Death by Baseball

Living and Dying:

I've been thinking some more about our recent conversations because of yesterday's tragic story from Texas.

This has to be the saddest possible event at a baseball game. A man goes to a ballgame with his son — it's the ultimate American experience — and he dies trying to catch a ball. It's hard to comprehend.

As for the need to raise the railings, or not throw balls into the stands ... that's the crazy part. How many thousands of games happen where nobody gets hurt, and now this?

The same is true for the poor motorcycle rider who was killed, of course: how many thousands of miles did he ride without any incident?

We usually make reference to statistics in cases like this, as statistics allows us to overcome our actual experience. We may have the actual experience of having ridden thousands of miles in safety, but statistics show that the activity is dangerous in spite of abundant direct experience of safety.

Yet statistics are famously easy to manipulate. I've been reading up on motorcycle safety statistics since our discussion, to try and find out just how much helmets really do improve safety. Do they actually improve -- as I understand they do not, from conversations with other riders?

I'm still not sure, but I do now know that most surveys seem to be peformed either by (a) helmet manufacturers, or (b) groups that already believed that helmets were a good idea (e.g., Snell). Confirmation bias is a danger even for the hardest science; when political advocacy -- or profit -- is at issue, it's harder to rely on the claims of such studies. For example, I wasn't able to find anything like a dividing line on the speeds at which helmets seem to be effective at reducing risk of injury. That may mean no one thought to ask, or it may be that the question was intentionally not asked.

Finally, though, I've realized what it is about this discussion that has been bothering me. I've spoken of my friend the father of two special needs children, and how proud I am of how he soldiers on under this incredibly heavy weight. When we were talking about motorcycle riders, the point was made by several of you that a man who is a husband and father has a responsibility to limit his risks in order to continue to live to perform his duties to wives and children.

However, a life that has become a misery is a weight that is even more likely to kill a man than any motorcycle. Heart disease is strongly linked to stress, as are many other diseases; and a man who dies of a heart attack at 48, though he bore his burden faithfully, has left his wife and children just as completely widowed and orphaned.

I work hard to try and get my friend to come with me to the gym, or otherwise to find pleasure and exercise of vital faculties; but the man is run down. Without joy in life, death follows: and if an activity greatly brings you joy, even if it is a risky activity, it may be worth doing for that reason alone.

More, a miserable life is no fit reception to the wonder of creation. God may not be pleased with your sacrifice if you have taken the gift of life and squandered it -- not on risking death trying to catch a fly ball for your son, but on letting even the most wise and proper responsibility rob you of the joy and wonder that you should find in His creation. You needn't put that in theological terms to get the same point: Plato called this wonder, which was the beginning of all philosophy, thaumazein.

The good life, then, and our ideals about how to live it need to capture a space for that wonder and joy. This is a duty, and a moral duty, as imperative to the good life as meeting responsibilities. It often entails risk -- climbing mountains, riding horses, drinking beer of an evening with friends, standing up to dangerous men with evil in their hearts. These are the things that make life joyous, and therefore we must do them. When performing a duty, we take reasonable steps to mitigate risk -- but we perform our duty regardless of risk.

That seems to resolve the problem, and the paradox, from my perspective.

Ideals

The Masculine Ideal:

Recently we discussed some examples from Dr. Hodges' "Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur." As I think more about it, I wonder if some of you might not be interested in his broader thesis. His piece is a pretty strong one in terms of suggesting that we should re-evaluate a lot of the assumptions of scholarship on what the masculine ideal might be.

In gender studies, critics frequently postulate a masculine ideal of
suave and potent invulnerability and then demonstrate how the
male characters in question inevitably fall short of it. Bryce Traister
has offered a thorough critique of this tendency in American studies,
arguing that the focus on “transcendent” masculinity obscures study
of “competent” masculinity—ideas of manliness as they are actually
practiced. Unfortunately, the same tendency can be seen in medieval
studies. While invulnerability and easy power may be fantasies for individual
men, these daydreams do not reflect the more realistic ideals of
manhood expressed in a work such as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte
Darthur.

We examined several cases last time of knightly suffering -- not only in Malory, but in medieval nonfiction -- that show this alternative ideal at work.

