Pentecost

I saw the different things you did,

But always you yourself you hid.

I felt you push, I heard you call,

I could not see yourself at all

--Robert Louis Stevenson "The Wind"







                            Pentecost

Today is Pentecost:

"Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you."

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained."

This is the declaration and the charge of Pentecost, really the beginning of the organized Christian Church.

"Pentecost" literally means 50th. It is of Old Testament origin, a feast celebrated on the 50th day after the Passover feast by the Jews, and it is a feast celebrated on the 50th day after the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus by the Christians. The Jewish Pentecost was originally a post-harvest thanksgiving feast. In early England, because of its association with baptisms and the white garments, it became "Whit Sunday."

The agent of this event, the agent that infuses spiritual and evangelical life into the apostles and the subsequent Church, is The Holy Spirit--a happy improvement of The Holy Ghost of my childhood, a name that was unfortunately spooky. For that is exactly what the Holy Spirit is not.

The Spirit is the Paraclete, a Greek word that is translated as Counselor, Comforter, Helper, Encourager, or Enabler. The phrase associated with the Holy Spirit is "wind," or "breath." It is supposed to be life-giving, a wind without destructive power.

So at Pentecost, the apostles--and the Church--receive an infusion of life and a mission of evangelism, both hinged to a principle new to the world: forgiveness.




HIS LITANY TO THE HOLY SPIRIT.
by Robert Herrick


IN the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown'd in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the artless doctor sees
No one hope, but on his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When his potion and his pill
Has, or none, or little skill,
Meet for nothing, but to kill ;
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the passing bell doth toll,
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the priest his last hath prayed,
And I nod to what is said,
'Cause my speech is now decayed,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When, God knows, I'm toss'd about,
Either with despair, or doubt ;
Yet before the glass be out,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the tempter me pursu'th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears, and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

When the judgment is reveal'd,
And that open'd which was seal'd,
When to Thee I have appeal'd,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me !

Some Numbers

The poster child for White Male Privilege is Bill Ayers.



                                    Some Numbers

Americans who are 25 to 54 are significantly less wealthy than 25 to 54 year olds 30 years ago. The only age group that is significantly more wealthy are those 65 and up. This is from The Fed!

On self-reported feelings of loneliness among older adults. The data comes from various surveys asking people directly whether they often experience feelings of loneliness (e.g. “I have no-one with whom I can discuss important matters with”).

The differences in the prevalence of loneliness across countries are very large. At the bottom of the list, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden and the US all have rates below 30%, while at the top of the list Greece, Israel and Italy have all have rates of close to or above 50%.





Most energy costs are local.


Amazing chart. It will be interesting to see the Virus's impact.


Mortality from AIDS:

Politics, Left and Right

One element of the Virus shutdown is the eerie quiet over the assumption of power to do it. The Chinese have assumed even more control over their society and people. This centralization was adopted, to a lesser degree, by all the Western nations. The economies all over the world have been stopped. An Iranian hacker could not have wished for more. Amazingly, there is very little alarm over this. Set aside the question of whether this is a good idea, do all the Western nations have constitutions that permit this? Every one? Even the independence-obsessed Americans?
And, as an aside, does anyone, anywhere have a clear idea of what happens to cultures, industries, and peoples when a group of politicians throws a spanner into the gears of commerce?


                                  Politics, Left and Right

An article by Kling summarizing a lot of political generalities:

Joseph C. Sternberg writes,

The oddity is that the left in most of the world has been so intensely critical of Sweden’s experiment. If this model works, it would hold out some hope that the coronavirus could be managed without putting millions of members of the left’s own blue-collar base out of work. Yet the prevailing attitude is less “let them try” and more “excommunicate the heretics.”

I prefer to use the three-axes model. For those of you new to this blog, the model says:

Conservatives like to frame issues in terms of civilization-barbarism, accusing their opponents of being on the side of barbarism.

Progressives like to frame issues in terms of oppressors-oppressed, accusing their opponents of being on the side of the oppressors.

Libertarians like to frame issues in terms of liberty-coercion, accusing their opponents of being on the side of (state) coercion.

For conservatives, the easiest way to frame this in civilization-barbarism terms is to cast China in the role of barbarians. President Trump has taken that approach.

Progressives instinctively reacted against this. Early in the crisis, the progressive framing, as articulated by WHO and some American progressives, was to charge that racism was behind the fears of the virus. They saw themselves as heroically fighting against anti-Chinese prejudice.

Since then, the progressive framing has become less clear to me. I have seen, but forgotten to bookmark, a few articles claiming that the virus crisis is harder on minorities because their death rates are higher and harder on women because they bear the burden of caring for children home from school. Those articles would represent oppressor-oppressed framing, but to be honest, I don’t see them as representative of what most progressives are saying at the moment.

For now, I see progressives as focused on claiming President Trump has badly mis-handled the crisis. It seems to me that they place a higher priority on that than on establishing an oppressor-oppressed narrative. Such a narrative may emerge later, perhaps in the report of the investigative commission that many progressives are calling for.

Libertarians are being driven bonkers. Myself included. I don’t have to repeat what I already have said. I see as villains all of those who seem to me to automatically praise activist government regardless of whether it helps while ignoring the possibility that the private sector can adapt effectively.

Of course, libertarians are backfooted by the undeniable fact that there are externalities here. If I behave recklessly, I can endanger others by infecting them or using scarce hospital resources.

Should it be legal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet or for a restaurant to have a smoking section? Many people would say “no.” Libertarians would be inclined to say “yes.” There is some of the same division over whether or not you should be allowed to eat in a restaurant these days. And libertarians are not winning the argument.

The Tyranny of Good Ideas

There will be some difficult assessments in the next years. The government has shut down the economy, relying on no obvious designated powers anyone knows. The presidential opponent substitutes dimness for Trump's brashness so it is doubtful it will be a source of much debate. There are no apparent Constitutional questions being raised about the shutdown so, presumably, it will serve as a precedent for future such actions.
These are truly grim times.


                                            The Tyranny of Good Ideas

An element integral to the Western democracies is their inherent good heart. Perhaps it derives from the democracy's concern for the individual and the minority. Many have it to a lesser degree, many have not fully recognized it, but some sense of responsibility, some feeling of wanting to help, beats in all of them to a greater or lesser degree and is expressed in various individual national personalities. One could easily counter that the German government that succeded the Weimar Republic was democratically elected but that just proves the point: Democracies are structured to have baseline foundations to protect the citizens from the Tyranny of Good Ideas. Those basic structures, in the United States in the Constitution, limit the damage the government can do in its overconfident enthusiasms.

