I've been considering that as an experiment, but I can see from his results that it's not quite time yet.
AI Cowboy
Out at the Cowboy State Daily, regular columnist Rod Miller had an AI produce this week's column after studying his style.
Another Stupid Train Idea
The love affair with spending vast sums of money on trains nobody will ride continues. Asheville is in the early (but still expensive!) planning stages of adding an Amtrak spur line for tourism. It'll take many years and cost a fortune, but if all that money is spent we can expect the following travel times:
Salisbury to AshevilleTrain: 3 hours and 35 minutesCar: 2 hours and 10 minutesBus: 3 hours and 30 minutes
Raleigh to AshevilleTrain: 6 hours and 47 minutesCar: 3 hours and 50 minutesBus: 6 hours and 20 minutes
Charlotte to AshevilleTrain: 4 hours and 26 minutesCar: 2 hours and 10 minutesBus: 2 hours and 55 minutes
So it's objectively worse on every option, as well as extremely expensive. (They're not even offering a comparison to flight times: Charlotte to Asheville is a route I fly regularly, and it takes about 30 minutes although you have to factor in security and other things too.) But it's a train, and good people love trains.
Look, I like riding on trains too. It's peaceful and kind of a pleasant throwback to an earlier time. However, this isn't Europe, and trains just aren't practical in most of America.
Virtue and Physical Fitness
Occasionally one reads columns like this one that suggest that physical fitness is somehow related to politics.
OK, this is going to sound a little hypocritical, as I have hard-recommended every activity and pursuit, every wellness wheeze and rejuvenation exercise the modern world has dreamed up.... at some time or another, I have insisted to anyone who will listen that it’s only their failure to incorporate, say, a horse into their weekly schedule that is standing between them and their best self.
As a matter of fact, I have also written extensively about the importance of horses to achieving one's best self. It's been a while since it was a regular topic, but at one time that was a major focus of the blog. What I thought it inculcated was courage, not recklessness; gentleness, and the compassion necessary to understand a very different kind of mind and build trust with it; honor, to ride with other people as well as with your horse; and a capacity for building each of these virtues that can become a skill at building virtue itself.
She worries that it might bring traits that she finds objectionable in politics.
The mechanism is incredibly simple: you embark on this voyage of self-improvement, and more or less immediately see results. You feel stronger and more energetic, probably your mood lifts, and pretty soon you think you are master of your own destiny. You’re still not, by the way: destiny does not care about your step count. But until that fact catches up with you, which it may never, there you are, high on self-righteousness. You can tell this has happened to you when you start inhaling performatively, like the hero of an Ayn Rand novel.Inescapably, you start to situate other people’s problems within their failure to be as fit as you. This is particularly true if you don’t know them and they’re just a bunch of numbers. All those statistics – depressed people, obese people, people with IBS – imagine how much better they would be if only they took responsibility for their health, the way that you have.
There's always a correlation/causation issue with things like physical fitness and, say, disease; maybe people who are healthier are more likely to engage in physical activities than those who are less healthy to begin with, say. On the other hand, some causal events like stronger bones from strength training and stronger hearts from cardio are provable, and these seem to have follow-on causal effects on health. Likewise, it's pretty clear that exercise both teaches the body to adapt to stress and encourages it to produce higher levels of its own antioxidants.
Still, what she's really worried about is that you might blame people for their bad luck if they aren't also physically fit. That's fair to some degree, and something to consider.
On the other hand, she is wrong about the nature of virtue.
I realise it’s not really a question of an unwitting slide into fascism, hastened by a treadmill. It’s more that there is a fixed amount of excellence in any self, and the more you spend on your biceps, the less you have for your personality.
It's only true that there's a zero-sum game insofar as you're spending all your time building virtue; then you might be building one sort or another. No one, however, is 100% focused on virtue-building. There's always capacity for more.
Rather, virtue building is a skill that you can learn, and you learn it by practice just like you do any of the virtues. Like many things in Aristotle, this is a matter that is conceptually severable even though as a matter of fact the activities are the same. I mean that you practice horseback riding (say) and you develop skill at horseback riding, but also courage, and gentleness, and the rest. Severably, you are learning how to build virtues by building all these virtues. When you want to build another one, you will have greater skill at the business of building any sort of virtue.
