"Is America headed to a civil war" asks... USA Today. Well, it's the Sage of Knoxville writing in the pages of USA Today, but the editors agreed to publish the piece. That this newspaper of all of them would carry a piece warning about a potentially imminent civil war suggests to me that the idea is now completely mainstream.
Who knows? We might catch up to Mexico in political assassinations sooner than anyone thinks.
UPDATE: Calls for more.
Interesting Point
A former lawyer (J.D. cum laude, according to her bio), writes in defense of the 'separation of parents and kids is bad' thesis -- but without exception.
Indeed, studies show that maternal separation is a major stressor even in newborn infants. And fifty years of social science evidence teach us that, on average, children separated from one or both biological parents fare worse, across virtually every measurable indicator, than children who have not been separated from their own married parents.She goes on to more anecdotal examples, which are not to my thinking as strong. But there's an interesting point there, one that echoes a line of thought that Chesterton advanced. Chesterton is so frequently on the side of the contemporary Right that it is easy to think he isn't going to be very challenging for an intellectual on that side of the fence. Yet he is not always so, and this favoring of the family over capitalism is one of the ways in which he is not:
Given how crucial intact families are to human flourishing, it is appalling that a purportedly pro-life and pro-family Trump administration would use any measure of its discretion to rip families apart. But I would also note that many of those loudly championing children at the border take an incompatible position when children are separated from their parents under other circumstances.
Children’s need for their parents in cases of intentional single-parenthood, divorce, surrogacy, and abortion, is no different than the needs of the children at the U.S. border. In these cases, though, the same needs of children to be raised by those who are most likely to fully invest, care for, and protect them — their biological parents — are ignored.
This is not to say, such as in the case of most adoptive parents, that there are not heroic individuals out there who have stepped up to give non-biological children the best life possible under what would otherwise be extremely difficult circumstances. This is also not to say that divorce is never warranted — although modern attitudes about the purposes of marriage and the no-fault system have overwhelmingly been a bust for children.
The 1970s models of thinking that “children are resilient” in the face of divorce has given way: “The myth of the good divorce has not stood up well in the face of sustained social scientific inquiry – especially when one considers the welfare of children exposed to their parents’ divorces,” observes University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox.
If it be true that Socialism attacks the Family in theory, it is far more certain that Capitalism attacks it in practice...So the factory is destroying the Family in fact; and need depend on no poor mad theorist who dreams of destroying it in fancy.This is from a piece called "The Superstition of Divorce," written at a time when widespread divorce was more theoretical than actual. The Right has moved on from that ground, for the most part; this one former attorney being a rare exception.
How Are Things South of the Border?
Headline: "Extraordinary moment Mexico arrests town's ENTIRE police force of 28 officers 'over murder of a mayoral candidate' amid country's bloodiest election campaign."
120 candidates have been murdered since September. This one was a rather extraordinary moment -- the assassin just walked up and shot him in the back of the head, and then walked freely away. But it's only one of three such murders in the last week or so.
120 candidates have been murdered since September. This one was a rather extraordinary moment -- the assassin just walked up and shot him in the back of the head, and then walked freely away. But it's only one of three such murders in the last week or so.
Fun with neologisms
Zero Hedge introduced me to two new words this morning. I fell for them briefly, then realized they are both amusing examples of turning the tables in the endless propaganda effort to coin words containing unexamined and unearned insults.
One was "pedophrasty," literally meaning not much more than "verbal expressions involving children," but in context the callous use of children as political cannon fodder, as in "How can we ever arrest adults who have a connection of any kind to children who would not be able to accompany them into a jail cell?"
The other was "bigoteering. " I particularly like that one, because I've long been interested in what happened to the word "profit" when it was transformed into "profiteering." Originally "eer"was fairly neutral suffix along the lines of "-er" or "-or," meaning "person who engages in." Some time back, it became a little shady. If the Royal Navy is honorable but letters of marque are not far removed from piracy, then the suspect "private" easily becomes "privateer." If profit becomes a filthy enough concept, "profiteering" acquires a sneering veneer. Soon any word can be similar sullied by adding "-eer," so it seems fair that unscrupulous scandal-mongers (mongeers?) should be pilloried with the term "bigoteering," with its hint of using imaginary bigotry in others for one's own personal gain. So we might also have "ecologeering" and "equiteering."
One was "pedophrasty," literally meaning not much more than "verbal expressions involving children," but in context the callous use of children as political cannon fodder, as in "How can we ever arrest adults who have a connection of any kind to children who would not be able to accompany them into a jail cell?"
