Nicomachean Ethics III.8: Courage II

Continuing from Friday, more of Aristotle's thoughts on courage. Today Aristotle wants to talk about things that are sometimes called courage, but that he doesn't think are the genuine article.

Courage, then, is something of this sort, but the name is also applied to five other kinds.

First comes the courage of the citizen-soldier; for this is most like true courage. Citizen-soldiers seem to face dangers because of the penalties imposed by the laws and the reproaches they would otherwise incur, and because of the honours they win by such action; and therefore those peoples seem to be bravest among whom cowards are held in dishonour and brave men in honour. This is the kind of courage that Homer depicts, e.g. in Diomede and in Hector:

First will Polydamas be to heap reproach on me then; and

For Hector one day 'mid the Trojans shall utter his vaulting

harangue:

Afraid was Tydeides, and fled from my face.

This kind of courage is most like to that which we described earlier, because it is due to virtue; for it is due to shame and to desire of a noble object (i.e. honour) and avoidance of disgrace, which is ignoble. One might rank in the same class even those who are compelled by their rulers; but they are inferior, inasmuch as they do what they do not from shame but from fear, and to avoid not what is disgraceful but what is painful; for their masters compel them, as Hector does:

But if I shall spy any dastard that cowers far from the fight,

Vainly will such an one hope to escape from the dogs.

And those who give them their posts, and beat them if they retreat, do the same, and so do those who draw them up with trenches or something of the sort behind them; all of these apply compulsion. But one ought to be brave not under compulsion but because it is noble to be so.

In our time and country, we tend to think of the citizen-soldier as the ideal exemplar of courage. Ours differ somewhat from the ancient Greek and Trojan cases in that we have an all-volunteer military; thus, our fighting men and women are in fact choosing military service freely rather than being compelled by laws to serve. This makes them better than the citizen-soldiers that Aristotle is talking about on his own terms. He would likely have admired those who elect to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, knowingly choosing an especially hard service; or those who choose the Army's combat arms. The portions of the service for which you must volunteer multiple times -- for example special operations or Airborne, where you have to volunteer first for the service and then again for the hard selection process -- would have drawn his admiration and approval, I think.

We do share his disdain for citizen-soldiers of nations that assign their NCOs or officers to kill any soldiers who don't press forward, as the Soviets were said to do in WWII. We generally agree, I think, that service under such compulsion is less noble and more based in fear than true courage. I also think that we tend to sneer at the indiscipline of such an army, or such a nation as cannot command loyalty from love instead of tyranny. 

Hector is usually considered a noble figure, but it is true that in the end he flees from Achilles. (Iliad XXII). Achilles is the favorite Greek example, but he had an unfair advantage that kept him from harm in almost all circumstances; I think of Odysseus as the best example of Greek courage because his courage was coupled with practical wisdom. This question is debated between Socrates and the Sophist Hippias in the Lesser Hippias or Hippias Minor, in which Socrates takes the position that Odysseus was the greater; philosophers usually treat that document as ironic or a reductio ad absurdum, but I think there is a serious point being made therein.

More after the jump; this is a longer chapter.

The NYT Validates MAGA

I'm beginning to suspect that there may be something to the President's charge that at least part of the Epstein story is a scam; and the reason I think so is that the whole of the media is piling onto it the way they have done with other Uniparty-backed scams. Today, for what I think is the first time ever, the New York Times published a piece asserting that MAGA has a valid complaint about something.

For those who don't want to read the whole thing, on the question we have been especially interested in -- whether there were intelligence ties, and if so to whose agency -- the reporter interviewed is agnostic. She says she is aware of the theories, but has no facts herself on which to base any reporting. They do mention Maxwell's father's ties to Israeli intelligence and Mossad, so they aren't trying to hide from that, but there just isn't enough information in public for reporting -- just for speculation of the sort we have been doing.

The No Banter Bill

Britain's House of Lords proposes banning pub banter. As The Free Press points out, this is on top of some pretty substantial existing bans on speech:

If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another....

[S]exual harassment and workplace harassment are already unlawful in Britain. So are “spreading malicious rumors,” “picking on or regularly undermining someone,” and “denying someone’s training or promotion opportunities” on grounds of age, sex, disability, gender reassignment, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion, or belief, or sexual orientation. The Equality Act of 2010 also makes employers primarily responsible for preventing the “bullying and harassment” of employees by other employees.

