BB: With Gov't Shut Down, Citizens Must Interfere in Own Lives
One of the primary functions of the government is to ignorantly muck around in the business of others, but the shutdown has hampered that. Thus citizens have been forced to try to fill that void themselves. “Today I just suddenly decided large sodas weren’t allowed,” said Morgan. “It was an annoying, pointless obstacle the whole day—it was like the government was still around.”I've imposed Prohibition on myself for the month of January, rather than waiting for Lent like usual. So far I haven't started a criminal organization to smuggle booze, but I suppose there's still time.
“I arbitrarily decided I couldn’t use plastic bags in school lunches,” said Arlene Williams, mother of three. “It was really irritating to deal with. It really made me feel like there was still some bureaucrat out there not caring about me.”
Broadcasting In the Clear
For a fairly long time now, those of us concerned about criticisms of 'toxic' masculinity have wondered if it wasn't really just a criticism of masculinity. The APA has finally dropped the mask.
You can't unring a bell, and bad philosophy can poison a culture as thoroughly as Romans salting the earth of Carthage.
APA has issued its first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys. They draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage[.]More and more I think that psychology/psychiatry is chiefly just bad philosophy -- but dressed up as medicine, so people act as if it were a technologically secure basis for decision-making. Freud did more damage to our society perhaps even than Marx, though we rarely talk about how badly he's damaged us by convincing us that people are largely unconscious machines in need of programming and shaping rather than convincing and persuading. That convinced our governing elites that the people were a dangerous mob in need of systems of control, and our fellow citizens that the half who disagreed with them were monsters persuaded only by the Id.
You can't unring a bell, and bad philosophy can poison a culture as thoroughly as Romans salting the earth of Carthage.
Conservatives Against... Conservatives
The Bulwark is the title of a new online magazine designed to oppose Trump. From the right, allegedly, but 'opposing Trump' is what it's all about.
Going Both Ways
Angela Davis -- heroine of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Panther, once honored by the Rolling Stones while facing murder charges, also a member of the Communist Party USA -- has been denied a high honor by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
She was originally approved, and then the offer was withdrawn after public comment. They didn't explain exactly what it was that caused them to change their mind. I'd be interested to know.
She was originally approved, and then the offer was withdrawn after public comment. They didn't explain exactly what it was that caused them to change their mind. I'd be interested to know.
Hymn of the Northmen
Ok, it's advertising, so I apologize for that, but- wow! It's perhaps the best 'commercial' I've ever watched, and the advertising is of things I'd very much like (though can't afford, alas)- things made with the wisdom of tradition and the care of the fine craftsman. I actually got led to this through a video on timber framing (and I think my dream vacation just changed because of it). It happens rarely, but sometimes the algorithms get one or two right.
Belated good luck and prosperity
A neighbor brought this cabbage-slaw-blackeyed-pea dish to a next-door New Year's Eve Party, to fulfill the traditional requirement for greens and peas. I tried to reproduce it last night from a general description, and it was as good as I remembered, though I see now I left out the green onions. It doesn't sound like it would be that great, does it?--but it was a big hit at the party. Just be sure to salt the peas appropriately and don't overcook them.
9/8
Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen both covered this 1996 Sting song, but unaccountably changed its interesting 9/8 time signature to a standard 4/4. The beat is odd, one-two-THREE-four/one-two-three-FOUR-five with some other variations like ONE-two-three/ONE-two-THREE-four-FIVE-six, and the tune is syncopated on top of that. The lyrics, in contrast, are a simple old-fashioned cowboy morality play, along the lines of "Long Black Veil."
Now You're Talking
Schumper: Trump threatened to keep government shut down for 'years.'
The jobs numbers are amazing. What better time for former government employees to find work in the productive part of the economy instead? Congress might have to eventually compromise, but even if we could keep it going for six or eight months, a lot of people would be forced by the long furlough to go find a job in the private sector. But we've got two years to play with, minimum.
OK, there are problems with that -- especially an inability to pay people like soldiers and Border Patrol agents. The biggest problem is that we've classified as 'essential' or 'entitlement' all the things that are really dispensable, while things that are actually essential -- protecting the country from invasion, say -- are classified as dispensable. All the same, think about it. Maybe a long, long shutdown is just what we need to get some priorities straight.
The jobs numbers are amazing. What better time for former government employees to find work in the productive part of the economy instead? Congress might have to eventually compromise, but even if we could keep it going for six or eight months, a lot of people would be forced by the long furlough to go find a job in the private sector. But we've got two years to play with, minimum.