The other was "bigoteering. " I particularly like that one, because I've long been interested in what happened to the word "profit" when it was transformed into "profiteering." Originally "eer"was fairly neutral suffix along the lines of "-er" or "-or," meaning "person who engages in." Some time back, it became a little shady. If the Royal Navy is honorable but letters of marque are not far removed from piracy, then the suspect "private" easily becomes "privateer." If profit becomes a filthy enough concept, "profiteering" acquires a sneering veneer. Soon any word can be similar sullied by adding "-eer," so it seems fair that unscrupulous scandal-mongers (mongeers?) should be pilloried with the term "bigoteering," with its hint of using imaginary bigotry in others for one's own personal gain. So we might also have "ecologeering" and "equiteering."
Fun with curve-fitting
These are the great results you can get if you look backwards at brief intervals of data and don't check your results by hypothesizing a causal mechanism, making a prediction, and finding out whether your curves match into the future. For instance, there is an uncanny ten-year correlation between the number of letters in the winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the number of people killed by venomous spiders.
Counterpoint: Needed, More Americans
Bret Stephens thinks we are dangerously underpopulated:
Myself, I hold these truths to be self-evident.
1) American cities are too crowded, and the bulk of new immigrants are going to go right to those cities -- just as they cluster in cities in the countries from which they come. (Besides, huge swathes of the unoccupied land in the USA -- especially out West -- is Federal land in national monuments, forests, parks, and wildernesses. The same folks who want to up our population density to UK levels would have a fit if you proposed opening that land to settlement and economic exploitation.)
2) New immigrants can in fact be better Americans than native-born Americans, but only if they come loving the American way of limited government and maximum freedom. Some do: likely you've known them, as I have. One of the best Americans I ever knew was a Korean-born Korean who fought the Communists in the 1950s, and then came here. He loved America with all his heart, and did his best to impress his love of the American ideal on all of his students once he became a professor of Political Science. I'll take all the guys like him you can find.
But that's my marker for whether or not America would benefit from any given immigrant. America is in a key sense a philosophy. If they share the philosophy, well and good: we can use all the Americans we can find. Otherwise, there are already plenty of folks on the highway.
…America is vast, largely empty and often lonely. Roughly 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas, covering just 3 percent of the overall landmass. We have a population density of 35 people per square kilometer — as opposed to 212 for Switzerland and 271 for the U.K.He has some arguments about new immigrants being, on average, better people than Americans. They'll work harder for less money, go to church more often, and -- he claims -- get into less trouble with the law. It's hard to say if that's true or not, actually; drug traffickers who cross international borders make up almost half of Federal prisoners, but that's not representative of populations in state prisons or local jails, where 90% of prisoners are but which are not good about submitting statistics in a fashion that can be readily studied. Clearly 100% of illegal aliens have committed at least a misdemeanor Federal crime; but since the debate is about whether or not to eliminate those very laws, that's not of much interest to the discussion.
We could use some more people. Make that a lot more.
Myself, I hold these truths to be self-evident.
1) American cities are too crowded, and the bulk of new immigrants are going to go right to those cities -- just as they cluster in cities in the countries from which they come. (Besides, huge swathes of the unoccupied land in the USA -- especially out West -- is Federal land in national monuments, forests, parks, and wildernesses. The same folks who want to up our population density to UK levels would have a fit if you proposed opening that land to settlement and economic exploitation.)
2) New immigrants can in fact be better Americans than native-born Americans, but only if they come loving the American way of limited government and maximum freedom. Some do: likely you've known them, as I have. One of the best Americans I ever knew was a Korean-born Korean who fought the Communists in the 1950s, and then came here. He loved America with all his heart, and did his best to impress his love of the American ideal on all of his students once he became a professor of Political Science. I'll take all the guys like him you can find.
But that's my marker for whether or not America would benefit from any given immigrant. America is in a key sense a philosophy. If they share the philosophy, well and good: we can use all the Americans we can find. Otherwise, there are already plenty of folks on the highway.
In Lexington, Virginia?
I've been hearing people mockingly say, 'Get woke, go broke' fairly often lately. This guy, though, really might. It's one thing to refuse to serve a prominent member of the Trump administration at a restaurant in DC, or in New York City. Lexington, Virginia, is not the right town for that.
It's been purged from the English-language Wikipedia article, but if you check the German-language one it still refers to Lexington as "The Shrine of the South." This is the site of Robert E. Lee's grave in the chapel named after him, at the University named after him, where also is the grave of his horse, Traveller. Stonewall Jackson was born here, and Sam Houston nearby. Currently it is the site of the Virginia Military Institute, producer of the kind of hardcore second lieutenants that come out of these Southern military academies -- the Citadel in Charleston, SC, produces their like as well. It seems like every other highway in the surrounding countryside is called "Lee Highway." Confederate flags abound.