Where the Banter Bill strikes new ground is by making employers liable for employees’ feelings about their customers, too. It will allow employees to define “harassment” under the lowest of thresholds: taking offense.

Expect that in California soon, I guess. The new frontier for 'free speech' is not being allowed to say anything anyone finds offensive in public (or online). 

Immigration "reform"

As a nation, we scarcely have an immigration policy--certainly nothing that commands any widespread consensus. My own views on immigration have been all over the map over the decades. Congress makes noises about "comprehensive" reform, which seems to be a euphemism for legislating the border out of existence. Before the second Trump administration we routinely heard that the existing legislative structure was unsustainable, though conservatives argued that it was merely unenforced, a conclusion that seems to have been borne out by events of the last six months.

I used to be rather a fan of amnesty for anyone with a clean rap sheet and a credible work record. Later, I came to believe that there must be a third requirement, which was demonstrating that the illegal immigrant was not on the dole. I believe we cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. I concluded some time back that the welfare state can't be eliminated, at least for citizens, which left only sealing the border to all but immigrants we reasonably concluded were not here for the purpose of launching a criminal career and/or a lifetime habit of going on the dole.

In the background, there always were the arguments about the impact of cheap illegal immigrant labor on the wage scale for working citizens, especially on the low end of the scale. These arguments echoed the endless debate over the minimum wage. I've never favored a minimum wage, believing it only converts low-paying jobs into outright unemployment. As a result, I was never swayed much by complaints, coming from the progressive side of the debate in the past, that the real problem with open borders (legal or otherwise) was the downward pressure on wages, and my views didn't change when, to my surprise, the same argument was embraced by the newly populist GOP.

My views changed when it became obvious that the solution proposed for the downward pressure on wages was to blow the doors off the welfare state. Imagine my amazement when Congress began to inch toward legislation withholding welfare from illegal immigrants and beginning to deport them in serious numbers.

I read an article today accusing the GOP of misrepresenting its rationale for deporting illegal immigrants. The thinking goes: we can't deport immigrants because we can't get citizens to do their jobs at the prices employers want to pay. But hasn't that always been the argument for the minimum wage? Who says employers are entitled to a supply of laborers who are willing to work for an infinitely low wage? If the business can't be sustained without workers willing to work at that low wage, the business will not stay in business. Whatever Americans wanted offered at that price won't be available. That's always been true; it's why we can't afford house-servants of the sort that rich people used to think were necessary to a civilized life. Nor are we likely to solve the problem by making up the difference by paying lots more taxes so that impoverished workers can afford to work for us and still have a lot of basic but expensive needs met by welfare. We can't legislate a free lunch into existence; anything "free" is paid for somewhere, by someone. Not even confiscating all the wealth of Bill Gates or Elon Musk will change that more than temporarily.

What I'm left with is this: we'll find out what jobs free Americans will do at the price employers can afford to pay. If those jobs can't be done, we'll figure out how to adjust to new prices for goods and services that used to be available to us at the old price, which depended on a combination of crippling levels of taxes to support a welfare state and unfair employer leverage over a workforce required to live in the shadows. We'll alter our priorities about the goods and services we are and are not willing to forgo. Maybe we can't have as many avocados or houses as large as have become customary in recent decades. But also maybe a lot of teenagers and adults new to the workforce will be able to find work for a change. People don't tend to stay in entry-level jobs at entry-level wages forever, but they sure can stay in the unemployed welfare underclass forever.

The power of the eternal purse

I knew progressives would be unhappy with the rescission bill, but I didn't understand that they would consider it a reversal of the constitutional order:

Our Constitution gives Congress the ‘power of the purse’ for a reason. It ensures federal spending is controlled by people’s elected representatives, not an all-powerful executive. It’s a crucial check against the expansion of presidential power.

This rescissions bill fundamentally alters that balance.

Republicans, including President Trump, enacted a funding bill that included this money for foreign aid and public broadcasting only months ago. Then they reversed course and voted to cut those programs. By walking back those commitments, congressional Republicans showed, yet again, they will refuse to stand up to President Trump, even for things they support.

This seems off-base. If Congress can approve spending, why shouldn't it also be able to cancel it? The real rub seems to be that rescission operates like a delayed line-item veto, which undermines the ability to approve spending favored by only one party by holding hostage spending critical to the other party.

