A Wonder, Of Sorts

Thank you, Ms. Garofalo, for your kind opinion of your fellow Americans.

The thing is, I think there is a funny parallel within the GOP to Ms. Garofalo's reading.  The thing behind the "Herman Cain can't win" concept is that Republicans also assume that some racist sentiment will keep Cain from winning.  The lesson of the Florida straw poll is that, actually, once people get together they realize that he has an extraordinary amount of support.  Once people realized that their fellow Republicans weren't as racist as they expected them to be, Cain won in a walk.

The shock, apparently even to Republicans, is that there is very much less racism within the Republican party than they expected to find.  Everyone feared everyone else, but in the end, it proved that their hearts were all in the right place.

That was surely a wonder:  like the coming of dawn after a long night.

In God We Trust

Walter Russell Mead makes an interesting point.

In ancient times, the damage to two unique symbols of national identity by something as rare as an East Coast earthquake which did little or no damage to more pedestrian and less symbolic structures would have been highly noteworthy.  We would be rending our garments, consulting the Sibylline books and repenting in sackcloth and ashes after so a clear a demonstration of divine wrath.

The phrase "In God We Trust" has an 18th century ring, he says, but it's actually a 19th century creation -- as a phrase associated with the United States government it dates, in fact, to the worst days of the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln clearly thought of what he was doing as reforging a broken compact with God.  He spoke of the horrors of the war in just this way.  Just a year after adopting the phrase "In God We Trust" for Federal money, he said in his second inaugural address:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 

It is true that the America of 2011 does not believe in anything like the fashion of the America of 1864.  The question Mead is drawing our attention to is the question of whether that is good, bad, or irrelevant.  It's an interesting question, since the powerful and wise of the hour seem to fall chiefly into either the "good" or "irrelevant" camps.

Quite Right

The worst argument against the death penalty, of course, is that it’s somehow awful for the state to kill people. Nation-states are all about killing people. They exist solely because they’re better at that, on a large scale, than any other form of human organization. Everything else is superstructure, and if they lose that edge it will fade away.

Instapundit, today.

Today's Headline

"Terrorist arrested in elaborate plan to cause minor cosmetic damage to government buildings."

It is good to love your enemies.  I love this one for designing a plan that, even if it had worked, would have had no effect whatsoever on America aside from a few days' employment for out-of-work construction contractors.  Also for finding a way to make Toys'R'Us into a supplier of dual-use technology.

Dear Mr. Fox...

...won't you guard our henhouse?

"I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that," North Carolina's Gov. Beverly Perdue said yesterday. 

That's just what our government needs:  less accountability for public officials.  Great idea, ma'am.

Bob Dylan and the Girl

You probably know this song.  If you don't much like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash did it; and if you don't like either of them, I've never met you.



Who is the girl?

History preserves her name.  She was Suze Rotolo:  "an American artist, but... perhaps best known as  Bob Dylan's girlfriend between 1961 and 1964 and a strong influence on his music."  She died, at 67, of lung cancer.

If you're like anyone, she is the one who grabs your eye when you look at the cover.  He looks like nobody; yet she was the influence, and he was the genius.  She didn't do anything we readily know of her own.  Most Americans could name another two or three of Dylan's songs; those of his generation, ten or more.

There's a lesson here, and it's an important one.  I'm not sure quite how to formulate it.  It seems improper, and insufficient, to say simply:  "The girl matters."  But she does, and surely more than we have any way to articulate.  She walked with him once, in a lane:  and he wrote songs for her.

What Justification?

Socrates was a troublemaker like this.



The man is a liar, too.  He tells you in the first few minutes that he is a Jew, but he is in fact an Evangelical Christian.

I'm not particularly interested in the last few minutes of the video, though, where he goes fishing for men.  I'm interested in the substance of his argument about... well, watch and see.  The important part stops about the 23rd minute.  There's a real problem in the analogy he's making, and I'm curious if you'll see it.

Reasons to Prefer Monogamy

In a prior post Grim asks, "Is there some fundamental reason to prefer monogamy, or is it just what we're used to seeing?" Perhaps more disturbingly, he asserts that there is no competing interest to be balanced against the expressed desire of a woman to be in a polygamous marriage. I can think of several fundamental reasons why a society might prefer monogamy. I can also easily think of a crucial competing interest: that of children born into polygamous marriages. Both points will be addressed below:

Reason #1 to prefer monogamy to polygamy: Inbreeding.

