, not reform. At one point, Scout asks him if it is O.K. to hate Hitler. Finch answers, firmly, that it is not O.K. to hate anyone. Really? Not even Hitler?"

That dismisses outright the gentler, hearts-and-minds approach to changing a society. The kind of person who -- again, from Mockingbird -- states that you can understand others only if you "climb into his skin and walk around in it" are not suitable, according to the author, for fixing real injustice. The slow, quiet, decent method is not workable.

In fact, that was the very warning that was raised by progressives in the South during the Civil Rights era -- that pushing too hard, too fast, would cause a backlash that would make change even more difficult. The Civil Rights movement achieved all of its goals, eventually, but it did drive out the progressives, and the era saw bombings, murders, brutality, and other horrors.

The author asserts that it was necessary, because the Jim Crow system was so ingrained that slow and peaceful change could never be enough. Perhaps; but if you had looked at Chinese society during the Maoist era, you might well have thought that there was even less hope there. The Red Guard tormented the people, spies were everywhere, violence was fielded against intellectuals and, eventually, anyone who spoke at all. The government blithely demanded the people produce ingots for steel production, even though it meant they had to melt down their tools for farming. Tens of millions starved. The government refused to ask for outside aid, preferring to watch its millions die than admit the failure of its Communist planning.

Maoist China was a clear competitor for "Worst Place and Time in Human History." There was no obvious progressive movement at all. Yet now -- at a similar remove from the Civil Rights Movement -- you can see how remarkable the changes have been. In the South, where there was such a movement, who knows? Big Jim Folsom was elected governor of Alabama, after all. It's not like he was a fringe politician.

Today, Cassandra writes to warn against treating the Left from an 'us v. them' perspective. It's wise advice, though I dissent -- as I always do -- from her affection for the law. It's a conditional good only, if it is well-written and employed justly. Mao had courts and policemen too.

Nevertheless, it is worth noticing that there has been a lot of demonizing and fury going on. If it becomes de rigeur for politicians to be treated this way, we'll only get the sort of people whose lust for power overrides any sense of decency for the treatment of their families. That's hardly the kind of people we want writing, or enforcing, the law.

It may be we've passed the point of no return, and that it's already the case that decent men and women will avoid higher office. Let us hope, though, that that might also change -- with time, and patience.

Iran

Iran:

H/t: NR.

Shut Up

"Shut Up":

I was waiting to post this because I thought perhaps it was old, and pertained to a different situation than what we are now seeing. But no, it's from August 6th. So...



That's honestly amazing. 'I'm the President, and I'd just like to declare that some of my opponents have no right to participate in the debate. Just shut up, OK?'

So, who are these 'people who made the mess'? Republican politicians? Insurance companies? No, not them... Obama's kissing their feet to a degree that caused Reclusive Leftist to declare, "Understand that Obama is the Enemy." Which, actually, is stronger rhetoric than I think I've ever used about him, though I suspect I have more points of disagreement with him than she has.

So, Republican politicians, then. They've got 40 votes in the Senate, which isn't enough to stop anything on their own; but if they could just shut up, too, that'd be great.

The problem is, the Republican politicians aren't doing much of anything here. The heat that's coming is coming from fed up citizens, not the political class. The numbers are big:

Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans and 58% of unaffiliated voters say the protesters reflect the concerns of their neighbors. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Democrats say the protests are phony.

When 58% of unaffiliated voters are against you, you lose in a landslide. The whole Obama/Pelosi strategy is based on the concept of convincing people that these protests are just bought-and-paid-for idiots, not at all a reflection of ordinary people.

Regardless of the motives behind the protests, however, voters overwhelmingly agree that the average congressman listens most to party leaders rather than the voters they represent – by a 73% to 14% margin. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided. These numbers remain virtually unchanged since April.

I guess we'll learn something definitive on that score soon. The people have spoken, as loudly and angrily as they have in a generation at least.

What to say? What to do?

What to Say? What to Do?

