Grim's Hall

So Who Do You Think We Are? Morons?

Mr. Obama grew especially animated in rebuffing suggestions by some Republican presidential candidates, governors and lawmakers that the United States should block entry of Syrian refugees to prevent terrorists from slipping into the country.

“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism; they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

Without naming him, Mr. Obama singled out a comment by former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, one of the Republicans seeking to succeed him, for suggesting the United States focus special attention on Christian refugees. “That’s shameful,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not American. It’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”

That's funny, because as I understood it your State Department specifically rejected visas for Christian refugees. That's been true both in specific cases and as a general policy.

At a time when they are facing specific threats just for being Christians -- and at such a scale that Catholic charities warn that Christianity itself will be wiped out of the Middle East within a decade -- one might think that a religious test would at least not be applied against them. Maybe it even makes some sense to favor Christians, given that they are the ones under threat of extinction, and given that they would fit in pretty well in an America that remains ~75% Christian (and which is culturally informed by Christian values even among those who are not themselves Christians). It would make sense for them, and it would make sense for us.

Over at Hot Air, they're scratching their heads about the politics of this move.

Skip to 2:15 to watch Rhodes, responding to the news that one of the Paris bombers washed up onshore in Greece just six weeks ago, claim that it’s full speed ahead on the U.S. accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees of its own. The Democratic nominee-in-waiting said on Saturday night that she wants 65,000(!) refugees here, albeit “only if we have as careful a screening and vetting process as we can imagine.” That’s a mighty bold move by Democrats given that a majority of Americans already opposed admitting refugees back in September, with that number sure to rise now in the wake of the attack. And it goes without saying that if someone makes it over here via Obama’s refugee policy and promptly blows themselves up in Times Square, it’ll be night-night for Democrats in next year’s election. That’s a gigantic risk for O and Hillary to take. So why are they doing it?

It's not the President's only risky move on this score lately. What's less clear is why Clinton is doubling down on it. Given the polling you'd expect her to make a much vaguer statement of support for the President for the duration of the primary, and then come out hard against him on this in the general. Instead, she really has to hope that there are no Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States this coming year -- especially any that can be tracked to refugees, but really any serious such attacks at all.

A Devil's Dictionary for Wall Street

They're in the news lately due to Mrs. Clinton's love affair with them, which is probably why this came across my desk this morning. It's pretty funny, where "funny" is an adjective that means "accurate."

Thrift (n.)
The obsolete practice of spending less money than you earn; once believed to be a virtue, now regarded as a disturbing form of deviant behavior.

Central bank (n.)
A group of economists who believe that their current forecasts will turn out to be accurate even though their past forecasts have been unreliable, that their present policies will succeed even though their past policies have failed, that they can prevent inflation from occurring next time even though they didn't prevent it last time, that they can foster lower unemployment in the future even though their practices worsened it in the past, and so forth.

You should be able to answer this riddle: What's the difference between a central banker and a weather vane? They both turn in the wind, but only the central banker thinks he or she determines which way the wind blows.

Tolkien's Beowulf: Not A Good Translation?

A scholar named Andy Orchard says that Tolkien's Beowulf was probably never meant to be published:

Orchard is the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, the same position held by Tolkien from from 1925 to 1945....

Orchard calls the published version of Beowulf by Tolkien “a horrible, horrible, horrible translation” one that the English scholar never imagined would be published. The translation was made by Tolkien in the 1920s and intended it to be “crib notes” that was to be used by students he was teaching at Oxford.... Still, this edition of Beowulf, which was posthumously published over forty years after Tolkien’s death, is very valuable to scholars according to Orchard. He calls the end notes offered with the text “brilliant” and something that can be very useful to those who are studying the poem.

Orchard's interested, of course, in that he has his own translation he'd like you to buy. There's an excerpt at the link.

In Which I Almost Agree With Frank Bruni

Even a near agreement is closer than I can recall us having been before.

Still, in the wake of the Paris attacks, I have seen almost instantly:

* Hillary Clinton leading American gun-control advocates electing to mourn this as an incident of "gun violence," implying that we should defer to them in stripping us of our rights even though Paris has exactly the gun laws they would like us to have.

* Gun-rights advocates suggesting that France needs to adopt the 2nd Amendment -- Bruni cites Coulter among others.

* Bernie Sanders suggesting it just shows that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq, like that despicable woman Clinton agreed to do in accord with George W. Bush.

* Libertarian isolationists suggesting that this proves that Western arrogance in the Middle East bears evil fruit that we more or less deserve.

* Climate change warriors suggesting this was all about climate change (Bruni deserves credit for seeing this one on his own side).

One person who didn't do this was retired Democrat Jim Webb.

Those in France and elsewhere should be able to feel safe and free from the forces of terrorism. This has been our policy for more than thirty years and it will continue to be. But this is not a time for emotional outbursts or empty threats. In key moments such as now it is vitally important for us to assemble a complete picture of what happened and why before recommending what specific actions need to follow. I would urge the President and other national leaders to work carefully with our national security leaders and to apply this approach in the coming days.

That's pretty good advice.

Bait & Switch

I wonder if she even noticed herself the flaw in her logic.

The term “political correctness” may be new but its foundations are not. For centuries, people of color have been expected to not offend white people—and were jailed, whipped, or murdered if they did. From the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century, African Americans were lynched by white mobs for all sorts of “reasons”...

“Political correctness” only acquired a name when, relatively recently in American history, the idea of treating others respectfully was finally extended to include how white people treat black people, how men treat women, and so on. Prior to that, the idea that some people were owed deferentially considerate treatment—even in its most extreme, vicious incarnations—didn’t need a special term. It was just the way things were.

The obvious conclusion is that "political correctness" is the name applied to the idea that "some people [are] owed deferentially considerate treatment[.]"

And, indeed, that's just what it does mean. It means that using language or displaying behavior objected to by the class owed 'deferentially considerate treatment' deserves severe punishment. Fair enough, right? We should object to political correctness as a less-severe incarnation of the same bad idea that undergirded lynchings. I wouldn't have put it that way, but I can see the point: just as not adhering to extreme deference in avoiding offending white women was once grounds for excessively severe punishment, so today...

Of course, she concludes the exact opposite of what logically follows from her setup.

Political correctness is a good thing—the idea that we should treat our fellow human beings with equal respect, despite their race or gender or sexual orientation, and the idea that we might all learn and get better at doing so because of feedback and changing norms.

No, the frame you set up was one in which "political correctness" is the heir to not treating people 'with equal respect,' but asserting that some deserve especial deference -- and that severe punishment should fall on members of the disfavored class(es) who violate that deference.

Political correctness is thus bad, not good, for the same reason (but to a vastly lesser degree) that lynching was bad. It is a system of punishing members of disfavored classes for failing to adhere to standards of excessive deference in avoiding giving offense to members of favored classes. The good thing would be not doing that.

Secure Communications

I suspect Eric Blair is right that important communications are no longer conducted electronically, but Belgium thinks that it has identified at least one such route still in operation: PlayStation 4.

Clever engineering

A group at MIT has figured out a way to get salt and other crud out of water using what I guess amounts to distillation that works on an electrical gradient rather than a gravitational one. It's just an early idea, which would have to be refined before it could scale up and compete with the current RO desalination technology, but it's interesting.

Paris

Coordinated attacks across the city tonight with the obvious purpose of terror, but so far no claim of responsibility. There is work to be done.

Lafayette, at least some of us still remember you.

UPDATE: Wretchard writes --

It looks like the wave of attacks is over, been some time now no new incidents. Period of damage assessment, counting up casualties, finger pointing and political posturing to follow as usual.

The significant thing is the attacks happened in the teeth of a heightened alert associated with big soccer matches. In fact Hollande himself was watching a game. So the French security forces and intelligence people were completely blindsided on this.

That means there are networks they don't know about, which are capable of Beirut-size operations. I think Scotland Yard and MI5 will be burning the midnight oil tonight.

Not only them.

An Addendum on Star Wars from AVI

And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent
instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way
into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten,
imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated
graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because
he who has received this true education of the inner being will most
shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with
a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into
his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame
and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is
able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise
and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

-Plato, Republic III

Commenting on Mike's recent post about Star Wars, AVI says: "At one level, I can't believe this needs explaining. The Rebels are the good guys. The Jedi are the good guys. The music and the costumes didn't give that away?"

He has a fuller examination of what's going on with the imperfections in the morality of Star Wars that is worth your time.

It occurs to me that his first take is the right one, though: it's the music of Star Wars that really carries the morality of the plot. You could dispose of perhaps every single line of dialogue, and still understand the movie perfectly just by hearing John Williams' soundtrack. The flaws come out of what was said in the screenplay. The real moral structure is musical, and perfect. It's only when someone -- Lucas, I suppose -- began to try to think and put it into words that the errors began to creep in.

Somehow we grasp the moral truth better through music. Plato's trust in the capacity of musicians to convey moral truths, provided that they were devoted to doing so, is perhaps if anything only understated. Trying to say the truth is very hard, as everyone who knew Socrates came to find out when he put them to the test when asked to define goodness or justice or piety. You can hear it expressed in music, though, and somehow understand exactly what is meant. For most people and most purposes, including to guide the soldiers of his model state in their moral decisions, Plato seems to have thought that this would do.

Republicans for Hillary

The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the worries.

“We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?”
If you’re a grassroots conservative who suspects that establishment Republicans would rather see Hillary win than an outsider from their own party whom they might not be able to control, that last line should show you that … yep, you’re right to believe that.

Contrarian tools

A good career strategy: find something to do that most people don't want to do. If you enjoy it and are particularly good at it, even better.

A study at the University of California, Irvine, found that when it came to workplace distractions, most employees were actually happiest when performing rote tasks. Highly successful people, though, aren't most employees; they make it a habit to do work that others don’t want to do.

If the only things that make you happy are things that everyone else is willing to do for free, you're in trouble. If you're good at something that almost no one else can or will do well, the world is your oyster.

Nanodegrees

From Maggie's Farm, an article about increasing employer recognition of online degrees. As MF comments, looks like homeschooling is bad only when conservatives do it. On either end of the political spectrum, any school can prosper if people are highly motivated to study there, whether for intangible personal fulfillment or to increase earning power in an attractive job. A company like Udacity doesn't need federal subsidies or student loans to keep its faculty in Priuses.

For some, the distinction between craftsmanship and deep thinking represents a false dichotomy (as a logician might say).

Matthew B. Crawford earned his Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago but failed to find a job as an academic and ultimately landed a position at a think tank. Unhappy with the work, he quit and became a mechanic in Virginia, using online tutorials to learn how to weld and make motorcycle parts.

He has also continued to write and has published books about his career transition. One of his books, “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” is devoted to debunking the notion that manual trades are mindless. “The division between knowledge work and manual work is kind of dubious, because there is so much thinking that goes on in skilled trades,” Mr. Crawford said.

As for the payoff, Mr. Crawford rejects the idea that philosophers cannot figure out how to earn a living.

“It’s obviously kind of a reductive approach to think of your course of study in college as merely a means to a paycheck,” Mr. Crawford said, suggesting the study of things like happiness can be enriching in ways that are hard to measure. “And nobody goes into philosophy because they think it’s going to make them rich.”

More on Equality

Colorado Springs police are being sued to drop their physical fitness test.

Last Friday the Colorado Springs Police Department agreed to the demands of 12 female officers who filed a civil suit claiming the fitness tests are discriminatory. All the officers were over the age of 40.

The suit will now move to a federal court. Police Chief Pete Carey says he’s disappointed, but will abide by the judge’s decision.

‘I very firmly stand behind physical fitness tests for our officers. I think what I’m asking them to do is fair and my hope is a federal judge also agrees with this,’ Carey said.

The police test consists of two running exams. Officers also have to do 52 push-ups in 2 minutes, and 45 sit-ups, also in 2 minutes.

ACLU: This 'Hurtful Speech' Policing Is A Bit Much

In fairness, you guys helped to call down the thunder. Still, it's good to see you getting it right now.

The ACLU of Missouri is disappointed with the recent request by the University of Missouri Police to report ‘hurtful speech,’ which simultaneously does too much and too little.

Racial epithets addressed to a specific person in a threatening or intimidating manner can be illegal, and may require action by police and/or university administrators. But, no governmental entity has the authority to broadly prohibit ‘hurtful’ speech — or even undefined ‘hateful’ speech, or to discipline against it.

Conversely, institutional racism and a history of turning a blind-eye to systemic inequities does require action. But mistakenly addressing symptoms — instead of causes — and doing it in a way that runs counter to the First Amendment is not the wise or appropriate response.

Harvard on Yale: It's Fascism

Usually, we at Harvard are more than happy to see Yale students make fools of themselves on camera....

Not this time.