Through the Air Force, quite likely.
It sounds like she was radicalized by Trump's election, which is true for many on the Left. Yet her linguistic skills suggest she was originally trained to do intelligence work on Iran and Afghanistan. Her Twitter account suggests she has been trained to interpret history through the lens of Western colonialism, and thus saw a moral duty to support the Iranians(!) against American 'colonial' policies. That's not new since Trump, but something she seems to have felt for a while -- probably since she was taught to think that way in college or in prep school.
Nobody checks up on that kind of thing? I know you don't list radicalizing college courses on your SF-86, but it seems like questions about your statements against America and for the enemy you're supposedly helping to study would come up in the security review.
UPDATE:
Looks like she was employed less than 3 months before stealing secrets.
UPDATE:
Her high school does not look like a radical outfit that would preach anti-colonial screeds, and she was in the USAF until last year. So where did she learn to think about the world in this Marxist fashion, I wonder? At home, perhaps.
Reading the Articles
I wouldn't normally link to Playboy, but this article on Afghanistan was written by a reporter I know. She embedded with the Afghan commandos, and it's a story worth reading.
DB: 'Mini-Troop Surge' in Afghanistan
Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, still has some apprehensions about the logistical requirements of the halflings, who are known to eat up to seven meals a day.
NSA leaker charged
Well, "leaker" is a misnomer. She's a traitor, a spy, an oathbreaker, and ultimately a very stupid young woman.
At the most basic level, she stole classified documents and gave them to an unauthorized person. She did it for one of the four primary motivations of espionage (sometimes referred to as MICE) in that she was ideologically motivated. Like Jonathan Pollard, she will have supporters who will say she was a patriot, just trying to help save her country. And like Pollard's supporters, hers will be wrong. She is a traitor who put her own motives ahead of the interests of her nation, her oaths, her integrity, and her future. Make no mistake, Reality Winner (yes, that's actually her name) has destroyed her future in order to score some political points. She sold out sources and methods the NSA uses to defend ALL of us in order to make "#NotHerPresident" look bad. And the worst thing is, what she stole didn't even prove what she probably thought it proved.
The document in question reveals that Russians hacked into voter registration data at a third party contractor. Not to change it, nor to change vote totals, but effectively to steal identities. In other words, nothing that could influence the 2016 election. And this stupid, stupid person decided that the law, her oaths, national security, her integrity, and her very future were unimportant enough that she should steal that information and release it to someone who would make sure the Russians (remember them?) would know we know they did it. An action which helps them to figure out how WE knew, which shuts down an avenue of intelligence gathering, or even potentially gets an actual live person KILLED (never forget the true cost of espionage; it's not "documents" or "words", it's actual lives).
I do feel some small pity for her. She ruined her own life with her stupidity. And worse, she did it to reveal a document that still does not show what she thought it did (the Russians hacked the election and made it so Trump won). But mostly I feel anger. She knew better. She had mandated yearly training that told her that she would be caught, that told her the consequences of being caught, that told her how stupid her idea was. But she ignored all that, betrayed her employer, her co-workers, her friends, and her nation... all in an effort to score political points (which she failed to even do). Pathetic.
At the most basic level, she stole classified documents and gave them to an unauthorized person. She did it for one of the four primary motivations of espionage (sometimes referred to as MICE) in that she was ideologically motivated. Like Jonathan Pollard, she will have supporters who will say she was a patriot, just trying to help save her country. And like Pollard's supporters, hers will be wrong. She is a traitor who put her own motives ahead of the interests of her nation, her oaths, her integrity, and her future. Make no mistake, Reality Winner (yes, that's actually her name) has destroyed her future in order to score some political points. She sold out sources and methods the NSA uses to defend ALL of us in order to make "#NotHerPresident" look bad. And the worst thing is, what she stole didn't even prove what she probably thought it proved.
