So, Who Was Really President for Four Years?

So, we don't really have a government that respects the Constitution. The 2nd Amendment is violated outright in several places; Maryland, which I will be in this weekend, considers it a three-year prison "misdemeanor" to carry some of the items I normally keep handy. The 10th Amendment is a dead letter. The 4th and 8th are violated by outsourcing. The government is evil, frankly, and much in need of dissolution.

Who was actually in charge for the last few years, though? Not the elected President, who is the only Constitutional officer in the Executive branch (the VP has his duties entirely within the Senate unless he/she steps up to take the Presidential office).

The answer is Weber's: the administrative state, unelected and undemocratic, was running itself.

I don't think they mean to be the enemy of all of us; I think they conceive of themselves as our betters and protectors. They are, however, the enemy of all of us. They defend their own interests, and are a positive threat to human liberty.

A Manual for the Ages

One hesitates to say anything even a little bit positive about the Nazis, but listen to just the first bit of this to learn about the manual they included in their Panzers. It shows an awareness of the costs of government that is enviable, even if nothing else about their program was.

Common Sense Gun Laws

UPDATE:

Courtesies of the White

A rare privilege: 

The three royals are allowed to wear white in front of the Pope because they are Catholic Queens and Princesses.

They are each one of only seven women in the world who have 'the privilege of the white' – or the ability to wear white when meeting with the Pope.

Called le privilége du blanc in French or il privilegio del biacno in Italian, the special tradition is extended solely to designated Catholic queens and princesses and is reserved for important events at the Vatican, such as private audiences, canonisations, beatifications, and special masses.

Normal protocol for papal audiences requires that ladies wear a long black dress with a high collar and long sleeves and a black mantilla.

An American woman can, of course, wear whatever she wants. 

The Rhythms of Old Norse Poetry

A really interesting video by Jackson Crawford, if you're into Old Norse or metered poetry or both.

It's Not Wrong to Threaten the President

Come off it. He put up a post on Twitter. That shouldn't be occasion for an interrogation. I think there's a real chance the current President is still alive because he was chosen by God to be; if that's right, all actual assassins will fail as the prior ones have for as long as that divine will continues. Some loser running his mouth, and virtually where it's even less important, isn't going to change anything. 

The natural rights are what matter. That's what the government itself allegedly exists to defend. If it can't do that, or worse if it betrays them, it is without function. 

Let a man speak his mind. Even if he's a jerk; a loser; a liar; a nothing without honor. Who cares what a man like that says? His words are empty, cowardly, and without meaning. 

What does matter is the right to speak your mind. 

Rolling to Remember

If any of you are planning to attend this year's Demonstration Ride through Arlington and DC, I plan to be there again. 

The Preservation of Books

Professor of history at the Catholic University of America Michael Kimmage writes an impassioned defense of a library in danger. It is rhetorically quite impressive.

Two oceans can be said to defend the United States. There are also the islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean, outposts of security and pivot points on the U.S. Navy’s map of the world. The American territory not bounded by water is bordered by countries with no reason and no will to invade: Mexico, Canada, and the United States still have the remarkable option of friendship, should they choose to accept it. Were the will to invade ever to materialize in Mexico or Canada, it would have to contend with a military that commands immense power on land, on sea, and in the air. For those still undeterred, countless nuclear weapons stand ready. The security is not total — total security is an illusion; but it is a fact so formidable that it can be (and almost always is) taken for granted.

Washington, DC, lies within this endless zone of security. Daily the city that defends a nation and a hemisphere defends itself. It does so seamlessly, as the task of the millions who wear uniforms, work in cubicles, decipher intelligence, and debate strategy so that the nation’s capital might be forever unharmed. The War of 1812 scarred Washington and the Pentagon was hit in 2001, two vivid exceptions to the rule that the American capital is impregnable. Only bad weather can go where no great power would dare to go; only it can barge in and break things down. Apart from the remains of a few Civil War forts, Washington, DC has no ruins. It is unlikely ever to have ruins.