OK, there are problems with that -- especially an inability to pay people like soldiers and Border Patrol agents. The biggest problem is that we've classified as 'essential' or 'entitlement' all the things that are really dispensable, while things that are actually essential -- protecting the country from invasion, say -- are classified as dispensable. All the same, think about it. Maybe a long, long shutdown is just what we need to get some priorities straight.
Letter of Recommendation: Old English
On the same topic as Pidgin BBC news, here's a letter recommending that you try Old English.
And once you have Middle English, you're almost a thousand years closer to Old English. It's a major change -- the biggest one ever in the English language -- but you'll be as well-placed as possible to leap backwards over the Norman Conquest with its introduction of the French and Latin roots.
It’s written in a slightly different alphabet to the one we have now, with the extra characters æ (said like the a in “cat”), þ (like the th in “thorn”), ð (interchangeable with þ) and ƿ (which sounds like w). It sounds musical, guttural, dark and rich, the aural equivalent of a peaty Scotch or a towering cumulonimbus cloud.If it still seems daunting, Middle English is even easier: if you can read Shakespeare, Middle English will only require a modicum of work. I recommend the Norton Critical Edition of Le Morte Darthur, which provides plenty of footnotes to help you work through the relatively few words that don't have cognates in Modern English. One of the delights, though, is being able to read it just as Malory wrote it with increasing smoothness and ease.
Old English became my favorite thing about college. The grammar is easy, so it’s not difficult to learn. And enough early medieval words survived into modern English that the vocabulary seems to unlock as you learn it — the Old English word is unlucan — like a long-stuck door to a hidden room in your own house. It feels like receiving a message that has looped around the entire intervening mess of modernity to find you.
And once you have Middle English, you're almost a thousand years closer to Old English. It's a major change -- the biggest one ever in the English language -- but you'll be as well-placed as possible to leap backwards over the Norman Conquest with its introduction of the French and Latin roots.
Progress!
A new Justice Ministry regulation taking effect Sunday will make it mandatory for women to be notified by text message when a court issues their husbands divorce decrees, Saudi lawyer Nisreen al-Ghamdi said.
Currently, some men register divorce deeds at the courts without even telling their wives, al-Ghamdi said by phone from Jeddah.
"The new measure ensures women get their rights when they’re divorced,” she said, referring to alimony. “It also ensures that any powers of attorney issued before the divorce are not misused."
The Wisdom of the Ancients
Well, pre-Columbians, anyway. They were originally contemporaneous with the Viking Age, but still being practiced as the Renaissance was well under way.
How Long to Live Somewhere?
It's a worthy question, actually. We make foreigners reside in America for at least seven years before pursuing citizenship. Should states be required to grant it at once?
The case touches on liquor laws in Tennessee, but there's a similar issue with pistol permits in North Carolina. If you move to North Carolina from another state, even though you may have had a license to carry firearms in that state that North Carolina would recognize as valid, your permit to carry is immediately invalidated by the move. But your right to purchase a pistol in North Carolina is subject to a year's delay: North Carolina insists on a pistol purchase permit for every such firearm, issued by the sheriff, and these permits may not be issued to someone who has been resident for less than a year.
There's a loophole in the latter case, as you can apply for a NC concealed carry permit and, if granted it, purchase pistols using it instead of having to apply for a permit to purchase a pistol. However, this doesn't obviate the issue, since concealed carry permits take a while to obtain too: they're shall-issue with a mandatory 45 day window, except that NC interprets that as meaning "45 days from the completion of all relevant background checks and paperwork," so it might be 3-4 months. In other words, you lose your rights from your old state citizenship immediately on moving, but you don't obtain new rights (or privileges) pertaining to new citizenship for some time.
I imagine there are a number of similar examples, especially as pertain to goods such as alcohol and firearms that our betters have wanted to ban us from owning. It would be nice to have limits set on the power of government to do that, especially in 2A cases.
The case touches on liquor laws in Tennessee, but there's a similar issue with pistol permits in North Carolina. If you move to North Carolina from another state, even though you may have had a license to carry firearms in that state that North Carolina would recognize as valid, your permit to carry is immediately invalidated by the move. But your right to purchase a pistol in North Carolina is subject to a year's delay: North Carolina insists on a pistol purchase permit for every such firearm, issued by the sheriff, and these permits may not be issued to someone who has been resident for less than a year.
