DB: Mattis Changes Title

In an effort to better align the title of his office with the duties and obligations he executes, sources say that Mattis will unilaterally change his title from Secretary of Defense to First Lord of Destruction.

One senior defense official said that other titles considered were Purveyor of Devastation and America’s Mighty Hammer of Righteousness. However, First Lord of Destruction had a nice “Marine Corps meets Sith Lord” kind of ring to it, the source said.

“If any of you sons of bitches calls me secretary, I’ll punch you right in the throat,” Mattis told members of the press in a recent briefing.

“I’ll call him whatever he wants,” one visibly shaken undersecretary of defense told reporters, on condition of anonymity. “Just as long as he doesn’t hurt me again. I called him Mr. Secretary once and he punched me right in the throat.”

Love of Honor

It's difficult to translate into English.

The exact meaning of philotimo is hotly debated, given that the word belongs to the pantheon of Greek lexical items that defy easy explanation. ‘Love of honour’, its official translation, is a utilitarian yet insufficient attempt to convey the constellation of virtues squeezed into the word’s four syllables. When I asked various Greeks about their own perception of philotimo, I received very different responses.

“Doing the right thing,” Pinelopi Kalafati, a doctor, told me. “Loving and honouring God and your society,” said priest Nikolas Papanikolaou. "Striving for perfection,” answered actor Kostis Thomopoulos. “Stepping out from your comfort zone to help someone in need,” suggested Tatiana Papadopoulou, a volunteer in Malakasa detention camp for refugees.

As the article suggests, there's a dark side to this, as there always is with honor. But, out of the same well, there is a fullness and a flourishing of virtue that otherwise does not occur.

Disconnection

ISIS attacks Iran's parliament.

Wretchard: "Half the world is turning men into corpses and women into slaves. The other half is turning boys into girls and girls into boys."

Wolf Time: Part II

Today's discussion is about the right way how to live a good life in an ethically confused time. How can one do it? Is it possible? What virtues are the right ones for such a life?

As fate would have it, we have an excellent intro into this discussion from our neighbors to the north.

Legislation passed by the Canadian province of Ontario has granted authorities the right to take children away from parents who refuse to accept their children’s “gender identity.” Critics of the new measure launched a petition aiming for a repeal of the “totalitarian” child abuse bill.... It deprives parents of their earlier right to “direct the child’s education and religious upbringing.”

The family is now only allowed to “direct the child or young person’s education and upbringing, in accordance with the child’s or young person’s creed, community identity and cultural identity.”

In fact the law is uglier even than that description, bearing the marks of the worst kind of identity politics.

The matters to be considered in determining the best interests of a child are changed. The child’s views and wishes, given due weight in accordance with the child’s age and maturity, unless they cannot be ascertained, and in the case of a First Nations, Inuk or Métis child, the importance of preserving the child’s cultural identity and connection to community must be taken into consideration.... the new Act includes the child’s race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, family diversity, disability, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

...

Societies are required to make all reasonable efforts to pursue a plan for customary care for a First Nations, Inuk or Métis child if the child is in need of protection, cannot remain in the care of or be returned to the person who had charge of the child immediately before intervention by the society or the person entitled to custody of the child and is a member of or identifies with a band or a First Nations, Inuit or Métis community. Customary care is defined as the care and supervision of a First Nations, Inuk or Métis child by a person who is not the child’s parent, according to the custom of the child’s band or First Nations, Inuit or Métis community.

An equivalent to section 86 of the current Act, which prohibits Roman Catholic children from being placed in the care of a Protestant society, institution or family and Protestant children from being placed with a Roman Catholic society, institution or family, is not included in the new Act. Instead, a society is to choose a residential placement that, where possible, respects the child’s race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, family diversity, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and cultural and linguistic heritage. In the case of a First Nations, Inuk or Métis child, priority is to be given to placing the child with a First Nations, Inuit or Métis family, respectively.

Lars Walker could have written that law into his book.

So what do you do about it? What do we learn from Wolf Time about how to deal with such a world?

A Further Conversation with Joan C. Williams

I mentioned Dr. Williams' piece on the white working class, and the need to show them honor, a few posts below. Slate magazine has undertaken an interview to get her to expand on her ideas.

Here are two excerpts where the Slate author tried to push her off the idea that it's on their side not to be scornful.

But as for people like us, we should have some commitment to honesty. What attitude should we be taking toward people who voted for a racist buffoon that is scamming them?