The unlikelihood of erasure, of ending, of extreme loss is psychological. Since it reflects certain realities – the reality, say, of two world wars that never directly threatened the American capital – this unlikelihood is unspoken. It is assumed, implicit, built-in, less an unlikelihood than an axiom of national security (and daily life). The White House was rebuilt after it was burnt down in 1812. The Pentagon was quickly repaired after it was damaged in 2001. And yet – a ruin is conceivable in this world-historical fortress, a ruin in a massive building on Pennsylvania Avenue a few blocks from the statue of General Sherman (who laid waste to Atlanta in the Civil War) and a few blocks from the White House. I am sure that such a ruin is conceivable in Washington, for I saw it with my own eyes.

This turns out, of course, to be the threat of Trump and DOGE; specifically, the threat posed by spending cuts, in this case to the Wilson Center for International Scholars' library. It does sound like an impressive library, and I agree that a collection like that deserves preservation. 

The rhetorical flourishes are less impressive at the conclusion of the essay, however.

The libraries of Washington, DC must be protected by the citizens of the city, book by book, collection by collection, and if they have to be saved they should be saved merely as the necessary objects that they are, not as metaphors. Better yet, the city’s books should belong to the city’s employed librarians, who are not primarily guardians or warriors or self-conscious defenders of civilization but the giver of gifts, the enablers of so much that is necessary. Without them, an abyss opens. With them, the abyss is kept at bay. We must save the books.

That view of librarians is unfortunately antiquated, and not consistent with what the American Library Association has taken to be its actual mission. They defend their practice of "collection maintenance" -- a euphemism at best -- as "weeding." This is often done with ideological ends in mind, given the ALA's very clear and deep bias towards progressivism. All of the links in this paragraph are to the ALA's own sources, in the interest of fairness. 

This shows up in local library collections finding themselves purged even of classics of world literature 'that are no longer of interest,' combined with additions that are drawn from 'the latest' fashions -- fashions that have been shaped by a parallel bias in publishing. Also in the interest of fairness, that link is to the NY Times. 

Now, here's how that tension plays out locally, which is emblematic of the problem we face at scale.

“I continue to get hounded by people about the stuff they’re displaying in the libraries,” said Commissioner John Smith, who led the discussion about possible withdrawal. “They’re promoting the same ideology that most people in this county reject.” 

[County Manager Kevin King] told the board that its most direct power over the library was through its appointments to the library boards, its appropriations to the library and its ability to exercise the right of withdrawal as permitted in the FRL interlocal agreement.

“The fourth option would be to close the library,” said Hooper, chortling audibly....

King said, “I guess that’s an option.”

Commissioners seem to be upset by some of the displays that are put up in the library, and voiced their disapproval that the nature of the displays have not changed... Commissioners also made it clear they were not happy with library leadership.... “It seems like they’re really promoting certain agendas,” said Commissioner Michael Jennings....

“You ought to be able to go to the library and not have to be appalled by anything that’s there, no matter which side you’re on,” said Jennings, apparently referring to political affiliation. Jennings and all his fellow commissioners are Republicans.

That's how we really got here, and it's a problem that has to be addressed if the libraries are to be preserved. 

I agree that valuable collections ought to be preserved (rather than "maintained" in their euphemistic sense); even if Kimmage's rhetorical flourishes are a little overstated, I agree that keeping good libraries is a fundamental function of civilization. I too want to save the books, as a lover of books and of learning. 

If librarians wish to resume the role that Prof. Kimmage ascribes to them, they need to reflect honestly on what they themselves have been doing to drive a wedge between themselves and the community of which they are a part. The work is itself communal, because the community pays for it even if most of the community doesn't do any of it. A community won't pay forever to be insulted, undermined, derided, or dissolved.

The briar patch

Harvard says, "Fine, we'll show you, we'll fund our own research and not have to satisfy your demands."

What is a tariff?

Having always tended strongly to favor free markets, I struggle with the special problems posed by the risks of international commerce. I think Oren Cass is talking sense, analogizing Chinese supply lines to subprime loans:

Taking the risk on China paid off handsomely for many years, while businesses avoiding it likely faced higher costs. The dynamic is a common one across industries: taking risks, cutting corners, ignoring resilience is all fun and games while the weather is fair. All the while, companies behaving more responsibly assume the costs without seeing benefits. Paying insurance premiums when catastrophe does not strike can come to feel like a mug’s game.

