Design

This delights me.  Would I buy it?  Well, no.  I'm not in the habit of paying $9K for a sofa, and this would fit very strangely in my home.  I'm just happy someone thought such a playful thing up.  Etsy is an entertaining site.

Look out

What were we saying about scratching that veneer?  When angry, grieving people start spontaneously singing patriotic songs, you're seeing bonding of a sort that may turn out very dangerous for the people who have angered and grieved them.

So, Why Wasn't There Top-Level Representation?

So, whether you agree that it's a good answer or a bad answer, you all know that there's an answer to this question: for two hundred years this year, the standards set by the Congress of Vienna make the Ambassador the personal representative of the chief executive and entitled to represent him and meet with his equals in his place. Therefore, there was top level representation in accordance with the accepted standards of international law in the modern era. "And so absolutely no slight should be read into this. The Ambassador is exactly the right person to attend in the absence of the head of state."

Why can't this woman give that answer?



Does she not know? I'm willing to excuse John Kerry for his ignorance, which is only to be expected. But if there's one person in the world who should be expected to know how to explain this, it's the spokeswoman for the US Department of State.

I'm done defending the administration here. Some foreign service officers in Paris got it right, and they apparently deserve a massive debt of their countrymen's gratitude, because they are the only ones in the entire government who seem to have known what the United States was supposed to do if the President decided not to come.

Two from Douglas

Tex was just saying she wanted to hear more from him on all subjects, and today he has sent me a couple of items for your consideration.

The first is an article on the differences between cops and soldiers, focusing especially on why it's OK for cops to engage in political processes like the mockery of the mayor. He invokes the Weberian point, which we have discussed here many times, that the state has 'a monopoly on violence.' I stand by my eternal rejection of that position, unless it is formulated in the specific way I just offered Tex in the comments to a recent post:

[I]t's not problematic if we say that citizens acting qua citizens can exercise that power. For example, citizens defending themselves from terrorist attacks! Or citizens acting in defense of the common peace and lawful order by using violence to stop crimes in progress, for that matter. And, of course, the militias of the several states, which can be called into Federal service.

Since the People are also sovereign, then, what we end up saying is just that the citizenry is sovereign over the monopoly on warfare. The state may be tasked to lead the effort, but that delegation can be withdrawn and the People resume their sovereignty should the state become tyrannical or nonfunctional[.]

That to the side, I see the point he's making. The police are civilians, and citizens, and should be free to behave in political ways within limits. My concern is that the NYPD may be more powerful than the mayor, so that they couldn't really be fired if they refuse to do their duty (just as they are plainly beyond his capacity to force to do their duty). On the other hand, the quasi-strike has actually improved things in New York without any increase in crime, at least so far. The mayor's office has found a way to retaliate, by denying leave requests until revenue collection returns to normal.

“Everyone here is under orders — no time off,” said one officer at the 105th Precinct in Queens. “And the majority of [new] summonses written aren’t protecting the public in any way. But now they’re realizing how much revenue the city is losing and they’re enforcing their will upon us.”

In once case, no police officer on duty was allowed to return to the precinct or even take a break until two summonses were logged, according to one source....

The station house has memos posted that notifies officers that no new vacation days would be approved beyond those which have already been approved. There would also be no sick days without a doctor’s note.

So it's proceeding less like a coup, and more like a labor dispute. That's not out of order.

The second thing Douglas sent was the following poster he made for us:

I like it.

Speaking of rough language

The Rotterdam mayor's response lacks nuance.

Dude

What's gotten into Venezuela's archbishops?  They're sounding like Milton Friedman.

She may get woolly

Young girls they do get woolly
Because they're under stress . . . yes . . . .

But law schools are on the job with therapy dogs.  Also with programs to avoiding triggering stress by forcing students to confront issues of law enforcement that might involve unpleasant behavior.

Actually, I like the dog idea, in this and just about every other situation.

Evidence of Absence

Apparently, John Stewart agrees with Tex.

Let's Play A Game

In the post about Twain and Austen, Tex wrote:

If Twain were a character in an Austen novel, she'd like him grudgingly but put him through the wringer for being such a juvenile, then marry him off to a lesser heroine after he'd been shaped up a bit. If Austen were a character in one of Twain's novels, he'd never "get" her, so he'd completely fail to provide a believable characterization.

This sounds like a fun game to me. Take any two well-known authors, and describe how they would write each other if they attempted to include the other as a character in one of their stories.

If you would find a list of major authors helpful, here's a good one (though it has a strange date for the beginning of the Renaissance -- usually the English Renaissance is said to begin in the 16th century, but for some reason they locate it sometime after Chaucer's death in 1400 and before Malory in the mid-1400s).

Why We Don't Drink Pig's Milk

A thorough response from an intern at the Illinois Pork Producers Association.

How About Some Incitement to Terrorism?