The document in question reveals that Russians hacked into voter registration data at a third party contractor. Not to change it, nor to change vote totals, but effectively to steal identities. In other words, nothing that could influence the 2016 election. And this stupid, stupid person decided that the law, her oaths, national security, her integrity, and her very future were unimportant enough that she should steal that information and release it to someone who would make sure the Russians (remember them?) would know we know they did it. An action which helps them to figure out how WE knew, which shuts down an avenue of intelligence gathering, or even potentially gets an actual live person KILLED (never forget the true cost of espionage; it's not "documents" or "words", it's actual lives).
I do feel some small pity for her. She ruined her own life with her stupidity. And worse, she did it to reveal a document that still does not show what she thought it did (the Russians hacked the election and made it so Trump won). But mostly I feel anger. She knew better. She had mandated yearly training that told her that she would be caught, that told her the consequences of being caught, that told her how stupid her idea was. But she ignored all that, betrayed her employer, her co-workers, her friends, and her nation... all in an effort to score political points (which she failed to even do). Pathetic.
A Drapa for Sigurd Syr
In a book I wrote, but never properly edited or published, there was a poet who wrote a drapa for the father of Harald Hardrada. Hardrada, at least, you will recognize from Wolf Time. That makes this week a good time to publish the poem in his father's honor. Unlike Hardrada, the Thunderbolt of the North, his father Sigurd Syr was a very peaceful man. It was difficult to praise such a man, in the old way; here is an imagined mode for doing so.
The references will be clearer if you have read the Heimskringla. If you have not, the poem is probably impossibly opaque. The second half of the drapa should nevertheless be clear enough.
The references will be clearer if you have read the Heimskringla. If you have not, the poem is probably impossibly opaque. The second half of the drapa should nevertheless be clear enough.
Rare the good king not a killer,
wise sleeper in his stronghold.
Ox-slain Egil Yngling
the Thing-thrall put to fleeing:
A dead king never dreaded.
When Old Starkad came to Sweden
Haki then Hugleik's land claimed. --
Where now is the hall-holder...
Aun, always the weak-slayer,
his sired he'd Odhinn offer;
He ran before Upsala's chieftain.
But Yngvar's son, Anund the Breaker,
Took the war-shield only
slaying his father's slayer.
Rare few are remembered wiser --
...the kingdom-ruler of wisdom?
One remembered is Sigurd
stepfather to the Digre,
father of the Hardrada,
Old lord of the northhold.
Shade from his hat, that broad-brim,
we remember as rain without thunder. --
Where now is the hall-holder...
Nothing with him dragons wanted,
Nor warriors who disdained golden
Grain. Loved him thrall and bonder:
He cared for cattle, but battle
He found empty of the glory
That forever draws the fighter.
No man’s thralls were freer. --
The kingdom-ruler of wisdom.
Islam: A Criticism
Andrew C. McCarthy is a former Federal prosecutor who dealt with the Blind Sheikh case among others. His view of Islam is more negative than my own in pronounced ways, but I respect the way in which he came to it. It is the sort of thing we ought to take seriously, even if in the end we reject it. Indeed, I think the onus is probably on my side of the debate. He is clearly right that traditional Islamic theology points this way. What people like me have to show is that there is any alternative, a project I am not prepared to undertake this afternoon.
UPDATE: An interesting development out of London.
UPDATE: An interesting development out of London.
Wolf Time: Part I
I propose to separate discussion of Lars Walker's Wolf Time into three discussions, starting today, Wednesday, and Friday. Of course this is a community discussion, so it may be that there are aspects of the work that others wish to discuss than the ones I've identified. If so, we can fit them in here, or start a separate section if one of my co-bloggers wants to do so.
In today's discussion, I want to begin with the predictions about the dangerous developments of political correctness and its hostility to human life and Aristotelian purpose. The book probably struck reviewers in 1999, when it was new, as ridiculously hyperbolic. In our own day, we have seen things very like the "Happy Endings" clinic, in which perfectly healthy people kill themselves because they are tired of being alcoholics. A healthy woman in Belgium was granted permission to die because of suicidal thoughts.
We see less open talk about what the book calls Extinctionism than you might expect, but it definitely lurks -- and sometimes comes out -- in the debates about the environment.
