Think Carefully

The ACLU has a message for you.

"Mass shootings create a pervasive sense of insecurity and anxiety that politicians and policymakers will inevitably seek to address," senior policy analyst Jay Stanley insists on the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project blog. As a result, he argues, "those who support expansive gun rights as a protection against excessive government power should strongly consider how much government intrusion and expanded power they're willing to trade for those rights."

I have considered the question, and the answer is, "The government is too strong and intrusive already." However, I reject the idea that disarming the law-abiding population is likely to make them less so -- or even to stop mass shootings. There are plenty of places like Brazil that have strict gun prohibition and also massive gun violence.

Reason magazine notes that, in addition to the Americas, there's the example of the UK:

Officials in the U.K. have already implemented probably every restriction on firearms that Stanley could imagine. The country has no "expansive gun rights," nor much in the way of advocates for them (not that London's rising violent crime rate cares). So there's no push for "government intrusion and expanded power," right?

Wrong. The British government has adopted what Edward Snowden calls "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies." The UK also requires Internet companies to take down "extremist" content and threatens legal penalties if they're not quick enough to do so.

Which liberties should our friends across the Atlantic stop advocating so that the government will stop hitting them, Mr. Stanley?

"Why Does Anyone in this City Need A Gun At All?"

I don't know, maybe because of terrorist attacks on an undefended populace?

I'm just spitballing, here.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani: My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave Trader

A very interesting family history, and it's at the New Yorker, of all places. Snippet:

My great-grandfather was given the nickname Nwaubani, which means “from the Bonny port region,” because he had the bright skin and healthy appearance associated at the time with people who lived near the coast and had access to rich foreign foods. (This became our family name.) In the late nineteenth century, he carried a slave-trading license from the Royal Niger Company, an English corporation that ruled southern Nigeria. His agents captured slaves across the region and passed them to middlemen, who brought them to the ports of Bonny and Calabar and sold them to white merchants. Slavery had already been abolished in the United States and the United Kingdom, but his slaves were legally shipped to Cuba and Brazil. To win his favor, local leaders gave him their daughters in marriage. (By his death, he had dozens of wives.) His influence drew the attention of colonial officials, who appointed him chief of Umujieze and several other towns. He presided over court cases and set up churches and schools. He built a guesthouse on the land where my parents’ home now stands, and hosted British dignitaries. To inform him of their impending arrival and verify their identities, guests sent him envelopes containing locks of their Caucasian hair.

Cuius regio, eius religio

Another Unherd piece, this time on the parallels between the Thirty Years' War and the storm brewing in the EU.  The author posits Hungary and Poland as the new Anabaptists:

If the Thirty Years’ War can he blamed on one man, it is the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II, whose disdain for compromise with the Lutherans – let alone the more challenging heretics – turned conflict into all-out-war.

His solution to the tensions of the Empire was to impose the will of the strongest power – and its ideology – on the other states.

I wonder if Angela Merkel can think of anything like that in the EU today?

Sweden's Trump Moment

A Maggie's Farm link to an unusually cogent analysis of Trump's appeal (in the Guardian, no less) led me to the site Unherd.com, where I read some more of the author's work.  He has put some effort into understanding political trends all over Europe as well as the U.S., and has this to say about Sweden's version of the "bitter clinger" and "deplorable" remarks that so alienating American voters from the Democratic Party:

At the core of it, shifting Swedish politics is simple, and has little to do with either deindustrialisation, racist deplorables or bitter clingers – however emotionally appealing it is for progressives to blame these factors. Sweden’s highly generous refugee policy never had majority support among voters, including Social Democratic voters. Blue-collar voters who dared to express even mild protest were bullied and branded as hateful or ignorant by their own party. The only outlet for that built-up resentment has been the Sweden Democrats, and while in the run up to the election the Social Democrats have moved sharply to the Right on migration and crime issues, the mistakes of the past years may prove difficult to repair for this once invincible party.