Doctors and family members interviewed by New Times say up to 20 children from families in the polygamist community are currently afflicted with the condition that requires full-time attention from caregivers. Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities.

"They are in terrible shape," says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. Aleck is a geneticist who participated along with Tarby and others in the groundbreaking study of several polygamous families with fumarase deficiency in the late 1990s.

There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level.

"But...", you say, "that's just one community". Except the same problems exist halfway across the world in Turkey. Different religion. Different culture. Same result:

Ayla has recently uncovered a disturbing side effect of polygamy and inbreeding.

Repeated intermarrying within families, typically between first and second cousins, has produced abnormally high rates of children with Downs Syndrome and Mediterranean anaemia.

Hmm... let's try a third continent:

Often it is not a question of remarriage but simply of inheritance, a widow being automatically transferred as wife to the man designated by the rules of succession. This implies a certain weakness or even the non-existence of prohibitions on marriages between affines; a man can inherit wives from his brother and from his father, although naturally his own mother is excluded. This practice, which is fairly frequent in Africa, flagrantly contravenes bothe the Christian and the Muslim teaching on incest.”

So much for that whole consent thingy. Wives are property....which brings us to reason #2.

2. Forced marriages and child brides.

Forced marriages, child brides, polygamy and arranged marriages between first cousins are some of the problems that Canadian immigration officials in Pakistan have to deal with.

3. Aging fathers + aging sperm = more birth defects. In societies where polygamy is common, men often continue to have children into their old age. Not only are older men unlikely to live long enough to ensure their latter born offspring are provided for, but their children face a higher risk of birth defects.

In a monogamous marriage, fertility is limited - naturally - by a woman's waning fertility and eventually, her inability to conceive. Not so when an 80 year old man can marry (and impregnate) a 12 year old.

4. Welfare and immigration issues. From communities where half the residents are on welfare and the majority of children live below the poverty level to Muslim immigrants who repeatedly return home (where polygamy is legal) and then bring their wives back to North America to collect welfare and state medical benefits to smuggling of child brides (gotta do something about that incest problem!), it's pretty clear that the rosy scenario of a rich, benevolent man supporting multiple wives and many children doesn't quite live up to the advertising.

5. Cost of living/stability: it costs more to support 3 wives and 15 children than one wife and 2 childen. The greater the number of dependents, the worse the consequences of financial reverses.

Not all rich men stay rich for life. What happens to all those wives and children when Daddy loses his nest egg? (see previous item)

6. Human nature/jealousy. Few women want to share a man. For that matter, few men want to share a woman. Pretty much every article I read pointed out that the Koran says the first wife must agree to a multiple marriage. And they all said that this is ignored in practice. Why? (hint: see item #8)

7. Parental neglect/children growing up with no father in their lives. Not recognizing your children when you meet them in the street is not a good thing:

Mehmet Arslan Aga, a sprightly, pot-bellied, 64-year-old Kurdish village chieftain from Isuklar, seems an unlikely defender of monogamy as he has five wives, 55 children, 80 grandchildren and a small army of servants. But he insists that if he had his time again, he would only marry once.

Although his large number of wives underlines his powerful status, he has found it a challenge to build each wife a house far from the others to prevent them from competing and struggles to remember all of his children's names.

He recently saw two young boys fighting on the street and intervened, breaking up the fight and telling them they would bring shame on their families. "Don't you recognize me?" one of them said. "I'm your son."

His biggest headache, though, he says, stems from jealousy among the wives, the first of whom he married out of love. "My rule is to behave equally toward all of my wives," he said. "But the first wife was very, very jealous when the second wife came. When the third arrived, the first two created an alliance against her. So I have to be a good diplomat."

Apart from the need to play marital referee, Mehmet, who owns land and shops throughout the region, says the financial burden of so many offspring can be overwhelming. He explained, "When I go to the shoe shop, I buy 100 pairs of shoes at a time. The clerk at the store thinks I'm a shoe salesman and tells me to go visit a wholesaler."

Despite his fecund lifestyle, Mehmet Aga acknowledges that polygamy is an outmoded practice and has taken personal steps to ensure that it is coming to a halt in his village. He has banned his own sons from taking second wives and is educating his daughters; he will not allow them to become second wives. He claims that his situation derives from his ignorance and the need to make tribal alliances. "I was uneducated back then, and Allah commands us to be fruitful and multiply, but having so many wives can create problems. If you want to be happy, marry one wife."