The question of what kind of morals one should have thus also ends up being severable. Whatever kind they ought to be, building the moral virtues to support successful practice of those things is just another virtue you can learn. If you've been developing your skills at virtue-building, it'll be easier and you will likely be more successful. All sorts of physical fitness can help with this (although you should be careful of ones that produce concussions, like boxing, where the negative physical effects on cognition may outweigh the virtue-building). It's good for you all the way around.
Killdozer
How is it that this spectacular event occurred 20 years, and I never heard a whisper of it? You'd think it would have been all anyone talked about for weeks.
Who's the Threat?
Maxine Waters: “I am going to spend some time with the criminal justice system, with the justice system, asking them, ‘Tell us what’s going on with the domestic terrorists. Are they preparing a civil war against us? Should we be concerned about our safety? What is he doing with this divisive language? It is dangerous, and we’re going to have to make sure that we understand, uh, that we’re not at risk with this man talkin’ in the way that he’s doing.'”
Emphasis added.
INSURRECTION: Anti-Israel protesters burn UC Berkeley police vehicle with ‘incendiary device’ in ‘retaliation’ for arrests. Have you noticed that MAGA people don’t “retaliate” for arrests?
Berkeley and Yale students are aspirants to the ruling class, and usually also children of it; they're not a threat even if they actually firebomb police. The ones you've got to watch are the ones who aren't already powerful and privileged.
UPDATE: Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that those students are part of active subversion on the Soviet model.
Living in the West in 1983, Bezmenov gave a lecture in which he explained “Psychological Warfare, Subversion, and the Control of Society.” It begins:
Subversion refers to a process by which the values and principles of an established system are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the existing social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. It involves a systematic attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or political system, often carried out by persons working secretly from within. Subversion is used as a tool to achieve political goals because it generally carries less risk, cost, and difficulty as opposed to open belligerency. The act of subversion can lead to the destruction or damage of an established system or government. In the context of ideological subversion, subversion aims to gradually change the perception and values of a society, ultimately leading to the undermining of its existing systems and beliefs.
The accompanying chart would seem to locate us in the "destabilization" phase, which last 2-5 years; ours started in 2020 with the BLM protests/riots and the Covid lockdowns (which, one recalls, made exceptions for the BLM protests), and now continues with these pro-Hamas protests. Assuming the chart were accurate, the next phase is 'crisis' (2-6 months) followed by Big Brother cementing its gains into a new, normalized system.
"I am not saying that Bezmenov’s formulation explains all that we are seeing. It clearly does not address all the West’s problems," she writes. "But once I immersed myself in his formulation, many of the topsy-turvy developments in our institutions fell into place."
Well, or it could be paranoia, which is to be staunchly resisted. But the riots are real enough, and the government continues not to enforce the laws upon them -- though they maintain a weather eye for any counterrevolutionaries that might emerge on the other side. Perhaps that's just a coincidence, though, class privilege playing out as I was discussing in the original post.
Expel New York
Long time blogger Don Surber advocates this -- I assume facetiously -- as part of a clean-up program. He ran a poll at the end that showed supermajority support among his readership for this, and majority support for giving Mexico back California. This is not the first time this suggestion has been made; Business Insider (clearly facetiously) found that seven states might be expelled to general pleasure (and not the ones I would have expected).
On the non-facetious side, Reason magazine found that a quarter of voters wanted to extract their own state from the union. They then polled about everybody else's state.
Of the 17 percent who thought that was a fine idea, there was an overwhelming favorite for who gets tossed from the moving vehicle: California.Yes, the Golden State was the choice of a whopping 53 percent of respondents who thought yanking a star off the flag would make the world a better place.New York came in second with 25 percent of votes, and Texas was third at 20 percent.
I don't know why anybody would want rid of Texas. The Reason article also links a very helpful map ranking the states by freedom (New Hampshire is #1: Live Free or Die!).
The thing is, we don't actually have a mechanism for any of this. We have very clear standards for admitting new states. There's no apparent mechanism for releasing states that want to leave, or expelling states against their will.
A political project of mine is to restore the defunct state of Franklin, made up of parts of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. Franklin would be pose a challenge to New Hampshire's #1 ranking as freest state, as the political culture of Appalachia has little enough use for governments. There is a constitutional mechanism for that, though it's a long shot: it needs approval by both houses of Congress as well as both the NC and TN legislatures.
