Fairies

On Fairies:

Joe recently made a remark on the subject of fairies. As he raised it in a memorial post to someone he admired, I didn't wish to raise the issue at the time, but after a decent interval I'd like to dispute something he said. That was this:

Or, as I might say to Chesterton, you may like the freedom to believe in fairies - but the fairies lose their magic if you do. And what a shame - because, in their rightful state, how beautiful they are.

Now, that is a serious claim. Chesterton wrote quite a bit about the fairies. His chapter in Orthodoxy called "The Ethics of Elfland" is among the finest things ever written. Elves are not fairies, of course; the root for elf is the Old Norse alfar, meaning "white," and they seem to be the honored dead, or those who belong to the Otherworld to which we go (or from which we come!) when we are not living here. Fairies are beings of a type unlike us; the root word is ultimately from the Latin, relating to the Fates. Elves are like us, but in another state; fairies are, whatever their other nature, genuinely alien beings.

The old tales about this are quite clear, if you care for old tales as I do. The problem in dealing with fairies is that they don't really understand us, and vice versa. In a fairy story, what seems amusing to them may destroy a man entirely; or bounce him hundreds of years out of his timeline, losing to him forever everyone he loved. We aren't really able to know if the 'revenge' our heroes take on them in these stories doesn't destroy them, or otherwise distort them in horrible ways. There is a sharp disconnect; and if you're of a literal mind about your literature, you might say that it is one of the rare attempts by humanity to imagine a completely different kind of intelligence.

Chesterton wrote quite a lot about these things, but the thing he wrote that I'll quote here is on another subject. It is still on point:

The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder.... If you reject [the "choking cataract of human testimony in favor of the supernatural"], you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story.

This is the problem I have. I have never seen a fairy; I don't know that I could see one. Yet I believe in them, because I know a woman who tells me that she has seen them. This woman is one whose testimony on any other subject I would not question; I have known her for years, and I have observed her to be a woman of unusually strong moral character. She is faithful to what she thinks is right even when it is to her own disadvantage. I am quite certain of her honesty.

That gives me compelling reason to assert, at least: "I know that she really believes that fairies exist." What would stop me from asserting, "I am prepared to believe that fairies exist"? Chesterton tells us: I have his two options. The first one, though, will not do. I cannot reject her testimony because of who she is, because I know she is just the kind of person whose testimony I should rely on if I rely on anyone's at all.

That leaves, then, only the second option. If I reject her testimony, it must be because I have a doctrine that fairies cannot exist; that fairy stories are never true.

I don't have any evidence, however, for that proposition. If I say I am being rational in rejecting her testimony, then, I am fooling myself. I have no rational reason to doubt her testimony merely because I haven't had the experience myself, any more than I could doubt her testimony to a murder because I didn't see it happen too.

The modern way of dealing with this is to push it into psychology; to say, in short, that there is something wrong with her. That is wrong in two senses. First, I have never observed anything wrong with her; genuine disorders are usually evident along a broad line of problems. She has always held a job, works hard, has strong and steady friendships and relationships to others, doesn't drink (let alone to excess) and uses no drugs, etc. So, it would be strange for me to impute some sort of disorder to her. She shows every evidence of being well ordered.

Second, I can no more see her mind than I can see a fairy. To make a positive judgment about her mind (that it is disordered) in order to avoid a positive judgment about a fairy (that it might possibly exist in some way we don't yet understand) is merely to prefer one sort of untestable theory over another. There is no lab test that can approach either question. I'm really making an aesthetic claim, not a scientific or a rational one. I'm saying that I prefer a world in which people who believe in fairies are insane, or that I prefer a world in which fairies might exist.

Of the two, aesthetically, I prefer the second. This happens to line up with the evidence of the woman being well-ordered in all other observable aspects; and with a vast wealth of similar testimony, dating over centuries and across cultures. So: I honestly believe that the rational position is that there likely are fairies. That also happens to be what I'd prefer to believe. I am aware of the potential for confirmation bias, then; but anyone who asserts the contrary had better be equally aware of their own aesthetic preferences, and resulting biases.

Does that mean that fairies lose their magic? I don't know that it does; they are quite mystical to me, since I have no way of seeing them, yet believe that somehow they exist.

What it definitely doesn't mean, however, is that I'm denying them their rightful place. If indeed they do exist, their rightful place is in the realm of things that exist. We should conceptualize our world in a way that leaves room for them.