8. Lack of consent/willingness from the first wife. An old movie quote comes to mind:

"But we had a deal!"

"I have altered our arrangement. Pray I do not alter it further".

9. Gross power imbalance. A man and a woman who marry have roughly equal power. It is up to them to decide how it will be shared. In a marriage between one man and multiple women, the wife faces not only competition from her husband but competition from other wives eager to gain power/influence.

10. Divorce. It's a big enough problem now between monogamous couples. How is marital property equitably disposed of when there are multiple wives, each with children? If a woman wants to leave a polygamous marriage, her actions affect many more people. Maybe that explains why most societies that allow polygamy don't think a woman should be able to get a divorce (unlike men).

I can think of many more, but this has gone on long enough. This article has an example of a situation where polygamy seems to have worked out for all concerned. I'm sure there are others, but anecdotes are generally a pretty poor basis for public policy decisions.

Note: Because Grim's argument was rooted in the notion of what a woman thinks is good for her, I purposely did not consider the drawbacks for men (though I believe they exist and would have little problem coming up with a similar list from the male perspective).

"Beauty and Brutality"

An article from Medievalists.net, on 'Iceland's literary landscapes.'  It goes with this video, which is part of a new documentary.  The video is of very high quality, so try expanding it to full screen.

Variations

I'd have to say that Johnny Cash wins the prize on this one, by a good sight.  Still, in fairness, he had the advantage of being much older when he did it.

Probabilities

You may have seen this article on the probability of your existence written by a student at Havard.  (H/t Instapundit).

So what’s the probability of your existing?  It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice – and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.

A miracle is an event so unlikely as to be almost impossible.  By that definition, I’ve just proven that you are a miracle.

With all due respect to our friend at Harvard, that's wrong in two ways.

First, since you're reading the article, the probability of your existence is 1.

Second, though, what is the probability of existence itself existing?  1, by the same principle:  but if you're going to run the regress, and try to figure out what the probability-of-coming-to-exist was before it happened, you need to know something that in fact you do not and cannot know.  Heidegger said that the great question of metaphysics is "Why is there something rather than nothing?"  That isn't a question that admits of mathematical proofs, since mathematics doesn't exist until the universe and its laws exist.

Rhymes

Dr. Hanson does best when he writes about history, as he does this morning.

Whether at Byzantium during the Nika Riots or in bread and circuses Rome, when the public expects government to provide security rather than the individual to become autonomous through a growing economy, then there grows a collective lethargy. I think that is the message of Juvenal’s savage satires about both mobs and the idle rich. Fourth-century Athenian literature is characterized by forensic law suits, as citizens sought to sue each other, or to sue the state for sustenance, or to fight over inheritances.

The subtext of Petronius’s Satyricon is an affluent, childless, often underemployed citizenry seeking inheritances and lampooning the productive classes that produce enough excess for the wily to get by just fine without working....  

Western moral literature, from Horace to Thackeray, focuses on the vanity of the rich who think that a greedy heir won’t really inherit their hard-won or suspect riches, or that their always aging hips and knees will always so briskly power them up the monumental stairs of their colossal homes, or that a fifth sailboat or another 1000 acres will at last end the boredom. But the rub is not whether they are rich but whether they are idle, whether they send a message that affluence can make life better, rather than affluence is inevitably corrupting. In Suetonius’s Twelve Caesars, the theme is not just imperial decadence and cruelty, but also the blind passions of the mob that the elite so cynically manipulate for their own useless privilege and nonsensical indulgence.

Fortunately, he has a remedy to propose.

"A new tax code, simple rates, few deductions, everybody pays something; new entitlement reform, less benefits, later retirement; a smaller government, a larger private sector; a different popular culture that honors character rather than excess — all that is not, and yet is, impossible to envision. It will only transpire when the cries of the self-interested anguished are ignored."

That sounds right to me.

The Godfather

How many of you like Herman Cain, but think there's no point in taking him seriously because he can't win?

In the days before the vote, nearly all the delegates who voted for Cain either said or heard someone else say this: "I love Herman Cain, but he can't get elected." The assumption that Cain can't win the Republican nomination was a serious obstacle in their minds. But at some point late Friday and early Saturday, the delegates overcame that obstacle. Some concluded that since they had heard so many people speak well of Cain, he could indeed win, if everyone who liked him would actually vote for him.

Now that's interesting.

UPDATE:  Here is the video of Mr. Cain's remarks on health care at the recent debate.



