Something Important about Rick Santorum

MEGADETH endorses him!



No, not that.

Actually, the news story that I found most striking today was this description of his economic plan.  Now, his plan is interesting to me because it does several things that are outside the usual playbooks for either party:

[In addition to cutting spending by $5T in five years he wants to flatten the tax code...]  

His plan would also likely mean a cut for many of the tens of millions of households making between $17,400 and around $50,000. They'd presumably fall into the 10 percent bracket, down from the 15 percent rate they currently pay. In keeping with his traditional views on social issues, Santorum also wants to encourage family formation (he and his wife have six children themselves), by tripling the personal deduction for each child, and by scrapping marriage tax penalties. 

Unlike Mitt Romney, Santorum has said he opposes a rise in the minimum wage, although he wouldn't scrap the concept altogether, as some in his party would. As well as auditing the Fed, he'd have it focus only on controlling inflation, and not on promoting employment. Santorum supports Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to save money by transforming Medicare into a system of private insurance. And like every 2012 Republican presidential candidate current or former, he'd repeal President Obama's health-care law. 

So far, that's a plan that sticks pretty closely to the standard GOP script. But other aspects of Santorum's proposal set him apart from his party, by grappling with issues of concern to Americans further down the economic spectrum. 

Again like most of his GOP rivals, Santorum would lower the corporate tax rate. But he'd establish two new rates: 17.5 percent -- a 50 percent cut from the current 35 percent rate -- for most businesses, and zero for manufacturers. The goal, his website says, is to "multiply job opportunities for struggling middle-income families and renew communities that have lost critical manufacturing jobs." 

In campaign appearances and debate performances, Santorum has often appeared eager to reinforce that focus on restoring middle-class jobs -- implicitly bucking the standard Republican line that derides issues of economic inequality and mobility as class warfare. 

"We need to talk about income mobility," he implored his party at a Republican debate on economic issues in November, noting the sky-high jobless rate for Americans without college degrees. "We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family."  

By the same token, Santorum hasn't shied away from mentioning poverty. "I don't believe that poverty is a permanent condition," he declares in the plan. "How do we effectively address poverty in rural and urban America? We promote jobs, marriage, quality education and access to capital and embrace the supports of civil society."

Now, since we're in the middle of a bruising primary battle, let's assume that whomever the final nominee happens to be will adopt the best ideas out of all the competing plans to take forward to the general election. What are the best ideas here? What might need to go?  What do other candidates have that you'd like to see added to the final plan?  For example, do you like minimum wage increases, or do you prefer to avoid them, or would you like to see the minimum wage discarded entirely?

Do you like the concept of fighting poverty by promoting marriage -- we've often seen good evidence that getting and staying married is among the most crucial factors in staying out of poverty.  Will increasing the incentives for marriage cut poverty?

What about the tax benefit for kids?  It appears he is proposing a deduction increase that can only answer to your actual liability, rather than an increase in the Child Tax Credit that (like the EITC) it can bring a "refund" even though you didn't pay the taxes in actual dollars.  At the lower end this might move some families off welfare; although some on the right regard the EITC-type plan as a form of welfare, since it results in transfer payments to poorer families.

I don't think I agree, though, because families raising children is what produces the best and most successful citizens, who will go on to pay taxes in the future.  It is therefore a kind of public good, in that all of us reap the benefits whether or not we pay into it (at least, all of us who live long enough to go on Medicare, or drive on the highways).  It's something we might reasonably support, not out of charity, but because it's the right thing to do, and because -- like making sure children are educated -- it works to the benefit of all of us.

Anyway, it's an interesting set of proposals.  What ideas did other candidates have you'd like to see added? Which of these ideas do you not like, and why?

The Status of the Infinite

A friend of mine who is a professor, and a specialist in the philosophy underpinning mathematics, told me that the major debate in that philosophy is over the status of the infinite.  You can see why:

 [T]he more that physicists stopped worrying about what their complicated equations meant and simply ran the numbers, the more progress they made. Some of their predictions have now been confirmed by experiments to 10 decimal places or more— the most accurate predictions in history.  

