He left as the most decorated mascot in school history, overseeing the Georgia football dynasty that lead to back-to-back national championships, two SEC titles, and victories in the Rose, Sugar, Peach, and Orange Bowls.
Long live the bulldog.
Goodnight, Uga X
In sad news, the University of Georgia's mascot bulldog, Uga X, passed away last night. They have royalty-like numbers after their names, and like royalty they often enjoy credit for things that happened during their reign.
Thanks, Lady
Cartoon rake, meet cartoon cat.
I grew up in the South in the same period she's talking about, and I never once heard the phrase "brown person" until the late 1990s -- and then it was in the mouths of liberals who were wishing it was a category they could assign to the thoughts of troglodyte rednecks, not a phrase used by the rednecks themselves. Racism against black people was very much a thing in the 1970s South, though as the article points out important aspects of the culture were already moving strongly against it. The irony is that the strength of the black/white division meant that anyone who wasn't black was, well, white. That's why the Irish had settled very easily into Savannah when they struggled in New York and Boston; it's why Jews were quite accepted in the Antebellum South when they were subject to great prejudice elsewhere.
The people of South Carolina elected her as their governor, for goodness sake, even though she was a Republican who credited Hillary Clinton with inspiring her political career. She didn't win the office with closet Democratic votes, either, as she may hope to do with tonight's election. She was embraced by one of the most strident of the Southern states -- one whose votes she'll have to ask for again, soon. Why she chose to insult them with this falsehood at this time is probably because she's looking for a new constituency, and thinks she can best seek it by publicly rejecting her old one. That sort of disloyalty is typical of a Washington politician, who forget in their moment of wealth and power who it was that trusted them enough to empower them to begin with.
On the side issue of "remembering the 1970s," I heard some young people discussing a theory that people didn't drink water in the 1970s. They asked if bottled water was even for sale in the stores. Well, no, it wasn't: water in those days was free, everywhere, as a general civilizational courtesy. The late, great Lewis Grizzard of the Atlanta Journal wrote that his father thought that only Communists would charge for water (a good laugh line even then, given the obvious capitalism of figuring out how to charge for what had always been free). When Perrier began to become popular among Atlanta Yuppies in the 1980s, he had a lot of fun with the idea that you'd pay good money for a drink of water. It's not so funny now, is it?
Choice and Happiness
The other day I was responding to a post by David Foster, with a discussion aimed at the unhappy youth. Specifically, I was trying to offer some advice on how to take charge of your happiness and become happier. I held that good philosophy can help you with that, as can bold practical actions:
The thing about anxiety is that it turns out to be one of the things you really can do something about. Stoic philosophy is a practice that tackles the problem of anxiety by helping you identify what you can control, what you can't control, and ways of focusing on the former. This does a great deal to eliminate anxiety from your life, because your focus ends up on things you absolutely can master. As you learn to let go of the other things and focus on your area of control, anxiety will diminish because you care less and less about the things outside your control....
Also, ride horses or motorcycles. As Aristotle teaches, you get virtues by practicing them. Get out and practice taking risks, being courageous, doing dangerous things. You'll get better and better at the things, but you'll also get better and better at handling risky situations in general.
I remember on reflection how exciting Aristotle was to me when I was young, and facing all the uncertainty of youth. Then one day I encountered a professor who told us, “Aristotle says that happiness is an activity, and the particular activity is using your reason to align your vital powers in the pursuit of excellence.”
That was a revelation to me. Happiness was in my hands. All I had to do was do it. The Stoics refined that picture, but that’s the truth. There’s no reason to be anxious. Just go do.
Now it happened that just a day or so later AVI wrote a post on happiness that contains an implicit challenge to this view.
Neuroticism decreases as we age. Stated the other way, our sense of emotional stability increases as we get older. Fewer things bother us. We give a rat's ass about less and less stuff. Put it however you want to, we calm down....
Because we are all moving in the direction of improved mood anyway - your 50s will likely be your happiest decade and your 60s your second-happiest - it gives us the impression that "when all is said and done, I made mostly right choices." People who married feel vindicated because they feel emotionally better at 55 than at 25. But people who did not marry are also quite sure they made the right choice.
(James had a theologically sound comment at that post, by the way.)
