lloydtown 

Security Without Sacrifice?

Even in his big speech last week, Bush wouldn't ask the country for more recruits. K. Lopez at the Corner noticed; it's almost as if, in the excitement of the moment, she thought Jonah Goldberg should enlist. Or some of the Young Republicans.

Fred Kaplan said right after the speech:

Perhaps the most appalling part of the speech came toward the end, when President Bush told the American people how they can contribute to the cause. This Fourth of July, he suggested, write a letter of thanks to a member of the U.S. armed forces or help out a military family that lives down the street. Up to this point, the president had been describing the many ways in which the fate of Iraq will shape the peace and freedom of the Middle East and the security of democratic nations everywhere. And this is his idea of commensurate sacrifice?

Whatever the answers, there is a potentially calamitous mismatch between the Bush administration's avowed intentions and its tangible means. They can print or borrow money to float the national debt. They can't clone or borrow soldiers to float an imperial army.

...I resent the taunt that is latent in the anti-war stress on supposedly uneven sacrifice. Did I send my children to rescue the victims of the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center? No, I expected the police and fire departments to accept the risk of gruesome death on my behalf. All of them were volunteers (many of them needlessly thrown away, as we now know, because of poor communications), and one knew that their depleted ranks would soon be filled by equally tough and heroic citizens who would volunteer in their turn. We would certainly face a grave societal crisis if that expectation turned out to be false.

Movies

Recently seen:

Return of the Pink Panther. My son and I are going back and seeing the series. This I think is #3, after the Pink Panther, and Shot in the Dark. Funnier than #4, Revenge of the PP, and maybe the funniest of them all. Old, classic stuff can be so funny. A cigarette lighter that looks exactly like a revolver. Inspector Dreyfuss shows it off, reassures his subordinate that the gun is safely away, somehow switches them, shoots himself in the face. Soon he is trying to kill Clouseau. Click, click, click. Is it the lighter or the gun? Clouseau helpfully suggests some butane, or a flint. After Clouseau leaves, bang, shoots himself again. Later reassures subordinate--it's the lighter--shoots him. At least once more trying to shoot Clouseau: lighter works perfectly. There's also a pretty good "tearing up the apartment with Kato."

I was trying to interest my son in some Buster Keaton recently, but I don't think I succeeded. This documentary comes on TV every so often--Buster is getting old, but he's making a movie in which he drives a pump car along a railway track. He fusses over every detail. If he is up on a bridge, where there is a high wind, and he chooses that time to get out a huge map, the white map becomes a sail...

In another scene he goes into a tunnel. I think he somehow makes a noise like a locomotive or something, so as he comes out, he sends a construction crew running.

The Aviator. A while ago now. A big focus on Hughes' mental illness, while showing he had real accomplishments as an entrepreneur before he went crazy.

National Treasure. I don't know, it doesn't leave much of an impression. Back and forth between the modern world, stores and streets, maybe a chase; and exploring deep underground, Indiana Jones-style. A kind of caper involving the Smithsonian in the middle.

Ocean's Twelve: not as good as Eleven.

Meet the Fockers. Definitely better than Meet the Parents. You can really see the contrast between the uptight WASP parents (DeNiro and Danner) and the Jewish parents (Streisand and Hoffman).

The Incredibles: I think I got it for my birthday. Really quite good. Holly Hunter's voice gets to me.

Hitch. Really not very funny. Will Smith is listed as one of the producers, as well as star. I'm guessing he had a lot of creative control, and he now thinks he can write, direct, produce, everything. Maybe not. Only memory of the movie: Kevin James moves very well for a big man.

Spanglish. I have a feeling I saw the best parts in previews. Is it really plausible that people who live in California speak not one word of each other's language--English and Spanish, respectively? And even in the course of the movie they are very slow to learn even one word at a time, the better to draw out the suspense of the scenes where translation is necessary? I was ready to tear my hair out. But: old-fashioned lesson about being a good person, living up to your responsibilities, I guess so.

Serpico. An oldie my wife bought. It gets kind of weird. He has so much integrity, he can't even commit to a girlfriend! That's how serious he is about his job! Yet soon after, he gave up his career altogether. You get a feeling he could take up and then put down almost any cause, always as a fanatic.

Thinking about seeing some:

Bewitched. At first I thought this is just nuts. But the previews look good. Now the reviews are mixed.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I gather it has some humour similar to War of the Roses.

The War of the Roses

The family bought the DVD for me for Father's Day. I'm the only one who sat through it all. I really enjoy it--especially the vicious ending. And I like the story that Danny DeVito fought for the "unhappy" ending, with studio people insisting there was a lot more money to be made with a happy one.

I believe the movie is based loosely on Martha Stewart's divorce. When they marry, they both take for granted that the man knows a lot more--about art, books, history, geography, you name it. She shows her virtue by being athletic and indeed dreamy in bed, and by being willing to learn. As time goes by, he continues to treat her the same way--as if she has really learned nothing. She naturally finds that this is getting extremely old, indeed repulsive.

