Dúnadan

"I thought you knew enough Elvish at least to know dún-adan: Man of the West, Númenórean."

― Bilbo Baggins

"The West" is hardly a new term in need of explanation. It applies to that part of civilization -- or, if you like, to that civilization --- which is philosophically rooted both in Athens and Jerusalem. Contra the author, 'race' has nothing to do with it. Aristotle would have considered the Germans and the Jews as much barbarians as he did the Celts; nor did the Jews of Jesus' day see any 'racial' kinship with Greeks or any of the others. However, the author is correct to suggest that religious heritage is important to the West. Much of the West may now be post-Christian, and not Jewish either, but even that part of the West owes an unfathomable debt to Jerusalem. Excluding India from the West is not a sneer at Hindus, but a recognition that they are simply not indebted in the same way.

I cannot believe that this term, constantly in use throughout my lifetime, is in need of explanation to audiences today. I must regard the attempt to redefine the term as hostile to the truth, a truth known (and well known) to everyone who will now be involved in the debate over the proper domain of "the West." Much will be revealed by where one chooses to fall on the question of whether or not to redefine the term as a sort of racism or religious chauvinism.

One thing that Trump's team is certainly right about is that the West needs, and merits, a defense. I count myself among its defenders.

Linda Sarsour Would Like Your Attention to Her Full Remarks

I'm sure you've heard of Ms. Sarsour, if not before today than following her speech at the Islamic Society of North America. She would like you to watch the whole thing before making up your mind about it. It's about 24 minutes long, if you're inclined to do so; follow the link above.

I've lately been revisiting my opinion of Ms. Sarsour's reputation. What I had always heard about her from right-wingers and reform-minded Muslims was that she was an American Islamist who hated Jews and Israel; and I would have gone on believing that if I hadn't lately read a profile of her from a left-wing site claiming that she is an unprincipled politician who has no grasp of Islamism (which they approve of, this group) and who loves Jews and Israel -- or at least is willing to play very nice with them in order to advance her political career in NYC.

That reminded me enough of Chesterton's approach to criticism of Jesus and Christianity -- 'Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who are growing thin might feel he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance' -- as to be inclined to give her a look and see where she really stands. This is the speech she wants to stand on, by her own remarks; see what you think of it.

Revel in the Smell of Cordite

After a pleasant evening of shooting off fireworks and other explosives -- the highlight of the evening was some for-entertainment-only mortars, which came complete with a cardboard launching tube -- it's nice to crack a beer and see everyone else enjoying themselves too.

Reuters:

The Associated Press:

As many in the United States celebrate the Fourth of July holiday, some minorities have mixed feelings about the revelry of fireworks and parades in an atmosphere of tension on several fronts.

How do you celebrate during what some people of color consider troubling times?

There are no good answers forthcoming, but there is some advice from U.S. News (and World Reports?) on how not to celebrate during what 'some people of color' consider troubling times.

Request denied. Enjoy your freedom.

Happy Independence Day

Remember what we celebrate.

This Guy

Czechs on Gun Rights in Europe

The EU is tightening restrictions. In return, the Czech Republic is considering adopting its own version of our Second Amendment.

Sideways

I rely on the Catholic Church to hold the moral center. On this occasion they've lost their way. That's a big problem: if they don't mark the center, how do others who have wandered find their way back?

The British are different from us, for reasons we remember this week. They are subjects of the Queen, and I suppose there is some sense in which subjects might be ordered to yield up their child's life on the orders of the state. Sure, they had the money to pursue their child's last hopes without anyone else being inconvenienced. But the state said the child should die, so the parents are subject to obedience. Pit and gallows, that sort of thing. All subjects are subject to being disposed of at the state's decision.

Should an American court issue a similar order on me, to command me to stand by while they killed a child of mine mauger my head, I would take it to be my duty to wage war upon them until I or they were stricken from the earth.

The Sea Queen

They reference Grace O'Malley, who was an impressive Irish leader around the time of Elizabeth I.

