Public services

Powerline records the exact moment when the serpent finished consuming itself:

I was reading an old lecture on Aristophanes by Leo Strauss when I came across these very usable sentences:

When about to enter a place at at which we are meant to laugh and to enjoy ourselves, we must first cross a picket line of black-coated ushers exuding deadly and deadening seriousness. No doubt they unwittingly contribute to the effect of the comedies.

Strauss had in mind of course the typical college professoriate of our time. These lines came springing back to mind when you come across a story like this:

MICHIGAN COLLEGE CANCELS ‘THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES’ BECAUSE ‘NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE VAGINAS’

As an unwoke ciswoman, I denounce myself.

Schumpeter Thought Otherwise

Pointing out a UC Berkeley class on destroying Israel and erasing its Jewish history (and, presumably, population), a hopeful author writes:

But good will come of this. Since there are no constraints on what universities do, they are increasingly moving toward the extremes. In doing this, they undermine their own legitimacy and their bogus claims of serving a societal good or promoting civic virtue.

Eventually, such a system will collapse because the larger society will recognize that it is paying for its own delegitimation and destruction through courses that view America and Western Civilization as the roots of all evil in the world.

The great economist Joesph Schumpeter thought the opposite. He believed that this very feature of the university's education of the rising elite would eventually destroy the West and capitalism itself.

We seem to me to be closer to Schumpeter's vision with every generation. Indeed, in Schumpeter's day Marx was recognized as disproven; now the Marxists are resurgent, and whole fields that are utterly Marxist in their frames of interpretation and criticism often do not even realize how wholly they have been subsumed.

The Second Must Not Be A Second Class Right

A piece at National Review by John Yoo, part of a series on restoring constitutional order, addresses the issue.

Everyone here knows my position, which I see no need to repeat after 15 years of blogging. If you don't know what I think about it, or just about anything else, it's in the archives. As a matter of fact, I could probably stop writing this blog just anytime, returning to it only when I change an older opinion for some reason. My opinion on the 2nd has not changed at all.

Good Advice Democrats Will Ignore

Joan C. Williams more-or-less accurately explains what Democrats need to know about attracting non-elite votes. To whit, stop treating economic concerns as pure racism; stop playing up race and gender issues, and focus on helping ordinary people; stop thinking that you and your fellow elites are so much less racist than ordinary people anyway. (Williams doesn't quite have the courage to go beyond 'ordinary white people,' and explain that racism is more or less universal and just as unhelpful in every demographic; but maybe The Atlantic isn't ready for that yet.)

Stop, in other words, focusing on demographic change as a solution. Quit telling white working class voters that you plan is for them to die so they stop being a problem for your agenda.

[P]eople on Twitter ask whether I’m finally ready to admit that the white working class is simply racist. What my Twitter friends don’t seem to recognize is their own privilege. If elites cling to the idea that working-class whites are perpetrators of inequality, rather than both perpetrators and victims, perhaps it’s because they want to believe that they are where they are because they’ve worked hard and they’re the smartest people around. Once you start a conversation about class, elite white people have to admit they have not only racial privilege but class privilege, too.

Acknowledging this also requires elites to cede yet another advantage: the extent to which they have controlled Democrats’ priorities. Political scientists have documented the party’s shift over the past 50 years from a coalition focused on blue-collar issues to one dominated by environmentalism and other issues elites cherish.

I’m one of those activists; environmentalism and concerns related to gender, race, and sexuality define my scholarship and my identity. But the working class has been asked to endure a lot of economic pain while Democrats focus on other problems. It’s time to listen up. The only effective antidote to a populism interlaced with racism is a populism that isn’t.

Needless to say, she is being totally ignored.

Democrats thinking about running for president in 2020 are dramatically changing the way the party talks about race in Donald Trump’s America: Get ready to hear a lot more about intersectionality, allyship, inclusivity and POC.

White and nonwhite Democratic hopefuls are talking more explicitly about race than the party’s White House aspirants ever have — and shrugging off warnings that embracing so-called identity politics could distract from the party’s economic message and push white voters further into Donald Trump’s arms.

I'm pretty sure that ordinary people -- and not just white people -- will be very impressed by intersectionality. Negatively impressed, but deeply impressed all the same.

