Gus Van Horn blog

During a walk, I was trying to listen to the Yaron Brook Show, but was having a hard time between the constant wind and the volume being low on that episode. I could make out bits and pieces, but was mostly frustrated. Fortunately, one of the bits I could make out was a rather topical recommendation: Listen to Leonard Peikoff's Ford Hall Forum lecture (embedded below), "A Philosopher Looks at the O. J. Verdict." Correctly hoping it would be loud enough to hear over the wind, I took him up on the idea. I had just started grad school during this trial, and I recall some very strange conversations among my acquaintances about what I had thought was a pretty cut-and-dried case. Yes, one is innocent before the law unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but the evidence of guilt looked pretty overwhelming to me. Peikoff was of a similar mind regarding guilt, which I expected, but he quickly had part of me wishing I had listened to his lecture long ago: It was clear I'd be getting much more than confirmation from this one. But part of me is glad that I -- who'd gotten sick and tired of hearing about the trial at the time -- didn't listen to the lecture before yesterday. Somewhat ironically, the wish and the relief both spring from the same source, which is that Peikoff discusses why there were such sharp differences on whether the verdict was correct or not, primarily between blacks and whites, but also between conservatives and leftists. Blacks and leftists tended to agree with the verdict, whites and conservatives not. Listening to the lecture sooner would have helped me understand this puzzling difference much better, as the notes at the Ayn Rand Institute might indicate:Peikoff looks at the issues raised by the trial and media response -- including reasonable doubt, conspiracy theories, racism, planted gloves and arguments from emotion -- and finds the process deficient from a philosophical point of view. Peikoff pays special attention to the standards by which evidence in a trial should be weighed, and he discusses the difference between arbitrary claims and evidence-based possibilities. Based on his examination of the motives and attitudes of both jurors and attorneys, as well as the controversial techniques used by the defense, led by attorney Johnnie Cochran, Peikoff describes the trial as "a very ugly and frightening turning point" and "an event that forever embodies the essence of an era." [bold added]Peikoff both discusses the long (but hastening) process by which American academics implemented bad philosophical ideas imported from Germany starting in the 1800s, and forms generalizations from examples about how the participants in the trial were thinking. The former gradually undermined Americans' confidence in their founding ideals and indeed in their own minds and is culminating in today's racialist-tribalist mess. The latter illustrates how emotionalism and magical thinking take over once people generally internalize antt-reason premises, such as anything is possible. Peikoff's exploration of how the defense undermined the prosecution is when I was glad I was hearing this lecture for the first time. The defense countered the straightforward prosecution with fantastic and conspiracy theory-like arguments, only loosely interpreting the evidence when they had anything to do with the evidence at all. And the jury -- primed with the ideas and manner of thinking induced by the culture's saturation with German philosophy -- fell for this approach hook, line, and sinker. This they did partly because they didn't know how to think, and partly because they wanted to believe the defense narrative, which fit neatly into the larger racist narrative that the intellectual establishment had already been spinning for quite some time. I not only found myself stunned at how well this explained the verdict and the reactions to it -- good and bad, and on either side -- but I also had a hair-raising moment of realization: The jurors remind me of today's hyperpartisans in how they approach the crucial issues of the day. The following list (omitting gloves and adding scare quotes) comes from the excerpt: "reasonable" doubt, conspiracy theories, racism, and arguments from emotion. This is a nearly comprehensive list of what passes for political argument from the far left and the alt-right these days, and note what's missing: evidence, reason, and persuasion. (A Trump supporter I know occasionally pushes some blatantly nutty book or other, but can't be arsed to read a short editorial from another perspective -- just like a leftist I used to work with who I had to tell to quit spamming my work email with leftist political screeds.) The Simpson jury was no anomaly: It was a group of people ahead of its time, in terms of America's philosophical dis-integration and consequent de-minding. And now, a plurality or majority of the American electorate processes evidence and arguments in the same way that jury did. Very ugly and frightening indeed. -- CAVLink to Original

Since he became speaker based solely on his loyalty to Trump -- a man who would throw his own mother under the bus on a whim -- I had an extremely low estimate of Speaker Mike Johnson. After he ignored such luminaries as Marjorie Taylor Greene to pass a military aid package, that estimate is slightly higher: He would seem possessed of enough low cunning or even common sense to know when and how to work with political opponents to achieve a goal. Writing at UnHerd, Fred Bauer outlines the ways the other Trump loyalists (who are now calling for Johnson's head) screwed themselves by preemptively writing off any and all cooperation with the Democrats:Probably a RINO, according to Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Image by United States Congress, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)... Because of the centrality of Ukraine for the Biden White House's foreign policy, Democrats might well have eventually accepted a legislative package that paired border control measures with Ukraine-Israel funding. Republicans could have passed a broader national security grand bargain in the House and then dared the Democratic-controlled Senate not to act. The precedent would have been the 2023 debt-ceiling standoff, in which House Republicans passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling and forced the White House and Senate Democrats to the negotiating table. Instead, recalcitrant populists in the House performed judo against themselves. Rather than leveraging the border to get Ukraine funding, they used performative opposition to Ukraine funding to block action on the border. Speaker Johnson put the matter bluntly the other day: "If I put Ukraine in any package, it can't also be with the border because I lose Republican votes on that rule." [bold added]Just as Bauer accurately describes how the populist kook wing of the GOP got nothing by demanding everything, I believe he pretty accurately foretells the future when he considers the deep reflection this should cause among them, but won't:... For some populists, this complete sacrifice of legislative leverage may be a policy disappointment but a messaging opportunity. Perhaps the most prized ornament among many Republicans on Capitol Hill is a badge of angry defeat -- won during the shutdowns and failed "Obamacare" repeals of the past. This debacle is another chance to rage against the "uniparty", fret about the betrayal by the Republican "establishment", and sneer at "America Last" foreign policy. [bold added]The likes of Greene are so blinded by rage at the left that they cannot see how stupid they are behaving or entertain the idea of achieving part of what they want, under the current political makeup of the legislative and judicial branches. I am no fan of Joe Biden, but this is a textbook example of how not to win against a political opponent, and I can't think of a political faction I'd want doing this more. The silver lining here is that Johnson has shown that there is room for a halfway sane legislative agenda to get passed in a closely-divided House: There will be enough center-left and center-right votes to pass measures that aren't too nutty for every member of either party to block, and that the authoritarian wings of each party can be marginalized. One cheer for Mike Johnson. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner. *** 1. As our family waited in the terminal ahead of an hours-long couple of flights from the West Coast to home, my son cast an uncomfortable and concerned glance at his parents. "I feel nauseous," he said a little weakly. Grabbing a bag from the lunch Mrs. Van Horn had just brought over, I thrust it into his hands. "Keep this with you in case you can't make it to a bathroom in time," I said. His older sister complained that she didn't want to sit next to him on the plane. "April Fool's," my son replied. He got all of us good by catching us completely off-guard and with an impeccable delivery. Well-played, my son! 2. Although I sometimes do wish my son were more interested in sports or outdoor activities, I don't share the moral panic many other parents do about his screen time -- which strikes me as a mashup of the reading, television, and gaming I did as a lad. Yes, reading, in the sense that he learns things and often follows up. Having learned about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he mentioned it to us as probably a good family movie, so that's what we did one Sunday evening. I hadn't read the book or seen the movie, so it was new to me, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. From the corner of my eye, I spotted these turtles while crossing a pedestrian bridge last week. (Image by the author. Feel free to copy/reuse.)3. After the move from Florida, I still miss seeing the wide variety of birds along with the occasional alligator I'd see when when I took walks there. That said, the more compact town we live in means that my walks can have other advantages, like including stops at coffee shops, in addition to being more scenic overall. As it turns out, my walks are not devoid of wildlife. The ponds and waterways here teem with turtles, as you can see from this picture I took from a pedestrian bridge. Oh, and I run into the odd crow now and then. If I start encountering those with any regularity, I might try my hand at befriending them. 4. Ahead of a trip last month, I looked ahead in my tickler file for the days I would be away and discovered something I had slipped into a Friday folder to file away during my weekly review: My car registration receipt. I'd tried getting my car inspected earlier in the week, but was told I'd need my registration receipt and was turned away. Since Florida doesn't require inspections, I was five or six years out of practice: Thinking I'd probably not need that scrap of paper, I stashed it in the tickler file and forgotten about it. Indeed, at the inspection station, I thought I might need to go back to the DMV and ask for the document, which would mean another hour or two of wasted time. Finding this was a big relief, because I knew I could very quickly get the inspection done now, and not have to waste time or risk getting a ticket. Chalk one up for having a (usually boring) clerical routine in place. -- CAVLink to Original

Jerry Liu offers the following advice, which fellow role-playing gamers will find easy to translate into real-life terms and quite memorable: Use your potions and scrolls. He opens with a familiar scenario:I find that when I play RPG games, I often hoard single-use items like potions and scrolls, saving them for some future critical moment. I finish games like Skyrim with a backpack full of unspent resources, reserved for a crisis that never actually arrives. What's the point, then, of all these items?The answer to his last question arrives from an experiment that it's probably fair to say went better than he expected:Recently I played Baldur's Gate 3 and I decided to try something new: I would actually gasp use my items as needed, as they were intended, without undue reservation. Not only was it actually fun to use my fireball scrolls and blow stuff up, but I also discovered new layers and hidden quests. For instance, using a 'Speak with the Dead' scroll on a certain suspicious corpse unveiled a questline I would have otherwise missed.Liu elaborates on his lesson, in the rest of his short, thought-provoking post. One insight worth remembering is that many things are actually not single-use -- although they can expire! Liu's backpack full of unused potions and scrolls reminds me of a related insight I had over years: Having a lot of something can, under certain conditions, be the functional equivalent of not having it at all. The germ of this one arose back in my card-playing undergraduate days, when I noticed that, depending on how one played long in a suit, one could opt to stay in a lead or basically sit out the rest of a hand. My huge supply of, say, diamonds, might mean noone could lead me into diamonds (or take them) because they were all in my hand. That ring is in there somewhere, but good luck finding it! (Image by Arthur Rackham, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)This isn't always helpful: Decades later, after a series of interstate moves that included young children in tow and no purging for several years, I remember looking for something in a garage full of disorganized stuff and unopened boxes. I can't recall what I was looking for at the time, but even though I knew we had multiple instances of it, I had to buy another because everything was lost in the disorganized dragon's hoard that our garage housed instead of our cars. Leading up to our last move, I attacked that hoard over a period of three months. We donated dozens of boxes of things to Goodwill, and lots of that stuff was brand new, or as good as new. Until I did that, it was as if we didn't have a garage -- or most of the things that were being stored in it! The clearing-out caused moving preparations to take longer than I would have liked, but I did not want to have the same situation on the other end. I wanted to enjoy this house! That was time well-spent, but looking back to Liu's advice again, it is clear that, had I not had to deal with this mess, I could have used a big chunk of time for much more interesting things. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at Reason, John Stossel notes that "The Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new regulations to reclassify many individual contractors as payroll employees." Great. I guess that's why our tax preparer had all sorts of questions about gig work for us this year. Naturally, news media uncritically parrot the administration's alleged justifications for the changes, despite the fact that, as Stossel reminds us, this terrible idea has already been tried and failed in California:Four years ago, unions got then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D -- San Diego) to push through a new law that reclassified gig workers. They were told they'd get higher wages, overtime, and other benefits. Clueless media liked that. Vox called the law "a victory for workers everywhere." Ha! A few months later, Vox media laid off hundreds of freelancers. "They expected that all these companies were going to reclassify independent contractors as employees," freelance musician Ari Herstand told me. "In reality, they're just letting them go!" Herstand was dismayed to learn that when he wants other musicians to join him, he could no longer just write them a check. "I have to put that drummer on payroll, W2 him, get workers' comp insurance, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes!" he complains. "I have to hire a payroll company." [links omitted]Stossel also notes correctly that (a) some professions managed to get exemptions in California, and (b) Biden wants to make that law nationwide and without exemptions. Never mind that it was so unpopular that even Californians partially clawed it back at the ballot box. It's too bad that the best we can hope for in the next election is divided government. The Democrats would ram this down our throats if left unchecked. The cash value of Trump "owning the libs" through easily-overturned means is zero. Case in point: Keystone XL never got built. (Image by Office of the President of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)And the Republicans? I seriously doubt that the current iteration of the Republican Party will do anything positive to protect gig work, much less roll back the regulatory state that makes moves like this possible: They'll be too busy infighting, or pursuing a theocratic and xenophobic agenda to worry about such unfashionable things as a free economy. Maybe -- if he wins and he feels like it, and as he did for some things during his term -- Trump will roll back the new regulations, as if the Democrats will never come back into power again. Spoiler alert: When they do, a future Democrat can reintroduce these regulations or worse. (For an example from the world of Executive Orders, see also: The Keystone XL Pipeline.) And that last, Trump supporters, is what is known as "owning" the libs without defeating them. -- CAVLink to Original

Some time back, I tweeted a Value for Value post by Peter Schwartz which explains how our culture's dominant ethical code, altruism, justifies supporting Hamas over Israel, despite the demands of justice to do exactly the opposite. Schwartz says in part:Certainly, a growing anti-Semitism is at work. But the more fundamental explanation is the one provided by a schoolteacher in Atlanta, as reported in the Nov. 5 NY Times ("Across the Echo Chamber, a Quiet Conversation About War and Race"). She posted the following message on Facebook, defending her unequivocal backing of the Palestinians against Israel: "The actual history of this situation is NOT COMPLICATED. I will ALWAYS stand beside those with less power. Less wealth, less access and resources and choices. Regardless of the extreme acts of a few militants who were done watching their people slowly die." She is stating the essence of a moral code that is accepted by virtually everyone today: the code of altruism. According to that code, need is the ultimate standard of morality. If others are in need, nothing else matters -- you have a duty to satisfy their needs.Now that Iran, a nation nearly ten times more populous than Israel, has more directly waged war against Israel, it would be interesting to quiz the above schoolteacher about which side she is on. I would not expect her allegiance to have shifted, despite the fact that Israel had enough help repelling that attack that it is a fair question whether it could have done so alone. Absent the ability to ask directly, we can get the answer by consulting a recent Brendan O'Neill article article at Sp!ked. It is titled "How Woke Leftists Became Cheerleaders for Iran," and I think the below is crucial to understanding why we're seeing mass "demonstrations" by people claiming to be in favor of this warmongering regime's "right" to "self-defense:"The left would say, Don't believe your lying eyes or mind about this evil man. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The Western left's blaming of Israel for everything, and its implicit absolution of Iran, is grimly revealing. These people seem to view Israel as the only true actor in the Middle East, and everyone else as mere respondents to Israel's actions. Israel is the author of the Middle East's fate, while the rest of them -- Hamas, the Houthis, even Iran -- are mere bit-part players with the misfortune to be caught up in Israel's vast and terrifying web. This is identitarianism, not anti-imperialism. A new generation of radicals educated into the regressive ideology that says 'white' people are powerful and 'brown' people are oppressed can only understand the Middle East in these terms, too. The end result is that they demonise Israel and infantilise Iran. The Jewish State comes to be seen as uniquely malevolent while Iran is treated as a kind of wide-eyed child who cannot help but lash out at its 'Zionist' oppressor. Israel is damned as a criminal state, while Iran's crimes against humanity are downplayed, even memory-holed. This is where wokeness leads, then: to sympathy for one of the most backward and repressive states on Earth on the deranged basis that its criminal strikes against Israel represent a blow against the arrogant West itself... [bold added]The whole idea that all of Israel is Caucasian or that the Islamic world is entirely brown-skinned is nearly as ridiculous as assuming that race determines character or as using white as code for oppressor and brown for needy or oppressed. If anyone needs disabusing of the notion that the left stands for racial equality or individual rights, what we're seeing unfold -- the use of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to excuse racially slurring Israelis as white (which is a racial slur coming from the left these days) en route to enabling their extermination -- should concern anyone with a grain of rationality or a sense of justice. By casting the alleged neediness of Palestine and Iran -- and Israel's well-earned strength -- as racial attributes, the left has excused making the mindless siding with terrorists in the name of altruism permanent. They're coming for the Jews now, and they will come for the rest of West as soon as is convenient. We're all "colonialists" now, according to the left, anyway. -- CAVLink to Original

