tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71373140568170487552024-03-06T19:33:58.243-08:00Booksellers versus BestsellersBooksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.comBlogger755125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-83849917435645904802023-03-31T16:21:00.003-07:002023-04-07T18:44:34.697-07:00186,000 miles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law. (a brief meditation on natural law.)<p> by John MacBeath Watkins</p><p><br /></p><div class="Ar Au Ao" id=":1cl"><div aria-controls=":1ff" aria-label="Message Body" aria-multiline="true" aria-owns=":1ff" class="Am Al editable LW-avf tS-tW tS-tY" g_editable="true" hidefocus="true" id=":1ch" role="textbox" spellcheck="false" style="direction: ltr; min-height: 376px;" tabindex="1">I used to have a poster that said, '186,000 miles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.'<div><br /></div><div>That is, in old-fashioned imperial measurements, roughly the speed limit of light. It can be made to go slower in some media, but not faster. At the time the poster came out, America had adopted a national highway speed limit of 55 miles per hour to save fuel during an oil crisis, and the poster was a play on the motto chosen to gain acceptance for the law.</div><div><br /></div><div>The speed of light is an example of the sort of thing we usually regard as a law of nature -- a law that can't be broken, because it is physically impossible to do so. T.S. Eliot, in <i>Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats</i>, may have told us that McCavity could do so...</div><div><br /></div><div><i>McCavity, McCavity, there's no one like McCavity</i></div><div><i>He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity</i></div><div><br /></div><div>...but outside of fiction and poetry, it is impossible, as far as has been so far determined, to break the law of gravity or the cosmic speed limit of light (shut up about spooky action a distance, no one understands that beyond 'because of quantum.')</div><div><br /></div><div>In political theory, the stuff we talk about as natural law does not have this characteristic. In fact, natural rights stemming from the concept of natural law are violated all the time. This conception of natural law goes back to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, and it is a contemplation of what it is to be human.</div><div><br /></div><div>St. Thomas Aquinas formulated natural law as a consequence of humanity possessing reason. Reason, (he reasoned,) is a spark of the divine, and every human possesses that spark. In that respect, all humans are equal, and each is infinitely more precious than any other thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>John Locke was not Catholic, his father having served in the Puritan cavalry during the English civil war. But he certainly knew of the long tradition of natural law and natural rights.</div><div><br /></div><div>Locke did not just write about politics. He also did groundbreaking work in epistemology, and in the process did a great deal to shape our modern conception of the self.</div><div><br /></div><div>Science seeks objective knowledge of the world. We see a certain kind of light, and we may perceive it as having color. The frequency of the light is objective, say for example<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="color: black;">540-610 THz. To me, light in that frequency looks green. One of my grandfathers was color blind, and to him, it looked gray, which made picking berries with the right degree of ripeness a challenge for him. This is one difference between object and subject. All things that cannot be recorded as the physical properties of objects are subjective, leaving to the subject such things as color and taste, but also such things as beauty, morality, and meaning. The subjective, which is a large part of the world humans experience, is that which depends on the interior life of a subject.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">That's a long walk compared to simply saying humans have a spark of the divine, but it does explain how different the human subject is from an object, and raises the question of how we should respond to the difference between subjects and objects. An object, for example, doesn't feel pain or object to its treatment.</span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">But even a one-celled creature responds to stimulus. If bacteria feel pain, is my immune system a mass murderer? I think not. A bacteria does not meet the threshold of a consciousness worthy of personhood.</span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Which begs the question, what is that threshold, and who should be treated as a person? Slavery was an institution probably older than writing, but it involved treating people like objects. Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, sought to justify slavery in the "Cornerstone Speech" by defining enslaved people as less than human, because in </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">a moral universe reshaped by the enlightenment thought of people like Locke, treating people like objects seemed morally repugnant.</span></div><div><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">"</span><span style="color: #202122;">Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Historically, most slaves had been very similar to the people who enslaved them, usually from a neighboring tribe or city-state. The stoic philosopher Epictetus, of Greek extraction, spent his youth as a slave, and by some account had his leg deliberately broken by his Roman master. But while his master did not regard a slave as his equal, he did not deny the humanity of Epictetus, who he allowed an education and eventually freedom.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">But by the time slavery was disappearing from the Western world, Stephens found it essential to deny the humanity of the enslaved people in order to achieve the moral flexibility his cause required. In fact, a great many Americans, not just in the South, bought into white supremacy. It was a belief that made it easy to justify not just slavery, but the western expansion and the taking of what had been Native American land. At an earlier time in history, such justifications for slavery and conquest were not needed. But Locke's thought had done something very difficult; it had changed what people regarded as ethical treatment of their fellow human beings.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">This happened because the project that gave rise to liberal democracies was never about building the strongest empire, the most wealthy economy, or the tribe that conquers other tribes. It was about building a society that allows people to exercise their humanity to the utmost, by respecting what is interior to the person.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">What Locke would have called natural rights we now more commonly call human rights -- the rights one needs to live as a human being. Locke said these rights are inalienable -- that is, you cannot sell them or otherwise alienate them from yourself, because it's always going to be you looking out of your eyes, and you cannot assign your humanity to anyone else, even if you want to. Nor can anyone else strip you of your humanity, because being a person is not to do with how you are treated, it's inherent in what you are. That's why Stephens, in the Cornerstone Speech, attempted to assert that slaves were not people.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">In religious terms, the question is, who is ensouled? In scientific terms, what level of consciousness qualifies a being as a person? Happily, Stephens and the Confederate government he served lost that argument, although in some ways we are still fighting that war. </span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">What rights do we need to live as human beings? Life, liberty, and property are the basics, according to Locke.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Clearly, we need to be alive, else what rights can we exercise? The right to live our natural lives leads to questions of when life begins and when it ends, and what we need to remain alive. Should the state ensure that people don't starve, that they have sufficient shelter not to die from exposure, that enough medical care is provided to treat readily treatable illness? Are we still alive when our heart is beating but our brain isn't functioning? Should an ectopic pregnancy, which might have a heartbeat, but no brain activity, a being worthy of human rights even though there is no chance that it could result in a live birth and its existence is a threat to the health and life of the mother? These are all questions that have been hotly debated in American politics of late.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Liberty doesn't mean we can do whatever we want, because (for example) serial killers want to kill other people, which deprives them of their rights. Locke, after all, was a social contract theorist. The idea is that in what Thomas Hobbes called 'the war of each against all,' no one is able to exercise their rights, even the right to be alive. People form a social contract so that their rights are protected from the actions of other people, and in return, they are restrained from engaging in actions that will interfere with the rights of others.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">When I hear that someone has dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, I can't help but think this person is preparing for the war of each against all, in the mistaken belief that it is possible to win that war. If an epidemic is under way, we all have an obligation under the social contract not to engage in behavior likely to spread a potentially deadly disease, because while you have a right to die from said disease, others have a right to live.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Liberty is the basis for many of the rights enumerated in the U.S. Bill of Rights. We have a right to say what we wish (no promises about consequences that may stem from what you've said, like getting sued.) The First Amendment also prohibits the establishment of a state religion, because to have freedom of conscience, you must be free from having a religion imposed upon you. Liberty is also the basis for the right to privacy, essentially the right to be let alone. This right is not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, but the courts have made it part of American law.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Property may seem an odd thing to mention in the same breath as life and liberty, but recall that Locke felt one's property started with one's self. Historically, it seems one could be property or one could own property, not both. Slaves were treated as property and not as people until slavery was ended. Women did not get the vote until their right to own property was sorted out. If you did not own yourself, you could be treated as property and denied all human rights.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;">Many human relationships were based on treating people as property, including the wives and children of patriarchs, which is why liberalism continues to change the institution of marriage.</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-17119627730178963372021-02-24T13:30:00.009-08:002021-03-02T11:06:22.913-08:00Preface to The Outlaw John Locke: A republic, if you can keep it<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgkftCvQ6HoImtxjkAQ5HWMQuHpLUYn0G_UCjlYLLN_uKp1qvhGYofU0XDz9yrjY3ttTktMMfZX8THPtA2_gAe3yRUStthEByoDvsEMfEKPsalGOC14o970rykuDsCTaE8iedHzrDim0/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="260" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmgkftCvQ6HoImtxjkAQ5HWMQuHpLUYn0G_UCjlYLLN_uKp1qvhGYofU0XDz9yrjY3ttTktMMfZX8THPtA2_gAe3yRUStthEByoDvsEMfEKPsalGOC14o970rykuDsCTaE8iedHzrDim0/w308-h400/image.png" width="308" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><br /><br />(I've rewritten the preface to my book, The Outlaw John Locke, in light of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.)<br /><br />by John MacBeath Watkins<br /><br /><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-before: always; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Preface</b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>:
A republic, if you can keep it</b></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">America is the most successful
large Utopian experiment of all time.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The events of Jan. 6, 2021, showed
how easily we could lose the benefits of that experiment. President
Donald Trump had rescheduled a rally nearby to occur shortly before
Vice President Mike Pence was to go before congress and certify the
election of Trump's replacement, Joe Biden.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Trump directed his followers to
march to the Capitol Building, where Pence was to engage in the
ceremony. They marched to the building, set up a (not very well
built) gallows, overwhelmed the police guarding the Capitol Building,
and invaded the building. Some seemed to be there on a lark, others
came in full G.I. Joe cosplay, equipped with Flexcuffs and
communications gear, apparently ready to take congressional
representatives and senators captive. The Capitol Police succeeded in
evacuating the elected officials, and only five people died in the
attempted putsch, none of them elected representatives or senators.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">They were attempting a sort of
counterrevolution. The United States of America was an effort to find
a better, more rational way for people to govern themselves than the
ethno-religious states that had preceded it. When Trump's followers
said they would 'make America great again,' what they aspired to was
a nation dominated by Christian Whites. Yet the Constitution, in the
Bill of Rights, said there would be no establishment of religion.
Those claiming America is a Christian nation have probably forgotten
the evils of an established church, which at one point led Christians
to burn booksellers for selling English-language Bibles (see Chapter
13.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It is no coincidence that the Jan.
6, 2021 riot, or attempted putsch, or whatever it was (I favor the
term 'beer belly putsch,' but I doubt that will make it into the
Associated Press stylebook), happened at a time when Whites and
Christians were both declining as the defining groups in American
identity. As long as those groups dominated, it was easy enough to
paper over one of the most radical aspects of the American
experiment, the fact that the country was not based on ethnicity or
religion. It now begins to appear that the next effort to paper over
that radicalism will be an attempt to entrench minority rule by
disenfranchising people who are not part of the concurrent White
Christian majority as it fades into minority status.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The
entire premise of the attempted putsch was silly. Had the
participants managed to "hang Mike Pence," the intention
they chanted, and prevented him from formally recognizing that Joe
Biden won the presidential election, Biden would still be the
president-elect, and Trump would still be the loser. It's as if an
aspirant to power had heard of "seizing the throne" and
decided that possession of the right piece of furniture would give
them power over all the land. But however delusional the putsch may
have been, the intentions behind it are tearing America apart.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Nick
Fuentes, leader of the Proud Boys, one of the groups that was accused
of organizing the putsch, followed the keynote speech at the
Conservative Political Action Conference about six weeks later with a
speech in which voiced support for the putsch. He explained the goal
of the participants this way:</span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i>If
[America] loses its white demographic core … then this is not
America anymore,” the AFPAC founder told the crowd. Fuentes went on
to praise the Capitol attack, boasting about it leading to a delay in
the certification of the election results. “While I was there in
D.C., outside of the building, and I saw hundreds of thousands of
patriots surrounding the U.S. Capitol building and I saw the police
retreating … I said to myself: ‘This is awesome,'” Fuentes said
to the applause of the crowd… “To see that Capitol under siege,
to see the people of this country rise up and mobilize to D.C. with
the pitchforks and the torches — we need a little bit more of that
energy in the future,” he said.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc" sdfixed=""><sup>*</sup></a></i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /> </span></span></span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">For
Fuentes and his comrades, America would not be America if it were not
ruled by White Christians. But this was not the essence of the
American revolution.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When the Constitutional Convention
of 1787 was wrapping up, Elizabeth Willing Powell, who maintained a
salon that attracted some of the brightest minds of the age, asked
Benjamin Franklin what sort of government the delegates had come up
with, a monarchy or a republic. Franklin famously replied:</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“<span style="font-size: small;">A republic, madam, if you can
keep it.”</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It is now fashionable on the right
to tell people that America is a republic, not a democracy, as a
justification for making the country less democratic. They usually
quote James Madison as authority, even though Americas is generally
considered a pioneer among what are now called liberal democracies.