Now there is much wailing over the fact that Congressional factions can no longer count on spending "deals" to be binding. There is more talk than I can ever before remember hearing about Democrats' shutting down the government. I'm not sure how effective a strategy that is, since the party in power can designate essential spending to survive, which is not a power I'd want to give to the DOGE factions if I were leading the Dems in Congress.

Bad Habituation

As we rest over the weekend after considering Aristotle's remarks on bad habits and character, a song celebrating how they can tie us to who we used to be before the crazy years began. That too is an Aristotelian point: for better and for worse, our character is who we are. It hold us together.

MRI trauma

My husband got a routine MRI this week and reported considerable annoyance at the number of times he was forced to answer the same questions about whether he had any metal implants. I like this radiological imaging center, but they do indulge in some repetitive questioning. Before they even got a chance to pepper him with inquiries, they'd already made me answer the same questions at length when I called to make his appointment.

Then a story like this comes along and makes you imagine how obsessed they must get with checking and re-checking and practically guarding the doors to make sure no one wanders in unawares. Those magnets are unbelievably strong.

John Ringo wrote an entertaining novel called "Von Neuman's War" about a attack by alien bots bent on stripping metal out of people and machines. Earth's citizens had to get serious about tooth fillings, braces, and medical implants.

Friday Night Motivation

 

Son of a Gun

Playing around with a pistol with bad trigger discipline makes me very uncomfortable, but the song isn't awful. I was wondering if the title was performing blasphemy (as is common to the point of banality among musicians and artists), but no, he put out a fairly straightforward explanation of his intent:

Jesus wasn’t the only crucified son. There were 2 others with him. Some say there were 4. The soldiers gambled for the clothes of these so called thieves on the ground right in front of Jesus and then watched him up there a while. In the Third Servile War the Romans crucified Spartacus and 6,000 of his followers along the Appian Road. All because the empire feared a slave. It’s estimated as many as six hundred thousand were crucified during the Roman Empire alone. Some folks have let me know they don’ think my song is in good taste. Most recently I was accused of comparing myself to Jesus. Well I know a lot of people who bare the cross that never learned a thing from the trials of Jesus. Handing out scripture and verse like they wrote it themselves. The first time I ever got sold out it was by my own kin. Then I got in the music business. lol. If they crucified a man like Jesus just imagine what they’ll do to you.

Fair enough, I suppose. The point of the incarnation was to be like us, and as he points out, a whole lot of us were crucified too. Every time but one it was just some regular men doing it to another. 

Attempted Theft 2016

A very significant release by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. In a way it’s nothing we didn’t know; but in another way, it’s a whole set of new evidence for what we came to know a while back. 

Nicomachean Ethics III.6/7: Courage I

Courage is the model virtue, not because Aristotle thinks it is the most important but because it is a particularly clear example. He has a lot to say about it: chapters 6-9 are all on the subject. 6 and 7 are fairly short, and we've already talked about this virtue in sketch so you probably have a feel for it already. I'll run these together. 

Chapter seven contains my favorite line in the whole Nicomachean Ethics.

6

That [courage] is a mean with regard to feelings of fear and confidence has already been made evident; and plainly the things we fear are terrible things, and these are, to speak without qualification, evils; for which reason people even define fear as expectation of evil. Now we fear all evils, e.g. disgrace, poverty, disease, friendlessness, death, but the brave man is not thought to be concerned with all; for to fear some things is even right and noble, and it is base not to fear them- e.g. disgrace; he who fears this is good and modest, and he who does not is shameless. He is, however, by some people called brave, by a transference of the word to a new meaning; for he has in him something which is like the brave man, since the brave man also is a fearless person. 

Emphasis added. "Death before dishonor" was a concept known of Old.

Poverty and disease we perhaps ought not to fear, nor in general the things that do not proceed from vice and are not due to a man himself. But not even the man who is fearless of these is brave. Yet we apply the word to him also in virtue of a similarity; for some who in the dangers of war are cowards are liberal and are confident in face of the loss of money. Nor is a man a coward if he fears insult to his wife and children or envy or anything of the kind; nor brave if he is confident when he is about to be flogged. With what sort of terrible things, then, is the brave man concerned? Surely with the greatest; for no one is more likely than he to stand his ground against what is awe-inspiring. Now death is the most terrible of all things; for it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead. But the brave man would not seem to be concerned even with death in all circumstances, e.g. at sea or in disease. In what circumstances, then? Surely in the noblest. Now such deaths are those in battle; for these take place in the greatest and noblest danger. And these are correspondingly honoured in city-states and at the courts of monarchs. Properly, then, he will be called brave who is fearless in face of a noble death, and of all emergencies that involve death; and the emergencies of war are in the highest degree of this kind. Yet at sea also, and in disease, the brave man is fearless, but not in the same way as the seaman; for he has given up hope of safety, and is disliking the thought of death in this shape, while they are hopeful because of their experience. At the same time, we show courage in situations where there is the opportunity of showing prowess or where death is noble; but in these forms of death neither of these conditions is fulfilled.