1680 China West

China and the West: 1680 Edition

Via Arts & Letters Daily, a remarkable piece on how East and West met in earlier times.

The particular meeting of the minds that I am exploring this evening occurred in the 1680s. That was just a century after the pioneering Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (whom the Chinese still refer to by his Chinese name of “Li Madou”) had crossed the border between Macao and China and rented a small house in Guangdong province. As a conversation piece, he placed on the wall a print of a world map made in the West, with the names of the main continents and countries spelled out in the Western alphabet. Some of the Chinese who came to visit were vexed, other were intrigued. It was those Chinese with the greatest interest in getting at the truth who persuaded Ricci to make an enlarged version of the world map with the names identified by Chinese characters, and with the cartography somewhat adjusted so that China was closer to the center of the map, rather than being stuck on the periphery (as had been the case with the original map). In following these Chinese requests, Ricci further revised and enlarged the map with descriptive passages (in Chinese) which gave commercial and political details of many countries in both Europe and East Asia, along with descriptive references to some aspect of the Catholic states, the role of the papacy, and the nature of Chinese relations with its neighbors.

Over the following years, a small but steady stream of missionaries followed Ricci, and even served in Chinese official positions in the bureau of astronomy. A smaller number of Chinese also traveled to Europe during this period, though none left detailed accounts of their experiences. But travelers moving in either direction during the 1680s were aware....

Aware of what? You'll have to read the rest.

The Dog Makes the Man

The Hat Makes the Man:

...and the man makes the dog. (Hat tip to T99, who should remember that she has posting rights here.)



Maggie's Farm says, "Pathetic. Even when my kids were little, they would not put up with that from our dogs. That is now a worthless dog, and it is the owners' fault."

It's not a worthless dog, though. That dog could be put right in thirty minutes by a man who knew how to do it. The problem is, having done it, the training would need to be reinforced and maintained. "Mr. President" would be right back in this situation in a few weeks, even if you handed him an animal that was perfectly trained.

That's nature at work. That's a metaphor for where the whole world is going, as long as he remains in the position he's in.

Forty-Five Minutes

Forty-Five Minutes:

It's a big chunk of your day. But watch it.

Anecdotal Evidence

Anecdotal Evidence:

Still, it does make one feel better about our neighbors in South Carolina.

Their allegations may ultimately help Ms. Haley, experts say, if she is viewed as a victim of dirty campaigning.... “I voted for the lady,” [one man] said, referring to Ms. Haley. “I was going to vote for McMaster but I didn’t like all of the junk that the other campaigns were saying about the lady.”

I hope we'll see the scoundrels run out on rails. It's a fine old tradition, really.

Gerard van der Leun, of the blog American Digest, from time to time has a little feature he calls "something wonderful" when he comes across something, well, wonderful on the internet.

So in that spirit, Here's the Opera Company of Philadelphia flash mobbing the Reading Street Terminal Market on a recent Saturday.

Various pics

This one goes with Grim's story of the Marine carrying his girlfriend up the mountain. Semper Fi, she says. Indeed.

And here is a little Belle Heures teaser. I didn't forget you guys and risked life and limb taking pictures with my cell phone, whilst evading no fewer than three minders in the exhibit. I felt so Mission Impossible. (I just went to a translation site to be cute and put that in French for effect and don't you know its spelt the exact same way?!)

This might be the one that I took through a magnifying glass they supplied. The aureola have real texture and look as though they were painted yesterday, though my little cell phone camera cannot reflect the true skill used.

And another one taken of two Mourners they had near the Belle Heures stuff.

And this is a little bit of information related to the conversation we were having about traditional religious orders. It's from the newsletter of a group of cloistered monks I support.

Grim's Hall Book Club

Grim's Hall Book Club:

It's been a while since we had a book club entry. While I suppose Zelda's Ogre counts as reading, in a sense, it would be a good idea to get back to the business of reading some underlying classics.

I've been reading Parzival this summer, one of the last major Arthurian texts that I hadn't read before. It fails my basic test of reading material for GHBC, though, which is that there does not appear to be a free version online. I suspect that it's not even available at most of your public libraries, except perhaps through interlibrary loan, as the story -- once the most popular tale in Europe -- has fallen out of fashion.