There's a reasonable argument for freedom of association allowing a business owner to refuse to serve guests of whom he morally disapproves. There's a countering argument, also reasonable, that public accommodations should not discriminate for moral reasons to include religious beliefs. Those discussions are worthy and interesting, but here I'm merely struck by the practicalities of this decision. It's not like you can up and move your cozy bed-and-breakfast to another town, the way you could close a franchise of a chain. There's an irreplaceable investment that's been made in a particular location, which has a particular environment around it. People don't come to Lexington, VA, on tour because they are interested in woke politics. They come to see their kids at VMI or Washington & Lee -- both on the list of "Most Conservative Colleges in Virginia" -- or to tour the shrines of the South.
I guess he deserves some respect for having the courage of his convictions. If you're willing to pay the freight, you can do what you want.
It's been purged from the English-language Wikipedia article, but if you check the German-language one it still refers to Lexington as "The Shrine of the South." This is the site of Robert E. Lee's grave in the chapel named after him, at the University named after him, where also is the grave of his horse, Traveller. Stonewall Jackson was born here, and Sam Houston nearby. Currently it is the site of the Virginia Military Institute, producer of the kind of hardcore second lieutenants that come out of these Southern military academies -- the Citadel in Charleston, SC, produces their like as well. It seems like every other highway in the surrounding countryside is called "Lee Highway." Confederate flags abound.
There's a reasonable argument for freedom of association allowing a business owner to refuse to serve guests of whom he morally disapproves. There's a countering argument, also reasonable, that public accommodations should not discriminate for moral reasons to include religious beliefs. Those discussions are worthy and interesting, but here I'm merely struck by the practicalities of this decision. It's not like you can up and move your cozy bed-and-breakfast to another town, the way you could close a franchise of a chain. There's an irreplaceable investment that's been made in a particular location, which has a particular environment around it. People don't come to Lexington, VA, on tour because they are interested in woke politics. They come to see their kids at VMI or Washington & Lee -- both on the list of "Most Conservative Colleges in Virginia" -- or to tour the shrines of the South.
I guess he deserves some respect for having the courage of his convictions. If you're willing to pay the freight, you can do what you want.
Randomness beats faulty prediction
I've signed up for an Aeon feed and so far am finding the occasional interesting article. Here's one that examines how seemingly meaningless augury techniques might be a good way to break people of the habit of using affirmatively harmful predictors. As I see it, though, the real trick is the double-blind study: one group uses the proposed predictors while the other relies on a random draw, then you figure out which produced better results. Randomness for the sake of randomness doesn't have the appeal for me that it seems to have for the author. But as a way of deciding whether that herb supplement is worth the money and risk, sure.
How's that Warming Going?
A thirty-year report.
Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios... Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago....Well, because the payments aren't evenly assessed world-wide, thus allowing nations like China and Russia to 'catch up' with the West.
These corrected climate predictions raise a crucial question: Why should people world-wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if those cuts have already been made?
A Pictish Fort Destroyed by Vikings
AS the Vikings sailed away, they probably thought they'd done a good day's work.Somewhat like a volcano, I suppose.
The Pictish fort behind them was ruined and ablaze, its defenders put to the sword and anything worth looting had been thoroughly pillaged.
But now archaeologists examining the remains of the 10th-century settlement at Burghead on the Moray coast say the attack by the Northmen has actually helped preserve the site and ensure it could be studied by future generations.
In other Viking science, a close examination of relics has produced a sense of what color paints were commonly used to decorate in the Viking Age.
I've got to remember this line
Useful filler next time you need to say nothing:
Even some Democrats, including warriors of press and tube, are beginning to take note that separating the children was first an Obama idea. A CNN interlocutor braced Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin with a loaded reminder that many critics of Donald Trump, who are now critical of bunking the children on mattresses within enclosures of wire and steel, made no criticism when Mr. Obama did it.
“You know,” Sen. Baldwin replied, in a voice as bland as a bowl of Cream of Wheat, “on this issue that we get into a moment where we’re making progress and then when it stalls we turn around. I think we all need to continue to be focused on it and press it through.”
Aren’t There Enough People In America?
Another Anton piece.
I don’t want to oversell Anton. I’ve met Anton a couple of times. We haven’t talked, because he’s the kind who talks so much that I don’t bother to try to talk with them. He’s a foppish dresser, proudly so. I don’t know how much we have in common. But look at this, where he gets the working man exactly right:
“After at least two decades of wage stagnation and even decline, now that we’ve finally reached the nirvana of full employment (and who knows how long it will last), why not take advantage of this tight labor market to raise wages across the board? Especially for the working and middle classes that got nowhere or even lost ground during the housing, finance and tech booms of recent years?”
Boy is right about that. He’s got a few other strong points too.
I don’t want to oversell Anton. I’ve met Anton a couple of times. We haven’t talked, because he’s the kind who talks so much that I don’t bother to try to talk with them. He’s a foppish dresser, proudly so. I don’t know how much we have in common. But look at this, where he gets the working man exactly right:
“After at least two decades of wage stagnation and even decline, now that we’ve finally reached the nirvana of full employment (and who knows how long it will last), why not take advantage of this tight labor market to raise wages across the board? Especially for the working and middle classes that got nowhere or even lost ground during the housing, finance and tech booms of recent years?”
