Dangerous Virtue

Theodore Dalrymple cites a passage by Chesterton in a piece on the London attack.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues . . . The vices are indeed let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

That passage is valuable. Another author, reading Chesterton, commented on the idea. "I had never considered virtues as something potentially dangerous, but that is exactly what Chesterton says is happening."

But of course virtues are potentially dangerous, because virtues are strengths. Strength can help you break chains, but strength also helps you forge them. Worse, if not connected to the virtue of practical wisdom, you may not know whether forging or breaking chains is the better course.

Mission Already Accomplished

Bernie says he wants "population control" as part of his climate agenda.

An audience member asked Sanders about "educating everyone on the need to curb population growth."

"Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. The planet cannot sustain this growth. I realize this is a poisonous topic for politicians, but it's crucial to face," the audience member asked. "Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact. Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?"

"The answer is yes," Sanders responded. "And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions."

In fact, we may already be there. Too, it is exactly for the reason Bernie cites as his goal: education, particularly of women. Women are simply deciding to have a lot fewer kids, and medicine has given them the power to control that decision.

In Praise of Censure

Writing in The Hill, a former Republican Congressional staffer offers a proposal: Censure the President rather than impeaching him.

He has a number of arguments in favor of doing this, one of which is important: Nancy Pelosi would get to control the process, rather than turning it all over to the Republican-led Senate. That would allow the Congressional Democrats to escape from the trap they have built for themselves by staging this drama on Ukraine, where not only Joe Biden but Nancy Pelosi herself, along with John Kerry and Mitt Romney, have children with sweetheart deals from energy companies. If this goes to a Senate trial, there's the potential for humiliating blowback once the Republicans are in charge of who gets called as a witness and what they are asked.

He also suggests that a censure might be bipartisan, though he himself wouldn't vote for it. Of course, we have already had a bipartisan vote on this: some Democrats voted against opening the impeachment inquiry, after all.

Jigsaw puzzles

More pieces to fill in:

The Obama holdover heading the Pentagon office reportedly under investigation by the U.S. attorney who is conducting the criminal probe of the Trump–Russia investigation was accused of leaking a classified document, in a recent court filing for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The connection hasn't been previously reported.

According to a Nov. 21 report by independent journalist Sara Carter, U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). ONA awarded about $1 million in contracts to FBI informant Stefan Halper, who appears to have played a key role in alleged U.S. intelligence agency spying on 2016 Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

In addition, however, a court filing indicates that ONA's director, James H. Baker, "is believed to be the person who illegally leaked the transcript of Mr. Flynn’s calls" to The Washington Post. Specifically, the filing states, "ONA Director Baker regularly lunched with Washington Post Reporter David Ignatius."

The filing adds that Baker "was Halper's 'handler'" at ONA.

From Epoch Times (possible paywall) via Ace.

Best Coffee Commercial Ever

Surviving a Saga Christmas

Trickier than you might think.

Thanksgiving Retrospective

A graphic showing the passengers of the Mayflower, and those who survived to the first Thanksgiving.

Fighting Terror with a Unicorn's Horn

Today in London, a convicted terrorist who'd been let free (albeit with a tracker on his person) attacked people on London Bridge with a knife. He was battled by a guy with a five-foot Narwhal tusk, which the fellow took off the wall at Fishmonger's Hall. Police later showed up and shot the bad guy, although presumably our hero could have done that himself if he hadn't been disarmed by his own government.

Well, and he found himself a proper tool. The Narwhal tusk was long sold in Europe by the Vikings as unicorn horns that could dispel poison. The story is an amusing one, and touches both Eiríkr Thorvaldsson, better known as 'Erik the Red,' and his son the famous Lief Erikson.

And not a knee taken

Post-Thanksgiving cooking

It's leftovers week!  We're already at work on turkey soup, and I'll insist on our usual turkey tetrazzini tomorrow.  For lunch I'm chewing on turkey wings with dressing, gravy, and smoky greens.