Real objects cannot have infinite charge or mass or whatever. But when scientists in the 1950s started calculating those quantities with their latest and fanciest theories, infinities kept sprouting up and ruining things. Rather than abandon the theories, though, a few persistent scientists realized that they could do away with the infinities through mathematical prestidigitation. (Basically, they started calculating with and canceling out infinity like a regular old number, normally a big no-no.) 

No one liked this fudging, but because it led to such stunningly accurate answers, scientists couldn’t dismiss it. In fact, the reigning paradigm in physics today—which describes the workings of invisible “fields” (similar to magnetic fields)— would not exist without this hand waving. And now physics is stuck with fields: they’ve become more fundamental to understanding the universe than mass or charge. Fields have become the very fabric of reality—even if our understanding of them relies on some unrealistic assumptions.

So what's the problem with infinity?  Let me offer a couple of starting points at getting at an answer to that question -- both of them discovered not in modern philosophy, but in Ancient Greek.

The first one is the problem the article cites -- theoretically, actual infinities shouldn't exist.  Aristotle explained why potential infinities could exist, and you probably know at least one of the arguments:  if you have a number, you can always divide it in half.  Thus one can be divided into 1/2, then 1/4, and so on forever.  The other kind he recognized was like this:  if you have an actual universe with the size of two, you can divide it into half, and then take the second half and divide it in half, so that now you have divide out one and a half from the total; and then again, so that you have divided out one and three quarter from the total; but you will never reach two.  Two is thus a kind of infinity, since you can never get to it; but it is not an actual infinity.  (As the Stanford article points out, however, this is not consistent with Aristotle's idea that the universe was eternal -- and that there must have been, therefore, an infinite number of days.)

These are not actual infinities, because you have really only the thing you are dividing and it is of determinate magnitude.  If the universe is not infinite, you should not be able to get to infinitely large magnitudes.  It is only through infinite division that there should be even a potential infinite.

(The concept we learned in grade school -- that given any number, you can always add one more -- is another kind of potential infinity.  It deals only with imaginary objects, not "real objects," which we would like to believe are finite).

The other starting point for the problem are Zeno's paradoxes.  Zeno's paradoxes of motion show that, if things are infinitely divisible, motion should be impossible.  Since a distance is a length, and a length is the kind of thing that should be infinitely divisible (one mile into half a mile, etc.), it should be the case that motion is not possible.  For say that you divide the line into an infinite number of points.  For motion to be possible, you'd have to pass from one point to the next.  But there is no "next" point if there is a true infinity, because you can always divide the distance between them in half.  Thus, between any two points are an infinite number of points.  (For further discussion, see the second paradox of motion.)

Likewise time should be divisible (a minute into half a minute, etc).  This provides its own problem, since we think motion takes place in time (indeed, Aristotle thought that time was the counting of motion).  So if we divide time down to the smallest possible increment, either a flying arrow is frozen in time and space, or it moves.  If it moves, though, our instant of time must have a start and a finish -- which means it should be further divisible, contrary to our assumption that this was the smallest possible division.  Therefore, we should get to a division in which motion isn't possible; but if time is composed of moments in which no motion is possible, how could motion be possible at all?  

The rest of Zeno's paradoxes, and the thinking of Parmenides and several others, posed real challenges for any system that includes infinities, but also for any system that includes multiple things.  The upshot of both is that reality only makes sense if it isn't really divisible, but finally unified.  Aristotle argues against this in Physics I, in part from the obvious rejoinder:  well, but we see motion all the time.  Thus, motion and time must be real; we all agree on it.

For many years we've followed Aristotle's basic solution by assuming that real (i.e., actual) infinities didn't exist.  Now, however, we find that we are able to make scientific predictions that are far more accurate than anything in human history... but only by assuming the infinite with real objects.

That's a problem.  It's a problem because it means that the most accurate science in the world is founded on assumptions that we have some good reason to think are impossible.

What does it mean if they're not?