I remember reading some posts by left-leaning writers, which I can't seem to find now, that pointed to these very remarks from the debate as the ones that made them angriest.  Their point, as I recall, was that nothing in Obama's plan would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.  I assume they believe this is true because the letter of the law does not do so.

However, it's hard to see how the plan avoids triggering the consequence, even if it does not state that it will do so.

Africa Leads the Way?

One of the stranger headlines today touts the fact that Africa is one of the bright spots in the global economy.  Why?  They ran out of money first, so they reformed first.

Developing countries from across the world, including Africa, are portraying themselves as "innocent bystanders" of the economic storm boiling out of Europe and the United States, and have joined the chorus calling on the European nations in crisis to bite the bullet of painful economic reforms.

"It is not easy, it is painful, and we went through the pain, and the Europeans must be prepared to go through the pain," African Development Bank President Donald Kaberuka told Reuters in an interview.

He said the reforms needed in the ailing southern European states involved the kind of overhauls of public finances and labor markets and other structural reforms that African nations -- with firm urging from the IMF and World Bank -- had tackled over the last two decades and now had results to show for it.

Fund and Bank experts say sound macroeconomic reforms and better budget management are some factors that have helped propel robust growth in sub-Saharan Africa since 2000.  This has given the region one of the brightest outlooks of any region amid the prevailing gloom.

So what kind of reforms did the IMF suggest, that produced these excellent results?

The IMF sometimes advocates “austerity programmes,” cutting public spending and increasing taxes even when the economy is weak, in order to bring budgets closer to a balance, thus reducing budget deficits. Countries are often advised to lower their corporate tax rate.

Really.  That sounds vaguely familiar.

Oh, in other news, President Obama gave a speech.  He says that the proposed GOP reforms would "cripple America."  Fortunately, he'll be there to keep those reforms from happening.

Polygamy in Georgia

From Atlanta's own Channel 2 news, a story that a school assignment is promoting Islamic polygamy:

Medlin showed Regan the assignment brought home by his 13-year-old daughter. The assignment consisted of a letter from Ahlima, a 20-year-old Muslim woman, and touts the advantage of a wearing a Burqa and finds the way western women dress to be "horribly immodest," according to the assignment. 

The assignment shows Ahlima saying she doesn't mind if her future husband takes more wives. "I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong," the assignment said... 

Another page of the assignment lists the seven conditions for women's dress in Islam, including:

-It cannot resemble the clothing of nonbelieving women

-It must protect women from the lustful gaze of men 

It also states, "Islam liberated woman over 1,400 years ago. Is it better to dress according to man or God?”

My favorite part of this story is the school's explanation for the assignment:  'to help students put the school dress code into context.'

Once I met a playwright from Al Kut who claimed he was going to seek asylum in America -- not from the Ba'athists, but from his two wives.  Apparently they were fine when they were alone together, but as soon as he walked in the door the jealousy and sniping began.

That said, it strikes me that there is a feminist argument for (as well as the more familiar feminist argument against) polygamy.  Naturally a woman wants to marry a man who has good bloodlines and who can provide for her and her children during the times when she is unable to do so.  Under monogamy, most women must settle for a man who is only average or below; but the richest men could more readily afford ten children than a poor man can afford one.  Since wealth is often correlated with self-control, hard work, and intelligence, one could argue that these men would also be better quality mates.

Why should a woman have to select an unmarried loser, just to preserve a level playing field for the men who are seeking wives?

Elise said a while ago -- I can't recall the exact context -- that it should matter to men who proclaim that they love the women in their lives that the women prefer monogamy.  Fair enough; but what if they didn't?  What if the woman, like Ahlima, happened to prefer to marry the best man even if he had another wife?  Polygamy at least preserves what marriage is for:  it binds families into new kinship bonds, and provides for the generations.  (Actually, one might put it the other way, and say that monogamy preserves what marriage is for, since polygamy may be the older and historically more-common form.)

Is it just Islam?  Apparently not, because people were just as upset when the Mormons proclaimed that polygamy was acceptable.  The Jews practiced it in the old days, and Christ used a polygamous bridegroom as the explanatory model for his church.  It can't be said to be un-Christian or irreligious, then; it's just, so to speak, un-American.

Or so it has been.  Is there some fundamental reason to prefer monogamy, or is it just what we're used to seeing?

The End of the World

Are you ready?