The Sacred Flame
I suppose we'll continue the Pride Month series as long as it remains interesting. Today's entry is from D29.
So who are the martyrs of Uganda? Now, that's a story you won't hear in these times, at least not from Fr. James Martin, SJ.
I'd never heard it from anybody, but even left-leaning Wikipedia agrees on the details.
When preparations were completed and the day had come for the execution on 3 June 1886, Lwanga was separated from the others by the Guardian of the Sacred Flame for private execution, in keeping with custom. As he was being burnt, Lwanga said to the Guardian, "It is as if you are pouring water on me. Please repent and become a Christian like me."Twelve Catholic boys and men and nine Anglicans were then burnt alive. Another Catholic, Mbaga Tuzinde, was clubbed to death for refusing to renounce Christianity, and his body was thrown into the furnace to be burned along with those of Lwanga and the others. The fury of the king was particularly inflamed against the Christians because they refused to participate in sexual acts with him.
I suppose it's a sort-of equality to recognize that homosexuals can be just as bad as anyone else. In any case, today is the feast day.
Still the King
To round out the Texas Playboys discussions we've had lately, I'd like to point out an album that Spotify introduced to me this week. The whole thing is on YouTube.
"Abhorrent"
Continuing the unexpected Pride Month series, an article (h/t Instapundit) about a university chancellor who lost his job* due to making pornography.
A statement from Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said that Chancellor Joe Gow was terminated on Dec. 27 following a unanimous vote from the UW Board of Regents.“In recent days, we learned of specific conduct by Dr. Gow that has subjected the university to significant reputational harm,” Rothman said. “His actions were abhorrent.”UW System Regent President Karen Walsh echoed this sentiment in a statement, saying Gow showed “reckless disregard for the role he was entrusted with,” and that the board is “alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor.”The firing comes after it was discovered that Gow had been producing and publishing pornographic content with his wife. The couple posts explicit content on X and porn websites, and hosts a YouTube channel called “Sexy Healthy Cooking,” which shows videos of them cooking alongside other porn actors and actresses.The couple have also published two books under the pseudonyms Geri and Jay Hart, which they note “are the pen names of a married woman and man who serve in executive positions at two well-known organizations in the U.S.” on their Amazon author biography.
I'm wondering what the community standard for "abhorrent" is at the University of Wisconsin; maybe D29 can comment on that. Naked cooking sounds pretty mild given the kinds of things that porn now embraces. Obviously I haven't seen their pornography, so maybe it's worse than it sounds. The books they have listed on Amazon sound like endorsements of open marriages, which while definitely not in the spirit of the institution of marriage is still on the conservative side for pornography.
Gow maintains that his actions are protected by the First Amendment, especially since he allegedly did not mention his position with the university during his pornographic work.
Probably the 1A doesn't protect you from being fired by a private employer for your speech, but a state university is in a dubious middle position.
* Lost his job as chancellor: as punishment he'll be 'transitioning' into a faculty role, where he can spend more time with students. Somehow this makes sense to people.
The Sacred Band of Thebes
I wasn't planning on any 'Pride Month' observations, but the Washington Post managed to come up with one that I don't mind to forward.
The Battle of Tegyra in 375 B.C. proved that the legendary Spartan army could be defeated.A thousand Spartan soldiers, trained for combat from the age of 7, were returning from an expedition when they stumbled on a much smaller force from the rival city of Thebes. Rather than retreat, the Theban infantry charged, pulling into a close formation and piercing the Spartan lines like a spear. The Spartans turned and, for the first time ever in pitched battle, fled.The most fearsome military force of its day had been defeated by the Sacred Band of Thebes, a shock troop of 150 gay couples.
This is almost true. The only thing that isn't quite is the description of the homosexual pairs as "gay," which is definitely a modern phenomenon that had nothing to do with their particular expressions. Plato described the ethic, though he was not speaking of the Sacred Banders but of an imaginary force.
Thus numerous are the witnesses who acknowledge Love to be the eldest of the gods. And not only is he the eldest, he is also the source of the greatest benefits to us. For I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover or to the lover than a beloved youth. For the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would nobly live at principle, I say, neither kindred, nor honour, nor wealth, nor any other motive is able to implant so well as love.