These celebrations of knightly suffering as admirable penance mean
that injury was not simply a messy historical fact edited out of the
romanticized ideal of knighthood; instead, the ideal of masculinity that
chivalric texts celebrate is one that includes being wounded regularly.
This fits not only with the historical realities of knighthood but also
with the needs of narrative....

An example of how this narrative logic works is Arthur’s fight with
Accolon (1:141–47; 4.8–11). Although Merlin has told Arthur that Excalibur’s
scabbard is more valuable than the sword itself because it
prevents the wearer from losing blood (1:54; 1.25), this information
does not become an issue in any of Arthur’s fights until he meets Accolon,
and then it is Accolon who is wearing the scabbard. What follows
should be, according to some models of gender, the wreck of Arthur as
a man: he is pierced and bleeding, on the verge of defeat, and all as the
object of a woman’s gaze, since Nyneve is watching. The description of
the fight emphasizes Arthur’s blood falling from him, weakening him,
staining the ground. But Nyneve, instead of seeing him as feminized
and diminished, judges him a good knight and a man of worship because
of, not despite of, his suffering on the field (1:144; 4.10). Arthur’s
ability to bleed, although a liability in strictly practical terms, highlights
his bravery and commitment to his cause, in contrast to Accolon’s smug
safety. Instead of proving him less of a man, Arthur’s wounds illustrate
that he is full of pure knighthood...

[W]hen Launcelot runs mad, those who find him treat him
well: “Whan they sawe so many woundys upon hym, they demed that
he had bene a man of worship” (2:822; 12.3). Likewise, when Launcelot
is praising La Cote Mal Tayle, he points out to the Damsel Maldisaunt
the young knight’s wounds, not as signs of failure (as in the past she
might have considered them) but of honor: “Now may ye se . . . that
he ys a noble knyght, for to consider hys firste batayle, and his grevous
woundis. And evyn forthwithall, so wounded as he ys, hit ys mervayle
that he may endure thys longe batayle."

There's a lot more, though I may be pushing the limits of 'fair use' for this discussion if I quote more; but I think it's an interesting thesis. What do you think?

Gandalf

Gandalf:

Continuing the meditation on independence, I saw several fireworks displays this weekend, both government-run and privately-funded. The government run displays involved far more expensive fireworks, and were more elaborate; but the aggregate of the individual actors who bought their own fireworks was ultimately more impressive than the aggregate government displays.

There's probably a lesson in that somewhere, but our friends on the left might note that not everyone is a trained fireworks engineer; I noted the fact myself after watching a guy set off a mortar that exploded a fraction of a second after launch, perhaps ten feet in the air. No one was hurt, but they certainly could have been.

Independent people get to do this kind of stuff, even though it entails some significant risk. That's what freedom is. Sometimes, of course, freedom kills.

A New York man died Sunday while participating in a ride with 550 other motorcyclists to protest the state’s mandatory helmet law.

Police said Philip A. Contos, 55, hit his brakes and his motorcycle fishtailed. Contos was sent over the handlebars of his 1983 Harley Davidson and hit his head on the pavement.

I sometimes ride motorcycles without a helmet, and always ride horses without one (that's what Stetson hats are for). In fact it is truly pleasurable, tooling down a backroad or a two-lane highway, feeling the wind on your face, and without the heavy helmet wearying the muscles of your neck. I'm not sympathetic to the joyless nanny-state crowd that wants to tell me that their interest in having to pay for my possible medical care gives them the right to tell me that I shouldn't do dangerous things.

Keep your medical care, if it comes to that. (My sister, who shares more than my genetics, tells me she is taking up BASE jumping as her retirement plan.) I certainly do not wish to suffer head injuries or any other injuries; but I wouldn't want a safe life. It's not the life for me. If that means my life ends up being short, well, so be it; I'll run my hazards.

Independence Day

Independence Day:

I entered my specifications into Google, and the first hit was a Sugar Daddy dating site. “No way,” I thought. “I’m not a golddigger, I just want a man who has his shit together.” But the tagline had already hooked me– “Meet Wealthy Men Seeking to Spoil Beautiful Women!” It felt like I had just been challenged… was I attractive and charming enough to pique the interest of a successful millionaire? My mind raced. Is this thinly-veiled prostitution? Were there really men out there who wanted to buy me shoes? I like shoes! Was this going to affect how I identified myself as an intelligent, independent woman? PRESENTS! I caved. I set up a profile, paid the membership fee, and waited to see what would happen.

