Hooah

Cadence to Arms:

An old piece from the Dropkick Murphy's:



So: "Scotland the Brave" is very obvious, but what are the other tunes embedded there?

IPA 1

IPAs of Spring:

The spring brings many joyous things, but also -- to many of us -- allergies. One of the few good cures is a fine hoppy ale, of which the India Pale Ales (IPA) are the hoppiest. As a service to you, the readers, I have undertaken a review of a few IPAs on sale here in the local market. Here is the least of the three I considered, Sweetwater IPA.



Sweetwater IPA has a taste that I would describe as flat and empty compared with the other candidates. It's not exactly unpleasant, but it seems to be missing quite a bit of the robust flavor that the others have to offer. Pity, because I'd like to praise a native Georgia brewery; but you can probably do better.

Don't Scare the President

Don't Scare the President:

I know nobody's really happy to see him traipsing around the heartland, but it's rude to scare your guests. I mean, if you bring out such dangerous crowds, it's only natural that they'd call in the SWAT Team.

Seriously, though, what on earth is this? Ever since my eye doctor, Sal Culosi, was shot and killed by a SWAT Team for 'gambling on sporting events,' I've had a very baleful notion of calling out the SWAT team for anything except the special cases that SWAT teams are really intended to address. Calling them out, as seems to be common, for serving ordinary warrants is wrong; calling them out because a few senior citizens are engaged in a perfectly peaceful First Amendment exercise is indefensible.

If the President is this afraid of Americans, he should resign. If the Secret Service is this afraid of Americans' First Amendment rights, they need to seriously revisit their doctrine.

UPDATE: A friend of Sal Culosi's writes to object that he would not want to be associated with my sentiments. Insofar as the political sentiments are involved, that may well be true; I cite him only in the paragraph about SWAT teams. All politics aside, he was a good man and I liked him. I think of him whenever I see cases of SWAT-type teams being used outside of the very rare and special cases for which they were designed. While they may be necessary in that limited context, they are not appropriate to be used against ordinary citizens engaged in peaceful lives. It's simply reckless to field that kind of force against normal people who mean no harm.

Way Up in the Sky

Way Up In the Sky, The Little Birds Fly:

So, for about a month, every morning at first light I have been awakened by this cardinal with a throat like a siren. The first time he piped up in the dim pre-dawn, I leaped out of bed. I had never heard a bird with a voice like that, or a song like that -- it sounded more like a SPACE INVADERS game on loudspeakers than any living creature.

Apparently he got the girl, though.

The Concealed Carry Debate in 1872

The Concealed Carry Debate in 1872:

Douglas sends a link to a Volokh piece on the debate regarding concealed carry in 1872 Philadelphia. As he says, it's remarkably similar to the debate today -- except, I note, that the debate then was concealed v. open carry, while the debate today is normally concealed carry v. banning the carrying of arms entirely.

Open carry is something I've long advocated, and still do. Our society would be better off if it got over its fear of weapons in the hands of law-abiding and honorable men and women. A lot of that is just a question of being accustomed to seeing people carrying arms, so that it becomes a normal thing. It's a service, then, to carry openly -- appropriately, and where you can do so legally.

Dressed to Kilt

Let a girl post and she posts about fashion.

Somehow when I saw this I thought of all of you. I know you'll appreciate - as I do - the comeback of the non-metrosexual male. Or do we call that just a regular guy?

I didn't even have to invent the "glamor" tag. Interesting!

Immigration II

The Immigration Law, Again:

Gracious.

OK, so the full and final version of the law does nothing but provide police with instructions to seek immigration status during already lawful stops. It doesn't, as we might have thought from earlier versions, create a new kind of 'stop and frisk' rule for people who look like they might possibly be aliens.

It does contain an anti-racial-profiling clause about which Richard Cohen is probably correct: "Since this law is aimed at illegal immigrants from Mexico, the cops are almost certain to bend over backwards to avoid any suggestion of racial profiling and will, as a matter of fairness, stop and frisk the odd Scandinavian." As it happens, as a Stetson-hat-wearing Southerner, I was invariably given the "special" treatment every time I flew anywhere for a few years after 9/11. It was necessary, you see, so they'd have the numbers right in order to be free to search people who did match the profiles. You know, the profiles they aren't allowed to have, but also don't need to formalize since everyone understood that they were looking for Muslims from the Middle East, not, say, Mexican immigrants. (Or me.)

Now, Mr. Cohen also says that this is a kind of tea party moment. That's right -- and it's the point that Eugene Robinson missed, although it is possible that Mr. Robinson has never understood the Tea Party's real complaint. The Tea Party is a "small government" movement only by accident; it's really a strict-Constitutionalist movement. If the Federal government is exceeding its specified Constitutional authority, it needs to be restrained. Since, mostly, that is what the Federal government is doing, the Tea Party is mostly a small-government movement.

However, here we have an area where the Federal government is failing to perform its Constitutional duty! So here, the Tea Party is a large-government movement. That is, the Tea Party wants the Federal government to perform all and only its specifically authorized duties, using only specifically authorized powers. If it tries to exceed its mandate, it needs to be checked. If it fails to perform its duty, it needs to be spurred and driven.

I am hoping this particular spur does the trick, though I'm not sure I see how it possibly can. The overwhelming problem is that the government will have to start serving the interests of the citizens instead of the political interests of the ruling faction. I honestly doubt if this government is at all capable of doing that.

We've talked at times about the importance of a state-led Article V Constitutional Convention, to rebalance the power relationship between the states and Federal government to something more like what the Founders intended. There also has to be a reform of the Federal government itself. That will be easier to do when it is less powerful, because there will be less opposition from interest groups (insofar as they will have less to gain!). On some of these points, it will be difficult. If a Congressman wishes to pass a law addressing this issue, he will ask his staff to help compose it. They will go to interest groups and lobbyists who are contributors, and get draft text from them.

Even if the Congress wished to do the right thing, to look out for the People instead of their interest groups, I'm not sure they have the capacity. I don't think they would know how to begin.

Endorsement

Endorsement:

I don't know that any of you will be voting in the Parliamentary election in Salisbury, but if you are, by all means vote for Arthur Pendragon. A member of the Stonehenge Druid movement, he apparently hauls one of those "Excalibur" reproductions around everywhere. The Guardian notes that there is a rule specifically forbidding Members of Parliament from bringing their swords into the chamber. Fear not, however! The traditional accommodation has not been abandoned:

There are two parallel red lines woven into the carpet that run the length of the chamber, one each side. The distance between them is about two sword lengths plus six inches.

Members must speak from their side of the line and may not cross it. They must toe the line! Anyone standing from the front row who does allow a foot to stray across towards the opposite side, is frequently ordered back quite sharply. It is a good tactic to disconcert the Member who is speaking.

It dates from days when Members carried swords into the Chamber as part of their daily dress, and were not afraid to use them against those opposite when passions were aroused. Nowadays of course, Members are not allowed to take swords (or any other weapon) into the chamber, but the lines persist.

As do little ribbon loops dangling from the hangers in the Members’ cloakroom by their private entrance, designed to hold their swords. The swords they are not allowed to take into the chamber!

This just shows you how wise is the conservative habit of preserving old traditions. You never know when they might become useful again.

It's the distiributor cap.

Dennis the Peasant beautifully deconstructs a post by Matthew Yglesias on what should be done with the banking industry:

He's under the hood of the engine of finance - pulling on wires and touching things - and all the while his readership, which knows even less about banking than he does (if that is indeed possible), is standing there waiting for some sort of reassurance. All they know is the engine isn't running and they can't do anything to change that situation themselves. And Matthew, being the bright boy that he is, has figured out about banking what I've figured out about cars:

Sometimes the important thing is to let others pretend you know what you're talking about.

As instapundit says: "Read the whole thing."

A Joke from Afghanistan

A Joke From Afghanistan:

I guess the question is, why did he think this joke was a useful way to introduce the subject at hand? There's nothing wrong with telling a joke, if it is to introduce a serious point: sometimes, the shock effect that jokes produce can open the mind to new possibilities, or clear a ground for discussion.



The transcript of the general's remarks is here. What was the point this joke was supposed to introduce?

I am honestly unsure what he meant to convey by it. Yet these remarks include the strongest statement yet from this administration about the Israeli/American alliance.

America’s commitment to Israel will endure. And everyone must know that there is no space—no space—between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable. It is as strong as ever. This President and this Administration understands very well the environment—regionally and internationally—in which Israel and the United States must operate. We understand very well that for peace and stability in the Middle East, Israel must be secure.

The United States will never waiver in defense of Israel’s security. That is why we provide billions of dollars annually in security assistance to Israel, why we have reinvigorated our consultations to ensure Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, and why we undertake joint military exercises, such as the Juniper Cobra ballistic missile defense exercise that involved more than 1,000 United States servicemen and women. We view these efforts as essential elements of our regional security approach, because many of the same forces that threaten Israel also threaten the United States.

I can also say from long experience that our security relationship with Israel is important for America. Our military benefits from Israeli innovations in technology, from shared intelligence, from exercises that help our readiness and joint training that enhances our capabilities and from lessons learned in Israel’s own battles against terrorism and asymmetric threats.

Over the years, and like so many Americans—like so many of you here tonight—I’ve spent a great deal of time with my Israeli partners, including my friends in the IDF. These partnerships are deep and abiding.

Perhaps the joke is a joke that the general learned from one of his Israeli partners, at some point in these deep and abiding friendships. It's not a joke on the Jews, after all (although I understand the sense being expressed this morning by this Jewish blogger that the joke plays on stereotypes he'd rather leave behind). The joke is on the Taliban, who finds himself entirely at their mercy in spite of his anger.

Obviously there are few Jews selling ties in Afghanistan, because the Taliban would simply kill them and take whatever water they required. This joke is really about how poorly adapted the Taliban mode is to a certain kind of life in which violence has lost its force. We are pleased to call this "the modern world," but the Taliban's world is just as "modern" as ours chronologically. Violence is still the currency there, as it is in much of the modern world.

There real question in front of us is: will the parts of the world where violence is the currency shrink, or grow? When the "modern" world is a few years older, will it be more violent or less? What probability would you assign? Would you go as high as 'even money'?

UPDATE: Beltway confidential responds to Jones' remarks thus:

"Somehow I can't envision a scenario where the White House would make a similar joke about Islam. This is doubly true since Jones has a reputation has prominent Israel critic"

That would be a fair point, except that this is a joke about a Muslim (the Taliban who ends up being the butt of the joke) as much as it's a joke about a Jew. It's not a joke about Islam, but neither is it a joke about Judaism. It trades on stereotypes -- but of the Muslims as angry but impotent as much as of Jews as merchants and manipulators.

The stereotypes are doubtless offensive; but jokes are allowed to be offensive, if there's a serious point they can help us understand. The question is, did Jones have a point? Or was he just telling a joke?

Financial Reform

Financial Reform:

I suppose this is the business of the day. Financial reform is not among my chief interests, but a citizen ought to try to develop a basic understanding of critical matters even where he is not interested in them. We do have to advise our representatives, and keep watch on them as well as we can.

So, here are two interesting pieces, and one comment:

This piece by an IMF 'old hand' was very interesting, and I think you should all consider it. We might discuss it here, to see how plausible his analysis is. If he's right, something like a 'bank tax' is nonsense; the banks are quite undercapitalized as it is. He recommends nationalization, bank breakup, and a turnover of our 'elites' in this society so that the US government is no longer captured by the financial industry. Radical stuff; but he says that other nations that have taken such radical measures have enjoyed rapid turnarounds. The US is unlikely to do so, because our financiers don't want to be turned out, and they control the government; plus, unlike many third world nations, we pay our debts in our own currency and can therefore simply print more of it. That way lies disaster, he says.

Another piece suggests that 'global rules' for capital might be in order. This is in keeping with the IMF hand's general concept that an internal US political solution would need to be more radical than Washington is likely to support. The bankers themselves were consulted, and here is where I would like to comment:

One participant at a US Federal Reserve meeting this month to discuss the new regime said “full and frank” did not do justice to the furious response from some industry delegates.

The reaction from capital hawks was that a blunt backstop might be better than an overreliance on the sophistication of risk models and regulators. They also said banks would be given plenty of time to adjust to the new system, perhaps several years, to minimise the immediate impact on credit provision.

Now that is very plausible, given Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fourth Quadrant argument, which I find highly persuasive. Risk modeling in these cases is doomed to failure, if the 4Q argument is correct: thus, any reliance on 'sophistication of risk models' is overreliance.

Sometimes blunt instruments are the right tool for the job; there are things one can do with a sledgehammer that cannot be done with a scapel. If you insist on using only the scapel, you will eventually fail at the task.

The Heroic Life

The Heroic Life:

Abraham came near and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

So the LORD said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare the whole place on their account.”

And Abraham replied, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord, although I am but dust and ashes. Suppose the fifty righteous are lacking five, will You destroy the whole city because of five?”

And He said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.”

He spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose forty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it on account of the forty.” Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak; suppose thirty are found there?” And He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” And he said, “Now behold, I have ventured to speak to the Lord; suppose twenty are found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the twenty.”

Then he said, “Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once; suppose ten are found there?”

And He said, “I will not destroy it on account of the ten.”

But there were not ten. There was only one.

In Praise of the Boy Scouts

In Praise of the Boy Scouts:

The NYT has a piece today by a man who was once a Boy Scout, and remembers it fondly.

But we were keenly aware that being a Boy Scout allowed us to shoot guns, build fires and take overnight camping trips on our own. In every sense it was revenge of the nerds. You have a curve ball; I can hit a bull’s-eye with my .22.

We were bookish, but in nonacademic ways. My interests were fingerprinting, Native-American skills and customs, rock climbing, map reading, canoeing and marksmanship. All of those represented merit badges that I studied for and earned. My Indian Lore badge taught me more about that aspect of American history than I was learning at school. And this wasn’t warmed-over “cowboys and Indians” fare: from the beginning the Boy Scouts taught respect for Native Americans, their values, as well as reminders of their victimization — indeed, their genocide.

Stifled by the hearty and the homoerotic in jock culture, I found refuge in the Boy Scouts, and an outlet for my love of hiking and swimming and solitude. It was important for me to separate myself from my parents. While other mothers and fathers cheered on their children at ballgames, we were on our own — two or three of us on an all-day hike, or target shooting up at the Stoneham sandpits.

Even Scout camp involved minimal authority, and its relative chaos was salutary. I earned badges for rowing and sailing — skills that have served me to this day. My lifesaving badges and Red Cross certification not only got me jobs at ponds and swimming pools in the Boston area, but enabled me, over the years, to rescue a number of hapless swimmers.

As might be expected from a writer for the Times, he ends up advocating that the Scouts should abandon certain traditional standards. Well, as to that, reasonable men can differ. Overall, a very nice piece.

Strange Days

Strange Days:

In a government that prides itself on its democratic roots, we've entered some strange days. Arizona passes a law that seventy percent of its citizens support, only to draw an immediate rebuke from the President of the United States.

The rebuke is understandable. This law sounds terrible: giving police the ability to stop people for no reason at all and demand they produce papers and identification is not something I support. I've never liked the anti-DUI checkpoints at which drivers are stopped and identification demanded, for example. I have my identification, of course, and it's merely a momentary irritation; and preventing DUI is a perfectly reasonable public policy goal that protects both lives and property.

Is immigration in Arizona a public policy problem at the same level as DUI? That is, does the threat to life or property rise to anything like the same level? It's hard to say. I've looked around this morning to try and get a sense of why there is such a high level of support for this law, but information is not easy to find. Missing from the coverage of this law in Arizona is any sense of why so many of her citizens feel that this is also a public policy goal that merits such intrusive measures. Is it because the offenses are so numerous and regular that they have ceased to be newsworthy?

The closest thing I can find is in this story, which also doesn't provide numbers, but says that there are "epidemic" spikes in "home invasion and kidnapping" associated with cross-border drug gangs; hundreds of people a year dying in the wilderness areas; and "numerous" police officers having been killed by illegal border crossers. That sounds like a public policy problem of at least the DUI level, does it not?