Of what am I speaking? Of the sense of honour and dishonour, without which neither states nor individuals ever do any good or great work. And I say that a lover who is detected in doing any dishonourable act, or submitting through cowardice when any dishonour is done to him by another, will be more pained at being detected by his beloved than at being seen by his father, or by his companions, or by any one else. The beloved too, when he is found in any disgraceful situation, has the same feeling about his lover. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the souls of some heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover.
The concept here is not necessarily homosexual at all; the idea is that since your lover would be watching you, you would not do any base thing like flee or throw down your arms. You would strive for honor, because you would want to be seen at your best while your beloved was watching. The beloved could be heterosexual just as well, but in the world before firearms women generally were not going to be effective on the field of armed and armored combat. Yet the basic concern was one of pursuing the heights of honor and avoiding anything dishonorable, which pursuit we know from Aristotle's description of magnanimity to be the capstone of virtue.
Unconsidered by Plato is the danger posed to unit cohesion by pairs of lovers who are loyal to each other in a way they aren't loyal to the rest of the band. Likewise, of course, the disruptive effect of introducing sexuality into a close unit like an infantry squad, where competition to be the beloved of an especially desirable soldier could tear the unit apart. (This has been a much bigger problem with the heterosexual soldiers since the introduction of women as well as gays to the military, simply because a single woman attracts almost all the male soldiers, whereas a gay soldier is mostly unattractive to the other males).
The Sacred Band contested the latter problem by recruiting established couples rather than a free-for-all 'singles' environment. They had an impressive battlefield record, eventually being destroyed by Alexander the Great's forces.
A Diplomatic Embarrassment
The President of the United States announced what he described as an Israeli government proposal for a permanent ceasefire; today the Prime Minister of Israel said the proposal was a nonstarter.
Either there was a significant misunderstanding, or one of the governments is outright lying. Whichever, it’s an embarrassment that will significantly undermine American diplomacy across the world.
Approximations of Justice
The only sense in which the outcome in the New York trial represents a sort-of justice is that it is an occasion in which the courts are treating a rich man as shabbily as they normally do with poor men. A rich man can't be forced to plea bargain by a poverty that prevents him from mounting a legal defense; as such, he has to be granted the formality of a trial. However, it can be a show trial.
I'm sure you've all read lists lists of the extraordinary lengths the judge went to in this case to bring about the outcome he got. Now we have to reckon with the spectacle of 34 "felonies" that are really disputes about whether a declared expense should have been categorized in the books as "a legal expense" or "a campaign expense." This isn't even a bright-line issue; paying a lawyer to settle a dispute out-of-court in a way that produces an NDA is the sort of thing that would very regularly be a legal expense. It's the most common of common practices. They might also be campaign expenses, but it's definitely not obvious that they aren't legal expenses.
So these are debatable even as the misdemeanors the law actually makes them out to be; but they were charged as felonies. On what justification? Because they were supposedly the basis of a conspiracy to commit some third crime. The prosecution didn't bother to say what that crime was for sure. The judge told the jury that they didn't even have to agree on what crime had been conspired, so long as each of them thought that one or another crime had been.
Based on the word of a convicted perjurer, with the judge suppressing expert testimony to the contrary, the jury has decided to convict on all charges. What is the appropriate penalty for such a mass of felonies? I asked a couple of progressives I know what they thought, and they said, "A couple of nights in jail" or "I would prefer that he be prohibited from running for office, and no jail (or a couple days)."
For 34 felonies?
The lack of justice is a sort of justice only because it now applies to at least one rich man as it so often does to the poor. It's almost fair if no one gets any justice, and fairness per Aristotle is one of the two aspects of justice.
Of course, the other aspect was lawfulness, and that's clearly gone here.
Right of Revolution
In a good but brief post today, Glenn Reynolds quotes the Tennessee Constitution.
Note the first two sections of the Tennessee Constitution, which dates to 1796 and which Thomas Jefferson praised at the time:Section 1. That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; for the advancement of those ends they have at all times, an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.Section 2. That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.This was unremarkable at the time of the Framers, when badges of office did not possess a talismanic power.
Quite right.
God-Given Rights?
I recently read and heard some commentary that used the
phrase “God-given rights.” In each case, the commentator was referring to the
idea that the origin of our political rights stem from God rather than government.
This is not a new idea. In fact, this concept is eloquently asserted in the
second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence which states that we are
endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. However, with all due
respect to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration, is this an accurate statement
regarding the origin our rights?
