THE AFF NETWORK


Revenge of the Sith

Posted on May 19 | Post a Comment

SPOILER ALERT

I saw the midnight premier of Revenge of the Sith today. What I hated about the first two episodes was the movement away from the austere and adolescent-oriented coming of age tale of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. Instead, of seeing a teenager become a man, we saw a young child acting like a man, racing space ships, fighting aliens, etc. These images were merely ridiculous rather than inspiring. Instead of the clash of rival systems of motivated men, we saw the morally cowardly casting of robots as the chief enemy of the Republican clone armies. (Likewise, the biolgoical explanation of the force ruined so much of the near-religous mystery of the Episodes 4-6). Finally, needless to say, we had an overly sentimental love story with the freaky affection of the young lady princess Padome with the prepubescent Annikan.

Anyway, the latest was much better. It involved the story of the
empire's rise and Annikan's devolution into selfish ambition. He is
cast as a tragic figure; his desire to save his beloved from natural
death--which he sees in a dream--leads him to explore the "dark side." The Buddhist vice of worldliness combines with the Christian concept of seeking divine knowledge of good and evil in that motiff. While the Emperor's callousness makes it hard to believe he could inspire Annikan, his forthrightness compared to the snobby Jedis seems believable enough.

Of course, there are some odd inconsistencies. Siths are said to deal with "absolutes," yet the emperor discusses how the Sith view both sidesof the force and are more flexible than the archaic, and dogma-bound Jedi. There is also a frequent appeal to "democracy," which just struck me as tone deaf. For starters, the Jedi are in some respects an illiberal and antidemocratic warrior aristocracy; their contempt for politics in general makes them unlikely guardians of the Republic. Finally, Annikan's love for Padome leads him to seek the Dark Side, but he automatically assumes she's in league with Obi Wan and proceeds to disable her when she discovers him fighting the rebels, rather than, more realistically, seeing him confused about her presence.

On the visuals, I thought the scenes in general were too busy, too
short, and insufficiently reflective. The battle scenes in particular
were too busy, without a main theme upon which one could focus. There
was something decadent about the 3 second clips, multicolored ships and explosions, and the failure to show the kinds of compelling visusals of episodes 4-6, such as space ship fighter duels or the memorable emergence of enormous imperial battleships after preview scenes involving empty space. This is to say, Lucas' vision of space warfare has been influenced by the MTV generation's lack of an attention span and impatience, rather than the original movie's inspiration in WWII dogfighter classics and Japanese coming of age epics. The battle scenes too were either oddly close up or involving too much action. There was no sense of main subject and background. There were a few exceptions, such as the light saber duels
near the end, but the earlier ones were too busy, too hard to follow,
and lacked the essential beauty of acrobatic sword fighting that we saw in the original flick and Empire.

This all said, it was 10X better than the extremely disappointing and
utterly sentimental episdoes 1 and 2, coequal with Return of the Jedi at least.

The Dark Ages . . .

Posted on May 16 | 5 comments

. . . weren't so dark. The alleged despotism of medieval Europe is largely propaganda, and confusion about the reality of Europe from, say, 700 to 1700 does much to support the aggrandizing structure of the modern, centralized state. Just as the US Constitution operates by pitting "faction against faction," the medieval structure worked through the tension between kings, nobles, the Church, and the guilds. No one group had all the power, and thus groups and individuals in danger had people with power to whom they could turn.

The modern regimes of the 16th and 17th Century were notable for their concept of absolute sovereignty, which did not permit countervailing authority in the Church, the guilds, etc. Liberalism emerged, in part, to temper this absolute sovereignty, but liberalism largely retained its basic structure: individuals relate to states, and vice versa. Under this view of what libertarians call The State the government by necessity has the monopoly on power and to give power to families, the church, the guild, local authorities undermines this authority and creates the opportunity for mischief. More often, coercive power by any of these groups is equated with The State. Even today, liberals and libertarians largely embrace an individualism that is as skeptical of local authority as central authority and that would not allow any special prerogatives of the Church, unions, the traditional family, and other intermediary institutions.

