Ancient Cave Signs

Constant Striving

Small Numbers

The Washington Post notes that the US Postal Service is helping the government spy on your mail.

Postal inspectors say they fulfill such requests only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.

Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved, according to the data. Postal inspectors recorded more than 312,000 letters and packages between 2015 and 2023, the records show.

I yield to none in my disapproval of government spying on its own citizens. Nevertheless, these figures are shocking mostly because they're tiny. There are 335,000,000 Americans, more or less.  They found 60,000 requests over 8 years. Check my math, but I make that approximately 0.00223%. 

All things considered, that's remarkably restrained given that the Postal Service basically never turns them down when they ask. Of course, it could be that they don't often bother to ask because people don't often plan crimes by mail (though perhaps any prospective criminals among you should, given their relative inattention!). 

On the other hand, your mail would be a reliable indicator if you were "in the military, or religious." Apparently that's a matter of concern these days.

High Costs of War

 An excellent point by Luttwak (h/t Instapundit).

Today, however, with the average fertility of women across Europe less than two and still falling — the EU average was 1.46 in 2022 — there are no spare children.

The extreme case here is China, with its fertility rate of 1.1. President Xi is, by all accounts, a bellicose man who enjoys threatening war against Taiwan. And yet, curiously, in 2020 he took eight months to reveal that one PLA officer and three soldiers had died during the fighting on India’s Ladakh frontier. During that period of official silence, the families of the four were re-housed and provided with welfare payments or better jobs; the officer’s wife who taught piano in a village school was elevated to the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, with a new house to go with it. Each of the four also became the subject of dedicated media campaigns, which portrayed the youngest as cinematically good-looking and the officer as so conscientious that, up in cold Tibet, he would wake up before his soldiers to prepare hot-water bottles for them. Later, the names of the four were added to many highway bridges to remind all of their sacrifice.

Why the grand acts of remembrance? The answer is demographic. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, imposed in 1980 with the abundant use of forced abortions, the four deaths extinguished eight family lines.

Emphasis added. I only have one child, by fate rather than policy; if he were drafted and killed at war, it would end my family line. I only have one cousin in my father's line; he has one son as well. We're only two sons away from my grandfather's line being extinguished. 

Under those circumstances, how important is Taiwan? Quite a bit, really, and more important yet is control of the sea lanes nearby; but those are the concerns of nations, not families. Not our family's, and not Chinese families'.  

Aristotle held that the polis is an outgrowth of the decisions of families, not (as modern political theory has it) of individuals. When the interests of the families as a whole comes apart from the interest of the polis, the political project is in grave danger of being fundamentally illegitimate. It seems this new demographic reality has changed us, but the archaic political systems at work here and in Europe and in China all date to the era in which National Glory was something for which children could be sacrificed. 

Sword of the Mountain Man

Mountain Man Jim Baker’s sword has been donated to a museum focused on his life. That’s a Sharps rifle in the picture also. 

Honeymoon

Grim’s Mead

It’s commonly claimed (perhaps falsely) that the word ‘honeymoon’ refers to a month after the wedding in which honey mead is drunk in celebration by the newlyweds. Twenty-five years ago mead was hard to find! It’s enjoying some popularity now, but at the time we were married the only production mead was a brand called Chaucer’s that was only available as a speciality item in major cities. It’s not hard to make, but I didn’t know how, so our honeymoon involved no mead. 

Our silver anniversary, however, saw us broaching a bottle of my own concoction. My wife pronounced it to be “a very good batch.” 

Solace

Somehow I have never been familiar with this famous piece, the Emperor Concerto, which I stumbled on recently in a movie soundtrack. Other than recognizing it as Beethoven, I couldn't place it. Now I can't stop listening to it and can't wait for the piano sheet music to arrive by mail. This is the second movement, the Adagio. Look at the transport on the faces of the performers.

A Day of Some Local Importance

Twenty-five years ago today my wife and I were married at Amicalola Falls. In the ensuing years she has not accompanied me on all my adventures, but most of them; and when I have gone on ones too far or too dangerous, she has been the one I could trust to keep the home front secure in my absence.

Three years to the day later, we spent our third anniversary in the hospital as she gave birth to our son. He is twenty-two today, now studying emergency management by day and taking firefighter certification courses by night. I am very proud of him.