Independence is an interesting concept, and one that merits some discussion. Little Bill constitutes himself a defender of it -- and he is, presuming that by "independence" we mean the right to pass laws in concert which block the individual right to the means of self-defense. The people of that little town are independent if anyone is: any man who is interested is capable of joining the local militia, so the denial of self-defense is mostly aimed at outsiders. They build a great deal of power into their community, and use that power to enforce a law that denies basic rights to others. They are satisfied with the state they have built because they participate in it; it only oppresses others. That is independence, as long as they can retain control of the beast they have made.

The article, via the Sage of Knoxville, points to another kind of independent decision. The writer has independently chosen to become a dependent upon someone else; in return for affection, he pays her bills. She asserts that she is just as independent now as she was before -- perhaps moreso, having fewer bills and debts. It is a free choice she has made, which has made her in one sense freer yet; but in another, perhaps, less independent than she believes.

I don't raise the article to condemn, but to wonder at the way in which independence is a slippery thing. I gave up a great deal of my own independence when I married, some years ago; that was a free choice to become less free, to bind myself. At the time I was most independent, all I wanted was to find someone else to depend upon; at the time I was freest, I wanted nothing so much as to be bound. This seems to be true for individuals and for peoples, for towns and for nations. Freed of all obligations in 1781, we turned at once to forging new chains, laws, and orders.

UPDATE: More thoughts on the question from E. J. Dionne:

[O]ur friends in the Tea Party have offered a helpful clue by naming their movement in honor of the 1773 revolt against tea taxes on that momentous night in Boston Harbor.

Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy.

Most of these last ten years, since 9/11, I've placed myself at the service of the United States government in one capacity or another. The military of the United States is by far the best part of its several bureaucracies; too, it has the benefit of being pointed outward, so that its mistakes are felt by others instead of ourselves. They work very hard to avoid civilian casualties in drone strikes, for example, but nevertheless once in a while it does happen. This is the best the United States has to offer, and having seen it up close for a long time, I am very glad to have the force of that system pointed elsewhere. The parts of the Federal government that point at us are far less pleasant, and less noble, and we might be happier to do without them.

I think that there may indeed be something illegitimate about a government as large and as distant as this one has become. Legitimacy in politics comes from a relationship between yourself and the state: it is the relationship of parent to child, more or less. A family relationship binds best when it is closest. A father and a son are tightly bound if they live together, and are close; but a father who walked away in youth would exercise far less legitimate authority, and a fifth cousin almost none.

The town council, the parent-teacher association, these are close relationships; the state is farther away, but our representative is close enough that we can know him and be sure of his vote. Congress is so far away that we get little more than form letters even from our individual representatives or Senators; and these are too small to much shift the weight of the great Federal bureaucracy.

A legitimate government might need to be small, small enough to hear the voice of the one man who has something important to say. The question is whether such a government can survive: lacking a Leviathan like our military, what would keep such a government intact against the winds of the world? In this hour, it is our task and honor to be that Leviathan; but I often wonder if, though we devote a great deal of our efforts to trying to do it in a moral as well as an effective way, we will be forgiven for all we must do to preserve the order of the world. As General McChrystal said, we have shot an amazing number of people.

Whether or not our government can still claim to be legitimate, America is certainly no longer independent. We have taken on the burden of holding up the world; and thus we are bound to it. Events in Thailand or Yemen or Zanzibar, small places on the other side of the world, echo in our halls and keep us awake at night. Their problems are our own. Perhaps this is what we always wanted; in any case, I do not know how to lay the burden down, or if it is right that we should.

This post is more akin to Kipling's "Recessional" than it is to a celebration of our nation; and for that I apologize, my friends. I hope your holiday was a fine one, and my troubled thoughts do not limit your enjoyment of your friends and family.

VALOURITUSMC

Project VALOUR-IT: Annual Fundraiser

Again this year, I have been asked to participate in the USMC team, Project VALOUR-IT. I always agree to do this even though I have no idea how to go about asking for someone's money; and especially in hard times like this -- the economy is bad, many of you may be out of work or underemployed, and the government is pressing so many new regulations and taxes that it will be hard for any recovery to be possible -- people often simply can't be sure that they can afford to give anything.