A Plague upon a Hallowed House

One of the many changes that seem to be looming is the shift in the public political landscape. The greatest economy in the history of the world has been throttled and shut down on purpose. Unprecedented. And fearless; no one really knew what would happen and seemingly does not know now. One might debate the reasons and the methods but rarely does one hear the questioning of the shutdown's legality. Does our governmental framework allow such an act?
The very framework of government, the very limits placed upon government is to prevent spontaneity. To prevent some Good Idea to leap into the minds of some well-meaning Robespierre. Discouraging talk should be suppressed! Retarded people should not have children! The framework of the U.S. was to protect certain inalienable rights first. Only then could the Good Idea of the moment threaten us. The biggest change of the last months is not the huge ambition of the government but the ease with which it insinuated itself into our lives.



                  A Plague upon a Hallowed House

The Plague has given stimulus for a lot of speculation. Will we start doing with less? Will we triage those elaborations in our lives, waitstaff for take-out, planes for cars, distance for local? Things--and beings--under pressure, change. The idealism of youthful Bernie-supporters may become more practical, desires may become hierarchical. We may return to a time of "making do" rather than "doing without."

Pressures have caused great declines in areas without substitutions. Religion. Parenting. Basic institutions have not fared well. But no group is as vulnerable as education.

Tuition jumped nearly 30 percent nationwide from 2007-2008 to 2014-2015, while real median income fell roughly 6.5 percent, according to Paul Friga of ABC Consulting. Student debt is now at more than $1.6 trillion. The economic downturn caused by Covid-19 shutdowns will likely be much worse than the 2008 recession. For now, most college presidents in one recent poll said that they were not contemplating a tuition increase; there is little reason to believe that that intention will last.

The coronavirus threatens tuition dollars, government support, and alumni giving. Some high school seniors are reconsidering their plans to start college this fall—roughly 12 percent to 15 percent, depending on the poll. Some say they want to stay closer to home; some are concerned about their family’s finances. A third of seniors in one poll were considering less expensive institutions. A whole branch of enrollment consulting is devoted to rustling up foreign students, since they usually pay full tuition. That sector is especially at risk, including Chinese students who may have a harder time getting a student visa and who may fear difficulties in returning home.

Many colleges are starting "distance learning," college from a laptop at home. Almost no college is considering a tuition rebate, which implies that online learning should be valued at the same rate as an on-campus class. Students and their parents may start to ask why they should pay astronomical fees for a campus experience if they can get the same instruction over the web.

In June 2017, college endowments contained $568 billion, according to economist Richard Vedder in Restoring the Promise. Princeton had nearly $3 million in endowment for every student; Harvard, $1.2 million per student. But 73 percent of presidents polled by the Association of American Colleges & Universities in late March said that they were not planning to increase spending from their endowments during the Covid-19 crisis. Instead, some students are reaching out directly to alumni for support, apparently feeling abandoned by their schools; the Harvard Club of Louisiana asked its members to contribute to a student-organized fund to help undergraduates burdened by Harvard’s vacate-campus mandate.

The higher-education establishment is complaining about its $14.5 billion coronavirus bailout package. That taxpayer subsidy is “woefully inadequate,” the president of the American Council on Education said in a written statement; $50 billion was the bare minimum needed to keep the sector afloat, according to ACE and other college associations.

Twenty percent of private colleges are at risk of closing due to the current economic downturn, according to Robert Zemsky.

There are a host of conflicts here, a number of factors. But education has so many components to consider. As in any business, survival depends on a number of elements. But one essential element is the business must understand itself, it must know what it actually is providing. In education, that question must be faced honestly. And bravely.

(a lot from MacDonald)

A Pick-Me-Up

I'm sure this question has been asked and successfully answered by many but, if Reason, like everything else from kangaroos to the human appendix, has been created by material forces, why should it be trusted?


                                       A Pick-Me-Up

In Steven Johnson's TED talk, he postulates a unique explanation of the Enlightenment and the English contribution to the innovation revolution. Because the water was so dangerous, people were prone to drinking alcohol, beer during the day, and wine or gin later. He thinks that most of the island was slightly impaired all the time and the appearance of the coffee house, where the water was heated for the preparation of coffee and tea, substituted a stimulant for the alcohol depressant and "stimulated" the innovation of the Enlightenment.

 

Wolves of War

Memorial Day remembers those who died protecting the nation, those who valued some quality greater than life itself. It is the other side of homicide where another's life is felt inferior to a larger concept or truth.
These hierarchies can get messy and confusing: How does one's circumstances of birth create a sacrifice and an executioner, as it does in Marxism? How does one god of benevolence toward some demand murder of the nonbeliever? How are some arbitrary or historic geographies triggers for combat and death? Indeed, how are the incarnations of Materialism, Naziism and Marxism, to be opposed? 
More, in our increasingly materialistic world of evolving biologic and historic accidents, how is anything worth fighting for?
Memorial Day is more than a day of sentimentality, it honors the rejection of nihilism. It is a declaration of values.


                                      Wolves of War

The writer Paul Auster visited his grandfather's home town, the western Ukrainian city of Stanislaus now Ivano-Frankivsk, an area of the world where, during the war, all the Jews were massacred. He spoke to a local poet about a period in the town during the war.

The Jewish half of the population between 1941 and 1943 had already been killed, but when the Soviet army rolled in to capture the city in July 1944, the poet said, just six weeks after the Allied invasion of Normandy, not only had the Germans already cleared out but the other half of the population was gone as well. They had all run away in one direction or another, east or west, north or south, which meant that the Soviets had conquered an empty city, a domain of nothingness. The human population had dispersed to the four winds, and instead of people the city was now inhabited by wolves, hundreds of wolves, perhaps thousands of wolves.

The poem by Georg Trakl—Eastern Front--a World War I poem from 1914 written about Gródek, a Galician city not far from Stanislau that ends with the stanza:

               A thorn-studded wilderness girds the city.
               From bloody stairs the moon
               Chases terrified women.
               Wild wolves have stormed through the gates.