But when winter comes and only the ant has food, the grasshopper doesn’t get to scream, “arbitrary decision by the government.” Conversely, of course, no one really wants to see the grasshopper starve. This problem is prevalent in public policy. In many insurance markets, it leads to mandates to maintain coverage. In financial markets, it leads to regulations requiring banks to maintain certain levels of capital or limiting the risks they can take. When it comes to international trade, how might we ensure that businesses betting on the low costs of risky supply chains internalize the costs of taking those risks, insofar as we do not want to just point and laugh when the storm comes? How might we ensure that better alternatives are available? One answer might be to impose some sort of tax or fee on the risky imports, reducing the cost advantage. We could call it a tariff.

The trolley problem

Borrowing trouble

We do sometimes have to borrow trouble when our available supply runs short, as if insufficient to the day were the evils thereof.

Powerline reports on a Minnesota story in line with an all-too-familiar journalistic trend, which I call the "Nation braces for" headline. In this case, a story reports that no one has any firm reason to suppose that the Trump administration is planning to grant clemency on the federal charges piled on to the George-Floyd convictions that landed Derek Chauvin in prison. The article dutifully reports that law enforcement has no information on any such plans. Governor Walz also has no information on any such plans. Nevertheless, "the governor and other public officials" are bracing for the inevitable riots that will result. Might as well get started on those riots right now, lest anyone be caught short on the looming five-year anniversary of the troubles.

Similarly, we were treated recently to a spate of articles about the inflation and recession that would result from President Trump's tariff policy. The actual news reported inflation abating, while the brief stock market dip corrected itself convincingly, thus revealing itself as more of a panicked reaction to distorted news than a real economic development.

None of this is novel. The climate catastrophe reported for the last 30 years has been almost 100% ill-founded predictions rather than news of genuine climate events. In each case, the nation braces for something awful that will have been caused by the bad people in charge.

An acquaintance recently remarked that President Trump deserves no credit for causing a disaster and then fixing it. It's a way of coping, I suppose, with the embarassment of predicting a disaster that never happens: as if it had happened in a kind of virtual universe but was averted there. I'm reminded of the Goldie Hawn character in "Overboard" (very worth watching) who complains, "I almost had to wait."

Mother God

Over at Instapundit, an article on 'how New Age women are turning right.' The politics of it aren't very interesting to me, but the story itself is. Indeed, the particular woman they chose died of her New Agery before the recent election anyway; except as a poignant example of how it can go wrong, I don't know why she's relevant to what they want to discuss.

Women may have stopped flying, but they still needed miracles. Sottile writes that in the Victorian era, women could transcend their inferior status by channeling spirits. “Spiritualism and women’s rights were intertwined,” she adds, sometimes in dramatic fashion. At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, “strange rappings” would shake “the very table where suffragists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments,” Sottile notes. When Helena Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society a few decades later, she positioned herself as the chief spiritual authority of a new religious movement. She was an odd figure who’d fled her much older husband in a search for esoteric truth, and her tales bore a touch of the grandiose: She spoke of ascended masters, and ancient wisdom, and a great spiritual destiny for herself....

By 2011, Sottile writes, the nexus of conspiracy and New Age belief had become so pronounced that experts coined a term for it. “Conspirituality” thrives on social media, and the rise of Trump has only supercharged it. Many of its most prominent voices are women like Carlson, who listen to their inner voices to the exclusion of all others, and they tilt, often, to the far right. 

I know several of these women, and none of them are remotely on the political right, for whatever that is worth. One of them was a banker in Charlotte with a significant position at the national headquarters and a husband who disappointed her; she left job and husband and moved to India, later returning a mystic who taught yoga and proclaims that she can spiritually heal you and talk to the dead. Another is a Doctor of Philosophy who didn't decide to pursue the academic career she had invested so many years in, but now teaches yoga in Savannah. There are quite a few others. 

The article goes on to suggest that the practice is mentally unhealthy -- "The self is not boundless, and a woman who delves within her own mind can trap herself there" -- but these women seem quite happy to me. Well adjusted? No, not that: they have rejected that as an important consideration. But they seem happy. The one teaching yoga on the docks in Savannah in the morning is much happier than she was when I knew her as a Ph.D. candidate. The life of rising each day with the dawn and leading others through exercises to the subtropical sunrise sounds pretty idyllic. It seems (from afar) to have improved her mental health as well as her physical health.

It is definitely healthier than the article's conclusion:

In America you can believe anything, and you can sell just about anything, too. “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known,” the apostle Paul told the Corinthians. We are all Paul by our mirrors, looking for the truth, wanting to be seen. But the glass is cracking. Behind it there’s only a wall.