So let's start with that. These are slippery slope arguments, and people will tell you that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy because there is no guarantee that the slope will play out. Nevertheless, it very often does play out: saying that it is a fallacy simply means that logic does not guarantee that it will play out. Logic does nothing to stop it from playing out. It is very often worth paying attention to slippery slope arguments, as they very often do play out. A mind primed to think in a given way in one case can easily come to think that way in another, even if it is not logically necessary that they should.
Where did these predictions go right? Where wrong? When wrong, is it just that we haven't gotten there yet, or are there cases where we won't get there for some reason?
Discuss.
On Wednesday, I'll want to use this discussion as a springboard to take on the more general theme of how to live a good life in such an ethically confused time. How can one do it? Is it possible? What virtues are the right ones for such a life? It does not seem as if they are courage or boldness -- or are they, but in a different way than in the more ancient expression? We'll pick that up on Wednesday.
On Friday, I'll raise an objection to the book's conception of Odin and his mission. This is a minor topic of no interest to anyone but me, and likely Lars Walker, but I don't think I agree with the book's basic conception of what Odin was about. This last discussion will be harder to follow and of less general interest, so we'll save it until we've dealt with the matters of more general interest and meaning.
In today's discussion, I want to begin with the predictions about the dangerous developments of political correctness and its hostility to human life and Aristotelian purpose. The book probably struck reviewers in 1999, when it was new, as ridiculously hyperbolic. In our own day, we have seen things very like the "Happy Endings" clinic, in which perfectly healthy people kill themselves because they are tired of being alcoholics. A healthy woman in Belgium was granted permission to die because of suicidal thoughts.
We see less open talk about what the book calls Extinctionism than you might expect, but it definitely lurks -- and sometimes comes out -- in the debates about the environment.
So let's start with that. These are slippery slope arguments, and people will tell you that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy because there is no guarantee that the slope will play out. Nevertheless, it very often does play out: saying that it is a fallacy simply means that logic does not guarantee that it will play out. Logic does nothing to stop it from playing out. It is very often worth paying attention to slippery slope arguments, as they very often do play out. A mind primed to think in a given way in one case can easily come to think that way in another, even if it is not logically necessary that they should.
Where did these predictions go right? Where wrong? When wrong, is it just that we haven't gotten there yet, or are there cases where we won't get there for some reason?
Discuss.
On Wednesday, I'll want to use this discussion as a springboard to take on the more general theme of how to live a good life in such an ethically confused time. How can one do it? Is it possible? What virtues are the right ones for such a life? It does not seem as if they are courage or boldness -- or are they, but in a different way than in the more ancient expression? We'll pick that up on Wednesday.
On Friday, I'll raise an objection to the book's conception of Odin and his mission. This is a minor topic of no interest to anyone but me, and likely Lars Walker, but I don't think I agree with the book's basic conception of what Odin was about. This last discussion will be harder to follow and of less general interest, so we'll save it until we've dealt with the matters of more general interest and meaning.
"Fringe Groups Revel"
An old-fashioned fisking of this article seems to be in order.
We do get some indication of their goals a bit further down.
It doesn't get much better than this. I think the reporter needs to go back home and rethink this whole approach to understanding what is going on.
Kyle Chapman expected he might find a fight. And he did — with a teenage girl.Oh, he beat up a teenage girl, presumably weaker than himself? That's awful.
The girl was waving an anti-fascist placard last week at a protest against Shariah law in Midtown Manhattan when a scuffle broke out and she knocked an older woman to the ground.Wait... she beat up someone weaker than herself, and he intervened to defend them?
“Assaulting our people?” Mr. Chapman shouted as he reached across the barricades and ripped her sign apart. “Your days are numbered, Commie!” he called after her as the police escorted her away. “The American people are rising up against you!”So, actually he didn't touch her at all, right? Also, she was the one arrested for assault and battery. That seems like an important detail.
