Jason Ubych of Tain and District Museum and Clan Ross Centre, said: “John led the struggle by the Cherokee people against forced and brutal relocation from their homeland in 1838, a story that has many similarities to the clearances in the Highlands being perpetrated at the same time.”UPDATE: As I reflect on it, this really should be read together with Tex's post below. Ross is a clear example of a man acting on family (and, by extension, tribal) ties to rein in the worst impulses of the state. He suffered with his people, but he helped them lessen the harms to which they were exposed, and was right there with them to help them survive the ones he couldn't avoid.
The Tale of a Cherokee Highlander
John Ross.
Recalcitrant families, benevolent states
As Glen Reynolds says, who knew a conservative backlash could cancel a progressive event demonizing homeschooling? Somebody had better get to work on a law about that kind of dangerous speech.
Chesterton wrote about the importance of the family as a bulwark against state coercion in "The Superstition of Divorce," in which he also ridicules the principle of unlimited personal liberty as "all windows and no wall":
Chesterton wrote about the importance of the family as a bulwark against state coercion in "The Superstition of Divorce," in which he also ridicules the principle of unlimited personal liberty as "all windows and no wall":
The ideal for which [the family] stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started. It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state. Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is, anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king. This is the only way in which truth can ever find refuge from public persecution, and the good man survive the bad government. But the good man by himself is no match for the city. There must be balanced against it another ideal institution, and in that sense an immortal institution. So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen.
Subsidiarity
One size doesn't fit all.
[T]here is one large group of the elderly for whom the issue is simpler: retirees who live on their own in rural, small-town, and small-city America. It is easy for most of them to take care of themselves, and they needn’t be rich to do it. We (for I fall into that category) don’t need to go to a workplace every day. We don’t need to use public transportation. Nothing requires us to eat in restaurants or, for that matter, requiresus to have close interaction with anyone. Does quarantining the entire population give us some additional measure of protection? Perhaps at the margin, though I would like to see some hard data proving that point. But I submit that we elderly who live on our own can make ourselves “safe enough” unilaterally, through the precautions within our control. What proportion of the elderly am I talking about? Calculating that number would take some digging, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what it is if we want to make sensible policy? And that brings me to my main point:
The relationship of population density to the spread of the coronavirus creates sets of policy options that are radically different in high-density and low-density areas. ... The sensible thing for government to do about the pandemic in a small town or small city is different from the sensible thing for government to do in a big, crowded city. ... [T]oo many people in high places, in government and the media, have been acting as if there is a right and moral policy toward the pandemic that applies throughout America. That’s wrong. Disaggregating policy choices to reflect local conditions is essential.
Speculation
It's getting harder to argue that we lack the manpower and other resources to pursue burglars, if we can spare a couple of squad cars to go after hardened criminals violating the six-foot rule.
Which is more speculative, the idea that a repeat offender might escalate if you fail to lock him up after several failures, or the domino effect from some scofflaws sitting on the beach?
“You can’t sit outside and watch the sunset because you might breathe on a butterfly that will carry your germs to a tree with lemons that might be picked by a child to make lemonade for his grandma, and she’ll die!”
"Only God Can Save Us"
That sentiment is typically expressed by priests and preachers, but there's a philosophical case for it that goes back to Socrates (who was speaking of another god, or at least thought that he was). This time the speaker is Elijah del Medigo, who may or may not be a priest since the name is a pen name, but begins with a poem excerpt by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Yet the institutions failed as soon as they shifted from finding new ways to respond to an emergency back to the more comfortable operation of the bureaucracies. The Afghan mission adopted a bureaucratic Big Army approach to a mission that had no possibility of success, and which has been pursued without success for nigh-on twenty years. The Iraq War was won by the invasion force, lost by the poorly-handed occupation, won again by the Surge force adopting a new model of counterinsurgency that forgave and adopted the Sunni Awakening, and then lost by the State Department that failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement and forced a rapid and too-early withdrawal.
