Privilege

An idea isn't necessarily bad just because the person who came up with it is rich or privileged in certain ways. However, there is a valid criticism when -- as here -- the idea's plausibility depends on the very access to wealth or privilege that isn't always present for others.

There is another issue around the analogy between police and maids. I imagine the police wouldn't appreciate being analogized to maids for the rich, but they do sometimes speak of 'cleaning up the streets.' They don't mean this literally, in terms of sweeping the sidewalk. They mean they are arresting and throwing people into prison, so that those people -- in the analogy, the trash -- are not on the streets anymore. Who are those people who are analogically 'trash'? Not the rich!

So the issue isn't just that the suggestion is 'have the maid do it' when not everyone can afford a maid. Another issue is that not everyone can rely on the maid to think of them as one of her clients.

Of course, one could counter-argue that no one would benefit from a good maid as much as those who currently find themselves surrounded by trash. Surely that's true, as long as the maid is reliable in discerning the trash from the clients who need help with the cleaning.

Fact-checking the fact-checking

Well, this is very meta, but seems a useful tool.  Real Clear Politics analyzes the methods of a number of fact-checking organizations such as Politifact and Snopes.

A New Model for Sportswriting

There's some promise here.

When I worked at NHL.com, we had to write these “Why the [TEAM NAME] will win the Stanley Cup” pieces before every postseason that were just nightmares, especially when you didn’t believe what you were writing... We were guaranteed to get 15 of 16 of these stories wrong every spring yet we did them anyway.

Six years later, I’ve found the perfect antidote to that insufferable optimism—telling you why your team isn’t going to win the Cup. I’m guaranteed to get 15 of 16 correct! You can’t beat those odds!

I don't know much about the current state of hockey, but the model he's hit upon is clearly valid.

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.