Biker In Chief Stares Down Putin

The President is a little soft-hearted for my tastes, but for whatever it is worth, our VP is solid.

Men of the North

A longstanding question of the Hall, posed rhetorically but meaningfully, has been 'where are our Wagners, our Beethovens, today?' One of them is Jeremy Soule.

Soule writes for Bethesda Softworks, and produced some few years ago one of the greatest orchestral pieces since Wagner.



If you have the nearly-four-hours, it is well worth your time throughout. The songs, echoing Tolkien, are in an invented language originally belonging to dragons. Although the game is an adventure, most of the music is peaceful rather than stressful: mostly it focuses on the beauty and wonder of creation, rather than the strife between creatures. But when it does consider conflict, it rises into the epic scale.

He has a new album out this year, which is symphonic sketches on the same scheme. It does not aspire to epic, and so it is not quite as powerful, but it is also well constructed.

An Interview with Paglia

Definitely the most interesting voice currently participating in that movement broadly called 'feminism,' Camile Paglia has given one of her periodic long and wide-ranging interviews. They are usually worth reading, and this one is no exception. For me there is always much to disagree with, but surprising points of commonality. For an example of the latter:

Claire Lehmann: You seem to be one of the only scholars of the humanities who are willing to challenge the post-structuralist status quo. Why have other humanities academics been so spineless in preserving the integrity of their fields?

Camille Paglia: The silence of the academic establishment about the corruption of Western universities by postmodernism and post-structuralism has been an absolute disgrace.... Most established professors in the 1970s probably believed that the new theory trend was a fad that would blow away like autumn leaves. The greatness of the complex and continuous Western tradition seemed self-evident: the canon would surely stand, even if supplemented by new names. Well, guess what? Helped along by a swelling horde of officious, overpaid administrators, North American universities became, decade by decade, political correctness camps. Out went half the classics, as well as pedagogically useful survey courses demonstrating sequential patterns in history (now dismissed as a “false narrative” by callow theorists). Bookish, introverted old-school professors were not prepared for guerrilla warfare to defend basic scholarly principles or to withstand waves of defamation and harassment.

It's hard to find anyone in academia now who will openly proclaim that the Western canon represents something categorically superior to, well, anything else. Western philosophers will still quietly murmur to each other their recognition that what they are doing is both categorically different from, and better than, what goes by the name of "Eastern philosophy." But they won't say it in public, and in private only among trusted friends.

"Fix it, Facebook"

I've been following the most recent flap over Facebook in a desultory way. I assumed if I clicked on a few articles I'd find one that explained what FB was supposed to have done wrong this time.  Instead, I found article after article that assumed I understood the obvious crime(s), and lots of increasingly desperate acknowledgements by FB that it can and should "do more."

Particularly interesting were the sprinkling of references to FB's failure to "do more" to stem ethnic violence in Myanmar.  Wait, what?  Did something just happen in Myanmar?  When I click through on the Myanmar references I get more comments about "doing more," but no dates or particulars.  Even FB's 60-page white paper on "doing more" fails to explain what happened in Myanmar before it drifts off into an extended discussion of the history of censorship and repression in that country.  Finally a general search for "Myanmar Facebook" took me to reports of a violent flare in 2014 said to be connected to someone's publishing a deliberately false rape report in a FB post in an apparently successful attempt to stoke racial violence in that benighted country.  It seems that FB did not already have Burmese-speaking moderators in place on the night the false allegations were made, despite its clear responsibility for understanding how dangerous communication can be in a country with a history of such iron repression.  After failing to reach FB executives in the first few hours of the crisis, Myanmar officials simply disabled FB in their country, which apparently caused things to calm down by morning.  Those terrible people at FB, however, took more than a year to put its Burmese-speaking moderation operation into place, complete with operatives well-versed in the entire social and culture quagmire that is Myanmar.  And in the meantime FB callously allowed the Myanmar people to continue communicating with each other.