Instead of rising to the defense of states that would have prayer in schools, anti-sodomy laws, drug prohibition, and the like--that is, the usual marks of vital communities governed by laws of their own choosing--libertarians instead largely approve of the efforts of the federal government (mostly through its courts) to undermine states in the name of individual rights. Ultimately, there cannot be a vital notion of "state's rights" or any rights other than individual rights under the liberal/libertarian scheme, and thus atomized men stands largely defenseless before the federal government. The very individualism that promised relief from the state, instead becomes its last obstacle, an anorexic moralism when compared to what individualism itself had destroyed.

The Decline of the War Movie

Posted on May 16 | 4 comments

Michael Medved has a good piece--a speech at Hillsdale--on the decline of the war movie, and what that says about what's wrong with Hollywood and the American left:

Consider two movies that were released last Friday. One is called The Jacket and stars Adrien Brody, Keira Knightly, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kris Kristofferson. It begins by showing American troops committing atrocities during the first Persian Gulf War and goes from there. But what’s fascinating is that it’s one of the very few films that have referred to that war at all. And remember: When we fought the first Persian Gulf War, it was not controversial like the recent war in Iraq. There was a huge worldwide coalition and the American public supported it more than any conflict since World War II, according to pollsters. Nevertheless, I can count on the fingers of one hand the movies that have made any reference to it at all. Besides The Jacket, there was last summer’s The Manchurian Candidate, in which there’s an evil conspiracy involving brainwashing and torturing on the part of American businessmen; before that there was Courage Under Fire with Meg Ryan and Denzel Washington, which was about a friendly-fire incident, military cover-ups and the mistreatment of a brave young female officer; and then there was Three Kings, starring George Clooney, which is also about the corruption of the U.S. military and our betrayal of our allies. So here’s an incredibly popular war and Hollywood hardly touches it. And it never treats it in any sort of favorable light. Why not? . . .

Three elements were always present in classic war movies—films like the John Wayne version of The Alamo, or The Longest Day, or A Bridge Too Far or Sergeant York. First, there was great affection for, and indeed glorification of, the American fighting man, who was portrayed as one of us—as representative of the best of what this country is. Second, there was obvious sympathy for the American cause. And third, the wars being dramatized were portrayed as meaning something.

It is far more common in war films today, regardless of the war being depicted, for the three elements of the classic war film to be turned on their heads. American troops are more likely than not to be portrayed as sick, warped and demented—in any case, very different from normal Americans. Very often the audience is manipulated to root for the other side, whatever the other side happens to be. And whatever the war, we are left with the idea that it is meaningless.

Newsweek and Dead Bodies

Posted on May 16 | 9 comments

Free speech is a valuable American right, but, it's worth remembering that free speech is not costless. Free speech can inflame, lead to social decay, offend, encourage lawlessness and mischief, and otherwise undermine the happy circumstances in which we find ourselves. What then to say about Newsweek's apparent untruths and sloppiness in reporting that Americans desecrated Korans at Guantanamo Bay. In the wake of the hysterical reporting of Abu Gharib, would it be too much to ask that such stories are reported after thorough fact-checking if they are to be reported at all? On this second point, it's not a loony view. Official censors censored the news during WWII. Could certain delicate matters like this that lead our enemies and those we are trying to influence to react like a bunch of crazed, rioting banhsees not be kept within official channels.

A desecrated Koran at Guantanmo is like the tree that falls in the forest and no one hears, but for Newsweek's amplified reporting. One wonders how many bodies a story like this, clearly designed primarily to undermine the war effort and the military, is worth?

Diversity . . . Or Else

Posted on May 13 | Post a Comment

We've been told for years that affirmative action is quite distinct from a quota system. It's now become more and more brazen, especially among the cutting edge progressives in the legal departments of big corporations:

In a pact brokered by the New York County Lawyers' Association, more than 60 law firms have agreed to tell their corporate clients the composition of assigned legal teams by race, gender, ethnicity and sexual preference.

For several years, clients have asked law firms to sign statements in support of diversifying the legal profession. But with the formal agreement, firms have volunteered to put hard numbers behind their noble aspirations. According to the pact, "law firms should not object to requests by their corporate clients [to] report the number of hours devoted to the clients' matters by minority lawyers."