We could do some more of Plutarch, if you like. Some of the Norse sagas make for excellent reading, and I'd like to tackle at least a few of those over the next few years. Some of you may have other ideas. Let's hear them.

Cyborgs

Scruton on Cyborgs:

Roger Scruton takes on an old debate of ours, and looks forward:

The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in the moment of truth, to a paroxysm of disappointment and misanthropy. Both of these do violence to our nature. The first condemns us to the life of unreason; the second to the life of contempt. Human beings may not be as good as the shallow optimists pretend; but nor are they as bad as the prophets and curmudgeons have painted them.

In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism...

That is the beginning; but what happens when we can change human nature? He appears to be pessimistic about that as well. Yet he is pessimistic in an odd way; this pessimism is required for us to be happy.

The transhumanists believe that we will replace ourselves with immortal cyborgs, who will emerge from the discarded shell of humanity like the blessed souls from the grave in some medieval Last Judgement.
The transhumanists don’t worry about Huxley’s Brave New World: they don’t believe that the old-fashioned virtues and emotions lamented by Huxley have much of a future in any case. The important thing, they tell us, is the promise of increasing power, increasing scope, increasing ability to vanquish the long-term enemies of mankind, such as disease, ageing, incapacity and death....

We are not, and cannot be, the kind of posthuman cyborgs that rejoice in eternal life, if life it is. We are led by love, friendship and desire; by tenderness for young life and reverence for old. We live, or ought to live, by the rule of forgiveness, in a world where hurts are acknowledged and faults confessed to. All our reasoning is predicated upon those basic conditions, and one of the most important uses of pessimism is to warn us against destroying them. The soul-less optimism of the transhumanists reminds us that we should be gloomy, since our happiness depends on it.

Confer with the piece from Mr. Dalyrymple, below. The idea is that redistributing resources cannot make people happy, because happiness comes from the development of internal virtues. It cannot even make them "not poor," as the failure to develop those virtues will strip them of whatever wealth you redistribute to them. What it can do, as in the case of the islanders with the phosphorous, is destroy them: it can undermine the virtues they do have by removing the scarcity that demands and regulates those virtues. Disaster follows.

This would appear to be the same concept, but pointed not at "the poor" but at all humanity. It seems like it might be right, too, on the same terms. Aristotle held that happiness (eudaimonia) was an activity, specifically rational activity in accord with excellence. The concept of "excellence" rubs up against failure: after all, you are judging what is excellent by comparing it with what is not.

This kind of life is perhaps a good example of what would 'justify us in having a child' according to Mr. Singer. What if we could promise that the child would never grow old or weak, nor be hungry, nor suffer pain or danger? Well, wouldn't the child be horribly bored with such an eternal life? Where then is the joy, the eudaimonia that Aristotle spoke of? How does the child excel if there are no challenges?

No matter, you might say; emotions are really "in" the brain, so we will remove the concern that you would be bored and unhappy by simply arranging to stimulate the appropriate pleasure centers. You will be perfectly happy and satisfied, forever.

That, then, would be for Mr. Singer a justification of the child's life. What kind of person would we be, though? What would that do to our moral nature? What would we do with such lives, and such freedom?

I suspect the answer is "nothing." If that is the case, Singer is wrong: the child may as well not have been born at all.

Confer

Confer:

Against spirituality in academia:

The kind of research Poloma and her colleagues propose, however empirical and peer-reviewed, seems to come as an affront to centuries of purported progress in disentangling natural science from supernatural belief. Depending on whom you ask, Templeton represents either the hijacking of nothing less than the meaning of life, or the restoration of its luster, which has been dulled by politics and cynicism.

In favor:

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Of course, Singer doesn't intend to argue for the importance of God in philosophy; and the Templeton scholars don't mean to be an argument against it. Yet each of them seems to do a good job of forwarding their opponent's position.

Editing the Mind

Editing the Mind:

We can now edit photographs far better than ever before. What happens when can edit memories to go with the new photos? Turns out, we already can.

She's preparing a report on a new experiment involving U.S. military personnel in survival training. First, the trainees were brutally interrogated. Then, through bogus photographs, their memories were altered so that they could no longer identify their interrogators. The experiment is an inadvertent blueprint for getting away with war crimes. Loftus worries about who will use it.

Everyone will.