The news yesterday and today about our dangerously ill next-door neighbor is so encouraging that I find myself coming out of a dejected fog and being inspired to cook.  I volunteered to bring a dessert to a public gathering tomorrow.  It seemed a good time to try something I've been tempted by on Facebook:  pecan pie brownies.

Mine didn't come out as self-contained or dignified as this stock photo, being more like a pecan-pie-brownie cobbler, but admirably gooey inside and crunchy outside, like the old joke about the polar bear and the igloo.  Because the Facebook recipe advocated a brownie mix, which is out of the question, I substituted a Julia Child fudge-style brownie base with a Craig Claiborne pecan pie filling for the top.  (You pour the brownie mix in the bottom and the pecan pie filling on the top, then bake at 350 degrees until it's Alton-Brown-style GBD, "golden brown and delicious.")

Presentation-wise, it might work better with a cake-style brownie and a shorter cooking time, so the pecan pie topping would be easier to cut while at the same time the brownie base would set up a little more.  Nevertheless, I'll let people spoon out their servings, and there's certainly nothing wrong with the flavor.  If I make it again, I may cut back on the sugar in the brownies, for contrast.  Barely-sweetened whipped cream wouldn't hurt a thing.

So now it's about the rule of law again?

These dizzying reversals:  when conservatives object that the impeachment farce is ignoring due process, we hear that impeachment is a political process that obeys political rules rather than all those tiresome and legalistic restraints.  That's actually close to my own view:  impeachments, like elections, are a vehicle for political opposition, not law enforcement.  Legal violations affect public opinion indirectly just as they do in elections and other disputes, but the people called upon to make a judgment aren't bound by the same intricate and straitlaced rules that are enforced in a criminal trial.

The prosecuting party in an impeachment, therefore, is technically allowed to throw due process in the trash.  The flip-side, however, is that the defense gets to use political tools of its own to ridicule the essentially free choices of the prosecution, and voters are free to decide what they think about it all.  So far, to the prosecution's horror, voters are bored or hostile about the results.

Predictably, the anti-Trump camp now begins to worry that their sacred ritual of impeachment is being infected by lowdown politics.  Well, if this dumpster fire clears the House and the Senate conducts a trial, they'll get a chance to see how they fare in a more traditional legal setting.  Nevertheless, the political problem won't go away.  If the charges are as spurious in that more formal trial setting as they are in the current kangaroo court, the political problem will only intensify.

A Considerable Irony

The World Socialist, that grand elder of anti-American Communist propaganda outlets, publishes an interview with noted historian Gordon Wood on how unfair the New York Times “1619 Project” is to the Founding.

Q. For our readership, perhaps you could discuss something of the world-historical significance of the Revolution. Of course, we are under no illusion that it represented a socialist transformation. Yet it was a powerful revolution in its time.
A. It was very important that the American colonial crisis, the imperial crisis, occurred right at the height of what we call the Enlightenment, where Western Europe was full of new ideas and was confident that culture—what people believed and thought—was man-made and thus could be changed. The Old World, the Ancién Regime, could be transformed and made anew. It was an age of revolution, and it’s not surprising that the French Revolution and other revolutions occur in in the wake of the American Revolution.
The notion of equality was really crucial. When the Declaration says that all men are created equal, that is no myth. It is the most powerful statement ever made in our history, and it lies behind almost everything we Americans believe in and attempt to do.

There’s a lot to like here. It’s worth reading to see how much the actual Communists object to the assumptions that the Times is making.

CIA disease

It's not just a disease of the CIA, of course; confirmation bias is always trying to undermine our ability to face facts.  But times of great political hysteria are fertile ground.

People are always trying to persuade me that we are more polarized and generally crazy these days than ever before.  I'm not really seeing it.  I was just reading a biography of William Bowditch, noting that around the turn of the 18th century many public-spirited men were shocked at the damage suffered by old and valued friendships from bitter disagreements over federalism.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was apolitical, though it's true that it was a small gathering of like-minded neighbors that presented no special challenges in that direction.  I wore my "It's beginning to look a lot like Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" holly-and-berries sweatshirt without fear of giving offense.  It was a slightly somber gathering, though.  Our neighbor, whom we had expected to join us, is gravely ill in an ICU in Houston, the victim of completely unexpected complications from minor surgery.  Life is fleeting.  We are thankful for our health.