Over the weekend and from its own territory, Iran launched a barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel, using Israel's attack on its "embassy" in Syria as an excuse. I recommend Yaron Brook's real-time reporting and commentary (embedded here). I was out running errands when I began listening. Any time I checked, I found him to be well ahead of other outlets both in terms of timeliness and quality of information. The whole thing was barely a blip in mainstream media, and even sites like the Drudge Report were somewhat late. At one point, Brook noted the issue with the most military significance at present: Iran doesn't have the nuclear capability it has been trying to develop. This attack could have been far worse, and harder to deal with if that had not been the case. And after this weekend there is no doubt that this scenario must be averted, in the minimal form of the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Ideally, the West also does whatever it can to topple the murderous, theocratic regime behind the attack and decades of terrorism and proxy conflicts. See also "End States That Sponsor Terrorism," by Leonard Peikoff. As became apparent during the podcast, the need to end Iran's nuclear capability is a point many in Israel seem to grasp, as the following, quote of former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, tweeted by Open Source Intel would indicate:Some points regarding the overnight Iranian missile attack on Israel:Contrary to what pundits are saying, this wasn't designed merely as "bells and whistles" with no damage. When you shoot 350 flying objects timed to hit Israel at the same moment, when you use three fundamentally different weapon types -- cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and UAVs, you're looking to penetrate Israel's defenses and kill Israelis.The US administration is telling us: "This is a victory, you've already won by thwarting the missiles. No need for any further action." No, it's NOT a victory. Yes, it's a remarkable success of Israel's air defense systems, but it's not a victory. When a bully tries to hit you 350 times and only succeeds seven time, you've NOT won. You don't win wars just by intercepting your enemy's hits, nor do you deter it. Your enemy will just try harder with more and better weapons and methods next time. How DO you deter? By exacting a deeply painful price.It's incorrect to say "nobody got hurt". There's a 7 year-old Israeli-Arab girl called Amina Elhasuny fighting for her life. That's who coward Khamenei hit. The Islamic Republic of Iran made a big mistake. For the past 30 years it's been wreaking havoc on the region -- through its proxies. A terror-octopus whose head is Tehran, and its tentacles are in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Gaza. How convenient. The Mullahs send others to conduct horrendous terror attacks, and die for them. Other people's blood. Israel's strategic mistake for the past 30 years was to play along this strategy. We always fought the Octopus' arms, but hardly exacted a price from its Iranian head. This should change now: Hezbollah or Hamas shoots a rocket at Israel? Tehran pays a price. The enemy is the Iranian REGIME, not the wonderful Iranian people. The Iranian regime reminds me of the Soviet regime in 1985: corrupt to the core, old, incompetent, despised by its own people, and destined to collapse. The sooner the better. The West can accelerate the regime's inevitable collapse with a set of soft and clever actions, short of military force. Remember, USSR collapsed without any need for a direct American attack. Let's do this. Israel is fighting everybody's war. In Gaza, Lebanon and Tehran. We're considered "the small satan" by radical Islam. America is the big one. I'll be clear: if these crazy fanatic Islamic terrorists get away with murder by hiding among civilians, this method will be adopted by terrorists worldwide. We're not asking anyone to fight for us. We'll do the job. But we do expect our allies to have our back, especially when it's tough -- and now it's tough. Be on the right side and help us defeat these horrible and savage regimes.That army of useful idiots -- the ninnies who are worrying about "escalation" -- are ignoring what happened on October 7 and over this weekend: Iran has already escalated unprovoked twice, and is going to escalate again, anyway. Its threats of doing worse if Israel retaliates are superflous and should be ignored, because these theocrats plan atrocities, genocide, and tyranny regardless of what we do. This is war. We should fight it on our own terms. This attack on Israel is a proxy attack on the West by dogs that smell fear. Let's snuff out these animals while they are still weak. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. According to New ideal, the Ayn Rand Institute is promoting a booklet titled Finding Morality and Happiness Without God, and quotes author Onkar Ghate:The basic reason religion remains such an esteemed aspect of American society is that it is considered important, even indispensable, to morality. The strongest form this idea takes is that morality depends on religion -- that without God, the distinction between good and evil loses meaning, and anything goes.Mentioning happiness in the title should intrigue the more active-minded: Thanks to religion, most people associate fear and guilt with morality, and are reluctant if not afraid to think about this life-and-death topic. We can blame the all-encompassing cultural stranglehold of religion for the fact that, while the true purpose of morality should be a huge sales advantage for Objectivism in the marketplace of ideas, it will cause suspicion for most. I think the exeception I noted above will more than offset the current disadvantage, since those who will be intrigued will inlcude some future intellectuals. 2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn advocates the free market as the solution the medical care crisis caused by Canada's government-run system. She outlines what this might look like in part:The very small percentage of people who could not afford to pay for health care or insurance would depend on private charity, and the quality of care would be protected, not only through competition and rights-protecting laws, but by private third-party licensing/certification. Healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, and others) benefit from private health care because competition among providers would enable them to negotiate fair compensation and working conditions, which in turn would attract more professionals to health care and eliminate staff shortages and burnout. The private healthcare providers (hospitals, clinics, professional practices) and medical insurance companies benefit by profiting from the quality and competitive pricing of their services.It is worth noting why Woiceshyn goes into such detail: The lack of truly private systems worldwide makes "envisioning how such a system would work ... difficult." 3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney addresses an interesting question that I'd put as What is the difference between a habit and an internal (psychological or mental) context?Image by Ping Lee, via Unsplash, license.Thanks to the influence of behaviorism, the term "habit" is commonly used to subsume a wide range of repeatable or regular behavior, regardless of the cause of such behavior. The problem with this is that different repeatable, regular behavior can have fundamentally different causes. Psychological concepts need to be defined in terms of fundamentals, i.e., by means of root causes, not superficial similarities. For this reason, I limit the term "habit" to automatized perceptual motor skills, i.e., physical actions that happen automatically in response to awareness of a particular kind of environment, unless you intervene to stop them.This is an important distinction: bad habits and unhelpful contexts make desirable self-directed action harder, but because they have different causes, combating or replacing them requires different approaches, which Moroney discusses throughout. 4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger considers the common claim that the United States is a "representative democracy." The most interesting part of the piece to me was the following:[Confusion on this issue is] because one needs to use the right method of concept formation. The right method allows one to validate one's concepts, rather than merely picking one term from those available.Picking one term from those available is ubiquitous today, and explains lots of what is wrong with the current political discourse. And that means not just that practically everyone falls into it on at least some issues, but it can be easy for those who don't to forget or be unaware that that is what often happens. This can affect how best to argue for a good position. The rest of the piece is highly instructive, both for its demonstration of the correct method of approaching the question and for its answer. -- CAVLink to Original

This morning, I read about two disasters, one natural and one man-made, that happened yesterday in Louisiana. Debris lines show the extent of the flooding. The faint uppermost line is less than a foot below doorstep level. (Image by the author, copying permitted.)The former took the form of a nasty storm that not only spawned a tornado that touched down northeast of New Orleans, but also dumped over half a foot of rain within a couple of hours. Fortunately for us, our neighborhood got just the rain. We have a very effective drainage system here, but we're on flat land and the rate of rainfall caused enough street flooding to stall out a car that had been driving through. Also, we found ourselves less than a foot away from having water in the house. The water was gone two hours later, but I have been warned: I was concerned only about the possibility of wind and hail, and was paying attention for tornado warnings. Flooding is a real possibility I've never really had to think about before, other than for insurance purposes. Now that I see how easily that can occur, I have to give flooding serious thought during hurricane season. As my mother said after I sent some pictures and video around to the family: Welcome to Louisiana. The other disaster -- man-made, much more dangerous in the long term, and slower-moving -- comes in the form of theocracy creeping closer at a faster pace in the red part of America these days. Louisiana has moved a step closer to mandating display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, in clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution:Louisiana is one step closer to becoming the first state to require that public schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom under a bill approved Wednesday by the state's House of Representatives. Following a lengthy debate, lawmakers voted 82-19 in favor of House Bill 71. The bill's author, Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, said the legislation honors the country's religious origins. "The Ten Commandments are the basis of all laws in Louisiana, and given all the junk our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it's imperative that we put the Ten Commandments back in a prominent position," she said.Dodie Horton's name and degree of ignorance sound like an April Fool's joke -- or a minor villain in an Ayn Rand novel. But this is the eleventh and I was reading the news. Setting those observations aside, even if we grant her fallacious assertion about the basis of American law, has she no historical knowledge whatsoever of the consequences of having government enforce religious teachings -- which are, by nature not debatable? Even the most religious of the Founders knew that religious power leads to religious persecution, and that it would be foolish to assume that followers of one's own religion would be the ones in power if that were permitted to occur. There are many other problems with state sponsorship of religion, but this one, obvious to practically anyone who cares to exert a modicum of mental effort, should alarm anyone tempted to cheer about this foolish and thoroughly anti-American development. Those who would force us to follow what they imagine will be their religion do not know or care about the consequences of their actions, much less about America. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at The Bulwark is an instructive article titled "From Intellectual Dark Web to Crank Central" that follows the inevitable downward arc of a group of dissident intellectuals whose only unifying characteristic was that they had been ostracized from or chose not to participate in the leftist intellectual establishment. The article credits Bari Weiss's 2018 reservations about the group with being "prescient." Cathy Young quotes Weiss: "Could the intellectual wildness that made this alliance of heretics worth paying attention to become its undoing?" This is so prescient that it is practically a rhetorical question: As with atheism or any other mere rejection of an orthodoxy, being against something leaves wide open what one stands for. There is nothing inherently wrong with stating opposition to an orthodoxy. Sometimes, all one has the time or energy or public visibility to do is to make it known that one does not support some horrible idea or trend. But since this leaves open the question of why one opposes something, doing so as part of a group makes it look like one might agree with what other members of the group do believe. Doing so beyond a very specific issue is a big mistake, as the better members of this group learned over time:Sam Harris found himself having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. (Image by Cmichel67, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Not all of the IDW-associated figures featured in Weiss's article have veered crankward. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow emeritus Christina Hoff Sommers remains eminently sensible (and an anti-Trump centrist). Two others, Sam Harris and Claire Lehmann, have openly broken with and criticized the IDW. Harris -- a philosopher, neuroscientist, prominent atheist, and author -- said in November 2020 that he was disassociating himself from the IDW label over other IDW figures' embrace of Trump's election-fraud claims and other conspiracy theories, noting that some of them were "sounding fairly bonkers." Harris has made even sharper criticisms since then, especially over the anti-vaccine rhetoric. Lehmann, who founded the online magazine Quillette as a hub for heterodoxy in 2015 and was featured as the "voice" of the IDW in Politico in late 2018, first clashed with some fellow Dark Webbers over her willingness to publish articles, including one by me, criticizing certain aspects of the IDW -- such as a tendency toward its own brand of groupthink and tribalism -- as well as some of its members, such as Dave Rubin. (It turned out Lehmann meant it when she told Politico she didn't want Quillette to be an echo chamber.) More recently, Lehmann has talked about the IDW's fracturing over COVID-19, conspiracy theories, the war in Ukraine, and other issues. [bold added, links removed]The piece reads like an up-to-date What Not to Do companion to Ayn Rand's 1972 Essay, "What Can One Do?", in which she cautioned against forming alliances with people whose stand on an issue might cause them to pass as fellow travelers, but who really aren't allies:... Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." By "ideological" (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the "libertarian" hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see "The Anatomy of Compromise" in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.) The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and this has to be watched very, very vigilantly). [bold and link on "compromise" added]When discussing compromise, Rand warned:The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side. The essay illustrates this in spades, and on multiple levels, from Sam Harris's having to distance himself from anti-vaxxers to individuals being tempted, often successfully, to sell out to keep the large audiences of kooks they ended up with by associating with this group. Young calls this last "audience capture." It is not enough to oppose an evil like "wokeness." One must do so for the right reasons, articulate those reasons, and offer a positive alternative. Joining forces with anyone who does not also do those things will ultimately backfire. -- CAVLink to Original

Donald Trump, whose Supreme Court appointments eventually overturned Roe vs. Wade, has stuck his finger into the wind and decided his best chance at a second term lies with pretending that abortion isn't really a big issue. The right, which only cares about (a) banning abortion and (b) whether Trump can win (in that order), is mostly in a bubble, taking him "seriously but not literally:" They sense that Trump will say whatever is most likely to get him elected and will roll with whatever progress the fundies can make on banning abortion. He doesn't really care about the issue beyond how it affects his election chances, and they're fighting a long game. The left -- who would rather indulge magical thinking than, say, making abortion actually legal or prosecuting insurrectionists on time -- is already writing his political obituary and and even fantasizing that Florida will "turn blue" during the next election. This isn't to say that a Trump victory is inevitable or that abortion won't cost him Florida, but one must read any political commentary these days with an eye on separating the wishes of the author from reality. I mildly exaggerated on my first commentary link. The Newsweek piece, by Democrat cheerleader David Faris, does in fact attempt a more-or-less cool-headed analysis of how Trump's latest flip-flop on abortion might play out. I think Faris gets it half-right:Image by pjedrzejczyk, via Pixabay, license.You must therefore wonder how this group of high-propensity voters that is absolutely critical to any Republican victory this November is going to take this news. My guess is "not well." While some Republicans might be satisfied with the end of Roe and abortion bans or impossible restrictions in 21 states, the most religious white evangelicals want total victory. And Trump just told them they won't get it. Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, issued a statement almost immediately after Trump's video dropped saying that she was "deeply disappointed," although still committed to defeating President Joe Biden. While we shouldn't expect his position to cause dramatic change in his white evangelical support, even a few points could be determinative it what looks like it is going to be an extremely close election. The other problem here for Trump is that, unlike him, people who care about restoring reproductive rights are not stupid. He did not say whether he would sign an abortion ban if it crossed his desk, a tightrope he will not be able to walk all the way to November without being pressed for a firm up-or-down answer. In private, he has previously said that he would sign a 16-week national abortion ban. And throwing up his hands and saying "let the states decide" still leaves tens of millions of furious women living in states where abortion has been completely banned -- including Electoral College battleground states like North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Florida -- or partially banned, like Wisconsin. [bold added]Faris is dead wrong about the evangelical vote: First of all, anti-abortionists have been working for decades to make abortion illegal and know that their gains are safe at worst with Trump in charge. Second, this part of the electorate is firmly within the Orange Echo Chamber. See take seriously but not literally above. And consider its support of Trump despite his serial philandering, sleaziness, and criminality. This is more of the same, and they will overlook it, too. With these people, Trump could get away with murder, as he once boasted. Faris is, however, correct about those of us facing -- or who have daughters facing -- an adulthood in which an accident or a crime might condemn them to the dangers of an unplanned pregnancy and the decision to (a) assume the lifelong responsibility of parenthood at a time not of their choosing or (b) forfeit that responsibility in the hope that a random stranger will properly care for their newborn child. The second piece is also more cool-headed than I let on. Its assessment of Florida is as follows:Tuesday's twin rulings on abortion from the Florida Supreme Court -- one letting a deeply restrictive, DeSantis-backed anti-abortion law go into effect, the other permitting an abortion-access initiative, Amendment 4, on the November ballot -- have upended political certainties in the Sunshine State. Last week, no one was talking about Florida as a swing state; now, with abortion at center stage, it's not beyond the bounds of the possible that, with an overwhelming majority of Floridians -- including a majority of Republicans -- in favor of reestablishing abortion rights protections, the Democrats will be able to use this issue to drive a wave of supporters to the polls in November. ... Yet such is the state of disarray in the Florida Democratic Party that, even with the huge assist the Supreme Court has given them by turning abortion into the central issue of the upcoming vote in Florida, it remains a long shot for President Joe Biden to mount a successful challenge for the state's Electoral College votes. [bold added]The piece then looks at the situation in other states where both parties are competitive and abortion has become a ballot-box issue. Regarding Florida, I think Trump can lose non-Evangelical Republicans on this issue, unless they buy his shtick about being non-committal on the issue or somehow don't pay any more attention to abortion than they have had to in the past. And I agree with Faris that he might not have to lose that many voters for it to matter -- since Democrats now have good reason -- Biden himself sure isn't one -- to show up and vote. My take is that abortion will hurt Trump, but perhaps not enough to keep him out of office; and that it will definitely hurt his party down-ballot. -- CAVLink to Original

John Stossel has a column that correctly calls out Joe Biden and Donald Trump as both being wrong about free trade, which both parties smear as "globalization" when it's convenient. The piece briefly debunks five common myths, and I was glad to see Imports take jobs from Americans addressed as Myth No. 2:This is the evil face of world-wide central planning, not of world-wide free trade. (Image by World Economic Forum, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)I say to [the Cato Institute's Scott] Lincicome, "Some people do lose jobs." "True," he replies, "We lose about 5 million jobs every month." But trade isn't the main reason. "Jobs are lost due to ... changing consumer tastes and from innovation. We make more stuff with fewer workers. That's productivity." Productivity increases are good. Trade and productivity improvements are reasons why the number of Americans who do have jobs has risen. "We're at historically high manufacturing job openings," says Lincicome, "Manufacturers in the United States say they can't find enough workers."The piece avoids putting off readers with detailed descriptions of the economic laws that make free trade a good thing, opting for more colloquial descriptions. For example, the Law of Comparative Advantage, which explains how free trade permits a sort of international division of labor, isn't stated explicitly. Instead the piece relies on an analogy of our national "trade deficit" to the "deficit" we all have, as individuals, with our grocery stores. There are, of course multiple ways the smear "globalization" could be addressed. For example, central planning via "free trade agreements" is not actually the same thing as free trade. And international agreements that damage the economy, such as the Paris Climate Accords, often get lumped together with misconceptions about free trade when populists attack "globalization." Those go beyond the scope of the piece, but that's fine: There is an incredible amount of ignorance about basic economics out there: One has to start somewhere... -- CAV Link to Original

An Early Friday Hodgepodge Spring break with the wife and kids, and other travel/family obligations will occupy me over the weekend and into next week. I plan to resume regular posting here April 7, although it is possible I'll be back earlier. *** 1. If -- after having to rid your person of metal objects -- you then wondered how the headphones inside an MRI machine work, wonder no more. Hint: It's not the same technology as the sound-powered telephone, another neat piece of low-tech wizardry. 2. A couple of years ago, I replaced my laptop with a Framework computer so I could upgrade components over time or make simple repairs. I'm quite happy with it so far and, because there is a hacking culture among Framework users, I tentatively plan to replace the guts of my desktop with Framework components whenever that need arises. (Folks share instructions, specs for 3-D print parts they need, and do other things that make it easier for not-quite-hackers like me to join in the fun.) As always with such things, I keep an antenna out for interesting news, and have found a someday/maybe project (video) that is too neat not to share:In this video, I will go over why I felt the need to create my custom portable all-in-one computer. Thanks to #framework I was able to put together something that's super easy to assemble and reproduce. I generally use my #dygma Defy split keyboard, but working around my Macbook Pro's keyboard was always a pain, especially on flights and other places with limited space. One of the options I considered was a Lenovo Yoga, but I wanted something more repairable. My wife thought of the name Flying Lotus, which I really like, but like I said in the video is not for everyone...At the link are the video showing how he made this, the many uses and advantages his design opens up, and a link for kit parts to make one for yourself. 3. A little over a decade ago, this Arsenal fan was overjoyed to see the English Premier League become widely available over cable in the United States. Streaming services eventually plugged whatever gaps there were in cable coverage of the Premier League, as well as other competitions: Now it's possible to see just about any game live one has time to watch. Just when I thought I couldn't be any more spoiled as a fan, I learned of the many podcasts by more knowledgeable fans. My favorite is the Arsenal Opinion Podcast which is a near-perfect mixture of analysis and entertainment for me. I follow that one regularly. My second-favorite is FourFourTwo, which is all about tactics. I don't regularly go there, but it's really good, as exemplified by the below embedded podcast about the tactics of Arsenal's "Invincibles" undefeated team of '03/'04. There has never been a better time to be a soccer fan. 4. Recently, I noted that I had learned about NewPipe, an open-source software front end for YouTube, whose interface is even more frustrating to use on a mobile device than on a computer. Having now used it on walks and on errands for a week, I highly recommend NewPipe. Who would have thought being able to easily find what you know is out there, pick up where you left off listening, or even (gasp!) be able to put your phone in your pocket while listening might be desirable features in a streaming app? (Snark aside, it's possible some "update(s)" changed default behavior to become less usable. My wife's iPhone version of YouTube can run with a locked screen, after all. But if that's the case, why should I stick with something whose maintainers are that incompetent or capricious?) To install the Android version, I recommend verifying and installing F-Droid, and using it to install and update NewPipe. Incidentally, you can dodge many of the annoyances of YouTube on a regular computer by using an instance of Invidious. (Believe it or not, although both of these tout being free of commercials, that isn't at all why I use them. I do not object to commercials, as long as I can otherwise conveniently find and enjoy what I came for.) -- CAVLink to Original

Defending Ukraine against Russia is not automagically the same thing as being in league with Klauss Schwab and the WEF. *** Today's GOP is not only not your father's GOP, it's much closer to his Democratic Party, with the lone exception being its full embrace of your great-grandfather's Christian prudery. Today alone, we have the increasingly nutty Issues and Insights -- within recent memory a redoubt of relative sanity on the right -- hawking pacifist Tulsi Gabbard as Vice-Presidential material:Image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons, license.The Samoan-American, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran, showed her plucky streak, and her inclination to think independently, while speaking in December at Turning Point USA's Americafest. She cautioned that "the future of our country is at risk." Her former party, she said, in language similar to that she used when she announced she was leaving the Democrats' fold, is "under the complete control of an elitist cabal of war mongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness." [links omitted, bold added]Following the links shows Gabbard also smearing Nikki Haley as a "neocon" and railing against "this ongoing proxy war against Russia." And since today's GOP has no real identity -- except as supposedly the opposite of whatever the Democrats happen to be at the moment -- this makes Gabbard a darling and automatically makes suspect stopping Russia's incursions against the West. To its small credit, even Issues and Insights can tell that Gabbard isn't a lockstep Trumpist. That said, it speaks volumes that the GOP is having trouble admitting that, despite Ukraine's imperfections and the fact that the Democrats somewhat support it, perhaps a proxy war now can be a good way to avert a real one later. This would entail seeing Russia as the threat to the West that it is. And after seeing "An Obsolete Alliance Turns 75" in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, all I can say is Good luck with that from today's conservatives:That the West felt entitled to dictate the forms, structures, and ideologies of the post-Cold War world was palpable to Russians and the rest of the world. It never occurred to anyone in power to ask what gave "the free world" the right to determine the forms of government, economy, and social mores in countries that were not their own. It was taken as a given that the West had such a right, and a condescending, patronizing, arrogant attitude was pervasive in the corridors of power in Washington. [bold added](1) This sounds like a leftist discussing the alleged "right" of pestholes during the Communist era to vote themselves into slavery. (2) And I guess we're supposed to not ask what gave Russia the right to just go in and take over neighboring countries? The piece is littered with errors and deserves criticism on multiple fronts (particularly using capitalist to describe either of Russia's oligarchic, post-communist political economy or that of the mixed-economy West), but my short, hot take is this: If you wanted to read a piece by a Democrat defending Russia against NATO, back when Russia was communist, you can get the same flavor by reading this piece -- against NATO, now that Russia is against "woke," never mind that their "woke" includes our enlightenment-era institutions as well as the leftist cancer that has, I admit, infected NATO. Russia has designs on the rest of Europe, and its threat will need to be addressed sooner or later. Whatever the merits of continuing NATO, it is fortunate that, whatever its flaws, it's still around now that Russia and many other authoritarian regimes have become actively belligerent. I would hazard a guess that bureaucratic alliance with less-than perfect allies is better now than no such alliance at all. During the Cold War, Ayn Rand, who emigrated from Russia, and saw that it had far more wrong with it than just communist rulers, said:Observe the double-standard switch of the anti-concept of "isolationism." The same intellectual groups (and even some of the same aging individuals) who coined that anti-concept in World War II -- and used it to denounce any patriotic opponent of America's self-immolation -- the same groups who screamed that it was our duty to save the world (when the enemy was Germany or Italy or fascism) are now rabid isolationists who denounce any U.S. concern with countries fighting for freedom, when the enemy is communism and Soviet Russia.Today's right uses globalism in a similar way: to smear as leftist, woke morons anyone who is concerned about what Russia is doing. -- CAV Link to Original

If Venezuela's Chavista regime held actual elections, they would probably lose the next one, according to a recent Wall Street Journal profile of Corina Yoris, the 80-year old grandmother whose 10-party coalition carefully vetted her and applied for her to run as their standard-bearer against Nicolás Maduro, the leftist dictator of Venezuela. This they did after their previous candidate, Maria Corina Machado, was blocked from running:Though respondents to a poll by the American company ClearPath Strategies haven't heard of Yoris, the results clearly showed that Venezuelans want change -- reflecting previous polls by other companies. In the past decade, the economy contracted 80% as oil output fell precipitously, and inflation at one point hit 2 million percent. The poll showed that an opposition candidate backed by Machado would win 49% to 27% for Maduro. Even a candidate who doesn't have her support would squeak out victory over Maduro, 35% to 27%, the poll shows. And though Maduro's regime has jailed political activists -- including seven of Machado's campaign workers -- the poll shows that 76% of opposition and undecided voters want a chance to cast a ballot. [bold added]The candidate, unlike the two incoherent old men running for President in the United States, is someone I might support. For one thing, she advocates free markets:Yoris is opposed to socialism and communism; she says that the free market regulates prices, that communism was responsible for the death of millions and that the ideology resulted with Venezuela becoming divided.For another, she is in full possession of her mental faculties, unlike her American counterparts, and uses them more effectively than most people do at half her age:Image by Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.Asked what she, as president, would do for Venezuela she recalled the democratic years when the country, though flawed in many ways, appealed to immigrants escaping Latin American dictatorships and hardship in southern Europe. "I want to give Venezuela what Venezuela has given me," she said. "I could study in this country. I could educate my children in this country. I could do all manner of things in this country." While not a politician, Yoris said she has taught classes on logic and such esoteric disciplines as the philosophy of argumentation, where she has delved into the concepts of Chaïm Perelman, a Belgian who was one of the 20th Century's most renowned argumentation theorists, and British philosopher Stephen Toulmin. Two years ago, she was named by civil-society groups to serve on an opposition-led commission, which was responsible for organizing the primary elections last year that Machado won by a wide margin. ... "I'm totally for Madrid, and people laugh a lot about this," said Yoris, who during a recent match tweeted out: "This is a scandal! The referee ends the game and takes a goal away from Real Madrid." And though she fires off messages about blackouts and the work of Albert Camus, she also takes photos of the fog-covered hills, flowers and fruit stands overflowing with Venezuela's bounty. She explained that her desire is to show beauty. "It's a message of joy because we've been submitted to a very ugly dark cloud," she said. "So I try to send out a message of optimism, and I take photographs of my surroundings." [bold added]Oh, and she is also much more benevolent than the two bitter old men we have here. Sadly for Venezuela, the Maduro regime, scared of this kind, elderly lady and the optimistic, sunny view of the world she represents, has, predictably, blocked her election bid, like the cowards that they are. -- CAVLink to Original