I imagine they were

I Imagine They Were:

Mr. Daylrymple writes:

No subject provokes the deformations of sympathy more than poverty. I recalled this recently when asked to speak on a panel about child poverty in Britain in the wake of the economic and financial crisis. I said that the crisis had not affected the problem of child poverty in any fundamental way. Britain remained what it had long been—one of the worst countries in the Western world in which to grow up. This was not the consequence of poverty in any raw economic sense; it resulted from the various kinds of squalor—moral, familial, psychological, social, educational, and cultural—that were particularly prevalent in the country (see “Childhood’s End,” Summer 2008).

My remarks were poorly received by the audience, which consisted of professional alleviators of the effects of social pathology, such as social workers and child psychologists.

Doubtless. Nevertheless, he makes a good case. Eric will probably recognize the truth of his remarks on the sudden alteration of people from subsistence to rentiers.

The Blade Show

The BLADE Show:

So today I went down to the BLADE Show, the annual exposition of Blade magazine. It was all the way down in Atlanta, but I went anyway because some of my association were getting together to play.



Described as "the world's largest knife show," it had some truly impressive entries from craftsmen and artists as well as industry leaders. I was impressed to see that almost every table was either a major manufacturer or an independent knifemaker of significant skill; there were also some supply dealers. What there wasn't was pawn shops, for the most part, or people peddling trash such as you get at gun shows (one reason that I have not been to a gun show in several years; another reason is that I believe I have a sufficient number and variety of guns for the various tasks that I encounter requiring them).

Of special interest to me were Albion Swords and CAS Hanwei. I met "Tinker Pierce," who has designed their latest range of swords for western martial artists. He provided a couple of test models of his longsword, blunt, which you can see being used above. They performed better than expected! After an hour of vigorous practice, there were no nicks on the blade, and the fittings had not loosened at all.

Albion invited me to handle every one of their main production line swords, and spent quite a while with me talking through the differences in the models. I was highly impressed, especially with the stunning difference in handling qualities between their type XIIa and type XIIIa war swords. These things read like they should be very similar in characteristics, as the stats are similar; both are made of the same monosteels, as well. The main difference is the taper line. Yet the XIIIa is a wholly different creature in the hand.

It was a very good time.

War Posters

History And Now

History and Now:

Did the Founders have all the answers?

If a "tea party" event is where the disaffected go to protest the present, his classes are where they go to ponder the past. Participants include members of "9.12" groups inspired by conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Republicans, home-school groups and people affiliated with militias.

Here in Springfield, the day's students sipped coffee and chewed on peppermints while seated at folding banquet-hall tables. They included a lawyer, a farmer, a local politician and a project manager for a construction company.

What I find most interesting about the courses is that they represent a return to history as it was taught some decades ago. That is, the focus on "the Founder's supposed immorality" that we find in modern histories is intentionally laid aside; and, perhaps because the founder of the course was a minister who was also an anti-Communist, there is instead a focus on the Founder's faith and spirituality.

On that subject, I think we might honestly say that the Founding was of two minds: there were quite a number of Deists and others for whom faith was not what we think of today when we ascribe devotion to someone. Yet that faith was not dead: Deists, if they did not believe in a God who intervened, they believed in a Creator who had some intentions in making the world (such that he 'endowed' humanity with 'certain inalienable rights,' such as life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness). If they did not believe that God would help us, they believed that God had made us free -- and had not done so for no reason.

There were also many Founders, particularly at the state and local level, who were intensely devout in a sense we would find more recognizable. The modern historians have lost that sense, in their focus on exploring Deism; Deism was important, and we should try to understand it, but much of the focus on it is a reflection of the modern scholar's taste. So too with the Founders' 'immorality,' some of which was certainly real; but the focus on it is mostly about the modern scholar, and not the real importance of the thing being described at such length and with such focus.

If these new/old classes go too far in playing down those things, that is the normal reaction in historiography. History as a discipline goes through waves of praising and condemning the same people or events, as the field cycles this way and that. Anyone who has followed historiography on any given topic knows the truth of this. This is why a truly balanced and sober history is such a gift, and so worthy of praise.

Of course, journalists are also guilty.

Today, reverence for the Constitution and the Founding Fathers is an important part of the militia movement. Taylor's work has been embraced, for instance, by members of Oath Keepers, a group of current and former police and military personnel who renew their oaths to the Constitution, and call themselves "guardians of the republic."

