Bloody Spring

Austin Bay is predicting a bloody spring in Afghanistan. He expects Talibani leaders to be gearing up for a major offensive in the next two months, and speaks with an ambassador who remains angry at Pakistan for allowing terrorists to train there.

His long-term outlook is more hopeful.

Global Warming Observations

You will not often catch me linking to the NY Times, but this Tierney article linked over at Instapundit has some interesting features. The writer believes that Global Warming is anthropogenic and that we should act on that, but he doesn't think catastrophic scenarios are at all likely. He also recommends we encourage private solutions.

I think that's about right. I would add in my long-term fondness for the low-environmental impact solutions of ANWR and offshore drilling, plus nuclear power. Oil shale/tar sands are excellent long-term solutions, but still need some development, both economically and environmentally.

Half-Syllables and Barrow-Wights

Update: We may have guests from the Worcester area, likely because I used the word "Worcester" in this post. The closest I lived to Worcester was Sudbury, but we may have others among the regulars. This blog usually focuses on language history, book reviews, and cultural/political commentary. Recently I have been railing against the perfidy of the Arts & Humanities Tribe in America. Thank you for dropping by.

Readers from northern New England will appreciate that I once found someone's place of birth entered in the computer as Wusta, MA. It took me a moment. Obviously, the person entering it wahnt from around heah.

We think of syllables as being a quantum phenomenon, coming in discrete packets. It's either one syllable or it's not, there's no such thing as a half-syllable, we think. Consider the word "barrels." All of us tend to swallow that second syllable a bit. Even someone such as I, who has an overprecise pronunciation even in everyday speech, would say "barruls," but very nearly "barr'ls." At the other end people in some regions come perilously close to saying "bairls;" yet not quite. There is a whisper of a second syllable even then. If the two extremes of pronunciation are 1.2 syllables to 1.8 syllables (there's nothing official about that. I just made it up), then calling it a one-and-a-half syllable word makes sense.

In fact, an enormous proportion of our words are like that. The gradual elision of unaccented syllables is how we get from "God Be With Ye" to goodbye, or to the pronunciation Wuster from the original spelling "Worcester." Learning phonetic reading and having dictionaries fools us into thinking that a syllable is an either/or thing. Jeet? for "Did you eat?" is one of those things that people learning live English learn, as opposed to those learning it in school somewhere. This is true of every language, which is why you thought you knew French but could barely understand anyone in Nice.

Writing slows language change. Otherwise, jeet would become the normal word in a generation.

Many children say "wheelbarrel" instead of "wheelbarrow." Not until people see it in print do they start to change this. Unless you had especially persnickity parents who corrected you on such minor solecisms, you probably did not even hear the difference until you saw it in print. And why would you? The item in question looks as if it could be related to barrels somehow. Half a barrel on a wheel: wheelbarrel. If your ear happened to catch the slight bear-o difference, your young brain would find nothing to fasten it on. There's certainly nothing about bears or bare things about it.

If it weren't in print, we would have switched to wheelbarrel long ago. "Barrow," if we have heard the word at all, means a mound or hill. It pretty much went out of use centuries ago, but archaeologists brought it back for technical purposes. It had pretty much lost any other meaning until Tolkien, always searching for archaic words to embed a sense of long history into his naming and narrative, brought it back for barrow-wights (wight is person or creature) and barrow-downs.

We leap to the conclusion "ohh, wheel-barrow! to wheel something up a hill!" but we would be wrong. Okay, I leaped to that conclusion years ago and I was wrong. This is a completely different kind of barrow, from a completely different root. That second kind of barrow comes from a root meaning "to carry," and is related to bear, bier, borne, born, bairns, and those sorts of carrying and children things.

The first kind of barrow comes from a root meaning a high and/or fortified place. Thus German Berg and Burg, and our iceberg. Tacking b-rg on to the end of names is common in Germany and Scandinavia. By the time the root was brought over by Angles and Danes to England, it was already -bury (Avebury, Shrewsbury) or even -by (Granby, Derby). And here we come full-circle again on the partial syllables. Danbury has two-and-a-half syllables. If it weren't written down it would have become "Danbry" centuries ago.

Buying Indulgences

I know nothing about this site except for this link. I did think it was an interesting update on carbon credits, to compare them to buying indulgences. Ouch.

Mark Steyn’s America Alone – Second Meander

It looks like we should have had more children.

I should have mentioned in my first post using Mark Steyn's America Alone as a starting point that the book is about world demography and its implications for America. Specifically, it notes that Muslims, not only in the Middle East but throughout the world, are still having lots of children -3.5 per woman - while the western democracies, with a few notable exceptions, are having very few children - 1.1-1.7 per woman, well below the replacement value of 2.1. These numbers, coupled with the cultural aggression of Islam compared to the cultural insecurity and passivity of the west, is a recipe for disaster for Western Civilization. Steyn writes off Europe as already essentially lost, though its cultural heritage will allow it do do some good in its death throes over the next 50 years.

America he believes will not fall prey to the same evils for several reasons. But we will feel the pinch, and we will not have our traditional allies. America's problem is not that it imperialistically exports its culture, as is commonly supposed, but that it exports only the accidents of its culture: Coca-Cola, KFC, Britney Spears. There's an important point here. Though the disaster movies, Fahrenheit 911, and Lord of the Rings represent very different parts of Anglospheric culture, they are all identifiable ours, but it's not translating to other cultures. Moore slams our president, in fine American tradition. Islamic societies also learn to slam our president, instead of looking at their own governments. Not the same lesson.

I digress, sorry. All young people should read Steyn's Introduction and 1st chapter if nothing else. This is the world that they will probably live in. Steyn is not simply projecting what might happen to the population of Europe and the Arab world, he is noting the demographics of the people who have already been born. The European population between 0-20 looks absolutely nothing like the population which is 60-80. In 20 years, the former will be adults, the latter will be dead. Steyn's numbers suggest that American young people should go forth and multiply, and you've already wasted too much time. Heck, even I regretted not having more children, and I'm in my 50's.

I had said not long ago that if I had to do over again, I would have two more biological and two more adopted children, for a total of eight. My wife is less convinced that would have been so brilliant. Okay, one and one, then, making a total of three bio and three adopted. Easy to say now, perhaps. Now that they're adults and do interesting stuff and can make their own sandwiches and buy their own donuts, they're much more fun. Adding in another child between Jonathan and Ben, then tacking on a sixth child, one younger than Chris, might have been more of an emotional strain than we wanted.

Getting two more kids was one of the absolute smartest things we ever did, though. Great for America and the West, too. For Romania, not so much. We took some of their young talent, which they're having trouble keeping anyway. Not that they would have appreciated J-A and Chris, of course. But they were more valuable than they knew.

Something About Amanda

I kicked Amanda Marcotte yesterday. Not unfairly, perhaps, but a definite kick. Some of this morning's church service reminded me of one of my own lessons learned, and I thought it fair to point out a sin the Pandagon blogger has not committed.

The verses of Scripture about the Unforgivable Sin state quite explicitly that blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is the one really big, beyond-the-palings sin. As Amanda Marcotte's most famous vile comments about God include mention of the Holy Spirit, it would be easy to conclude that she has stepped into the worst of all possible territory. But she hasn't. What the verses about "saying a word against" the Spirit of God seem at first glance to mean, is a bending of that Scripture's intent, and one which we often fall into. As the Second Commandment - taking the Lord's name in vain - is not about swearing and using bad words, so also is the Unforgivable Sin not about saying vile things in regard to the Holy Spirit. There is in fact a strong connection between the Second Commandment and the Unforgivable Sin. No surprise, when you think about it. Something really high on the New Testament "you'd better not" list should be expected to also be well up on the Old Testament "thou shalt not" list.