Innovation is possible when the emergency grows dire enough that the bureaucrats loosen their grip, but doom returns as they reassert it. The American state has succeeded, where it has, by voiding its rules: truckers can drive further and faster, the FDA can let people make tests who know how without months of regulatory grind, and our food supply can be secured in a similar manner. If we simply void the rules and let people find solutions, solutions can be found. The enemy is the state; the ossified institutions themselves are causing the harm.
Death closes all: but something ere the end,This is exactly the same thing that 9/11 revealed, which caused me to write the following motif into my own poem, which was written on the very day:
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
...Our decades of overconfident liberalization and globalization have come back to bite us, Wilks argues, and we have now hollowed out American society to the point that the smallest tasks are too much for us: “We now find ourselves unable to stick ear straps onto face-sized pieces of non-woven medical fabric at industrial scale.
Decades of stagnation, offshoring, and complacency have caught up with us, and all of our institutions have failed to prevent the coronavirus from crippling the nation. Our physical decay can no longer be ignored.” He is right: decades of complacent management have not so much left a chink in our armor as fully stripped it off. Decline is a choice, as Charles Krauthammer said, and American bureaucracy has been choosing it for decades.
At last even EnidIn the poem, the red-rust mail was well-forged though ill-tended, and proves adequate to the task. Our institutions responded to 9/11 well in the first charge, rapidly deposing the Taliban and sending al Qaeda into hiding. Special Forces learned to ride horses in Afghanistan; Rangers took the peaks at Tora Bora; Marines deployed by helicopter into a land very far from any sea. The world learned that we were capable of a great deal of force, rapidly and unexpectedly.
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.
Yet the institutions failed as soon as they shifted from finding new ways to respond to an emergency back to the more comfortable operation of the bureaucracies. The Afghan mission adopted a bureaucratic Big Army approach to a mission that had no possibility of success, and which has been pursued without success for nigh-on twenty years. The Iraq War was won by the invasion force, lost by the poorly-handed occupation, won again by the Surge force adopting a new model of counterinsurgency that forgave and adopted the Sunni Awakening, and then lost by the State Department that failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement and forced a rapid and too-early withdrawal.
Innovation is possible when the emergency grows dire enough that the bureaucrats loosen their grip, but doom returns as they reassert it. The American state has succeeded, where it has, by voiding its rules: truckers can drive further and faster, the FDA can let people make tests who know how without months of regulatory grind, and our food supply can be secured in a similar manner. If we simply void the rules and let people find solutions, solutions can be found. The enemy is the state; the ossified institutions themselves are causing the harm.
How a Feudal Lord Handled the Nazis
I didn't know this, but there were actually a few genuine feudal lords during the 1930s. The last of these, the Isle of Sark in the English Channel, was a fief ruled by a hereditary lord until 2008, when it was democratized. There is still a lord, but now it's a more ceremonial role.
This article is about how Dame Sybil Hathaway, the Isle's feudal lord, handled the Nazis taking over her fief. It's a good story. Too bad her autobiography is out of print.
This article is about how Dame Sybil Hathaway, the Isle's feudal lord, handled the Nazis taking over her fief. It's a good story. Too bad her autobiography is out of print.
China's On the Ballot
Wretchard.
China won’t give up its formerly dominant supply chain position without a fight. Beijing has been quick to reopen even as Western politicians debate over whether it is safe to emerge from lockdown. “Analysts at Morgan Stanley suggest businesses are unlikely to take the opportunity to tilt parts of their manufacturing operations away from China, at least for now. They said cash-starved companies currently lack the funds to invest in new operations and tinker with existing supply chains. At the same time, Chinese assembly lines have been swift to bounce back, even as other economies remain in lockdown.”...Vote no on China.
The adage “take the high ground” applies to politics and it’s puzzling why the Democrats didn’t take ‘Reshore Hill’ and become the champion of returning jobs to America before Trump did. Instead reflex pushed them into instinctive opposition, tending to disculpate China and demand even longer lockdowns, even to their potential detriment.
Phase I Pie
First restaurant food in just over two months, tailgate pizza from a local joint just re-opened. “Local” means it’s a 40-minute drive (or ride) from the house.