That is merely despair. Despair by tradition is a mortal sin precisely because it destroys the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. 

Blood on the walls

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission apparently was persecuting defendants fairly lawlessly. One commissioner kept complaining and suffering retaliation for it. Now she's the acting chair. This week, a defendant in one of the more scurrilous cases got hold of the dirty laundry and filed a motion for sanctions against the Commission. The court agreed, dismissed the case, and commended the acting chair for starting to clean the place up. I'm guessing the court's order of dismissal suggested that the dirty actors at the CFTC should show up tomorrow prepared to line up against a wall, and advised them not to wear a nice shirt.

Russia Adapts

In the face of drone warfare, a Russian adaptation provides at least a propaganda victory. 

Motorcycles are fast, nimble — and as actor Steve McQueen showed in the World War II movie "The Great Escape" — the epitome of cool. But replacing tanks with motorcycles?...

Russian troops believe that motorcycles are fast enough to storm Ukrainian positions, light enough to infiltrate through terrain inaccessible to tanks, and agile enough to evade the drones that have helped destroy 10,000 Russian armored vehicles. "These assaults are quite large-scale: from a dozen to a hundred motorcycles," the Ukrainian spokesman said. "They believe that in this way they can quickly overcome the terrain and reach Ukrainian positions — faster than a drone can reach them. And if not — then one motorcycle is spent on one drone."

As many a Hollywood movie has shown (as well as foreign films like Mad Max), a large number of motorcycle riders can be quite impressive.  

A Brief Lesson in Arab Manners

I was watching this video of Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince having a meeting, at which I assume coffee (but possibly tea) was served. In spite of the language of this tweet, he did eventually drink it as he should have -- hospitality is a valuable matter of honor, and though having been offered it is strictly good enough to trigger the protections, rejecting offered hospitality is quite insulting.

That's not the part I wanted to tell you. See how the Prince drinks his right away, and then shakes the cup back and forth until they come to take it? That's important to know. 

In Iraq they served usually tea, and it was boiling hot. Iraq was already boiling hot, without being asked to hold a glass of boiling hot liquid in your hand. As soon as I could, I would drink it, and immediately the cup would be refilled with more boiling liquid. Nobody told me that was the way to signal that you'd had enough, and no more was wanted, thank you very much for the generosity. 

So now you know. If you ever end up in the Middle East accepting hospitality, that is how you signal that you're finished and don't need any more.

Also, the word for "no" in Arabic is lā. If you want to be very polite, "no, thank you" is lā shukran. These are very important words to know when traveling in Arabic countries. (Also in China, where the Mandarin word at least is bù or bù yào for 'don't want [that]').

Three Times is Enemy Action

Third large-scale snake-induced power outage strikes North Carolina. 

Motorcyclist Killed By Deputies

Here in North Carolina, though up in Ashe County, deputies accidentally killed a motorcycle rider by triggering his airbag safety vest. They were unreasonably aggressive, pulling a gun on him and physically dragging him off the bike without bothering to disconnect the safety vest. If you don't know how these work, they are connected to the bike so that if you come off of it the ripcord causes the airbags to expand. These things exert pretty serious force (as you can see from that link), which can cause problems for breathing -- especially if you are also being choked out by a deputy sheriff. An autopsy ruled Mast’s death a homicide and found the cause of death was “compression asphyxia of the torso and neck.”

As you can see from the embedded video, the sheriff's statement doesn't line up with the body camera footage at all. There were no warrants; the suspect had not been observed in any illegal activity, and was driving the speed limit when the deputies decided to pull him over and forced him off the road (by their own admission on camera). The footage was withheld from the public until a local news station got a court order forcing its release following the autopsy report. 

From the last link: 

Representative Sarah Stevens (R-Surry) filed a bill that would make autopsy reports secret. Stevens told Axios Raleigh the proposal was pushed by the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys.

To better serve and protect you, no doubt.  

Interview with an Augustinian

If you were not as familiar with the Augustinian Order as with better-known Orders like the Franciscans or the Jesuits, partly it's because it is small. A helpful interview gives their leader, Father Moral Antón, as well as church historians and others a chance to explain how this group of friars operates. I did not realize, for example, that Martin Luther had been a member before provoking the Protestant Reformation. 