So the implicit challenge is that young people just are unhappier than older people; and thus, that adopting a good philosophy or having grand experiences merely correlates with a natural process of declining neuroticism. Correlation is not causation. Of course, getting older is itself also a correlation: it's just one of those things that happens to us -- at least, those of us who get ahold of our mental health sufficiently to avoid suicide or death by drug overdose. Susceptibility to those things may also be heavily influenced by genetics, though, and so also not necessarily the product of good philosophy or activity.
Epictetus tells us in Enchiridion V that misery is in our hands, because we can choose to take a view even of death that is not terrible (as, he points out, did Socrates). He goes on to say one of the most striking things in the whole book, which I think relevant to today's discussion: "It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself."
This is meant to apply to misfortunes, but it applies just as well to good fortune. I am happier now than I ever was, and I ascribe this to adopting a better philosophy as well as to having trained myself for action. Maybe I should not credit myself for this happiness, nor my teachers (nor, as per AVI's post, even my long-suffering and patient wife). Maybe it's just something that happened to me, like all the other things.
That's more Zen than Stoic, which brings me to a strong counter-argument: Richard Strozzi Heckler's In Search of the Warrior Spirit, his account of teaching Zen meditation to US Special Forces. He did so as part of a program that was meant to create improved capacities for things like marksmanship and stealth in these already-capable men. They absolutely hated the practice of meditation, which went counter to their nature as men of action. However, the practice did in fact increase their scores on the objective tests of their marksmanship and so forth. The practice of the philosophy -- not merely the thinking of philosophcial thoughts, but the union of practice according to philosophy -- did further improve outcomes, in other words. The unity of thought and practice altered their outcomes as predicted.
Of course these were especially excellent men to start with. The fact that they can do it does not mean that everyone can. It does offer hope, though, that it might work. If you happen to be miserable, why not give it a try? The worst that can happen is that you'll get older while you practice, and therefore happier; and in the meanwhile, it'll give you something to help pass the time.
With Sorrow
Not unexpectedly, US Central Command has announced that the two Navy SEALs who were washed into the ocean during a raid on a vessel carrying Iranian arms are deceased. Such men are strong, but the ocean is stronger.
Other people's weather
We barely have weather, compared to you guys. In the last few years, it's true, we've faced freezes every winter that last for days. That has surprised me, because when I was growing up in Houston, which is slightly colder than here, it was nearly unheard of for a freeze to survive much past dawn, let alone all day for several days.
Still, you can't say much about barely-freezing weather a few days a year at most. In this last one, nearly all my greens crops and winter herbs came through unscathed even though I didn't cover them. We had to harvest a lot of green tomatoes. Those bushes, along with the eggplants and peppers, obviously didn't make it.
In the meantime, we're experiencing something more like true winter vicariously through our niece and heir, who met a nice fella, quit her job near San Antonio, sold her house, and hit the road with him. In warm months they live a sort of gypsy life, traveling around in an RV meeting up with friends and family and staying long enough to do some light repair contracting work. In the winter they hang out in a cabin they're building in a remote area of Wisconsin. It seems well dried-in now, and a little larger than last year, and quite cozy. My niece is having the time of her life. The two dogs, Southern flowers, have adapted well.
Generators and Hydropower
So the previous post produced a lot of knowledge about generators, which has clearly been of interest to many of you. I'm going to put a follow-up question out there: how much do you know about generating electricity with water?
I live on a mountain, with a clear and fast-running creek a few yards from my house. There's a good grade -- mountainside and all -- and the water flow is year-round. I've always thought that putting a turbine in the creek would generate enough power to run my house, and the source would be only a few yards away.
How much do you folks know about that project?
An Icy Time
Power was out this morning before dawn due to ice on the lines; it came back, but then went out again due to a vehicle sliding off the road and taking out a power pole. It was barely above freezing at dawn, and is scheduled to fall all day and night to be near zero by morning. Snow is blowing, but so far not sticking.
No force, as Sir Thomas Malory would say. I’ll suspend participation in’Dry January’ for the weekend, so there is homemade mead and fire.