Our labrador lightened the atmosphere by eating half a trayful of the white turkey meat while we were distracted out on the porch.  Luckily there was still plenty, but she was a little restless and gaseous all night, the rotten creature.  She hasn't learned a thing and would do it again in a heartbeat.

The Rolled Turkey

It came out pretty well, given that it was my first attempt. Slow-roasted for 14 hours, then finished at a higher temperature for half an hour to crisp the skin.

As promised, three kinds of pie, so lighter on the traditional side dishes than usual. I hope your feast went well also.

Thanksgiving

Nothing is ever as good as it could be, and often I think of the ways in which it could be better; but for all the ways in which it is good, and for the very experience of goodness at all, I give thanks.

Brilliance by Discipline

Instapundit linked this study to explore different ideas among students about male vs. female professors. I want to point out, instead, the good things it says about philosophy professors! They are the most brilliant, above average on funny, and below average on both meanness and rudeness.

Tax The Poor!

It’s good for them.

Carter Page Requests An Audience

Well, now.

Watch Out For The Traumatized, Part II

Exactly as predicted, the government has chosen the easy and wicked route.

A small percentage of teens who are depressed or bullied will respond with violence. After reading a recent report on school violence from the U.S. Secret Service, however, you’d be led to believe that every one of them is a potential mass-murderer.

“Secret Service research findings [indicate that] targeted school violence is preventable,” the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) Director James Murray writes in a new NTAC report. All schools have to do is treat any student in any sort of distress as a potential danger to everybody else and respond accordingly....

"This approach is intended to identify students of concern, assess their risk for engaging in violence or other harmful activities, and implement intervention strategies to manage that risk. The threshold for intervention should be low, so that schools can identify students in distress before their behavior escalates to the level of eliciting concerns about safety.... The fact that half of the attackers had received one or more mental health services prior to their attack indicates that mental health evaluations and treatments should be considered a component of a multidisciplinary threat assessment, but not a replacement. Mental health professionals should be included in a collaborative threat assessment process that also involves teachers, administrators, and law enforcement."

Seeking help, then, is a red flag. That should not have any negative unintended consequences whatsoever.

Also, suffering poverty means that you are dangerous:

The Secret Service lists the following household “difficulties” as contributing to the likelihood of a young person one day coming to school with the purpose of murdering his associates:

• Bankruptcy

• Eviction

• Homelessness

• Failure to Pay Child Support

• Foreclosure

• Fraudulent Check(s)

• Lien

• Low Income

• Poverty

Naturally, of course, the remedy for your weakness is that your whole family should be disarmed by government agents.

Most attackers used firearms, and firearms were most often acquired from the home: Many of the attackers were able to access firearms from the home of their parents or another close relative. While many of the firearms were unsecured, in several cases the attackers were able to gain access to firearms that were secured in a locked gun safe or case. It should be further noted, however, that some attackers used knives instead of firearms to perpetrate their attacks. Therefore, a threat assessment should explore if a student has access to any weapons, with a particular focus on weapons access at home. Schools, parents, and law enforcement must work together rapidly to restrict access to weapons in those cases when students pose a risk of harm to themselves or others.

Once again, exactly as predicted. "Since it is the only thing that is really likely to work, though, injustice is the most probable outcome of future government action on this issue. My sense is that we have much more to fear from any government attempts to address mass killings than we have to fear from the tiny number of killers, bad as they are."

Traditional Mongolian Music Vs. The Hu

After being introduced to The Hu here recently, I checked out the original folk style. I don't remember ever hearing Mongolian throat singing before, and I haven't decided what I think about it yet.

Here are two songs about Chinggis Khaan (apparently the Mongolian transliteration for the name), one traditional and one by The Hu.

The lyrics below the second video introduced me to Tengrism, a Central Asian religion which apparently is undergoing a revival since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Interesting stuff.