Sunday/Spring

                                    Spring

Today's gospel is that of the week before Pentecost, always the speech Christ gives at the Last Supper beginning, “Father, the hour has come." There is a writer at hand here, reflecting "My hour has not yet come" that Christ says to His mother at the Marriage in Cana when He first enters public life. And a writer at hand there too as Christ did what, in the natural world, grapevines do all the time: Conjure water into wine.

The May Magnificat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

May is Mary’s month, and I

Muse at that and wonder why :

Her feasts follow reason,

Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day ;

But the Lady Month, May,

Why fasten that upon her,

With a feasting in her honour ?

Is it only its being brighter

Than the most are must delight her ?

Is it opportunist

And flowers finds soonest ?

Ask of her, the mighty mother :

Her reply puts this other

Question : What is Spring?—

Growth in every thing—

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and greenworld all together ;

Star-eyed strawberry-breasted

Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within ;

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing

Mary sees, sympathizing

With that world of good

Nature’s motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind

With delight calls to mind

How she did in her stored

Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this :

Spring’s universal bliss

Much, had much to say

To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

Bloom lights the orchard-apple

And thicket and thorp are merry

With silver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoocall

Caps, clears, and clinches all—

This ecstasy all through mothering earth

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth

To remember and exultation

In God who was her salvation.

Stats on Stuff

Duquesne University has lost about $50 million in its investment portfolio so far. And their estimate is that there will be a 20% decline in this Fall's freshmen class. Duquesne does not operate under much of a surplus and that kind of decline will put it in the red. The assumed adjustments that The Virus seems to require are going to have significant economic repercussions for people and organizations. What and where might be a fun party game but there are a lot of educational institutions that are in a lot worse shape than Duquesne.
We have, with little provocation, forced a reorganization upon ourselves which has extraordinary possibilities for good and ill. But the entire episode reveals a number of things about us--of all political leanings. Mostly, though, we are feckless.


                                Stats on Stuff

Horizontal vs. Vertical

Honesty is beginning to creep into the education debate. As the Virus pressures all areas of social contact, the practicalities of subways, classrooms, athletic events and all are beginning to become valid topics of discussion. And, as with most practicalities, the results are harsh. While some are dependent upon mass transit, we may find the contagion risk too great. Alternatives--and more likely bikes and not carpools--may be the result. So, too, the scrutiny of education may be revolutionary--not because of the changes we may want to affect but rather the clarity it might bring. Technology can substitute well in teaching, for classrooms and dorms. But that may not be the real definition of education, as we are beginning to see. What could easily be applied to college learning--online classes, living at home, virtual classrooms--would not substitute for college as seen by the student. For the student sees the university as more and less than education. The student sees university as an "experience," a netherworld between childhood and the working adult world. A summer camp with periodic exams. Goldilocks, in every way.

                                    Horizontal vs. Vertical

Dr. David L. Katz is the founding director of Yale University’s C.D.C.-funded Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and an expert in public health and preventive medicine.

Katz wrote an Op-Ed in The Times recently. He argued that we have three goals right now: saving as many lives as we can, making sure that our medical system does not get overwhelmed — but also making sure that in the process of achieving the first two goals we don’t destroy our economy, and as a result of that, even more lives.

For all these reasons, he argued, we need to pivot from the “horizontal interdiction” strategy we’re now deploying — restricting the movement and commerce of the entire population, without consideration of varying risks for severe infection — to a more “surgical’’ or “vertical interdiction’’ strategy.

A surgical-vertical approach would focus on protecting and sequestering those among us most likely to be killed or suffer long-term damage by exposure to coronavirus infection — that is, the elderly, people with chronic diseases and the immunologically compromised — while basically treating the rest of society the way we have always dealt with familiar threats like the flu. That means we would tell them to be respectful of others when coughing or sneezing, wash their hands regularly and if they feel sick to stay home and get over it — or to seek medical attention if they are not recuperating as expected.

Because, as with the flu, the vast majority will get over it in days, a small number will require hospitalization and a very small percentage of the most vulnerable will, tragically, die. (That said, coronavirus is more dangerous than the typical flu we are familiar with.) As Katz argued, governors and mayors, by choosing the horizontal approach of basically sending everyone home for an unspecified period, might have actually increased the dangers of infection for those most vulnerable.

Some Windows are Small

For the last several weeks, Iran and Isreal have been in a CyberWar. Most recently, unsecured websites in Israel have been hacked and threatening messages attached. Thursday’s attack comes after a series of tit-for-tat cyberattacks between the two countries, with Iranian hackers linked to an attempted cyberattack on the official Israeli water network in April and Israel blamed for a reciprocal attack on computers at Iran's Shahid Rajaee port that caused massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. Not a shot has been fired.

Disruption, like bombing supply lines, bridges, and train tracks--without a shot--has become the disorder of the day. It is a field where a single man can have a lot of leverage.

It's not Stuxnet, but it is a new age of danger to humanity that attracts a new kind of homicidal mind.                                              

                                Some Windows are Small

This is an opinion piece on the NYT's take on one of the Democrat debates. I can't remember where it's from.

The Times’ editorial board shows that it is unconcerned with economic growth or paying for government programs. But it is obsessed with the markers of identity politics, like a candidate’s stance on reparations and the number of people of various ethnicities employed by campaigns. It is suspicious of anyone who has even briefly been associated with for-profit companies.

Economic growth is a great social good. It raises people out of poverty and is correlated with longer life and greater happiness. Even if you believe that the state should engage in progressive redistribution of income and provide important social services, growth remains important because that growth permits more distribution and better services.

Yet the board never asked any questions of any of the Democratic candidates about growth.

The board gave a hard time to only three of the candidates about their résumés—Steyer, Buttigieg, and Yang. In all three cases, its concerns only revolved around their work with for-profit companies. Their worries about Buttigieg were particularly telling. One might well be concerned that Buttigieg’s experience of being the mayor of a city of 100,000 residents does not qualify him to be the president of a nation of 300 million people. But instead the questions about his qualifications focused on his work with McKinsey as a junior consultant right out of college. The board was concerned, for instance, that McKinsey works on consulting reports which result in cost-cutting and layoffs (as if businesses can easily thrive if they are overstaffed and inefficient).