So why the sudden interest in FB late in 2018?  The New York Times apparently is investigating again, and--as helpfully summarized by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial page--this time has discovered that FB is engaged in denial and deflection.  It hired consultants to discredit its critics, mostly in the context of the Russian influence on our 2016 election, but Myanmar keeps getting thrown in the mix, too.  FB downplayed the seriousness of reports from its own executives about something apparently related to these concerns.  It deflected blame onto its rivals.  It sought special favors from politicians.  (These are nearly direct quotations; I'm not removing any references to specifics.)  And it took these unprecedentedly vile measures to escape blame for--what, exactly?

Well, it seems FB isn't taking its trust, transparency, and privacy problems seriously.  FB is not doing enough to combat false news and information on its platform.  Its failure in Myanmar four years ago shows that it's not willing to be an aggressive defender of human rights.  Its shaky steps to improve transparency haven't been thorough or consistent.  It uses contractors to hit back at critics.  Social media platforms are being used to sway and divide people, and the new House Democrats are thinking of doing something about it, so FB had better get with the program.

I feel an unwilling sympathy for Zuckerberg, trying to punch back against this amoeba.  I can't wait to see what the incoming class of representatives are drafting up.  It shall be a federal crime to operate a social media platform when your head isn't in the right place?

Way back in 2014, someone apparently had the bright idea of pursuing a successful criminal prosecution against the woman who first published the deliberately false rape claim in Myanmar.

Obsession

I'm not sure it's healthy for someone like me to watch a video like this.  It's like dangling heroin in front of an addict.

"Democracy Failed Georgia"

So says Ms. Abrams, as she admits defeat.

She did, however, announce plans for a "major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions."

Even in acknowledging defeat, Abrams insisted her speech was not giving a concession and instead delivered a series of sharp criticisms of Kemp....

"Under the watch of the now former secretary of state, democracy failed Georgia," Abrams said of Kemp, who served as the state's chief elections officer for nearly a decade before resigning after overseeing his own contest.

"Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions," Abrams said. "I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired affect on the electoral process in Georgia."

So no hard feelings, then. We'll just shake hands and carry on.

You made a good bargain, Georgia. You don't want to be governed by someone with this much anger inside them. Kemp's a scoundrel, and you'll need to keep a watch on him. But he'll only cheat you. He won't set out to punish you.

One Afternoon on Twitter

In which a sitting Congressman threatens to nuke the territorial United States if citizens don't peacefully surrender their firearms.

Democrats Always Win Recounts That Change Election Results

It's a statistically insignificant number, though: three, out of all the thousands of statewide elections between 2000 and 2015.

Joe Bob Briggs: Resist the Campus Speech Nazis

He's happy because a group from Colorado State came down to one of his recent shows.

Colorado State may not be high on your list of trendsetting institutions, but anyone who follows political-correctness battles is well aware of it. To use just one example, the “Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Associated Students of Colorado State University” (yes, that’s a thing) recently said that students shouldn’t use the phrase “Long time, no see,” because it’s offensive to Asians....

That’s why the Colorado State students and professors and ex-students who came to my show mean so much to me. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe in any of the “diversity and inclusion” rules. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe in censoring social media or kicking people out of school because they hold unpopular views. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe that anytime someone says, “You triggered me,” we should all stop talking and hug the complainer. This makes me think that much of the campus political-correctness movement is just intimidation of people trying to get through college without getting called out. It makes me think they all know it’s bullshit and just ignore it like you ignore a loud preacher on the subway. It makes me think that most people still believe in letting every American say whatever the heck every American wants to say, using whatever words he wants to use, and to hell with the public scolding.

There's a lot more at the link, including some hilarious examples.

Sore Losers are Still Losers

The Abrams campaign prepares a very novel lawsuit to try to force Georgia to hold an entirely new election, since she now appears to have lost the last one.

She's alleging massive voter suppression efforts, but frankly those are not in evidence. Kemp set up a system that could be easily cheated, which is why I've been very critical of his performance as Secretary of State. But if he were going to cheat, he'd have given himself a comfortable margin of victory that would have forestalled this recount/lawsuit approach. He could have cheated, certainly. The evidence strongly suggests that he did not, though he remains at fault for having set up a system in which we can have so little confidence.

Georgia should fix its systems for the next election. All the same, it's time to call this one. He's almost twenty thousand votes ahead of the runoff number, and more than fifty thousand votes ahead of her. That's ballgame.