Emphasis added. Aristotle is restricting courage in its purest form to the Homeric courage that Greek heroes demonstrated in their wars (and not the Trojans, as we shall see). Other forms of bravery in the face of danger are analogs to this true courage; and even the courage of citizen-soldiers, again as we shall see, is not the very purest form. The purest is that of the nobles, like the Greek heroes of the Iliad. You can imagine how pleasing this model was to young Alexander of Macedon, later 'the Great,' as he studied at Aristotle's feet in his youth. (Really his whole life was youth; he was dead by 32.)

Now you might think that a soldier at war would be courageous in exactly the same way as a seaman in a storm, i.e., at least partly from confidence borne of experience. The brave, noble man should be bold in the face of a noble death even if it is his first battle: but how then can it be habituated? It is the proper upbringing, including the telling of heroic stories to the youth by their elders; practice at analogous things like horseback riding and combat sports; and martial training. This prepares the youth to be bold in the opportunity to earn a noble death, and not to care if it comes to them because it is the path of honor. The proof of that is how much those model heroes of the Iliad were, in fact, still honored across the Greek civilization of the day.

7

What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say there are things terrible even beyond human strength. These, then, are terrible to every one- at least to every sensible man; but the terrible things that are not beyond human strength differ in magnitude and degree, and so too do the things that inspire confidence. Now the brave man is as dauntless as man may be. Therefore, while he will fear even the things that are not beyond human strength, he will face them as he ought and as the rule directs, for honour's sake; for this is the end of virtue. But it is possible to fear these more, or less, and again to fear things that are not terrible as if they were. Of the faults that are committed one consists in fearing what one should not, another in fearing as we should not, another in fearing when we should not, and so on; and so too with respect to the things that inspire confidence. The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave; for the brave man feels and acts according to the merits of the case and in whatever way the rule directs. Now the end of every activity is conformity to the corresponding state of character. This is true, therefore, of the brave man as well as of others. But courage is noble. Therefore the end also is noble; for each thing is defined by its end. Therefore it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs.

Emphasis added. Honor wasn't 'the end of virtue' in Book I: honors, at least, those awards of respect that were bestowed upon the many, were considered as a candidate for the end but determined to be unsuitable because they were not under our own control. To live for honor's sake is different from 'to receive honors,' though: it is an internal determination of our heart's, rather than a thing anyone else can bestow or take away. It is going to prove to be at the root of the capstone virtue of magnanimity. 

In any case, this is the standard for any virtue: 'to do the right thing, from the right motive, in the right way and from the right time' is what is going to universalize. Courage is particular in that it pertains to fear in battle, or analogously other sorts of fear. Yet there is an underlying unity of the virtues in having that rational quality of 'getting it right' vis a vis a particular challenge. This is why the trait is an 'excellence,' ἀρετή (aretḗ), the actual word that is being translated into English as 'virtue.' 

Socrates very frequently asked this question in Plato's dialogues, because he was bothered by the unity of the virtues. He wanted to determine if the unity was the really important thing, or if there was in fact a host of different virtues at work. What makes 'getting it right' in battle all that different from 'getting it right' with regard to overeating (our next virtue being temperance)? Isn't the universal thing the real virtue, and thus there is one virtue instead of many? 

Aristotle settles on the pragmatic acceptance that there are many even though they have an underlying quality. We can see that the brave man is the right man for battle, but he may not always be very temperate at table. Thus, it seems that the underlying unity is conceptual more than actual; frequently, we do find that some virtues are realized in a man, and others not. Aristotle's ethics is pragmatic, and this is one of the concessions to that pragmatism. 