This one’s called “The Duke.”
John Wayne would appreciate it.
This one’s called “The Duke.”
John Wayne would appreciate it.
A Summary of Recent History
Representative Jim Jordan has published a piece in the Federalist entitled "A Look Back On The Russia, Mueller, And Flynn Investigations." It is worth the time it will take you to read it.
Arbery Shooting
My virtue-signalling left-wing friends have been raising Cain over a shooting back down in Georgia, where two former police officers (who happen to be father and son) shot and killed a jogger. The shooters were white, the jogger was black, and the shooters appear to have taken him for a burglar and tried to make a citizens' arrest. That's legal in Georgia, provided that you bring the arrested before a magistrate in very short order.
The jogger grappled with one of them, who was holding a shotgun. The other one shot him, as he had taken up an elevated covering position by standing in the back of their pickup truck.
Generally this is being portrayed as a white-supremacist-hate-crime. Perhaps it was, although so far I haven't seen any evidence suggesting it besides the fact that they are white and the dead man was black. I am instantly struck, however, by the fact that they would probably not even be charged if they were still cops. 'Suspect grappled with the responding officer, and was going for his gun. Backup officer applied necessary force to ensure arresting officer was not killed in a struggle over the gun. Suspect died of wounds.'
In fact I suspect they will be cleared at trial for just that reason. A struggle over a gun with a suspected criminal poses an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm of just the sort that the Georgia self-defense laws permits. A third party may use lethal force to save the life of another so threatened. Since the dead man had a criminal record that did include burglary, and the shooters were former law-enforcement, my guess is the jury will break their way if they aren't convinced to take a plea bargain. At worst they'll likely get a mistrial; they may well be acquitted.
That said, what really happened here is probably what AVI was talking about: reversion to training. They did what the police are trained to do, and I can't imagine charges being brought against two police officers who did exactly the same thing. Here's a case in which training can actually work against you, because as your role in society changes over time, old training remains part of your state of character. A man is dead because of how they were trained as police officers.
The jogger grappled with one of them, who was holding a shotgun. The other one shot him, as he had taken up an elevated covering position by standing in the back of their pickup truck.
Generally this is being portrayed as a white-supremacist-hate-crime. Perhaps it was, although so far I haven't seen any evidence suggesting it besides the fact that they are white and the dead man was black. I am instantly struck, however, by the fact that they would probably not even be charged if they were still cops. 'Suspect grappled with the responding officer, and was going for his gun. Backup officer applied necessary force to ensure arresting officer was not killed in a struggle over the gun. Suspect died of wounds.'
In fact I suspect they will be cleared at trial for just that reason. A struggle over a gun with a suspected criminal poses an immediate threat of death or grievous bodily harm of just the sort that the Georgia self-defense laws permits. A third party may use lethal force to save the life of another so threatened. Since the dead man had a criminal record that did include burglary, and the shooters were former law-enforcement, my guess is the jury will break their way if they aren't convinced to take a plea bargain. At worst they'll likely get a mistrial; they may well be acquitted.
That said, what really happened here is probably what AVI was talking about: reversion to training. They did what the police are trained to do, and I can't imagine charges being brought against two police officers who did exactly the same thing. Here's a case in which training can actually work against you, because as your role in society changes over time, old training remains part of your state of character. A man is dead because of how they were trained as police officers.
Avoiding the Perjury Trap
Another big thing that happened yesterday was the opening of a lot more HPSCI documents from the Trump/Russia hearings. Ace has been doing yeoman work in pointing out that, over and over and over again, people who were publicly proclaiming Trump's guilt privately testified under oath that they had no evidence whatsoever.
Well, that's what oaths are for. Too bad this wasn't made public way back when. Might have saved time and money, but it would have also disabled a politically useful argument, so there was no way it could happen.
Well, that's what oaths are for. Too bad this wasn't made public way back when. Might have saved time and money, but it would have also disabled a politically useful argument, so there was no way it could happen.