I mentioned in this space a few weeks ago the IMF’s calculation that China will become the planet’s leading economic power by the year 2016. And I added that, if that proves correct, it means the fellow elected next November will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world’s dominant economy. I thought that line might catch on. After all, we’re always told that every election is the most critical consequential watershed election of all time, but this one actually would be: For the first time since Grover Cleveland’s first term, America would be electing a global also-ran. But there’s not a lot of sense of America’s looming date with destiny in these presidential debates.... On Thursday night, there was a question on gays in the military but none on the accelerating European debt crisis. 

It's a small matter. If the world as we know it does end, all the gays will be involved in the war.

Down a Forest Service Road

Today I took the motorcycle up into North Carolina, across the rim of NC 106 toward Highland, and then down into the National Forest near Rabun Bald.  Forest Service Road 7 runs several miles through pure wilderness in northeast Georgia near the Bartram Trail.  

It's a rugged road, and it was an adventure getting down it on a motorcycle.  The last time I was on this road it was covered in snow, although I believe it was March or April.  We were in the truck, and came across a place where the road was blocked by a fallen tulip or maple tree.  I had a good Bowie knife, though, so I quickly cut the tree apart and we were on our way.

Well, today I had to do that again, only this time it was a red oak!  Fortunately, after I was about halfway through the tree and into the heart wood, a Ford F-350 came up the road from the other direction.  The two guys were older gentlemen revisiting a favorite camping spot from their youth.  They had been horse packers back then, and would ride into the wilderness for a week at a time:  but lately there are many more restrictions placed on horses in the national forest.  

Anyway, they had a big truck and a good rope, whereas I had only a motorcycle.  They put a rope on the tree and broke it where I'd cut it -- it was too big to simply pull out of the way -- and then the three of us pushed it off the road in the two pieces.   That saved me a good deal of time!

I also saw a fellow with a two-mule team moving the remains of a front-end loader, which I suppose didn't survive the mountains.  The mules did all right, though.  A couple of those mammoth jack mules can move just about anything you're likely to be inclined to move.


Mrs. Grim ran off with the camera this weekend, so I don't have any pictures for you.  Here's some music instead.  How about some bagpipes in honor of the soon-coming Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games?



Or maybe this one?

Or one more, since I ran across a rendition of "Scotland the Brave" on this very trip.

 

The Downgrade Simplified

From the Gator Gainseville Tea Party:

Why S&P Downgraded the US:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

That makes it pretty clear. (H/t D29.)

The Rose Abides

Retriever has written a moving post about death and loved ones. She ends:

Lately, I keep roaming around my familiar haunts with different cameras, setting myself ridiculous tests or trying out different lenses, simply to distract myself. As if one could frame the same reality and somehow change it. As if capturing a rose in bloom might preserve it, like something caught in amber. Forever on display. Either that or rot and decay. Everything hurtling to destruction, and so I snap from the careening car that beautiful view, that bird, that pair climbing the hill. The beauty we must not miss.

What if the rose is in no danger?

There is a school of metaphysics, whose claims are suggested by Einstein's special relativity theory, that holds that each of us exists as an object extended in four dimensions: the three you know, and time. Thus the rose exists as a kind of line, that begins the moment it takes on existence as an independent object -- say, the moment at which its genetic code is set, so that it is a new and distinct object with its own structure. The line, widening as the rose grows, extends to the moment that the rose dies.

Because this object contains all the time during which the rose exists, the object itself is static and unchanging. If you saw the rose in bloom, it is because your object snakes close enough to the rose, at a particular point upon the rose-object when the rose was in full bloom. If your object turns away from it, then, and goes home, it can snake back in the direction of the rose in a month or a year, and find it gone or rotting; and so you think the rose is lost.

But the bloom is not lost. It is there, in the object, now as forever. Nothing is lost, not ever.

So this school holds, at least.

Checking in with GWB

Walt Harrington is a reporter who knew the former President for a long time. How long?

In Midland all those years ago, the normal distance between prominent source and reporter didn’t apply, and W. invited me out to a Mexican restaurant with Laura and their four-year-old twin daughters, who got in trouble for throwing chips, were threatened with a spanking, and went home without dessert.

He stopped in recently to see his old friend, and report on how he's doing.

Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush looks great. Two years as a civilian have been good to him. His feet clad in golf shoes and up on his desk, he leans back in his chair, a well-mouthed, unlit cigar as a prop. At 7:45 A.M., he’s talking golf.

Golf is a fine pastime for a retired President.