Today is also the summer solstice, aligning our personal time-keeping with that of the heavens. I hope you all have an excellent day today.

Bump-Stocks: A Compromise

After the Supreme Court struck down an unconstitutional ATF rule, Democrats in Congress tried to fake a vote to pass legislation banning them.

Democrats tried to force a voice vote on the bill to ban bump stocks, a tactic often used by both parties when they know that they don’t have the votes to pass legislation but want to bring an issue to the Senate floor. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, would ban the sale of the devices, similar to the rule issued by President Donald Trump’s administration after a gunman in Las Vegas attacked a country music festival in 2017 with semiautomatic rifles equipped with the accessories.

The Supreme Court ruling was not that these devices enjoy Second Amendment protections, but that the ATF rule process effectively stole legislative authority from Congress. If Congress did pass such a law, it would probably survive review: as I wrote at the time:

They're not good technology, making the rifle less accurate and unstable. I don't think it meets any the tests SCOTUS has set up for this: it's not a weapon that serves a viable military use suitable for militia service (US v. Miller), nor is it in common use for lawful purposes (it's uncommon), nor is it part of any sort of historical or traditional understanding of the right to bear arms (it's a gimmick mostly used to play on the range).

However, there's good reason to oppose the ratchet effect of increasingly banning things until Americans are less free than once. I could accept adding these devices to the list of those things controlled by the National Firearms Act, but in return we should get something back that we'd rather have. 

I think the obvious choice for a trade is the suppressor, often called the "silencer." The suppressor improves the function and safety of the weapon. Because they lengthen the barrel, they improve both accuracy and power. Because they reduce the noise, they reduce the risks of hearing loss associated with practice. 

They should be protected under the Second Amendment under two of the three tests. They have a clear militia function: the US military uses them, and so you can see a clear use for militia in similar roles. That satisfies Miller. They are in common use for lawful purposes -- they are so valuable that many people go through the trouble of obtaining one through the National Firearms Act regulatory structure. The only test not clearly satisfied is the Bruen test, because we do have about a century of historic tradition of them being regulated by the state. However, if Congress passed a law changing that, there's no reason they shouldn't.

Although I oppose the National Firearms Act in principle, legislation is generally an act of compromise. Here's one that seems reasonable to me: swap suppressor/silencers for bump stocks in an alteration of the National Firearms Act. That would not ban bump stocks, but make them available only under stricter regulations and with high taxes; it would, in return, allow suppressors to be sold more freely than they are currently. We would not be participating in the ratchet effect, but trading something better for something worse. 

As a compromise of the sort that Congress used to do when it was a more serious organization, that makes sense to me.

New Waylon Music

This is the most exciting news I’ve heard in ages. 

Pride and Tolkien

The other day AVI was writing about pride, in the Christian conception that it is a sin rather than the American elite's concept that it is a virtue. (This is, I reminded him in the comments, "Pride month"!)

Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about this subject. As readers know, a major part of Aquinas' work was adopting Aristotle's ethics to Christian practice and theology. Here is an area where it might seem that Aristotle and Christianity come apart, though: for as readers of this blog also know, Aristotle's capstone virtue was Magnanimity, which is the virtue of those who use all their other virtues to pursue 'that which is most honorable.' This is actual, complete virtue, and it is the virtue of the best people who deserve the most honor. 

To do that which is most honorable is to merit high honors; and to seek to merit high honors is surely prideful, since it sets you above others who deserve less. The Latin word for pride is "superbia," meaning that you think you are better than others. But this man really is better than others, and strives to be so. In doing so, he not only becomes better than others, he becomes the best kind of person. This is really a virtue, too, because it creates an excellence in one's self -- and it also improves things for everyone else, who benefit from all the excellent things being done that merit their respect and gratitude. 

Aquinas gives a fairly straightforward answer that aligns magnanimity not with pride but with humility, which might at first seem surprising. The sin of pride is to seek not that which is most honorable, but things beyond what reason tells us is most honorable. To seek that which is best and most honorable, but not beyond what one ought to seek, is humble -- and therefore humility and magnanimity are almost the same thing. 

