The FOX Cut

So, my guy in this election is Jim Webb, who though he has been a Republican in other years is running as a Democrat this time. He may yet have a moment, if the Hillary collapse continues, and I think it's right to be prepared for it should it come. On the other hand, this is the right time to be keeping an eye on the primary in general. If I've learned anything about American politics, it's that only those who are interested early have any hope of affecting the outcome. For that reason, these early stories can really matter. Here's one that does: FOX News has picked its debate partners.

It's a shame about Santorum, since he is a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and for the same reasons the most socially conservative figure in the race. He did very well in 2012, holding off the establishment machine longer than anyone. I realize some among you thought he was a faker about his moral convictions, and he has not polled well this year. Being a frontrunner four years ago doesn't make you a contender today. If he is to come back from this he'll have to earn it.

Otherwise, it seems like the best candidates -- Cruz, Walker -- and the worst ones -- Bush, Trump -- will all be there. Should be a good brawl.

"1332"

A Strange Definition of Hypocrisy

An author named Damon Linker has an article in which he claims that pro-life advocates are hypocrites. It starts reasonably:

I'm never more dumbfounded by my fellow liberals than when they profess not to be in the least bit morally troubled by abortion. Which means that I've been dumbfounded a lot over the past few weeks.

Come on, admit it — you've heard variations on it, too:

Those videos of Planned Parenthood employees nonchalantly discussing killing unborn human babies, dismembering them, and selling the parts for medical research — how could anyone object to that? What should really make us angry is that these pro-life activists filmed the videos in the first place. And if you want to see something truly despicable — a genuine moral outrage — there's this dentist who hunted down and shot a lion in Africa...

I have indeed heard exactly these variations lately. Somehow the real moral problem exposed by the videos is... that someone made the videos. That should be punished!

So, OK, I'm open to his argument. He comes down to a moderate pro-choice position at least to viability, which is not my position but one I'm prepared to see as reasonable. He's got thoughtful arguments. So what's this about hypocrisy?

[T]he pro-life movement, which consists largely of conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants, doesn't just want to lower the abortion rate. It also wants to win a culture war in the name of "traditional values" — and encouraging the widespread use of birth control doesn't fit with its conception of tradition, which holds that women are first and foremost meant to be mothers, children are a gift from God, pre-marital sex should be strongly discouraged, both husband and wife should be "open to life" during sexual intercourse, abortion should never be considered an acceptable choice, and the government should enforce all of this by outlawing the procedure.

There's two things to say about that.

1) It's not true that pro-lifers in general oppose birth control, or strive to keep it from being available. In fact, the last I heard there was a faction on the Republican pro-life side that was advocating making birth control over the counter. So not only would you not have to ask your priest if you could use it, you wouldn't have to ask a doctor or a pharmacist either. You could just go grab a bottle of the stuff like you would Tylenol. So there's a pro-life position in accord with his stated views.

By the same token, there are people who hold firmly to all the traditional values but don't necessarily want the government to be the enforcer. For a long time that was my position: pro-choice only in the limited sense of not being willing to actually outlaw and prosecute people over abortion, but pro-life in the strong sense of believing that abortion was obviously immoral. A good person ought not to do it except in a very limited set of cases involving the death of the mother. Other solutions ought to be chosen. That doesn't mean that prison is the answer for those who make what I think is the immoral choice, any more than I would want to see people imprisoned for divorcing or even adultery. So there's a vigorous pro-life option available without force.

2) For the subset that remains, it's hardly hypocrisy to hold to a set of non-conflicting religious doctrines. For Catholics, yes, abortion is a grave sin in addition to a moral crime. Birth control is also forbidden, but not by a conflicting argument, by the same argument about God's purpose for human sexuality. It's the same argument that leads to both conclusions. How can this be hypocrisy?

As I've mentioned here a number of times, to the eternal boredom of everyone, Kant comes to the same position from an argument he believed based on pure practical reason. Whatever Kant was, he wasn't a hypocrite!

On sexual matters especially, there's a danger of hypocrisy in the usual sense of the term: we often really believe in the truth of doctrine, but fall away from practicing it due to temptation. It may well be that the doctrine is so strict that few are able to fully practice it perfectly all the time. Human weakness is not a good argument for abandoning a doctrine soundly based on reason, though, and it's an even worse argument for those who believe the position is derived from divine purpose.