Our commitment to free speech seems to embrace it, as long as it is phrased just the right way.

You allow the Americans, who are the biggest butchers in the world, to stop at Shannon Airport to refuel and go on to kill people in Muslim countries. If you believe the Americans are terrorists, the Irish government is colluding with them and aiding and abetting terrorism,” he said....

“You know it’s not just now that it’s become a legitimate target - I believe for a long time that in the eyes of al-Qaeda and others, [Ireland] is a place which is being used to aid and abet the war. The Irish claim that it is neutral is not something which has been bought by Muslims around the world,” he said.

Now, he didn't actually say, "Go blow up some Irishmen." He just said that Ireland is "a legitimate target."

Everything You Need To Know...

...about CENTCOM's Twitter account being hacked by ISIS/Daesh.

Daesh

The French and the Aussies have hit upon a way to annoy ISIS: refer to them instead as "Daesh."

So what does “Daesh” mean? According to France24, it is a loose acronym of the Arabic for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham). However, the term is also one of defiance and disrespect.

It is also considered insulting, and the IS (Islamic State) itself doesn’t like the name Daesh one bit.

Beyond the acronym, “Daesh” sounds lie the Arabic “Daes”, meaning “one who crushes something underfoot” as well as “Dahes”, which means “one who sows discord”.

Dahes is also a reference to the Dahes wal Ghabra period of chaos and warfare between Arab tribes which is famous in the Arab world as one of the precursors of the Muslim age.

“Daesh” therefore has considerably negative undertones. There can be little political ambiguity behind the French government’s decision to deploy Daesh as a linguistic weapon.

So now you know.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria...

While the world's leadership focused on the attacks in Paris, Boko Haram killed two thousand people in a massacre designed to enforce their vision of Islam.

As Islamic terrorists continue to spread, more nations are in danger of simply collapsing as their citizens lose faith in their ability to keep them safe. We’re in serious danger of having an increasing pile of failed states which will serve as a breeding ground for more of the same. Unfortunately, as bad as Boko Haram is, attacks like this are never going to capture the media’s attention the way an attack in France (or America) will.

So what can we do about Boko Haram realistically? I have absolutely no idea. Launching a major military offensive against them (given how much else we have on our plate) seems unlikely in the extreme, even if the will existed in the White House to do so. And I doubt we have any allies left who have the resources and the interest to do it in our stead.

Stimulating D.C.

From a Michael Barone piece on U.S. population-movement patterns since 2010:

The 2013-14 numbers just released, for example, show interesting contrasts with those of 2010-11, when the economy was flagging and stimulus money disbursed. Back then the Washington metropolitan area — Virginia, Maryland, D.C. — was growing well above the national average. Now, with the sequester cuts, growth in the region is below average.

Is that what Keynesian stimulus amounts to? Congress authorizes a bunch of spending, but little of it makes it more than a few miles from D.C.?

The rest of the article is interesting, too, on the subject of which states get or lose international or domestic net immigration, and why.

It Does Work

Al-Qaeda in Yemen didn’t attack Charlie Hebdo because we are all Charlie Hebdo.

The opposite. It sent in the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi because Charlie Hebdo was almost alone.

Yes, that’s right, almost alone, despite the hundreds of thousands marching with their “Je Suis Charlie” placards.... Even the Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally publish the cartoons that provided Muslims with a pretext for mayhem and murder, even that paper has declined to republish anything that might be “offensive” to Muslims because, they said, “violence works.”

What we do in the contemporary West is we protect groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, who malign everything we really believe, so they can make the funerals of our soldiers more painful for the parents of our beloved dead. We protect them, but fuck them. Their heads are the ones that belong on spikes; we are just too nice to post them.

Well, "we" are.

Anyway, this business about being 'almost alone' is more complicated than it looks. Mostly I think outfits like Charlie deserve protection as a kind of limit case. They aren't the core of what we're about, as a decent people. They're about our tolerance for liberty, even when it descends into garbage. We believe in liberty, so we tolerate -- we defend, we protect -- the garbage.

That doesn't mean it isn't still garbage. And maybe we haven't found the right point of balance yet: Maybe there's still a better solution for groups like Westboro, wherein they can be made to accept responsibility for the garbage they bring into the public space.

Another Pleasant Quiz

Which Ancient or Medieval Warrior Are You?

No one will be surprised by my results.

William Wallace

A valiant freedom fighter, you are the Scotsman William Wallace! You strongly believe in the individual freedoms of every man and woman, regardless of background - and are willing to fight 'til the end for it. Close-minded individuals are perhaps your biggest pet-peeve. "This great warrior was a fiercely loyal Scottish landowner who willingly defied the bullying of the English nobles on behalf of his countrymen. He later led a wildly outnumbered and unprofessional army against well-trained advancing English forces in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, turning contemporary rules of engagement on their heads and earning a Scottish knighthood in the process."