Supporting the effort are some 65 bar organizations, including major groups such as the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the New York State Bar Association and small specialty bars such as the Nigerian Lawyers Association and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Law Association.

In-house counsels at more than 20 businesses were also signatories, including large corporations such as the Bank of New York, the Coca-Cola Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Prudential Securities and TIAA-CREF. . . .

Firm partners attending the press conference indicated that the agreement's strength was in making use of the competitive nature of the legal industry. The numbers of minority lawyers on legal teams as a means of demonstrating commitment to diversity might well become a competitive marker in standard firm surveys, they said.

"And if your numbers don't add up," Mayes warned, "you're history."

One might think, "What's the problem; these comapnies have simply decided this is good business." For example, the tobacco industry and its army of balding, middle-aged, white-male lawyers were the perfect physical embodiment of the "out of touch" corporations targeted by plaintiffs lawyers in dozens of personal injury suits in the 1990s. Many are now pressing for diversity as a strategy to win.

But do these losers know how to win a case? I don't think so, and I don't think much of their diagnoses of a lack of diversity as a particularly significant culprit. If you know how to communicate and can convey honesty, sincerity, and a logical case, you can win lawsuits in front of any jury. Period.

The next logical question: Why do companies stay with losing firms?

Several theories. One, sports tickets don't pay for themselves, and big firms are good about forming relationships with in house counsel. That is to say, very few of the buy-side decisions are made solely or even primarily with an eye on results. Second, as many in house guys come from big firms, they don't know how to evaluate a winner. They, like their big firm colleagues, focus largely on inputs, on how much work is done, on the credentials of the lawyers, etc. Because these reputations are long established, and these big firms have a lot of manpower, an inhouse guy will rarely get fired for hiring an AMLAW 100 firm. It's a classic case of an employee's imperfect exercise of a fiduciary obligation because of his own risk-aversion. Finally, big firms are great about blaming judges, juries, opposing counsel, "bad facts," and everything else but their mistakes and inability in the wake of a bad outcome. I've seen it first hand.

Self-deception is a funny thing.

Ruminations on Nationalism

Posted on May 13 | Post a Comment

I've not been blogging much this week. I've been busy at work and not much has been going on. If you look at my books on the right, though, the book on nationalism has proven quite interesting. I think the author is left of center, but his basic thesis is that America has a variety of tendencies and habits of the populist and militant variety that incline it to crete unnecessary offence to other countries and then to react bellicosely when any offence is, in fact, taken. Of course, even without this tendency, we would create offence. As a country we are castigated for acting and failing to act all the time, because of our great economic and military capabilities. That said, it is silly, ahistorical, and dangerous to forget that others love their countries as much as we love our own. That they, like ourselves, are concerned about territorial integrity, sovereignty, foreign influence, being respected, and the like. The best example of America's occasionaly pathological nationalism that I can think of in recent times has been the equation of every opponent of the Iraq war with America's enemies. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and France are no different than China, Cuba, and North Korea in this analysis. It's ridiculous and the failure to appreciate the importance of America's relationship with Europe out of a chauvinist vision of imposing American-style democracy on the whole world could be our downfall.

Public Trust

Posted on May 10 | Post a Comment

One of the orginal mandates of television broadcasters in the United States was to operate in the public interest. News organizations have repeatedly cited this mandate as part of the basis for their extreme degree of self-regard, which entitles them to special access and esteem in the American landscape. Of course, the reality of local television news speaks for itself in many ways, and never more so than in an anecdote shared with me by a friend:

My dad pointed out something on the news the other night that has been bothering me. It was Sunday, when the storms were flooding parts of the city [of Houston], and for a few hours, there was a commercial (on which channel I forget) advertising the upcoming 10:00 news. The anchor spoke of a "major freeway" being shut down and promised the details at 10:00. In other words, the actual news -- the identity of the freeway that was flooded and closed -- was intentionally withheld for hours as part of the new entertainment dynamic of news stations. Although it's a small thing, for some reason it is really sticking with me as a disgusting and depressing window into modern society.
I have to agree. Someone with a major communications ability has a duty to share this basic information with fellow members of the community. People living together in a city should know immediately if a major freeway is closed and should share this basic information out of elementary notions of social solidarity. These television shows' behavior is the functional equivalent of refusing to warn someone of an oncoming train or some other impending disaster. I'm sure I'll soon be told by libertarians that it's their property/station/etc. to do with as they will, but is it not obvious that this particular use (or omission) is disgustingly selfish.