A Cup of Mead To Warm the Heart on St. Valentine's Day

Allow me to offer a toast.  Let us drink to the best and noblest of women.  Naturally, I mean my own.  (But if you direct that toast towards another in your heart, you may trust that I will not pry.)

To the ladies who join us here in the Hall, let me thank you for your friendship and kindness.  I will not toast you, but only because you may not drink a toast to yourself -- and I would want to share the wine with you fairly.  Wæs Hæl!

The Return of Elise

Those of you who have been anxiously awaiting Elise's return from exile will find that she is up and running again.  She has a simple solution to the current debate about contraception:  Catholics should stop providing charity.

There is a sense in which that solves the problem, but it doesn't, really.  The problem isn't even employer-sponsored health insurance, although that is part of the problem.  Moving it to the government doesn't relieve anyone who pays taxes of material support for abortion.  That's why there are always debates about taxpayer support for abortions.

What really would work is for everyone who takes the provision of contraception and abortion to be a sacred duty to provide them on a charitable basis.  Just as the Catholics are providing hospital care to the poor, you too can give your money and time away.  If it is really that important to you, there are plenty of people out there right now who would be only too happy to accept your donation.

Then everyone who wants to obtain these things can obtain them; and everyone who wants to support them can support them; and no one is forced to violate his or her conscience over it.

The first step is to accept that some people really do believe that abortion is a moral horror, and that it isn't right to make them participate in it.

If you can't accept that, well, Elise has another good point  that might convince you instead.

"She loves another. She thinks it is you."

When better than Valentine's Day to discuss adultery? Belladonna Rogers at PJ Media ran a column last week about whether an adulterer should make a clean breast of things to his/her spouse. Honestly, I don't know. I'm inclined to think, as I commented there, that you can camouflage part of yourself, but you can't replace it with something real. So your spouse will detect the blank, dead spot without necessarily knowing what's wrong. I suspect the dead spot is more dangerous than the adultery.

In today's follow-up column, Ms. Rogers holds to her original advice that confession is merely self-indulgent and cruel to the wronged spouse. Checking again on last week's comments, I found this very thoughtful one:

[To] carry off an affair, [the adulterer who started this discussing by asking Rogers for advice] had to feel entitled to this misbehavior. To what does he feel entitled? Not all entitlements are bad. He might feel entitled to be swept away by a grand passion. He might feel entitled to lots of worshipful attention. He might feel entitled to more sex. He might feel entitled to stress relief. Who knows? It’s worth asking, framed that way -- to what does this man feel entitled, enough to violate the terms of one of the very few vows he’s made in his life. Seriously -- we watch vows from Crusaders, and comic book avengers, and nuns and scarlett o’hara’s calorie count . . . but we only make one or two in our life. What sort of entitlement makes it easy to disregard that vow?

Sinner is also in thrall to some particular bad ideas in circulation. Love conquers all, love excuses all, I couldn’t help myself, affairs are sexy, while married love is boring . . . who knows? It’s all on sale in hollywood, so there’s a chance the guy is just a sucker for pop-culture. He might want to consider what influences he succumbed to. Did he go looking? “Dear penthouse letters. . . . I never thought it could happen to me . . . .” I think it’s kind of funny, b/c what I get out of it is nearly an animist belief that the whole world is one pulsing orgasmic reality slightly covered with clothes and manners. If he keeps the attitudes, without examining them -- he might think he’s enslaved to the boring woman and has heroically given up wildly satisfying sex, sacrificed any possibility of his own happiness . . . it’s worth checking, to see what he thought about all of this . . . .

. . . The pain is realizing that [your wronged wife is] in love with a different man -- the good man you might have been. You are experiencing, possibly, a form of jealousy: she loves another. She thinks it is you. That’s a poetic form of justice, don’t you think?

Why not fit his face onto yours, and pretend to be him? A good, honorable, decent, loyal, faithful man. At some point, the mask might become true, and your smaller, meaner, more selfish self will have crawled into a corner, to not be appreciated, or see the light of day in all his meagre dragony glory. To be unknown, as you sought to reveal yourself, you must admit, is a sort of punishment. To not be accepted just as you are, as incontinent, weak, helpless . . . it’s every infant’s nightmare. you’ve just dressed it up in grownup clothes.