Nevertheless, VALOUR-IT deserves your attention because it helps those who have already given to you. As surely all of you know by now, the name stands for Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. The project was started by Chuck Ziegenfuss, based on his own experience of being without the use of his hands following an encounter with an IED in Iraq. He has since returned to service, and is doing very well; but in addition to his continued service to our country, he has devoted himself to helping those soldiers and Marines, sailors and airmen who may follow him through the hard path of recovery.

Honor is sacrifice, and this project honors those who have sacrificed a great deal for us. It is right and proper that we should honor, and sacrifice, for them. Therefore, please consider donating as you are able; and even if it is not much that you can spare, remember the story of the widow's mite.

"If This Goes On --"

"If This Goes On --"

I've found an entertaining site for speculative fiction fans like myself, called Paleofuture: The Future That Never Was." The host finds old stories and articles speculating about the future, then looks at what was easy to foresee and what snuck up on everyone. This entry caught my eye: it speculated that future governments would turn most issues into instant public referenda by publicizing the dispute and asking everyone to vote on it electronically at once. Somehow nothing like that seems to have happened. It amuses me to read, nevertheless, because the yearning behind the prediction is for something we already have in an important institution: the free market. The whole theory of the free market is that billions of individual decisions get made in real time every day, spread out to the individual consumers in the farthest corners of the nation and world. These decisions control the allocation of our scarce resources that have alternative uses, merely by setting prices that respond to supply and demand. It's inefficient, wasteful, and cold-blooded, and has only the advantage that it produces more widespread prosperity and avoids more misery than any other system ever tried.

Our government reflects the prevailing mindset of Americans, which is to pay lip service to the free market but not really to trust it very thoroughly. I'd be awfully surprised to see the government moving toward frequent plebiscites on any important issues if they could possibly avoid it. Robert Tracinski opines today on RealClearMarkets about how it can have happened that the current administration can have achieved an expense education without learning the first thing about how our economy works:

Consider Obama's background. He grew up among leftists, his childhood mentors were outright communists, and he then went off to academia, where he spent his formative years in an environment where business and profit-making are looked down upon as ugly, dirty, rapacious, immoral. Is it any mystery why he doesn't know about business or economics? Asking him to study the economics of the free market is like asking one of the old New England Puritans to thumb through a manual on sex education. Why immerse oneself in a subject that is so unseemly? Why make a study of how to be immoral?

Meanwhile, what I'm hoping for from the future is a better way to perform a certain exam that people of my age are all too familiar with. Preparation the day before involves drinking a very large quantity of a substance that tastes like melted jello infused with the flavor of old latex gloves, flavored with off-brand diet soda. I hope all your prayers and good thoughts will be with me as I await the results this afternoon.

Institutions

An Institution:

This is a fascinating account of the development of Trinity College, where many of the most powerful women in America were educated.

Some of you may be put off by the fact that the article is clearly celebrating liberal women leaders, but don't be. This story is a very important one, as it highlights the way that crucial institutions are built. The builders in this case are spirited Catholic nuns.

If our civilization is to be saved, we also must build institutions. Recapturing and repairing broken ones may sometimes be possible, but very often it is easier -- and wiser -- to start anew.

In Catholicism, different religious orders describe themselves as each having a distinct “charism.” The term refers partly to the basic mission of an order, but also to a more intangible set of attitudes—a spiritual temperament that traces back to the group’s founding. The charism of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur involves running schools for women and girls. More than that, though, it entails a spirit of ambitious enterprise and fierce autonomy—a refusal to take no for an answer in the face of institutional authority.

We need some institutions each having a charism fitting our project. Yet I honestly would not know how to begin; I suppose you must begin with money.

Etiquette

Etiquette:

Normally, when one has a guest who violates some rule of manners, it is most praiseworthy to avoid drawing attention to it. When that person happens to wish to join your family -- so that they are petitioning not merely to be a guest, but a daughter -- there may be occasions when you have to express your dismay. After all, once married into your family, their bad manners will stand as a charge against you and your entire family!

Needless to say, this is precisely the opposite of the reaction of the journalist covering this story.

Southerners

"Southerners"

Dad29 had an interesting piece on a critic who worried -- in the 1930s -- that "Southern" ideas no longer received a fair hearing.

