A voice and a heart

From a Gutenberg project I'm working on, this excerpt from Browning's An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, an Arab Physician, "the startled utterance of the Syrian contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth":

"... think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-great were the All-loving too!
So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying: "O heart I made, a heart beats here!"

The NRA and Race

It's a point we've featured here before, but it's worth hearing it again.

The NRA, from its very beginnings, took seriously the issue of black Americans' right to defend themselves with firearms. The worst that can be said about them is that they could do more, for example in cases like Philando Castile's; but that wish for more happens in a context in which very few are doing anything to protect their rights at all. Many, in fact, are doing the best they can to strip their rights away.

Nonsense, Mr. Khan

"There is never a reason to carry a knife"? The knife is one of the most universal tools in human history. There are hundreds of reasons to carry a knife, which is why everyone everywhere has typically done so.

Self-defense is a valid reason, for that matter. The collapse of order in your city, Mr. Khan, is a more than adequate reason by itself. But for goodness sake, don't try to sell me on "never." I carry a knife everywhere, and I find it endlessly useful. Other people who have neglected to carry a knife very regularly ask to borrow mine.

Why don't you try establishing a civilization in which you don't have to ban ordinary useful tools in order to have peace and good order? The British used to know how to do that.

Middle-Earth Announces Heavy Tariffs On Narnian Imports

MINAS TIRITH, GONDOR—Kicking off a major trade war between the two kingdoms, the Middle-Earth Trade Federation has announced heavy tariffs on the import of Narnian steel, sending the stock market into a freefall Thursday...

Bee Stings Google for Easter

Google Pays Respect to Jesus's Empty Tomb with Empty Homepage

Happy Dance

Speaking of MercyMe ...

I had a teacher once who told me, "I can't sing worth anything, but I can sure make a joyful noise."

The Left's Enemies Must Be Crushed

The head of Twitter endorsed this article on eliminating the political opposition, so you might want to read it.

It's not well-argued, and there's almost nothing of value in its extremely loose historical analogies. The endorsement thus isn't based on the notion that this is a tightly argued piece that maps out a plausible way forward. The endorsement is of the overarching vision of a nation where only Democrats exercise political power, where Republicans and conservatives are as powerless as in California, and where 'the wrong side' is crushed and subordinated.

California accomplished this, the author says, so the nation as a whole can as well. There are in fact substantial road blocks to doing that in the rest of the country, but you might usefully ask how California became so reliably Democratic. The answer is straightforward: Democrats endorsed mass immigration, Republicans opposed it, and the massive number of immigrants voted for Democrats as a result. It's actually completely unlike the historical analogues chosen by the author, i.e., the Civil War and the FDR era that arose in the Great Depression. Those political outcomes were the result of calamities that persuaded people to accept a new order. In California, they just imported enough new voters to tip the scales.

California also exported a lot of Republican voters, of course, as they fled the state for Texas or other friendlier climes. In the envisioned scenario, there would be nowhere to go.

The Great Leveler

On Jordan Peterson's recommendation, I'm about to start "The Great Leveler," an attempt to analyze how much income inequality has occurred from 9,000 B.C. through the present.  The general consensus is that the author is descriptivist not prescriptivist and has no political agenda to push.  His overall conclusion is that income inequality is persistent, interrupted only by cataclysms like war and pestilence, which foster an equality by general immiseration.

It's interesting to read the most positive and negative reviews, as I usually do before taking a chance on a book:  about the same number of negative reviewers object that his political bias is obvious.  Some, however, object that he is betraying a bias to the left by arguing that inequality must be bad, without explaining why or noting that what's important is how tolerable life is for those on the bottom.  Others object that he is betraying a bias to the right by arguing that equality can be achieved only by violent disaster, whereas all sensible and compassionate people know that inequality occurs only when bad men use violence.  The positive reviews tend to find him apolitical, whether the reviewer betrays a disposition towards the left or the right.  The author himself apparently offers no suggestions other than to be careful what we wish for.

A Historical Analogy

Safety Brief

Have a great time otherwise.