For those who actually live the doctrine, the charge of hypocrisy is wholly unwarranted. They're being honest about what they think is best, and trying to pursue a society in which it is the norm. That's just what they ought to do.

Insurgent Action Report

Charles Koch has struck up a partnership with the United Negro College Fund.

He and [UNCF President Michael] Lomax have found common ground over the issue of criminal justice reform, a cause that Koch Industries has taken up. And Koch expressed concern about the recent spate of high-profile incidents in which black men have died at the hands of police officers.

I think we missed an opportunity to reach out to the Occupy Wall Street crowd when that was going on. I think we're also missing an opportunity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. With OWS, we have a shared concern with crony capitalism, and with BLM, it's legal reform.

We don't have to agree with everything they want, and we don't even have to like them. But building relationships and working with the left's own protest movements to achieve our goals would be a twofer in every case.

A Conservative Insurgency

Kurt Schlichter's book Conservative Insurgency: The Struggle to Take America Back 2009-2041 presents a battle plan for conservatives willing to fight for reform. It is written as a novel and told as a graduate student oral history project of how conservatives retook American institutions from the universities to Hollywood to, of course, the state and federal governments. In a way, it is the antidote to Dan Simmons's Flashback where everything has gone wrong.

The book assumes Hilary won in 2016 and 2020 and that conservatives lost power in the federal government through the end of her time as president. But, by then, the conservative insurgents, the Tea Party and many like-minded folk, liberals mugged by the reality of what the liberal agenda does, etc., are prepared to fight back and they begin winning in very interesting, and plausible, ways.

Schlichter is a retired infantry colonel, trial lawyer, and, only naturally given the previous, a stand-up comedian. He worked for Andrew Breitbart and has apparently been around the talk radio and Fox channels. He brings all of these perspectives to this book.

It's a quick read and only 280 pages, and it sounds like a good plan to me.

Christina Hoff Sommers on how Feminism Went Wrong

It's an interesting conversation between two low-key, nuanced thinkers from the right. I don't necessarily agree, but her account is well-informed by decades of involvement.

A Good Head On Her Shoulders

I don't know how many of you saw Ronda Rousey's 34-second fight this weekend, but I did, and she has been very well taught. The most important thing she's got going for her from my perspective is that she's got her mind right. She understands what she's there to do, and she doesn't get distracted from doing it. That's more complicated than it sounds, as MMA is more complicated than boxing and it's fairly complex even in boxing. In brief, she's come to understand how the human body can be destroyed, and she's very good at recognizing opportunities to apply the right kind of force to the first opening she comes by that has that destructive potential. That's a mental game as much as a physical one, although you have to do the physical work to train your body to react to the openings in the right way.

So it's not too surprising -- especially since she tends to win very quickly, and therefore limits the number of shots to the head that she takes -- that she's got a good mind to go with her strong jab. Asked about whether she'd like to fight a man, since she's dominating among women, she looked outside of herself and her own situation and recognized something important about the message such a fight would send.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television,” Rousey told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I’ll never say that I’ll lose, but you could have a girl getting totally beat up on TV by a guy — which is a bad image to put across. With all the football [domestic violence] stuff that’s been happening, not a good idea. It’s fun to theorize about and talk about, but it’s something that’s much better in theory than fact.”

Today, I came across an interview in which a female reporter tried to get her on board with the 'gender disparity in pay' line. Rousey was not buying it. "If I got to the point that I had like 50 fights," she said, she'd be making the kind of money the top male boxers make at the height of their careers. "But at this point, I have eleven."

Pornography as Anti-Islamist Weapon

Vice magazine reports on a feature length pornographic film featuring Islamic symbolism. The accompanying photos are R-rated, not X-rated, though of course they are images from the promotional materials for a pornographic film. If you go to read the article, set your expectations accordingly.