As the founder of a group of right-wing vigilantes called the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, Mr. Chapman, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound commercial diver, is part of a growing movement that experts on political extremism say has injected a new element of violence into street demonstrations across the country.Pretty sure your own description makes it clear that he is not the one "injecting violence into street demonstrations." The physical description is meant to make him sound scary, but it's his opponents who are physically attacking people.
Part fight club, part Western-pride fraternity, the Alt-Knights and similar groups recruit battalions of mainly young white men for one-off confrontations with their ideological enemies — the black-clad left-wing militants who disrupted President Trump’s inauguration and have protested against the appearances of conservative speakers on college campuses.Those "black-clad left-wing militants" are also "mainly white." Antifa looks to be super-duper white, in fact. Elizabeth Warren white. Rachael Maddow white. Keith Olbermann white. So what's with trying to paint one of these groups as being defined by race, and not the other?
Along with like-minded groups like the Proud Boys, a clan of young conservative nationalists, and the Oath Keepers, an organization of current and former law-enforcement officers and military veterans, they mobilized on social media to fight in New Orleans over the removal of Confederate monuments; on the streets of Berkeley, Calif., where clashes between the left and right have increasingly become a threat for law enforcement; and at a raucous May Day rally in Los Angeles.The Oath Keepers are like-minded? I think I know what the Oath Keepers think that they are doing: they conceive themselves as keeping their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Is that also a priority for this other group? I wouldn't know, since the report hasn't said anything at all about their ideology or goals. It's just said that they are "mainly white."
We do get some indication of their goals a bit further down.
“There’s been a lot of organized violence on the part of the left against the right, so we have to organize,” Mr. Chapman said. “The purpose is to have a peaceful event. But if people are attacked, you have to be ready and willing to defend yourself and your right-wing brothers and sisters.”Wait: "this form of aggression"? What he said was that the purpose was to have a peaceful event, but that he was willing to defend his side if necessary. That's aggression? It sounds like an explicitly defensive strategy, not an aggressive one.
This form of aggression is something researchers say they have not seen on such a scale before on the far right...
It doesn't get much better than this. I think the reporter needs to go back home and rethink this whole approach to understanding what is going on.
That's the Spirit
A journalist in England redeems his profession's reputation somewhat in the face of a fifty-thousand pound bounty on his head.
Oathless
What happens when justices don't trust the oath of the President?
Yet normally courts presume campaign rhetoric is a sort of nonsense that has no bearing on how one actually governs -- and that seems to be a presumption justified by the facts to some degree. If anything justifies presuming Trump's oath is less reliable than usual, it must be that he is unusually likely to pursue his campaign statements. He did, after all, pull us out of the Paris accords. He did, after all, appoint a hardliner to run the CIA's operations against Iran (and, by the way, we need to have a talk with our 'paper of record' about the propriety of publishing the names of such officers). He did, after all, prefer a serious textualist to the Supreme Court. He hasn't kept all his promises (e.g., moving the embassy to Jerusalem), but he has apparently taken a number of them seriously.
Compare and contrast with President Obama, "I'll close GitMo," "if you like your plan you can keep your plan," "if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor," "the Iran deal is not a treaty," "the Paris climate accord is not a treaty," etc. I should be more suspicious of the oaths of, say, Supreme Court justices who feel that the Constitution is a living document they are free to modify at will. That is plainly not in keeping with an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution; it is making it one's own playtoy, and arrogating powers never intended by the Constitution to one's self and one's own office. It is their oaths I doubt.
It seems strange to doubt Trump's oath more than one would doubt the oaths of other politicians on the precise ground that he seems unusually likely to keep his promises. I don't take his word seriously because he often seems to say things he doesn't mean, but that approach undermines the 4th and 9th circuit opinions: why bother worrying about what he said on the campaign trail if you don't worry about what he says in general?
Their argument is just the opposite: 'We doubt his oath because we believe he will keep his word.'