Phase 1
Governor Cooper's office has put together a Twitter thread that is reasonable, cautiously optimistic but straightforward about the risks. I'm trying to be patient with this process, which I think is overly cautious but which is clearly well-intentioned. Let us hope it goes smoothly.
Ted Cruz Gets a Haircut
In another stunning reversal of fortune, the Dallas hairdresser who was jailed for operating her salon has been freed; the governor has issued an executive order banning jailing of people for violating mere executive orders as opposed to laws; and a Senator dropped in for a trim.
Oh. O.
So the President is entitled to know pretty much whatever he wants to know, however, his personal attention is limited. To discover that he is personally aware of specifics from a FISA intercept is significant.
More Biden News
Tara Reade's ex-husband mentioned that she was sexually harassed by her boss in a court filing that has come to light.
Justice Department Drops All Charges on Flynn
A stunning reversal; they didn't even wait for Judge Sullivan to rule on whether he could withdraw his guilty plea. This is not the end, though. The DOJ prosecutor has withdrawn from all of his cases, not just this one, and there is doubtless more to come.
UPDATE: I want to say that I am really pleased and encouraged by this outcome. Last week's Brady material establishes that the FBI never thought he was guilty of anything, after a very thorough counterintelligence information produced "no derogatory information" in any of the several methodologies employed. They were going to close the case, until they were ordered to hold it open so that a perjury trap could be attempted. If the witnesses about the original 302s are accurate, even that shouldn't have worked because the original 302s said that the agents didn't think Flynn was lying to them, just wrong on a couple of points.
I always liked Flynn because he was willing to take on the intelligence higher-ups on the word of the guys on the ground. An officer that will both listen to and fight for his guys is as good an officer as you can ask. He has been shamefully abused by the government he served long and well. I generally never hope to see anyone sent to prison, as I hate to see a free man reduced to a slave. Those who abused him, though, have spent their whole careers sending other people to prison. They broke the laws they enforced on others. For them, I can only say that it would be a sort of poetic justice if they should have that hammer fall.
UPDATE: I want to say that I am really pleased and encouraged by this outcome. Last week's Brady material establishes that the FBI never thought he was guilty of anything, after a very thorough counterintelligence information produced "no derogatory information" in any of the several methodologies employed. They were going to close the case, until they were ordered to hold it open so that a perjury trap could be attempted. If the witnesses about the original 302s are accurate, even that shouldn't have worked because the original 302s said that the agents didn't think Flynn was lying to them, just wrong on a couple of points.
I always liked Flynn because he was willing to take on the intelligence higher-ups on the word of the guys on the ground. An officer that will both listen to and fight for his guys is as good an officer as you can ask. He has been shamefully abused by the government he served long and well. I generally never hope to see anyone sent to prison, as I hate to see a free man reduced to a slave. Those who abused him, though, have spent their whole careers sending other people to prison. They broke the laws they enforced on others. For them, I can only say that it would be a sort of poetic justice if they should have that hammer fall.
Can Virtue be Taught?
AVI responded to yesterday's short essay with a post of his own, questioning whether habituation is in fact how one develops virtues like courage.
The first issue is whether virtue is a sort of knowledge, or something else. If virtue is knowledge, then it should be teachable. Plato enjoyed irony, so in the Protagoras he has Protagoras argue that he teaches a kind of virtue that is not knowledge; he has Socrates argue that virtue is a kind of knowledge, but can't be taught. Socrates makes clear the irony that they're arguing two impossible positions in the ending of the dialogue.
There are several good reasons to think that virtue is not a kind of knowledge, however. One of them is brought out in the Laches, which is specifically about trying to teach courage by practicing the martial arts, with teachers who went about Greece showing students techniques they had developed. The techniques can definitely be taught; in fact the word 'technique' is rooted in the Greek word techne, which is a species of knowledge-as-art that can definitely be taught. This word is also the root of our word "technology," and Socrates' favorite example of it is shoemakers. They definitely know something because they can not only make a shoe, they can also explain exactly how they do it, exactly why each step makes sense, and they can teach it to others. Teaching the martial arts is like that too.