What is interesting is the psychological claim that the filmmaker is claiming:

First and foremost, I want to make sure that everyone knows I'm not trying to incite another Charlie Hebdo incident. But [our four scenes] basically represent different women from different regions in the Middle East, different kinds of ideas. [We're] trying to be a little titillating, obviously, with the different kids of traditional dress. But I started the video by [thinking]: For Middle Eastern women, veiling is not just a way to suppress her sexual freedom, it's a symbol for all the human rights violations against these women like rape and domestic violence.

[It's about] taking the veil off.

Vice wasn't very impressed with the effect. "At its core," the judge, "the film is a prime example of banal ignorance fueling bigoted imagery."

I obviously haven't seen the film, and don't intend to. However, it strikes me that Vice isn't well placed to judge the impact of the film. Clearly the filmmaker is right about the effect of the veil as it is experienced by women in the region. Some may experience the veil as Islam claims to intend it to be experienced, as a liberation from the tyranny of continual male sexual attention. For others, her reading has to be close to right. What that means is that not only is this symbolism going to be powerful for those women, it's also going to be powerful symbolism for men from the cultures where veiling is tied to issues of sex. It may end up being more effective than they expect, in spite of its banality, because it touches on symbols that are deeply-felt for the Middle Eastern audience in a way they are not here.

So, there's an ethical question: would that be good, to have a beneficial effect achieved through the method of pornography? If you were trying to disrupt Islamist systems and found this was effective, is it a method you'd endorse? Or is the harm done too great to apologize for the good? You might want to include a brief discussion of whether you think pornography is in fact harmful, and if so just how, as philosophical opinions on that differ sharply.

Pressure Mounts on Clinton Emails

Not against Hillary herself, of course, but the water has risen high enough that Huma Abedin now has to tread it.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, cracked down on the delay tactics exercised in the effort to build a moat around her e-mails. He ordered Clinton and two of her closest aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, to “describe, under penalty of perjury, the extent to which Ms. Abedin and Ms. Mills used Mrs. Clinton’s email server to conduct official government business.” He also ordered them to confirm that that “they have produced all responsive information that was or is in their possession as a result of their employment at the State Department.” And if “all such information has not yet been produced,” they are ordered to produce it “forthwith.”

I assume they will have a lot of trouble recalling, though there is a point at which you can risk charges of contempt going down that road. I suppose they might try the lane cleared for them by Ms. Lois Learner: 'I have done nothing wrong, and plead the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination.'

UPDATE: The NY Daily News reminds us of a precedent: Bill Clinton's CIA director, whom he pardoned for a very similar offense.

The law is plain. Under the Espionage Act of 1917, “gross negligence” in the handling of national defense information is a punishable offense. If such information is “removed from its proper place of custody,” the responsible government official faces a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment....

Only after a year of spinning wheels did CIA managers finally refer the matter to the Justice Department. Attorney General Janet Reno responded initially with the most minimal conceivable action, suggesting that Deutch’s security clearance be reviewed. But after the CIA’s critical report became public in 2000, igniting a firestorm on Capitol Hill, prosecutors swung into high gear.

Yet just as Deutch was ready to agree to a plea bargain, the matter came to an abrupt end. On Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, President Clinton issued a surprise pardon to his wayward CIA director.

The Arian heresy

Much blood has been spilled over the vexing question of how to consider Christ's dual human and divine nature.  I've been proofing a book about Mennonite or Anabaptist martyrs in the 16th century and came across this account of the interrogation and torture of a woman who refused to go along with the orthodox line on this and many other matters:

In the sixth place she was asked whether she did not believe that Christ had assumed his flesh from Mary. But she confessed that he was from above, and had come down from the Father; that the Word had become flesh, even as John says: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." And as he himself says, that he is the bread which came down from heaven. That he was also the only reconciler, redeemer and advocate. To investigate further, was not necessary to her salvation. John 8:23; 1:14; 1 John 1:1; John 6:31; Rom. 5:10; 1 John 2:1.

That's a good response, I think: "To investigate further, was not necessary to her salvation." I can't believe it was necessary to anyone else's care for her salvation, either, particularly if the investigation was backed up by torture and death by burning (the sentence routinely handed down for unrepentant Anabaptists).  There are some detailed explanations of spiritual mysteries that we are not privy to.  Nor have we been encouraged to believe we are either authorized or obligated to ferret out the explanation by exhaustive analysis, and certainly not that we need to kill each other over our diverse results.