[I]f the courts are going to write a new jurisprudence for an oathless presidency into the law, Mandel and Din actually make for a very natural place to start. Both literally concern the question of “bad faith,” the same question raised by whether the courts can trust Trump’s fidelity to his oath. To put it another way, the cases are an expression of the “presumption of regularity,” the idea that we can usually trust public officials to do their duty. And as the Trump administration is discovering, that presumption of regularity is only a presumption, which courts can waive in extraordinary circumstances.What justifies this "presumption of regularity" even as a presumption? The oath of office is to the Constitution; many acts by Presidents, Senators, and Congressional representatives are facially unconstitutional. Any sort of "campaign finance reform" appears to violate the First Amendment, which plainly states that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. The vast majority of Congressional and Executive acts violate any reasonable reading of the 10th Amendment. Many campaign promises also plainly violate the 10th Amendment, as candidates pledge to pursue powers that the Constitution never delegates to the Federal government.
Yet normally courts presume campaign rhetoric is a sort of nonsense that has no bearing on how one actually governs -- and that seems to be a presumption justified by the facts to some degree. If anything justifies presuming Trump's oath is less reliable than usual, it must be that he is unusually likely to pursue his campaign statements. He did, after all, pull us out of the Paris accords. He did, after all, appoint a hardliner to run the CIA's operations against Iran (and, by the way, we need to have a talk with our 'paper of record' about the propriety of publishing the names of such officers). He did, after all, prefer a serious textualist to the Supreme Court. He hasn't kept all his promises (e.g., moving the embassy to Jerusalem), but he has apparently taken a number of them seriously.
Compare and contrast with President Obama, "I'll close GitMo," "if you like your plan you can keep your plan," "if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor," "the Iran deal is not a treaty," "the Paris climate accord is not a treaty," etc. I should be more suspicious of the oaths of, say, Supreme Court justices who feel that the Constitution is a living document they are free to modify at will. That is plainly not in keeping with an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution; it is making it one's own playtoy, and arrogating powers never intended by the Constitution to one's self and one's own office. It is their oaths I doubt.
It seems strange to doubt Trump's oath more than one would doubt the oaths of other politicians on the precise ground that he seems unusually likely to keep his promises. I don't take his word seriously because he often seems to say things he doesn't mean, but that approach undermines the 4th and 9th circuit opinions: why bother worrying about what he said on the campaign trail if you don't worry about what he says in general?
Their argument is just the opposite: 'We doubt his oath because we believe he will keep his word.'
Three Men, Eight Minutes in London
Eight minutes is a pretty solid response time for a terrorist attack, given that you will want to stage up some sort of response rather than sending individual officers in without backup. You'll want to send people in linked up with at least one other officer, and given that aspect of this, eight minutes from report to "terrorists shot dead" has got to be close to as good as it gets. The London police deserve real credit here.
The British people also deserve credit for fighting back. At the "Black and Blue" -- alternatively described as a "pub" and a "steakhouse" in the press -- a disarmed populace fought back as well as it could by hurling glasses, chairs, whatever came to hand. Slowing the attackers any amount is not to be disparaged as a response given that the police inside London are capable of a fairly quick response time. Every second is a second off the eight-minute clock.
So you might call this the "new normal" for London. You could adapt to this the way London adapted to the Blitz. Once in a while, these bloody attacks come up. It's part of life given the existence of a real enemy that wants to kill you and destroy your civilization. Everyone knows his duty: the disarmed citizen to resist however possible to buy time for the armed agents of the state to arrive and stop the attack. Mentally, one could accept this and learn to live with it.
Why, though, should one do so? The Blitz was accepted because, in 1940, the British had no way to strike back against continental German targets. The alternative was to surrender, but that was unacceptable. It was endured because there was no alternative but to endure it until things changed.
It was also endured because the British superiority in naval forces, and its homeland defense, prevented the Nazis from carrying out any other sort of attacks. There is a parallel here. The Islamists who are murdering British citizens on a regular basis are very much like the Luftwaffe, in that they have hit upon a reliable way to cause death and disruption within London that nevertheless cannot possibly win them the war they want to fight. The Nazis at least could hope for a collapse in civilian morale that would cause a demand that the British government surrender. These Islamists cannot hope even for that, as there is no one to whom the British could surrender if they would.
My own prescription is by now well-known: I think the population should be armed and trained in how to fight back. A civil defense option here would leverage the goodwill of most ordinary people such that any group of fifty random folks at the pub would be able to form a common defense, a kind of impromptu shield wall. If the British government really rejects arming them with firearms, it can train them to fight with knives or sticks. Properly, of course, a free people has the right to self-defense -- and therefore, the right to the tools of self-defense. Properly, a free people has the duty to defend the common peace and lawful order -- and therefore a duty, stronger than a right, to be prepared with the tools to do so.
So far this resort to the citizen militia has not been appealing to the elites, who fear -- I suppose -- the citizen's militia more than they fear the radicals and terrorists. One might wonder why that would be so in a society that claims to be a democracy.
Still, in the light of this attack, it should be obvious why such a militia is an important component of civil defense. There's a clock that starts ticking at the onset of an attack like this, and it stops when the terrorists are dead. The police probably can't do much better than they did in terms of response time here. What can help are citizens who are trained to defend themselves, both in terms of how to avoid harm to themselves and how to link up for a common defense against the foe.
Do that, and the eight minute response time doesn't look so bad. Indeed, even at eight minutes, the police might begin to find that they are arriving largely too late to save the attackers.
The British people also deserve credit for fighting back. At the "Black and Blue" -- alternatively described as a "pub" and a "steakhouse" in the press -- a disarmed populace fought back as well as it could by hurling glasses, chairs, whatever came to hand. Slowing the attackers any amount is not to be disparaged as a response given that the police inside London are capable of a fairly quick response time. Every second is a second off the eight-minute clock.
So you might call this the "new normal" for London. You could adapt to this the way London adapted to the Blitz. Once in a while, these bloody attacks come up. It's part of life given the existence of a real enemy that wants to kill you and destroy your civilization. Everyone knows his duty: the disarmed citizen to resist however possible to buy time for the armed agents of the state to arrive and stop the attack. Mentally, one could accept this and learn to live with it.
Why, though, should one do so? The Blitz was accepted because, in 1940, the British had no way to strike back against continental German targets. The alternative was to surrender, but that was unacceptable. It was endured because there was no alternative but to endure it until things changed.
It was also endured because the British superiority in naval forces, and its homeland defense, prevented the Nazis from carrying out any other sort of attacks. There is a parallel here. The Islamists who are murdering British citizens on a regular basis are very much like the Luftwaffe, in that they have hit upon a reliable way to cause death and disruption within London that nevertheless cannot possibly win them the war they want to fight. The Nazis at least could hope for a collapse in civilian morale that would cause a demand that the British government surrender. These Islamists cannot hope even for that, as there is no one to whom the British could surrender if they would.
My own prescription is by now well-known: I think the population should be armed and trained in how to fight back. A civil defense option here would leverage the goodwill of most ordinary people such that any group of fifty random folks at the pub would be able to form a common defense, a kind of impromptu shield wall. If the British government really rejects arming them with firearms, it can train them to fight with knives or sticks. Properly, of course, a free people has the right to self-defense -- and therefore, the right to the tools of self-defense. Properly, a free people has the duty to defend the common peace and lawful order -- and therefore a duty, stronger than a right, to be prepared with the tools to do so.
So far this resort to the citizen militia has not been appealing to the elites, who fear -- I suppose -- the citizen's militia more than they fear the radicals and terrorists. One might wonder why that would be so in a society that claims to be a democracy.
Still, in the light of this attack, it should be obvious why such a militia is an important component of civil defense. There's a clock that starts ticking at the onset of an attack like this, and it stops when the terrorists are dead. The police probably can't do much better than they did in terms of response time here. What can help are citizens who are trained to defend themselves, both in terms of how to avoid harm to themselves and how to link up for a common defense against the foe.
Do that, and the eight minute response time doesn't look so bad. Indeed, even at eight minutes, the police might begin to find that they are arriving largely too late to save the attackers.