An analogy to Tolkien will make this puzzle become clear. It was the humility of Gandalf that kept him from taking the Ring and striving for the power of Sauron. In this way, however, he was also doing what was most honorable for a being of his station -- he, indeed, was the only one of the wizards who actually remembered and kept to his assigned mission. In this way he is the most praiseworthy of his order, which is magnanimity realized. He strove always for what was best, and never strove to go beyond his place in the created order. 

Saruman by contrast shows pride. Appointed to a higher position than Gandalf, to be the White Wizard and the leader of the Order of Istari and the White Council both, he strove to seize the Ring. His pride was his downfall, and led him not to deserve the highest praise but to deserve shame and condemnation. 

Honor is therefore a reliable guide to virtue, just as Aristotle says. It may be surprising that a desire for honor turns out to be compatible with humility, but the literary example shows that it is indeed. 

Hunting’s Over

Freedom for the other guy, too

HotAir on the ignorance of workers who overestimate their leverage with people who can walk away.

We have created a generation or two of profoundly ignorant people who think that they don't have to create value in order to extract it from others.

Fire Fighting Flyers

 This looks like fun!

Pickup Truck Song

He Does Not Listen

I will credit the artist once I figure out who it is. 

UPDATE: I got up early and split a load of firewood with my son, then made the egg breakfast from the post below. After that I took my son and dog to run some errands in the pickup truck. Then we had a traumatic injury call we ran together, as my father often did in his day. Now we’re going to have a great dinner of my chili and some tamales my wife whipped up while we were on the call. 

So a very fatherly day, in any event. 

Grim’s Egg Bites

Speaking of the chickens, here’s a breakfast dish I’ve developed because of the surplus of eggs. This dish quickly uses up eight. The three of us eat all eight in one sitting, my wife taking two, three each for my son and I. 

It’s a quick recipe to pull together. 

Preheat oven to 400 F. Grease the muffin baking tin; line with small, street-taco size tortillas.* Add one-half slice American** cheese, then one tsp. sausage***. Crack one egg into each. Sprinkle with herbs,**** and then bake for 20 minutes. 

* They come out nice and crispy this way, but a better version can be made with pastry. It’s more trouble, and this is intended to be a quick breakfast food. Do what you prefer. 

** Or any melting cheese; today I am out of American cheese, so I’m using Swiss. 

*** I use raw Hot Tennessee Pride. You can use anything. It cooks in the same time as the eggs. I tested this with a meat thermometer the first few times to be sure. You may substitute cooked sausage if you want. 

**** This step plus the choice of sausage/cheese gives easy variations: you could use Mexican oregano, chipotle, chorizo and Queso Chihuahua for a Mexican flavor, or Italian sausage, mozzarella, and basil for an Italian flavor. 

Lincoln’s Favorite Chicken

Cowboy Kent Rollins is a chuck wagon artist with a line of seasonings and videos. He’s given to adaptation of traditional recipes to easier substitutions for contemporary audiences— here he offers boneless, skinless chicken thighs as a substitute for starting with a whole (live?) chicken. If you keep chickens like we do, skinning them out is easier than plucking them and deboning them is not hard nor with practice slow. If not, use the substitution. 

Now at one point you might think he says that this dish is made with margarine, but he really says "marjoram," the herb. Margarine is demonstrably ahistorical. Margarine wasn’t invented until 1869, in a French competition to try and find a low price substitute for butter for the army and lower classes. Don’t use the stuff here or at all. I find that birds won’t eat it if you put it out like you would suet, and the internet says it's not good for them because it lacks the kinds of fat they need even if you can get them to eat it. I would suggest never using it, but definitely not in a historical recipe. 

Otherwise I think you might like this. There's an alternative recipe here which is similar and likewise does include the butter, and that one cites its source in case you're wondering about the historical basis of all this. Cowboy Kent is not bad in spite of these occasional lapses; he does sometimes bury a cast iron Dutch oven in the ground in the old way. Some concessions probably make it easier for contemporary audiences to actually get around to trying these things out, too. 

A Courtroom Win

Today, Firearms Policy Coalition announced a major legal victory in its Mock v. Garland lawsuit challenging the Biden Administration’s “pistol brace” ban rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In the decision, United States District Court Judge Reed O’Connor granted summary judgment in favor of FPC and its co-plaintiffs and issued a final judgment and order vacating the ATF’s rule. 