Of those who go to excess he who exceeds in fearlessness has no name (we have said previously that many states of character have no names), but he would be a sort of madman or insensible person if he feared nothing, neither earthquakes nor the waves, as they say the Celts do not; while the man who exceeds in confidence about what really is terrible is rash. The rash man, however, is also thought to be boastful and only a pretender to courage; at all events, as the brave man is with regard to what is terrible, so the rash man wishes to appear; and so he imitates him in situations where he can. Hence also most of them are a mixture of rashness and cowardice; for, while in these situations they display confidence, they do not hold their ground against what is really terrible. The man who exceeds in fear is a coward; for he fears both what he ought not and as he ought not, and all the similar characterizations attach to him. He is lacking also in confidence; but he is more conspicuous for his excess of fear in painful situations. The coward, then, is a despairing sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition. The coward, the rash man, and the brave man, then, are concerned with the same objects but are differently disposed towards them; for the first two exceed and fall short, while the third holds the middle, which is the right, position; and rash men are precipitate, and wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them, while brave men are keen in the moment of action, but quiet beforehand.

Emphasis added. I have written about the nameless vice of the Celts before. I suppose it is surely my own.  

As we have said, then, courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear, in the circumstances that have been stated; and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil.

It is not noble, and therefore all the more tragic, to die of a broken heart.  

Recissions

It's a mark of how big the problem is that $9 Billion is a drop in the bucket, but it's at least one drop in the right direction. The first of the DOGE cuts were approved by Congress overnight.

"Jacksonian"

Foreign Policy argues that the current President is pursuing a "Jacksonian" foreign policy.

Jacksonians focus inward, taking a profoundly nationalist approach that prioritizes domestic over foreign policy. But they are also perfectly happy to spend on the military and entirely willing to fight over issues that they perceive to be central to U.S. interests. As the historian Hal Brands describes it, “their aim in fighting [is] American victory, not the salvation of the world.”

If Trump is indeed a Jacksonian, it marks a notably nationalist turn in U.S. foreign policy—perhaps, even, the end of the era of almost unchallenged Wilsonianism that saw the United States as the world’s “indispensable nation.” Presidents since George H.W. Bush have sometimes embraced Jacksonian policies but have in the main pushed some larger vision of a U.S.-led world order. 

Joel Leggett and I both advocated for this approach way back in the old days of blogging. I also used to remind people that "Jacksonian" should remember James Jackson as well as Andrew Jackson, both early American duelists and both veterans of her wars for liberty.

Liberal Time Traveler Mission to Kill Hitler

 

"Suicidal Empathy"

A late but worthy entry into our discussion of that subject.

Nicomachean Ethics III.5b

Continuing from yesterday, we are talking about the vices of the soul. Unlike Socrates' argument that no one does themselves harm voluntarily and knowingly, Aristotle has argued that people do form characters that are given over to vice. Thus, they did voluntarily assume these vices even if they find they are no longer in control of them.  

But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to weakness and infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from birth or by disease or from a blow, but rather pity him, while every one would blame a man who was blind from drunkenness or some other form of self-indulgence. Of vices of the body, then, those in our own power are blamed, those not in our power are not. And if this be so, in the other cases also the vices that are blamed must be in our own power.

It is possible that we could be unfair, which Aristotle does not seem to consider here. Perhaps we blame someone for things sometimes that we would like to think are in his control, but which are not in fact. A lot of recent history has been caught up in the West with trying to identify things like that so that they can be removed from moral consideration; homosexuality, for example, is now said not to be a voluntary vice but that people are 'born that way.' This may or may not be strictly true, but the effect of convincing people that it is plausible or even likely has been to remove what was long considered a serious moral failing from the realm of moral condemnation.  

Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but have no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each man in a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man is somehow responsible for his state of mind, he will also be himself somehow responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one is responsible for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts through ignorance of the end, thinking that by these he will get what is best, and the aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good, and he is well endowed by nature who is well endowed with this. For it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given us at birth, and to be well and nobly endowed with this will be perfect and true excellence of natural endowment. If this is true, then, how will virtue be more voluntary than vice? To both men alike, the good and the bad, the end appears and is fixed by nature or however it may be, and it is by referring everything else to this that men do whatever they do.

This is initially presented as a material conditional dilemma that needs to be evaluated. However, at least one scholar I know of argues that we have generally underappreciated the role of "natural virtue" in Aristotle, meaning non-habituated virtue that some people just have more of by nature. I will leave that as an exercise for the reader to consider. 

Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each man such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or the end is natural but because the good man adopts the means voluntarily virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less voluntary; for in the case of the bad man there is equally present that which depends on himself in his actions even if not in his end. If, then, as is asserted, the virtues are voluntary (for we are ourselves somehow partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by being persons of a certain kind that we assume the end to be so and so), the vices also will be voluntary; for the same is true of them.

Aristotle is resolving the dilemma by showing that virtue and vice end up as voluntary on either horn of that dilemma. That solves the problem of whether or not vice is voluntary; but it doesn't resolve the question of which of those horns is true. 

With regard to the virtues in general we have stated their genus in outline, viz. that they are means and that they are states of character, and that they tend, and by their own nature, to the doing of the acts by which they are produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary, and act as the right rule prescribes. But actions and states of character are not voluntary in the same way; for we are masters of our actions from the beginning right to the end, if we know the particular facts, but though we control the beginning of our states of character the gradual progress is not obvious any more than it is in illnesses; because it was in our power, however, to act in this way or not in this way, therefore the states are voluntary.

Let us take up the several virtues, however, and say which they are and what sort of things they are concerned with and how they are concerned with them; at the same time it will become plain how many they are. And first let us speak of courage.

So, after two and a half chapters of groundwork, we are finally ready to start speaking of the individual virtues. 

The 1939 Project

I have a really hard time taking Tucker Carlson seriously, to say nothing of Candace Owens. However, I've met Dr. Heinrichs professionally and I know she is a smart cookie. In addition to her work at the Hudson Institute, she is a contributing editor to Providence, a Christian national security journal. If she says it's a problem, it's at worth considering that it might be a problem.

Not all the claims she mentions are absurd.

Tucker Carlson suggested that the fact that the Trump DOJ found that there is no Jeffrey Epstein client list misses the real question. “The real question is,” he said, “why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from?” Carlson then offered his own theory: The deceased convicted child sex trafficker was working for Israel’s Mossad. He said it is “extremely obvious” that Epstein “had direct connections to a foreign government.”

I don't think that it's 'extremely obvious,' but it is plausible; though I suspect that it is at least as likely that it was British Intelligence as Israeli. The fact that British royals were wrapped up in it indicates that they were a target, which is of more interest to the British civil service than it would be to the Israelis. (That there were Jews involved, which some seem to think points so clearly to Mossad, hasn't been surprising in the UK since Disraeli). Or, even more plausible to me, it may have been an international intelligence operation designed to rope in the rich and powerful everywhere. James pointed out that this may well be why they're 'trying to make the elephant disappear' -- allied governments may still be using these levers, and they don't want to grant permission to give them up.

Others are half-baked, but half.

In January, Carlson speculated openly to an aghast Piers Morgan whether modern Europe would have been better off under Nazi rule: “I’m not defending Nazis. I’m just saying, where is Western Civilization? What did [Churchill] preserve?”

Implicit here is the grotesque suggestion that defeating Hitler’s Germany directly led to Europe’s modern “woke” culture—in other words, that a Nazi victory might have preserved traditional, Christian civilization.

On the one hand, Carlson is definitely wrong about Churchill. Nor is it remotely plausible that the Nazis intended to preserve 'traditional, Christian civilization' even in Germany. At the end of the war, they were already beginning to expand their internal purge -- already grown from 'Jews' to people with one Jewish grandparent -- to actual Germans with unwanted eugenic traits. Like the French Revolution or the Khmer Rouge, they intended to overturn everything to establish their new order. 

On the other hand, it has long been suspected and argued academically that the CIA was behind the modern art 'abstract expressionism' movement. As we've seen in the USAID disassembly, support for 'woke' organizations -- especially transgender ones -- has been a US foreign policy tool, presumably because it allows them to establish networks in traditional societies of people who have a basic complaint with the whole project. The elite schools from which the CIA and State Department both recruit have been the nurseries of all of this critical theory; which is why we saw the absurdities of 'Pride marches' and festivals at US Embassy Baghdad or Kabul, and the pushing of a whole host of similar theories upon those traditional societies. The complaint that the US Federal Government -- and the British one, even more so -- has been a particular enemy of traditional society has weight. 

I think Dr. Heinrichs is right to say that these people have lost the President's ear, and as such I don't regard them as particularly dangerous. They may, at times, even raise critiques that are worth considering. That is a function of extending free speech even to the more radical thinkers and speakers. 