Teaching courage, though: well, Socrates says, if it is like that we should be able to say exactly what it is we are wanting to teach. Can you define courage in an unassailable way? None of the participants in the discussion could, even though they were all men who had displayed courage on the battlefield (including Socrates, who was a war veteran famous for his conduct in a rear guard action during his youth). All possessed courage, but none could define it. That suggests that the virtue is not knowledge, at least not techne, and calls into question whether it is teachable.
What else might it be? It might be an inherited quality. The Greeks didn't know about genetics, but they knew that sons resemble their fathers in many ways. But (as is brought out in the Protagoras) the sons of good men often aren't as good as their fathers. Socrates points out that successful fathers who have displayed virtue not only often produce inferior sons, they do so even though they spend a lot of money and effort on trying to educate their sons. If virtue were inheritable, wouldn't it be the case that the sons of virtuous men were reliably better than others? If virtue were teachable, wouldn't these efforts bear fruit given that they are practiced on the most promising stock, i.e., the sons of the best men?
Aristotle's answer is that virtue is not a form of knowledge exactly, but a state of character. The way one develops that character is by practice, so that it become habituated. (This is not quite the same thing as a "habit" in the English sense, as this essay examines.) One changes one's character by practicing the right thing until one does it without having to think about what the right thing is. The argument that one reverts to one's training, then, isn't just an argument that Aristotle would accept; it is in fact his position.
This only partly solves the problem, of course, since we have to figure out what 'the right thing' is in order to train ourselves to do it. That still seems like needing a form of knowledge, not just practice and training: someone has to know. If there is someone who does know, then virtue is at least rooted in a sort of knowledge that can be taught. Even if that is true, knowing what virtue entails in this way does not satisfy the condition for having virtue; one still has to practice until doing the right thing is habituated. This is Aristotle's explanation for a problem that bothered Socrates: if virtue is a form of knowledge, then knowing what is right should entail always doing what is right. Yet people often know what is right but do something else.
The idea that virtue is any sort of teachable knowledge is a problem for the reasons given above, and for other reasons Plato explores. It's a very sticky question, and a highly consequential one. I will stop here to let you all consider this, and express your own thoughts.
Thinking about that, I think it is only partly true. It is not the mere experience of danger and risk that teaches, even to those who are alert and seeking to draw lessons. An example: early in my career at the hospital it was common to be working an understaffed unit. Just before I arrived, they had finally made it policy that no one was to work a unit alone. Not all psychiatric patients are dangerous, but enough of them are that they required physical intervention to restrain them. They can be assaultive, out-of-control, or so intensely self harming that they attempt to run into wall, cut themselves with whatever is handy. When you are alone in facing this and you know that you can get hurt badly, but your job is to keep everyone safe, it is frightening. Yes, you are still alone, because someone has to get to the phone, or is on break. Especially tough on night shift when there aren't even that many people in the building to help out. You were left with the intervention far more often if you were male, also. The adrenaline rises, clouding your judgement, and memories of past injuries, especially from this same patient, rise as well.This is one of the most consequential questions with which the Greeks wrestled. The issue makes up the core of several of Plato's dialogues. In fact it is the heart of Socrates' conflict with the Sophists, who claimed that they could and did teach virtue.
This was part of my job for seven years, and then an occasional part for ten years after that. I experienced that fear many times and worked to contain it. Yet even though I was paying attention and trying to draw lessons from the experience, or trying to emulate those who seemed to be doing better, I don't think I improved much. Not until about year five, when a new type of training come in, did I feel I was making progress. It was not mere habituation, but specific training that mattered. I imagine Aristotle might partly agree if I explained it to him.
The first issue is whether virtue is a sort of knowledge, or something else. If virtue is knowledge, then it should be teachable. Plato enjoyed irony, so in the Protagoras he has Protagoras argue that he teaches a kind of virtue that is not knowledge; he has Socrates argue that virtue is a kind of knowledge, but can't be taught. Socrates makes clear the irony that they're arguing two impossible positions in the ending of the dialogue.