Your wife loves another man. You could have been him, but you aren’t. That’s the burden you are trying to cast off -- you’re jealous of him, the one she knows and loves . . . .

Don’t confess, and kill the other, honorable man. Behave as if he were you. You are his doppelganger. Do him proud, Joseph Conrad tough-man proud. You’ll have the chance to grow to be honorable.

“Guinevere”

Wond’rous bird, she dwelt in a land

With such glory as beauty assured.

Her wild song rang a golden strand;

Her throat band bright as swords;

To her grey tail did eyes return,

To a breast as rich as summer corn.

Two great birds fought for her love;

Chatter’d and clash’d like summer gale,

Till whole of flock they fought above;

Claw and feather like knives in mail:

So one beak found the road severe,

So one great heart did know its spear.

Heart-sent blood shone on the snow,

Horror sent the winged beauty away.

She sought a perch where she in woe

Suffered through her heart’s decay;

And in molt her feathers fell,

And in grief she long would dwell.

Brave victor, he had lost his love

And sought a quiet place alone,

Bearing wounds he died thereof;

And she who far from him had flown

Whiten'd in molt till feathers new

Were pure and shining as the dew.

Far and high men saw her glow

Alit on tree at mountain peak,

Feathers colored as grey old snow,

Ashen from tail to start of beak;

Beauteous sorrow became her fame,

But from that hour, she never sang.

It'll Soon Be Valentine's Day...

...so here's to beauty and horsepower, two of the great loves of my life.









UPDATE:  These two are not of the same type, but I think they are worthy additions.  The first captures the beauty of horsepower (hat tip: BSBFB).  The second, some rising beauties of courage and skill.

A Test for an Old Proverb

'A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.'

Guess we'll find out!

A new friend

We've adopted a 10-month-old black lab from the son of some friends. Like a lot of kids of college age, he didn't understand how hard it would be to raise and train a young dog while attending classes and moving from one student apartment to another, letting her be babysat here and there by a whole series of friends and relatives.

I'm sure he must have taught her something, but it's not apparent what. She didn't understand about water at all. Now she's learning what to do in the little bits of pond we have left after our long drought, though she stills swims like a puppy, all frantic splashing. The notion of retrieving is just bubbling up from her genes into her consciousness like a revelation. She heels about as well as a raccoon. I know she'll settle down quickly, though, once she gets used to her new, more consistent home. There are lots of woods to run around in and exercise that bursting youth and strength. She needs to smell everything and learn that it's hers. She needs to know that we're her pack now.

Our two other dogs are adjusting, one easily and one with difficulty (pretty much blowing things out of both ends all over the carpet; use your imagination; let it run wild). Even the one with the delicate sensibility will come around soon, though, if past dog additions are any indication. Luckily I don't object much to dog messes.

This is the first time I can remember that we took in a dog more on my husband's initiative than on my own. I was prepared to let our friends find a home for this pretty dog somewhere else. I'm always up for another dog, though, and so was thrilled when my husband suggested it. (What could be better than a husband who adopts dogs?) It just means going back on puppy discipline: no leaving out balls of yarn or books until we can explain to her how she must act.

Speaking of animals, I got to cuddle a small boa constrictor this weekend.

More Sweet for Hate and Heart's Desire

Dad29 sends some words from Dr. Russell Kirk:

We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true place in our culture only when many more of us are obedient to Love.

"What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. 

He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

Well, now.  What ought a man to hate?

Not his enemy, to be sure!  Jesus said "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you[.]  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?"

Chesterton put it into verse, a verse that all of you know well:

How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,

Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

If it is not the enemy, it is his evil; and you must hate the evil while loving the man.  This is fitting, for he ought to hate your evil -- and all of us have evil within us -- while loving you.

Follow the first link on the sidebar under "Chivalry," and you will find this:

 If I am to love a man, I must love him as he is; yet if I am to love him as I love myself, then I may fight with him to the degree that I would fight myself. I may even kill him, if there are things I would rather kill myself than be guilty of having done.  