Gender-Blind

What happens if you put an obviously African-American name like "Jamal" on an application instead of a white-sounding name? Fewer job offers for Jamal: that study's been done many times.

What happens if you put a man's name on an application instead of a woman's?

The trial, which was an effort to push more women in senior position jobs, revealed that removing the gender from a candidate’s application does not help boost gender equality in hiring. The trial also revealed that adding a male name to a candidate’s application made them 3.2 percent less likely to get the job while adding a female name made it 2.9 percent more likely that the candidate would be hired....

“We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist,” said Professor Michael Hiscox, a Harvard academic. “We found the opposite, that de-identifying candidates reduced the likelihood of women being selected for the shortlist.”

It's as if hiring boards were under intense pressure to find qualified female candidates, and really wanted to do so whenever possible.

Travel Ban: Not that Different

Following a unanimous SCOTUS rejection of all the lower courts that had ruled on Trump's travel ban, the thing finally went into effect. The result?

Chaos!

Things were pretty much like always.

It’s not because the Trump administration implemented this ban perfectly — it made one important change to who’s banned and who isn’t right before the ban went into effect, and further changes could be on the way. But it was smooth enough to avoid a political uproar or a midnight courtroom fight.

In one respect, that’s a victory for the ban’s critics. But it’s also a serious challenge. The ban, as it’s instituted right now, folds neatly into the things in existing immigration law that often seem maddening, unjust, or discriminatory[.]

The thing is, deciding who of the endless millions of people who would like to come to America actually gets to come to America is necessarily an act of discrimination. You can't ban discrimination from discriminating.

Big Moves on Outer Space

Flanked by legendary astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, President Trump announced the reformation of the National Space Council. It is tasked with the pursuit of "grand ambitions," a mission very much in the Trump mindset.

Meanwhile, in Congress, a motion to split the Air Force in order to establish a Space Corps survived its first hearing.

Early stages, but these moves represent an attempt to restore a part of what "Made America Great" in the eyes of the earlier generation. Buzz Aldrin's father's generation dreamed up Buck Rogers: Aldrin himself went to the moon. The greatness of that has never been equaled, and so far, it has never been surpassed.

I don't know if I believe that Federal bureaucracies still have the capacity to do things that are Great in that capital-letter sense. Maybe not. But at least they're aiming in the right direction.

Beer for the Beer God

A rather cheerful piece of history on some ancient Celtic mythology.

Making Health Care Cheaper

Vox says that one of the most important issues is why Americans pay so much for care that costs less elsewhere. One reason why: America's two basic systems for providing care both put the payment on organizations with huge pools of money. Insurance companies have big budgets, but they are dwarfed by the Feds who run Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.

Inflation follows naturally when more dollars chase the same number of services.

"The Clenched Fist of Truth"?

This is not the NRA I thought I knew.



The old concept was always that an armed citizenry could hedge against government tyranny. That's not what is on offer here.

Why Do People Want to Kill Each Other Over Politics?

A philosophically-trained writer at the Federalist says it's because we view the government's power as far more necessary to life and its goods than it really is.

If government power is the people’s best and only hope, then to deny the use of that power, or even to exercise it in the wrong way, is just like killing people. So you are naturally going to long to see the political malefactors behind such a policy struck down, for the same reasons we love the scene in the action movie when the bad guy finally falls off the skyscraper and gets what’s coming to him.

This attitude is not strictly limited to the provinces of the Left where we currently see it so flamboyantly displayed. As we have recently discovered, some on the Right also look to government for salvation, hoping that the right kind of limits on trade and immigration, the right deals made by the right dealmaker, will solve all of our problems—and anyone who doesn’t support that leader is a traitor.

But the basic idea of government as salvation is associated more with the Left, because expanding the power of government is their primary political cause.

Is he right about that? Vox argues that it's impossible to tell conservatives apart from their caricature of conservatives -- and for them, I don't doubt that this is true. Republicans want to kill the poor in order to provide tax cuts for the rich, and that's the only way to understand the policy they're proposing.