These Anabaptists got into deadly trouble for two other persistent errors.  First, they denied infant baptisms, going so far as to renounce their own, if they had occurred, and insisting on a new baptism as reasoning, consenting, and believing adults.  Often the main focus of their tortured interrogations was to get them to name the parties who had been present at their adult baptisms; it was their primary glory to refuse to answer.  Second, they declined to receive the Catholic eucharist, considering the doctrine of transubstantiation to be a superstition or idolatry.  These were the two heresies that most worked up their inquisitors, to judge by the summaries of their trials and sentences.

For their own part, the shock troops of the Reformation had a bad habit of killing people who persisted in holding or attending Masses, on the ground that it was a deadly heresy to engage in this idolatry.  It was a very bad time, and hard to imagine in these days.  It would be nice to think that's because we now understand that our duty lies more in examining our own conscience than that of others.  More likely, though, it's hardly anyone takes the form of worship seriously enough to imagine killing or dying for it.

The definition of insanity

If inflation has missed the Fed's 2% target for 38 straight months, my husband wonders, "Could it be that there's little or no correlation between the Fed's tool and its intended result?  But no, that's crazy talk."

"Governing"

Is Mitch McConnell essentially a sell-out, or is he so desperate to look like he can govern better than Harry Reid that he's forced to pass every crony capitalist measure that crosses his desk as the compromise price-tag for his own ostensible priorities?

A Ring-Whorled Prow Rode in the Harbour, Iceclad, Outbound...

...a craft for a prince.

Sweet Mental Revenge

I've never cared for the lyrics of the Waylon Jennings classic. I've always liked the music of the song.

Rebels and Rhetoric

What do we do with the Confederate battle flag?

Hoyt Axton

vs. Alfonzo Rachel

This goes back to Grim's post expressing some doubt about whether the Democrats were actually responsible for all of history's horrors. That may be debatable. After all, I don't believe the Black Death was a Democratic policy, though I'm not sure. It does bear some resemblance to the ACA ...

However that may be, the Democrats were the party of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and Bull Connor. I think we should use that in our rhetoric against progressives again and again and again. We need to destroy the lie that conservatives are racists, and pointing out this history is one important avenue of attack. EDIT: As Grim points out in the comments, I know the history is much more complicated than Rachel paints it, but my point here is about how rhetoric about the flag can help or hurt us. Right now it's hurting us, and we can change that.

But what would that do to us? A lot of Southern conservatives feel a real connection to some aspects of the old Confederacy, and if we take up Rachel's rhetoric, does that start a conservative civil war?

10,000 Posts, Home Defense Artillery, and a Modern Order of Knighthood

Grim's last post last night was the 10,000th for the blog, apparently.

Backyard Ballistics arrived this week. Heh Heh. You'll have to imagine the evil grin.

Have any of you heard of the International Order of St. Hubertus? I ran across their website while looking for information on St. Hubertus (also St. Hubert), patron saint of hunters, and thought the order looked interesting. From their website:

The International Order of St. Hubertus is a worldwide organization of hunters who are also wildlife conservationists and are respectful of traditional hunting ethics and practices.  Founded in 1695, the motto of the Order is “Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes” or “Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures.” 

Purpose of the Order

• To promote sportsmanlike conduct in hunting and fishing
• To foster good fellowship among sportsmen from all over the world
• To teach and preserve sound traditional hunting and fishing customs
• To encourage wildlife conservation and to help protect endangered species from extinction
• To promote the concept of hunting and fishing as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity
• To endeavor to ensure that the economic benefits derived from sports hunting and fishing support the regions where these activities are carried out
• To strive to enhance respect for responsible hunters and fishermen

The International Order of St. Hubertus is a true knightly order in the historical tradition. The Order is under the Royal Protection of His Majesty Juan Carlos of Spain, the Grand Master Emeritus His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria and our Grand Master is His Imperial and Royal Highness Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary.

Well, That's Embarrassing...

Apparently one of the Islamist shooters in Texas may have come to the party with a Fast and Furious gun.