Conservative or Right-Wing Populist

Posted on May 10 | 1 comment

Interesting piece by John Derbyshire on how Bush and many of his followers are a kind of anti-intellectual right-wing populist movement, whose passion for "social issues" replaces any real concern with much of the abiding principles of American conservatism, such as fear of centralization, skepticism of social equality, etc.

He writes, humorously:

American exceptionalist-conservatism still holds out in odd corners of the national life. The National Rifle Association, for instance, is still a formidable force for personal liberty: The passing of the recent "right to shoot" law in Florida is very heartening. All in all, though, I don't think that the prognosis for conservatism in America is any better than in England. My colleague Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out the other day that there has been no conservative elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court without an assist from identity politics since 1972! Scalia, remember, was the first Italian-American justice, and was nominated partly for that reason. I doubt there will be ever be another conservative on the Court. In place of Coolidge ("It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones") and Reagan ("Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"), we have George W. Bush ("When somebody hurts, government has got to move").

RIP Hackworth

Posted on May 06 | 1 comment

I've read Col. Hackworth's columns off and on for a long time. His straight talk in an age of left-wing pacifism and right-wing military fetishism is very needed and will be missed. The military has had significant problems with procurement, training, political correctness, lack of innovation and risk-taking, pay, retention, and priorities since the early 1990s. Even now, lessons learned in Panama and Somalia are being relearned every day with blood in Iraq. Critics like Hackworth who are serious about providing American with a vital and effective military are necessary in a republican regime, such as our own. Hackworth was a war hero, a patriot, and a very good writer. While he ruffled a lot of feathers, and sometimes said things that were out of left field, his passion and his commitment to the guys in the field will be missed.

Spies Like Us

Posted on May 05 | Post a Comment

So where are all of the kill-em-all patriots of the hawkish right now that we've found spies in our government!?! The blogosphere and the legions of professional journalists have been curiously silent about the arrest this week of Larry Franklin and the discharge of two American-Israel-Public-Affairs Commitee (AIPAC) employees, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. All are impliciated in a conspiracy to pass on sensitive administrative policies regarding Iran to Israel.

This is extremely serious. Israel is an ally, but the chain of command gets to decide what info they get and when, not individuals out of their own notions of what is in the US's national security interest or for their own notions of justice and loyalty. For individuals to gratuitously pass classified information to Israel or to spy on its behalf raises serious questions about information security in our government and how individuals with access to sensitive security are vetted. That Richard Perle and Douglas Feith were in sensitive positions in Rumsfeld's Pentagon should be scandalous by itself, after earlier, credible charges against both men of spying and passing on information to Israel. Now the scandal grows.

It's as important to punish individuals involved in this scandal just as we would if our enemies were involved. We've learned from our own history that today's friends can be tomorrow's enemies (USSR, Iraq) and that decisions about what kind of information to give, and to whom, need to be decided deliberately through official policies made by the highest officials.

A False Start

Posted on May 05 | Post a Comment

A long, but interesting, article in Foreign Affairs by Bernard Lewis on how the Arab world's current morass results from its desperate attempts to catch up to the West, and its emmulation of the least valuable political and social ideas of the 20th Century: communism and national socialism.

He writes:

Some critics may point out that regardless of theory, in reality a pattern of arbitrary, tyrannical, despotic government marks the entire Middle East and other parts of the Islamic world. Some go further, saying, "That is how Muslims are, that is how Muslims have always been, and there is nothing the West can do about it." That is a misreading of history. One has to look back a little way to see how Middle Eastern government arrived at its current state.