There's a loophole in the latter case, as you can apply for a NC concealed carry permit and, if granted it, purchase pistols using it instead of having to apply for a permit to purchase a pistol. However, this doesn't obviate the issue, since concealed carry permits take a while to obtain too: they're shall-issue with a mandatory 45 day window, except that NC interprets that as meaning "45 days from the completion of all relevant background checks and paperwork," so it might be 3-4 months. In other words, you lose your rights from your old state citizenship immediately on moving, but you don't obtain new rights (or privileges) pertaining to new citizenship for some time.
I imagine there are a number of similar examples, especially as pertain to goods such as alcohol and firearms that our betters have wanted to ban us from owning. It would be nice to have limits set on the power of government to do that, especially in 2A cases.
Why Not Totalitarianism?
As China rises, with its 'social credit' monitoring of every aspect of human life, we see a new kind of totalitarianism: not one pointed at an ideology, such as Communism, but totalitarianism for its own sake.
It has all the downsides for human expressions of religion as the liberalism ascendant in America, coupled with the state actually inserting agents into your home to monitor religious expression, and sending you to concentration camps for reeducation if they don't like what they see.
Should we believe that this will remain confined to China, or at least to its sphere of influence once it is done with its intended expansion? Perhaps not, since the Chinese have made use of the American tech elite as partners in effecting their totalitarianism. Coincidentally, perhaps, these same giants -- Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube among them -- have all decided to suppress American conservative speech.
Nor is it only China that is interested in this project. The European Union has enlisted these same tech giants to suppress what they call 'extremist' speech. And, of course, our own IRS has admitted to targeting conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny under the Obama administration, a clear attempt to prevent political organization on the right.
The cultural power being wielded against our traditions is immense. I wonder what limits, if any, our opponents are prepared to accept on their accumulation of power over us?
It has all the downsides for human expressions of religion as the liberalism ascendant in America, coupled with the state actually inserting agents into your home to monitor religious expression, and sending you to concentration camps for reeducation if they don't like what they see.
Should we believe that this will remain confined to China, or at least to its sphere of influence once it is done with its intended expansion? Perhaps not, since the Chinese have made use of the American tech elite as partners in effecting their totalitarianism. Coincidentally, perhaps, these same giants -- Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube among them -- have all decided to suppress American conservative speech.
Nor is it only China that is interested in this project. The European Union has enlisted these same tech giants to suppress what they call 'extremist' speech. And, of course, our own IRS has admitted to targeting conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny under the Obama administration, a clear attempt to prevent political organization on the right.
The cultural power being wielded against our traditions is immense. I wonder what limits, if any, our opponents are prepared to accept on their accumulation of power over us?
A Least-Sexist Industry
Would you be surprised to hear that a major American industry is now primarily led by women? Would you be more surprised to learn that it was the military-industrial complex?
The interview does end on a sour note.
From the executive leadership of top weapons-makers, to the senior government officials designing and purchasing the nation’s military arsenal, the United States’ national defense hierarchy is, for the first time, largely run by women.The women interviewed have mostly positive things to say about their experience working in what one might have thought of as the epitome of male-dominated fields, that of weapons and war. So the question the article gets to, which is the most interesting question, is: do women do weapons and war differently? In other words, have we gained or lost anything by the transition?
As of Jan. 1, the CEOs of four of the nation's five biggest defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defense arm of Boeing — are now women. And across the negotiating table, the Pentagon's top weapons buyer and the chief overseer of the nation's nuclear stockpile now join other women in some of the most influential national security posts, such as the nation's top arms control negotiator and the secretary of the Air Force.
How is their approach to leadership different than men's? In many ways, both subtle and not so subtle, whether in solving problems or questioning deeply held assumptions, they say.That's a pretty unimpressive set of arguments, I think, but perhaps that's to the good. It indicates that there hasn't been radical change in how things are done, because the clearest paradigm isn't 'We decided this-or-that category of weapons was inhumane and stopped building them' but 'we started using pantyhose as a filter, which shows how radically different our perspective is.' Maybe women are better at understanding people's priorities, but maybe that's just another stereotype. Certainly being underestimated can be an advantage in negotiations, but not necessarily so; if a committee is united in underestimating you, they may simply steamroller your objections because they don't take you seriously. (Nor, for that matter, is it true that women are universally underestimated anyway: some of them are overestimated, and others are quite forceful enough to prevent underestimation.)
Panetta, who says she is often asked about the benefits of women in leadership, tells the story of soldiers in the desert using pantyhose to keep sand out of sensitive equipment. “Do you think a guy thought of that?” she asked. “For the longest time, these male-dominated organizations missed half of the population’s perspective on an issue or on an approach.”
McCaffrey also said women are less "wedded to ‘we’ve always done it this way.' Sometimes women are a little more willing to question that.”