Elise is very angry at how the nation has treated the murders of women by a loser unable to attract them. I wondered what to say about it, and finally decided I had nothing of use to say.

The fact is that these mass killings are with us for the forseeable future. It's not a question of guns; in Iraq, they use bombs made with homemade explosives. Such weapons are not hard to make, out of chemicals readily available anywhere and too useful to ban. We are, in a sense, blessed by the guns: we read in America on rare occasion of the death of five of a dozen, rather than fifty or two hundred.

Because the killings are always the product of the unstable and strange, it's impossible to predict where they will occur, or when, or why. Indeed, giving weight to the meaning is almost pointless. It's only accidental that these minds' hatred and rage settled on X instead of Y. No amount of education or reasoning would have persuaded them to hate Y instead of X, and certainly not to hate nothing at all. You cannot teach them that womens' lives matter, or that anyone's does.

Once I would have said: "The lesson here is that women must be prepared to defend themselves; they ought to want to seek the training, and they ought to want to seek the tools." I have decided that, too, is a fool's errand. In Iraq, for example, there remains a problem of female servicemembers being raped. Rape is usually described as 'a fate worse than death,' and for good reason. When two people have sex, even if one of them sincerely does not wish it, chemicals in the brain cause a bonding with the other. Thus the raped cannot escape the memory of the rapist or the rape. The torment cannot end, does not end for many years, I have understood from those I've known who've suffered it. Yet time and again, women who were trained to arms, required to carry them everywhere, taught to kill as well as anyone could be taught, and well aware of the danger, did not use their arms, nor make themselves prepared to use them in those moments where the danger was most likley.

Some women are suited to killing, but many are not: many, and very good women, would not kill even to save themselves from death or a fate worse than death. I don't think that's a flaw in them. So, while I absolutely believe in the right of women to bear arms, and have trained many myself in their use, I know this is not the solution that will take away the problem. It can help some women, but it will not help all of them. Neither does that fact mean that there is something wrong with those it will not help.

I will certainly say to those who can bear arms that they should, always and everywhere. Be prepared, even though it is unlikely in America that you will ever encounter violence of this sort: but if you do, you may be the only hope. To those of noble heart, be ready to lay down your lives at any moment in the defense of the weak and the innocent. Evil exists. We must be ready to die at all times, in our souls and hearts as well as otherwise.

Those of us who can must be likewise ready to kill, that we may defend those who are not. It is important to do this, and to do it while remembering that those who are not able may be better than us. If you can remember that their gentleness and kindness may make them better than we are, you serve them humbly: ordinary people, who mean no harm.

If there is more to be said than this, I don't know what it is, unless it is prayer. Perhaps you know.

Order of ST. George

The Order of St. George:

Lt. Col. Edward Bohnemann, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division performs the traditional knighting for Sgt. 1st Class Byron Grier during his induction into the Order of St. George at Fort Hood's Iron Horse Gymnasium, July 22. Grier was one of three senior noncommissioned officers at the ceremony to receive the award, which is granted to armor and cavalry leaders for their dedication to duty and leadership. (Photo by U.S. Army)

Organized v. Disorganized

Organized Protests:

This marks a strange moment in American life. Ordinary citizens have come together to protest a government initiative. The government has apparently decided to declare the dissent inauthentic, and to suppress it using a combination of rhetoric and force.

It is not the first moment when protests have been declared to be the work of organized agitators, and bands of men deployed to drive them off. That was a regular feature of the early union movement, with union organizers (branded Communists, only sometimes with justification) being targeted by hired strikebreakers.

In those days, though, unions were poor and poorly represented. Though honest and hard-working, they were easy to marginalize because their experiences were not like those of the broadest part of the population. It was not difficult to convince Americans in the middle that they were dangerous, and in need of being brought to order.

The protesting groups today are composed of middle-class Americans, the most normal and ordinary sorts of people. The government has turned against these groups sharply, apparently under the belief that it can marginalize them according to the old formula.