If I can but forgive his soul, I am doing all that is asked in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If I can do that, then we may fight each other as hard as needs be -- and we may even love the chance to strike a blow for what is right, best, just. Even the most wicked man is therefore lovable, insofar as he gives us the greatest opportunity to create good in the world. Even our own capacity for sin is lovable, for the same reason. 

We are meant to hate the evil, but love the man. We often find evil in ourselves, which we should hate; and we should seek mercy for it. Yet we might also remember the good that comes of it. Another man, evil in his way, fights against us in his own glorious cause. For a moment, while he is fighting the evil in us, that wicked man is bright.

So, there are two lessons of substance here.  The first is this:  One of the things we might forgive God for is the idea of original sin.  For if it were not for the evil in us, others would not have the chance to strive brightly against a terrible foe.

The second is the answer to a question Cassandra once asked:  'Why can't we just do the right thing, because it is the right thing?'  The answer is that, if we did -- if we did just that -- no one would have the chance to brighten their spirit.

The evil in us bends to the good of others, and so even it is worth loving, in its way.  

The Old Wound

A new paper asks, 'Who gave Arthur a Crippling Blow?' and answers that it was Saint George:

[W]ith the Norman Conquest, a new form of kingship was imposed on the English people. William I, for example, made far-reaching changes to solidify his regime-change, but at the same time showed less interest in England than in his own native Normandy. Lesyer says that for William, “England was a source of revenue, no more, no less.” 

Although subsequent monarchs were somewhat better on establishing positive relations with their English subjects, the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170 quickly led to the growth of his saintly cult and restarted pro-English views that had largely laid underground for the previous decades. Leyser makes a point of noting that it is “hard to find any English king who inspired affection,” and while countries like France produced hagiographies for some of their rulers, this did not exist in England. 

Leyser argues that it was also during this period that as the story of King Arthur became popularized by writers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, he began to be seen as the ideal king, who would return and right all the wrongs imposed on the English people – and that these wrongs often were committed by the present-day kings. For Leyser, nationalist sentiment emerged in opposition to the crown, with King Arthur one of the main representatives of these views.With this in mind, it is not surprising that many English monarchs were lukewarm to depicting themselves as a new Arthur, and it was during the reign of Edward III that another English hero was given more prominence – St.George, a soldier from late antiquity who became the focus of several hagiographic legends. King Edward did much boost the figure of St.George, as well as that of the Virgin Mary. He tied the fortunes of the Plantagenet family to these two saints, and used their cults to promote his own rule.Leyser concludes by noting that by the late Middle Ages it was St.George who became the leading symbol of the English nation, giving “a crippling blow on Arthur, from which he never recovered.”

One small problem with that thesis:  Edward III died in 1377.  Guess who was born about 1405?

Where Could Such An Obligation Arise?

The WSJ has an article today that Hot Air tagged "There is No Such Thing as Free Birth Control."  The article makes the point that someone has to pay for the birth control or abortifacients that come with insurance plans, and since the insurers are going to be tasked to provide it at no cost to the end user, that means that the cost will be hidden and distributed into the costs of the plan.  It has to be that way, because the stuff costs money:  someone has to pay for it.

The point of the article is that this continues to violate the religious freedom of Catholics, who are commanded by their faith not to materially support abortion, contraception, etc.  That's true, of course, but it's not what interests me.

Rather, the Hot Air tag to the article suddenly made me realize how odd it is to expect to receive something expensive for free.  It's not usually the case that you obtain expensive things for free.

The argument seems to be that it's important for women, so therefore it should be free to women.  There are lots of things that are at least as important, though, that we certainly don't expect to be free:  food, for example, or sufficient clothing for the winter.  The argument seems to be that birth control ought to be free (and indeed it is, in the form of abstinence, a form of birth control that Catholics consider it a virtue to materially assist:  but I digress).  It ought to be free, and any employer ought to be sure that any of their employees receives it as free.