Can principles enunciated as Southern principles, of whatever cast, get a hearing?” he inquired in The Attack on Leviathan. “ . . . It seems to be a rule that the more special the program and the more remote it is from Southern principles, the greater the likelihood of its being discussed and promulgated. Southerners who wish to engage in public discussion in terms that do not happen to be of common report in the New York newspapers are likely to be met, at the levels where one would least expect it, with the tactics of distortion, abuse, polite tut-tutting, angry discrimination and so on down to the baser devices of journalistic lynching which compose the modern propagandist’s stock in trade. This is an easy and comparatively certain means of discrediting an opponent and of thus denying him a hearing.

As Dad29 points out, the "South" was only the leading edge here: the mechanism is currently being employed against rural Americans regardless of how northerly their point of origin. The relentless 'distortion, abuse, tut-tutting and discrimination' aimed at Sarah Palin during her run for the Vice Presidency is exactly of this type; and Alaska is pretty far north!

We're seeing the same thing aimed at Rep. Michelle Bachmann, and Christopher Hitchens -- whom I've often praised for his several good qualities -- gave the game away:

Where does it come from, this silly and feigned idea that it's good to be able to claim a small-town background? It was once said that rural America moved to the cities as fast as it could, and then from urban to suburban as fast as it could after that. Every census for decades has confirmed this trend. Overall demographic impulses to one side, there is nothing about a bucolic upbringing that breeds the skills necessary to govern a complex society in an age of globalization and violent unease. We need candidates who know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas. Yet the media make us complicit in the myth—all politics is yokel?—that the fast-vanishing small-town life is the key to ancient virtues. Wasilla, Alaska, is only the most vivid recent demonstration of the severe limitations of this worldview. But still it goes on. Hence one's glee at the resulting helpings of custard.

While I share Hitchen's enthusiasm for the Libyan adventure -- if only it were properly pursued -- I find his disdain for the rural to be remarkably ill-informed. I have lived in small towns and big ones, urban America and rural America and densely-populated China; and of it all, rural America really does have a special set of virtues. I trust the gentleman from England doesn't realize it, perhaps having missed the opportunity -- or, perhaps, he simply lacks the right kind of eye.

Still, there is something to be said for the prejudice. Cities also produce a number of disagreeable qualities, and frankly I hate them. I hate them never more than when I'm forced to be inside one for any extended period. Yet it is good that there are cities, if only so that there are fewer people in the woods. The more people who share the prejudice, the more likely I am to be left in peace.

Wounds

Wounds and Manhood:

Dr. Kenneth Hodges wrote:

Wounds do not mark failures in the effort to be knightly. Although
each wound might be said to result from a failure to ward a blow properly,
the inevitability of this happening some times even to the best
knights means knights had to deal with the fact that they would be
hurt. Medieval sources testify to the thorough understanding that being
injured was an essential part of knighthood, even for the best knights.
Geoffroi de Charny, when he compares knighthood to religious orders,
emphasizes the injuries that knights regularly suffer. Likewise, Margery
Kempe uses knights as seeming commonplace images of bodily pain and
penance. Malory’s Gawain unwisely makes a similar argument in the
Grail quest: “I may do no penaunce, for we knyghtes adventures many
tymes suffir grete woo and payne.”

...

Maurice Keen quotes several
men who justified tournaments precisely because they taught men how
to deal with pain. Roger of Hovedon said, “he is not fit for battle who
has never seen his own blood flow, who has not heard his teeth crunch
under the blow of an opponent,” and Henri de Laon agreed, writing,
“to be soaked [in] one’s own sweat and blood, that I call the true bath of
honour.”

This strikes me as relevant to contemporary social issues as well; but I won't draw the lines too finely.

Beer Goddess

Give Me That Old Time Religion:

It's good enough for me!

The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess.

We really need to regard the end of the "beer goddess" as a kind of giant backwards step in civilization.

Walzer Maimonides

Walzer on Maimonides, Charity, and Justice:

Michael Walzer, a leftist thinker who has written one of the most important modern works on Just War Theory, has a new piece on questions of charity and justice. He is interested in the Jewish model -- because it was stateless -- which strikes him as useful because, in the (hopefully continual) absence of a global state, he believes that all of us are stateless. This leads to some interesting lines.