This strange detour into militias (and inability to recognize that the Oath Keepers are not a militia!) is plainly a product of the fears of the reporter. Citing the "milita movement," which is like five guys in Oregon, is just a weird hobby horse. Would the Washington Post endorse: "Today, reverence for the Koran is an important part of the terrorist movement"? Of course not; they would say that the statement slanders the Koran and the millions who reverence it without being connected to terrorism in any way.

Ultimately, the Founders weren't right about everything. Slavery is the obvious choice of an example of something they got very wrong, although it is also sui generis, and therefore has limited use as an example. Certainly, however, there were other things that they did not get right.

Too, there are other things that they got right for their time and place, but that we no longer find quite right for America as it exists today. For example, birthright citizenship made perfect sense for them at the time; but in an age when it is easy to get on a plane and fly around the world, so that anyone with a plane ticket can essentially purchase citizenship for their child by vacationing at the right time, it may no longer make sense. Another example is military appropriations; the Constitution hedges against a standing army by refusing to allow for more than a two-year appropriations of funds for one. The ship has sailed on the question of whether or not we'll have a standing army, however; and more, the army has proven to be not the fearsome force that the Founders worried about in their era, but one of the strongest pillars of our Republic.

Where the Founders weren't right, however, they gave us Article V to let us change the things that we need to change. Adjustments to our basic law that are approved in that mode enjoy broad support and legitimacy. More, the strength of the process prevents rapid alteration of society's shape, requiring careful deliberation over years before making major alterations. This prevents social instability, and ensures that momentary enthusiasms among the voting public do not undermine the fabric of the nation.

That's one lesson we need for today. The Constitution provides specific, limited powers to the Federal government. Any time it wants to do something new, it needs to ask for new authority. If we learn just one thing well, let us learn a way to require the Congress, the Executive and the Supreme Court to respect that principle.

South Carolina's Strange Election Year:

Crush at BLACKFIVE writes about an attempt to lie about a veteran's combat record, in a South Carolina election.

According to official documentation, Connor – a recipient of the Bronze Star and the combat infantryman badge – has been described by his superiors as “a fearless, consummate combat leader” who “performed well under intense enemy fire and always led his men from the front.”

Beyond that, I have personally spoken to soldiers who have served “in action” with Connor, and in one instance Connor literally had to fight with his pistol against fanatics with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades who were trying to wipe out a convoy (Connor was leading) with a series of complex ambushes one-after-another for 4.5 miles of isolated highway in Afghanistan.

This is exactly the kind of garbage that would vanish in an instant if these lies were subject to the old sanction. How fitting it would be if a lie like this was answered by an opportunity to face "a fearless combat leader" on the field of honor.

Another thing we would see a lot less of is vicious attempts to slander ladies. These people making accusations of unchastity towards here are not fit to duel. A gentleman would not say such things about a lady in public even if they were true. As these are dogs as well as liars, they would not merit the honor of a duel; they deserve only to be driven from the state with a horsewhip.

The elected officials pretend to the status of gentlemen, however, and ought to be answerable to actual gentlemen. There are plenty of oak trees in Charleston that would be perfect for this occasion.

This Is The Moment

A Moment in History:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.

It was an impressive speech.

Venite a Laudare

Venite a Laudare:

Venite a Laudare
Per amore cantare
L'amorosa vergene Maria.

When I was younger, I used to say that I would convert to Catholicism if they would go back to Latin masses. It appears that people who are currently young feel the same way:

Pope Benedict's critics had hoped Summorum Pontificum would disappear without a trace. It hasn't. His apostolic constitution authorizing wider use of the Traditional Latin Mass continues to bear fruit, some of it annoyingly visible to these critics.

Far from just a sop thrown to aging traditionalists, as some liberal bishops cast it, Summorum Pontificum has proven popular with the young. As Pope Benedict noted in its accompanying letter, the Traditional Latin Mass is old in origin but new in appeal: "young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Sacrifice particularly suited to them."

Explaining exactly why that should be the case is difficult, but it is plainly the case nevertheless. J. R. R. Tolkien captured something of the issue with his use of the elvish tongues he invented in situations in his novels where Latin would have been employed by a Medieval writer. Of course, Tolkien was a master of languages, of philology, and so his inventions have very solid foundations. They may be as good as organic languages; indeed, I suppose in some sense they might be better than organic languages. (Cassandra, in particular, will want to follow that link and read it through.)