Madison, in fact, made it very clear that what he opposed was direct
democracy, in which people vote directly on every political issue. He
was a believer in elites, and advocated elected representatives. When
he helped found a political party, it was called the
Democrat-Republican Party, embodying two ideals he held dear. For
short, I will be referring to the system of liberal democracy as
liberalism. It is a system based on social contract theory. The idea
is that the government gains its legitimacy from serving the people
it governs, in a social contract periodically renewed by elections in
which the people may choose to keep their current representatives or
elect new ones.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Up until America's founding, most
nations were made up of territories where a majority of people
belonged to one ethnicity, whose language, religion, customs, and
appearance were similar enough that people could recognized their
fellow citizens as "one of us." This was one of the major
differences between nation states and multinational empires such as
the Austrian, Persian, or Roman empires. Ethnic homogeneity had
become the new requirement for a coherent political unit.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In contrast, consider this charge
against King George III listed in the Declaration of Independence:</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He
has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that
purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</blockquote>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Not only were they building a new
country not based on ethnicity, America's founding fathers were upset
that the king was not allowing them to encourage people who were not
English to come to this land and become citizens.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">America was founded not as an
ethno-religious state like those of Europe, but as an experiment in
building a society based on reason. Americans would have no king, no
nobility, no state religion. People could worship as they saw fit,
they could speak their minds, and they could select their leaders --
or, should they find their leaders needed to be removed, they could
remove them without violence. The American constitution provides two
ways of removing a bad president, elections and impeachment. In
adopting impeachment, they were following the example set in the
English Civil War, when Charles I became the first head of state to
be impeached. The theory was that there might be a need to remove a
head of state between elections, either before they could do more
damage, or because they had corrupted the means of replacing them by
election. Locke argued that people have a right to revolution when a
bad leader could not be removed by other means, and the American
constitution was written to make revolutions unnecessary. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">There was nothing else like it in
the world. There had been democratic and republican states in the
ancient world, but not states without a state religion. Even the
Netherlands, governed as a republic after 1649 and considered a
bastion of free speech, was an ethnically homogeneous state founded
in a war between Catholics and Protestants.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">There are countries where more
than one language is spoken, such as Switzerland and Belgium, but
America never has had an official language. The Pennsylvania Dutch
(ethnically Deutsch, that is, German) developed their own version of
German. Our 8th president, Martin Van Buren, spoke Dutch as his first
language, as did most of the residents of Kinderhook, N.Y., where he
grew up (he was the first president born after the American
revolution, therefore the first president born an American citizen.)
Thorstein Veblen, one of America's most famous academics and the
inventor of the concept of conspicuous consumption, spoke Norwegian
as his first language and only started to learn English when he went
to school (he was born in Wisconsin to Norwegian immigrant parents
and had plenty of Norwegian-speaking playmates.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And as a bookseller, I frequently
get old books in German that were published in Chicago, because many
German-speaking communities in America wanted books in their
language. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The term “melting pot” was not
at all common until about Word War I, when war propaganda made
preserving German culture less popular. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The truth is, 18th and 19th
century America was more multicultural</span><sup><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc" sdfixed=""><sup>*</sup></a></span></span></sup><span style="color: black;">
than melting pot, which was fine, because America was not founded to
be an ethnic or religious state. It was intended to be a bold
experiment to find a better way for humanity to live together, to
reduce conflict and increase happiness. Consider the second paragraph
of the Declaration of Independence:</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</blockquote>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">No medieval monarch would have recognized this as a
proper way of governing. The sovereign served God, not the people,
and God's earthly representatives gave their approval (or not) to the
sovereign's reign.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We have lived so long by the founders' principles that
we no longer appreciate how unique the experiment is. Faced with
enemies who wish to frame conflicts in ethnic and religious terms,
some wish to respond in kind instead of playing to America's
strengths, such as a tolerance of differences that allows us to
absorb instead of conquer, and a freewheeling, vibrant culture that
attracts others, instead of subjugating people outside of it.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Keep in mind during our journey,
those who held these ideals were human, inconsistent, and as prone to
failures as we who live today. But ideas have their own life; they
spread and grow more like a forest than a subdivision, not because of
coordinated effort but because they found fertile minds.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 0.14in; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</p>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">*</a>https://abcnews.go.com/US/gop-congressman-headlines-conference-organizers-push-white-nationalist/story?id=76152780</p>
</div>
<div id="sdfootnote2">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym">*</a><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Although
the term 'multicultural' did not become current until the 1970s.</span></p>
</div><div><div><p></p></div></div>Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-10163015764085893622021-02-22T15:40:00.001-08:002021-02-22T19:31:51.875-08:00What is socialism?<p> by John MacBeath Watkins</p><p><br /></p><p>It seems socialism was a big issue for some voters in the 2020 election, particularly in Florida.</p><p>For example, in a Nov. 17, 2020, article New York Magazine recounted the following:</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/republican-socialism-attacks-haunt-democrats-in-florida.html">“It was a McCarthyism type of pounding,” said Congresswoman Donna Shalala, looking back on the election she narrowly lost this month. Shalala had spent eight years serving in the Cabinet of Bill Clinton, the paragon of Democratic moderates, but by the end of her reelection campaign, she told Intelligencer<em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">, </em>people were coming up to her and saying, “You’re a communist.”</a></span></p><p>The smears relied heavily on lies, and on linking to the few people who caucus with the Democrats who embrace the socialist label, such as independent Bernie Sanders, a senator for Vermont, and <span style="font-family: inherit;"> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected to congress on the Democratic ticket in New York.</span></p><p>Part of the problem here is that socialism means different things to different people. From that New York Magazine article</p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/republican-socialism-attacks-haunt-democrats-in-florida.html">As Rick Wilson, a longtime Florida-based Republican consultant, put it: “Socialism broadly speaking in the United States is a bad brand. In Florida, it is a horrific brand.” Wilson, who is now a leading “never Trump” voice through his perch at the Lincoln Project, noted that to south Florida Hispanic voters “socialism isn’t universal health care and day care, socialism was secret police knocking at their door and shooting a family member in the head.”</a></span></p><p>Wikipedia, that voice of consensus knowledge, says that socialism is characterized by social ownership of the means of production. This was most famously carried out in the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes, but the Fabian socialists associated with the Labour Party in the United Kingdom also advocated social ownership of the means of production, producing a National Health Service, nationalized coal industry, steel industry, and other industries. Most of their program produced terrible results, but the NHS is well loved, and produces results comparable to the American medical system at a fraction of the cost.</p><p>Social Democrats have embraced democracy, and in general have been more inclined to advocate for a social safety net without wanting to nationalize the whole economy. There is a huge difference between a Labour government in Britain or a social democratic one in Denmark and the sort of socialist government found in Cuba and Venezuela.</p><p>Social Democrats and Fabian socialists have embraced democracy, believing that their ideas would sell themselves to people once they saw them in action. When they failed to produce results, they were voted out of office, but some of what they did remained. No Conservative government has been able to privatize the NHS, though Margaret Thatcher did manage to privatize the coal and steel industries, where the socialist experiment had failed badly.</p><p>We actually know a great deal about what goods are best handled by markets and what goods are naturally public goods. Even the most radical of our elected conservatives would probably not advocate privatizing the military and having everyone hire their own mercenaries to prevent their turf from being invaded. The military is insurance against invasion, and the peace it ensures within those borders is not something you can easily exclude people from if they don't want to buy it. People are therefore not required to buy that peace in order to enjoy it, so markets are not practical as a means to deliver it.</p><p>But the rhetorical use of the term 'socialist' goes well beyond social ownership. For example, the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a market-based system for reforming the provision of health insurance, and the Republicans adopted it in opposition to the Clinton administration's proposal for a reform based on having employers provide the insurance. Years later, President Barak Obama used that plan as the basis for the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Republicans denounced it as 'socialist,' although it did not involve nationalizing anything, it was just a way of changing the incentives in the market for health insurance. The ACA also gave states the option of expanding Medicaid, a program for government payment of medical bills for those who cannot afford medical care. In states that have not availed themselves of this provision, hospitals absorb the cost and pay for it by raising prices on everyone else.</p><p>Most nations, in the end, have public and private sectors, and there is not much controversy about it. People drive on public roads and stand on sidewalks paid for with taxes while protesting against socialism. Few of them would prefer police departments be disbanded so that we could all hire our own guards. At the moment, Medicare seems sacrosanct, although conservatives claimed it was socialist before it became the law of the land.</p><p>In a 1965 speech, Ronald Reagan said,<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white;">“[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit;">telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free</span><span style="background-color: white;">.”</span></span></p><p>Providing medical insurance to the elderly was not profitable. Retired people tend to have less money than working people, and old people tend to have more expensive medical needs than a younger population. Yet Americans found it unconscionable to have people dying prematurely because they couldn't buy health insurance or pay for care out of pocket or afford expensive medical insurance.</p><p>Does one become more free or less free with the provision of Medicare? If you are not wealthy, surely Medicare makes you more free, as you can get your ills treated sufficiently to go about life in a normal fashion, rather than be bound to your bed by debilitating disease. Certainly Medicare is sufficiently popular that it would be difficult to reverse the policy based on the ideological argument that it is socialism. The other problem with this argument is that Medicare isn't socialism. Medicare owns no hospitals. It is a subsidy to those in need, not an effort to take over the means of production.</p><p>Sen. Mitch McConnel, leader of the Republican faction in the U.S. Senate, called the part of President Joe Biden's covid-19 relief plan providing for $1,400 checks sent to all taxpayers socialism. He did not call the $600 checks Republicans had voted to send the same people socialism, and he didn't call former president Donald Trump's call for the checks to be $2,000 instead of $600 socialism, but then when President Biden decided to pursue the same policy Trump advocated by topping up the amount so it would total $2,000, McConnel decided it was socialism.</p><p>This definition of socialism, then, means that socialism occurs when Democrats try to use government to help those not already wealthy and powerful. The same policies, when proposed by Republicans, are not socialism. By using the term this way, Republicans have a rhetorical cudgel they can use to claim that those who, for example, support higher funding for Medicare, are equivalent to violent, oppressive regimes along the lines of the one now ruling Venezuela. </p>Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-62265654713188365322020-10-07T14:01:00.000-07:002020-10-07T14:01:03.318-07:00Rethinking liberal theory 2: The outlaw John Locke, terrorist, liberal, and advocate of freedom of property<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/John_Locke_by_Herman_Verelst.png/488px-John_Locke_by_Herman_Verelst.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/John_Locke_by_Herman_Verelst.png/488px-John_Locke_by_Herman_Verelst.png" width="260" /></a></div>
By the time the British government set out to arrest John Locke, he'd set out for France, fleeing his native country under suspicion of conspiring to kill the British king, Charles II.<br />
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Yes, that's the same Charles II whose reign Thomas Hobbes went to so much trouble to legitimize. Hobbes wanted him to take his father's throne, and Locke wanted him to leave it feet first. He faced arrest as one of the conspirators involved in the Rye House Plot.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_House_Plot">This was a plot</a> to trap the king's carriage in a narrow street overlooked by Rye House, a sturdy stone structure, and rain fire down on it with muskets until all within died. Word got out, the king changed his route, and many of the conspirators were rounded up and several executed.<br />
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Locke was the sort of fellow the Department of Homeland Security now calls a terrorist.<br />
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Locke is remembered fondly as one of the giants of liberal theory, the man who made freedom all about property. Students forced to study his Second Treatise on Government (or even, more rarely, to actually read it) are not typically informed that the pamphlet was so inflammatory that Locke never allowed it to be published under his own name during his lifetime. Charles II might not be so sure Locke was trying to kill him that he'd send agents to France to kill Locke for the Rye House Plot, but a pamphlet that said the subjects had a right to remove their sovereign if he did not serve them well might have sealed his fate.<br />
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To understand why property was so important in Locke's thinking, you must keep in mind that at the time he was writing, the voting franchise in England was given only to people who owned real property and paid tax on it.<br />
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During the English Civil War, the Levelers had argued for equality before the law, for popular sovereignty (the idea that legitimacy of the state rests on the consent of the governed) and extending the franchise. They also advocated religious tolerance, a principle that became dear to Thomas Hobbes when he was accused of blasphemy. One way of saying that every man should have the vote (women's suffrage was far in the future) was to claim that everyone owned property in the form of their own person.<br />
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This expresses a conflict inherent in the system of value Thomas Hobbes proposed. Remember, he said:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The Value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power...</i></blockquote>
<i> </i>Which would seem to say that our values must be expressed in the marketplace, with money. Thus, your work must not only be desired, there must be effective demand, that is, demand backed by money. A starving pauper, then, would not be able to express what bread meant to him, and would not have his needs met. But the sentence continues on,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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...<i>and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgement of another.</i></blockquote>
Must need and judgment only be expressed through property? The New Model Army, raised by parliament to oppose the royalist forces, had officers who were often difficult to tell from the enlisted men, because they did not possess wealth and rich clothing. The technology of the time relied heavily on foot soldiers with muskets and teams of men working artillery pieces. The age in which a knight wearing armor that cost more than most people would see in a lifetime was nearly invincible when faced with foot soldiers (unless they carried bows and kept their distance) was a distant memory.<br />
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It was an army that relied on the infantryman for its victories, and the people who carry the arms that are decisive in putting the government in power are not to be denied a voice in what that government does, even if they lack property. If the "need and judgment" of moneyed men is difficult to ignore, how much more difficult is it to ignore the "need and judgment" of armed men?<br />