This is really an astonishing demand.  I could understand demanding it at cost:  we could structure an argument whereby insurance companies are understood to receive a reasonable profit, and as part of the price of approving the practice of the business in the state, we mandate that they arrange to provide certain critical medications to their consumers at cost.  We might ask, even then, why birth control or abortifacients would be the medicine we chose to occupy this position of special importance -- surely life-saving drugs would be a more worthy choice?  Still, at least at cost could conceivably be a reasonable demand.

Free, though?  Nothing is free.  Everyone knows this.

There is a parallel with last week's Komen feud, in which it was asserted that -- having once given Planned Parenthood money -- a kind of moral obligation existed to continue providing money for free.  Now we have an obligation, apparently on all of us who participate in employer-sponsored health plans, to provide pills for free.

How could any of us have come under an obligation to provide these things for free?  How could such an obligation arise?  "By law" is not an adequate answer, but it appears to be the only one.

UPDATE:  An answer of sorts comes in this piece from Think Progress:

Manmade global warming is one of the most troubling symptoms of economic and social injustice around the planet, and the ”countries in the developing world least responsible for the growing emissions are likely to experience the heaviest impact of climate change, with women bearing the greatest toll.” Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson discussed at the Durban climate conference last December:

In addressing climate resilience, Robinson stressed the importance of focusing on health and burden impacts of climate change. One of the keys is access to reproductive health for women.

If all the assumptions made here were true, it would perhaps provide a ground from which an obligation of this sort could arise.  We could point to a common good -- the survival of the planet -- which might obligate all of us to contribute to it.  It might even be a good of a high enough order to explain why we would prefer the Pill to life-saving drugs.

Of course, all of these assumptions are controversial, so the ground is an unsteady one to say the least.  Nevertheless, this kind of argument grounds support for families:  we distribute the costs of public education to everyone, not just families with children, because we recognize that we all have a stake in ensuring that the next generation comes, and is educated and capable of undertaking the work of continuing the civilization.  Education is not free -- you must pay property taxes if you own property, and frequently also sales taxes, to support the local schools.  Still, it is offered below cost, which means that the cost is distributed.

The argument for public support of contraception and abortifacients is even stronger, since it demands that these things be free.  I would like to say that the two policies are different as well in that the one is in support of flourishing families and fecundity, while the other is in support of withering and barrenness; which is to say, that the difference is between life and death.  That may not be fair, though; if the supporter of free birth control believes that the planet shall otherwise die, they are in a fashion on the side of life.  They simply believe that life will not be possible but for a very few of us, on very much more parsimonious terms.

It's Eighteen Degrees Outside... What Should We Do?

Well, now, that depends on whether you are in Sweden...



...or New Jersey.



Actually, maybe there's not so much difference after all.

(H/t BSBFB).

Via Cassandra

In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. 

Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay's daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend's missing daughter. Romney's accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could, prostitutes, drug addicts, anyone. 

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney's former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter's life, saying, "It was the most amazing thing, and I'll never forget this to the day I die."...

Gay says Romney helped "save" his daughter, though previous reports have differed on the condition she was in. The line in the retelling now circulating -- that doctors told Gay she might not have lived another day -- comes from a Boston Globe report in 2002.

Newsday, for its part, reported in July 1996 that "Melissa's parents said she was physically unharmed though she appeared 'very fragile.' The family's doctor had examined the girl and pronounced her in fairly good condition. ..."

"She was not harmed," Robert Gay said at news conference after she was found, according to the New York Daily News. "She was in tears. We just gave her hugs and brought her back home." 

It's of no matter whether she was close to death or in 'fairly good condition,' since no one knew that until she was found.  The point is that this was a damn decent thing to do.  I'm going to rescind my absolute objection to voting for Romney on the basis of this, the story checking out as it appears to do.  It's a fit way for a man to have behaved toward his fellows, and it provides an answer to a question that has bothered me.  I think we now know whom he takes for his brother.

He's still not my candidate, on account of positive reasons to prefer Mr. Santorum, and other objections to Mr. Romney's approach that I reserve.  Nevertheless, such work should be rewarded, and it would be wrong not to recognize where a man has done a worthy thing.