So what is the Federal government intending to do to answer the concerns of the citizens? This same President, with a unified Congress, just passed a health care law that was opposed by a majority. In February, Rassmussen found that only 21% said the US government has the consent of the governed. This month, Pew found that nearly eighty percent don't trust the government. The reason these citizens are feeling so negatively is that the government's interests are its own interests -- it doesn't seem to be tethered to what the people want (nor to its own Constitutional limits; but we'll leave that for the moment). Will the Federal government act in the interest of the people of Arizona, or in the political interest of the Democratic party at the national level? To ask the question is to answer it.

If there's a better way of dealing with these problems, fine: I don't like the idea of police stopping people and demanding papers either. The concerns of the 30% of citizens opposed to the new law also deserve consideration. Yet it won't do to simply wave your hand at Arizona and say, "Bad!" The fact that a supermajority of its citizens are ready to support such strong measures should be a warning that we need to take serious and careful action to solve the problem that is driving them.

Unhelpful and Uninteresting Ideas

Unhelpful and Uninteresting Ideas:

I imagine this kind of thing doesn't seem 'interesting or relevant' to many; but we'll see how they feel about it in November.

It's interesting to me that this comes from the Republican Governor's Association. This is a pretty intense ad for state governors to post up about the activity of the Federal government. Eric has often pointed out that state resistance to Federal authority would be one of the signs of serious tension; so here is another example.

UPDATE: Guy Fawkes! That's funny -- I didn't catch the reference at all. The story is somewhat obscure in America, if you didn't see "V for Vendetta" (as I have not).

Passengers

Passengers:

Eric Blair's old favorite:



And another:




"The cops are comin'.... You can hear it too, if you're sincere."

Take a ride.

Madness

Madness:

So, once again -- I think this question gets asked by various liberals at least ten times a year -- are conservatives nuts?

Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that's plaguing the conservative movement. The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn't study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?

Fortunately, I did study philosophy a bit. Let's get clear on exactly what "epistemic closure" means.

Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article here. If you don't want to work through it, though, the easy way to understand the issue is this: let's say you know a thing or two. Doesn't really matter how you know it, for our purposes: epistemology is the study of knowledge. Exactly how you come to know things, and what you can claim to know, are serious, deep subjects we can set aside for the moment. For now, let's say you do know something. What can you do with it?

Well, one thing we'd normally like to say that you can do with it is reason from it to other things you'd like to know about. You can make deductions, which is to say, you can reason down: I know that I have a dollar, so I know that I have some money (as a dollar is a kind of money). You can also make inferences: I know that I have a dollar, so I know that someone is printing money.

Closure is normally related to deduction. It is meant to have limits: there are only so many things I can deduce from a given piece of information. Once I have approached it from all possible sides, I've reached closure. This means that, given what I knew, if I have reached closure, there are some other things I ought to know.

This is the closure principle:

SP: If person S knows p, and p entails q, then S knows q.

Is that right? No; no one thinks it is. The interesting aspect of the question is how you can fail to know q, if you know p and p entails q. Are you making an error, or is it natural that people don't chase everything down logically? Why do people hold beliefs that might not sort logically?

What does all this mean? Well, one thing it means for the current debate is that people are throwing around a philosophical concept very loosely. The idea that is being put forward is that conservatives have accepted a 'closed set' of beliefs, and are not accepting as knowledge anything that is not entailed by that set of beliefs.

That's not what closure really means, though. Refusing to learn new things might be a kind of madness, but the closure principle has nothing to do with that.

I offer this just for the record. Speaking as someone who might be described as a conservative, and who actually does understand these terms that are being so blithely tossed about by people who (sometimes even openly admit that they) don't: you might be a little less cocksure about your claims.

Now, is it the case that conservatives refuse to learn anything new? Well, speaking only for myself -- assuming I qualify -- I find the idea laughable. You can think what you like, but thinking it doesn't make it true. (And how many of you bothered to look up "epistemic closure" this last week or so, before you used the phrase in your articles? Fine time to complain about other people not bothering to learn new ideas.)

Proposals

Proposals:

The WSJ would have you believe that people don't propose marriage anymore.

In 1972, on a park bench in Birmingham, Ala., Garner Lee Green's father proposed to her mother. The proposal came out of the blue. She said yes.

"That doesn't happen to people anymore," says Ms. Green, who is 30. And it certainly wasn't the way her husband asked her to marry him several years ago. The two of them talked for a long time about how and when the proposal would happen. "I was ready before he was, so we had to come to a meeting of the minds about a time frame. The negotiations lasted about six months," Ms. Green says.