Continue reading "A False Start"

Crystal Ball Report

Posted on May 05 | 1 comment

The lovely Annika--who is on my blogroll--had the following funny observations on the outcome of the recent elections and the hystrionic predictions of certain Hollywood starlettes:

So Cameran Diaz and Ashton Kutcher Timberlake are finally getting married?! Well, i sure hope they don't breed.

And i'd like to get in on the divorce pool, too. i'll pick sixteen months.

While their eventual breakup is a metaphysical certainty, i'm still waiting for Cameren to recant her ridiculously ugly prediction, made on the Ofrah show last year, that if women didn't vote (i.e. if Bush won) rape would become legal in the United States.

Well, as far as i am aware, the Rape Legalization Act has yet to be introduced into either house of Congress, despite the Republican majorities and the religious theocracy i keep hearing about. Oh, and i'm still waiting for Cher's prediction to come true. You know the one where we Republicans are supposed to round up all her gay friends and exile them to some remote state somewhere.

Still waiting. Idiots.

Conspiracy Theories . . . of the Left

Posted on May 02 | Post a Comment

Great piece by Michael Greve of AEI on how liberals have invented a non-existent threat to justify their own naked use of the judiciary to advance their agenda. Liberals, having used the Courts to empower the federal government, disempower the states, and invent a host of au courant rights, now label anything to reverse this non-textualist assault as extremists. And, to further justify their obstruction of any limitations on this path, they've suggested that conservative jurists whom they oppose are paving the way for a return to the constitutional regime of the 1930s. Would that it were so! Greve writes:

Everybody, chill. Libertarians are notoriously incapable of planning a lunch. With the lone and arguable exception of Justice Clarence Thomas, all sitting justices have time and again reaffirmed New Deal precedents and shunned opportunities to limit their reach. The Rehnquist Court's federalism "revolution"--the principal target of liberal wrath--consists of margin-nibbling decisions that no ordinary American has heard of, and recent (and, probably, forthcoming) decisions strongly signal an abandonment. At the same time, the supposedly conservative Court has cranked out an amazing array of newfangled rights, especially on sexual mores.

In short, I despair of our supposed plans for toppling the New Deal. And in truth, there is no Constitution in Exile movement. Google the phrase, run it through Lexis-Nexis, search far and wide: No conservative or libertarian activist, theorist, or judge has used the term since its casual mention in 1995 (and few have ever heard of it).

The propagation of the Napoleonic moniker is the assiduous work of liberal theorists--prominently, University of Chicago professor Cass Sunstein and Yale professor Bruce Ackerman.

No serious scholar--least of all Sunstein and Ackerman--disputes that the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, did radically change its meaning in 1937 or thereabouts. It's the "exile" metaphor that does the work, by suggesting that the original thing ought to be brought back from its juridical Elba by judicial fiat.

In intimating that this is the conservative program, liberal propagandists rope in unlikely suspects. Rosen's article tags former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who has a long history of denouncing judicial activism. Sunstein has pinned the charge on Justice Antonin Scalia, who has rejected Epstein's theories on using judicial activism to promote economic liberty with the vehemence he usually brings to bear against the Supreme Court's snazzy new rights inventions. A recent Ackerman article in the London Review of Books identifies as a leading Constitution-in-Exilist legal scholar Robert Bork, who has proposed an end to judicial review of just about any kind--not exactly a recipe for restoring an exiled constitution by judicial decree.

For good measure, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and People for the American Way's Ralph Neas have charged the entire Federalist Society with trying to restore the exiled Constitution.

A "Constitution in Exile" adherent, it turns out, is anybody the Left doesn't like.

The Ugly American

Posted on May 02 | 2 comments

If you've seen any of the documentaries regarding Iraq--Gunner Palace, Off to War, A Company of Soldiers, or The Push to Baghdad--one is struck by how alien the Iraqi people are to the American soldiers and how much mutual confusion there is because of cultural and linquistic barriers. The most pathetic site is of American's yelling at Iraqis to get back or stop in English! In the US invasions of France, Sicily, or Germany, one could count on at least a few competent speakers of these European languages down to the company level, but today there are few Arabic speakers in the modern military, and the gap between the strategic goals and military capabilities is startling in this area. We cannot gather intelligence in Iraq and the War on terror, train Iraqi soldiers, or fight the propaganda war in Iraq and globally without a greater and more widespread facility with Arabic on the part of the American military and intelligence agencies.

This Slate piece by Fred Kaplan details the sorry history of the DoD's attempts to get our people up to speed on the languages of the region, when a much more ambitious effort is required, beginning at the High School level. Instead, 7 years after 9/11, plans are to have the management of such a program in place, before any training in earnest shall have begun:

In the three and a half years after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the U.S. government funded dozens—if not hundreds—of Russian-language and Russian-studies departments not just within the military but in high schools and colleges all across America.
Now, three and a half years after Islamic fundamentalists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Department of Defense is three months away from publishing an official "instruction" providing "guidance for language program management."
It's pathetic.

Bring Back Stigma

Posted on May 02 | 8 comments

Great article by Roger Scruton that says the death of stigma, its relegation onto the heap of "uncivilized" prejudices and practices, increases social problems and ultimately conspires against individual happiness. Though libertarians and small government types pay lip service to stigma and social pressure, I find that conservatives are more reliable on this front. After all, if one thinks that one cannot know with any certainty anything other than "natural rights," then on what basis would one feel empowered to get in people's faces and tell them that their behavior is disgusting. This view of life and moral knowledge unwittingly creates a more chaotic society, which creates greater demands for government regulation of people's behavior. Scruton writes:

Stigma has evaporated in our era, and along with it much of the constant, small-scale self-regulation of the community, which depends on each individual's respect for, and fear of, other people's judgment. In consequence, the laws have expanded, both in extent and complexity, to fill the void. Yet as sanctions have been expropriated from society by the state, people feel far more free to follow their own inclinations, to disregard proprieties, and to ignore the effect of their behavior on others and on the common good. For although the law impinges far more on their lives, they experience it as an external force with no real moral authority. In addition, the law increasingly distinguishes the "public" realm, where it is the sole objective authority, from the "private" realm, where it cannot intrude, leaving the private realm less and less regulated, despite the fact that it contains most of the matters on which the future of society depends: sexual conduct, the rearing of children, honest dealing, and self-respect.
Moreover, there is no evidence that the law can really compensate for the loss of social sanctions. The law combats crime not by eliminating criminal schemes but by increasing the risk attached to them; stigma combats crime by creating people who have no criminal schemes in the first place. The steady replacement of stigma by law, therefore, is a key cause of the constant increase in the number and severity of crimes.

Sullivan on Ratzinger

Posted on April 28 | Post a Comment

Watching Andrew Sullivan completely melt down over Ratzinger has been both amusing and sad. Amusing, because he does it with such authenticity and passion, even when he becomes completely unmoored from the facts, history, and reality. Sad, because Sullivan is ultimately at war with Catholic truth; he has a vestigal attachment to the Church, but he wants to strip it down of all that is inconvenient, challenging, or that might make him confront sin in his own life. And what would it be when he and other liberal Catholics are complete? Pretty vestments and vague notions of transcendence?

Anyway, he lays out his beef with Ratzinger in a new column. I noticed something kind of peculiar. He says, "Reading Benedict for a struggling gay Catholic like me is like reading a completely circular, self-enclosed system that is as beautiful at times as it is maddeningly immune to reasoned query. The dogmatism is astonishing."

Dogmatic it may be, but it is after all dogma. Ratzinger may pontificate, but he is, after all, the Pontiff. Andrew Sullivan does not want to hear the word, "No." But saying no to the world, modernism, and its false promises is saying yes to Christian truth. We pray after all that His will be "done on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Carrots and Sticks

Posted on April 27 | 1 comment

One of the more notable aspets of the counter-insurgency in Iraq has been the attempt to get everyone on board, that is, to apply the same hearts and minds strategy in the Sunni Triangle as we successfully employed in Kurdish and Shia areas of Iraq. While one should always leave undecideds a face-saving way to turn towards the regime as part of a counter-insurgency strategy, it's ridiculous to think that the losers under the new system will embrace it without incentives beyond hand-shakes, school book-bags, and the like.