With little or no coercive power, the Jewish communities in the Diaspora had to rely heavily on the charitable contributions of their members. The contributions were indeed necessary, for without them there would be no way, for example, to ransom Jewish captives (a major concern of the Diaspora communities throughout the Middle Ages), help the poor and the sick, provide for orphans, or fund synagogues and schools. And so the medieval philosopher Maimonides argued, following Talmudic precedents, that insofar as Jewish communities in the Diaspora had coercive power, they could legitimately force their members to give tzedakah.

...

Pledge cards were distributed, filled out at the table, and then put in an envelope and passed to the head of the table. There sat the owner of one of the biggest stores in town -- let's call him Sam Shapiro. Sam knew everybody else's business: who was doing well and who was not, who was paying college tuition for their children, who had a sick mother, who had recently made a loan to a bankrupt brother, who had money to spare. He opened each envelope, looked at the pledge, and if he thought that it was not enough, he tore the card in half and passed it back down the table... What moral or philosophical principle was Sam enforcing? He probably could not have answered that question, but the answer seems obvious: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That line is from Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program. Sam was not a Marxist, not by a long shot, but he adjusted the demands he made on each of us to his knowledge of our ability to pay. And we all believed that the UJA would distribute the money to those most in need.

A strongly left-leaning thinker will find these principles easier to endorse than a right-leaning one; but Walzer is worth engaging even for those on the right. For example, he has this to say:

What does it mean to address the needs of the poor? This, too, is a question not only of charity but also of justice. Maimonides has a famous discussion of the eight levels of tzedakah, but only two need concern us here. The highest form of charitable giving, he wrote, is to set up a poor man in business or in work of some sort, to make him independent.

All of this talk of charity is directed toward a final assessment of humanitarian invasions. Walzer has an interesting history here, having strongly favored them before the Iraq war... and then, for reasons that strike me as being out of line with the principles he argued so well in Just and Unjust Wars, finding ways to oppose the invasion of Iraq. See what you think.

Piva

Piva:

Performed by Les haulz et les bas.

Elise

Elise:

I would just like to take a moment to point out that our friend Elise has been blogging again, including quite a bit of commentary on David Mamet's new book (which I haven't read, and am fairly certain not to read).

Her latest post is one that was written as a criticism of the Left, but that deserves a serious and thoughtful response from the Right -- and, indeed, from my part of the Right broadly considered.

A woman’s femaleness—and thus her sexual potential—is, in a patriarchy, always uppermost. A man can be a doctor, but a woman is a lady doctor. A man can be a lawyer, but a woman is a lady lawyer.

My sense is that it is true, even in the least patriarchal of societies, that sex has a fundamental place: in other words, that a man who is a lawyer is a man who is a lawyer even once we no longer deploy terms like lady lawyer.

This is because sex is part of one's first nature, as Aristotle puts it: the part of ourselves that we obtain from nature. 'Being a lawyer' is part of our second nature, which refines and (hopefully) improves upon our first nature; but it cannot supplant it. We should not expect it to do so, either for ourselves or for others.

Nor, indeed, should we wish to be able to blind ourselves to these basic differences. Over the last eight months, I've been reading a great deal of Hannah Arendt's work; and while I think I am ready to identify and explain just what it is about her approach that bothers me, I have also found in it a great deal to admire. She has a particularly convincing and persuasive argument that plurality should be recognized as the basic condition of the universe.

The fact that even our solitary consciousness divides itself when we are alone and in thought -- so that we can have a conversation with ourselves, and run the risk of falling into disharmony with ourselves -- is evidence that consciousness cannot operate properly without a plurality. There is a fundamental benefit, in other words, to having another consciousness with whom to compare notes; so fundamental that we are forced to replicate the experience even when we are alone.

Indeed, I think the argument is stronger than she makes it out to be, as she is trying to dissolve metaphysics and yet seems to have demonstrated a genuine metaphysical principle. This is an argument that approaches the mystery of creation; it explains why a unity (such as God is supposed to be by Augustine, Avicenna, and many others) would produce a plurality. The neoplatonic model usually asserts (as did Augustine) that it is simply 'abundant goodness' -- that the essential nature of the One is existence (which Augustine, Avicenna and Aquinas identify with the good), and that it 'has so much' existence that existence simply spills over.

God creates, that is, because He cannot do otherwise; it is His nature. Here is another way of approaching the point: a conscious mind, perhaps even a divine one, will instantly create a plurality when it is alone. Creation follows naturally from consciousness, not merely existence or goodness.