And indeed, she takes a moment to field a few critiques herself:

Policymakers from both parties assumed trade and diplomacy alone could soften adversaries like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Since the apex of American power at the end of the Cold War, policymakers turned their focus on the global war on terrorism, but rather than end its just post-9/11 military campaign in Afghanistan after destroying jihadist cells, the Bush administration grew its ambition and engaged in nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq that proved foolish—and led to an emboldened Iran.

If the liberal idealist fantasy of building liberal democracies in the Middle East wasn’t bad enough, the United States failed to maintain a defense industrial base capable of maintaining the production capacity to produce weapons at the scale necessary to deter a major power war. Today, for the first time in the nation’s history, the United States must deter not just one peer nuclear adversary like it did during the Cold War, but two: China and Russia.

I suspect that she is right that the Global War on Terror, the War in Iraq, and the two-decade mission in Afghanistan cost America its leading stature. It soured the public, and demonstrably damaged its military officers corps: the officers who started that war would never have ended it as ham-handedly as the ones who did so. She's also right about the industrial base as an issue that will now be hard to fix, if it can be fixed at all.

Likewise, as I have said here before and will now reiterate, I don't think antisemitism is a good operating theory even pragmatically. It leads you to bad analysis. Critics of Israel rarely compare it fairly with its actual neighbors, instead comparing it (as AVI said) to places like Switzerland. Compare its campaign in Gaza with the recent civil war in Syria, and suddenly the campaign looks intensely discriminate and careful; compare it with the current slaughter of Druze and others by the new government in Syria; compare it, for that matter, with our war in Iraq as we fought in Fallujah, Ramadi, or Mosul. Speaking as one who's done it, they're keeping casualties remarkably low for an intensely-fought war in an urban environment against Islamists using guerrilla and terrorist tactics. We can't claim to have done it better ourselves, and we certainly tried to be discriminate and to avoid war crimes. (Most of us, at least; some units like the one at Abu Ghraib didn't hold up that general standard.)

Israel has its own interests sometimes, and they aren't always the same as ours. Well, so too France; Saudi Arabia; Qatar(!); NATO 'ally' Turkey(!!!); that whole business of 'entangling alliances' is fraught, as Washington himself said it would be. We can field specific criticisms fairly. 

So again, I don't know that I can take Carlson et al seriously enough to suit Dr. Heinrichs; but I take her seriously, so I'll try. 

The Fight to Come

Matt Bai, who wrote a book about the debates on reforming the Democratic Party during the early Obama era, has some thoughts on what needs to be done to bring the party back today. (This is another Washington Post link, so once again I'll blockquote the relevant part.)

The far left has been flat-out wrong on the two broadly most important issues of the day, which was a huge reason Democrats couldn’t get their nominee over the hump last year.

The party’s self-described progressives now proudly embrace the label of socialism as they champion expansive government and vast federal spending, despite the public’s plain distrust in government, and despite the obvious inflationary risks. And the most visible faction on the party’s far left has been obsessed, at least since 2020, with dividing up the electorate by race and ethnicity and gender identity, accompanied by a penchant for shouting down anyone who disagrees....

It would be nice to think you could “rebrand” the party without having a fight over the defense of capitalism and Americanism, but I don’t think you can.

That sounds plausible to me, but so far the party seems to be running in the other direction.  

Nicomachean Ethics III.5a

Today's problem is whether or not people can be voluntarily wicked or involuntarily happy. This problem bothered Plato (and, apparently, Socrates) quite a lot. You may recall the problem from the Meno back when we were reading the Anabasis. It doesn't really make sense on the model of ethics in which virtue is a sort of knowledge; if you know how to do a virtue, why wouldn't you do it given that it's the most effective and happiest thing? Yet many people seem not to do so. Aristotle begins by pointing out that the answer can't be that it's not in out power to do right:

The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and choose, actions concerning means must be according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues is concerned with means. Therefore virtue also is in our own power, and so too vice. For where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa; so that, if to act, where this is noble, is in our power, not to act, which will be base, will also be in our power, and if not to act, where this is noble, is in our power, to act, which will be base, will also be in our power. Now if it is in our power to do noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to be virtuous or vicious.