The Second Commandment is actually about putting words in God's mouth: forging His signature under your own ideas. The Unforgivable Sin is about public renunciation of what we ourselves know via the Holy Spirit; that is, conveniently teaching that something is of God which we ourselves know darn well isn't. The longer we do this, the more we convince ourselves that Sin A is not very important, then not important, and finally, is not a sin at all. It is the denying of what we do know to be good, and walking into evil. When we no longer acknowledge a sin, we can no longer confess it. What we cannot confess cannot be forgiven.

So. Ms Marcotte uses lots of four-letter words and says insulting things about God and the Church. That is not the same thing, even if the words "Jesus Christ" or "Holy Spirit" work themselves into her "Opus #57, Variations in the Key of F-bomb." God seems to regard unbelievers who happen to be clever and original in their vileness as a fairly minor problem. He gets more exercised about believers who claim to speak for Him.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I wrote about this last February.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

This has nothing to do with swearing, dammit. (I just threw that last in for effect.) Bad language is hardly ever mentioned in the rest of the Bible, so why would people think that God would make it #2 on the Big Chart and then forget about it? Even making promises with oaths -- the other swearing -- gets very little play, Old Testament or New.

False prophecy, now, that subject comes up a lot, with many variations played on the Carillon of Scripture (that metaphor didn't work out as well as I'd hoped). And that, my friends, is what is referred to as taking the Lord's name in vain is here. It means no forging God's signature under your own ideas. It means being very cautious and considered about making any claims that what you teach is The Gospel, or The Authentic Gospel.

Continue Reading Here

That Edwards Blogger

For those who have been following the Amanda Marcotte - Pandagon - John Edwards controversy, Iowahawk has the idea to run it as a musical based on "My Fair Lady." Strong language advisory - which you would know anyway if you've been following the story. Ms. Marcotte is apparently unable to type for long without scatological references emerging onto the page.

If you like that sort of thing, Iowahawk has another sendup of the affair on his main page.

Mark Steyn’s America Alone – First Meander

The Wymans have a tradition that graduating from highschool grants the privilege of choosing a family trip. This seemed quite sensible when there were only two potential candidates, and both were Eurocentric Arts & Humanities Tribe like their parents. Adding in two sons who were actual Europeans added in the expense of two more trips to Europe – not to mention additional Christian school and college costs.

But it’s Part Of Their Education, a phrase that comes to encompass just about everything you think would be good for a child, and we have gotten some great trips to Europe ourselves out of the package. The first son chose London, Scotland, and points between by rented car in 1997. The second son chose Dublin, London, and points between by rented car in 2002, at which point we had the two Romanians as well. The older of the Romanians chose Budapest and Transylvania. This got a touch messy because three of the boys were working at the orphanage and clinic in Beius in 2005 for greater or lesser amounts of time. Their obligations and different interests separated us slightly throughout, so that we had parallel trips that were semi-shared. Because of airline problems, we all got some time in Shannon as well.

This year will be the last family trip, and Chris has chosen Munich and Oradea. The trip is scheduled around the wedding of their once-lost older brother, so we will be going to a Romanian wedding as more than spectators this time.

That is a great many places, and many more were on various lists one time or another as possibilities for visiting: Luxembourg, Belgium, Versailles, Constanza, Paris, Greece, Italy, Zurich, and some I have forgotten.

According to the emerging demographics, if my sons continue the tradition, a lot of European cities may be off the list for this type of educational travel. On the basis of the people they have right now, with no further immigration, plus the likely projected children, many of them will be more than 50% Muslim cities. Plus, the Muslims there will be more radical, insular, and intolerant than those you would find if you planned a trip to a Muslim city such as Cairo or Istanbul. And with such concentrated districts wielding political power, the nations themselves will be only halfhearted allies in any War on Terror. They will be sources of danger for Americans, not respites from it.

That’s Mark Steyn’s projection, anyway. The numbers seem to back him up on this. There will still be the England or France or Holland you have a picture of in your head, but it will be mostly rural, and populated by old folks. It’s hard to imagine that the big draw tourist attractions – the White Tower, Tower Bridge, the Eiffel Tower – will be shut down or destroyed. They will still be there attracting Europhiles from around the world, selling souvenirs in the shops, and if the guides dress differently, look darker, and have non-British accents, what of it? The museums may give you more trouble, as much of what you came to see at the Prado or the Louvre will no longer be on display. Much of it offends Islamic sensibilities, and there are already items being quietly removed and stored in the basements.

Don’t expect the charming pubs, cafes, and beer gardens; the high fashion, edgy theater, and nightlife will have moved out as well. I admit, it seems impossible to me.

If it were the eastern Europeans, Indians, or West Indians who were taking over it would be a quite different picture, we think. Characteristic Britishness or Germanness would change somewhat, as it does in every generation, and take on darker hues or extra foods. But it would be a permutation of the old culture mixed with newer strains. Islam is quite opposed to this. That religion’s intent is to provide a replacement culture, not a blended one.

So says Steyn, and his data is persuasive. My younger readers might want to get to Europe fairly soon, if you want to still observe the cradle(s) of Western Civilization. The native Belgians and Italians aren’t having many children, you see, and many city schools are already predominantly Muslim. Muslim families do tend to have children. There are no factors which suggest either the native European or Muslim habits will change on this.

It is unwise to project much further than the next generation, but it does bear at least passing consideration. Native Swedes and Spaniards are moving to other places, and the number of their children continues to project down. Europe 2040 - what do you see? Why do you think so?

Steyn is not nearly as pessimistic about America, and I will meander through that topic sometime soon.

Humor and Emotional Balance

I haven't reprised anything from Feb 2006 yet.

These three articles were not written as a series, but I must have been thinking much about how humor is indicative of emotional stability, among both individuals and nations.

There are two essays on Self-Mockery, here and here.
And a third on The Punchline as Stereotype.

I had forgotten it was exactly a year ago that Ben worked at the Olympics in Torino. That seems like two years now.

Softball King Eddie Feigner Dead at 81

I loved watching this guy. Saw him on TV a few times, and at Gill stadium in 1968, I think.

Eddie Feigner, the hard-throwing softball showman who barnstormed for more than 50 years with his "The King and His Court" four-man team, died Friday. He was 81.

Feigner, the former Marine known for his trademark crewcut and bulging right arm, died in Huntsville, Ala., from a respiratory ailment related to dementia, wife Anne Marie Feigner said Friday night.

With a fastball once clocked at 104 mph, Feigner threw 930 no-hitters and 238 perfect games and struck out 141,517 batters while playing more than 10,000 games. He was inducted into the National Senior Softball Hall of Fame in 2000.

continue article here

The Ideas, and Why They're Wrong

This is the promised followup to the last post.

If we fight, we are becoming just like our enemies. Well, no. The express train to becoming like our enemies is to be conquered by them. A slower, but equally reliable train, is to negotiate with them. This is so painful for people to hear, but there is no way around it. It can be necessary to negotiate for a dozen reasons: becoming like your opposite number may not be so bad, as in the case of allies; the alternative cost, in lives, money, or freedom, may be so high that concessions may be worth considerable sacrifice; your negotiating position may be so strong that your loss is negligible, even if you negotiate badly. But becoming like your enemy by fighting him is slow, very slow indeed. Perhaps if we were to fight a hundred Al Qaedas over a century we would become like them. Yes, true; perhaps even inevitable. But consider the UN and the OFF, child rape scandals, and refusals to protect who they are sent to protect. Has the organization become more like the Western democracies over time, or more like the countries it was supposed to contain?