I don't care a bit about tax cuts for the rich, but I'd like to see the government get completely out of health care. My reasoning has two parts: most importantly, because government-run health care poses severe challenges to human liberty; less importantly, because the government's effectively-unlimited money distorts markets and produces runaway price inflation. If the government must be involved at all, it should be on the back end, quietly repaying expenses for qualifying veterans (and potentially certain very poor individuals) so that no one realizes that there's an unlimited pool of money they could chase. Then people's capacity to come up with the money up front would serve as a market brake on the inflation, and yet veterans would be able to pursue the health care they want from the doctors they choose -- not ones imposed on them by an uncaring, massive bureaucracy.

But I suppose that's tantamount to saying that I want people to die.

Georgia Alters the Deal

I mean, eight percent is better than nothing, but a promise is a promise.

Medieval Times

Russian propaganda is an interesting phenomenon. We see little of it here in the West, just a small subset that is shaped to fit in with our own news well enough to fool those who don't pay close attention. But there is a much wider set of claims being made by the propagandists. This newsletter tracks the major themes.

This week there's a fun claim about a secret plan to restore Moscow to it's medieval boundaries:

This week, pro-Kremlin disinformation time-travelled to medieval times, suggesting that the West and/or NATO planned to reduce Russia after the fall of the USSR to the size of the historical Grand Duchy of Moscow. For those who can't quite recall the borders of that Grand Duchy, you can find a map here. Like in any good spy novel, it all supposedly came from secret documents obtained by Russian intelligence services – soon handed over to Sputnik apparently. There was no further information concerning why the West and/or NATO had a plan to divide Russia according to medieval territorial borders, but the curious disinformation was repeated both in Russian and English outlets. Needless to say, the claims were not accompanied with any proof of the existence of such a 'Grand Duchy plan'.

Victor Charlie

A fine Celtic piece that will make some of you feel right at home.

Frederick Law Olmsted

AVI has a good piece on the famous designer's early travels. I have nothing of value to add to what he says, but I do have a relevant story of roguery and mis-spent youth.

Way back in mumble-mumble I graduated from High School. This was at a school in Atlanta, Georgia. Naturally, we gave some attention to the "senior prank" that might have been better spent on preparing for the SATs. In fact, we planned the thing months in advance. It was decided that we would steal a desk from the school, one of the proprietary ones that obviously belonged to a school, spray paint it with "Kilroy was Here!" graffiti, and then hang it in a big oak opposite the school's main building.

The operation was divided into three phases. Mine was the first phase, the stealing of the desk. Needless to say this had to be done in such a way that the hanging of the desk would later seem to be a tremendous surprise. Thus, it had to disappear long before the prank, and in such a way that no one would be sure where it had come from. For that reason, I arranged to defeat the school's security systems -- both lock and electronic -- so that we could spirit out a desk in the middle of the night, in the winter-time long before graduation. We also rearranged the desks in the room during the operation so that no one would notice a missing one.

That was effected before Christmas. We then had plenty of time to paint the desk appropriately, concealing it for months in a secret location.

Near graduation day we had one of our comrades who was an expert tree-climber sneak into the park opposite the high school headquarters at night, and toss lines over the high tree limbs. Assuming his success -- this was before everyone had a cell-phone -- we arrived about 2 AM with the desk, so that it could be hoisted and secured in position. After that, it was a simple matter of removing the lines and exfiltrating the park before police noticed our activity. It was thus secured well above where anyone would be able to simply remove it.

Here is the tie-in: unbeknownst to any of us, the next day was the 100th anniversary of that park, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The mayor of Atlanta came down to give a speech at the very spot where we'd secured the "Kilroy was here!" desk.

Our comrade the tree-climber was immediately captured, as his hobby was too well-known for him to avoid detection. He was a stand-up guy, however, and the rest of the team escaped unpunished. I'm sure we're well past the statue of limitations now.

Viking Dragons

Naturally we have to hear this lecture from our new favorite professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.