UPDATE: 'Georgia's governor's race "stolen,"' according to Democrats. The Post author explicitly treats similar Republican claims as "baseless" and "without evidence," while saying these claims are being made on much stronger grounds. I concede Kemp's dubiousness; but I notice that "without evidence" is a stick that the press is increasingly using against conservatives, frequently in error (or often, I suspect, maliciously).

Trump-Appointed Judge Sides CNN

It's just the temporary restraining order, but I find the logic amazing all the same.

The judge also found that Acosta suffered “irreparable harm,” dismissing the government’s argument that CNN could simply send other reporters to cover the White House in Acosta’s place.

The suit by CNN alleges that Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated by suspending his hard pass. While the judge didn’t rule on the underlying case, he signaled they were likely to prevail in their claims.

Having spent a fair part of my life going into and out of secure facilities, I find it stunning that a judge would rule that someone has a Constitutional right not to be forbidden from one. Revocation of a prior clearance to enter falls, surely, under the authority of the executive branch. Article II of the Constitution says "[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." If Trump were to give the order personally, I can't see how it could be outside the scope of the President's authority; but were he to delegate it, well, that's how all executive authority works. If a base commander can revoke your clearance to enter his base, whoever is delegated similar authority over journalists can do it.

Nor do I buy that it does 'irreparable harm' to a journalist to be reassigned, which is all that would result if this one permanently lost access to the President. OK, go cover the UK Prime Minister instead. CNN does both, and having been kicked out by Trump would only improve Acosta's standing in the eyes of European leaders he might be assigned to cover instead. What's the harm?

Supposedly there's some due process issue, but I can't think what it would be. Secure facilities have a right to refuse entry to anyone, or to remove anyone, prior to whatever process of review there is for that decision.

The judge isn't a partisan against Trump, being a Trump appointee. I make no such accusation; but what an amazing decision to have reached, even on the temporary order. He has to make a judgment that success in the main suit is likely, and I can't see any basis for thinking it at all likely.

The Battle of Hastings, Oversimplified

Plus background and how it changed the English language.

Changing the Rules

Florida keeps rolling in scandal.

A day after Florida's election left top state races too close to call, a Democratic party leader directed staffers and volunteers to share altered election forms with voters to fix signature problems on absentee ballots after the state's deadline.

The altered forms surfaced in Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus and Okaloosa counties and were reported to federal prosecutors to review for possible election fraud as Florida counties complete a required recount in three top races.

But an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida shows that Florida Democrats were organizing a broader statewide effort beyond those counties to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline. Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a "cure affidavit," that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline.

One Palm Beach Democrat said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.

U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that voters should have until Saturday to correct signatures on ballots, a move that could open the door for these ballots returned with altered forms to be counted.

I guess it's fine to set aside the rules established by the state legislature if some judge says so. Until some other judge says otherwise. Why do we have laws at all? We could just ask a judge to rule on any conflicts that occur, since they're apparently going to set the laws aside whenever they feel like it.

Aristotle tried to warn us about that.

Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and this for several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency. The weightiest reason of all is that the decision of the lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general, whereas members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on definite cases brought before them. They will often have allowed themselves to be so much influenced by feelings of friendship or hatred or self-interest that they lose any clear vision of the truth and have their judgement obscured by considerations of personal pleasure or pain. In general, then, the judge should, we say, be allowed to decide as few things as possible.

SEAL Accused of Various Improprieties

According to the newly unearthed charge sheet, dated Oct. 2, Gallagher faces charges of premeditated murder for allegedly stabbing the wounded ISIS fighter "in the neck and body with a knife" on May 3, 2017. He's charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon for shooting two noncombatants, one male, one female, with his firearm on separate occasions in June and July of that year.

In three charges of novel specification, Gallagher is accused of posing for a picture with a human corpse, completing his reenlistment ceremony next to the corpse and operating a drone over it, according to the charge sheet.

These alleged crimes are charged the same day he is accused of killing the detainee; Task and Purpose reported that evidence introduced by the prosecution includes photos appearing to show Gallagher posing with the murdered man and the knife he allegedly used to kill him.