America understood as much during its successful counterinsurgency in the Phillipinesl, which bears many similarities to the present campaign in Iraq. I recently read an article from Parameters that showed how sticks, as well as carrots, were employed to great effect in the PI:

Incentives without sanctions, largely the case before December 1900, are much less effective. Unlike General Otis, General MacArthur made known that there were limits to American benevolence. As the cost and risks of supporting the insurrection increase, support will decrease. To return to Mao’s metaphor, as the water becomes hotter, it evaporates from around the fish. While these principles are simple and constant, the appropriate tactics, techniques, and procedures must be developed, adapted to local conditions, constantly reassessed, and permitted to evolve.
Civic action and benevolent treatment alone were unable to win the Philippine campaign. Armed only with good deeds, soldiers were unable to either protect Filipino supporters from retribution or deny support to the insurgents. It was only with the addition of the chastisement tools—fines, arrest, property destruction and confiscation, population concentration, deportation, and scorching sections of the countryside—that soldiers were able to separate guerillas from their support. The proper mix of tactics and techniques appropriate for each local situation was determined by officers in hundreds of garrisons throughout the archipelago.

Types of Faith

Posted on April 27 | 1 comments

Michael Novak has a very nice column in today's National Review today about the Catholic Church's unique heritage, which includes attempts to persuade not just with demands for blind obedience but with reasoned argument. In coming back to the Catholic Church during college after a sojourn with the Southern Baptists, I found this aspect of the Church most satisfying, in contrast to the emotive and volunterist aspects of Evangelical Protestantism, as well as its frequent lack of precision on doctrinal matters:

There are always reasons why the Catholic Church holds something as doctrine. It is never arbitrary. Those who inspect the reasons may or may not be persuaded; but they cannot deny that a reasoned case has been laid out. While other churches may rely more on conversion of heart and even abjure the giving of reasons, and while still others may take refuge in "Here I stand, I can do no other," the Catholic Church is willing to run the risk of falling into an excess of rationalism by its willingness to put its case in discursive reason.
It is one thing for persons without education, or perhaps with only a child's capacity for reasoning, to rest on a simple, more or less unquestioned faith. My mother was a simple person, without a college education, but God tested her through very great suffering, including the murder of her second son and a near-fatal car accident to a beloved daughter, among many other griefs. She was cruelly tempted to doubt the goodness of God and even the existence of God. Her love for God, even in the darkness, held firm. She could not, however, good woman that she was, offer a reasoned case for what she was doing. Her faith was deep, and tested, and wise, but not verbose or highly cognitive.
It is another thing for intellectually talented and well-trained minds to practice an unquestioned faith. That would be an abuse of God's gift, a failure of application, a classic case of intellectual sloth, and a lack of honesty and courage. To think unquestioned faith a standard to be aspired to would be an outrage. In its infantile conception of the God who made the sun and all the stars — and all the brains within the universe — to think unquestioned faith a good would be a blasphemy.

Intel Dump

Posted on April 26 | Post a Comment

Not much time to write, but a few interesting links.

Phil Carter at the blog "Intel Dump" has a fairly well thought out criticism of the Army's investigation and exhoneration of various high level officer's involved in the Abu Gharib incident. He specifically criticizes the Army for effectively abandoning the principle of "command responsibility" by letting nearly all flag grade officers off the hook.

A long, but sad and tragic account of a Marine officer charged with unlawfully killing Iraqi civilians.

A review of the book Not A Good Day to Die, which I just completed myself. The book is an eye-opening and frustrating read because of its subject matter: the thoroughly screwed up chain of command and flow of events during Afghanistan's Operation Anaconda in early 2002.