She ticked off several other ways defense companies and national security agencies can operate more effectively with women leading the way.
For one, women are shrewd negotiators. “I’ve known women who were good negotiators because they were underestimated,” McCaffrey said. “The key to negotiating is making sure you know what other peoples’ priorities are. Women tend to do that really, really well.”
Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson — the third woman to hold the job since the 1990s — told lawmakers last year she believes it's perfectly natural for women to play a greater role in defending the country.
“If I ask everyone in this room to think about the most protective person you know in your life, someone who would do anything to keep you safe, half the people in this room would think about their moms,” she told the House Armed Services Committee. “We are the protectors; that’s what the military does. We serve to protect the rest of you, and that’s a very natural place for a woman to be.”
The interview does end on a sour note.
“I think this is great," added McCaffrey, "but not if 10 years from now, these women are gone and we’re back to having all white men in these positions."That's disappointing, as it undercuts all the earlier talk about how 'finding the best person for the job' was what this was all about. The sex and class resentments, which white men must have been at the forefront of yielding up since they're the ones who had all the power not long ago, are roadblocks to attaining the goal of promotion by merit alone. I don't know if that goal is attainable, but the persistence of the resentments is not encouraging.
Virtue Ethics vs. Character?
Mitt Romney published an editorial claiming that Donald Trump lacks the character to be President. Will Chamberlain offers a kind of opposing argument, although one based on far too few examples to be decisive, that "character" in Romney's sense is at least unrelated to successful performance as a President.
That, I think, is what Trump tends to get wrong: he shows respect or disrespect transactionally rather than out of a grasp of what is worthy of respect. If you show the President respect, he responds with respect. If you show him disrespect, he reflexively shows disrespect back. There's a kind of game theory justice to that, especially since he offers occasional forgiveness if you come back: 'tit for tat plus forgiveness' is one of the best game theory strategies.
However, it's how he gets sideways in cases like McChrystal and Mattis, and even the Khan family back during the campaign. Once you understand what is worthy of respect per se, it is unjust to assign disrespect in those cases. The negative reactions he gets from the broad American culture when he does this are healthy rejections of this basic injustice. Of great interest to me is that this shows an American sense of honor that is broad and deep, and crosses party lines: for the most part, even committed Republicans hate when Trump speaks disrespectfully in these cases.
This understanding of what is worthy of honor, and the actions to show proper honor in proper cases, is fundamental to Aristotle's capstone virtue of magnanimity. Ultimately the magnanimous does what is most worthy of honor in every case, to include showing proper honor to others according to their virtues. Getting it right gets everything right, Aristotle argues. But it requires complete virtue to do this, as virtue is what is most worthy of honor and you must have it to 'know' it well enough to recognize it. Note that this adequately solves for 'polite, decent' qualities -- those are both about showing respect. The only one it doesn't solve for is 'empathetic,' which I suspect is not really a virtue; that kind of emotional attachment warps one's fairness of mind in the manner that Aristotle describes as 'distorting the ruler before you use it to measure.' It makes it harder to understand what is justly worthy of honor, in favor of honoring that which or those to whom one is emotionally attached.
Magnanimity and honor, then, are where I think Donald Trump goes wrong, but the point about LBJ or Clinton stands. There are effective approaches that are not respectful and not honorable. Sometimes you can get a long way with low cunning and a two-by-four approach to disagreements.
The two most decent, polite, cooperative, and empathetic Presidents I can think of (from the last fifty years) are George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.Trump isn't strong, and his mastery is somewhat open to question. I would have argued, however, that his most significant problem was with "honor." However, this is one of those occasions when the issue turns out to be that the writer has stipulated a definition of the term that is at variance from the usual one.
They were also arguably the worst two presidents of that time period.
No - who were the Presidents with the worst "character" of that time period?
I'd say - Kennedy, LBJ, Clinton.
All three were adulterers, liars, narcissists. Kennedy and Clinton were more well-liked, while LBJ was just a raging narcissistic asshole.
Did that translate into making their presidencies "failures"? Hardly.
Kennedy and Clinton are both lauded - and LBJ is a Dem hero for his legislative accomplishments. They all had relatively successful presidencies compared to Carter and
At a minimum, it's pretty clear that "character," in the "are you a polite, decent, empathetic human" sense is just not that useful a way to predict the success of.a President.
What is, then?
A few years back Jack Donovan wrote a fascinating book - The Way of Men.
In it, he outlined what he called the "tactical virtues" - strength, courage, mastery, and honor. He argued that these virtues made one "good at being a man."