It's not just that, though. As the link mentions, the return to tradition is broader.

These younger Catholics are attracted to traditional spiritual practices such as Eucharistic adoration and Marian piety; they have a generally positive attitude towards authority, especially the papacy; and they’re less inclined to be critical of church teaching....

Marian piety, which is what this hymn is about, is plainly a useful and beneficial feature of Catholic tradition. It's not shocking to find that it is attractive to anyone -- somewhat like the mysteries of language, it has a clear power even if it is hard to say exactly what that power is.

The attractiveness of the other things is not so obvious. Nevertheless, this seems like a positive sign. (H/t: Dad29.)

The Assassins

The Assassins:

Killing by suicide has a history, in Shi'a Islam, that has passed into legend. The legend has real roots in history:

Even the most powerful and carefully guarded rulers of the age—the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphs, the sultans and viziers of the Great Seljuk and Ayyubid empires, the princes of the Crusader states, and emirs who ruled important cities like Damascus, Homs, and Mosul—lived in dread of the chameleonlike Assassin agents. Known as a fida'i (one who risks his life voluntarily, from the Arabic word for "sacrifice"; the plural in Arabic is fidaiyn, or the present-day fedayeen), such an agent might spend months or even years stalking and infiltrating an enemy of his faith before plunging a dagger into the victim's chest, often in a very public place. Perhaps most terrifying, the Assassins chose not only a close and personal manner of killing but performed it implacably, refusing to flee afterward and appearing to welcome their own swift death.

This is the interesting part of the article, though:

They developed a means of attack that negated most of their enemies' advantages while requiring the Assassins to hazard only a small number of their own fighters. As with any effective form of deterrence, the Assassins' targeted killings of hostile political, military, and religious leaders eventually produced a stable and lasting balance of power between them and their enemies, reducing the level of conflict and loss of life on both sides.

The article clearly wants to bring the Medieval facts forward, as an analogy to our present time. Now, for our modern conflict, "targeted killing" is what we usually use to describe our drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. This is likewise aimed at "hostile political, military and religious leaders," as among the Taliban.

Is it an effective form of deterrence? Will it inexorably produce a "stable and lasting balance of power"? That seems far more questionable.

Yet assume for a moment that it was the case. Would this not make assassination a moral weapon of war? After all, it kills few (and fairly precisely), risks few lives on your own side, and is (we are assuming) an effective deterrent that leads to stability and relative peace.

The argument against assassination, at least in democracies, is that a core function of the democracy is to provide the citizens with the leadership they choose. Killing their elected leader is, in effect, to deny their sovereign status; it is a more serious offense against them than to kill a soldier (the theory goes), because it strikes at the root of what makes the state legitimate and valid.

The counterargument to that is to point out that it is only natural that the elected politicians who write the laws should view the assassination of elected politicians with a special horror. Yet I can't think of a single elected politician whose life I would trade for most any soldier I have had the honor of knowing. It is the function of the soldier, of course, to hazard his life for the politician. That fact, however, means that the sort of people who choose soldiering are on average better people than the sort who choose to pursue political power, with all that entails.

The Assassins were better enemies than our current foes, who seek to wage war not on politicians but on people. Suicide bombs in a marketplace are no moral weapon at all; they target neither soldiers nor politicians, but innocents. In part this is because our enemies are weaker than the Assassins ever were. If they had the strength to strike at our elected officials, they would do so; terrorism is the best they can manage.

Does that suggest that we should wish for stronger enemies? We're likely to get them, thanks to current policy.

Ah, Italy

Ah, Italy...

One of the joys of studying history, anthropology, or any similar discipline is you get to read things like this.

For generations of Venetians epic fist fights atop neighborhood bridges were a celebrated tradition. Beginning in about 1600, from September to Christmas each year rival clans would gather en masse at small bridges without rails and throw punches with the goal of knocking the opponents into the cold and sewage-strewn canal below.

These "Wars of the Fist" were frowned upon if not outright outlawed by the ruling Council of Ten, but tolerated as they marked a big improvement over the earlier tradition of fights with deadly sharpened and fire-hardened sticks. Legend has it that in a stick battle in 1585...

A legendary stick battle!

In any event, this is one of those things that helps you understand why Italian politics is the orderly, sedate affair we've come to expect.