The answer is obviously the latter, with one exception. The UN has become very much like the A&H Tribe of the western democracies in how it does business: it talks; it negotiates; it issues position papers; it travels places; it has conferences. It has adopted the style of the good guys, but the actions of the bad guys. The Arts & Humanities Tribe believes if we just “stay the course” with the UN, it will eventually adopt all those virtues we hope for it. More cynically I would say: the A&H Tribe likes the way the UN operates, because they get to be the stars. Talking is their turf. They think they can eventually win those others over if we just give them more time. The chess club thinks it can have a chance against the skinheads if they play chess. They certainly don’t have a chance if they fight. They don’t realize that after you beat the skinheads at chess, they will still beat you up. And, they will be a little better at chess, too, but you won’t, having had your concentration impaired. With your new head injury, you will become a little more like them, just weaker.

If we understood their culture and grievances better, we could address those, instead of always fighting. No again. In a limited sense it is always true. Even insane regimes like North Korea have some core of legitimate grievance, or cultural quirk that makes their actions look more reasonable from their perspective than from ours. But this is seldom what drives the conflict. People want to be in charge, that’s what drives the conflict. Sometimes it is a person, sometimes a family, sometimes a class or profession. I don’t doubt that many Muslims have some genuine religious desire to see other peoples brought into their faith because it would be good for them. But the baseline point is, if there is Muslim dominance in a country, which is the top group? Muslims who can give evidence that they are really, really devout. By having fought in jihad or sent a son to be blown up or something. And who would be in charge of that group? Imams. Quickly now – who is giving us the most trouble worldwide? Funny. It’s exactly the subgroup that benefits most. Go figure.

Even legitimate grievances can be rationalizations. People have to have some narrative of why they hate you, and a partially true one is better than an utterly false one. In the current instance, though, we are dealing with nations which have no free press, know their own histories very poorly, and believe absolutely insane things about other countries, religions, and cultures. If they had a legitimate grievance, how would they know? Of course it feels legitimate to them. But in the case of say, Palestine, the average age is less than 16. The women have received almost no education. Half of the adult males do not have any kind of a job to give them any perspective on how the world works or dealing with others. The very few tell stories to the many about why they are poor and miserable. They plead to not merely a small responsibility, but zero responsibility for what has happened to them. 95% of the population has no reasonable idea of what reasonable grievance they might have. The other 5%, who have the occasional good reason on behalf of the people, are the same who oppress the people, and have the most guilt on their hands in dealing with other nations. Why should we pay any attention to any of it? Legitimate grievances should be addressed after victory, so that they do not metastasize. Once someone has declared war on you, the discussion of legitimate grievances is suspended.

America (or Western Civ, or Corporations) has done bad things to these people, so we don’t have any right to fight them. Forgive me for referring you back to my Surprise #2 essay before we go any further. Don’t you mean some other western tribe that you dislike for your own reasons stands accused? Business? The Church? I don’t recall hearing the complaints where the publishing industry, or American colleges, or environmentalists, unions, or Hollywood has hurt them, though these are also manifest. Depart from me.

For those still here, or those back after repentance, you have some good points here. There have been actions by various representatives of the West, individual and collective, which are deplorable, and I don’t pretend to defend them. They have also done this with the complicity, encouragement, and even assistance of governments. Agreed. But notice: they have done far worse to each other. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. If we learned that 5.5 million of that was various Jewish groups killing each other, would that let Nazis killing the other half-million off the hook? Not in a pure sense, but we would certainly no longer be very worked up about it now, would we? So with all that we have supposedly done to Muslims and the ME over the last century, remind me again how most of the untimely deaths happened. Not because of us. I also find that people are quick to jump to conclusions about what's oppression, finding trade agreements oppressive which the oppressed would be saddened to lose; or treating the normal diplomatic and economic pressures that all nations use on each other as somehow unfair. But even absent those, there are plenty of examples of real exploitation, real corruption, real destabilization.

My answer may take a moment to absorb. That is no basis for foreign policy decisions. Because such things certainly impact other nations’ view of us, and influence their willingness to trust us or cooperate with us, they affect the practical applications of foreign policy. We might regret today what we winked at Bloviated Chemical doing in 1995. We might rue that we had the CIA pay guys to overthrow in 1986 the guy we want back today. We might call ourselves stupid, or shortsighted, or a hundred other names. But it does not affect one whit what we should decide now. Nor should it affect what that country decides now about us. People being what they are, we will both probably continue to be grateful or resentful of past actions. But it’s immaterial. We do what’s right today, and so should they.

We have had ambiguous relations with government X in the past. This is a derivative of the discussion just above. It is brought out now because of our (overstated) connections with Ba’athist Iraq in the 80’s, or Muslims in Afghanistan in 1979. The answer is the same: Avoiding irony is not a basis for foreign policy. Only Arts & Humanities people would think it was, being addicted to the narrative of events rather than its actuality. Countries switch sides mid-war, and for good reasons, never mind decades later. You do it yourself at work or in your extended family on the basis of a single conversation. Thinking in those terms is not simply inefficient or limiting. Thinking like that is very near the root of your disorder.

But wouldn’t it be better if people tried to negotiate instead of going to war? Yes. What’s your point?

Our real reasons for this war/policy/treaty/agreement are not what the government and its supporters say they are. They really want to do this to a)get elected, b)buy cheap shoes, c)prove they have penises, d)reward a constituency, e)distract attention from the homeless hamster bill. Maybe so, but the level of evidence for such an accusation should be pretty high, don’t you think? Halliburton has thus far lost money on Iraq. We could have bought oodles of oil from Saddam on the sly and saved a bundle. Offering explanations that would be devastating if they were true is actually quite easy. Takes about three minutes to think up a good one. Even after all this time, with everyone having had a go at it, watch: George Bush and the neocons wanted to go into Iraq because…it gives them greater control of all that natural gas in Turkmenistan (27 seconds), Saddam had (or Maliki has) blackmail on Dick Cheney (22 seconds), it’s a distraction to push through legislation that will protect Bechtel from prosecution (73 seconds), it’s a way of forcing Russia stay neutral about its former satellites (41 seconds). Do you think it’s actually hard to be a journalist or a talking head?

Showing that your secret motive decoder is better than the masses’ is not really intelligence, it’s just cheap cynicism. Sorry to break the bad news.

Surprise #2 - The Soul of America

Sometimes one states an unremarkable idea and finds it gives offense. This time, I had withheld full-throated statement of an idea for some time, only to find that once uttered, the supposed offendees agreed with it. Perhaps that's a social-skills problem on my part...

Conservatives complain that the left is not serious about the War on Terror, but is treating Bush and the neocons as the enemy. Put less confrontively, the left is fighting a different battle - one for the soul of America. I had thought the overdramatic S of A phrasing would raise hackles, as if I were saying it sneeringly or ironically. But, as with my "God & Country Tribe" phrasing, the people named did not find it ironic at all, and thought I had summed it up nicely. Yes, exactly.

Conservatives are not uninterested in this Soul of America idea, and some religious conservatives also consider it more important than the War on Terror. In the long run, it is of course the larger issue. If America isn't itself, what's worth keeping about it? America is founded on a set of ideas about how government should work and people should live. If those are gone, we will retain some fondness for the appearance of the Grand Canyon, or the existence of hot dogs; the flag might still stir us and we might root for American teams in international competition, but really, what would be the point? Simple nostalgia.

There are difficulties with this Soul of America idea, however. First, it is not simply a matter of working very hard and behaving very nobly about things we all agree are the right way of the soul. We don't entirely agree on what those aims are. In this it is different than the situation faced by the Old Testament Israelites. After some grumbling and pouting, they all knew quite well what was being asked, and that they hadn't been doing it. Nor is our difference a mere matter of where to start. While prioritizing would certainly be a matter of disagreement among us, we would soon come to issues where we pulled in different directions. It's not the same.


This argument over the soul of America, then, would resemble a group of wealthy Englishmen discussing Empire after dinner over the port, while poor young Tommy is out fighting somewhere. This is, in fact, precisely what some conservatives suspect liberals of doing, and accuse them of being unserious, or blind to the real dangers.