It's a dangerous thing for political and social movements to let resentment build up.  Protests that aren't heard become more shrill and polarized.  Progressives instinctively understand this when the protesters are women or LGBTQs, but seem to lose their good sense when the protesters are anyone outside their own charmed circle.  It's a short step from "I can't be heard" to "this game is rigged" to "I'll support anyone who will shake this crummy system up."  There's a good reason the First Amendment was first.

Lasagna for Dinner

Full-fat cheese and butter are vindicated.

Vox Against Democracy

"Letting only the informed vote."

Mukasey on the Russian Moves

This analysis sounds right to me:

At the time of the hacking, virtually no one gave Mr. Trump any chance of winning. Mr. Putin is a thug, but he is not reckless. It seems unlikely he would place a high-stakes bet on a sure loser. Rather, he likely sought to embarrass the person certain to be the new president, assuring that she took office as damaged goods.

The Russians seem to have helped all three of the major campaings: Bernie's and Trump's, but also hers. The whole Trump/Russia dossier was built out of things that Steele paid Russian intelligence officers to produce against Trump (allegedly "former" officers, but once you're in, you're in for life). That she'd sought this aid from the Russians would be more leverage once she was President. It's a Watergate-level scandal that they could drop on the sitting President any time. That the Inevitable, Smartest Woman barely managed to limp over the line against the likes of Crazy Bernie and Mad Don would also make her look weak, and effected the Russian end of making our feel country divided.

I'll wager that the Jill Stein campaign will prove to have received help as well, and don't discount how effective that was -- Stein's margin in some of the close states may have tipped them to Trump. But I can't imagine he thought that Stein would accomplish that. The more obvious goal given the polling was simply to make the margin razor-thin, not to beat Clinton outright.

The rest of former AG Mukasey's piece is worth reading also, but that's the part that leaps out at me. The assumption shouldn't be that the Russians expected or even intended to defeat Clinton. It should be that they wanted to divide us, and weaken her. I imagine they were as shocked as the rest of us when Trump won on election night, and probably as panicked as many on the American left were.

I Suspect Some Of My Friends Feel This Way

Probably family too.

You don't know this guy, but really, you do.

Shinobu Hashimoto just passed away at the age of 100. Hashimoto was the screen writer on over 70 films, among such as:

1968 Hell in the Pacific (uncredited)
1967 Samurai Rebellion
 1966 The Sword of Doom (screenplay)
1962 Harakiri (screenplay)
1960 The Magnificent Seven (screenplay "Shichinin no samurai" - uncredited)
1960 The Bad Sleep Well (written by)
1958 The Hidden Fortress (written by)
1957 Throne of Blood (screenplay)
1955 I Live in Fear
1954 Seven Samurai (screenplay)
1952 Ikiru (written by)
1950 Rashomon (screenplay)

Yeah, you know this guy. Now many of those above were directed by Akira Kurosawa, which is how most people come to these films, but It's still amazing to me the influence that these films still have and will continue to.

I've seen all of the above, some multiple times.

The Page FISA Application

It's unique in that a FISA court application has never been made public before, even in a redacted form, so it's worth looking at carefully. Since this audience leans right, I thought I would link to some opposing views. Lawfare hosts David Kris' view, in which he holds that the release confirms his earlier view that the Nunes memo was deceptive and wrong. Meanwhile, here is a courteous but sharp dispute between Andy McCarthy and Bradley Moss over the propriety of the release and the quality of the information it provides.

UPDATE: McCarthy's column today: "The crazies were right, and I was wrong."

Meanwhile, an argument from evidence is made that Ali Watkins -- the disgraced NYT reporter who slept with her sources for access -- was given an unredacted version of this application, complete with Top Secret information, by one of her sources. If so, that's a serious violation of classification laws.

Russia vs. America: Two Views from the Left

Noam Chomsky vs. Thomas O. Melia push opposite lines on whether America is worse or better than Russia in terms of interference with elections. Chomsky points out that, in addition to electoral manipulation efforts by the CIA and others, America just overthrows countries and replaces their whole governments sometimes; Melia says much of what people like Chomsky are pointing to are efforts to improve democracy, and shouldn't be put in the same category as the CIA's activities (which he admits occur).