Don't Be Anxious
Via David Foster, an analysis of the worsening trend among the young of being anxious, combined with a graph that shows a correlation between the rise in words like 'caution/worry/risk' and the decline of words like 'progress/future' in our writings since the 1960s. I assume that the nuclear war scares of the Cold War are behind this, although the whole history since WWI points towards technology becoming more threatening and less promising. People endured airplanes turning into bombers and machines turning into machineguns because they could see the strong benefits as well. Nuclear power ended up getting billed as toxic, though, so at some point people started just being afraid of it all.
This is all wrapped up, for reasons that doubtless Mr. Foster can explain to us, with a lot of concerns about relationships and love. Young people are anxious about that too, I guess.
The thing about anxiety is that it turns out to be one of the things you really can do something about. Stoic philosophy is a practice that tackles the problem of anxiety by helping you identify what you can control, what you can't control, and ways of focusing on the former. This does a great deal to eliminate anxiety from your life, because your focus ends up on things you absolutely can master. As you learn to let go of the other things and focus on your area of control, anxiety will diminish because you care less and less about the things outside your control.
The Enchiridion and its commentary (see sidebar) are a good place to start here, but if you want support The Daily Stoic is a good institution as well.
Also, ride horses or motorcycles. As Aristotle teaches, you get virtues by practicing them. Get out and practice taking risks, being courageous, doing dangerous things. You'll get better and better at the things, but you'll also get better and better at handling risky situations in general.
UPDATE: I remember on reflection how exciting Aristotle was to me when I was young, and facing all the uncertainty of youth. Then one day I encountered a professor who told us, “Aristotle says that happiness is an activity, and the particular activity is using your reason to align your vital powers in the pursuit of excellence.”
That was a revelation to me. Happiness was in my hands. All I had to do was do it. The Stoics refined that picture, but that’s the truth. There’s no reason to be anxious. Just go do.
Hunting Deer with an AR-15
In honor of the Washington Post's blacked-out-horror-show account of AR-15 lethiality, a reminder that it's illegal to hunt deer with one in 12 states because it isn't considered sufficiently lethal (and is, allegedly, cruel to use because it injures instead of kills the deer).
Personally I think it's perfectly adequate for deer hunting, provided you are a good shot. Note that those 12 states mostly include gun control havens like California or Maryland, though. As is so often the case, any stick is good enough to beat their enemies: the AR-15 should be banned, they say, both because it is too lethal and because it is not lethal enough.
Usually in logic, deriving a contradiction is thought to prove the opposite of the assumption that got you there. Here they take it to prove that which they assumed at the beginning.
FBI/DOJ: Yeah, the Laptop was Real
This is in a real sense water under the bridge, but it's important to note nevertheless. These institutions are going to want you to believe them again in the future, and you just shouldn't. We already knew that -- the list of bad behaviors is legion -- but make note of it once again.
Four years after the FBI and DOJ got a copy of the Hunter Biden laptop, filled with evidence of impeachable offenses and Biden family international self-dealing, the "Justice" Department only now admits that it's real. The DOJ has had the laptop's contents since December 2019, just over four years ago, when this evidence was delivered to the FBI. The revelation came in a "Justice" Department filing on Tuesday....The FBI convinced social media to censor the laptop story before the 2020 election. After Donald Trump's loss, approximately 17% of Americans said they would have changed their vote had they known the laptop was real, according to at least one poll....Joe Biden loyalist, Tony Blinken, who is now the disastrous Secretary of State, and former Acting CIA Chief Mike Morrell used this false information by the FBI to write an open letter alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. Fifty-one intelligence community members signed their names to the letter.... The FBI's information operation against the American people was run by the same FBI personnel who oversaw the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping story, the January 6 "insurrection" story, and by extension, the imprisonment and prosecutions of thousands of Americans.
This story differs significantly from the Whitmer/J6 stories, though I can see the point of running them together. This story was true, and the FBI initiated an effort to censor it and convince American voters before an election that it was false. This was an outright obstruction of justice by the "Department of Justice," for no other purpose than to influence an election's outcome.
Those stories involved some degree of entrapment by Federal agents -- intensely so in the Whitmer case, but also obviously so in the J6 case. We discussed the latter the other day. Federal wrongdoing here at least admits of the defense that entrapment only works where the entrapped are willing to commit a crime. I still think it's always wrong, but the defense can be (and usually is) raised by them on that ground. There is no similar defense possible in the laptop case, where the wrongdoing was by a Biden and the Federales were wholly engaged in illegal, unconstitutional, despicable behavoir.