Donovan used honor in a narrower sense than you might anticipate - it loosely translates to "in-group loyalty," as the context for all these virtues is the ethos of the gang.So really, what is meant by honor here is 'can we count on you?' It isn't the issue of understanding what is worthy of respect, and acting so as to show proper amounts of respect to the worthy and to the unworthy.
Trump had an advantage on every GOP politician by aligning himself HARD with the base.
That, I think, is what Trump tends to get wrong: he shows respect or disrespect transactionally rather than out of a grasp of what is worthy of respect. If you show the President respect, he responds with respect. If you show him disrespect, he reflexively shows disrespect back. There's a kind of game theory justice to that, especially since he offers occasional forgiveness if you come back: 'tit for tat plus forgiveness' is one of the best game theory strategies.
However, it's how he gets sideways in cases like McChrystal and Mattis, and even the Khan family back during the campaign. Once you understand what is worthy of respect per se, it is unjust to assign disrespect in those cases. The negative reactions he gets from the broad American culture when he does this are healthy rejections of this basic injustice. Of great interest to me is that this shows an American sense of honor that is broad and deep, and crosses party lines: for the most part, even committed Republicans hate when Trump speaks disrespectfully in these cases.
This understanding of what is worthy of honor, and the actions to show proper honor in proper cases, is fundamental to Aristotle's capstone virtue of magnanimity. Ultimately the magnanimous does what is most worthy of honor in every case, to include showing proper honor to others according to their virtues. Getting it right gets everything right, Aristotle argues. But it requires complete virtue to do this, as virtue is what is most worthy of honor and you must have it to 'know' it well enough to recognize it. Note that this adequately solves for 'polite, decent' qualities -- those are both about showing respect. The only one it doesn't solve for is 'empathetic,' which I suspect is not really a virtue; that kind of emotional attachment warps one's fairness of mind in the manner that Aristotle describes as 'distorting the ruler before you use it to measure.' It makes it harder to understand what is justly worthy of honor, in favor of honoring that which or those to whom one is emotionally attached.
Magnanimity and honor, then, are where I think Donald Trump goes wrong, but the point about LBJ or Clinton stands. There are effective approaches that are not respectful and not honorable. Sometimes you can get a long way with low cunning and a two-by-four approach to disagreements.
"Conservative Democracy"
I found this argument at First Things fairly persuasive. It may be slightly too strong on the Biblical aspects -- Jefferson would have thought so, certainly -- but it's not too strong in most respects.
Given the strenuous objections I feel myself, too, how much stronger must those objections be among those against whom force has been used to effect this agenda. These people are completely convinced of the rightness of their cause, and that their opponents are motivated by simple racism or xenophobia or hatred of some similar sort. They do not see, and do not understand, how their project is experienced by those who are experiencing this project as finding their faith, traditions, and nations under assault.
I find it difficult not to see the Western nations disintegrating before our eyes. The most significant institutions that have characterized America and Britain for the last five centuries, giving these countries their internal coherence and stability—the Bible, public religion, the independent national state, and the traditional family—are not merely under assault. They have been, at least since World War II, in precipitous decline.As strongly worded as that is on first face, I think it's appropriate. When I reflect on the 'bake the cake' court cases, or the lawsuits brought against groups like The Little Sisters of the Poor, or the Senate confirmation hearings in which membership in the Knights of Columbus is treated as a problem -- well, "anti-religious, anti-traditionalist, universalist" sounds more or less correct.
In the United States, for example, some 40 percent of children are today born outside of marriage. The overall fertility rate has fallen to 1.76 children per woman. American children for the most part receive twelve years of public schooling that is scrubbed clean of God and Scripture. And it is now possible to lose one’s livelihood or even to be prosecuted for maintaining traditional Christian or Jewish views on various subjects.
Add to this the fact that the principal project of European and American political elites for decades now has been the establishment of a “liberal international order” whose aim is to export American norms and values to other nations, and you have a stunning picture of what the United States has become—a picture that in certain respects resembles that of Napoleonic France: an ideologically anti-religious, anti-traditionalist universalist power seeking to bring its version of the Enlightenment to the nations of the world, if necessary by force.
Given the strenuous objections I feel myself, too, how much stronger must those objections be among those against whom force has been used to effect this agenda. These people are completely convinced of the rightness of their cause, and that their opponents are motivated by simple racism or xenophobia or hatred of some similar sort. They do not see, and do not understand, how their project is experienced by those who are experiencing this project as finding their faith, traditions, and nations under assault.
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