In contrast, the board never raised any questions about the lack of business or economic experience of those who spent most of their lives on the public payroll. For the Times, being a legislator or a professor brings with it the presumption of fitness for the Presidency, but participation in business carries a presumption of unfitness.

The board’s enthusiasm for identity politics often descended from the momentous to the relatively unimportant. They quizzed Buttigieg about how many African Americans were on his campaign staff and Bernie Sanders about how many women. They wanted to quiz Steyer on his asylum policy specifically for LGBTQ people, although Steyer could not even remember that he had one.

The focus on identity politics is the flip side of the board’s indifference to economic growth. Economic growth expands the pie. Identity politics in the form of reparations or employment preferences is a divisive, zero-sum game.

The board is also hostile to big tech. They even asked some candidates whether they were members of Amazon Prime, as if this were evidence of complicity in evil. But while the board focused on the possible benefits of breaking up big tech in general, Facebook was clearly the object of its greatest ire. In one interview, a Board member suggests that Facebook is a threat to democracy.

It’s much more obvious that it is a threat to institutions like the New York Times. Its influence comes from letting others offer their opinions through their posts and advertisements. This mechanism for decentralized messaging undermines the hegemony of the old media—especially the influence of their political endorsements.

Selective Experts

There is a sociological axiom that the buildup of unemployed men leads to war, population decline, and eventual social restabilization. While this may be nothing more than a Good Idea, this economy has similar qualities. Years of economic buildup have created an overripe economy where peripheral occupations have filled the economy and now they may go away. For good. Who would recreate this kind of uncertainty and risk again on purpose? And will the society be willing to repeat the errors and excesses?



                                  Selective Experts

From a letter to the editor at The Washington Post:

Without opining on the merits of epidemiologists’ expert assessments regarding COVID-19, I’m compelled to ask why there is no deference to the expert assessments of us economists. Why, for example, is economists’ long-standing consensus in support of free trade – indeed, strong support for unilateral free trade – ignored? We hear no demands from the likes of politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer or pundits such as Dana Milbank that economists’ expert recommendations on trade policy be followed in full, no questions asked.

Likewise, it’s very difficult to find an economist who supports rent control. Yet this expert consensus against rent control is routinely ignored by the likes of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders. Why? Where’s their respect for experts?

I emphatically reject the Progressive belief that society is an engineering project that can be scientifically guided by a government of the best and brightest toward some optimal condition. But I also believe that true experts can play a valuable role by informing the public and government officials of the likely consequences of different policies. And so given today’s clamor for deference to the expertise of epidemiologists, where’s the deference of pundits and politicians to the expertise of us economists on those policy matters on which we can fairly be said to have reached a consensus?

John Paul 11 and Bonner

 Freedom is dangerous to the individual. That is no myth. The myth is that it is less dangerous to the individual if he surrenders his freedom to a third party. Nature and Living are very dangerous; freedom and oppression are subsets within Nature and Living, and the risks and dangers are not separate from them nor can they be simply deferred.


                              John Paul 11 and Bonner

Weigel has a short piece on John Paul 11 in the WSJ. Unfortunately, it is presented in the garb of political subterfuge when it is quite different; it is a story about the personal energy of a man perceived by a woman who does not believe or respect any of what the man represents. It's worth the read.

"Students of the Cold War’s dark arts know that Communist intelligence services deeply penetrated the Vatican in the 1970s. Yet few know that Pope John Paul II, whose centenary will be marked on May 18, had his own secret agent in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. That relationship led to a remarkable personal encounter that helps explain what made the pope the man he was.

John Paul’s unlikely 007 was Irina Ilovayskaya Alberti, the Russian-born widow of an Italian diplomat. A former personal assistant to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Vermont, she met the pope quite by accident during a papal audience in the early 1980s. A friendship quickly developed between them. As the Gorbachev thaw made access to the U.S.S.R. easier, Alberti traveled to the country several times a year. “If I learned anything interesting,” she told me years later, “I’d call the pope, we’d meet, and I’d tell him.” Vatican diplomats, who liked to keep such matters on close hold, didn’t appreciate that kind of back channel. But John Paul had a habit of going around his mandarins when he thought doing so might yield useful information. He ignored the traditional managers and kept in touch with his clandestine operative.

As it happened, Alberti was also a friend of Yelena Bonner, the tough-minded wife of Soviet nuclear physicist and human-rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov. Under house arrest in 1985, Sakharov went on a hunger strike and demanded Soviet officials let his wife leave the country for critical medical care. The authorities finally agreed, but Sakharov was hostage to Bonner’s good behavior abroad. That meant no meetings with world leaders or the press.

Alberti still thought Bonner should meet the pope. When she came to Rome after her medical treatment, Alberti organized a subterfuge that had the Roman press corps chasing Bonner’s children as she drove the recovering dissident into Vatican City, incognito. Emotionally hardened by decades of battling the KGB, Bonner wasn’t given to sentimentality. Nor was she religious. Yet a two-hour, one-on-one meeting with Pope John Paul II left her sobbing. She told Alberti afterward, “He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever met. He’s all light. He is a source of light.”

The Bonner-John Paul II relationship continued for years and eventually led to a lengthy private meeting between the pope and Sakharov, who sought advice about playing a political role in the endgame of the U.S.S.R. It was that first meeting with Bonner—and her reaction to this Pole, a man she had never met before and the leader of a faith she didn’t share—that is worth pondering on John Paul’s centenary, though.

How did Pope John Paul II touch hearts and minds, even those of unbelievers, the way he did? He was a man of probing intelligence, an experienced pastor, a polyglot and a shrewd operator on the world stage. His commitment to basic human rights, irrespective of religious conviction or the lack thereof, had been demonstrated time and again during his years as archbishop of Krakow and as pope. He had paid the price of that advocacy with his own blood, surviving an assassination attempt that he certainly suspected had been initiated in Moscow.

But that curriculum vitae and that credibility do not explain why a tearful nonbeliever should say, “He is all light. He is a source of light.” Or why, in his last years, wracked by Parkinson’s disease, he could still draw vast crowds and lift the spirits of the suffering.

Pope John Paul II cannot be explained or understood unless he is taken for what he said he was: a radically converted Christian disciple. He believed that God had revealed himself in history, first to the Jewish people and ultimately in Jesus of Nazareth. He believed that the resurrection of the crucified Nazarene was the axial point of the human saga: an event in and beyond what we know as “history,” which disclosed that God’s passionate love for humanity was stronger than death itself.