In any case, these are very high metaphysical arguments for taking differences seriously, and seriously valuing them. This is true even for our enemies, whom we are rightly told we should love. How fine it is to have a worthy enemy, who will push you to strive for your own best! How fine it is to have a wicked enemy, who gives as a free gift the opportunity to strike a blow for what is right and just! Life offers nothing finer. We rightly love the ones who give us that adventure.

We who are men should likewise love women, precisely because they are different from ourselves. The opportunity to learn from women is a great gift to men, precisely because it offers another and different view on the world (or, if you wish to continue framing this in the rather stronger and more useful theological terms, this divinely-blessed creation). They can see in places where we are blind; and vice versa.

This does not escape the perils of having a first nature that can be improved but not discarded. Rather, it accepts those first natures as part of the order of the world: and it accepts them in large part because it begins to see the benefit that goes with the hazard.

When Elise's favorite Lefist blogger writes, "As a feminist, I want women to be able to walk through the world as something more than just....", I understand and wish to accord with her. She should certainly have the right to be 'more than just...' her first nature, and should have the liberty to develop her second nature to its highest degree. I am glad to defend her rights in this regard.

I am furthermore glad to defend a space for those who share her first nature to walk through the world without being preyed upon by those who haven't properly tamed their own first natures. Valuable those these things are, they nevertheless are meant to be refined and trained by reason and discipline; though, those who will not are still valuable as enemies of the wicked type. Compartmentalizing sexuality isn't the same as denying first nature; it's an exercise of the virtue of moderation, which is surely the hardest and most excellent of the virtues.

This places me, I think, in the position of asserting that women have something uniquely valuable to offer humanity as women -- and that as a sort of metaphysical consolation prize for being unable to satisfy the desire for an escape from what her first author calls a 'ghetto.' Women can and should be free to walk the world 'not just' as women, but nevertheless as women. It is your charge and your honor to do it well or badly. I cannot and do not wish to offer men any greater freedom, for whatever that is worth.

The Deficit Crisis

The Deficit Crisis

Not just the budget deficit, but that other one: the attention deficit.

Now's when I'm really missing Fred Thompson as a candidate:

[T]his is . . . about more than winning the elections next year. We must win the argument upon which the necessity for spending reductions is based. . . . Economic numbers fluctuate. The principles on which our economic salvation rests do not.

Suppose Republicans win next year because we are “not the other guys.” Then what? Winning is necessary but not sufficient to save our country from fiscal disaster. Two years later the Democrats will still be offering free stuff and the postponement of pain. We can’t win the several subsequent elections that will be necessary to put us on the right path unless we win the war of ideas and develop the ability to explain why restraint and reform are necessary and that fostering a nation of free people, free markets, and the rule of law is not only morally just and right but is the only way to sustainable growth and prosperity.

It's the same problem I posed in the context of wars that require a purpose of more than two years' duration. The people have to have the purpose. We can't count on shifting elected leaders to embody it by themselves.

Afghanistan:

I am not currently free to discuss this subject, but I would like to hear what the lot of you think about it. Here are some others' thoughts.

STRATFOR:

...as the process of pulling back accelerates and particularly as allied forces increasingly hunker down on larger and more secure outposts, their already limited situational awareness will decline even further, which opens up its own vulnerabilities.

One of these will be the impact on not just situational awareness on the ground but intelligence collection and particularly exploitable relationships with local political factions. As the withdrawal becomes more and more undeniable and ISAF pulls back from key areas, the human relationships that underlie intelligence sharing will be affected and reduced. This is particularly the case in places where the Taliban are strongest, as villagers there return to a strategy of hedging their bets out of necessity and focus on the more enduring power structure, which in many areas will clearly be the Taliban.

(Obama's Afghanistan Plan and the Realities of Withdrawal is republished with permission of STRATFOR.)

The Washington Post:

PRESIDENT OBAMA failed to offer a convincing military or strategic rationale for the troop withdrawals from Afghanistan that he announced Wednesday night. In several ways, they are at odds with the strategy adopted by NATO, which aims to turn over the war to the Afghan army by the end of 2014. For that plan to succeed, military commanders believe that U.S. and allied forces must hold the areas in southern Afghanistan that have been cleared of the Taliban through this summer’s fighting season as well as that of 2012. They also must sweep eastern provinces that have not yet been reached by the counterinsurgency campaign.