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Yet, in the end, the new king, Charles II was crowned. The property requirement for voting, far from being eliminated, was retained and eventually strengthened. In 1712, the amount of property that was required to vote was changed (it had been set at 40 shillings in 1430, when that was a lot of money) to restrict the franchise more than it had been. In 1832, when the franchise was given to men owning property worth at least £10, vastly increasing the number of voters, only one man in five qualified to vote.<br />
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Locke's radical idea was that we are all born owning ourselves, therefore we all should have the rights of citizens. Further, he asserted that these rights are inalienable, meaning some rich fellow couldn't buy them off you, because you could not sell yourself.<br />
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That last bit caused a lot of trouble. Locke was aware of slavery, and in fact was complicit in it. He was a stockholder in the Royal African Company, which was in the business of purchasing slaves in Africa and selling them in the new world. He also helped draft the constitution of the Carolinas, which established a feudal aristocracy and made a slave owner the absolute master of his slaves. He did this while serving his great benefactor, Lord Shaftsbury, a Whig who should have known better. Locke wrote the <i>Two Treatises of Government</i> at Shaftsbury's prompting, and in the second, laid out his theory that we are all born owning ourselves and cannot be owned by another.<br />
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South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, in its <a href="http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html#South%20Carolina">declaration of the causes of secession</a> clearly stating that it had to leave the union because the North was threatening to take away its citizens' property, the slaves, and pointing out that the constitution recognized the legal status of slavery.<br />
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But Locke's subversive notion that we all have some basic rights because we are born owning ourselves resonated precisely because so many didn't have those rights. And the progress toward greater liberty came because he understood that property was central to our understanding of rights, yet strangely, while Locke wrote extensively about what things and people might be regarded as property, he never defined what property <i>is</i>.<br />
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So let me have a stab at it.<br />
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Property is not objects, which exist whether they are owned or not. It is the rights, privileges and obligations society assigns people in regards to objects, and a system for expressing our values regarding objects. One might even say, it is the meaning of objects. We are, after all creatures who create meaning -- it is the essence of human society. Locke changed our understanding of human rights by addressing how humans fit into this system of rights, privileges and obligations.<br />
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But we should not think this is the only system of value and define all human action in the Procrustean bed of property. It is the essence of our political system that we have more than one way of expressing our values. We can express them through property interactions, directing our worldly goods toward some end, or we can express them outside the realm of property.<br />
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We express who we value as a political leader by voting, and consider it corruption when votes are bought. Voting, in fact, is meant to be a counterbalance to property rights, a way for the political sphere to correct the imbalances that can occur in property relations. After all, we've accepted Locke's notion that we own ourselves and cannot lose the rights we have as property to ourselves, but where is the <a href="http://booksellersvsbestsellers.blogspot.com/2011/11/effective-demand-and-famines.html">effective demand</a> if we have no money? After all, we've seen famine areas exporting food in Ireland during the potato famine and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. One man, one vote is a way of giving effective demand to people who have no power to express their values in the marketplace.<br />
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In the English Civil War, the Cavaliers supported the rights of the propertied nobility. The Roundheads, of which the Levelers were a sub-category, supported the rights of commoners. Our civil war was not so different, and we are still fighting those wars, of the propertied and their supporters against the commoners.<br />
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Links to the rest </div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-11039829424563005452020-09-19T14:01:00.000-07:002020-09-19T14:01:18.949-07:00The Outlaw John Locke is now out in paperback<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkR1Bu62AJSQWN0hcJDkC05a36zCSgErQePzj9aNACQHMp65BSVGQN3Pz_MsEa2NNHo3pPPvYX1tgKK824o8n5U3in6rytBOez4hxEpp4R7SridjvyXjOPsrQtR6zyFrfsuoQA7lKMNyY/s1056/John+Locke+cover+for+paperback%252C+Celtic+type.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1056" data-original-width="816" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkR1Bu62AJSQWN0hcJDkC05a36zCSgErQePzj9aNACQHMp65BSVGQN3Pz_MsEa2NNHo3pPPvYX1tgKK824o8n5U3in6rytBOez4hxEpp4R7SridjvyXjOPsrQtR6zyFrfsuoQA7lKMNyY/w309-h400/John+Locke+cover+for+paperback%252C+Celtic+type.jpg" width="309" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>by John MacBeath Watkins</p><p><br /></p><p>My book, <i>The Outlaw John Lock and Why Liberalism is Worth Fighting For</i>, is now available in paperback. As of Sept 19, 2020, I don't have copies in the store yet, but it's available on Amazon and I'll make sure we have copies in both Twice Sold Tales soon.</p><p>For those unfamiliar with the book, it had its origins in this blog. I started writing about political theory as ideas came to me, dealing with the forgotten radicalism of John Lock and other theorists who helped us on the way to liberal democracy as a way of government and a way of thinking, and demonstrating how Locke's theories continue to change our society and our politics.</p><p>Anyone interested in the book should follow this link:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJohn+MacBeath+Watkins&s=relevancerank&text=John+MacBeath+Watkins&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1">https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJohn+MacBeath+Watkins&s=relevancerank&text=John+MacBeath+Watkins&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1</a></p>Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-36615093733726326912020-08-24T16:17:00.002-07:002020-08-28T18:11:26.029-07:00Public versus private, lighthouses, libaries, and medicine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/CaliforniaLight.jpg/490px-CaliforniaLight.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Wikimedia Commons image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CaliforniaLight.jpg" border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="490" height="383" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/CaliforniaLight.jpg/490px-CaliforniaLight.jpg" title="Wikimedia Commons image https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CaliforniaLight.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><p>by John MacBeath Watkins</p><p><br /></p><p>One of the more peculiar things about the current state of American politics is that an entire political party devalues all things public (except police and the military) and valorizes all things private.</p><p><span> Like many Netizens, I spend too much time arguing with idiots on the internet. One exchange involved me and an Australian librarian discussing the need for libraries with a business consultant, who argued that libraries are not needed.</span><br /></p><p><span><span> "Where's the market failure?" he asked, as if no form of human organization was legitimate unless it could not be provided by the market. Markets </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Über Alles has long been the cry of business conservatives, but other than assuming that markets are superior, they don't seem to spend much time justifying this choice.</span></span></p><p><span> The truth is, we have centuries of experience and thought that help us understand the difference between public and private institutions, but few people seem to avail themselves of this knowledge.</span><br /></p><p><span> Markets work very well when used for goods from which people can be excluded, both physically and morally. The example usually cited is lighthouses. Everyone can see a lighthouse and use it in navigation, but because no one can be excluded, it is difficult to collect a fee for the services provided by the lighthouse. In England, private companies built lighthouses, then found they could not collect money from those who used their service, so they got the ports to collect port fees to support lighthouses. Then, the profit incentive was to spend as little as possible on maintaining the lighthouse while still using the power of the state to collect the fees. Eventually it was discovered that only government had the means to collect the fees and the incentive to provide decent service. This is the essence of a public good.</span><br /></p><p><span> At one time, excluding people from health care services was considered morally tenable. Physicians served the rich, barber-surgeons served the rest, and neither had an enviable record of curing people, so home remedies were often as effective as medical care in any case. John Locke argued that natural law shows we all have a right to life, liberty, health and property, and he first gained a powerful patron by acting as a physician to</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Ashley_Cooper,_1st_Earl_of_Shaftesbury" style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #0b0080; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury">Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">, not long after getting a medical degree at Oxford (Locke got the medical degree in 1665 and treated Ashley in 1667.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> As medical care improved, it became increasingly evident that to exclude someone from medical care could result in them losing their health or even their life. If we are all born owning ourselves, depriving us of such things interferes with our fundamental right to exist <i>and</i> our property right to ourselves.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span> In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which said hospitals could not refuse treatment at their emergency rooms for people because of citizenship, legal status, or the ability to pay, in order to end the practice of "patient dumping," that is, discharging patients because they might cost the hospital too much money. It was possible to physically exclude people from treatment, but was in morally acceptable?</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span> Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 campaigned on a promise of social welfare insurance, including a national health service (he founded the Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party, for the purpose of running.) Medicare, Medicaid, and the Reagan-era emergency room mandate were all patchwork attempts to deal with the failure of American politics to provide a path to universal access to healthcare when it had ceased to be morally acceptable to exclude people from healthcare. The Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) attempted to solve the same problem more comprehensively while not eliminating the private-sector actors in the insurance and health care industries.</span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span> We have, at this point, spent more than 100 years trying to solve the problem of medicine becoming good enough to be worth having, while private enterprise could not provide the service in a morally acceptable way. Medical care has made a transition from private good to public good.</span><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span> Oh, and returning to the business consultant's question, where's the market failure that justifies the existence of libraries?</span><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><span><span> First, no market failure is required to justify people's desire to have a public amenity. We are free to organize our society however we want, provided we don't infringe on the rights of our citizens. If we elect a government to build public institutions and keep electing those who found and fund libraries, we are free to spend our money though taxes just as we are free to spend our money in markets.</span><br /></span></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"> Second, libraries provide goods from which it is immoral to exclude people. They provide knowledge, both in the form of non-fiction and in the form of literature, that people ought to have access to in order to realize their potential and to have sufficient knowledge to </span><span style="color: #202122;">exercise</span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: inherit;"> their freedom of conscience.</span><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span></span></span></p>Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-10969328954869138702020-04-14T12:24:00.001-07:002020-05-05T22:21:40.050-07:00A brief history of my obsession with plagues<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img alt="Plague T-Shirt" src="https://dqzrr9k4bjpzk.cloudfront.net/images/26425053/1393807979.jpg" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">by Jamie Lutton</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The last few weeks I have been watching the news about eight hours a day. w</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">atching Covid 19 spread around the world, the mounting numbers of the dead,and watching doctors begging for medical supplies, to mostly deaf ears. Learning about what a horrible illness and </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">death it was. And that no one took the warnings from China seriously.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Like Malcolm in Jurassic Park. I hate it when I am right. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I am horrified twice over, once for the world, my nation, and my city, </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">But also that I saw it coming, and I said little as I did not think anyone would believe me. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This all goes back to when I quit reading SF books for fun. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Back in the early eighties, when I was half way through college, I had gone on </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">a history kick, reading about history books that year, besides my school work..</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I am a speed reader, so I could read a book every day or every two days. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "new";"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "new";">Got interested in ancient and </span>medieval<span style="font-family: "new";"> history, first off. </span></span><span style="font-family: "new";">Several of the books became personal favorites, ones I would re-read.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A chapter in one book sparked a lifelong interest in disease for me. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Chapter 5 of A Distant Mirror by the historian Barbara Tuchman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The book's thesis was that the 14th century was a 'distant' mirror to our own time. The years 1340 to 1390 was her main focus {she left out the great horror </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">of 1312 to 1318, where due to a climate cooling down 10% of Europe died of starvation. </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The cooling was caused by a large volcanic eruption in Indonesia. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Reference THE GREAT FAMINE by William Chester Jordan.) </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">This was a time of two Popes, wars about the schism, political rivalries that shed </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">a lot of blood, and worst of all, the Black Death killing as much as 40% of the population, mostly but not </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">limited to the poor. And it came back, every 10 to 15 years, for centuries. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br clear="none" /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I bought and read as many books as I could </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">on that first beakout, then went on to read about the plague outbreak of the 1660's, and the </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">ones in the classical world, esp the one in the 7th century that led to the final c</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">ollapse of the Roman Empire. </span></div>
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When I opened a bookstore in 1987 I was looking for a theme for the shop t-shirt. In 1993 I hit on the idea of a shirt with partying rats on the front, and the motto 'Celebrating 650 years of the Plague,' with the name of the store on it. Part of the logic was that the Black Death had made more rags from clothing available for paper-making and raised the average income, which helped make the printed word viable as a medium. And with the chronic labor shortage, the struggle for human rights for the mass of people began. </div>
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A decade later, the shirts were still popular, but the 650 year anniversary was long gone, so my business partner, John Watkins, came up with a design celebrating the next significant anniversary, 666 years, To make the shirt relevant for a longer period, he listed the history of the plague's passage on the back, like a band's tour t-shirt.</div>
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Plagues Progress</div>
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1331 China</div>
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1339 Central Asia</div>
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1340 South Asia</div>
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1345 Crimea</div>
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1347 Constantinople, Genoa</div>
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1348 Marseilles, Bristol </div>
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1349 Oxford, Dublin Bergen </div>
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The front had a rat, or two rats (the design change year by year) on the front either in a party hat or drinking champagne together: with a modern city background. The shirts were, of course, black, with white lettering. I had to defend that shirt from time to time, but it always sold well to people who worked in the hospitals around me. I kept thinking about other diseases, and reading more, and worrying more. That shirt for me was warning everyone, through making at a macabre joke</div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I began to collect books on the history of disease - books on cholera, </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">a 19th century pandemic from India that swept the world then (( one last holdout was Haiti, </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">which got its first cases I know of after their earthquake, when UN soldiers </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">introduced it there)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In England in 1854, there was a waterborne c</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">holera epidemic killing hundreds of thousands of their poor. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The outbreak in Soho, London was stopped when a brilliant doctor, John Snow, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">convinced the local council to disable the public water pump there. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There are many doctors who were unsung heroes fighting </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">disease before the germ theory, even the journalist Daniel DeFoe, in </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">his novel <i>Journal of the Plague Year</i> speculated that the 'creatures' </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> discovered using the newly invented microscope, 'might' be causing the disease.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Other books on</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> smallpox, the yellow fever epidemic of the 1790's, Polio, Typhoid, measles. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">rabies, syphilis, gonorrhea, </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A lot of these books were older, focused on historical outbreaks, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">ending up with the discovery of the rat-flea-disease link with the plague, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">and </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Dr Jonas Salk and his Polio vaccine. Some spoke of Penicillin and the conquering of Syphilis at the end </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">of World War ll. which had ruined millions of lives. Third stage syphilis </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">and the birth defects from syphilis are nearly unknown now.</span></div>
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They nearly all implied that we knew better now, with the advances in medicine, we would never have</div>
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a rampaging pandemic. Even the flu was conquered, with vaccination. </div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Then in 1995 a book that sounded the alarm about new diseases on the </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">horizon was published, The Coming Plague: Newly emerging diseases in a world out of Balance, </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">by Laurie Garrett. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This book and others that came after linked the ravaging of the Earth's environment, with eating </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">wild animals and cutting down ancient forests letting lose new disease on humanity. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Doctors had thought in the 1960's, 1970's that that battle was over, and that studying epidemic disease </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">as a specialty was foolish, as humanity had conquered all the major diseases that afflicted people, with only malaria, and mopping up the last of polio left, with venereal diseases as a rather minor problem. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">They had not thought about, or did not know yet that our biggest scourges jumped from</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> animals to humans, nor realized that the wild held scourges to come, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">such as AIDS from wild apes, etc that arrived in the mid 1970's. AIDS woke up the world of medicine</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">that there were scourges just waiting to emerge, the recklessness in ignoring a small breakout. AIDS was ignored in the US</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">until a friend of the POTUS of the time, Ronald Reagan died from it - Rock Hudson. But then it was far too late,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">There are several books on this theme.<i> Spillover</i>, by David Quammen starts </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">out with a mysterious disease jumping from the environment of Australia, killing </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">horses there, then killing veterinarians. His focus also was the jump from wild animals, to domestic animals to humans. </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The book is more academic than, say, </span><i style="color: #26282a; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The Hot Zone,</i><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> but has frightening accounts of what was on the horizon. It is also very well written. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Those books, and many others stressed that an virus of some kind, new </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">to humanity, would arise and sweep the planet, causing many deaths and great anguish. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "new";">The more I read, the more alarmed I got. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "new";">I had wanted to be a doctor, long ago, but I was not a good enough student of chemistry. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "new";">I had been reading paleontology for pleasure, along with books on the history of disease, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "new";">but </span><i style="color: black; font-family: New;">The Coming Plague</i><span style="color: black; font-family: "new";"> got me focusing on what was could be on the </span>horizon<span style="color: black; font-family: "new";">, just waiting for a chance encounter to sweep the world. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I began to read all the books I could on mysterious diseases, like the 'sweating' illness that killed </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">the children of </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Thomas</span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> C</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">romwell, a minister in king Henry Vlll's court; the fictional biography of whom was <i>Bring Up the Bodies</i>, by</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> Hillary Mantel. That disease came and went, killed thousands, and has not been named yet. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It is an unknown illness of an unknown nature.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I got a subscription the CDC magazine to<i> Emerging Infections.</i>I tried to read every issue, they all had alarming/ interesting articles in them. </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Some diseases just last year jumped from Africa to the new world, the mosquito borne illness called Zika which would make fetuses damaged, giving </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">them</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">microcephaly, i.e. severely small heads and other brain damage. Thi</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">s spread to Central America and even Florida, and is endemic there now.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In 2014, I called up an ex employee ''Joe'' who and told him in May that year to start watching the news out of Africa. I watched the Ebola epidemic. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in May or so there was only about 100 cases and 30 or so deaths, but having read <i>The Hot Zone</i>,</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> I knew that this would go bad fast.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It had sprung up in a completely different part of Africa, where it had never been seen before. The death rate and spread went up </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">week by week, until by August thousands had died, and it had spread to three countries on the West Coast. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I would call Joe and give him briefings, as I was worried that, like Zika later, it could jump and spread to other tropical nations.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I but did not think America was in any danger, as it was spread by blood and bodily fluids and would not </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">get far in the West. The experts that year kept saying that we did not have to be ''that'' alarmed as it would not spread easily in the West. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I watched the struggles of Doctors Without Borders in Africa, as they were accused of spreading the disease, were threatened, as they went and tried to quarantine </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">and treat the sick and dying, some of them catching it themselves and dying. The local doctors and nurses died in great numbers, t</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">hey put their own lives at risk by exposure to Ebola from the sick and dying. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I got into the habit of reading international news for stories like this after that. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">In fact, the world missed a worse threat than Ebola, when in Madagascar </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">in the fall of 2017, a form of Pneumonic Plague akin to the Black Death -- spread by breath -- </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">broke out there. The local government is a dictatorship, and did not care about the </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">health of Madagascar's people. They had been in power so long, the health infrastructure was in shambles. </span></span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So, there the Plague was 'endemic' - Black Death there for decades. The </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">island had a lot of non native rats that carried it. Every fall there would be an outbreak around the time of the harvest, when the rats would </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">multiply in great numbers, spread the disease to the population, who would catch the rats to eat them.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So that country had ''minor'' Black Death outbreaks every year for decades. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Turns out that if you ignore a Black Death outbreak, especially a moderate sized one, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">it can and will make the ''jump'' to change it's nature and be spread by breath. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A case would settle in the lungs, and be expelled in the victim's breath. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Pneumonic Black Death is a real threat. Not spread by rat-flea-human link, </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">but just by breath, as contagious as a cold, symptoms like a bad cold, but </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">untreated the fatality rate is 80%. And it kills quicker, sometimes in 24 hours.</span></div>
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Doctors Without Borders went in and did a big cleanup, medical exams, got rid of a lot of rats, tested thousands, </div>
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and after a month or so, stamped that epidemic out. We were very lucky - - that time.</div>
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I read the news every day that fall, reading the local news in English coming from Madagascar as I knew how bad the Pneumonic version could be. Planes leave Madagascar going to at least 5 countries, and it could easily </div>
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have 'jumped' to Africa, India, Saudi Arabia , Australia in one flight. All it would take would be people not paying attention, ignoring a disease breakout in a poor country like Madagascar.</div>
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So what with those two outbreaks, I read a lot of international news. About this time I read up on SARS and MERS. The fatality rate for both is very high, but both seem to only be contagious when symptoms are showing themselves, so it didn't spread very easily. Also, people went in and suppressed it, mostly again Doctors Without Borders. And other worried epidemiologists who saw the threat and acted right away. One expert at least died trying to treat the patients. One thing I learned from my reading about SARS and MERS then that some of our 'old' diseases, like the measles, smallpox, etc jumped from domestic animals pigs, cattle, sheep. Sheep may be the origin of measles - as in the modern era MERS jumped from camels. The more I read, the more alarmed I got. It became a minor obsession. I would take customers aside and suggest they read books on plagues of all kinds, when they said they liked nonfiction. I looked for these books for my shop as well. Whenever I had a customer who did not know what they wanted to read, I pushed <i>The Hot Zone,</i> books on the plague, books on Yellow Fever, etc.</div>
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I realized that I had made a career mistake, I should have gone into public health. I kept discussing this subject with customers, as I was alarmed, and I wanted others to be. The shop T Shirt was my way of making people think about disease, and maybe, like me, start paying attention. The aftermath of the Black Death pushed the West towards a better world. But at what human cost.<br />
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Now up to the present.<br />
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I am used to not being believed. I am bi/polar, and an old woman, who does not 'nice' clothing, heels -- I have these two strikes against me being believed.<br />
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Also, I am not a medical expert, just a bookseller.<br />
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In early February, I went to my kidney specialist, who I like a lot - he cracks jokes about Trump -- in mid January 2020 I told him I was worried about my own health -- but everyone's health. I was getting very alarmed. by the news out of China. also, I had a kidney transplant a year ago,and was worried about catching this. I am high risk of getting very sick. I asked him - I cornered him, speaking earnestly - - What did he think? Could someone raise an alarm?? No one in America seemed to be worried enough . . . I thought that this was going to get really bad.<br />
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But, He patted me on the head, told me not to worry, and handed me some face masks. laughing just a little. He thought I was being amusing, again. So worried about nothing.<br />
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I had a phone conference with him three weeks ago, about my health, I have to check in with him every 2 months or so. I did not come in as the Covid was raging by then, and doctors were only doing phone conferences. After the usual visit, I said ''I hope you can admit I was right' Silence, then he laughed again.<br />
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Wish I could have seen his face.<br />
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I am very sorry I did not call the local media - at least the Seattle Times?? The Stranger?? and say 'you should write about this, this is going to be very bad. This is going to sweep over us!' But I did not expect to be believed. I could not even get my step son to move Stock Market money around to protect our savings. He thought I was an alarmist. FYI I had been trying to get him to read the old books about Market crashes, some of which are hilarious, as well as informative (THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by J.K. Galbraith. Read the Second edition where he talks about the death threats he got around the time he wrote the book. I have read it in excess of 15 times. It is a penny and postage on ABE Books. Go order it - it is a must read. very good writer.)<br />
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It is my nature to get excited about a lot of things, and try to get others excited. Most people can't be made excited by such ''dry'' stuff. This has discouraged me from years of me getting excited by this book or that - but I should have seen this time it <b><i>was</i></b> an emergency, that I should have been yelling about this outbreak. .</div>
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So, I apologize for not making a bigger fuss.</div>
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I am sick at heart. Even if I had started yelling in January, I do not think any one would believe me. I should have tried harder, but like the 2017 Pneumonic plague outbreak in Madagascar. I still thought- well maybe it wont get here. . . I was wrong about that one. I had been really alarmed by that outbreak, as pneumonic plague is so easy to catch and has such a high mortality rate.<br />
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Doctors Without Borders reigned that outbreak in. And surely the experts in charge of worrying about this has it well in hand . . .right? The experts know what they are doing, right? They will tell us what to do. This is not my job to raise the alarm. So, I only bugged my doctor. And talked to a few customers, employees.<br />
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I did not want to be Horton, trying to get hostile people to see something invisible and to take it seriously. Horton was laughed at by everyone over something they could not see. Dr. Seuss can be quite profound about human nature.</div>
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But - the people who did know better -who tried to brief Trump in early February about how bad it would get - the ones who also saw, and had the credentials - the people who run this country, the POTUS blew them off. He thought doing anything would 'spook' the Stock Market. He called Covid 19 a 'Democrat's Hoax' etc for weeks.<br />
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And here we are, locked down, and the people we hired to look after us failed us. Let us never forget the experts knew months ago but could not get our leaders to act in time. To create hundreds of thousands of Covid 19 tests, find people infected, and trace their contacts - - isolate the infected, before the disease was everywhere, like South Korea did. We now have the worst pandemic of Covid 19 in the world, and will lose, according to Trump, if we are lucky, ''only'' 200,000 American lives. </div>
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We have a terrible time ahead of us. We must remember the spring of 2020, the stay at home orders, the deaths of our family and friends, the overrun pleading hospitals, tent hospitals, hospital ships, Governors who laughed and refused to issue the orders for a quarantine that would save the lives of their citizens, saying it was 'bad for business'.<br />