Believing that, he lived without fear. And living without fear, he inspired fearlessness in others. He was “a source of light” because he spent his life allowing what he had experienced as divine light to shine through him."

After Socialism

There were military meetings this weekend analyzing the impact of the Virus on the morale of the military. The belief is that the popularity and publicity honoring medical and infrastructure people have had a proportionate decline in the honor and prestige of the military. I don't know if there is a way of documenting this. This is the Myth of the Zero Sum, that there is only so much of whatever, and when you don't have it, someone else has yours. It is a justification for envy. It allows competition for credit. We live in a world that sees honor in such short supply, it must be fought over

We are a culture developing a lot of Myths. The question is, why do we need them?

                                     After Socialism

Alan Charles Kors writing for the Atlas Society in 2003 “Can There Be an ‘After Socialism’?“ An old article but interesting because it is accurate and heartfelt:


No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them.
….

The record is truly plain. Socialism, wherever it actually had the means to plan a society, to pursue efficaciously its vision of the abolition of private property, economic inequality, and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets, culminated in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, associational, and political liberty. Its collectivization of agriculture alone led to untold suffering, scarcity, and contempt for property as the fruit of labor. It was, at its best, the ability, through horror and servitude, to build Gary, Indiana once, without the good stuff, and without the ability even to maintain it.
…..

To be moral beings, we must acknowledge these awful things appropriately and bear witness to the responsibilities of these most murderous times. Until socialism—like Nazism or fascism confronted by the death camps and the slaughter of innocents—is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live “after socialism.”

It will not happen. The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture—free markets and individual rights—that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance, and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life.

This pathology allows Western intellectuals to step around the Everest of bodies of the victims of Communism without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind.
…….

We know that voluntary exchange among individuals held morally responsible under the rule of law creates both prosperity and an unparalleled diversity of human choices. Such a model also has been a precondition of individuation and freedom. By contrast, regimes of central planning create poverty and occasion ineluctable developments toward totalitarianism and the worst abuses of power. Dynamic free-market societies, grounded in rights-based individualism, have altered the entire human conception of liberty and of dignity for formerly marginalized groups. The entire “socialist experiment,” by contrast, ended in stasis; ethnic hatreds; the absence of even the minimal preconditions of economic, social, and political renewal; and categorical contempt for both individuation and minority rights. Our children do not know this true comparison

The Paraclete

C.S. Lewis has some observations on the distinctions among the British "Classes," a phrase that has never been successfully introduced into the U.S., despite the efforts of the Left. Lewis says the biggest differences in an educated Briton trying to discuss Christianity with an average Briton--by which he meant "proletariat intelligentsia," an intelligent, male, Englishman without university, probably RAF--were materialism, a profound distinction in language, and a scepticism toward history. Of the last, they were more likely to agree on generalities of prehistoric man because there was a scientific basis in those studies and observations than they were in the generalities of recorded time because they were more subject to human observational and recording error. So a Christian miracle or the Ressurection was doubted less because it was fantastic and more because its recording was less reliable.

Makes Fauci and Birks all the more understandable.

                                   The Paraclete

In the gospel today, Christ promises The Holy Spirit, The Paraclete, an advocate and helper in the world. Paraclete comes from the Greek meaning “one called to help," a more specific meaning than the original Aramaic which can mean any powerful personal assistance, including angels. He mixes this mystical concept with practical distilled-down advice: Keep my commandments: Love God and your neighbor.


Jesus said to his disciples:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always,
the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept,
because it neither sees nor knows him.
But you know him, because he remains with you,
and will be in you.


So the Holy Spirit, in an unseeing and unhearing material world, will always be there, stilling "the hammer of chaos."


                      Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men."



The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest,

And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

--Leigh Hunt

Stats: Power and The Virus

One of life's great problems is the infusion of high-minded purpose and values into the insensate. Blind and cold elements can be given grand motives. So the calculating, predatory, hungry stare of a house cat becomes coy love. History marches in an evolving, directed improvement. Scorpios are sullen.

This is similar to giving a hurricane the personality of a storm god.

So Capitalism will be evaluated in the future as to how it responded to The Virus. But it has no such function any more than a car is responsible in a hit-and-run. Capitalism is a means for the most efficient delivery of a product or service to a consumer. Period. It is not a philosophy, it is a technique. It is not a rule, it is an evolutionary process. It is not run by Capitalists, it is run by consumers. It is practiced by Capitalists.

Virtue is not involved; it is outside the system. Virtue, present or absent, is applied, or not, voluntarily by the individual. On his own for his own reasons. The burden of virtue, like it or not, is, as always, upon the individual. 

The institutionalization of virtue is called religion.


                             Stats: Power and The Virus

Some of Sowell

                                        Some of Sowell

Diversity. 

“If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, “diversity” should be a prime candidate. Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.

It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength.”

Greed. 

“Someone pointed out that blaming economic crises on “greed” is like blaming plane crashes on gravity. Certainly, planes wouldn’t crash if it wasn’t for gravity. But when thousands of planes fly millions of miles every day without crashing, explaining why a particular plane crashed because of gravity gets you nowhere. Neither does talking about “greed,” which is constant like gravity.”

The Anointed Ones.

 “In their haste to be wiser and nobler than others, the anointed have misconceived two basic issues. They seem to assume: 1) that they have more knowledge than the average member of the benighted, and 2) that this is the relevant comparison. The real comparison, however, is not between the knowledge possessed by the average member of the educated elite versus the average member of the general public, but rather the total direct knowledge brought to bear through social processes (the competition of the marketplace, social sorting, etc.), involving millions of people, versus the secondhand knowledge of generalities possessed by a smaller elite group.

The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by ‘society.'”

There’s No Free Red Tape/Obamacare. 

“Do you seriously believe that millions more people can be given medical care and vast new bureaucracies created to administer payment for it, with no additional costs?

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free red tape. Bureaucrats have to eat, just like everyone else, and they need a place to live and some other amenities. How do you suppose the price of medical care can go down when the costs of new government bureaucracies are added to the costs of the medical treatment itself?

And where are the extra doctors going to come from, to treat the millions of additional patients? Training more people to become doctors is not free. Politicians may ignore costs but ignoring those costs will not make them go away. With bureaucratically controlled medical care, you are going to need more doctors, just to treat a given number of patients, because time that is spent filling out government forms is time that is not spent treating patients. And doctors have the same 24 hours in the day as everybody else.

When you add more patients to more paperwork per patient, you are talking about still more costs. How can that lower medical costs? But although that may be impossible, politics is the art of the impossible. All it takes is rhetoric and a public that does not think beyond the rhetoric they hear.”

Essential Universities

                 Essential and Non-Essential University Faculties

Philip Carl Salzman’s article “A Modest Proposal for Opening Universities: Some Faculties Should Remain Closed” in PJ Media. (Afterward we can move on to unessential government facilities.)


In dealing with this Chinese pandemic, the U.S. and Canada have responded by distinguishing between “essential” and “nonessential” workers, businesses, and activities. Universities and colleges should draw this distinction as they consider reopening. What faculties are essential in universities? The sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer studies are essential, in that they make a major economic contribution. The faculty of medicine and nursing are essential for the wellbeing of the population. The faculty of business serves society’s practical needs, and can be considered at least quasi-essential.


But, in contrast, many faculties are not essential; they are in fact counter-productive for society. The “humanities” and “social sciences,” with their grievance advocacy “studies” programs, such as women’s studies, black studies, Latinx studies, queer studies, and the like, today function primarily to divide people and advance Marxist goals such as class conflict, socialist governance, redistribution of wealth, and so are counterproductive. So too with the radical faculties of education and social work, all relentlessly ideological, and all sending their activists under the guise of teachers and social workers.


University administrations are chock full of nonessential positions and employees. The vast multiplication of deans, associate deans, assistant deans, and assistants to the assistant deans, vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, etc. etc. should be culled vigorously. The first who should be axed are the scores or hundreds of “diversity and inclusion” officers, who have been hired to enforce “social justice” ideology, silence dissent, and serve the “special needs” of preferred categories of students and staff. Nothing is so inimical to academic life as ideological commissars with belts of enforcement tools spying on students and professors. Show them the door, and some semblance of justice might return to campuses.

A Tale of Two Fortunes

                                                 

                                A Tale of Two Fortunes

Resentment of wealth is not always mindless, it's just usually bigoted, generalizing from the worst example.

A tale of two fortunes, from Henderson, in Reason:

"The issue of wealth and income inequality, to my mind, is the greatest moral issue of our time," said presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich claims that "great wealth amassed at the top" will cause us to lose democracy. To fight economic inequality, presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is calling for a 2 percent annual tax on household net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and a 3 percent tax on net worth above $1 billion.

In 1949, Robert McCulloch introduced the 3-25, a one-man chainsaw weighing only 25 pounds. This revolutionized forestry. A friend of mine, now in his late 80s, told me that when he was a teenager, his father made him cut wood for a whole winter of heating a large house. When my friend found out about the 3-25, he used his own allowance to buy one. It changed his life.

McCulloch made a lot of money with his chainsaw. But everyone who bought a 3-25 wanted it. It's likely that almost all of them got a large benefit from the purchase. McCulloch got richer, and so did his customers, who were able to save huge amounts of time and effort. Eventually, competitors produced their own chainsaws to compete with McCulloch's—products that were better, cheaper, or both.

That increased the benefits to consumers while reducing the profits to McCulloch. Still, he made a lot—enough that his innovation almost certainly increased income inequality, by raising McCulloch's income far above most other people's.

Now consider a story in which someone used political power to make himself and his wife very wealthy. In 1942, a young congressman from Texas had a net worth of approximately zero. But by 1963, when he became president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson and his wife had a net worth of about $20 million, a large part of which could be attributed to a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to operate the radio station KTBC in Austin, Texas.

During the 1964 presidential campaign, Johnson claimed that his wife had turned an asset she bought for $17,500 into a property worth millions by working hard. Not quite. Lyndon had worked hard—at using his political influence as a congressman. Before his wife acquired it, KTBC's owners had spent years trying to get the FCC's permission to sell the station. On January 3, 1943, Lady Bird Johnson filed her application to buy it, and just 24 days later, the owners were suddenly allowed to sell. That June, the future first lady applied for permission to operate for more hours a day and at a much better part of the AM band. She received permission a month later.

While all this was happening, the FCC was under attack by a powerful congressman, Eugene Cox, who wanted to cut the FCC's budget to zero. Lyndon Johnson strategized secretly with an FCC official named Red James and used his influence with House Speaker Sam Rayburn to deflect the attack. James later admitted that he had recommended to Lady Bird that she apply for the license.

Over the subsequent decades, the FCC didn't just clear an easy path when her radio station (and, later, a television station as well) needed an application approved. When a competitor wanted to make a move, the agency would put regulatory barriers in its way. In this manner, Lady Bird's company came to dominate Austin broadcasting.

So here we have two examples of income and wealth inequality increasing. In the first case, inequality increased because a man's company introduced a product that made the lives of those who bought it substantially better, raising their real incomes. In the second case, inequality increased because a politician used his influence to get monopolistic privileges from a federal agency, making the politician wealthier and lowering the real incomes of people in the Austin area.

There are at least two reasons to think differently about these two cases. The first is that McCulloch's actions improved others' well-being in addition to his own, while the Johnsons' actions benefited themselves at the expense of others. The second is why McCulloch's actions had those benevolent social effects and Johnson's didn't. McCulloch's wealth—and the benefits to his customers—were rooted in voluntary transactions in the marketplace. The Johnsons' wealth was rooted in raw political power.

Income Inequality

                                Income Inequality

Income inequality is a big deal in the press and among political panderers. "The issue of wealth and income inequality, to my mind, is the greatest moral issue of our time," said presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.)

Piketty and the Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez have estimated that, for the United States between 1979 and 2015, the top 1 percent's share of pretax income (including capital gains) increased from 9.0 percent to 20.3 percent. But in a 2018 paper, economists Gerald Auten of the U.S. Treasury Department and David Splinter of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation came to a very different conclusion. To get a better measure of income, they accounted for all of national income, including unreported income, retirement income missing from tax returns, and income due to changes in the tax base that resulted from the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Their conclusion: Between 1979 and 2015, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent rose from 9.5 percent to 14.2 percent, and the share of after-tax, after-transfer income rose even less, from 7.2 percent to 8.5 percent.

What opinion is right? And how much of the world as we know it should we tear apart and restructure because of that opinion? And the larger question, whose right is it to make such a decision?

Project Fear

                                       Project Fear

This from a WSJ article by Sternberg:

Project Fear is back, alas, and it threatens to ruin our post-coronavirus politics for years.

That was the name for the strategy Prime Minister David Cameron deployed in his campaign against Brexit during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership. The point was to scare the bejeezus out of moderate voters who might otherwise be tempted to take a chance on leaving the bloc.

“Remain” advocates produced a steady flow of economic analyses warning of dire consequences if the electorate voted for Brexit. The economy would contract and unemployment would spike. Worse, Brexit would diminish Britain’s standing in the world. It would signal a form of spiritual and moral decay. In this way, Project Fear tried to transform the question of Europe from a policy debate into a moral crusade.

Americans have suffered through their own version of this phenomenon in the Trump era. It has never been enough to argue that most of his policy ideas are bad. Much of the media and his opponents on both the left and right present him as a mortal threat to the republic. Whether they’re ascribing to Mr. Trump authoritarian tendencies or accusing him of collusion with Russia, it’s all about stoking fear.


Sure enough, here comes Project Fear 3.0. This column has previously observed that policy makers are letting themselves be guided less by “the science”—which remains preliminary and conflicting—than by a perceived public clamor for a draconian response to the pandemic. The important word is “perceived,” since whatever outcry exists has been filtered through a media eager to hype the fear factor.

.........

A YouGov survey in 2019 found that with the passage of time 2016’s Remain voters had grown only more convinced Brexit would be bad for jobs, would leave the economy worse off, and would put Britain more at risk of a terrorist attack. A separate YouGov poll in January found Remainers making their peace with the referendum but only slowly: 38% of them said they were still angry over, in denial about, or determined to overturn the Brexit vote. Is it any wonder U.K. politics has become unhinged? The losing side of the referendum is only very slowly admitting that what it lost is a policy debate rather than an existential struggle. In the U.S., this is the origin of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Covid-19, a disease that threatens the lives of many vulnerable people, has an existential dimension Brexit and the Trump campaign lacked. But the danger of a similar outcome looms. Once fear infects politics, it tends to linger.

Sunday/Social Rules and Real Rules

                              Sunday/Social Rules and Real Rules

 Some significant readings this Sunday. the first is from The Acts, where the members of the early Church are trying to structure how they will live after Christ.
The Greek-speaking widows complain that the Aramaic-speaking food-ministers were short-changing them at meals in favor of the Aramaic-speaking widows. The apostles solved the problem by convening a meeting of "the whole community of the disciples" and informing them that they should be the ones to work through their problem. Their task: "Select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to the task" of distributing the food. Note the names of the chosen seven: "Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolaus of Antioch." Every single one is Greek.


 The Gospel is from the Last Supper. Christ is contemplating His imminent betrayal, torture, and death. Instead of the obvious, He tries to console the apostles and gives them the promise of everlasting life. Part is the "many mansions" imagery:
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come back again and take you to myself,
so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”

 You just gotta love Thomas. Christ answers,

I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, then you will also know my Father.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.


 This eternal question is handled rather casually. "Truth" is a concept that has been debated since Plato and appears with Pilate himself later in this story.
Christ's answer is simply that Truth is Him.



                        The Road Not Taken  

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,



And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.



I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Mixed Stats

                                 Mixed Stats

Social Credit

                                    Social Credit


The "social credit system," first announced in China in 2014, aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful," according to a government document. The government is setting up a vast ranking system that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population. The program will be mandatory. Some programs are run by city councils, others are scored by private tech platforms which hold personal data, but this is planned to be fully operational nation-wide by the end of the year.

It is like private credit scores. A person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior. The exact factors and weighting are secret — but early examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.

Low scores can keep you from buying tickets for domestic flights and from getting business-class train tickets. According to Foreign Policy, credit systems monitor whether people pay bills on time, much like financial credit trackers — but also ascribe a moral dimension like spending too long playing video games, wasting money on frivolous purchases and posting on social media. People who refused to carry out military service last year were barred from enrolling in higher education, applying for high school, or continuing their studies. These strictures can be inherited; a child can be punished for a parent's misdeeds. Although work on the social credit scoring algorithm is not yet complete, around 18 million people have already been banned from flying—and 5.5 million from purchasing high-speed train tickets—because of outstanding debts.

Scores can keep you out of certain jobs, hotels, and vacation trips. One interesting use appeared in the eastern Chinese city of Jinan who started enforcing a social credit system for dog owners in 2017. Pet owners get points deducted if the dog is walked without a leash or causes public disturbances. Those who lost all their points had their dogs confiscated and had to take a test on regulations required for pet ownership.

Some are very creative. The government algorithm will go as far as to install an “embarrassing” ring tone on the phones of "laolai," debtors, shaming them every time they get a call in public. Chinese authorities released an app that allows users to locate anyone with unpaid debts within 500 yards.

One can see the appeal here. No one would argue very hard over people being encouraged to be better citizens, take better care of their pets, avoid indebtedness. But there is a question as to who should do this and how aggressive they should be. Can civic virtue be legislated top-down?

One can only wait until the current crop of virtue-signalers get their hands on this.

Online Support

                         Online Support

In an essay in the New York Times, Veronique Mintz, an eighth-grade NYC student agrees with the notion of online education:

"Talking out of turn. Destroying classroom materials. Disrespecting teachers. Blurting out answers during tests. Students pushing, kicking, hitting one another and even rolling on the ground. This is what happens in my school every single day.

You may think I’m joking, but I swear I’m not…during my three years of middle school, these sorts of disruptions occurred repeatedly in any given 42-minute class period.

That’s why I’m in favor of the distance learning the New York City school system instituted when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

…Distance learning gives me more control of my studies. I can focus more time on subjects that require greater effort and study. I don’t have to sit through a teacher fielding questions that have already been answered.

…This year I have struggled with math. The teacher rarely had the patience for questions as he spent at least a third of class time trying to maintain order. Often, when I scheduled time to meet with him before school, there would be a pileup at his door of students who also had questions. He couldn’t help us all in 20 minutes before first period. Other times he just wouldn’t show up….With distance learning, all of that wasted time is eliminated. I stop, start and even rewind the teacher’s recording when I need to and am able to understand the lesson on the day it’s taught."