If it is, I find no sanction for this idea in the Bible,
certainly not in the New Testament. I find no endorsement or explanation of
rights that civil society is required to observe or respect anywhere in the
teachings of Christ or his Apostles. In fact, 1 Peter Chapter 2, verse 13
specifically tells Christians to submit to every human authority. Slaves are to
submit to their masters, even if the masters are cruel.
This is not surprising because Jesus was clear that his Kingdom
was not of this world. Christ is concerned with the state of our soul, not
temporal political or legal concerns such as rights. Consequently, I think it
is mistaken to think of our rights in society as originating with God.
This does not mean that I believe our rights are a gift of
the government, to be removed or restricted as government officials see fit.
Rather, our rights came into existence over time through the influence of
societal variables such as history, experience, tradition, legal precedent and
any number of phenomena that shaped our cultural values. Our rights are a product
of our shared societal experience rather than something that was divinely
granted. They are a cultural inheritance to be protected.
What is the value or impact of this observation? If rights
are the product of a particular cultural experience they will differ from
society to society. Different societies will understand and express rights in
different ways. That being the case, it is futile if not illegitimate to try to
force a particular understanding of rights on another culture. This is one
reason why our attempt to force Western notions of rights on Afghanistan and
Iraq failed so miserably. Consequently, foreign interventions to enforce a
specific rights regime, or remake countries in our image is not only
wrongheaded, it’s bound to ultimately fail.
Some Western Swing
Gringo's been pretty patient with all the Outlaw Country. Let's do some of his favorites.
I like this live recording because it gives a sense of the style of the band at play.
An instrumental of a classic piece, with swing elements.
You may have heard of the Fallout television show, which has become a breakout hit. I think it derives a lot of its force from its use of this kind of classic American music -- including Western Swing -- which is just objectively better than what the kids are used to hearing. It's not even nostalgic for them, because they've never heard it before. The real trick is this: they've never heard anything like it.
C'est Dommage
The US "relief" pier to Gaza collapses in high seas. The sad thing is that they're going to put it back up.
On the Birthday of Patrick Henry
We were just discussing Patrick Henry in the context context of the flags; today was his birthday.
In addition to his well-known sentiments in favor of revolution and liberty, he was also a staunch opponent of establishing a strong central government that would overwhelm the states. Jefferson saw the federal government's role as 'looking out' while the states 'looked in,' so that the Federal government would deal exclusively with foreign affairs or disputes between two or more states. Henry realized that it would, instead, form a competing power that would tend toward domination.
The fate of this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, We, the states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing — the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. I need not take much pains to show that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic, and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England — a compact between prince and people, with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? Is this a confederacy, like Holland — an association of a number of independent states, each of which retains its individual sovereignty? It is not a democracy, wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, from a confederacy to a consolidated government.... It is radical in this transition; our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished: and cannot we plainly see that this is actually the case? The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change...
Emphasis added; there is a great deal more to the speech that is worth review.
As is well known, objections such as his gave us the Bill of Rights, which has been an insufficient but necessary defensive measure. On some occasions it has been successful, and on many occasions it has provided a part of a successful legal defense.
He also talked about the danger posed by a central state to the physical defense of liberty. Even today his words bear consideration.
My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength — an army, and the militia of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous: gentlemen cannot be earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence [sic], the militia, is put into the hands of Congress?... Whither is the spirit of America gone? Whither is the genius of America fled? It was but yesterday, when our enemies marched in triumph through our country. Yet the people of this country could not be appalled by their pompous armaments: they stopped their carer [sic], and victoriously captured them. Where is the peril, now, compared to that? Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.
I likewise think that America is not ripe for conquest by a foreign power, certainly not a European one but not any one; and it is so not because of the fact that the central government has a strong army and has managed to turn the state militias into a National Guard it can federalize at will, but because the people remain heavily armed and capable of independent action.
Indeed, this is the chief thing that has kept all of that centralized Federal power from becoming a true tyranny. The lines they wish to cross and do not remain uncrossed because they are cognizant of the limits of their power to control the ordinary people's ideals given the ordinary people's arms.
That is a partial answer to his concern about whether we have the means to resist disciplined armies given the lack of a disciplined force loyal to each of the states. Like the Bill of Rights, however, it is not a complete defense even if it is a necessary one.
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