No Future

I promptly asked, “What’s the situation?” Our shared patrimony obviated any need for further elaboration; as a European Jew addressing an American one, he knew exactly at what I was aiming. “There is no future for Jews in France,” he said.

As you know, I recently returned from Jerusalem. While I was there, I had many opportunities to talk with thoughtful Israelis on the subject of their country and its mission -- no subject seemed more dear to them. Some of them were not only thoughtful but professional historians and philosophers, who discussed Zionism from a position of personal conviction. Some were immigrants, Jews born elsewhere but who had taken advantage of Israel's open offer to all Jews everywhere to 'come home' -- the term in Hebrew means 'to go up.'

Right now the figures are tiny. 7,000 Jews out of a population of a half a million might not even interfere much with natural replacement. But I heard Natan Sharansky -- a genuine hero of anti-Communism, a man who stood firm in the prisons of the KGB on charges of being an American agent -- say that immigration from the First World was, for the first time in Israel's history, the leading source of immigration.

The people I spoke to clearly believe, and I see why they think they are right, that Israel is the only home for the world's Jewish population. They clearly believe, and I think they really are right, that having the option to resort to Israel is key to the safety of Jews everywhere.

Now, I'm not a Jew, but as long as I live I can say that Jews will be safe within the realm of my right arm. I suspect many Americans would say the same, and so perhaps this place may long be a place where they can linger, if they wish.

In another way, I'm sorry we do not have what they have: a Númenor to their Undying Lands, our ancient home now sunk in the sea, a place to which we as they might withdraw if our values came under a similar assault.

There is no such place for us. We have only the sword.

Conrad Black on the Defense of the Christian West

His introduction is an amusing transgression of the social restraints on married couples seeming too interested in each other, but he goes on to a high note.

As I was sitting down to write about the atrocity in France, my wife Barbara hove into view, always a delicious sight, and announced that she was writing elsewhere on the same subject and that I could not do it. So I will not, other than to say that France.. has been comparatively indulgent of Muslims... but this incident... will motivate France to lead the Western counter-attack against militant Islam that should have been launched by our united civilization many years ago.... [W]hen French possession and enjoyment of their country is threatened, the national faith in liberty, equality and fraternity will give way to more systematic repression of violent Islamists than would be acceptable in an Anglo-Saxon democracy.

...[I]n France there will be none of the faddish and abusive meddling of human rights commissions such as persecuted Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in this country. Since the barbarians comingled with the Romanized Gauls 1,500 years ago, no one has displaced the French from their complete cultural occupation of la douce France. Those who have tried, including the Moors, the Plantagenet kings of England, and the German Empire and Third Reich, were a great deal more formidable and comparatively numerous than the venomous rag-tag of contemporary Islamist terrorists. Vive la France, which now awaits the continuator of Charles Martel, Joan of Arc, and Charles de Gaulle; a relatively easy victory awaits him or her.

Since I have been cyber-gagged from pursuing this subject further, I will retreat to a related one.

The related subject is more interesting.

An Article in the NYT I'm Glad To See

It's been the case since the beginning of the nation that the North has told itself a story of racism in which it was the hero and the South was the bad guy. We hear about slavery, but not about how the slave ships that fueled the Middle Passage sailed so often out of Boston and New York. We hear about how the cotton economy was built on slave labor, but not about how the North's industry was built from the proceeds of the Triangular Trade. The Civil War is the reflex point, in which whatever marginal guilt the North admits for having 'compromised' with the South on slavery is washed clean in blood. Subsequent history is virtuous Northerners periodically forcing vicious Southerners to amend their Jim Crow ways, until at last LBJ came down to help MLK and victory was achieved.

So it's not merely a timely but an evergreen question that the Times is asking today: "When Will The North Face Its Racism?"

In matters of racial injustice, the South has been the center of attention since before the time of the Civil War. But the North, with its shorter history of a mass black population, has only more recently dealt with the paradox of an enlightened ideal coexisting with racial disparity. The protests have become a referendum on the black condition since the Great Migration. “The protests are beginning to wake people up to the idea that the problems are not only there but have been obvious all along,” the historian Taylor Branch told me. “It feels like the South in the 1950s.”

Yet the parallels drawn aren't to the South in the 1950s, but to the South at the height of lynching. The parallel between lynchings and police killings of blacks is overblown, as we've discussed before, because even if the rate at which such killing occur is about the same, the population growth means that the rate per black citizen is a fraction of what it was. Still, "it feels like" doesn't require much substantiation: the feeling may not be purely rational, but feelings are often not. Grappling with the problem means both that many in the North may have to acknowledge a greater degree of structural racism than they want to admit to or recognize; it may also mean that some in the black community may have to admit to a kind of objective improvement in the facts, even if there are times when they still feel strongly the sense of oppression.