We are about to have a serious, and overdue, conversation about the relationship between the states and the federal government. Governor Abbott's letter raises some important issues that Americans need to consider seriously.
UPDATE BY GRIM: Twenty-five state governments including Texas, as governors have signed a letter of support for Abbot.
The Government put forward plans to ban some zombie-style* knives in August last year, but Ms Hayes said this is “insufficient” because the ban does not cover all offensive weapons, such as swords.
It turns out that just as there isn't properly a "weapon of war" there isn't really an "offensive weapon" either. All weapons can be used for defense as well as offense: even a tank can be used to deter an invasion rather than to fight one.
Likewise, just about anything can be a weapon, and therefore 'an offensive weapon' as well.
* This is a new one to me, who has spent his life around knives. It apparently means "the kind of knives one sees in Zombie TV shows," which accords with the language about banning "Rambo-style knives" as well. Is a "Rambo-style" or "Zombie-style" knife more dangerous? Absolutely not. Was it designed as a weapon of war? No, it was designed to make an impression on television or movie audiences.
In any case, I refer you as always to Havamal 38: "Never step a foot from your door/ without your weapons of war: for never sure is the knowing/ when you might be needing/ your weapons along the road."
Wine colors, for example, were not standardly subdivided between white and red (as is done today), but for the Romans, they belonged to a wide spectrum of colors ranging from white and yellow to goldish, amber, brown and then red and black, all based on grapes macerated on the skin.
Because the fermentation technology was different, they say the wine would have smelled and tasted different from ours too: it would have had the aroma of bread, and a spicy flavor. The closest thing like it today is wine from the Republic of Georgia, still made in similar vessels called qvevri.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