Here’s the absolutely sobering truth. A lot of them saw those aspects of Trump, and yet they thought he was the best candidate. Democrats have given the Republicans the precious gift of being the party that’s out there talking about jobs for people who lack college education. Two-thirds of Americans aren’t college graduates. And sometimes the message that they have heard is, “if you want a future, graduate from college.” Two-thirds of Americans are not college graduates, and what Trump said was, “I am going to offer you good jobs even if you don’t have a college degree.” The policy solutions he proposed were supply-side economics, bringing back coal, and chitchatting with a few employers. Those are not effective policy solutions, but as long as Democrats don’t say anything but that you guys are racist, are voting for a racist, they’re going to keep on voting for Trump.

...

And if you tallied up the time that Hillary Clinton spent talking about jobs for the American people versus Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton spent way more time. And if you look at their websites Hillary Clinton has more plans, or had, for Americans without college degrees than Donald Trump does, and the more sensible plans, at least by my analysis and I think your analysis. Don’t “average people” have some responsibility to learn this.

No I think that’s completely unrealistic.

I agree it’s unrealistic, but I am not sure whose fault that is.

I am. I think the Democrats are—I’m damn sure they are at fault for that. The reason that Trump won was about 80,000 voters in Rust Belt states. Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and others were begging that Hillary Clinton campaign in those Rust Belt states and talk to those people about jobs and about other concerns that blue-collar Americans feel very, very strongly about, and they were told no. And they were told to adhere to a script of Donald Trump is unqualified, and Hillary Clinton is super qualified and wouldn’t it be awesome, and a progressive gesture to vote for a woman for president. Let’s break the glass ceiling. That is an incredibly well-designed message to alienate these voters.... The glass ceiling is a very ineffective message. Not only for the men, but also for the women, because what does glass ceiling mean? It means women like me, born with a silver spoon in my mouth, get to have jobs like the jobs my husband and father had. Why should working-class people care? You know, newsflash, they don’t care.

There's another challenge about how important it is to talk about race where she turns the charge around in an interesting way.

"The Lion of London Bridge"

A profile in courage, as they say.

Qatar

I thought the Saudi-led move against Qatar, which houses CENTCOM's forward deployed base and other key military facilities, was one of the most alarming pieces of news I've seen cross my desk in a while. Trump apparently thinks it's a victory.

Who's right? I guess we'll see.

FIRE: Left Wing Profs Need Free Speech, Too

A fair point.

Much of the recent intolerance of campus speech has come from the left, and has been widely covered by conservative media outlets under the guise of a concern for the state of free speech on campus. Why, then, do these same outlets remain comparatively quiet when the intolerance for speech is coming from the right? Free speech is free speech, and if you believe that the right to openly express controversial political opinions is important, you should be as concerned about Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s right to free speech as you were about Charles Murray’s or Ann Coulter’s — and vice versa....

I have worked as a free speech advocate for more than 12 years now. In that time, it seems as if the extent to which we insulate ourselves from opposing viewpoints, and demonize the people who hold them, has increased dramatically. Admittedly, this is just my sense of things, but it is a sense I have heard echoed repeatedly by colleagues, friends, family, and virtually anyone with whom I discuss the work I do. It feels as though we have reached a point where many of us, from across the political spectrum, recognize that this is a problem — but it feels insurmountable, and we don’t quite know what to do about it.

If you feel this way, start being a role model now. If you disagree with professor Taylor’s remarks about President Trump but are horrified by the threats made against her, send her a note of support. Share one of the few reports about her story with friends who might not otherwise see it, and let them know what you think. Similarly, if you disagree with Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College but are appalled that police can’t ensure his safety on campus simply because he expressed his views, send him a note of support. Be a vocal supporter of the right to free speech not only when you agree with the speaker, but also — especially — when you disagree with the speaker.

Related: "A New Wave of Left-Wing Militants is Ready to Rumble," at Mother Jones. They don't seem to be taking the advice to heart.

VA: New Electronic Records to be "Seamless" with Military System

We'll see about that. Still, it does sound like an improvement.

D-Day

A terrible day that made for many beautiful tomorrows, so many of which are now already yesterdays.

Sen. Warner: Intercept Story only Part of Russian Campaign

Senator Mark Warner wants you to know that the Russians did far more than spoof a voting company.

"I don't believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes," Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. "But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far." He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names of those states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before the midterm voting in 2018....

"I really want to press the case. This is not an attempt to embarrass any state. This is a case to make sure that the American public writ large realizes that if we don’t get ahead of this, this same kind of intervention could take place in 2018 and definitely will take place in 2020."

Faith in the integrity of our elections is of the utmost importance to the peaceful transfer of power.

How Did this Girl Get a Security Clearance?

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.

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.

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.

This Guy, Too

We have an embarrassment of riches, just now.

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.

"Fringe Groups Revel"

An old-fashioned fisking of this article seems to be in order.

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.”

This form of aggression is something researchers say they have not seen on such a scale before on the far right...

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.

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.