An Alternative Reading List for Incoming Freshmen
The National Association of Scholars, rebels, radicals, and revolutionaries all, have put out a reading list for incoming college freshmen. While it includes such classics as Augustine's Confessions, The Book of Ecclesiastes, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, and William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways,
I've never heard of quite a few of the 115 recommendations. Each is
given with a justification for its inclusion, such as the following
examples.
Chinua Achebe – THINGS FALL APART (1958)
Among the first African novels written in English, Things Fall Apart depicts the Igbo of southern Nigeria during the period of initial Western colonization. The protagonist is an ambitious young man in a traditional village who gains fame through a feat of wrestling and goes on to become a powerful leader, only to see his world collapse. We picked it because it is a classic indictment of colonialism but comes with the complicating twist that it is written in a colonial language by an author who has thoroughly absorbed a Western aesthetic sensibility, and because it puts the real questions of cultural relativism on the table.
KINGSLEY AMIS – LUCKY JIM (1954)
Jim Dixon is a medieval history lecturer (and first-generation college student) who does not like academia, does not like academics, and is faced with the horrible prospect of spending the rest of his life in the pompous, affected world of the university. The funniest campus novel ever written, Lucky Jim will inoculate students against the self-importance of college life
M. F. K. FISHER – HOW TO COOK A WOLF (1942)
One of the first great American evocations of the love of food—written during World War II food rationing, when the absence of food increased the love for it. We select this book as an alternate to the growing number of contemporary books on food selected for common readings, for 1) its literary quality; 2) its evocation of the American home front during World War II; 3) its important role in the birth of the food writing genre; 4) because Fisher turns love of food into something more than the hedonism of the well-fed; and 5) because her chapter “How to Keep Alive” gives very practical advice to a college student trying to feed himself on a tight budget.
A Clearing of the Tabs
He got a bad grade. So, he got the Constitution amended.
At Imprimis, Hillsdale College's monthly "speech digest", Kimberly Strassel, author of the book The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech, gives a three-page overview of that topic that is full of specific examples.
Why college graduates still can't think, by Rob Jenkins over at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
Over at USA Today, Glenn Reynolds does the job American journalists don't seem to want to do by asking if Obama's illegal spying was worse than Watergate. Although I don't think there will be anything really new to readers at the Hall, it gives a good summary of events in one place.
Mexico's drug war death toll in 2016 reportedly exceeded that of many countries having real wars.
A very even-handed assessment of Obamacare over at the Federalist by Mary Katherine Ham. She discusses how it has helped some of her friends and how it has hurt her family. Her argument is that we shouldn't ignore either side.
The rise of obesity in the U.S. tracks closely with the expansion of America's primary food assistance program.
Babalu Blog covers a report arguing that Cuba's treatment of medical professionals amounts to human trafficking.
Brett and Kate McKay over at the Art of Manliness have an article I should read, you know, after I check this next website: How to Quite Mindlessly Surfing the Internet and Actually Get Stuff Done.
Graph Paper Diaries offers a 12-post course on spotting and refuting BS called, appropriately, Calling BS Readalong. The link is to the series index.
The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy
FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and Heterodox Academy's Jonathan Haidt offer The Coddling of the American Mind.
Junicode -- a Unicode font for medievalists
A page on using Old English in the digital world (font, browser, etc., recommendations)
A guide to giving your cats their annual performance review
At Imprimis, Hillsdale College's monthly "speech digest", Kimberly Strassel, author of the book The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech, gives a three-page overview of that topic that is full of specific examples.
Why college graduates still can't think, by Rob Jenkins over at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.
Over at USA Today, Glenn Reynolds does the job American journalists don't seem to want to do by asking if Obama's illegal spying was worse than Watergate. Although I don't think there will be anything really new to readers at the Hall, it gives a good summary of events in one place.
Mexico's drug war death toll in 2016 reportedly exceeded that of many countries having real wars.
A very even-handed assessment of Obamacare over at the Federalist by Mary Katherine Ham. She discusses how it has helped some of her friends and how it has hurt her family. Her argument is that we shouldn't ignore either side.
The rise of obesity in the U.S. tracks closely with the expansion of America's primary food assistance program.
Babalu Blog covers a report arguing that Cuba's treatment of medical professionals amounts to human trafficking.
Brett and Kate McKay over at the Art of Manliness have an article I should read, you know, after I check this next website: How to Quite Mindlessly Surfing the Internet and Actually Get Stuff Done.
Graph Paper Diaries offers a 12-post course on spotting and refuting BS called, appropriately, Calling BS Readalong. The link is to the series index.
The Best Browser Extensions that Protect Your Privacy
FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and Heterodox Academy's Jonathan Haidt offer The Coddling of the American Mind.
Junicode -- a Unicode font for medievalists
A page on using Old English in the digital world (font, browser, etc., recommendations)
A guide to giving your cats their annual performance review
Honor and Progressives
Interesting to see the word come up in a progressive piece, and even employed correctly to describe this particular problem.
Two changes are required for Democrats to diminish the 39-point margin by which whites without college degrees voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton.I sometimes get the sense that progressives think that step two is sufficient: that if they come up with a good enough set of government-based gifts, they'll win (and deserve to win) the working class without needing to treat the honor of working class members as important. This guy clearly sees both that this is not sufficient, and also understands just why.
This first concerns social honor. Too often in otherwise polite society, elites (progressives emphatically included) unselfconsciously belittle working-class whites. We hear talk of “trailer trash” in “flyover states” afflicted by “plumber’s butt” — open class insults that pass for wit. This condescension affects political campaigns, as in Hillary Clinton’s comment about “deplorables” and Barack Obama’s about people who “cling to guns or religion.”
“My biggest boneheaded move,” Mr. Obama mused.
He was right. Democrats should stop insulting people. The high cost of doing so is dramatized by “I’m deplorable” T-shirts and Inaugural DeploraBalls. There’s no need to accept racism, sexism or homophobia from working-class whites or anyone else. Just live up to our progressive ideals by acknowledging social disadvantage more consistently....
That’s the first step. The second is for Democrats to advocate an agenda attractive to low-income and working-class Americans of all races: creating good jobs for high school graduates.
Education theory
I'm proofing a sweet little juvenile story on Project Gutenberg, called "Squib and his friends," by Evelyn Everett Green (1900). Our young hero is befriended by a wise man during a family trip to Switzerland, and is regretting having to go home, where he will be
". . . just having stupid, tiresome lessons to do. It will be so dull!"
"Dull!" said Herr Adler, in a voice which brought a sudden wave of red into Squib's cheeks; "dull to learn all sorts of wonderful and interesting things about the great wonderful world we live in! Why, what did you say to me the other day about finding everything so interesting? And now you call your lessons dull. Why, that is nonsense!"
"Oh, if you taught me my lessons they would all be interesting," answered the little boy quickly; "but some people can't make anything interesting; and then--and then--"
Herr Adler nodded his head several times, with one of his grave smiles.
"Yes, you may well say, 'and then--and then--' and stick fast. Can't you make things interesting for yourself? How is it your games are all so interesting?--your collections and your carving? Why, because you are interested; because you want to learn and to know and to do more and more, and better and better. And your lessons will be just as interesting--no matter who teaches you--if you just make up your mind that you want to know.
A promise we can all get behind
In a nice counterpoint to the hyperventilating about Trump's withdrawal from the Paris "accords," Commentary Magazine gives us an example of the pitiful tissue of nothingness in which the participating countries are expressing their continued staunch support. Pakistan, for instance, has agreed to "reduce its emissions after reaching peak levels to the extent possible.” As the author points out, that is a definition of the word "peak," not a commitment.
Anarchy and McMaster
David Benson makes a reasonable point: "McMaster/Cohn simply accept the world as anarchic. If Putin does, too, that just means they're all right together. Putin may also believe water is wet."
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