Gallagher also allegedly used Tramadol Hydrochloride, a prescription-only pain reliever, and possessed Sustanon-250, an injectable testosterone, according to the charge sheet.

This is one of those occasions when the military justice system is quite different than the civilian one. If he were entitled to a trial by his peers -- meaning by other special operators -- I suspect that the 'shooting at noncombatants' charge wouldn't have a chance. You just don't know who the combatants are in places like Iraq.

The murder charge? I'm not sure that one would fly either. If it can make sense to put a 'security round' in a fighter to make sure he doesn't blow a hidden suicide vest, or come at you from behind once you've moved past him, it could make sense to knife him down too. Depending on the circumstances, that could be an appropriate thing to do. It would be wrong to torture a wounded man to death once the area was secure; it might be right to finish him off while the area was not secure and the operation was ongoing, especially if stealth was a concern.

Discipline is the soul of an army, as Washington said, and it's important to hold people to standards. It could be that on a full account of the circumstances his fellows would convict him. There are at least some readings of the most serious charges, though, that I could see a jury of peers accepting under some circumstances.

That isn't how the military system works, though.

"Facebook Betrayed America"

The New Republic is not happy with Team Zuck. And they are swinging for the fences: the allegations don't stop at treason, but include also complicity in genocide.

Bikers and Fake Ballots

The source for this story is Gateway Pundit, which Wikipedia's community has decided to call "a far right fake news site." Still, they're also a very plausible source for a story that originates with Bikers for Trump. I'm going to bold what I take to be the crucial facts alleged.

According to the letter sent by [Bikers for Trump leader] Cox’s lawyer Derek A. Schwartz, while outside the Broward Supervisor of Elections main office, Cox and other members of Bikers for Trump learned of twelve colored plastic zip tie tags that were each stamped with a seven digit serial code.

“The tags were discovered by other citizens on the ground near the loading dock area outside the BSOE building,” the letter explains. He then went on to provide the serial numbers and the color of the tags.

“It is my client’s understanding and belief that these tags may have been used by the BSOE to secure and seal ballot boxes and/or bags on the night of the election prior to transporting the ballots to the BSOE office. Based on where these tags were found, my client believes these tags were likely illegally removed from the ballot boxes and bags prior to being delivered to the BSOE’s office,” the letter continues.

Schwartz goes on to state that “if these tags were used to seal ballot boxes and bags and improperly removed, then the chain of custody of the ballots in the boxes and bags was broken and the ballots were subject to tampering and manipulation.”

It goes on to request that Bondi’s office immediately determine if any of the tags were used to secure ballot containers, that they find out who removed them, as well as who authorized the removal. The letter additionally requests information about how many ballots were related to the tags, what the serial numbers correspond with and which polling locations they came from.

“My client believes that each ballot box or bag can hold up to 2,500 ballots. Based on having 15 tags, that could mean that approximately 37,500 ballots have been tampered with,” the letter states.

What's of interest to me is the specificity of the claim. Assuming GP is accurately reporting a real letter, then the claims being made are quite actionable. There should be a list of serial numbered tags assigned to various sites, so it should be possible to determine relatively quickly whether tags with those numbers were in fact assigned to this county.

If it's a completely false report, that should also be immediately obvious to prosecutors.

There's middle ground, I guess, where you could have taken note of the tags used on election day, and then made up a report about having found those tags in the loading dock area. Then the prosecutors would quickly discover that the tag numbers were legitimate, but might find that tags corresponding to those numbers were accounted for at the end facility. Then you'd have a big problem, as you'd have to try to investigate a false theory that fake tags had replaced the real tags, and that would be impossible to disprove. It's the kind of thing that could ground a conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.

Of course, it could be true that there's a ploy to counterfeit these tags. The fact that you couldn't prove it wasn't true wouldn't prove that it was, but you might possibly prove that it really was true. Then people should be going to prison.

Well, keep an ear out, and remember the source.

UPDATE: Some of you have been suggesting that Florida needs a Battle of Athens moment. It occurs to me that there are some similarities in having Bikers for Trump staking out this voting area.

By the way, the Washington Times has confirmed the story, and has a photo of the tags.