“The Holy Father will certainly be inspired by this search for communion and dialogue,” said Pierantonio Piatti, a historian of Augustinians with the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, a Vatican office. That would mesh with the concept of “synodality,” fulfilling Francis’ vision of a church that brings bishops and lay people together to make big decisions.

“The other great element of Augustinian spirituality,” Dr. Piatti added, is a “search for balance between action and contemplation, between contemplation and action.”

In part because of their small size, Augustinian priests are a tight-knit community around the world, and many have encountered Leo over the years.

“Even when we disagree on something like politics, we have no trouble talking to one another,” said Father Allan Fitzgerald, 84, an Augustinian priest and longtime professor at Villanova University northwest of Philadelphia, which Leo graduated from in 1977. “I think we are, in some ways, an image of the U.S. There is certainly a whole swath of us that is to one side and to the other. Even if we can’t talk directly about politics, we are still able to talk about things that matter.”

Dad29 points out that exactly what is meant by "synodality" is tremendously unclear, at least in terms of practical application. You can imagine trying to apply it to secular governance: sure, it would be nice if the government's officials also listened to the people in making big decisions, but what exactly is the mechanism for that? Public comment periods? Do those actually influence powerful bureaucrats? Referenda? More frequent elections, to subject officials to public approval? Less frequent elections, so the officials have time to listen rather than constantly campaigning and raising money? Even if you have a very generously-minded President, how would he go about soliciting the opinion of 400 million people? Given that they disagree, often sharply, how should he weight such opinions if he could gather them usefully?

In the religious context, there has been an additional consideration on top of those practical difficulties. It has normally been thought that those who are devoted to the religious life should have special authority when speaking to such matters. Unlike professional bureaucrats or politicians, the members of religious orders were thought to be especially devoted to virtue and morals. That presumption has been somewhat weakened in recent generations. 

Still Not Fascism

The Society for US Intellectual History has published what I gather they think is a takedown of a book citing numerous academics who, after 2016, denied that Trumpism was a fascist movement. They note that some academics cited against that proposition before now agree that, in fact, the term is appropriate. 

I notice however that the article doesn't cite a definition of fascism, and indeed tries to evade the question as not important.

The real question to be asked is not how Steinmetz-Jenkins’ mentors finally changed their minds, but what kept them so long? A clue was offered by Moyn, a contributor to this volume, who tweeted after Paxton declared J6 to be fascist: “FWIW, my reluctance was and is rooted less in the analytical propriety of the term as in my sense of the likely political consequences of certain framings.”

To wit: if we call it fascism, we declare the wolves have indeed arrived and we must do all we can to stave them off. Including coalescing with the very “centrist” liberals that socialists viewed as their main ideological adversary, ever since Senator Hilary Clinton voted for the Second Iraq War.

Trumpism may be wrong, if it is wrong, without being fascist. Fascism is not (as Orwell tried to point out) just anything you don't like. It is a Modernist species of corporatism. Trump isn't one not because he's a virtuous or upright person, but because he doesn't believe in that doctrine at all.  

Fascists believe in the state as the absolute center of human life, the definer of all values in the post-religious age, with which all churches and families must align, and nothing can be allowed to oppose. The centrality of the state is total:  as Mussolini put it, "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

A movement built around slashing the government so that it exercises less control over individuals and families is certainly not fascist in any sense of the word.... Pushback from within the Republican party is that there's no way it will happen, not because they have designs on conquest but because Congress won't agree to spend that much less.

The Trump administration has also got another sense of meaning and rightness that isn't just state dictates. Rightly or wrongly, they interpret sex according to nature, and want the state to comply with that external natural order. 

There may be fascists in America somewhere, but they aren't at the Daytona 500. 

Nor in the Hells Angels, even though they sometimes wear actual Nazi symbols: that's just not what they're doing. 

The Society publication is really fighting an internal fight between liberals and socialists, and its argument is simply that the socialists now need to compromise with them and give way to them. It's another one of those fights for position within a faction; the question of what is actually going on here is not of great interest to them.

It should be, however, of interest to all of us. We would all benefit from honest grappling with what makes Trump popular, what legitimate complaints he's addressing, as well as where he's going wrong either due to bad ideas or amateur execution. That might actually improve things; hardening the opposition to him, both when he's right and when he's wrong, is only going to prolong the suffering.