Chomsky dodges the fact that Russia also replaces governments it doesn't care for if it can, and has for decades; and just conquers nearby territories, sometimes, if it wants to do so. But there is a basic point here about which Melia is right that goes beyond that. America still has an ideology to push, which is liberty -- personal freedom, democracy, and the economic freedoms of capitalism. We'll see if that agenda survives the American Left's response to the Trump administration, but for now it is still what America does. Russia used to have an ideology when it was the Soviet Union; now it is just a gangster state trying to take for itself what it can. (Ironically, given the facts of the Communist ideology, this represents a substantial improvement in the character of the Russian state.)

America probably does interfere with other countries governance more often than Russia, and to a greater degree. It does so, however, in pursuit of a vision of the good. Is that adequate to excuse its violations of the sovereignty of other nations? That's a question that would require a lot of groundwork to explore.

Economics and Feminism

A very serious lecture, brought to you by Christina Hoff Sommers.

I think the basic assumption that bothers me most is that economists should somehow be in charge of something. She clearly views the profession of economist as being rightly of tremendous importance in shaping the world and ensuring just outcomes. In fact, economists just study what other people do and make theories about why it worked out that way. Some of these theories are better than others, but attempts to use economic theories to guide economic outcomes inevitably leads to worse economic outcomes. (For women, too.) Economists should stick to studying and thinking, and never be asked to run anything.

God Save the Queen

Johnny Rotten defends Donald Trump.

Because of Course

Tony Podesta was given immunity, to testify against a Trump campaign guy (Manafort).

As Ace says:

Meanwhile, Mueller has given yet another Hillary Clinton associate immunity, because Hillary Clinton associates are never prosecuted for crimes, only given immunity for them. Only people running against Hillary are prosecuted.

A similar rule: only judges appointed by Clinton or Obama hear Trump-prosecution-related cases.

Trailer for "Mayans MC"

This show is a spinoff of the famous 'Sons of Anarchy,' which had a great second season* from my perspective; I won't speak to the rest of the series. But this spinoff is worth giving a chance because it features Vincent Vargas of Range 15 / Art 15 fame. He's a great guy, and I hope whatever he works on does well.




* You might object, on moral grounds, to a show that glamorizes gangsters to whatever degree. There's an argument on that point at the link from the history of American cinema, and the crucial role that gangster movies have played precisely in dramatizing morality in the American context.

UPDATE:

Speaking of Range 15 vets and new videos, here's Nick Palmisciano of Ranger Up's new project.

The Skills Gap

The CEO of Lockheed Martin, whose piece here was pushed out by the White House via its Twitter account, has some thoughts on how to address the skills gap within the context of helping American workers.

A glimmer

I give this Dutch writer a bit of credit for acknowledging that not all skepticism of popular scientific orthodoxy is an artifact of conservative troglodytism. He forces himself to admit that skepticism of GM foods and vaccines can come from all ranges of the political spectrum--implicitly even the left, though he never comes right out and says so.  Instead, he notes that suspicion about vaccines correlates with concerns about the morality of naturalness, while suspicion about GM foods is associated with ignorance.  He throws "religiousness" in there, but appears to means something like concerns about morality in general, and notes that whatever it is he's measuring probably is confounded with general ignorance.

Climate change skepticism, however, clearly has no explanation other than political conservatism. I doubt the writer even entertains the private suspicion that anyone with his eyes open would be a bit skeptical of many aspects of climate alarmism, and that the common thread there is the political bias (hint: not conservative) that prevents nearly everyone he associates with from closely examining the subject.

The writer finds it natural to gauge trust in science in large part on the basis of how enthusiastically someone supports federal financing of scientists.  How else would you know, right?

Even a Blind Squirrel Finds a Nut Now and Then

Ted Rall, very much not my favorite cartoonist, finds a point:

A Partial Answer to the Previous Question

James Comey:

All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.

Really? Anyone who votes Republican this fall is un-American, according to the former head of the FBI?

UPDATE: Is Joe Lieberman un-American too? He's arguing against voting for the Democratic nominee this year.