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We can prevent, finally and forever being run over by epidemic, pandemic disease. Listen to experts and act - and teach our kids to love science, and believing experts over wishful thinkers. To not think of money first, when bad news comes. Ever see the movie Jaws? The mayor refused to close the beaches, chose money over the safety of the people on the beach. That movie is still a favorite - not so much for the shark, but of everyday fighting for reason over avarice, shortsightedness in the modern world.<br />
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Here is a list of books I liked, read more than once, about pandemics and plagues. This is in no way complete, I probably left out some very good tiles, please tell me if you read some I missed and did not list here. For fiction, I recommend JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR by Daniel DeFoe, He fictionalized stories his uncle had told him, who had lived through the Black Death pandemic of 1666, that swept through London and killed 40% of the population. The Norton Edition has very good notes, points out that DeFoe references the microscope, and seeing creatures in it, remarking that 'perhaps they cause this plague' . . . then moving on. We were very close to seeing the connection centuries before we did, the evidence is in DeFoe's book. Fiction sometimes teaches better than nonfiction.<br />
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Also - THE BLACK DEATH, A PERSONAL HISTORY -- by John Hatcher -- Set in a market town in England. this title is about 15 years old. you follow the fates of several characters in that town. Touches on the fact that citizens of England saw Black Death coming for months before it reached England, the news carried to them by fleeing people gave the word. Very good novel, lots of small details of the time, what it was like to live then. written by a Black Death expert.<br />
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YEAR OF WONDERS is pretty good, following a woman's fate in the Black Death year of 1666.<br />
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THE BLACK DEATH 1346 to 1353, by Ole J. Benedictow, This is the best modern book on the 14th century Black Death. It the raises the possibility that there was an anthrax outbreak at the same time. Lots of math in it. Very long. I read it twice.<br />
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Other modern books:<br />
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THE BLACK DEATH a chronicle of the plague. All original sources like Petrarch, DeFoe, Boccaccio, and Machivelli.</div>
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Am re reading this one right now</div>
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THE COMING PLAGUE- I mentioned before,<br />
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SPILLOVER by Quannem - same<br />
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RABID - A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST</div>
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DIABOLICAL VIRUS by Bill Wasik this disease is carried</div>
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primarly by bats, like Ebola, do not miss this book.</div>
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The horrible days before a vaccine - really worth reading.</div>
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NO TIME TO LOSE by Peter Piot, the discoverer of Ebola</div>
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VIRUS by Frank Ryan - Tracking the new killer plagues.</div>
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other older titles </div>
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BRING OUT YOUR DEAD J.H. Powell 1949 history of 'The Great</div>
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Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793</div>
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VIRUSES, PLAGUES, & HISTORY Micheal B. A. Oldstone</div>
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A good Ebola book about the first big outbreak in the 1990's is</div>
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THE HOT ZONE + CRISIS IN THE RED ZONE about</div>
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the huge outbreak of Ebola in 2014, </div>
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DEMON IN THE FREEZER all of these are by Richard Preston -- the second book is about the history of </div>
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Germ warfare. Not to be missed!! There has been a lot of paranoia that Covid 19</div>
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was release as 'germ warfare'. This book covers real germ warfare of the 20th century,</div>
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including accidents with a virus in Russia in the 1970's that killed thousands.</div>
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The first book I read on the 14tth century outbreak alone was Philip Zegler's </div>
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THE BLACK DEATH, written in 1969.</div>
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PLAGUES AND PEOPLES wrtten in 1976 by William H. McNeill, covers </div>
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classical plague outbreaks, the post Colombian disease exchange, with</div>
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a chapter on the history of fighting plagues, diseases from 1700 on.</div>
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RATS LICE AND HISTORY by HANS ZINSSER written in 1934.</div>
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Also Pepy's diaries of that year, as he stayed in London.</div>
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((There is a book with just extracts of that, could not find the title))</div>
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THE PLAGUE IN SHAKESPEARE's LONDON, </div>
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good background to what London was like then, the backdrop of so many of Shakespeare's plays.</div>
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and how the Black Death was a scourge that would sweep through Europe every 15 years or so</div>
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for nearly 400 years. </div>
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One last thought. The only way the Black Death and other diseases after that were stopped was quarantine. Thought up by the Venetians, they would make ships wait for 40 days before unloading, the term quarantine' comes from the Italian word 'quarantine", or '40'. It worked to stop epidemic Black Death in 1740s, when all nations in Europe finally quarantined houses when they had a case of the disease in that house. The practice was being tried in the plague of 1666 in London. In cities, people would hang out of a window, lowering baskets with money in it, and food would be put in it, and the basket would be hauled in. If they left that house, they would be killed. .</div>
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As we hide in our own houses, One last thought. The only way the Black Death and other diseases after that was quarantine. .<br />
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As we hide in our houses in 2020, with a 'shelter in place' order to stop or at least slow down Covid 19,</div>
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the methods we use today have not changed much since centuries. </div>
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Our basic weapon against pandemics have not changed that much - </div>
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with all the advances in science, we have only added masks and washing our hands - germ theory.</div>
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. The front doors would be marked</div>
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in red, the doors were boarded up, and guards put in place.</div>
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At least we dont have our doors boarded up. Yet.</div>
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On Passover, I remembered the Jews surviving the hand of God by staying inside</div>
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as Egypt lost their first born, and have never forgotten that night.</div>
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I always thought that might be a memory of a plague, waiting inside, till the disease was stopped.</div>
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It always was strange to me that being inside, staying inside, saved the Jews, thousands of years ago.</div>
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Please stay inside - have patience - </div>
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and keep washing your hands.</div>
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And remember this horrible time when you vote in the fall.</div>
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PS saw this online<i><b> "Why is it that every disaster movie starts with people</b></i></div>
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<i><b>in charge not believing the scientists?</b></i>"</div>
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-42406271805500714912019-07-01T15:21:00.000-07:002019-07-01T15:21:26.471-07:00Meet the new cat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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We have a new cat. Our large luxury cat, Bea Geste, is slowly adapting to the presence of an interloper, and if you come in, please offer him reassurance that people still love him, don't just heap love on the small new sports cat, Joan Jett.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cxgFd-5r7j_yBEf46KklTM8pPzh1uYhE5yo09LSIDP_4Rb323yI8BJUakA7Yj_BtzrhDdGUenF_HduH6eTuCFpeaZKKcuUTXgaBR77_TpdZiw8wW0sYnOgwnuXGeHw-U19aDGRYBszw/s1600/Beau+%2526+Joan+7-1-2019.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="1600" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5cxgFd-5r7j_yBEf46KklTM8pPzh1uYhE5yo09LSIDP_4Rb323yI8BJUakA7Yj_BtzrhDdGUenF_HduH6eTuCFpeaZKKcuUTXgaBR77_TpdZiw8wW0sYnOgwnuXGeHw-U19aDGRYBszw/s640/Beau+%2526+Joan+7-1-2019.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beau Geste offers the Paw of Peace to our new companion, Joan Jett.</td></tr>
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Beau is now more than three years old, Joan just about two months old.</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-74525216755000215432019-06-28T17:31:00.002-07:002019-06-28T18:53:31.648-07:00Patriarchy versus liberalism, a war of tradition and reason<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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The most remarkable thing about patriarchy is that after millennia of organizing societies around it, we have now become uncomfortable with it.<br />
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A remarkably large number of human societies treat people as things. It is a foundation patriarchy, a system in which dominant males treat women and children as property. There is even a debate about whether such behavior is innate or socially conditioned (full disclosure, I come down on the socially conditioned side of the debate.)<br />
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Abraham Lincoln was rented out as a laborer by his father for 10 cents to 31 cents an hour, and wages earned by him were paid to his father. "I used to be a slave," is the way he described the situation in an early political speech.<br />
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The legal situation that allowed this was part of what we now call patriarchy. While American society never allowed men to buy and sell children or wives, fathers and husbands have long held a dominant property position in the family. Under the doctrine of coveture, when a woman married a man, they became, for purposes of property, one person, and that person was the man. Any property the woman had passed to the man, and in event of a divorce, would remain property of the man unless there were an ironclad prenuptial agreement. This meant that for a very long time, divorce meant ruin for a woman.<br />
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Being, essentially, property, meant that you were not treated as fully human. Neither slaves nor women got to vote until they got property rights, and the first property right is to own yourself. And who would not want to own themselves? I'm not aware of any slaves that wished to remain a thing used by others. I am aware that a few women prefer traditional gender roles. Perhaps it is comforting to know your place and not have to invent your own place in the world, but it seems to be a comfort few wish to avail themselves of.<br />
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Patriarchy played a role in the justification of monarchy, and is perhaps part of what attracts people to all autocratic forms of government. No one needed to justify the right of kings to rule until it came into question, but when it did, some of the justifications founded the king's authority in parental authority. In fact, a book some considered the definitive defense of the divine right of kings was titled <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><i>Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings. </i>In it, Sir Robert Filmer argued that Adam had complete power over his descendants, including the power of life and death, and it was from this basis that kings could trace their power. Filmer had a son, who seems to have survived his parenting.<br />
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John Locke, who never married or had children, seemed to have a better understanding about how families work. He pointed out that the father shares his authority over the children with their mother, and his power is not absolute. Locke argued that we are all born owning ourselves, and that fathers do not have the power of life and death over their children, because such authority is not needed for the purpose of the relationship, which is to care for and nurture children until they reach the age of reason, and can be responsible for themselves and embrace their freedom.<br />
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It is fashionable to study the ethics John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant, who addressed the question of how we may know right from wrong directly, attempting to codify behavior that was already accepted. But Locke's ideas changed the way we conceive of people, and changed the way we treat them. He changed what we regard as ethical in a way no ethicist could.<br />
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Once we encounter Locke's idea that we are all born owning ourselves, and cannot sell the rights to ourselves as property, it seems intuitively obvious. A pot has no mind to care who cooks with it, or whether the food is good or bad, a chair cannot resent the weight it bears, but we cannot help but care how we are used. Once we understand this about ourselves, we cannot escape a natural human empathy to others who are used as objects are used, and we sympathize with their plight. Slavery, an institution probably as old as war, becomes an abomination. Coveture, and parallel institutions in other patriarchal cultures, becomes absurd.<br />
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The process of the logic of liberalism spreading through human institutions has not been terribly rapid, but it has been inexorable, and the effects of its logic continue to change traditional elements of our society.<br />
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Consider Locke's theory of property. We apply our labor to nature, and this makes property. Now consider the patriarchal way of life. A man plants his seed in the land, and makes it fruitful, he plants his seed in a woman and makes her fruitful. In each case, the land and the woman, both the thing he plants his seed in and the fruit of his planting becomes his.<br />
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Clearly, this is more a founding myth than how the world has ever worked, but myths are the way we understand the way the world is <i>supposed </i>to work. The patriarch is supposed to build a little world in which he owns the land, governs his family, and provides for all. This is a model for the larger society, as well.<br />
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Not all men could do this, particularly in a world where most of the land was already owned. One solution to this was to have disenfranchised men who had little or nothing, and wealthy men with many acres, cattle, chattel, and wives. The entire system was based on perpetuating little empires of property, and the relationship to most of the things in a household was one of the patriarch's ownership. Traditional institutions of law and government existed, to a great extent, to adjudicate and enforce this system of property, and thereby bring order to society. Men of property wielded great power in such societies. Women of property, and therefore women of power, in many societies did not exist. Instead of owning property, they were property.<br />
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Not owning yourself, of course, has a spiritual side, but more obviously, it has a physical side. If you do not own yourself, you do not own your body, and you do not control what is done with your body. When Ohio Republicans blocked an amendment that <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/12/1849808/-Ohio-men-can-now-legally-rape-their-wives-force-them-to-give-birth-Seriously">would have made it illegal to rape one's spouse </a>while they are drunk, drugged, or incapacitated, this was part of the same philosophy that caused them to pass a law banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, if a heartbeat can be detected (usually around six weeks after conception, often before the mother is aware of the pregnancy.) In either case, the object is to keep women from having control of their bodies.<br />
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I'm not sure to what extent there is a conscious realization among the people doing these things about the connection between women controlling their bodies and and women owning themselves and having agency and power in the world. One would think that people who find abortion abhorrent would favor availability of birth control, which makes abortion less necessary, but this is not the case. Nor is it the case that they consistently advocate for society to provide better prenatal care for the unborn or for children after they are born. The logic of their actions does not support the notion that what they care about is mainly children. However, in matters of birth control, abortion, and marital rape, the same group of people act on a unified theory that women should not control their bodies.<br />
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Granting them control of their bodies grants them ownership of themselves, which in turn means granting them agency and power in the world. Changing who owns the woman's womb challenges the entire traditional edifice of a society based on a system in which women and children were property.<br />