By withdrawing 5,000 U.S. troops this summer and another 5,000 by the end of the year, Mr. Obama will make those tasks harder. By setting September 2012 as a deadline for withdrawing all of the 33,000 reinforcements he ordered in late 2009, the president risks undermining not only the war on the ground but also the effort to draw elements of the Taliban into a political settlement; the militants may prefer to wait out a retreating enemy. It also may be harder to gain cooperation from Pakistan, whose willingness to break with the Taliban is linked to its perception of U.S. determination to remain engaged in the region.

Richard Cohen, at least, is very happy:

The American Century just ended. This was the phrase coined by Henry Luce, which so aptly described America as the modern-day colossus, more powerful than any nation had ever been. Wednesday night, President Obama said that power had reached its limit. He was bringing 10,000 troops home from Afghanistan. The war was not finished, but we are.

“America, it is time to focus on nation building at home,” the president said.

There it was, the theme of the speech. We had done what we could in Afghanistan, and there was, of course, more to do. But the purse was empty and the nation was tired -- this is me, not Obama, talking, but he said much the same thing. “We must be as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute,” Obama said. In other words, we are going to pick our fights more carefully, and when we do, we can use the new weaponry of drones and the units of SEALs and such. No need for massive armies anymore. From the president’s mouth to God’s ear, I would add.

A Historic Moment:

A Turkish admiral sails into Abu Dhabi "for the first time in centuries," says the news; and longer still since one was welcomed!

Just how long? I'm not sure: This might be a starting point for figuring that out.

Singing in the Rain

Singing in the Rain:

A local theater was showing it tonight; I didn't get by, but I regret that I couldn't make the time. It was a favorite of my mother in law's, and a classic of American culture.



The idea of watching it in a historic theater, today, reminds me of a scene in The Professional, in which Leon goes to a similar theater alone. An immigrant alone in New York without good English, he has no human connections; and the scene shows him sitting in the theater by himself, face alight with joy, looking cautiously at the few others in the theater in the hope of seeing that joy reflected. The look is cautious, from that old human fear of intrusion into the business of others: the fear of rejection and exclusion.

The one scene and the other play off each other well. I am sorry that I can't find the right clip online so that I could show them both to you: a scene of transcendent joy, and a scene of very ordinary isolation and fear even in the presence of that joy.

The Spider & the Diving Bell

The Spider & the Diving Bell

This Discover Magazine site's column called "Not Exactly Rocket Science" is one of the best finds I've made in a long time. Check out this piece on a spider that blows an underwater bubble and uses it as a kind of detachable gill organ.

Every week the author lists a couple of dozen links to a variety of articles by others as well, like this link to an amputee who tattooed his remaining shoulder to look like a dolphin, or this one about levees and the illusion of flood control. It's easy to get lost here.

Birds Do It, Bats Do it

Birds Do It, Bats Do It

Do our bodies contain an ancestral but atrophied gift for "seeing" magnetic fields? Birds navigate with the aid of a protein in their retinas called cryptochrome, which is sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field and therefore serves as a built-in compass. And it's not just birds that can do this trick but bats, turtles, ants, mole rats, sharks, rays, and flies. What's more, the molecule that confers the sensitivity is "an ancient protein with versions in all branches of life," including humans. Drosophila flies can be trained by artificial magnetic fields to search for food in a particular direction. Remove the gene responsible for their cryptochrome and they lose the ability -- but it can be restored by giving them human cryptochrome.

Even if human bodies contain a retinal molecule that is sensitive to the angle of the magnetic field, that doesn't mean that humans have (or still have) a sensory and neural apparatus that permits them to translate the molecule's sensitivity into a useful perception. There has been limited, and disputed, research into whether some people have a robust sense of direction that can't be explained by visual cues. The investigation is complicated by the possibility that any magnetic/directional sense we do have is tied to the retina and therefore hard to untangle from ordinary visual clues. Still, the possibility of these mysterious ninja talents always enchants me.

Related: From a link at the same site, an article about echolocation and the "the brain’s extraordinary flexibility and power to squeeze perception out of a range of information streams, some of which are normally non-conscious to us." Some great video there: