"Remember the Ladies"

Also from the Free Press 250th Anniversary historical discussion is the famous exchange between Abigail and John Adams, excerpted here.

Abigail (full text) ...and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

John (full text) Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight. 

I have most frequently heard this discussed as if Abigail is being half- or even fully serious about the rebellion. In that reading, John comes off as something of a prick, dismissing it so lightly. Yet while Mrs. Adams is being sincere, she is also being intentionally humorous and hyperbolic. Only in our own era, when there are women who would mean it just as it is stated, would the harsher interpretation be automatic to some. John Adams was not that stupid. If he thought this a quiet threat of what would happen in the next decade or so if the ladies were not "remembered," he would have been more diplomatic and conciliatory in his response.

These were two people who loved and enjoyed each other, and even on serious subjects put each other first. They are both correct about the underlying issue. In the realm of violence men are more likely to be dangerous and tyrannical, and women even then knew that reining that in was of grave importance to many women. But the general (though uneven) verbal superiority of women was known then as well, though scarcely acknowledged, and Mr. Adams's humor is carefully delivered. 

Don't Call Them Pirates

 From the Free Press, a story of the privateers of the American Revolution, Don't Call Them Pirates.* 

Washington had a realistic view of what motivated men. Though he himself had refused to accept a salary for his service in the Continental Army (he accepted only reimbursement for expenses), he saw the importance of marrying patriotism with appeals to the pocketbook. “I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest,” he wrote. “But I will venture to assert that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone—It must be aided by a prospect of interest or some reward.” 

I am a subscriber, and I don't know how much of the article is above the paywall. But with FP the first paragraphs are usually enough to get you started thinking, anyway.  And I have some 1-month free subscriptions to give if you get in touch with me at wymanhome (comcast). It is also why I included a section from further down.  Letters of marque and reprisal figure prominently, and a further reading list is there.

*Not that that would be a bad thing. 

Civic Knowledge

Instapundit links to a study (via Marc Porter Magee at X) by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation of the comparative civic knowledge of men and women.  Men greatly outperformed women on the task in all 50 states. However there may be something misleading about this.  It is my experience that women know more about local elections, candidates, and issues, while men follow national candidates and issues more.

Just a thought. 

High Trust and Xenophobia

I had a friend at work who lived for two years in Estonia when her children were preschoolers in the early 2000s. She and her husband were very white, Americans of German extraction and not alarmingly eccentric in any visible way. Neither were they socially accepted in any way, even though the husband brought very useful skills to the university and the wife was intelligent, open, and charming. Other mothers would decline play dates with the brightly-dressed American children, and at daycare the staff discriminated against them and did not insist that the other children treat them fairly. 

The quote that begins Are High-Trust Societies More Xenophobic? , “I found a region and a culture that finishes high in societal ‘trust’ rankings globally, yet has little trust in outsiders,” rang true for me about rural Scandinavia, but not urban.  In contrast, Romania both welcomed and rejected Americans while I was there at about that time, and I was given to understand that this extended to Western Europeans as well. But Romania was not a high-trust society under communism, even as intense nationalism simmered underneath the surface the whole time.  Yes, they hated gypsies, Hungarians, and Russians, not to mention Jews and Germans while they still had them, but they were not correspondingly high-trust with each other either. There was a Casa Noastra in the cities, quite equivalent to the Italians of similar name. Trust only for the narrowest of categories.

I would read the Aporia article with the world outside North America uppermind first, only extending it to ourselves when you finish. The relationship between ingroup and outgroup thinking is much more complicated that we would think at first, and the usual explanations shift between obvious correctness and wild misunderstanding. Peter Frost has given a gift here, of information vaguely known and understood leading to unexpected conclusions that don't fit our pictures of other nations. But...but...aren't these the same people who... Yes. Yes they are.  Their contradictions are different from ours. You will find yourself tentatively thinking "I see that, but I had not thought of it that way."

All of this changed with industrial capitalism and the rise of labor markets in the 1800s. Industrialists found that they could more easily expand and contract their workforce by hiring and firing non-family members. Meanwhile, compulsory education made young people less available as a source of labor. Children became a net cost, and their numbers shrank. Thus ended the West’s population boom, first during the 1920s and 1930s and then for good in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the rest of the world began to experience substantial population growth due to Western advances in medicine, sanitation and agriculture. (Italics mine.)

Wednesday Links

Reading comprehension is not a skill. An excellent "we've put the cart before the horse in education" essay. Critical thinking skills are not even an issue if the child doesn't know the vocabulary. Another instance in which "drill and kill" is actually life-giving. 

Crystal Widjaja. "You need to be unemployed to keep up with AI, so that you don't fall behind and become unemployed."

Voter's views on the economy 

Kids are safer than ever.  We complain that the overemphasis on safety has made children tentative and vulnerable.  Bethany checks out what we have gained for this. 

Unexpected

NH has had vanity plates for a long time, and still has a high percentage of them. I always thought it was a very sensible libertarian way for the DMV to make a little extra money for the taxpayers. Fee for service. 

 

Medical Update

I fell off a bread truck onto my elbow over 10 weeks ago driving my humerus into my rotator cuff.  Three of the four tendons are completely torn.  Surgery will be in early June, with a 50-50 chance of doing any good at all, only a 25% chance of complete restoration of function. Then 6-12 weeks in a sling, 6-12 months of physical therapy.  The PT will maximise whatever I've got, so my functioning will be at least improved regardless. 

Not very encouraging, but I have already started adapting, anticipating what I can lift and what I can't, where I can reach. One gets creative. I am not especially discouraged.  Life goes on.  

A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother

My DIL is weeding books from the town library, and discovered a songbook from 1992 which has never once been taken out. It has "Sippin' Cider," which I knew from scout camp in 1965, but none of the others were familiar.  Some of the titles were phrases I had heard before, not knowing they came from a song.

 

Foxhole Friends

Anyone can support you when you are right, moral, and making sense.  The fanatic's test is whether you can support them when they are wrong, evil, and making no sense at all.  Those are their most important supporters. 

At the Free Press I Went Undercover in France's Anti-Israel Movement. 

 I participated in conversations in which activists—who proclaimed themselves deeply committed to believing all sexual violence victims—expressed doubt about the veracity of rapes committed by Hamas against Israeli women on October 7. Worse still, some female activists claimed that “Hamas responded in accordance with its culture.” Even those who believed the victims fiercely denied the antisemitic nature of the rapes: “This is not an antisemitic rape; it is patriarchal, because it is inherent to men to rape women,” explained one activist during a feminist demonstration.

Bad Apologies

If someone says "I'm sorry IF..." that could mean they don't think they did anything wrong, it's just you being oversensitive.

If someone says "I'm sorry BUT..." that could mean they only did something that looks wrong because you did something worse that caused it.

If someone says they are sorry and feel ashamed they did something, they still might only mean they are embarrassed they got caught, not that they feel at all bad about having injured you.

Each of these might be used for a decent apology.  I don't want to fuss about someone sincerely being sorry but not getting the words quite right.  Yet these are often evasions. 

Inexcusable and unforgivable are not the same things. An evasive apology does not only not excuse wrong behavior, it is an additional injury in and of itself.  Not all behavior is excusable. Yet all call be forgiven and we are in fact commanded to. One of the main ways we go wrong is in wasting energy trying to find excuses and convincing ourselves they apply to "those who trespass against us."

Scripture tells us that the quickest and most reliable way to get to forgiveness is to recall what we have been forgiven for ourselves.  

Flogging a Motionless Nag Again

Why Would You Study That?  People who study sexual and ethnic differences in humans are often challenged for doing it at all.  Aporia plays the Basic Curiosity card. I think it would be unimportant if we didn't build so much of our legislation and government funding off false information. But once we are going to shell out large amounts for it, craft our education around it, while punishing good things and rewarding bad ones, I get interested.

We are bombarded by claims that the South Koreans educate better because they are so strict, and the Finns do so much better because the are are so laid back. Yet the PISA scores track the national IQ very nicely, including at more granular levels like Brahmins, Saami and immigrants from different countries. 

We don't want to condemn a generation of Caucasians into believing that they can't ever be an Olympic sprint or jumping medalist no matter how hard they try.  Why would you crush their dreams like that? Isn't it better that we feel relieved that the myth is true rather than letting them learn that being a coach, or a sportswriter (or Youtuber), or a manager/trainer/photographer/physical therapist/merch creator is more accessible?  Why would you limit a child's dreams in that way.

Not recognising heritability is ultimately cruel. You just didn't try hard enough. You don't have the character for that. The Man is keeping you down.  How is that better for a kid?

Up Periscope

 I remember that these were fun for about fifteen minutes.

Pouring Out

We want the people in the way of our loved ones' salvation to be cleared out.  No mercy for them. It isn't just evangelicals.  A Catholic priest told our group a story of a woman who worried about her brother, who had long ago left the Church and was now dying, who kept telling him he should call for the priest and receive Extreme Unction (which most of us call the last rites). Lord, please grant this small thing.  I am sure it will be enough. And there are Gospel accounts of Jesus operating at a distance, or indirectly simply by being touched. 

It reminds me of the many mothers talking about their child who "got in with a bad crowd."  In one sense that is true, for we are social creatures, and the accident of who was in our neighborhood or class does have an effect.  However, sometimes we are the bad crowd for someone else. Sometimes it is not the lack of a single friend or the prayer of a single sentence. Sometimes the need is thoroughgoing and huge.

I was at a funeral mass for a middle-aged man who committed suicide and was impressed how the language of the liturgy was quite different. The grace and mercy of God are poured out. It might be good for us to remember that to be the dog beneath the table waiting for scraps is enough and begging for those, but for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Father's love is poured out.

Poured out. Take your time. Maybe come back to this on Good Friday.

 

 

Boxing and Wrestling

Virginia Postrel on how live sports saved television. 

Sports were so perfect for television that many feared the new medium would devastate ticket sales. ‘It’s inevitable that sports attendance will crash to a national calamity’, declared a columnist, reporting that boxing authorities in the nation’s capital were lobbying for legislation requiring broadcasters to cover match expenses. Football coach Rip Engle, then at Brown University and soon to move to Penn State, foresaw a shakeout. ‘I won’t be surprised if there are only ten college football teams left in a few years’, he said in 1949. ‘That’s what’s going to happen if games involving the big schools are widely televised’. Others predicted the death of minor league baseball. Why turn out for the local farm team when the big leagues were on TV?

But the tiny screens worked best for visually contained sports such as boxing, bowling, wrestling, and even roller derby or horse racing.  As for the big-field sports, it is important to remember that people were already listening to baseball and college football on the radio. Even a ghosty picture was a big addition.  Basketball was just a little too large for those screens, and soccer wasn't even under consideration.  Only as the camera work greatly improved did those become popular on TV. 

Monday Links

Buying three airplane seats that can be folded into a bed, for one, two, or three people. 

Work is essential to happiness I didn't learn the dignity of work itself from high theory.  I learned it from having a low-status job.  I recall a retreat speaker once mentioning ways one could discern whether a call was from God or not. "It is usually a call downward in the eyes of the world." In my case that was necessary.

Chilean Sea Bass - It was an inspired renaming to make a fish more popular. But don't be fooled into thinking it's all PR. It does actually have to be worth eating or people will only have it once.

Immigrant assimilation proceeded more quickly in the  Deep South and West  We think first of the urban immigrants in the melting pot, but they didn't melt as quickly. They could maintain networks, neighborhoods, institutions, and languages. When there are fewer Germans around, you are less likely to marry another German.

The Coming Recession

 Niall Ferguson believes we are headed for a recession.  I'm surprised it isn't already here. 

Stunned by the economic consequences and their likely political costs, Nixon instructed Kissinger to get the embargo lifted. The secretary of state made his first trip to Riyadh on November 8. For all Kissinger’s skill as a negotiator, and for all the shuttle diplomacy he undertook, it took more than four months to get the embargo lifted, on March 18, 1974. By that time, the energy supply shock had been enough to push the U.S. economy—and much of the rest of the industrial world—into recession. Is something similar happening right now as a result of Trump’s war? 

Campaign Fund Corruption

Nellie Bowles at The Free Press, following up on Kristi Noem and the expensive border commercial.  I love her writing.

 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent nearly $19,000 of campaign funds on a psychiatrist who specializes in ketamine therapy. Caveat: We don’t know who was being treated, and we cannot say it was with ketamine. But let’s imagine for a moment. First of all, aren’t we glad that women are in public office now? Men spend campaign funds on one thing and one thing only: paying off prostitutes. Sometimes it’s paying off people who paid off prostitutes, and probably buying prostitutes. But women with a bucket of campaign funds? Women get creative. Women give us variety. A man never spent 20 grand on horses, or 20 grand on therapists who will give you an IV of horse tranquilizer so you can finally forgive your dad. You know this is just the tip of the iceberg. Botox, special appliances, ecstatic dance lessons. You know it got crazy.

A Christmas Carol

 Not the best version, but the one I grew up on. 

 

Tradeoffs Vs Failures

Scott Alexander, who is a psychiatrist, discusses the tradeoffs versus failures of schizophrenia as a jumping off point to discuss the phenomenon of tradeoffs versus flat-out failures in genes and interventions. (The title must need editing - doesn't make any sense.) He makes the good distinction that sometimes it is not the expression of a gene that is ambiguous in its fitness, but the risk of it. 

But cancer risk can also be elevated by tradeoffs: for example, with many asterisks and caveats, the higher a person’s risk of cancer, the lower their risk of certain degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, probably because cells can be set to either easy division (maximizing healing and growth) or limited division (minimizing cancer risk).

Walkin' The Dog

I have been thinking of this, because...I've been walking the dog and I can't get it out of my head.*

 *Having written that, I have suddenly switched to "Goin' out of my head." We'll see which one wins.

The Men of the Future

David Foster has a new substack post "Destroying the Passwords," about the erasure of history from a culture, starting with the example of the the Bank of England's banknotes and discussing the larger implications for societies as a whole.  It will no longer be using historical figures - neither traditional nor woke ones - but will feature scenes of wildlife and landscapes.

Because what we are witnessing today is not a debate about the design of banknotes. It’s part of something much deeper and more insidious: a slow but relentless erosion of our national culture, identity, and sense of collective memory. As I wrote nearly two years ago, across the West we are now living through what Professor Frank Furedi has called the ‘War Against the Past’.

Increasingly, a loose alliance of bureaucrats in thrall to the ‘Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality’ agenda, radical left activists, and compliant public institutions are pursuing a cultural project that seeks to delegitimise our history and heritage, and strip away the symbols that once anchored our sense of collective identity and memory. The pattern is now familiar. Statues are toppled. Historical figures are reframed as morally suspect or “divisive”. Public institutions rename their buildings, spaces, even London Tube lines. 

I thought immediately of CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man and his discussion of the Last Men.

And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes — the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct — the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future...

...but even within this master generation (itself an infinitesimal minority of the species) the power will be exercised by a minority smaller still. Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. 

As well as George Orwell's words in the mouth of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four 

Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past… The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. 

It is frankly unnerving that the atheist and Christian writing at the same time agree on so much that is worrisome about the future of mankind - and that is looks prescient still.