Of Course

REPORT: Navy to Charge Officer Who Fired on Islamist During Chattanooga Terror Attack.

A friend of mine at CENTCOM told me, before it was public knowledge that the two had exchanged fire with the terrorist, that there was talk about whether they could be eligible for Purple Hearts or even valor awards. Their actual chain of command has come up with the more obvious response. Joseph Heller, call your office.

UPDATE: Jim Webb says he'd set the Navy straight if he were President. I doubt ours will, but I expect we'll hear from Tennessee's Senators about this before too long.

UPDATE: The Chattanoogan gets a statement from the Navy to the effect that no one has been charged, though the matter is still under review. PJ Media considers that confirmation that charges are being considered; The Chattanoogan reads it the other way.

My sense is this: of course the Navy was, and perhaps still is, considering charges. It had regulations that were broken. That's why the title of this post was "Of Course." That process had gotten far enough along that LCDR White was given a heads up that he should prepare himself to face possible charges, and he prepared himself by contacting retired LTC Allen West. West had faced very serious charges himself under what White might consider similar circumstances, i.e., he violated regulations in a manner his conscience told him was right and necessary. In both cases, significant good came out of it (LTC West saved his men from falling into a waiting ambush, and LCDR White was able to assist in the evacuation of the recruiting station under hostile fire). West would be a natural person to reach out to for advice on how to handle a situation like this.

West has since become a Congressman, and after that a professional commentator, and decided to conduct a fire mission in support of White. That's appropriate in my view: one reason we sometimes advise servicemembers to "call your Senator" is that the bureaucracy often errs in favor of the hard application of the rule over the wise application of judgment. In a case where the rule is obviously wrong and the judgment was obviously well-considered and properly applied, it's good to provide a counterweight. As a former Congressman himself, West knew what could be done if he could garner Congressional support for White's case.

So, all of you who contacted your Senators or other Congressmen, thank you. You've probably helped to save a good man.

What's that party again?

Chris Matthews amused many of us by asking Debbie Wasserman-Schultz innocently, "What's the difference, really, between Socialists and Democrats?"  Kevin Williamson tries to sort out the socialist-vel-non beliefs of Bernie Sanders supporters by mingling with the crowd:

Aside from Grandma Stalin there, there’s not a lot of overtly Soviet iconography on display around the Bernieverse, but the word “socialism” is on a great many lips. Not Bernie’s lips, for heaven’s sake: The guy’s running for president. But Tara Monson, a young mother who has come out to the UAW hall to support her candidate, is pretty straightforward about her issues: “Socialism,” she says. “My husband’s been trying to get me to move to a socialist country for years — but now, maybe, we’ll get it here.” The socialist country she has in mind is Norway, which of course isn’t a socialist country at all: It’s an oil emirate. Monson is a classic American radical, which is to say, a wounded teenager in an adult’s body: Asked what drew her to socialism and Bernie, she says that she is “very atheist,” and that her Catholic parents were not accepting of this. She goes on to cite her “social views,” and by the time she gets around to the economic questions, she’s not Helle Thorning-Schmidt — she’s Pat Buchanan, complaining about “sending our jobs overseas.”

L’Internationale, my patootie. This is national socialism.

Williamson talks to another fan:

He goes on a good-humored tirade about how one can identify conservatives’ and progressives’ homes simply by walking down the street and observing the landscaping. Conservatives, he insists, “torture” the flowers and shrubbery, imposing strict order and conformity on their yards, whereas progressives just let things bloom as nature directs. I am tempted to ask him which other areas in life he thinks might benefit from that kind of unregulated, spontaneous order, but I think better of it.

Doesn't everyone?

A BBC article reports on people who experience music as an almost sexual pleasure.

The article also observes how idiosyncratic the response is.  The author uses an Adele song (whoever she is) as an example of particularly evocative dissonances, but when I eagerly went to listen to it, I found it didn't do a thing for me.  Then, something like "Women of Ireland" that tears my heart out of my chest leaves someone else cold.  And there's the enduring mystery of why I've been completely indifferent to every Mozart piece I've ever heard, when there may be no other composer so universally beloved.  Why can't I hear it?  The reaction either happens or it doesn't; there's no explaining it.