I don't know about "Ms." Green, who is 30; but since she's talking about something that happened "several years ago," we're planning to celebrate our 11th anniversary this summer. I proposed in just this way:

It was the day before Christmas eve. My girlfriend -- how odd it seems to say that, instead of "my wife"! -- had booked a flight to take her home for Christmas. She was down in Savannah, working on a Master of Fine Arts in painting; she wanted to be with her family over the holidays. They're dead now, both her parents; younger readers, take note. That can happen fast, and her deep wish to be home was wise.

I hadn't been around Atlanta much in several years, but my father was still trekking downtown regularly. I asked him for advice on how to get her to the airport that morning. The advice he gave me sent me into the worst traffic I'd seen in years. We missed her flight by half an hour, easy.

As we were in the traffic, before we reached the airport far too late, she began to panic. I told her, to calm her down, that if we missed the flight I'd just drive her to Indiana. Well, we missed the flight; so I drove her to Indiana.

Her father put me up on the floor of his house, downstairs by the door.



Watch him: he says, "Bei." That means: "Drink."

After he went to bed, she crept downstairs and slept on the floor next to me. That was the night I asked her if she would mind my asking her father's permission to seek her hand. She agreed; and the next morning, he agreed, saying that he'd raised her to make her own decisions.

That was eleven years ago. We were married the next June. I might love another, in the course of my life; but I will never fail to love this one, as long as I live.

The movie Rob Roy says that 'honor is a gift a man gives himself.' That's a lie; honor is something quite different, and it takes a community to give it. Yet romance is a gift that a man gives himself; and he gives it, at the same time, to another. It makes life worth living. Love is not a small thing. It may be the most important thing.

Posting a Scoundrel

Posting a Scoundrel:

MikeD sends a link to an example of an old tradition. Posting was supposed to be done only in cases of honor when the duel had either been refused by another gentleman, or if they had agreed to a duel and then not shown up for it.

There's an interesting backstory to this particular posting. General Leigh Read refused this duel partially on the grounds of being a poor shot, but partially because he didn't feel that Tradewell was his equal. He accepted the duel offered by Tradewell's superior within the Whig party, one Augustus Alston, whom he killed.

Tradewell was right to be furious, as the claim that Read was too good to fight him was not proper. European nobility might disdain to fight a 'mere gentleman' on the grounds that they would duel only with equals; but in America, where nobility did not exist, the tradition was that all gentlemen were on a par. Saying that Tradewell was not good enough for him to fight was a tremendous insult.

Leah acquitted himself well, though -- far better than Alston's brother, who chose to pursue revenge through murder. He made two attempts on Leah's life, both dishonorable, and finally succeeded by shooting the general in the back.

He was later killed himself by a lynch mob, for murdering a doctor who rightly derided his honorless conduct. An interesting story all the way around.

The Collapse

The Collapse:

Africa's "forever wars" seem to offer a terrible picture of what human nature might be like. These groups are brigands, but somehow the brigands fail to provoke the response you would expect even in places where all governmental authority has failed: a few local families or tribes getting together and going out to hang the bunch for the common good. These are not soldiers they are fighting, after all, but criminals.

The Cold War's end bred state collapse and chaos. Where meddling great powers once found dominoes that needed to be kept from falling, they suddenly saw no national interest at all. (The exceptions, of course, were natural resources, which could be bought just as easily -- and often at a nice discount -- from various armed groups.) Suddenly, all you needed to be powerful was a gun, and as it turned out, there were plenty to go around.

That is not all you need, though; one thing we know from our own Dark Ages is that resistance is possible even when the walls collapse. Organized resistance can be successful in building a wall against such predation that, even if it is not universally effective, raises the costs of predation to such a degree that the predators go elsewhere.

This doesn't have to entail high costs; we saw the Anglo-Saxons resist Danish raiding with a fire beacon system and a small but organized group of people who would respond to raids when they saw the fires lit. The Danes were far more powerful and organized, in turn, than these African bandits. Saying that the system has collapsed explains the opportunity for violent predation. It doesn't explain how new systems don't spring up to resist those predators.