That cannot work, however, because these people are quite mainstream. Iowahawk makes the point in satirical fashion, but quite well. Look at the examples of an organized protest -- the formatted signs, easy to read on television, or the uniforms of t-shirts, so that TV viewers will know there are large groups of people in agreement with the protest.

The opposite images -- just folks showing up in whatever they were wearing that day, amateur lettering on signs, etc -- are also available. Keep that in mind when you look at stories about these protests, because it is an excellent point.

For example, look here, at protestors that were simply locked out of the town hall meeting. (Union members were admitted through a side door, for the benefit of TV cameras inside.)

Take a look at these dues-paying members of AARP:



The White House is actively organizing a movement designed to show support for its programs, having just stated that 'organized' opposition was illegitimate. The Speaker of the House is dreaming up swastikas; scrambling to cover for her, the Huffington Post did manage to uncover a single swastika on one of those hand-lettered signs. It had a circle and a strikeout through it: 'No swastikas,' in other words.

Peggy Noonan, very much a Beltway insider, writes that the Congress is simply shocked. They knew there was hostility, of course -- that's why there was such a push to get this done before August. Nobody knew just how hot it would be. It's as hot as it has ever been in my lifetime.

I remember attending a HillaryCare "town hall" back in the early part of the Clinton administration, where an administration spokesperson came down to tell us about how great it would be. There were quite a few stiff questions about the plan then, too. Finally, in frustration, she said: 'What you really need to understand is that you'll get whatever health care you need, and it won't cost you anything.'

The audience burst out in uproarious laughter, with hoots and hollering thrown in for good measure.

Nobody seems to be laughing this time.

Clausewitz Today

Clausewitz Today:

Here is a review of On War at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Von Clausewitz remains the standard text for military science's beginnings. Though other introductory material now exists -- the Marine Corps' Warfighting, for example -- there is still a great deal of value in the book.

The reason it is so valuable is that the basic concepts remain powerful. Clausewitz was writing in the Age of Napoleon, but even in the age of maneuver warfare -- even in the age of Air/Land Warfare -- even in the age of Hybrid Warfare, the basic concepts he described exist. There is an enemy, with a structure that has to be attacked. There is a population, which is the key to final victory. There is friction in every action.

Vegetius, a Roman writer of the fourth century AD, said, "Let him who desires peace prepare for war." Carl von Clausewitz sharpened the point: "The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms." Darfur has made clear that that is not just a metaphor.

Just so, though denying that fact has been the strong hope of many people who wish it was not the case. For one such competing view, see here.

Now that's a boy

Now That's a Son To Be Proud Of:

Down Australia way, they still make boys fit to be men once in a while.

THE nine-year-old son of a spectator king-hit at a children's rugby match punched and hit the alleged attacker to try to get the strongly-built steel worker off his father.

"King-hit" appears to mean a blindside attack, followed up by pummeling the man while he's down. Here's a nine-year-old boy who looked at a giant of a man who had knocked down his father, and was hurting him badly: and decided the right course was to attack. That's a boy to be proud of, as I trust his father must be.

Of course the thug proves to have previous problems with abusing those unable to defend themselves. All of the British lands seem to have this issue: somehow their jurisprudence has gotten to a point where a man can use the strength he was given to assault women, children, and the defenseless, and yet be free to do it again.

The Last Great War in the Ukraine

The Last Great War in the Ukraine:

I believe this is an art form I have never before observed, practiced with an extraordinary degree of both talent and development.

(H/t: Arts & Letters Daily.)

Trouble

We May Be In Trouble:

Once:





Now:





There is no excuse for anyone being able to out-cowboy the United States of America. Something's not right.

Lars Book

West Oversea

Our friend and occasional commenter Lars Walker has apparently been so modest as to fail to mention to us his new book, trusting perhaps that everyone would simply find out on his own. :)

I see that the reader review mentions two things that ought to draw the eye of many who frequent Grim's Hall: Norse mythology, and Robert E. Howard.