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And if men of property really <i>should</i> wield great power in a society, power over women, over those who have less property, and over those who previously were property, that at last explains the mystery of why poor whites have been voting for a political party that gives benefits mainly to those who have a lot of property. They are voting for a traditional society in which patriarchs run things, because something deeply embedded in our society tells them this is how it should be.<br />
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Locke's idea that we are all born owning ourselves is deeply subversive, even more subversive than he realized in his lifetime (and Locke knew it was explosive enough that it could cost his life or liberty, which is why he never allowed his Treatises on Government to be published under his own name during his lifetime.) Property, after all, is not things, it is the set of rules about how we use things, about our rights and responsibilities in relation to them. When you decide that a person is not property, you change a great deal about how that person is to be treated. And when you do that, you change the very structure of society.<br />
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We are in the midst of a slow-motion revolution that is changing first our minds, then changing everything else. We must not underestimate the disruption this is causing, or the resistance it will engender. The imperatives of a society in which we each own ourselves are very different from those of traditional societies, and we will find ourselves reinventing ourselves and our societies.<br />
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Liberalism, therefore, is not for the faint of heart. There is no certainty that what the logic of liberalism leads to is even possible. This reinvention of society is a product of the enlightenment, and it will require courage and persistence to avoid sinking back into the dark age in which we were governed by force, faith, and custom.</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-29030194897196292932019-02-09T17:58:00.001-08:002019-02-09T17:58:35.873-08:00The Outlaw John Locke is published!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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Long-time followers of this blog will know that I've been working on a book about liberalism for several years. It is now available on Kindle.<br />
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LC6Y934/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07LC6Y934/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb</a></div>
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This is a book on political economy, about the most successful large Utopian experiment ever attempted, liberal democracy.</div>
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None of America's founding fathers would have called themselves capitalists, because capitalism was in its gestation while liberalism was already producing revolutions. The Ur text of capitalism,<i> The Wealth of Nations</i>, was published in 1776, and I would say that capitalism was not fully developed as an ideology until the marginal revolution of the 1870s, when it finally got a working value system. Liberalism became complete as an ideology with the publication of<i> A Letter Concerning Toleration</i> and <i>Two Treatises of Government</i>, both by John Locke, in 1689.</div>
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Locke fled England in 1683, a wanted man. He had been implicated in the Rye House Plot, a plan to kill King Charles II. He was unable to return to England safely until he could do so in the company of an invading army, during the Glorious Revolution of 1688.</div>
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We don't teach this much anymore, but Locke argued for the right to revolution, when a terrible leader could be removed by no other means, and apparently he practiced what he preached.</div>
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His ideas continue to change our society. In his day, many people were treated as property, not just slaves, but wives and children as well. He introduced the notion that we are all born owning ourselves, and cannot ever stop owning ourselves -- that's what 'inalienable' means, as in 'inalienable rights.' This idea upended such ancient institutions as slavery and marriage.</div>
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The notion that government should rule for the good of the people would have been an unfamiliar notion to leaders through most of human history. Kings served God (or Gods) with the blessing of whatever church they belonged to. Many parts of the world are still ruled by force, faith, and custom.</div>
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And while liberalism has held sway in much of the developed world, industrialization has changed the way we live, and with industrialization has come capitalism. It used to be that increasing wealth required controlling more resources, such as land, minerals, and labor. Under capitalism, the key to increasing wealth is wealth itself. Capitalism has shown it can function under dictatorships and kleptocracies, but it seems to produce the most wealth in liberal democracies. The relationship between the ideologies has always been an uneasy one, with democracy often acting as a check on capitalism.</div>
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These are some of the themes I explore in <i>The Outlaw John Locke & why liberalism is worth fighting for</i>. I've priced it low -- $2.99 -- in hopes at least a few people will read it.</div>
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-64925430636375784662019-01-15T10:42:00.000-08:002019-01-15T10:42:42.000-08:00The move is under way!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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We have now been working on the move for one full week, and we've made great progress. The books are at the new store, and we've got some shelves up, and we're getting books up.<br />
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Those of you who have volunteered, thank you! Those who haven't, you've got a standing invitation to help out. Just give me a call on my cell, two O six, nine three one, thirteen thirty one.<br />
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Beau is coming with us, but he's very nervous right now. As near as he can tell, the world is slowly disappearing around him. I believe he is contemplating going feral.<br />
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Soon, we will move him, and all will be well.<br /></div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-17899001831964985782018-11-07T18:57:00.001-08:002018-11-07T19:35:29.394-08:00We have found a new spot for the store!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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Twice Sold Tales is staying in Ballard!<br />
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We've reached an agreement with the International Order of Odd Fellows local chapter to rent the retail space in the front of the Odd Fellows Hall at 17th and Market. Our new address will be 1708 N.W. Market St. We take possession in January, and begin the arduous task of moving thousands of books and scores of shelves.<br />
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As some of you know, the building the store is now in will be torn down to be replaced by something much taller, an apartment building with about 170 units. We were told to be out by March 31, but we are now planning to be out by the end of February.<br />
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Being a bookstore, we have little money, so any volunteer help moving would be welcome! Just send us an email at twicesoldtalesud@gmailcom if your're interested. We live in hopes that we will never have to move again!<br />
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-43609428946428102642018-10-07T22:16:00.000-07:002018-10-07T22:16:39.685-07:00A society without money<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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In <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/kavanaugh-hearings-republican-women-voter-turnout.html">this post</a>, we explored what money is. Short version, money is a sign that the holder of it is owed favors. But what if you had a society that didn't have money?<br />
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Money is an ancient institution, Standardized coinage goes back almost 3,000 years, commodity money, representing a given weight of a commodity such as copper, further than that. But most people living in ancient civilizations never saw money. Most were peasants who paid their taxes in commodities and labor, or slave who labored without pay and we given what little they had by their masters, or serfs who were in some cases little better off than slaves.<br />
<br />
Some societies, such as the Inca civilization, had no money system at all. The Inca had a centralized system of government, and people worked for the government and were given what they needed by the government. Ancient Egyptians paid their taxes in grain and labor. While we use money to track almost all of our economic obligations, these societies kept track of peoples' obligations largely without the use of money.<br />
<br />
The problem is, if you don't have money, you have to keep track of peoples' obligations somehow, and that's easiest to do by defining their obligation very rigidly. If you were an Inca, you labored, and all you produced went to the state, and all you got back came from the state. If you were an Egyptian, you labored on land surveyed by the priests, your obligation depended on your relationship with the state, in time of famine you looked to the state for sustenance, and when the country needed a new pyramid, you got in the harvest, then worked on the pyramid.<br />
<br />
There wasn't a lot of freedom in a society like this, because freedom made it hard to know what your obligations were, whether you had met them, and what was owed to you. It was just simpler to have a regimented society in which you were told what to do.<br />
<br />
Perhaps most people in these societies liked it that way. They had a place in the world, and they didn't need to go through the business of inventing themselves.<br />
<br />
But then, the world started changing too fast for this system to thrive. The late bronze age collapse started about 1200 BCE, and the first standardized coinage showed up on the Anatolian Peninsula about 600 BCE. Instead of the unchanging life promised by the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the kingdom of Lydia, which occupied most of what is now Turkey, arose during the chaos of the late bronze age collapse as one of the new iron age kingdoms. The Lydians needed a system that worked better than barter and could deal with shocks better than the system of bondage to the land that Egypt used.<br />
<br />
Trade goods such as grain or copper are not ideal media of exchange, although their use is sometimes referred to as 'commodity money.' We see something similar in prisons, where tins of tuna or packs of cigarettes have been used as media of exchange. Real money is a much more abstract, and has not got the value for use that a bushel of grain or a tin of tuna has. Eating hundred dollar bills might be extravagant, but it would hardly be nutritious.<br />
<br />
Using coinage allowed for a much more flexible system, in which trade could follow whatever patterns the current harvest suggested was best, and a stranger could do business in a new town without building the kind of relationship the Egyptians had to their god-king and his representatives.<br />
<br />
It also made it a lot easier to cheat. Pirates who stole grain could eat, but pirates who stole money could have whatever they wanted. Instead of conning people for a meal, you could con them for enough money to buy many meals.<br />
<br />
Institutions had to adapt. The rule of law had once dealt mainly with stolen animals and such, now it had to deal with new ways of stealing the more abstract thing that was money. Some even said money was the root of all evil.<br />
<br />
That saying gives too little credit to the inventiveness of the ancients, who I'm sure found plenty of ways of being evil before money came along. Human beings have never been angels.<br />
<br />
The evil of concentrated wealth and power was as much a part of the pre-money civilizations as of those that used money. In fact, without the regimented systems many of these civilizations employed, and the centralized power of the god-king, it would have been impossible to have a large civilization.<br />
<br />
So, let's count our blessings. And our money. The concentration of power and wealth that we decry is as old as civilization, and much, much older than the humble coin.</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-71662694566212971662018-07-27T19:02:00.000-07:002018-10-07T20:54:53.817-07:00The deep state and democratic institutions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWcn9CZvjqznc-47LJwXbrZL4PqsG46wHgce6VkkbOhToNVngtCS9WJbZScFc9Gi1vifoyUaSAcLHmICdt9MB5vVcHGTtJtpJTGE5F2FWpHp56wxHMHr5T2RRcX3r_1jfE4V0Nr9bohR__/s640/447px-Piranesi9c.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="476" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">The Drawbridge, from Imaginary Prisons, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi">Giovanni Battista Piranesi</a>, 1750.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
Does a 'deep state' threaten a republic, or actually strengthen it?<br />
<br />
One of the complaints of Trump supporters is that the deep state -- a sort of Praetorian Guard that controls who will rule and how -- has frustrated Donald Trump's efforts to remake American government.<br />
<br />
This is a fascinating claim. The Praetorian Guard was an elite corps of the Roman army tasked with protecting the emperor. Over the centuries, their power increased, to the point where they were either killing emperors and naming their successors (Caligula, dead, Claudius, emperor) or signalling their support for who would rule after an emperor died (Claudius poisoned, Nero supported for emperor.)<br />
<br />
But these were not bureaucrats, nor were they equivalent to the lightly-armed Secret Service. In the reign of Tiberius, there were nine cohorts of 4,500 soldiers each in the Praetorian Guard, three of them stationed in Rome and the others nearby.<br />
<br />
The deep state of our time is supposed to be the staff of the U.S. government, whether in the Justice Department, State Department, or intelligence services. The idea is that they may lack loyalty to the president.<br />
<br />
One problem with this is that we are a country ruled by laws, carried out by our elected and career government, not a nation ruled by the will of a leader. John Locke, whose writing inspired many of the ideas for the American experiment, said that if the people cannot rid themselves of an oppressive and arbitrary ruler by any other means, they had a right to revolution.<br />
<br />
So, our founding fathers decided we needed a republic, which would be governed at the highest levels by people who could be voted out of office.<br />
<br />
But if a new regime is to take over, how is it to govern? Won't the personnel of the old regime frustrate the new?<br />
<br />
The first answer to this was the spoils system, which allowed each new government to replace large numbers of government workers with people chosen for their loyalty, rather than their skills.<br />
<br />
The result was powerful political machines with the ability to reward or punish people according to their loyalty, and a great deal of corruption.<br />
<br />
In the late 19th century, the progressive movement started changing this. Their idea was that they could eliminate much of the power and the corruption of political machines by replacing the political hacks with professionals chosen for their skills, and protect those professionals from the corrupting influences of political machines by ensuring they could not be arbitrarily fired.<br />
<br />
This was in keeping with the concept of the Constitution. Article VI of the Constitution includes this language:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.</span></blockquote>
Note that these officials do not swear to support the president. This is the current federal oath of office:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.</span></blockquote>
Donald Trump is reportedly upset that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the investigation of Trump's campaign, and blew his top over the issue, saying that he "needed his Attorney General to protect him."<br />
<br />
But Sessions -- and for that matter, Trump -- took an oath to protect the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. This means that if even the president becomes an enemy of the constitution, his attorney general (and, paradoxically, the president himself) is obligated to defend the constitution from him.<br />
<br />
The U.S. Constitution lays out a system of government designed to work, within a set of parameters, for successive governments chosen by the electorate. For that system to work, it has to be a professional government that can work for whichever people get elected.<br />
<br />
But this is not how Donald Trump conducts business. He demands absolute loyalty of those around him, and has always relied on his lawyers to clean up any messes he may have with the law. Right now, his main fixer, Michael Cohen, is in trouble for the way he went about cleaning up those messes.<br />
<br />
You can run a business this way, especially a small family firm without the reporting or legal requirements of a publicly held corporation. As a system of government, the Germans had a word for it: fuhrerprinzip, usually translated as the leader principle. Under that system, at each level of government, the person in charge has total control, and that person's will overrides any written law. The person at the top of the hierarchy is the Fuhrer, whose will overrides any written law and any orders by subordinates.<br />
<br />
President Trump, with his admiration for dictators, has shown a preference for the leader principle. Now, the proper control on this behavior is not the democratic norms embedded in the professional standards of the civil service, which has no role described in the constitution for constraining the authoritarian ambitions of a president. The proper control is congress, which passes the laws the executive is charged with putting into action and has the power to remove the president.<br />
<br />
There's a problem with that. Not only are most Republican legislators scared of the power Trump holds over the Republican base electorate, many of them agree with his anti-democratic instincts.<br />
<br />
From a Sam Tanenhaus article in the July, 2017 issue of The Atlantic:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-the-radical-right/528672/">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-the-radical-right/528672/</a><br />
(Economist James McGill) Buchanan’s theory found another useful ally in the budget-slasher and
would-be government-shrinker David Stockman, who idolized Hayek and
declared that “politicians were wrecking American capitalism.” But
Stockman also discovered that restoring capitalism to a purer condition
would mean declaring war on “Social Security recipients, veterans,
farmers, educators, state and local officials, the housing industry.”