Boy is right about that. He’s got a few other strong points too.
The other half of the motive
And if a hope of currying favor with the expected new president isn't enough, now there's the fear of suffering reprisals from the possible new Congress:
The Justice Department’s tepid OIG report, with its risible assertion that there was no political bias in the FBI’s Clinton email probe, suggests that it was written by people afraid to tell the unvarnished truth about the conduct of the federal government’s police apparatus, an agency that openly defies congressional oversight and has participated in a vendetta against a sitting president. The FBI’s leadership clearly hopes that the Democrats will win majorities in Congress and put a halt to the investigations into its multifarious abuses of power. The OIG is loath to face the ruthless reprisals that would inevitably follow such a disaster.
In other words, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is filled with people who fear the FBI. Think about that for a minute. What is the usual term for a government whose members live in fear of its police arm? Ronald Reagan famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The OIG report suggests that its demise may be only one election away.
"Future Pres HRC"
Speaking of grand unifying theories, I believe Victor Davis Hanson has cracked the code that explains a lot of head-scratching deep-state decisions in 2016.
Karen Veith: Closing the Door on the Madison Metropolitan School District
A teacher with 16 years in the system explains in detail why she quit, primarily because the administration's policies and lack of leadership led to chaos in the school. There are a lot of stories out there like this one.
It's worth reading the whole thing if you want to understand public schools today.
It's worth reading the whole thing if you want to understand public schools today.
Incrementalism vs. absolutism
I don't understand the particle physics, of course, but I'm interested in this discussion about the approach to research:
The bottom-up method is much less ambitious than the top-down kind, but it has two advantages: it makes fewer assumptions about theory, and it’s tightly tethered to data. This doesn’t mean we need to give up on the old unification paradigm, it just suggests that we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can unify physics right now, in a single step. It means incrementalism is to be preferred to absolutism – and that we should use empirical data to check and steer us at each instance, rather than making grand claims that come crashing down when they’re finally confronted with experiment.This gets me where I live. We can't make much sense of data unless we have theoretical structures, but it can be hard to improve our theories if we let them blind us to new data. I love the image of "bunging in" a new hypothesized particle.
On second thought . . . .
Pope Francis Denounces Abortion
Nazi comparisons are everywhere these days.
...the SIR agency of the Italian bishops’ conference quoted him as denouncing the pre-natal tests that can result in parents choosing to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.On this point, at least, he is solidly within the norm of Papal remarks. Unfortunately, I don't think our age is primed to listen to him. It's also worth remembering that eugenics weren't just a Nazi thing; they were beloved by the elite here in America, too.
“Last century, the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves,” the agencies quoted Francis as saying.
The pope urged families to accept children “as God gives them to us.”
Colonel Kurt on the IG Report
In his inimitable style, a beatdown from an unapologetic voice of the right.
UPDATE:
Paul Sperry:
I wonder if the Mueller probe has named any subjects or targets? Wanna bet?
UPDATE:
Wired:
The bombshells in the IG report could justly be classified as “thermonuclear,” but remember the Comey conference back in July 2016? Its bombshells were thermonuclear too. Integrity Boy laid out an utterly devastating case against Felonia Milhous Von Pansuit, highlighting in damning detail her litany of crimes that would have consigned you, me, or anyone else not in the elite to a long tour in the stony lonesome. And then that Looming Doofus concluded his lengthy summation with, “But never mind.”There's more, if you're inclined.
The same with the IG report. Yeah, the report demonstrated intense and pervasive political bias. Yeah, at every turn the FBI/DOJ hacks gave unprecedented deference and breaks to Hillary. Yeah, from the get-go they talked about how no one was ever going to be prosecuted. Nah, nothing to see.
It’s like a prosecutor laying out a crushing case to a jury, then saying, “And in conclusion, I’d like you to find the defendant not guilty.”
“No evidence,” concludes the IG report. It’s 500+ pages of evidence.
UPDATE:
Paul Sperry:
IG Horowitz revealed in Senate testimony FBI never named a target or even subject in Clinton probe. Not Mills, Abedin, Combetta or Clinton herself. "Nobody was listed as a subject of this investigation at any point in time," adding this was "surprising" for a crim probeIt would be surprising, had it been a criminal probe. For an exercise in one hand washing the other, it's just what you'd expect.
I wonder if the Mueller probe has named any subjects or targets? Wanna bet?
UPDATE:
Wired:
BREAKING: IG Horowitz says 2 of the 3 unnamed FBI agents caught sending anti-Trump text messages are currently on the Robert Mueller probe investigating President TrumpOf course they are.
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