She also discussed some "group learning" where the more able students tried to teach the less able and recalcitrant--like a one room schoolhouse for delinquents.

The clarifying Virus.

The Devil Talks Education

                                The Devil Talks Education

In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already become something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between the pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised.

This can be done on various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks [grade inflation]. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud-pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.”

Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age-group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his contemporary’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON THE MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching.

Of course this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will… I’m as good as you is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies.

(from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Proposes a Toast, 1959)

Tres Plus Dos Equals Cinco de Mayo

                         Tres Plus Dos Equals Cinco de Mayo

The painting often identified as commemorating Cinco de Mayo in Mexico actually depicts the Spanish war with Napoleon's France two generations before the French war in Mexico. Nor is the event of Cinco de Mayo of much political significance--other than ironic--although it was a shocking military one.

Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War, a savage affair fought by Spanish partisans against hard, regular French troops. This famous painting was The Third of May (along with its companion piece, The Second of May 1808 or The Charge of the Mamelukes.)
Third of May:



A half century later in 1862, Spain's creditors ran out of patience with her debts. France, eager to expand her territory and following long accepted custom of seizing a reluctant debtor's ports and collecting the tax receipts in lieu of their loan, invaded the Mexican port of Veracruz with the intent of collecting customs receipts until the debt was repaid. They also had another aim: They hoped to make their stay permanent with the placement of Maximilian on a Mexican throne. The French marched inland. This was an experienced, tough group and they proceeded virtually unopposed until they were confronted by a good sized Mexican force at the small town of Puebla. There, against all expectation and logic, on 5 May 1862, Mexican troops, led by Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated a larger force of the elite French Foreign Legion. Mexican President Benito Juarez declared 5 May a national holiday -- Cinco de Mayo--although he certainly knew the truth. The French replaced their commander and sent thirty thousand reinforcements. In no time they controlled the cities and created the election that elected Maximilian Emperor of México.

Flynn, FBI, and Strassel

                   Flynn, FBI, and Strassel

I've heard a lot of opinions about the Flynn/FBI problem recently. Divergent ones. There seems to me to be several questions. What did Flynn actually do that was criminal? And were the FBI's actions defending us and the country or motivated by something quite different? In the haze of political mendacity, it is sometimes hard to believe in clarity--but the FBI is not a political organization. Here is the fierce Kim Strassel's column on it.

The newest Federal Bureau of Investigation documents in the case of former White House national security adviser Mike Flynn are stunning in themselves. But the totality of Mr. Flynn’s treatment shocks the conscience.

Mr. Flynn in 2017 pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to FBI agents about conversations he had with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Thanks to new documents the feds belatedly turned over to his attorneys, we know the FBI engineered this “crime.” Handwritten notes from former FBI counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, made before the bureau’s interview of Mr. Flynn, ask the following: “What is our goal? Truth/Admission, or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

One of the frustrations of the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative is that the evidence of law enforcement’s abuse of power keeps emerging in dribs and drabs. To grasp the outrageous conduct fully, the Flynn documents need to be added to what we already know. The overall evidence paints a scandalous picture: Having labored and abysmally failed in 2016 to build a case that Mr. Flynn was an agent of the Russians, the FBI and Justice Department changed gears—rifling through his communications, inventing a fake crime, and entrapping him on a “lying” charge.

The latest documents reveal the FBI was officially closing its Flynn case on Jan. 4, 2017. The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team spent 2016 checking “databases” for “derogatory” information on him, running down accusations that he had ties to Russians. They struck out, and the closing document admits Mr. Flynn “was no longer a viable candidate” for investigation. Then, suddenly, also on Jan. 4, FBI agent Peter Strzok sends a text saying: “Hey, if you haven’t closed [the Flynn case], don’t do so yet.” Mr. Strzok explained: “seventh floor involved”—a reference to FBI top brass.

What changed? In late December, Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak. Federal law gives investigators the authority to wiretap foreigners but also requires strict privacy protections for U.S. citizens with whom they speak. The Obama administration superseded those protections and “unmasked” Mr. Flynn in the days following his discussions. They later leaked the classified contents of the call to the press.

The snooping gained them nothing substantive. Mr. Flynn’s conversations were lawful and routine. So Justice Department and FBI officials instead manufactured the absurd theory that Mr. Flynn had violated the Logan Act of 1799, which bars citizens from engaging in unauthorized negotiations in disputes between the U.S. and foreign governments. No one has ever been convicted of violating the act. This week’s handwritten notes show that among the FBI’s hopes in interviewing Mr. Flynn was to “get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act.”

The real goal was to trap him. Remember, the FBI didn’t need to ask Mr. Flynn what he’d said to the Russian ambassador; they had a recording. The only reason for an interview was to coax Mr. Flynn into saying something at odds with that transcript. They worked hard at it. Then-Director James Comey has previously bragged that the FBI went around the White House legal counsel to make sure Mr. Flynn had no lawyer present.

This week’s documents include an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page debating ways for the bureau to get around its standard formal admonition against lying, suggesting agents just “casually slip that in” when talking to Mr. Flynn. A document from former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe says that he urged Mr. Flynn to conduct the interview without a lawyer, and that the FBI deliberately dispensed with the admonition altogether.

The abuse then continued under former special counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Flynn initially explained that he misremembered what he’d discussed with the Russian, a highly plausible claim. But Mr. Mueller’s lawyers pursued him to near penury and threatened to prosecute his son. He succumbed and agreed to a plea deal.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this week’s documents is what isn’t in them. The FBI expresses no concern that Mr. Flynn was “colluding” with Russia or otherwise threatening national security—supposedly the rationale for the FBI’s intrusive investigation. By this point, it just wanted a scalp, a means to keep its broader narrative rolling.

The FBI exists to investigate crimes, not to create them. Some might add this shameful behavior to the long list of the FBI’s “collusion” malfeasance: the surveillance-court abuse, the Steele dossier, the leaks. But the Flynn case is something different. This isn’t the FBI playing fast and loose with sources or the courts. This is law enforcement abusing its most tyrannical power—to strip citizens of their reputations, their livelihoods and their liberty.

The FBI’s treatment of Mr. Flynn lives up to Americans’ worst fears. Attorney General William Barr was right to order a review of the case. Now someone must be held to account.