What president was going to do <i>that</i>? Certainly not Reagan. As Stockman reflected, “The democracy had defeated the doctrine.”</blockquote>
Tanenhaus was writing about Nancy MacLean's book, <i>Democracy in Chains</i>, which explores the influence of Buchanan's public choice theory on American politics. Essentially, the argument is that when it appeared that democracy was a threat to the pure form of capitalism Buchanan favored, his doctrine said that the value system of capitalism should be the one to triumph.<br />
<br />
If democracy defeated the doctrine, the solution was to defeat democracy.<br />
<br />
We live in a democratic republic. Republics can be undemocratic: The Roman Senate operated more like the English House of Lords than the House of Commons. America's founders thought the best way to have a peaceful and well-governed country was to have its leaders democratically elected, so that if they governed poorly, they could be peacefully replaced.<br />
<br />
Over time, we have recognized the humanity of groups like women and former slaves and their descendants by granting them the vote. Rousseau defined freedom as living under a law of your own making. Widening the franchise recognized that previously disenfranchise people were their own masters, and should have a role in determining the laws under which they lived.<br />
<br />
Buchanan's theory seems like a throwback to the times when one had to own property to have the right to vote. John Locke theorized that we each are born owning ourselves, and can never sell that property right to anyone else. If you own your own soul, should that not be property right enough to shape the government that rules you?<br />
<br />
Buchanan said he was applying economic theory to politics. The problem is that he, and those who have financed the political movement that has drawn on his ideas, also applied economic values to politics, privileging economic assets and market value above all else.<br />
<br />
Buchanan does stipulate that there can be just constitutional arrangements in which people can be rightly taxed. He only stipulates that this arrangement requires unanimity in agreeing to the terms of the constitution. From Chapter 6 of his book, <i>Limits to Liberty</i>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Under a unanimity rule, decisions if made at all are guaranteed to be efficient, at least in the anticipated sense. Individual agreement signals individual expectation that benefits exceed costs, evaluated in personal utility dimensions, which may or may not incorporate narrowly defined self-interest. With a purely public good, the individually secured benefits, as evaluated, must exceed the individually agreed-on share of costs, measured in foregone opportunities to secure private goods. From an initial imputation of endowments or goods, the multiparty exchange embodied in public-goods provision moves each individual to a final imputation, which includes public goods, that is evaluated more highly in utility terms. Each person in the collectivity moves to a higher position on his own utility surface, or thinks that he will do so, as a result of the public-goods decision reached by unanimous agreement.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
No such results are guaranteed when collective decisions are made under less-than-unanimity rules...</blockquote>
(A couple of paragraphs later:)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...We are assuming that the same persons participate in the conceptual constitutional contract and in postconstitutional adjustments. From this it follows that, if a constitutional contract is made that defines separate persons in terms of property rights, and if these rights are widely understood to include membership in a polity that is authorized to make collective decisions by less-than-unanimity rules, each person must have, at this prior stage, accepted the limitations on his own rights that this decision process might produce.</blockquote>
Now, that's a slightly different position than the "all taxes are theft" position taken by some other theorists, but note that none of the factors that would make the last quoted paragraph apply to the American tax system do in fact apply. While all the states ratified the constitution, they did not do so by unanimous vote. Massachusetts, for example, ratified it by a vote of 187 to 168. While Buchanan theorized that there could be just taxes, no government I know of meets his standards for justice.<br />
<br />
Charles Koch became interested in his work, and in 1997 donated about $10 million to finance Buchanan's think tank, the Center for the Study of Public Choice, which is associated with George Mason University.<br />
<br />
Public choice theory did much to destroy the idea of "the public good," as understood by political theorists prior to the 1960s. Public choice theory assumes that the people who make up government have their own self-interest. Therefore, any time someone claims to be acting in the public interest, we should assume that whoever is making these claims is acting in their own interest.<br />
<br />
Now, consider the first paragraph in section 8 of the U.S. Constitution:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;</blockquote>
James Monroe claimed the phrase "...and general Welfare..." was meaningless, Alexander Hamilton claimed it was crucial. Hamilton was a mercantilist who believed in government taxing and spending to develop the nation.<br />
<br />
The welfare clause became the justification for the Supreme Court's 1937 ruling in<i> Helvering v. Davis </i>that held the government had a right to levy Social Security taxes and pay pensions. After all, if Social Security doesn't provide for the general welfare of the country, what does?<br />
<br />
Well, who says what the general welfare of the country is? Is it any better defined than "the public good?" Aren't the people promoting the idea just acting in their own interest?<br />
<br />
One of the problems with the tools of economics is that it is a discipline that makes certain assumptions about human nature, that humans are rational and self-interested. It is a discipline with a decent but mixed record of analyzing behavior in a restricted part of human endeavor, the economic part. It is not really designed for analyzing altruism, heroism, or even the sacrifices a parent will make for a child, seeking to explain all these things in terms of individual self-interest.<br />
<br />
The self-optimizing individual isn't necessarily selfish. One may have a preference for as much money as possible, or one may prefer to spend a lifetime trying to save the world from whatever you feel threatens it. Economics treats these preferences as equal, making no judgments as to the moral value of preferences. However, many on the right seem to treat all preferences as selfish, because they are the preferences of individuals. Perhaps this is because they have fallen under the sway of a far more widely known thinker, Ayn Rand, who wrote:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.</blockquote>
This takes the economic assumption in the commercial sphere that people will try to optimize their financial well-being, expands the "virtue of selfishness" to all of life, and changes it from an empirical assumption into a normative judgment.<br />
<br />
But we have more than one way of organizing society. There are spheres of human endeavor in which the market is simply not competent to deal with our problems. In fact, markets cannot exist without these other spheres of endeavor. Attempts to run an economy without a properly-functioning legal system have resulted in poor economic performance, and societies only satisfactory to those with enough influence to make sure the courts rule in their favor. Markets were never intended to deal with the problems of those who cannot work.<br />
<br />
What sort of parent would fail to sacrifice their sleep to a wailing infant, or their time and money to the education, both academic and moral, of their children? Rand had no children, in keeping with her philosophy that she was an end in herself, but a society of such people would disappear in one generation.<br />
<br />
Even in obviously financial decisions, like what one does for a living, people are not financially optimizing creatures. That's not a problem for economics, it just means that the preferences being optimized are not necessarily financial. The problem is with the way this economic explanation is interpreted. The default assumption on the right seems to be that unless one's motives are Evangelical Christian or military, they are selfish, therefore those who seek a profession that gives their lives meaning, like taking a job in the Environmental Protection Agency in the hope of working toward a better world, are really motivated by selfishness.<br />
<br />
And if that's the case, the people working for the government cannot be altruistic. Any claims that they are acting for the good of the country can be discounted. People working at agencies because they agree with the purpose of the agencies and the laws that established them are, to this way of thinking, just as selfish as those who want to tear down those agencies so that corporations can make more money.<br />
<br />
One of the more troubling ways conservatism has become corrupt is this belief that there are no altruistic people, just hypocrites pretending to have moral standards.<br />
<br />
These assumptions would staff your deep state with morally corrupt people whose agenda is not that of the governed, but only of their own corrupt ends. And the solution to this problem would be to elect the Great Man, and make the government subject to his will. The checks and balances built into our government by people who believed there was such a thing as "the general welfare" are useless in this world view, and serve only to frustrate democracy.<br />
<br />
But we've seen this movie before, and the ending wasn't funny. In fact, it's a story thousands of years old. About 2,500 years ago, Aristotle wrote the following in <i>Politics</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.”</blockquote>
Plato, his contemporary, thought societies went through a natural progression from oligarchy, to democracy, then tyranny, each stage representing the breakdown of the previous stage. To be ruled by a tyrant is to be subject to the will and the whims of that ruler. Plato said the tyrant arrives as the peoples' champion, telling them only he can fix their troubles, but cannot even govern himself because there is no constraint on his whims and urges. Moreover, because all his relationships are built on domination and submission, the tyrant “never tastes of true freedom or friendship.”<br />
<br />
If you cannot know friendship, can you know empathy? Trump is Ayn Rand's ideal man, always looking after number one and as a result treating others like number two. He wants to wield the kind of power held by the people he admires, men like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un. He does not want a government of laws, he wants a government that will do his will.<br />
<br />
When his followers refer to organizations such as the Justice Department as the "deep state," they are saying they do not want Trump constrained by the laws of our country. You might think this is just an animal urge on the part of his supporters, most of whom have never heard of James Buchanan, but that would mistake the nature of influential ideas. People who couldn't spell John Locke's name and have never read his work hold his ideas about each of us being born our own master sacred. You don't have to read <i>The Second Treatise of Government</i> to feel that way, the idea is embedded in our culture.<br />
<br />
The ideas of people like Buchanan and Rand have become embedded in the hive mind of the right, and have become part of their culture.<br />
<br />
The concept of the deep state also made some inroads on the left, particularly the far left, where faith in democracy has always been weak. Public choice theory has always had less appeal to this group, because its assumptions are those of capitalist economics. Whereas Buchanan might be said to have made the argument that money doesn't run everything, but it should, the far left tends to think that money does run everything. The deep state of liberal nightmares is the military-industrial complex. The deep state understood by adherents of Buchanan's ideas is government based on laws passed by the people's elected representatives.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-70221182830123015322018-06-20T18:43:00.000-07:002018-06-20T18:48:38.515-07:00We have nine months to find a new spot for the Ballard store<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<img height="400" src="https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-1/p200x200/18698137_10154810027228871_1644369188560965674_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=9af413508994ae56ee9bc06852699ea8&oe=5BBD0A34" width="400" /><br />
<br />
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
Some of our customers are already aware that the building the Ballard Twice Sold Tales is in will be torn down to build a 173-unit apartment building. Today, I got the termination notice for our lease.<br />
<br />
When I signed the lease, I insisted on nine months to find a new place after they give notice, so the lease will terminate March 31, 2019. I had thought they would give me more time, since they aren't likely to demolish the building for about a year and a half, but apparently they wanted more freedom of action.<br />
<br />
It's hard to find a location with enough foot traffic to support a bookstore that has low enough rent for a bookstore's revenues to cover it. I've been in business since 1992, so if you know a landlord who anticipates an opening, let them know that we're a solid business with an international reputation, and we've never missed a month's rent. I'd like to stay in Ballard, but I'm open to suggestions.<br />
<br />
The whole thing is a bit of bad luck, I had hoped that Ballard Transfer would not sell the building so soon, and the the new owner would not act so quickly. Moving a bookstore is difficult and expensive, so when the time comes, anyone who wishes to volunteer help is welcome.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-6834279948825727342018-05-02T19:02:00.000-07:002018-07-27T19:04:10.669-07:00The increasing division between racing and daysailing sailboats<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
The evolution of planing sailboats has favored the fast over the pleasant, at least in development classes.<br />
<br />