There is an unfortunate amount of truth in this. The Arts & Humanities Tribe - my tribe - wants very much to be the well-fed gentlemen with the port. They do want someone else to do the fighting, as evidenced by how seldom their own sons and daughters go into the military. But even more, they want to be the gentlemen listened to. They are good at this talking, understanding Empire, and drinking port, and the fact that the government, heeding the words of mere business interests and military advisors, isn't doing as it's told. Not like the old days when those chaps knew their place.

After being so harsh on them, it is fair to point out that there are more reasonable and unselfish motives for liberals to want to have this other battle first, making my analogy of the bloated gentlemen quite unfair. The difficulty with this is that those other motives, noble at first glance, lead back to the same place if one follows them out to their end.

There are two parts to the battle, deeply interrelated. The first is the mere tribalism of people wanting to be Top Tribe of the Nation; the second is the ideas or methods of the tribe, which it believes are an objectively superior way of running things. The Arts & Humanities Tribe believes they are all about the latter, acknowledging little or nothing of the former in its motivations. My recent contention is that the former - the mere tribalism - is primary for the A&H tribe as a whole. For some, it is more than the primary motivation, it is the entire motivation, or something darn close. But for those others, might they not well say: Even if our motives are tainted, the ideas are superior. The rest is footnotes.

Fair enough, and I will deal with the ideas as I can, though you can find many others who do it better. (An all-star list, BTW). But first, we should deal with the mere tribalism. It is everywhere, and completely unacknowledged. That in itself should raise alarm bells. When people acknowledge a bias or an ill motive but say they are taking it into account, we might give them the benefit of much doubt. But when they insist that the Rhinoceros in the living room is not merely small, but nonexistent, we cannot trust what they say about any matter pertaining to the house. They hate George Bush's accent, they hate his ranch, they hate that he mentions his faith. They hate NASCAR, country music, southerners. They are sure that his supporters are racist, sexist, homophobes, but the evidence they give is along the lines of not saying the magic words about these pieties; they think middle America doesn't have passports (they mean, doesn't agree that the European elites have much to offer. All those military guys and people doing business overseas don't really count), doesn't support the Theatre, doesn't have any really good Thai-Italian fusion restaurants.

If you think I exaggerate, you don't read or listen closely in the traditional media. There are websites that devote their entire energy to cataloging these things, and many others that give it a shot amidst their regular work. The comments sections of political sites produce hundreds of new examples every night. It is not merely a fringe phenomenon, it is present in all the respectable left-of-center weeklies, dropped in sentence after sentence. If you don't see it, then you can't see it, and there is really nothing one might say to you. You need to drop current events altogether and go read something from another era to clear your mind: Orwell, Lewis, Mencken, Montaigne, Swift, Plato. Anyone, really. You need this so desperately. I'll make it easy for you. None of them is a neocon. None of them voted for George Bush. Ever.

On to the ideas: but this has gone long enough, and I know you folks skim. I will address them in a separate post.

The Long Post You May Want To Skim - Or Miss

Update: GM Roper linked to this, and he may be correct that this is the one you want. But I thought it long, and filled with family lore that may be charming but useless to you, so I have done a shorter, more entirely sociopolitical, essay here.

Update #2: My uncle replied. He didn't understand what I was driving at.

It starts on family culture, ends on American Tribal Politics. I will summarize the latter soon under "Surprise #2." For those scoring at home, I am in my 50's - the uncle I write to here is 80. The Arts & Humanities Tribe may be changing in the younger generations.

I agree with much of what you last wrote. I have an angle on it that is quite different, and I hope fascinating, however, that weaves in a fair bit of family history. I have a tape of Selma that I started listening to in preparation for this, more for flavor than information. I made the tape during the Gethsemane Lutheran 100^th anniversary in 1982, when I was writing the history of the church. I felt some obligation there, as Louise had done the history for the 75^th, and John August for the 50^th. Family lore: Louise was one of, if not the first child baptized in the church. Before that, most baptisms were done at home on pastoral visitation, but whoever was pastor then thought that babies should be brought to the church now, not like farm people in the old country. Jean was baptized there, of course, and (more from Louise pressure than anything, I imagine) so was I in 1953 even though we didn’t live in New Hampshire. Tracy and I started going to Gethsemane in 1976 and were there 8-plus years. So Jonathan and Ben were baptized there as well, fourth consecutive generation, which I imagine is unusual these days. I also imagine the streak ends there.

That whole Lindquist line has definite characteristics that got obscured by the surname changes. The whole batch of wordsmiths comes down that root, from Henning editing the Swedish newspaper in Manchester, Sunday School Superintendent forever, librarian Jenny and her books and editing, female poets dying young, John August – a shopkeeper – is the person who actually puts pen to paper for the history, guys running off to teach in Brazil, women starting radio shows in the 30’s or selling used books, law profs, theater profs, Louise walloping every living creature at crosswords and jeopardy – except maybe her sisters; editors of the Concord Monitor (Mike’s son Sven is growing big in competitive bridge in DC. Where’d he get that?). All those cousins I lost track of: Wendy, Carly, Joey; Katie and David; just a guess- do they make their livings with words? Your James fits right into that. At the occasional work party or social gathering people will be trying to do some lame song parody that’s just horrible. So I scratch one off in 30 minutes and everyone’s amazed. They don’t get it. Everyone in my family can do this. It’s so easy that we don’t even bother to do it except for each other. Not that there aren’t people who are better than we are at it – I have known several – but it’s just not even a noticeable quality. Most of us musical too – none brilliant, but mostly without effort. Just there. Mention something by Frost and Selma recites it all, plus a little anecdote you can’t find anywhere else. Need an additional verse to O Little Town of Bethlehem to fill time while the shepherds move offstage? No problem.

Even when they go into business they don’t go into business – they teach it. They write about it.

Can you cherry-pick such data from any line? Not the Wallaces or Smiths. Maybe this is actually a Nordstrom thing, but I doubt it. The Wyman line has all blueberry farmers and fishermen from Nova Scotia – not a rumor of anything literary until Al hits the stage at college. All my father’s lines, all Maurice’s lines, show nothing of the sort. I don’t find this in Tracy’s family on any line.

It’s very tribal. It’s a branch of the Arts & Humanities tribe which has been prestigious for so many generations, especially in New England. Our people moved right into that, got christened as members because we had so completely absorbed the values that having poorly educated mill-working forebears meant little. If we’d been dark, or Catholic, it would have been harder, but still in our reach. The marrying-ins were a mixed bag, of course. But for Jonathan and I, it came down straight Lindquist, and we married a librarian and a writing prof. No surprise. What other cultural influence was there going to be? Not my Dad’s culture. Not Maurice’s culture. Carl Nordstrom had died 40 years before. So when we got a new culture – Ken’s, which is as solidly Business Tribe as any in America, both before him and after – and it came with all the emotional baggage of a guy who wanted a pretty young wife but not so much her children – easy to reject and revert to the culture we knew: Jean, Selma, Louise, Esther. That, and the books they were always putting in our laps, was our culture.

New England always had plenty of that A&H Tribe around, as did just about any good liberal-arts college in the 70’s, so I always had a host of natural slots to fit into. I can find my people, if there are any around. There is such an overabundance of them online that I have to cull my bookmarks every few months. I can’t fit in anywhere near enough people I want to read and argue with.