Congratulations to the FPC's team of young, energetic lawyers. 

The Biden administration has been inclined to wide-reaching, unconstitutional 'rule changes' that are attempts at actual legislation without the bother of consulting Congress. They are being effectively challenged by FPC, Gun Owners of America, and sometimes the NRA.

As they point out in the full press release, the Biden ATF just transformed millions of Americans into felons without consulting their constitutional representatives. This one (of several similar maneuvers) is dead for now. The government can appeal, of course, if they want to transform this into a SCOTUS ruling instead of a circuit court one.

UPDATE: Another one, this time from SCOTUS itself. This one was the 'bump stock' ban; the other one was the 'pistol brace' ban. 

Both of them turn on the same basic logic, which is that an administrative rule change can't fundamentally alter the law: they have to go through Congress to legislate. That's good news. 

In spite of the similarity of the technologies, both being attachments to the stocks of firearms, they're quite different in character. I wouldn't necessarily oppose a bump stock regulation enacted in a reasonable way. They're not good technology, making the rifle less accurate and unstable. I don't think it meets any the tests SCOTUS has set up for this: it's not a weapon that serves a viable military use suitable for militia service (US v. Miller), nor is it in common use for lawful purposes (it's uncommon), nor is it part of any sort of historical or traditional understanding of the right to bear arms (it's a gimmick mostly used to play on the range). I could see adding it to the National Firearms Act, so that Americans who wanted one could have one but only with the additional steps (and costs) involved.

The pistol brace, by contrast, helps especially disabled Americans to use a militia-quality firearm in a more stable and accurate way. It should enjoy protection even under Miller's logic, which is the most restrictive. 

However, the court is quite right to prevent the bureaucracy from just rewriting the law as if it were a representative, legislative authority.

UPDATE: Ironically, the abortion pill win is also a victory on similar grounds of restraining the government's dictatorial authority: here the court actually restrained its own, which is an impressive feat. Clarence Thomas often notes that the court rarely asks if it has the legitimate authority to do a thing; it just assumes it does. This time they didn't do that, and even though the subject is the tragedy of abortion on demand, it's good to see the court recognizing that even it has proper limits it should not transgress. 

All these Flags are False

We should all be delighted at the successful stopping of a planned mass murder in Atlanta, not just because the murders were prevented but because the information operation the murders were intended to effect was stopped also.

Officials say their investigation began when Prieto told a man at a gun show that he wanted "to incite a race war prior to the 2024 United States Presidential Election."...

As reported by the indictment, Prieto said he wanted to target a rap concert because "there would be a high concentration of African Americans" and planned to leave confederate flags after the violence and to shout phrases like "KKK all the way."

I'm struck by how no one in this story is who they claim to be. A man using a fake name who isn't a Klansman intended to pose as one, enlisting the aid of a man who was an undercover Federal spy -- a 'confidential human source' who spies on gun shows for the Feds. The CHS carried on these conversations with him "over several years," growing increasingly alarmed at the murderous wishes he expressed. So he introduced him to an actual undercover agent, who actually got him to confess to the murderous plans and try to enlist them to participate in the fake Klan attack.

“The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a f*****-up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now?"

When this 58 year old man was a kid, Jimmy Carter was the governor of Georgia, so that probably isn't as true as he believes it to be. Not that he sounds like a man of good judgment or clear reason.

Not a great judge of guns, either. 

PRIETO stated he preferred to use two rifles and a bolt-action sniper rifle because it was more accurate. PRIETO suggested the CHS and UC should use an AK-platform weapon, as AR variant rifles were less reliable.

That hasn't been true since the Vietnam era.

In any case, I'm happy that this kind of attack was stopped from happening. 

I'm also happy that the Klan is so weak these days that people have to fake them because there's not much of a real one left. Once upon a time if you wanted the Klan to stage an attack you'd start  by joining the Klan; these days you couldn't find a branch of them to join. 

That's a genuine improvement we should try to build upon. Fortunately starting a race war is probably out of the question; just another bit of bad judgment in his tangled mind.