"I'm the Majority" - the Law Abiding Citizen

Four minutes that perfectly explain the gun issue.  Thank you Mr. Mark Robinson of Greensboro, North Carolina.  I'll say no more and just get out of his way...

Run Devil Run

Pueblo Sin Fronteras

More looking-glass-world news coverage this week.  President Trump announced that there would be some really unpleasant consequences to Mexico if a caravan of illegal immigrants from Central America were ushered politely through Mexico to the southern U.S. border, and magically, they called the march off and dumped the participants into Mexico City.  Now it seems that there is an annual caravan of this type, organized by a group called "Pueblo Sin Fronteras" (People Without Borders), whose website asks for donations but doesn't give any information about where it's based or who runs it.  PSF explained that the halt had nothing to do with Trump, whatever you might have assumed, but was a rational response to the fear of the dangers of an arduous train ride that normally forms the next link in this standard trek.

You might think that the news coverage would stress the fact that this is an annual organized attempt to challenge the U.S. borders and to spin up favorable news coverage for open-border enthusiasts, but instead the coverage is . . . strange.  This NBC story, for instance, explains that President Trump is misleading everyone into thinking that there's a large organized group of illegal immigrants being shepherded through Mexico on their way here, because it's really an annual publicity stunt that's been going on for years, what's the big deal?  Snopes takes the same strange view:  you may have heard that there's a caravan, etc., but a quick look at the facts shows that it's just the usual annual, etc.  What's more, no one is planning an illegal entry.  Instead, they intend to ask for asylum, as usual.  It's true that, in order to ask for asylum, they have to present themselves to immigration officials inside the U.S., having first crashed the border, but what's the big deal?  Why is Trump being a meanie all of a sudden?  The whole purpose of the annual march is to highlight the plight of people on an annual march to crash the U.S. border, and suddenly you guys want to make it harder?

I think "People Without Borders" is a better description of us than of the organization that organizes the annual caravans.  PS, as the Washington Examiner points out, there is also an American organization called People Without Borders that facilitates assimilation of legal immigrants, but it is getting flak from people who have confused it with Pueblo Sin Fronteras.  PSF's Facebook page is short on background but identifies itself as an "International Migrant Outreach Collective," whose "product" is "humanity."

Amazing Grace

This song in one form or another has come up in my life several times over the last week. Might as well put the Dropkick Murphy's version up.

Being Terrible

A confession.

I Can Only Imagine

Also a good movie, though of the two I preferred "Paul, Apostle of Christ."

If you aren't familiar with it, the song "I Can Only Imagine" launched MercyMe's career in the Christian music world and I believe is the best-selling Christian single ever.

UK Holds 78 Year Old For Defending Himself

A pensioner in London is under arrest after stabbing one of two men who invaded his home and assaulted him.

The injustice of this is apparently not obvious to British authorities. One begins to suspect it is the desired future for some of our fellow Americans, too.

Paul, Apostle of Christ

It's really pretty good, I thought.

Dissembling at the Edge

C'mon, ma'am. We all know you really do care whether we live or die.

The California Secession

States control their own ballots for their own state and local elections, and they can let non-citizens vote if they want to do. However, in Federal elections, they must ensure that only citizens vote. If they knowingly register non-citizens to vote without ensuring that those non-citizens can be excluded from Federal elections, they're out of order. What's to be done about it?

Imagine a better alternative. Suppose that President Trump announces today that the new California law has made all future elections unconstitutional and illegal, because foreigners are now allowed to tilt the outcome. Neither he nor the Republican House and Senate will accept the credentials of anyone elected by California (one of eight states, incidentally, that have more registered voters than voting-age citizens).

Imagine after November's vote that California's two Democratic senators and 53 members of Congress (39 of whom are Democrats) are not seated until a new California election purges all illegal aliens and other foreigners from the voter rolls in federal elections. No California presidential votes will be counted in 2020. Imagine the federal government requiring voter IDs and declaring it a felony punishable by permanent forfeiture of future U.S. citizenship if a non-citizen votes illegally in any federal election.

I can imagine that, but what's the mechanism for not counting the votes of Presidential electors appointed by California? Does the Office of the Federal Register have the authority to do that? Would they exercise it?