Well, some funny things happened to the Wordsmith Tribe along the way. These things never stand still, and the ideas of classical liberalism, conservatism, freethinking, open-mindedness, cultural preservation and the like got all jumbled. People hung onto different pieces and insisted they were the True Tribe. Meritocracy is a classical liberal idea, because it contrasted with inherited aristocracy. Now meritocracy is contrasted with identity politics and is a conservative idea. Not that the old conservatives necessarily invited them in – they just sort of inherited them by default. Preservation of history and culture is an enormously conservative idea that gradually became the province of people who don’t want to preserve history and culture, but to change how you view it. Being a liberal used to mean allowing kids to be exposed to new ideas, like poetry that didn’t rhyme, or political systems we didn’t follow. It still has a lot of that meaning, but now tends to operate in reverse. We’re not in danger of kids learning too much hagiography about dead white males and founding fathers anymore. My Romanian sons were taught who Harriet Tubman and Chief Seattle were (and that one frosts me, because the speech is an urban legend written in the 70’s. My irritation at the nasty irony of children being born under Ceaucescu being taught fabricated but politically correct history was completely opaque to their teacher. “But it’s important for them to learn about culture from another point of view!” True. How about from one that actually happened, instead?), but Lincoln got missed. So did Franklin. Good thing I sent them to Christian schools first, where they still teach that retrograde stuff. The change is less visible in the upper-middle-class school districts, too, where the teachers tend to some natural conservatism of what they were taught themselves, and assign accordingly. The recommended summer reading lists are insane examples of identity politics over quality. Fortunately, no kid has ever read those books.

It’s not “liberals” who have done up these lists and texts. It’s part of our old Arts & Humanities Tribe, the Wordsmith folks who have done that. And it’s the part that considers itself the True Tribe to represent the Arts & Humanities, even though someone like a Buckley or a Hanson, or a Kimball have a far better claim.

First political comment. The conservative sites online are chockablock full of these guys, people who you read and go, “y’know, that’s how I remember persuasive argument used to be done.” The Arts & Humanities people on the left seem to have picked up another strain of argument from their predecessors, and one I like far less well.

Those parvenus from the social sciences have done their bit, of course. Where they want to overlap with the A&H Tribe has become the new center of gravity for the humanities. They are often arts and literature wannabees, who have only vaguest idea what went on before their own college years, but are very up on Current Stuff. Following the changes in NPR over the years gives some idea of it. NPR used to be the old-line liberals who wanted classical music, light jazz, and talky professors and series documentaries. Would that be conservative now? Sort of. Either way, it’s gone. NPR is now the province of people who are very proud of themselves for not falling for the advertising that the masses do – they fall for another kind of advertising (I still like some of NPR, BTW. But they just can’t help themselves).

The social science people accentuated a tendency already pronounced in the A&H Tribe: argument by sneer and condescension. The Twains and Menckens of the world were fully capable to sustained argument and often exhibited it. But that tendency to merely ridicule was present even then. It makes some sense. Those who live in a world of words are very sensitive to tones of voice and choice of vocabulary. They pick up the social cues of the tribe, and enforcement of tribal standards can appear delicate to outsiders. “Yes. I’ve heard that theory.” Slam.

Now the sneer is very effective because it can sometimes be backed up. If the tone of the group tells you that your little thought is just too ridiculous to even consider, you might be tempted to fight back, if you are very sure. But those who have observed someone who actually does have an incredibly stupid idea trying to prevail against people who sneered because they really do know this stuff, know that it isn’t pretty. As a consequence, it’s a great bluff, much better than a challenge at Scrabble, because you can lose so much more. And if you are in a group who you know agrees with you generally, then so much the better, because even if you personally don’t have the ready response to this foolishness, there’s a good chance someone will, or at least appear to.

Condescension comes to be relied on as an argumentative tool for just this reason. You can usually inflict pain with little risk of retaliation. Every tribe uses it, certainly, but the Wordsmith Tribe is exquisitely skilled at it. So skilled, in fact, that they have devoted much of their talent to the wit of the riposte than to actually, er, knowing anything about the subject. It eventually can become comical, and good writers have lampooned the self-important who look down on others very effectively. But like a tyrannical government until the moment before it falls, the self-important appear powerful until the moment before you see the humor.

On to politics: I go over to Salon and several op-eds; pick up New Yorker or Atlantic (improving!) in the waiting room; follow links that people send me from NYTRB or The Nation. And those aren’t even the far-left, nutroots sites, those are standard Arts and Humanities Tribe newsletters, but the arguments all depend on sneer and condescension. I don’t mean that they use these tools to make a point bitingly; I mean that when you take the sneers out there is very little argument left. Condescension is of course most easily recognized from those one disagrees with, but it’s not impossible to pick it up from any source, even one you are sympathetic to. And it is frankly stunning how little is left of the text of some arguments once you resolve to remove sly and unfair associations.

The left has some arguments to put forward – I have seen them with my own eyes. But they seldom use them. Disdain permeates each paragraph. There are several groups which have some immunity to disdain. The best is that group which actually knows something. But we failed geniuses who ended up in some random profession have considerable immunity as well. Condescension makes my eyes light up. I eat those guys. And because I see them in a different habitat, I notice some things others might miss. And once the theory forms dimly in your mind, suddenly examples of it are popping up all over the place. Yesterday Chris Matthews let slip “I want someone for president who doesn’t own a f-ing ranch!” Really? And why might that be?

There is some evidence that the left doesn’t like George Bush and his “cabal,” “cronies,” junta,” “jack-booted thugs” for his ideas, but there is far more evidence that they don’t like him for who he is. They don’t like his tribe and the tribe who votes for him. They’re southern. They’re in (shudder) business. They profess a faith that was universal but shallow in this country fifty years ago, which means that they’re, they’re something bad.

Bush could have been part of the tribe, but defected. That is unforgivable. Kerry is A&H. Gore is A&H. Bill Clinton was marginal on that, but Hillary was tight, and they brought in all the right sort of people. Dukakis: Swarthmore, liberal arts, even if ethnic. Mondale A&H. Reagan, no way. Bush 41, a crossover. Both Business and A&H tribes.

Democrats are worried that the far left is going to defect and not vote for Hillary if she’s nominated. Ridiculous. They can’t help themselves. She’s their tribe, they’ll wail and gnash their teeth and vote for her. Is she too obviously ambitious, conscienceless, positionless? It doesn’t matter. These are the A&H members who believe themselves to be the true heirs. And they believe that their tribe should rule, because it knows more. Hmm.

This is not just some wild guess of mind-reading on my part. This is what these folks let slip repeatedly whenever they think they are talking about issues. Great example from the Harvard Crimson illustrating this this week.

You can’t turn on news or pick up the news without seeing some guy or gal from the Clinton White House working for a network or newspaper. Of course journalists liked them before. It’s their tribe. Deep sounds unto deep, as the scriptures say. The State Department? How many of those guys were Chem majors, do ya think? Or International Business?

When I made my comment about liberals fighting for the soul of America, instead of fighting terrorism, that struck a chord. I think this is most of it. Our tribe should rule, as it started to in 1992. 1994 was described as – yes – a coup d’etat in the mainstream press. Repeatedly. Doesn’t that strike people as a little fevered, a little odd? The fury and resentment from 1994 played out throughout the Clinton years, and into the 2000 election. The Republicans had stolen, had usurped, had somehow cheated their way into power. They had played on base prejudices. They had tricked people with clever advertising or something. They had done something funny with the votes. The fact that the evidence for these things was bizarre didn’t matter. People knew that something had been stolen, they just weren’t sure how. It wasn’t right, and all sensible people knew it.

So then it had to ramp up from there. Cue Darth Vader music under whenever Cheney is mentioned. If you have access to a few years of Time and Newsweek covers at the library, just browse them for the last few years. Yes, the conservative’s face is half in shadow, or peering darkly in the background. He is frowning. The headline begs the question it answers. All of the left side of the internet went berserk in the fall when Newsweek had a different cover on its international and American editions. Uh, welcome to our world, guys. If you think that kind of advertising isn’t powerful, then why do people A) pay so much for advertising and B) scream like stuck pigs when it goes against them?