The False Hopes of "Progressive" Catholicism

Posted on April 22 | 18 comments

Great article from the New Republic that basically shows how Churches that have done what progressive Catholics recommend--ordination of women, liberal views on social issues, more flexible and democratic approach to dogma--are in decline with respect to membership and influence:

The election of Benedict XVI, at least in the Western press, is being interpreted primarily as a blow to liberal Catholicism--the Catholicism that has endured a kind of exile since the late 1960s, when it became clear that the post-Vatican II renovation in Church teaching was not to be as sweeping as many hoped. For some, this exile has meant formally abandoning the Church; for most, though, it has meant remaining within it, waiting first for Paul VI to die, and then John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, and all the while insisting--often from major op-ed pages and tenured positions at Catholic universities--that all of the Church's difficulties, from declining vocations to dwindling mass attendance to the sex-abuse scandals, would be solved if only Catholicism were to become more in step with the modern world.
It's an appealing notion, particularly to people whose lives and beliefs already conform more closely to modern mores than to traditional Catholic teaching. But it has almost no empirical support. All the evidence suggests the opposite--that a more liberal Catholic Church would be far weaker, smaller, and less influential even than the wounded and divided Body of Christ that Benedict XVI will govern.
The problem for liberals is that their preferred path to the Catholic future has already been tried, and with less-than-encouraging results. In America, the Church's decades-long slide in mass attendance and ordinations to the priesthood is at its worst not in Catholicism's more conservative precincts but in the liberal-minded dioceses and religious orders--the places where implementing the spirit of Vatican II has meant ignoring the actual Vatican on matters of liturgy, theology, and morality. The once-rigorous, now-latitudinarian Jesuits, for instance, have seen ordinations slow to a trickle, whereas self-consciously traditional orders like the Legionaries of Christ (and, of course, the notorious albino monks of Opus Dei) are growing rapidly. When a recent survey compared 15 "progressive" dioceses to 15 "orthodox" dioceses, it found that the proportion of priests to practicing Catholics in conservative dioceses actually grew slightly between 1956 and 1996, while the proportion in the more liberal dioceses steadily dropped.

The Junk Food Blogosphere

Posted on April 22 | 5 comments

I've realized in reading different blogs that so much of what is offered on blogs is the intellectual equivalent on junk food, and this defect exists as much on the right as on the left. Pile on fests against the "hate object" of the day get blogs to link to one another and create a frenzy of self-congratulation. Other blogs have reconceived of their role as media watchdogs, constantly trying to find some oversight, misstatement of fact, or evidence of bias. What was once a happy byproduct of so many people reading the news, commenting on it, and being able to communicate their insights widely has become for some their raison d'etre. Finally, by focusing so intently on the news, the day to day, and one's personal experiences, most blogs lack historical perspective of any kind, and thus most blogs, like the media whom they follow so closely, don't have anything interesting to say on current events.

I've realized that so much of my blogroll is now boring to me; not only are predictable things said, but they're said predictably. LGF is the perfect example; today, for the 1,000,000th time Charles complains about insurgents being described as "militants" in the media. Others in the blogosphere continue to delude themselves with Condi for President fantasies, Davos conspiracy theories, and other blog-reinforced nonsense.

Blogs work best when bloggers read a book or a long article or something other than other blogs so that when events occur, bloggers might actually have something to say about them, other than "Yeah team!"

Cardinal Ratzinger's Sermon

Posted on April 22 | 1 comment

Cardinal Ratzinger's homily prior to the papal election conclave was full of an erudite combination of theology, moral philosophy, and pastoral inspiration. Like so many others, I especially liked his stand against the corrosive ideologies that have weakened and confused Western Man and his direction of the faithful to Christ as the way out of this morass:

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – which creates unity and takes form in love.

Our Neighbors

Posted on April 22 | 1 comment

I watched the documentary Chasing El Norte recently and was struck by Mexico's aggressive efforts to prevent illegal immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala from passing through Mexico en route to the US. Aside from showing the Mexican regime's hypocricy in describing US border security as a violation of human rights, it shows something else, a certain good sense on Mexico's government's part that our own is lacking. Mexico apparently understands that at the lowest echelons of the labor market, any job taken by a Salvadoran or other low skill immigrants might otherwise go to a Mexican and, in turn, enrich Mexico. If there is competition between Mexicans and Salvadorans and others for these jobs, surely it doesn't take a great deal of insight to realize that there is also competition between these illegal immigrants and our own low skill laborers. Needless to say, it's shameful that Mexico is doing more to protect its own citizens than our government is.

As we're often told by the multiculturalists, we can learn a thing or two from foreign cultures.