An Insurrection!
Well, it's hard to charge pacifist Mennonites with insurrection, but the accidents are pretty similar to the occasion that is often billed as one when Republicans did it. I guess there's a significant difference between those who are committed to philosophical pacifism, and those who merely didn't happen to bring their guns along. Still, it always seemed important and relevant to the question of whether or not this was an insurrection that people didn't bring their guns along.
Turn off the Siren
Secretary Austin's hospital stay is back in the news. The media is upset that the ambulance was asked not to run lights or sirens.
The 911 dispatcher replied, “Usually, when they turn into a residential neighborhood they’ll turn them off,” but added that the driver is legally required to keep them on while transiting main roads.
In fact ambulances and other emergency apparatus often don't run lights or sirens when responding to calls. Other times, they do in order to get there quickly but then turn them off as they are approaching the target. There are various reasons for this, but it's not unusual.
One common reason is not to scare the patient. Especially in cardiac cases, the realization that your life is in immediate danger can worsen the event. Having a lights-blaring-and-sirens-screaming ambulance show up might increase blood pressure. Likewise in responding to apparent mental health incidents, upsetting the patient may cause problems that could be avoided with a quieter approach.
Another common reason, equal and opposite, is that death isn't imminent. You need an ambulance ride, but it doesn't need to go screaming down the highway. Many medical conditions need hospital attention without being quite so urgent, like broken hips. They definitely are unpleasant, and you're going to need surgery, but as long as there isn't internal hemorraging you aren't going to die in the next hour or two. There's plenty of time, so rather than risk lives by speeding down the highway ambulances will respond quietly and in an ordinary manner.
Police can use similar tactics to avoid exciting or escalating a situation -- again, mental health emergencies may often benefit from not roaring in with blazing lights and blaring sirens. Obviously search warrants may benefit from not alerting the people that you're coming while you are still two blocks away.
Even fire apparatus often responds quietly. Fire alarms are very often false alarms, so if there is no visible smoke or other indication of trouble they will frequently roll up to check the alarm on a non-emergency basis. That saves lives in traffic, and since so many of the alarms are false it just makes sense of the averages.
Locally our dispatchers will advise us to respond "on a routine basis" or "on an emergency basis." That lets the responders know whether lights and sirens are advised. Routine calls are, as the name suggests, routine.
A Poem from October 7, 1571
Another poem by G. K. Chesterton about the wars between the West and Islamic empires. The Wikipedia article gives a basic rundown of the battle and its importance. Of literary interest is that the young Miguel de Cervantes, later the author of Don Quixote, fought as a marine in this battle.
LEPANTO
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shake with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the cape of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled.
Spuming of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in 'the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day.
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed—Booms
away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign(But
Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sex
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Druid Addresses Scottish Parliament
For the first time, a Druid was invited to offer what I gather is an official prayer at the Scottish Parliament.
I'm just going to publish the prayer she offered, and put forward this question: if I'd told you that I went to a church service at a random church this weekend, the kind of place with 'folk guitar' church music and lots of talk about social justice, would you have caught that this wasn't the prayer offered there?
"Grant, O divine spirit, thy protection. And in protection, strength. And in strength, understanding. And in understanding, knowledge."And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice. And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it. And in the love of it, the love of all existences. And in the love of all existences, the love of divine spirit and all goodness.
Probably a church service would have said "O holy spirit" rather than "O divine spirit," but either could serve as a translation of Spiritus Sancti. They don't mention Jesus by name, but frankly a lot of churches don't invoke him by name all that often either.
The alignment between "existence" and "goodness" is strictly orthodox. Indeed, it's the opening of the Summa Theologiae. Questions 2, 4, 5, and 6 from the ST's first part are on this very subject. The relationship of justice to this divine goodness comes much later -- it starts at question 57 in the second part of the ST -- but her formulation is not out of order.
I wonder if such invocations end up appealing to the right place, as one might address a letter to "Santa Claus" or "St. Nick" and expect it to be delivered to the judge's desk in Miracle on 34th Street? Or does precision in the address matter, such that a wrong digit in the zip code would keep your letter from being seen? How good is the divine post office?