The saying that 'no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily happy' seems to be partly false and partly true; for no one is involuntarily happy, but wickedness is voluntary. Or else we shall have to dispute what has just been said, at any rate, and deny that man is a moving principle or begetter of his actions as of children. But if these facts are evident and we cannot refer actions to moving principles other than those in ourselves, the acts whose moving principles are in us must themselves also be in our power and voluntary.

A further proof, from Aristotle's perspective, is that the law is structured to reward virtue and punish vice, but the law does not (or at least should not) punish or reward things not in our control. 

Witness seems to be borne to this both by individuals in their private capacity and by legislators themselves; for these punish and take vengeance on those who do wicked acts (unless they have acted under compulsion or as a result of ignorance for which they are not themselves responsible), while they honour those who do noble acts, as though they meant to encourage the latter and deter the former. But no one is encouraged to do the things that are neither in our power nor voluntary; it is assumed that there is no gain in being persuaded not to be hot or in pain or hungry or the like, since we shall experience these feelings none the less. Indeed, we punish a man for his very ignorance, if he is thought responsible for the ignorance, as when penalties are doubled in the case of drunkenness; for the moving principle is in the man himself, since he had the power of not getting drunk and his getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know and that is not difficult, and so too in the case of anything else that they are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; we assume that it is in their power not to be ignorant, since they have the power of taking care.

So, if we willfully and knowingly do wicked things sometimes, why would we do them given the knowledge we have about what is noble and best? 

But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of that kind, and men make themselves responsible for being unjust or self-indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the other by spending their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities exercised on particular objects that make the corresponding character.

In other words, we are responsible for what we become because we become what we practice. Once you develop a character it is binding. Everyone knows how hard it is to break a habit. 

This is plain from the case of people training for any contest or action; they practise the activity the whole time. Now not to know that it is from the exercise of activities on particular objects that states of character are produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person. Again, it is irrational to suppose that a man who acts unjustly does not wish to be unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-indulgent. But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow that if he wishes he will cease to be unjust and will be just. For neither does the man who is ill become well on those terms. We may suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through living incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then open to him not to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his chance, just as when you have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet it was in your power to throw it, since the moving principle was in you. So, too, to the unjust and to the self-indulgent man it was open at the beginning not to become men of this kind, and so they are unjust and self indulgent voluntarily; but now that they have become so it is not possible for them not to be so.

This is an interesting answer, which continues in tomorrow's reading. We are free, in the sense that we were free; in that way, the wrong we do is voluntary because we chose to practice it. Yet we are not free in that we have now formed characters that are very difficult to alter; and in that way, the harm we do to ourselves is involuntary. 

"In one way yes; but in another way no" is a fairly typical move for Aristotle. Some think it is a weakness or even a contradictory way to philosophize. I think it to be sophisticated, in that he is able to explore questions more deeply and identify ambiguities. The ability to hold both ideas in the mind and to see where they contradict and where they do not allows a deeper understanding of the problems we are analyzing. 

Nicomachean Ethics III.4

We did one today already, but chapter four is very short.

That wish is for the end has already been stated; some think it is for the good, others for the apparent good. Now those who say that the good is the object of wish must admit in consequence that that which the man who does not choose aright wishes for is not an object of wish (for if it is to be so, it must also be good; but it was, if it so happened, bad); while those who say the apparent good is the object of wish must admit that there is no natural object of wish, but only what seems good to each man. Now different things appear good to different people, and, if it so happens, even contrary things.

Short but important. Do we direct our wills towards a good that is real in the world, or only an idea we have in our heads? This is highly consequential, partly because it will end up grounding proofs for the existence of God by thinkers like Avicenna.

If these consequences are unpleasing, are we to say that absolutely and in truth the good is the object of wish, but for each person the apparent good; that that which is in truth an object of wish is an object of wish to the good man, while any chance thing may be so the bad man, as in the case of bodies also the things that are in truth wholesome are wholesome for bodies which are in good condition, while for those that are diseased other things are wholesome- or bitter or sweet or hot or heavy, and so on; since the good man judges each class of things rightly, and in each the truth appears to him? For each state of character has its own ideas of the noble and the pleasant, and perhaps the good man differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of things, being as it were the norm and measure of them. In most things the error seems to be due to pleasure; for it appears a good when it is not. We therefore choose the pleasant as a good, and avoid pain as an evil.

Aristotle has of course warned us against this common path. Tomorrow's reading will wrestle with one of the harder questions in moral philosophy.