So all this privacy stuff comes up. These are all bananas we ate decades ago, and less information than Amazon has about you, and it’s the end of the republic. The A&H crowd in Europe doesn’t like Bush either – now there’s a surprise, so American liberals are all embarrassed and humiliated that such a man is representing us. Well, India liked him okay. There’s a billion people right there. Eastern Europe loves him. Mexico likes him better than anyone else we’ve had. And when he actually goes places in Europe, not so many seem to be upset with him. Just the A& H Tribe. Who cares? That tribe, on both sides of the Atlantic, has less military and business knowledge than our other tribes. They do know about Goethe, though.

My contention is that there is no way of knowing what the Arts & Humanities tribe, the second best-educated tribe in America (Science and Technology is first), would have for political beliefs if they weren’t advertised and manipulated into them. It’s that NPR style of advertising, of course. We don’t have commercials like those icky other stations. You’re too smart for that. Our listeners are independent thinkers. Yeah right. No one is more easily manipulated than the intelligentsia. Underneath the discussions of issues, there aren’t many issues. It’s the tribe.


"Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers?…But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1943

Surprise #1

I read another of my Christmas books yesterday. I don't recommend it, but it had some information worth passing along.

It should have been named Trace Your Roots! With DNA! And Cliches! by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak! and Ann Turner! The exclamation points, and Megan using such a surname twice should tell you everything you need to know about the style.

But it was the content I was after, so I plodded through it. It runs 270 pages, but a good editor could have had it down to 100. Okay, maybe 10, plus charts and appendices. Megan teaches you some basic genealogy. Then she teaches you some basic genetics. But what you are looking for is "What tests are available?" "What will they tell me?" "What do they cost?" "Where do I get them?"

You can have a Y-DNA test, which tells you only about the single line from sons to fathers, running up the left, or along the top, or your pedigree chart. As this is the surname line as well, it is often one of the ones people are most interested in. If you're female, you don't have a Y to test, but you can get your father or brother to take one to get equal results. If you believe your mother, that is. And therein lies the possibility for unpleasantness - not with your mom necessarily, but that many generations, everyone's telling the truth, what are the odds? About 98.7% per generation, actually. But that adds up, and finding out that all the Heinzenbenners at the reunion have a proven common ancestor, but you emphatically don't, can be dismaying to some. It can be useful for clearing up mysteries, though, like showing that the Neals of North County and the Neales of South County are related. Or not. Which can be useful for the Neal genealogists if one of the Neales has traced the line back to the 2nd Century or something. If your Y-line goes to Britain, you can get it identified as Viking, Celtic, Angle. That's cool, though it doesn't tell you which generation or where.

You can have an mtDNA, which traces the complement daughter-mother line. Sons on this line also have the mother's mitochondrial DNA, but they don't pass it on. Even more than the Y-DNA, you want to use this test to answer a specific question, or all you get is a string of numbers which mean nothing to you. They use this one to identify remains, or to figure out which of someone's wives you are descended from. This is also good if you hit up against three of the same name marrying nearby about the same time. We have that for Sarah (Sally) Moor(e) in the early 1800's. Daniel married Sarah, who died known as Sally, but which one was she? With some reverse genealogy, you might be able to find out by checking your mt against others.

Autosomal DNA - now this was the one I was interested in. It is much more general than I though it would be. It tells you what percentage (healthy margin of error - get a sibling done as well) of you is Sub-Saharan, Native American, East Asian, or Indo-European. I suppose we could easily have gotten some MicMac mixed in up in Nova Scotia over a century and a half, or less likely a Narragansett in Massachusetts, but Sub-Saharan's awfully unlikely, and even East Asian is only remotely possible with some sort of Uralic/Lappish thing. I was hoping that the test could turn up Jews, or Roma, or Turks, particularly with my Romanian sons. But if all it's going to say is 100% Indo-European, given how different we look, it hardly seems worth the bother. Wait 10-20 years on this one, when they might be able to tell you a little more. For African-Americans or those of mixed race, however, this one is quite cool, as it gives you some percentages to work from: 70% Sub Saharan African, 15% Indo-European, 15% Native American, for example. With the scantiness of some slave records, that may be the most solid news you'll see in a year's research. As many African tribes have remained discrete there, you might get a tribal match as well.

Next of Kin and DNA profiles are great for adoptees or "non-paternity events" finding out which family reunion they belong at.

The Surprise: I still don't care much. We put a lot of energy into our respective genealogies in the first 20 years of our marriage and got some great stories out of it. "Perley Wallace," who was probably not born where he was said to be, but died right under his headstone down in Londonderry, will probably bug me until I die,just because it's so ridiculous to have a person just show up on the earth like that, with no one with of any of his names born anywhere near where his death certificate says, within several decades of his age. I figure he's lying, and I want to know why, but I never will. Or he said something other than "Bethel" and something other than "Maine," but the people in Londonderry darn well heard it as "Bethel, Maine." A mystery. And we've got lots of them now, because in genealogy, every answer leads to two more questions.

Once we adopted the boys, my interest in genealogy pretty much evaporated. We've taken a couple of wild swing at it, mostly trolling the internet for easy pickings, but I just no longer find it important. I even tried to snatch up some of the boys' history when I was in Romania, but the records are closed. The people are puzzled why anyone would care. I'd be interested if they're part Hungarian, part gypsy. Why do these stupid Americans want to know these things? I thought this book would get me excited again. It didn't.

The Correspondence - Long Post Coming

I have had an emailed political debate with my uncle for nearly ten years. My son Jonathan and brother Jonathan chip in very occasionally. After an exchange over the last few days, I have spent much of today on the reply. Not that it's well-edited or anything, but it is long. For those who have been following the Tribes discussion, or who have any interest in odd questions of family culture - ours in particular - you might like this. But feel no obligation.

Imus In The Morning

Don Imus is particularly good at getting people to spill what they really mean, that they have to go back and cover for tomorrow.

He had Chris Matthews this morning complaining about George Bush. I keep telling you, they hate him because he's from the wrong tribe. Everything else is just rationalization.

Environmentalists in Romania

Still sick , but up and reading for brief periods. The Romania angle caught my eye.

Mine Your Own Business is a film about environmentalists bringing projects in poor countries to a halt. George, unemployed in northern Romania, is not amused. I am guessing that this is the Tisza River gold mine they are talking about. (Projects in Chile and Madagascar are also highlighted). You can't see the film at the Dublin Film Festival this year because it's sold out.

Norovirus

GON OUT
BACKSON
DISY
BACKSON

My Texas Readers...

... might be interested in the article by Rod Dreher.

HT: GM Roper

Why Some Ideas Stick

From Michael S. Hopkin's article today at the Christian Science Monitor, touting Chip and Dan Heath's Made To Stick.

On April 29, 1999, an article appeared in the Indiana Daily Student headlined "Indiana U. Senior Gains New Perspective on Life." You'll recognize the story. It profiled a 425-pound college kid who cut his weight in half by eating fast food. His name was Jared.

Part of the reason you know the story is that Subway – the place Jared got his veggie and turkey subs every day – turned it into an ad campaign that transformed Jared into an unlikely celebrity. (Possibly you can still picture him in his "after" version, stretching the 60-inch waist of his "before" pants between two widespread hands.)

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, By Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Random House, 289 pp., $29.95

But the Subway campaign alone doesn't explain the nearly viral phenomenon it triggered. There have been countless other ad campaigns since Jared's debuted, and none of them imprinted an unknown college student on the nation's memory the way Subway's did. Nor did many of them so swiftly and lastingly get their message across. ("Our food, though fast, is actually so healthy it can help you lose weight.")

Why not? What was it about Jared's message that made it – and him – stick?

I know I am going to love this book, I am going to learn what is in it, believe it, swear it's true, and then go back to trying to persuade people in my old boring way. Because the techniques that work won't seem "fair" to me.

Continue the CSM article here

Okay, This Time It Is

I have always felt uncomfortable with those conservatives who are so quick to cry "creeping socialism," or accuse everyone who supports a government program they don't like as socialist. All societies care for their own in some way, all governments tend to grow and get involved in stuff they shouldn't, and Socialism is usually a pretty complete deal in the countries that use it. Redistributive government probably owes a great deal to socialist theory, and some of the supporters of these programs do indeed look wistfully at more fully socialist states. Still, it always seemed fevered and crying wolf to be finding socialism in every bill.

But this one is the real deal. With worse information here. Senator Rodham-Clinton's proposal to take the profits from oil companies and do something good about alternative energy with it is actually a partial nationalizing of the industry, a la Venezuela or Cuba. She will be backtracking on this over the next few days, and she will do it artfully enough to keep the focus of anger on those evil oil companies and their obscene profits. Her interviewers and questioners will not press her very hard. Her handlers have gotten very good at keeping direct heat off her.

During her husband's impeachment proceedings, all I wanted was for him to be made to stand in the well of the Senate and answer questions. That's all I want for the wife's presidential campaign as well: to be made to answer difficult questions without being rescued. The very few times she has allowed tough questioning, she has been destroyed, and it won't be happening again. Every debate, every interview, will have requirements before each can go forward. Her people will be very skillful at making the other side look like it is making unreasonable demands.

One speculation this week - and I stress that it is no more than that, though it does fit some interesting reasoning - is that the information that Sandy Berger was removing and destroying from highest-clearance files were records that showed Mrs. Clinton to be present at National Security briefings, as she absolutely should not have been. Well, maybe. Some other explanation might also fit the facts. Will she be asked?

Psychosphere Roundup

When GM Roper linked to many of us on the psychosphere, I didn’t think to pass that along to others. There are a few things you might like. Roper himself ran across an instance of Piglet being censored out of a picture book in Qatar, and asks Piglet for comment on the whole affair.

Dr Helen, never afraid of controversy, has a post on Why Men (And Women) Don’t Want Sex.(Poignancy alert!)

Psych Pundit, who I believe is new, has articles on research showing a link between dietary sugar and mental illness, and commentary on the importance of social networks for physical and mental health. (Both should be right up BSKing's alley, anyway)

Okay, I’m Not Really A Cowboy hasn’t been posting so much lately, but has posts on the death of a friend, and gun ownership and perception of danger.

Sunday Mornings

The idea of having other gods is a commonplace for Christians. We hear sermons on it, read books about it, teach it to our children. We know from the examination of our own hearts that such things are not only possible, but the natural state of things. There is a spiritual Second Law of Thermodynamics that says we will move inexorably toward lesser, path-of-least-resistance gods unless organizing energy is put into the system.

Yet few things are less congenial to a nonbeliever’s mind. I have lost friends almost immediately after asserting to them that they do indeed have a religion, whether they recognize it or not. That may be my fault for putting it so bluntly. The idea seemed very natural and unremarkable to me, having encountered it in myself so often. To set up Education, or Comfort, or Books, or Position, or Fame, or Freedom of Action as a small deity with a shrine of its own somewhere in my life is something I do almost accidentally. Self-examination or events of the week cause me to stumble over its altar: “Hey look, there’s a god there! Darn.” These days, my computer is God's Rival.

The initial difficulty comes because people think that to be called a religion, something has to have formal prayers or worship in it. If they don’t wear special vestments, or sing songs while thinking about Something, or get together with others to agree that they have a religion and this is it, they don’t think it should be called a religion. There’s some justice in that. Religion often does mean those things, and if we’re going to use common words in a different way, we have some obligation to clarify. I have several times mentioned here that liberalism is a religion – as conservatism can also be, though that is currently less automatic. It is easy to find people online who claim that environmentalism is a religion.

Where that goes wrong is that it is running way too far ahead. What we mean is if you examine this set of beliefs closely, you will find that it resolves into something that functions like a religion. And once we have stated it in that complicated fashion, it’s obvious that no one’s going to swallow that concept at one gulp. We need to go more slowly on that.

I have several times been in the CS Lewis “Lord, Liar, or Lunatic” debate with people, and I have never convinced anyone. (Even playing an Arts & Humanities trump card and saying that it comes from a medieval formulation aut Deus aut homo malus – either God or a bad man – has been unpersuasive.) People put forward all sorts of ideas about Jesus that they say do not fall into any of those. That’s true, in its simplest sense. What I should have argued is that all claims about Jesus eventually resolve into one of those three. The resolution, however, is not always immediately apparent.

If we start from the other end, and claim that everyone has some set of animating principles by which they have learned to interpret the world, there may be less objection. “Oh well then, if that’s all you mean, then of course that’s true.” Or to take it from another angle, that everyone has things they pursue and sacrifice for that pushes out lesser goals. I think it is only through long examination and many steps that people come to a realization that their desire to focus on rescuing the environment is based on an idea of leaving some legacy (why, one asks, should we care at all?); that this proposed legacy includes an idea of how the world should look; that this should is based on some idea of nature left over from summer camp, or from ideas of stewardship, or aesthetics. Only well down the line can people begin to absorb the ideas that this particular legacy may be tied in with having only one child, or none; that it wishes most for others to look at nature as they do; that it wishes, in fact for all people to be like them in some essential characteristic; that it is, in fact, a religion, with triumphant vision, ritual, sacrifice, and the giving of oneself.

Or similarly, people believe that we should move toward a world of no violence. For what reason? (I don’t disagree, but it helps to ask the question.) It would be better now if we had a world which resolved things through negotiation, so it is natural to think that those who come after will want the same. Let us attempt to move toward that world, then.

Yet why? We don’t know the people who will be running the joint in 2100, and they may be doing a lot of junk we disapprove of. We might not like them. And they may not like us. So why bother? If we have determined visions of preserving what is valuable no matter what Dark Ages may lie ahead – and I have those thoughts often – what is the reason? I know my reasons – they spring directly from my religion.

My most radical-lib friend claims to care not a whit about the year 2100, and in one sense, I believe him. He hates George Bush and the corporatocracy because they are destroying human freedom with their fascist overthrow of democratic principles. When you press him, he cannot allow it directly, but it is clear that he wants people to live a certain way in the world – for certain values to rule. He wants, in short, for others to be like himself and his friends. He believes if all this junk and superstition is cleared away, if the powermongers are held in check and the wise people allowed to direct things, that everyone will see that this is best and be happier. When his tribe wins, all will be well. He doesn’t sing songs about his tribe; certainly he does not pray to his friends or some idea of the ubermensch that is within our grasp; he doesn’t think he goes to worship services. But it’s a religion.

“Worship at the church of your choice*” the public service TV ad used to run when I was a child. Yes, children, that was broadcast over the public airwaves in the old days, and no one thought it odd. In 1960, 96% of Americans claimed to have some affiliation with a place of worship. It may have been that faith was a mile wide and an inch deep, but it was indeed a mile wide. That line comes to me on Sunday mornings as we drive to church. One person is running – ah, a body-worshipper; another has a skimobile or ATV in tow – ah, a fun-worshipper; the café is full – another type of body-worshipper, or perhaps a socialization worshipper. This one does the crossword and reads the NYTimes Review of Books. Another goes to work to make money or rise in society. Yet another plays with the children, a gentler religion, bearing resemblance to the faith of his fathers, but insidious nonetheless. “Worship at the church of your choice.” You do.

*Those who worship on other days, no offense meant.

Defining Liberal/Conservative

For those who assent to the idea that our political labels are too inexact to be very useful, Steven den Beste's discussion of the matter is quite thoughtful. Thanks to neo-neocon for reminding me of the essay, which is several years old but still quite valid.

History Review

Stephen Bainbridge reviews Roberts' History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 , which is consciously a follow-on to Churchill's 4-volume work. It looks quite interesting, and includes this pointed quote from Lord Salisbury:

"England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war, eminent men write and speak as if they belonged to the enemy"

Groundhog Day

My younger Romanian son finds the entire premise behind Groundhog Day more than a bit strange. If a fat animal emerged February 2 in the village of Derna, they would eat him.

Pagan Worship

The gymnasium at my hospital was having its floor redone. This displaced the morning light-exercise "Movin' In The Morning" to the front lobby. Also in the front lobby last week were the people from Aflac hawking their services. They brought a giant stuffed duck to attract notice.

This created the disquieting daily display of patients and staff gathering in a circle and dancing to a giant duck. Not quite what a psych hospital wants to be doing, I don't think.

Supporting The Troops

A huge amount of this argument about “but we support the troops” stems from the vagueness of the word support. We all mean something different when we use the term. There are lots of legitimate meanings for support in this context. (Nearly) everyone wants them to be fed, unharmed, and happy, and that is a sort of support. Others are much more demanding what they consider support. If you get into this argument with anyone, whether live or online, first get away from the vagueness of this one term.

Brains And Languages

Teri – I think it was teri, let me check; yes, teri wondered over at my review of The Power of Babel whether different families of languages operated in the brain in different ways. The short answer is “No, but…”

When people are using their first language, whether that be English, Hebrew, or Maori, the same parts of the brain light up. Sort of. There is some variation among individuals on this score, so we can’t definitively say there is no difference. There is enough similarity to give partial evidence for the Noam Chomsky-Steven Pinker view that there is some built-in language hardware in the brain. (The alternate view is that the very versatile and protean brain is less specialized than that, and could be used for a thousand different things, but we all happen to use language.)

Beyond that, however, things get very interesting. Different parts of the brain light up when we are speaking, hearing, reading, or writing, even in the same language. Words set to music are stored differently. Memorized pieces are stored differently. Sign language is stored and used differently. Not completely or radically differently for any of these, (there is always overlap) but enough to be quite certain that different processes are being engaged.

If you are bilingual from early childhood, you store things differently. If you add in a language (or two) a little later but before puberty, however, it will not only store in a different way, but will “move” the first language somewhat. Languages learned after puberty are each stored in a different strip of Broca’s area.

Edward Sapir, an early 20^th C linguist, believed that the language you speak conditions your view of reality. You may have seen reference to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis or the book Language, Thought, and Reality in school. Same guy. Sapir was fascinated by the very different way that verbs are used in the Hopi language, and believed that being taught Hopi, especially as a first language, allowed one to understand some advanced physics concepts more easily than speakers of European languages could. This showed up in the 80’s as a pop-psych idea that people experienced understanding information differently, and that this revealed itself in language. Those who said “I see what you mean” were different from those who said “I hear what you are driving at” or “I follow what you are saying.” A charming idea, but one that has not been borne out by any research.

The Russian Alexander Luria, founder of neuropsychology, studied memory, brain injuries, and aphasia in an attempt to understand language and the brain in the era before there were any of the brain-scanning techniques we use today. If you have read Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, he records many of Luria’s cases and observations.

If you are interested in following this further, you can type “bilingual brain,” “aphasia,” or “psycholinguistics” into a search engine. Big names to watch for are Dahaene, Obler & Albert, and Kotik-Friedgut. As to the original question, it is Kotik-Friedgut who remarked that people who are bilingual seem to fall entirely within one of two camps, with no middle ground: those who perceive that they are a different “person” or “aspect” when speaking each language, and those who find the idea bizarre and foolish.

Links: Lighter fare: Uwashington ,Dartmouth , New Scientist , Lc Media

Journal articles: Oxford Journal, Oxford Journal, TC Library, Cambridge

Discussions:  Kotik-Friedgut ,  Kotik-Friedgut

Thought Experiment

Expressing confidence not fully felt is something we often do for each other: “You’re qualified for that job and you have as good a chance as anyone.” “Don’t worry, we’ll find her.” “They caught the cancer early, that’s a good thing.” What if we were generally the opposite?

There are several things I don’t mean when I pose the question: I don’t mean humorous cynicism; I don’t mean “what-if” worrying; I don’t mean injecting a note of warning into a conversation that is over-optimistic.What if we reflexively tried to tell others – our children, our friends - they were less competent? That the odds were more against them than we believed? If we tried to cheer people down instead of cheer them up? What would happen?

I ask even those who seldom comment to try and put in a sentence or two on this. And if you wish to write at greater length, please do. Heck, write an entire essay if you want. I’m interested.

Rules of Engagement

You are a rearguard observer of a convoy in Iraq. A car is approaching the convoy from behind at high speed. What do you do?

Running Commentary

Lots in the news today. I have seldom done a comment-as-I-go post. Which reminds me, I haven't done a Transylvania Update for a long time.

One of the commenters over at Dr. Sanity’s used a phrase I’m going to get future use from: “recreational compassion,” referring to the cheapness of a political compassion that costs you nothing, but allows you to sniff at others. It puts me in mind of a post I wrote two months ago entitled Not Good Enough.

Robert Fulghum has a mildly interesting piece about American tribal behavior. I recall similar pieces from college sociology and anthropology texts, purporting to view America from an objective standpoint. The most famous is Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema. Cute. You will notice that these essays never satirize their own tribe, but take a condescending distance. You can easily guess Fulghum’s tribe. If you have any doubt, he’s a U-U minister.

You can learn how cars skid on ice over at Popular Science, with a great video of cars slowly crashing into each other.

Over at Oxblog, Dave Adesnik links to comments by Professor Wendy Doniger about religion and politics. Her observations are an excellent example of how liberalism is a religion.

Evan Coyne Maloney remarks on Great Moments in Objective Reporting

Some folks have recently gotten a lot of mileage over complaining that their patriotism is being challenged for dissenting from the president’s views. It is not mere dissent that is unpatriotic – neither dissent nor agreement is patriotic in itself – it is specific dissents that can be termed unpatriotic. Like this one. Don Surber summarizes the Arkin-Washington Post brouhaha. Arkin is unpatriotic. Has been for years.

Wiki Edit

I am attempting my first wikipedia edit tonight. They encourage one to be bold, but I am going to be cautious. I still think like an old person and have trouble with these internets.

I saw an error in Maine-New Hampshire dialect and will correct it. I may come to like this.

If I don't wake up tomorrow, it will be because God punished me for breaking an encyclopedia.

Very Young

I work in a teaching hospital, so I am used to how young medical students, psych interns, and student nurses look. There is quite a bit of variation, of course. The student nurses are a group who are clearly concerned with looking sophisticated, which keeps them off the ridiculously young-looking end of the scale, but some 25 year-old medical students can look much younger. They are drawn from that subset of focused students who actually went to college to study, not impress their peers, which keeps a certain naivete in their countenance.

People make their share of Doogie Howser jokes, and lots of older people have discomfort with having a doctor so young asking them personal questions. It’s never bothered me much, neither here nor at my own doctor’s where I get an ARNP as often as not. Also, though my daughter-in-law’s age froze in appearance at 14 for about 6 years before resuming its normal course, she has always shown remarkable self-possession. Her courtship with my son only had that disquietingly Appalachian look at a distance or in photographs. She didn’t seem that young in conversation.

So I’m used to this. Really. I am used to medical students or second-year interns, male and female, looking 16.

But 10 years old is pushing it. The new med student looks like she’s going to come back in her jammies and ask me to read her a story. Her voice sounds like that, too. I can’t decide if I’m in a science fiction movie or a sitcom.