Two on Independent Contractors
This piece suggests that a part of the appeal of the recent victor in Iowa is his appeal to independent contractors.
“Make America Great Again” resonates. He relates to what the college-educated press calls “blue-collar workers”. However, those blue-collar workers aren’t what they used to be. Many of them own their businesses. They are self-directed and self-employed. They should be referred to as “independent contractors”.Since he was in commercial real estate, [he] has worked extensively with these kinds of people. They are smart, though most didn’t go to college. Their unions have abandoned them.These people all over the country have seen the government debt skyrocket no matter who is in charge. They have seen a two-tier legal system be implemented. They have seen Washington DC bureaucrats and politicians skim the cream and they get the dregs. It’s a mini-Hunger Game.When you are working for yourself no matter if you are a hairdresser or a carpenter, you feel the sting of taxes. You see the rot in your neighborhood. You want everyone to do well and factory jobs to increase because it means people will be spending more on your services.
I've mostly been taxed as an independent contractor in my life, and I can therefore tell you that the government hates them. They are required to pay "both halves" of the FICA taxes that are the biggest tax of all, and as such their effective tax rate is much higher than they would be paying if they were categorized as employees. Yet there are signal advantages also: you can set your own hours, determine your own working conditions, and be free of the oversight of HR departments and other corporate disciplinarians who increasingly monitor your outside life and politics to keep you in line.
Not coincidentally, there is a strong push to eliminate the possibility of independence from left-leaning states like California -- and, therefore, from the Biden Administration as well.
If the analysis I started with is accurate, this is -- coincidentally? -- an attack on the heart of the political support of their most feared and hated opponent. It's certainly got a political angle over and above the tax issue. Everyone's livelihood must depend on the approval of HR, which means everyone must be taught to behave in HR approve ways -- on and off the clock. Everyone must be monitored and taught not to say the wrong things.
It's another public-private partnership, like the pre-Elon Twitter (and the still current Facebook) that made sure to censor and shadow-ban all the ideas the Establishment asked them to do. They even locked up the accounts of the New York Post, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton, to prevent it from reporting the disapproved Hunter Biden Laptop story in the hours before the 2020 election; and they took instructions, after that election, on things the administration would have liked kept down. That was all exposed after Elon in the "Twitter Files," but you'll only get the NPR-approved version of that story, which highlights the counterarguments instead of the story itself. NPR is another public-private partnership too, isn't it?
The Crusader Returns from Captivity
THE CRUSADER RETURNS FROM CAPTIVITY
by G. K. Chesterton
I have come forth alive from the land of purple and poison and glamour,
Where the charm is strong as the torture, being chosen to change the mind;
Torture of wordless dance and wineless feast without clamour,
Palace hidden in palace, garden with garden behind;
Women veiled in the sun, or bare as brass in the shadows,
And the endless eyeless patterns where each thing seems an eye....
And my stride is on Caesar's sand where it slides to the English meadows,
To the last low woods of Sussex and the road that goes to Rye.
In the cool and careless woods the eyes of the eunuchs burned not,
But the wild hawk went before me, being free to return or roam,
The hills had broad unconscious backs; and the tree-tops turned not,
And the huts were heedless of me: and I knew I was at home.
And I saw my lady afar and her holy freedom upon her,
A head, without veil, averted, and not to be turned with charms,
And I heard above bannerets blown the intolerant trumpets of honour,
That usher with iron laughter the coming of Christian arms.
My shield hangs stainless still; but I shall not go where they praise it,
A sword is still at my side, but I shall not ride with the King.
Only to walk and to walk and to stun my soul and amaze it,
A day with the stone and the sparrow and every marvellous thing.
I have trod the curves of the Crescent, in the maze of them that adore it,
Curved around doorless chambers and unbeholden abodes,
But I walk in the maze no more; on the sign of the cross I swore it,
The wild white cross of freedom, the sign of the white cross-roads.
And the land shall leave me or take, and the Woman take me or leave me,
There shall be no more Night, or nightmares seen in a glass;
But Life shall hold me alive, and Death shall never deceive me
As long as I walk in England in the lanes that let me pass.
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