As the violence escalates, it seems he is more or less sincere in saying he loves her (or his out of date image of her), whereas there is little doubt that she hates him. At the very end, as she dies, she even insists on getting his hand off her body. Does this make her a nastier person? I don't think so. He demonstrates that love can be suffocating and tyrannical, especially if it is based on notions which were dubious from the beginning (if she was so dumb, why was she lovable?), and are now an insult to her. Her rage seems quite natural, and he is completely unreasonable about the house. He is full of himself; he does have a way of applying his considerable intelligence to sucking up to his bosses; and as he gets older, he loses his sense of humour about these things. He is getting less attractive as a mate, she is getting more attractive as she builds her catering her business.

There is something natural about them killing each other--in a way, I think we end up rooting for this result.

Busy

It turns out I'll be teaching a different course at the University of Toronto starting in September--a seminar in political philosophy, specifically on Aristotle's Ethics, the book I wrote my dissertation on.

A real treat for me, which results from bad news for the Department: they did not succeed in filling a full-time position.

So I have some work to do.

I digressed over the last couple of weeks to work on a family history. My older brother had a draft he had worked on with our mother; some old letters had surfaced; and it's all kind of on my mind because of my quick visit to Edmonton. I still have some work to do in order to incorporate as much detail on my mother's side as we have on my father's side.

And I'm still planning to get back to an article on The War on Terror: Towards a Thucydidean approach. After 9/11, Americans were frightened as well as angry; both emotions made them feel the whole world was a problem to be solved; any erstwhile ally who questioned what they were doing was soft on evil, etc.; and anything they chose to do was justified, as long as it wasn't actually as bad as Buchenwald, or something. All of this reinforces that the U.S. has been generally isolationist, with occasional interventions in the world, increasingly dramatic in the 20th century. They prefer that their interventions can be justified morally; that they don't sound like imperialism, or even the beginnings of imperialism; and that the rationale for them makes it sound as if all U.S. troops will be home soon, even if this isn't likely or true. In fact, despite their tendency toward isolationism, they like to think of themselves as liberators of the entire world, so every intervention has the potential to be justified this way: this isn't just a war in hell-hole number 58; this is a significant step, even if a small step, toward turning the whole world into something we're going to like a lot better--or at least, be able to pronounce the names of.

In all of this, there is at least a close correspondence between the American approach and the Spartan approach in Thucydides. Sparta actually did liberate quite a few people.

In the old joke, the American kid writes: "Towards a better--and cheaper--elephant." In U.S. military interventions, the rationale is: "Towards a better--and cheaper--world." Of course, the promise of cheapness doesn't necessarily pan out either.

Global Warming for the nth time

Someone who doesn't work for polluters, via Hit and Run:

There is no proven link between human activity and global warming.

Global temperatures will likely rise by 1.4-5.8 degrees during the next 100 years. The average increase will be three degrees. I do not think that this threatens mankind. Sea levels, due to rise by 47 cm in the 21st century, will not threaten port cities.

Regimes that Harbour Terra

Porter Goss this week: [blockquote]In his first interview since becoming CIA head, Porter Goss assures Time, "I have an excellent idea of where [Osama bin Laden] is." He's hard to capture however, because, "When you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play."[/blockquote]

President Bush, September 14, 2001: "We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them."

President Bush, September 20, 2001:

We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Guantanamo, etc.

Chris Matthews via Atrios:

MATTHEWS: My big concern is, the longer you keep them, the angrier they get. Eventually, you are going to send them home. Maybe the smarter thing is to execute everyone down there, because if you‘re going to send them back to the Arab world or the Islamic world angry as hell at us, they‘re going to be doing dirty stuff against us, right?

ORIN: I go back to the fact that we need to remember we‘re at war.

And it makes it—you know, for some of the people who are on the left on this issue, it gets very easy to say, oh, we need to treat them with proper respect and so on. This is a very complicated question, because, on the one hand, you don‘t want to behave as badly as they do. On the other hand, you know, I think the reaction in much of the al Qaeda world to this story will be, what a bunch of wusses. Boy, if that is all they do to you, we don‘t even have to be afraid of being captured.

New Article

We just got six copies of the May issue of EP (Exceptional Parent), with my latest and probably last article about our late daughter, Kate.

I don't think it's available online.

Reading

1. Using a gift certificate from Chapter's, I bought Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up: a collection of non-fiction pieces.

Pretty high quality throughout. I like the story of Robert Noyce, one of the founders of Intel ("Two Young Men Who Went West"). More updated stuff on how computers have changed things, how wealthy the U.S. is (contrary to gloomy declarations by would-be Marxists), and the future of neuroscience (which might change our world more than computers have), all quite good.

Wolfe, describing the new with-it world, uses the expression "RIM pager." I'm surprised he didn't have the term "Blackberry," or in fact "Crackberry." It's the kind of thing he would have liked to have thought of.

His novella,. "Ambush at Fort Bragg," is relevant on a number of fronts. A TV news magazine team from New York heads out to an army base in the south to catch the murderers of a gay soldier on tape, admitting to their crime and giving some of the cultural, i.e. disgustingly backward, background. They get their tape, but when the bigoted young soldiers find out they've been taped, the brightest of them gives a speech about how it is the unit that counts, not the individual. You can't expect an individual to risk his own life, but the unit will sacrifice itself every day. Out gays risk the unity of the unit, and that's what intellectuals with no military background don't get.

The finished product on TV is distorted, false, in very specific ways. Yet for purposes of a news show going for ratings, it tells the truth.

2. Retrieved from my mother's house: Peter Quennell, Four Portraits. This is the kind of thing I'd like to write: fairly light literary/historical studies. Quennell does Boswell, Gibbon, Laurence Sterne and John Wilkes. The first three wrote literary works of considerable repute as well as popular success. Wilkes made a name for himself defending "the rights of Englishmen" against the government that was supported by George III.

These four were contemporaries, and each had some glory at roughly the same time, say the 1760s. Quennell gives off hints that the Victorian era was coming--more narrow morally, but no doubt capable of prodigies of its own. Boswell was an inveterate womanizer and party animal, who was drawn to Johnson partly because he needed a somewhat stern but loving father, which his own father had never really been. Johnson had genuine crises of Christian conscience; Boswell may have had paler versions of these.

Gibbon actually converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager, and was immediately treated as an outcast by his family. He was sent to study with a Protestant minister in Switzerland, obviously in the hope that he would convert back, which he eventually did. In his magisterial history of the decline of Rome, he famously shows a kind of contempt for Christianity, and a suspicion that its influence was always harmful. In his personal life he was remarkably inexperienced, but not exactly innocent.

Sterne was an Anglican priest--as with Talleyrand, it was the only way offered him to make a living. He had richly emotional affairs with various women, but there is some doubt as to whether many of them, or any, were consummated. He may have introduced the word "sentimental" into the English language--no doubt influenced by Rousseau.

Wilkes was a complete reprobate, but he could charm anyone. Johnson disapproved of him on early meetings, but soon came to say "Jack is alright," and such.

Christianity is a presence for these men, but as Quennell says, the Anglican church in this time is extremely easy-going. When the Victorians toughened up morality they did so not so much with the support of Christianity, as despite the lack of belief in it--at least among intellectuals.

Jonathan Swift in the News?

Glenn Reynolds and others are speculating about where stem cell research might take us. In the short term, might we add twenty years or more to the average life?

One of the oddest episodes in Gulliver's Travels concerns the Struldbruggs. Gulliver is asked how he would like to life forever. He says that would be a dream come true--but of course he is imagining eternal youth. What the Struldbruggs have is eternal old age.

[blockquote]When they came to Fourscore Years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this Country, they had not only all the Follies and Infirmities of other old Men, but many more which arose from the dreadful Prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative [oh oh; were they bloggers?], peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative; but uncapable of Friendship, and dead to all natural Affection, which never descended below their Grand-children. Envy and impotent Desires, are their prevailing Passions....They have no Remembrance of any thing but what they learned and observed in their Youth and middle Age, and even that is very imperfect... The least miserable among them, appear to be those who turn to Dotage, and entirely lose their Memories; these meet with more Pity and Assistance, because they want many bad Qualities which abound in others.[/blockquote]

If there is a married couple of these folks, they are granted a divorce once one of them turns 80--since eternal marriage would make them even more miserable. They understand no language except what was spoken when they were young, etc. Allan Bloom has suggested that the Struldbruggs represent the various Christian churches.

Meanwhile, via hit and run, an experiment that shows monkeys can learn the use of money, and act like humans more or less at their worst. Of course this is reminiscent of the Yahoos.

Finally, in searching around a bit, a found some passages on lawyers:

[blockquote]I said there was a Society of Men among us, bred up from their Youth in the Art of proving by Words multiplied for the Purpose, that White is Black, and Black is White, according as they are paid... For example. If my neighbour hath a mind to my Cow, he hires a Lawyer to prove that he ought to have my Cow from me..... Now in this Case, I who am the true Owner lie under two great Disadvantages. First, my Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falshood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness, if not with Ill-will. The second Disadvantage is, that my Lawyer must proceed with great Caution: Or else he will be reprimanded by the Judges, and abhorred by his Brethren, as one who would lessen the practice of the Law..... I have known some of them [judges] to have refused a large Bribe from the Side where Justice lay, rather than injure the Faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their Nature or their Office.[/blockquote]

It is a Maxim among these Lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: And therefore they take special Care to record all the Decisions formerly made against common Justice and all the general Reason of Mankind. These, under the Name of Precedents, they produce as Authorities to justify the most iniquitous Opinions; and the Judges never fail of directing accordingly.