There are several good reasons to think that virtue is not a kind of knowledge, however. One of them is brought out in the Laches, which is specifically about trying to teach courage by practicing the martial arts, with teachers who went about Greece showing students techniques they had developed. The techniques can definitely be taught; in fact the word 'technique' is rooted in the Greek word techne, which is a species of knowledge-as-art that can definitely be taught. This word is also the root of our word "technology," and Socrates' favorite example of it is shoemakers. They definitely know something because they can not only make a shoe, they can also explain exactly how they do it, exactly why each step makes sense, and they can teach it to others. Teaching the martial arts is like that too.
Teaching courage, though: well, Socrates says, if it is like that we should be able to say exactly what it is we are wanting to teach. Can you define courage in an unassailable way? None of the participants in the discussion could, even though they were all men who had displayed courage on the battlefield (including Socrates, who was a war veteran famous for his conduct in a rear guard action during his youth). All possessed courage, but none could define it. That suggests that the virtue is not knowledge, at least not techne, and calls into question whether it is teachable.
What else might it be? It might be an inherited quality. The Greeks didn't know about genetics, but they knew that sons resemble their fathers in many ways. But (as is brought out in the Protagoras) the sons of good men often aren't as good as their fathers. Socrates points out that successful fathers who have displayed virtue not only often produce inferior sons, they do so even though they spend a lot of money and effort on trying to educate their sons. If virtue were inheritable, wouldn't it be the case that the sons of virtuous men were reliably better than others? If virtue were teachable, wouldn't these efforts bear fruit given that they are practiced on the most promising stock, i.e., the sons of the best men?
Aristotle's answer is that virtue is not a form of knowledge exactly, but a state of character. The way one develops that character is by practice, so that it become habituated. (This is not quite the same thing as a "habit" in the English sense, as this essay examines.) One changes one's character by practicing the right thing until one does it without having to think about what the right thing is. The argument that one reverts to one's training, then, isn't just an argument that Aristotle would accept; it is in fact his position.
This only partly solves the problem, of course, since we have to figure out what 'the right thing' is in order to train ourselves to do it. That still seems like needing a form of knowledge, not just practice and training: someone has to know. If there is someone who does know, then virtue is at least rooted in a sort of knowledge that can be taught. Even if that is true, knowing what virtue entails in this way does not satisfy the condition for having virtue; one still has to practice until doing the right thing is habituated. This is Aristotle's explanation for a problem that bothered Socrates: if virtue is a form of knowledge, then knowing what is right should entail always doing what is right. Yet people often know what is right but do something else.
The idea that virtue is any sort of teachable knowledge is a problem for the reasons given above, and for other reasons Plato explores. It's a very sticky question, and a highly consequential one. I will stop here to let you all consider this, and express your own thoughts.
Uh-Oh
An essay by a Harvard professor of constitutional law has prompted a lot of elite conservative thinkers to begin musing on new non-originalist ways to interpret the Constitution to 'help the common good.' At the same time, a new think tank called American Compass wants to re-examine the use of government to 'help': "HELPING POLICYMAKERS NAVIGATE the limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security."
The reason to support originalism wasn't because it was useful, but because it is true. A law is passed to do something specific, and it shouldn't be re-interpreted later to do something else even if a judge can creatively read it that way. The legislature should pass a new law to do the new thing, if they think it's worth doing; the old law should be repealed, if they no longer think it worth doing. That's empty of content about ideology.
As for government's ability to promote the common good, I've never been more skeptical of it than I am today. Government should be treated as a necessary evil, but an evil for certain.
The reason to support originalism wasn't because it was useful, but because it is true. A law is passed to do something specific, and it shouldn't be re-interpreted later to do something else even if a judge can creatively read it that way. The legislature should pass a new law to do the new thing, if they think it's worth doing; the old law should be repealed, if they no longer think it worth doing. That's empty of content about ideology.
As for government's ability to promote the common good, I've never been more skeptical of it than I am today. Government should be treated as a necessary evil, but an evil for certain.
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