Preparerent Se Viriliter Et Sapienter

Via Lars Walker (who notes that Troll Valley is now available as an iBook, if any of you are devotees -- apparently no links are required), a modestly large online version of the complete Bayeux Tapestry.

If you don't read Latin, you can find scene-by-scene translations of the text here.

The "Zweep" of Our Engines

The inimitable Iowahawk takes on the second annual preposterous "Detroit is A-OK" Superbowl spot:

Okay, yeah, so this isn't Detroit, it's actually New Orleans. So sue me. We were supposed to film this in Detroit, but GM rented it out to film their Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad.

I thought he was kidding about filming in New Orleans, but I guess not.

Proof that Gingrich Really Is Smart

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), engaged in a tit-for-tat race for the primary wins, will be addressing this CPAC conference in the grand ballroom, giving impassioned speeches in an 11th-hour effort to convince conservatives that each is the right candidate to defeat President Obama. 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be making his case over pizza and happy hour brews. 

The Newt 2012 campaign distributed a flier... leading up to the big, bold event: a pizza party with Newt at a nearby Italian kitchen on Connecticut Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

“There will be $2 beers, too,” the volunteer told me.

As is well known, all the real progress at conventions and conferences happens at the bar afterwards.

The War in the Mind

A remarkable post on martial arts called The Pleasure of Drowning deals with the self-deception that comes from teaching your students how to fight you.  Here is a master of Aikido whose students have learned that they had best evade his every hint if they are to avoid a painful reprisal:



And here is what happened when he faced another master, who did not have that barrier of fear in the mind.



The author says that the students were complicit, but in fact they probably had each learned painful lessons in the face of the master, so that they were eager to avoid each of his strokes.  The competitor who had learned his own art did not come up with that fear of the master, and so beat him with ease.

There is a lesson here; there are several.  What are they?

An Invitation

I've written a small work of Arthurian fiction, on the order of a modest novel.  I think it would benefit from the critical eye of careful readers, and their healthy feedback.  If any of you would be interested, please let me know and I will arrange to send you a copy of the book.

On the Stakes in the Current Election

You've doubtless seen the news from yesterday; obviously I am pleased to see Mr. Santorum do well.  The key thing about yesterday's events, though, is not that they change the race all that much:  they put Mr. Santorum in the lead in terms of the number of states won, but given the structure of the primary that has no bearing on who actually becomes the nominee.

What it may do is give him the airtime he needs to become better known to the voters.  There is a certain sense in which our archetypes about how stories should be told influence our view of the world.  News stories about elections almost always take on the form of The Favorite and The Underdog; this race so far has been chiefly about competition for the role of The Underdog.  If yesterday cements Mr. Santorum in that role, we'll be ready to tell the story; much of The Favorite's strength comes from the fact that he has had no clear challenger, but rather a series of characters moving in and out of the role.

Though I often write about elections, it is not my habit to participate more than by voting.  This year may be different.  We are seeing a substantial fracture in the Democratic coalition because of the Obama administration's move to force Catholic charities to do things that are sins according to Catholic doctrine.  Much has been written about that lately, and I don't have more to add to it than to say that it is an important question in determining the degree to which we expect religion's submission to the state.  It is a difficult moral question even for Army chaplains who have binding oaths in both directions; but private citizens engaged in a religious charity have only one such binding obligation, and it is not to the state.

This is an attempt to redefine a basic part of the bargain at the root of our social contract.  John Locke wrote of his desire to see churches give up all coercive force to the state, in return for freedom from coercion in matters of faith.  The state's lane does not include using its coercive force to command a voluntary religious society into sin.  This is something we ought all to oppose, and I think Mr. Santorum is uniquely placed to do so.  (However, in fairness, I would like to note that Mr. Romney's organization believes its record on the same issue in MA has been distorted in the press; scroll to "Another false claim" for his perspective on the matter.)

We have always opposed the Affordable Health Care Act, precisely because massive Federal involvement in health care entails loss of freedom in the most intimate areas of our lives.  The loss of practical religious freedom is only the first such command.  If we are not successful, others will follow.