Here, for example, is an interpretation of current trends in planing sailboats:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNKZrPCaL9Xd_w5SlgvmRbi371iVjxpKNoMGXkU6dB_oyTHhKUjidHKEM6AVrujbCTaVFbgALOsjfIedcrfRRO6634rKU5JLkq5Mo9kVfphReotqiOZDZ0UqLo3WzVZEteLxNH1kBML6w/s1600/17%2527+skiff+with+hiking+racks+5-2-2018+1-56-32+PM+1591x798.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1591" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNKZrPCaL9Xd_w5SlgvmRbi371iVjxpKNoMGXkU6dB_oyTHhKUjidHKEM6AVrujbCTaVFbgALOsjfIedcrfRRO6634rKU5JLkq5Mo9kVfphReotqiOZDZ0UqLo3WzVZEteLxNH1kBML6w/s640/17%2527+skiff+with+hiking+racks+5-2-2018+1-56-32+PM+1591x798.bmp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull A. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This represents a 17-foot racing dinghy with minimal initial stability, a high prismatic coefficient (.58) and hiking wings. The waterline beam is about 2 feet 9 inches, the beam of the hull is about 3 feet, and the beam of the hiking wings is about 8 feet. The entrance angle is less than 9 degrees. It would carry about 200 square feet of sail, have a crew of two, both using trapezes to increase their righting moment, and it would have a reefing bowsprit for an asymmetric spinnaker. Everything, the hull, the rig, even the hiking racks, would be built with carbon fiber so that its scant displacement can support two highly skilled sailors.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And they'd better be highly skilled, because although fast, the boat will be nearly impossible to sail. It is designed to have the least possible resistance going to windward in waves, thus the narrow hull. The theory is that modern planing sailboats are fastest sailed flat, so there's no point in making them stable, because the crew will sail them so flat the center of buoyancy has no opportunity to move to leeward.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The type can be used without the trapezes or the jib and spinnaker. In fact, it started with the Moth class. The last of the non-foiling Moths looked quite like this, but were 11 feet long with a waterline beam of about one foot. I've heard of an Australian Moth champion starting 5 minutes behind the legendary Flying Dutchman class and finishing the race having overtaken all but the leaders of that class.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The down side is that almost no one can sail a boat like this. It looks like the central hull of a trimaran, and has about as much stability.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is a more moderate approach in hiking classes that do not allow hiking racks. Consider this boat, about 16 feet long, 3 1/2 feet wide on the waterline, and just under 6 feet wide at the deck:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsnMJXTm9POjs5CANjJC20fxoyKN5b0YcEBdPwqIPX1lnVXeZ_SwE9SHxJU_-pAKeOKDQqZeadXhnXM4zY7hMOWwGW8o598O36lUhcRa5JvFQ3Q_OPyRhXb9-EkaDoU-gj6Q0DiGh7r8A/s1600/16%2527+modern+planing+hull+5-2-2018+2-25-01+PM+1619x781.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="1600" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsnMJXTm9POjs5CANjJC20fxoyKN5b0YcEBdPwqIPX1lnVXeZ_SwE9SHxJU_-pAKeOKDQqZeadXhnXM4zY7hMOWwGW8o598O36lUhcRa5JvFQ3Q_OPyRhXb9-EkaDoU-gj6Q0DiGh7r8A/s640/16%2527+modern+planing+hull+5-2-2018+2-25-01+PM+1619x781.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull B. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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This is quite moderate compared to a modern Merlin Rocket, which would have a beam at the deck of about 7 feet and a waterline beam of less than 3 feet. The entrance angle is a little over 10 degrees, and it has the same U-shaped sections forward as its narrower cousin, flattening aft to help it plane. The flare allows the boat to gain some stability before it reaches the point where capsize is inevitable, but this is still based on the idea that stability should be minimized to reduce the drag of the hull. It's just the same set of priorities applied to a boat that more people could successfully sail around a race course.</div>
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Compare this to the older planing types.</div>
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The first type to plane regularly during races seems to have been the sharpie, as rigged for racing in the 1870s:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOyb4gZF3YwiiamZYX9VLomUmvTQYS4wkJGXXU4kPrgSUY3_lPTg6W2tao1Dltn220I2kBglYPGEAMbed2JmPp0iU4SC_I4TH96efFS3f5fSeCbnij3IxDDoI3cxP1pwQifvbavw-ZxA/s1600/New+Haven+sharpie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="992" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOyb4gZF3YwiiamZYX9VLomUmvTQYS4wkJGXXU4kPrgSUY3_lPTg6W2tao1Dltn220I2kBglYPGEAMbed2JmPp0iU4SC_I4TH96efFS3f5fSeCbnij3IxDDoI3cxP1pwQifvbavw-ZxA/s640/New+Haven+sharpie.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sharpie hull. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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<div>
These flat-bottomed workboats, with the moderate rig usually carried, had a useful amount of stability for getting to and from the oyster beds, and for tonging for the oysters while there. With the truly frightening rigs they carried on race days, they carried ten men on springboards to stabilize them, and more than 1,000 square feet of sail to windward, more reaching and running. The boat would have been about 35 feet long and 7 feet wide, and the unballasted hull would have been light, probably less than 3,000 lb.</div>
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The second type known to have regularly achieved planing speeds when racing under sail were scows, with a flattish arc bottom and a bluff bow, relying on the small angle of between the rise of the bottom to the bow for their entry angle:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrT7wMwWdrvue3jaFZ0ePnqi6-wowHXTPTDd_57BH3wo8Xqg3XzOqUfRivLl4Ras4EhRf_Zg48plDKryym0EEl7K5b3-zXmrn57MG246fFB8Gba5xkfUh_EZ-tMqPJXStze9IL1S-emNs/s1600/scow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="646" data-original-width="1067" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrT7wMwWdrvue3jaFZ0ePnqi6-wowHXTPTDd_57BH3wo8Xqg3XzOqUfRivLl4Ras4EhRf_Zg48plDKryym0EEl7K5b3-zXmrn57MG246fFB8Gba5xkfUh_EZ-tMqPJXStze9IL1S-emNs/s640/scow.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scow hull. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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These boats have very stable hulls that extend the maximum beam farther forward than a sharp-bowed skiff hull. Scows are sailed heeled to windward, and fairly flat reaching in a strong breeze. As a result, they are useful daysailers, which can be sailed in a relaxed manner when not racing. When racing, the hulls have a minimal deflection angle at the forward part of the hull, so the crew doesn't have to move aft when the boat is planing. This is true of both the scows and sharpies, even more modern sharpies like the Lightning class. Now consider the type Uffa Fox introduced with <i>Avenger</i> in 1928:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSO3FC9D1cO7iqx6dBpvx9s82iCNp06Z6KLcju4HP4E0v6aPcMtlZURO5drEug1-o7CMIGNQPA0J5B3hlh7CFVgt5cezSt3vyQAdV0VoqV28ovx4AUiQE-rqEuwODWFR5ZWjC2zDUH1DU/s1600/Avenger-type+hull+by+johnw.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="774" data-original-width="1357" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSO3FC9D1cO7iqx6dBpvx9s82iCNp06Z6KLcju4HP4E0v6aPcMtlZURO5drEug1-o7CMIGNQPA0J5B3hlh7CFVgt5cezSt3vyQAdV0VoqV28ovx4AUiQE-rqEuwODWFR5ZWjC2zDUH1DU/s640/Avenger-type+hull+by+johnw.bmp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Uffa Fox-type hull. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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This type is deeply Veed forward. This allowed these boats to be fast in choppy conditions that hit the scow bows and impaired their progress to windward. The deep Vee forward produces too great a deflection angle for planing, which means that in planing conditions, the crew must move aft. The type was more stable than the U-sectioned boats that preceded it in the International 14 class and similar classes. To sail it fast, you needed to sail it flat, but the inherent stability of the type made it forgiving. They are fastest sailed flat, but if you failed to sail them flat, they simply became less efficient. You could capsize them, but not as easily as the modern types.</div>
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The same year <i>Avenger</i> came out in England, Ted Geary designed a planing dinghy for the Seattle Yacht Club. That design, originally called the Flattie and now called the Geary 18, had a sharp bow and sharpie-type construction, but the bow was well clear of the waterline and the hull was clearly a scow type. The class added more sail area and a trapeze as time went on, but no spinnaker. They have a faster Portsmouth Yardstick rating than the Jet 14, which combines a 1950s-era International 14 hull with a Snipe rig, with a spinnaker added, but no trapeze.</div>
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All of these older types were planing racing boats that could be used for daysailing. Few classes made this as explicit as the Lightning class, which sent a design brief to Olin Stephens asking for a boat sailors could take their families out in, but also occasionally race.</div>
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These are the types of vessel that led to the great age of dinghy sailing from the 1950s through the 1970s. We now see the best racing sailboats as something unsuitable for taking the family sailing in. The older classes are still suitable for use as daysailers and as racing boats. To some extent, the older one-design classes have mitigated the effect of trends toward a division between daysailers and racing boats, but some have allowed costs to skyrocket.</div>
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The Optimist Pram, the most popular sailboat in the world, no longer allows homebuilt boats, and allows carbon fiber spars.</div>
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Now, I've built a 9' 6" dinghy for less than $500 in materials that will easily out-perform the 7'9" Optimist, but I can't buy an Optimist new for less than $3,000, and can easily spend $4,500 for one with carbon spars and a boat cover.</div>
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The problem for one-design classes is that the most avid racers are likely to be the most active participants in running the class, and they will want to be allowed to use the latest go-fast items. It's easy for a class to become as expensive as the latest racing designs without matching their performance.<br />
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We are likely to continue to see a division between daysailers and racing boats as time goes on and the older designs are left behind. The classes trying to continue to provide a more stable boat, such as the JY 15, tend to be those which are aimed at youth sailing programs, not at families. There are still companies providing kit boats, but these tend not to be the sort of racer-daysailer that kit boats tended to be in the 1960s. Chesapeake Light Craft, one of the more successful kit providers currently, produces not one racing dinghy class.<br />
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Not everyone likes to race, but it would be nice if people could experience the handling of a nice planing dinghy without either getting a boat that is difficult to sail, or one that harks back to the 1930s.<br />
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Let's see where the logic of this situation takes us. We want a dinghy that is stable enough to that most sailors can handle it. We want enough carrying capacity for a mom, a dad, and a child. Current practice says that it should have a narrow entry, U-shaped sections forward, a flat area aft of the mast and ahead of the transom on which to plane, and enough flare that the crew gets some extra leverage for hiking, but not so much that it's difficult to get on and off it from a dock.<br />
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I'd also like to see simple construction so that the home builder can make it out of plywood without a huge amount of skill.<br />
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So, it's going to be either V-bottomed or flat bottomed. Let's explore both options.<br />
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The V-bottomed boat will be simplest. You can't have U-shaped sections with a V or a flat-bottomed shape, but you can touch some of the points that describe a U:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMC-Z1a6-_YXzQVu9fAiXgNI4HtY9nSinCb4p6XD22YdVzobbFqHFIn61_fDzR2wdH8elTfL-2GLMkT6icHbNnXcDeOY-me90FC4AhABuCL1oVcgAtdnbnjhOD7iD3xchJ1Un45_xT3tM/s1600/14%2527+simple+skiff+5-2-2018+5-24-55+PM+1469x776.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1469" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMC-Z1a6-_YXzQVu9fAiXgNI4HtY9nSinCb4p6XD22YdVzobbFqHFIn61_fDzR2wdH8elTfL-2GLMkT6icHbNnXcDeOY-me90FC4AhABuCL1oVcgAtdnbnjhOD7iD3xchJ1Un45_xT3tM/s640/14%2527+simple+skiff+5-2-2018+5-24-55+PM+1469x776.bmp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull C. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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This boat is 14' by 5', able to carry about 400 lb., and has an entry angle that is narrow by the standard of most V-bottomed boats, but not by the standard of modern racing monohulls. It has substantial rocker forward, allowing the V sections to have plenty of volume for the amount of beam forward. You'd want to build it with a watertight deck above the waterline, so that it could be recovered easily after a capsize, but not deck the upper part of the hull to keep weight down and keep the cockpit roomy. Perhaps some pool noodles or pipe insulation on the top of the sides would provide some comfort while hiking, and some buoyancy to help the crew get back aboard after a capsize.<br />
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Now consider a more forgiving flat-bottomed design.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oxPQmn8gdhQVPAeP1XY_4-wN_tHx_ggonNukQe08YYuW-jGiphhbw8XK5KCLSsct_ZpLB5ziKeXB1eaNkZXTimxKqAh4VLp7NcOBIL7v-Zsv1HuBNnGGF7gdF3UNws7IJ_FgsoKZdfs/s1600/14%2527+flared+flat+bottom+5-2-2018+5-49-09+PM+1606x787.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="785" data-original-width="1600" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8oxPQmn8gdhQVPAeP1XY_4-wN_tHx_ggonNukQe08YYuW-jGiphhbw8XK5KCLSsct_ZpLB5ziKeXB1eaNkZXTimxKqAh4VLp7NcOBIL7v-Zsv1HuBNnGGF7gdF3UNws7IJ_FgsoKZdfs/s640/14%2527+flared+flat+bottom+5-2-2018+5-49-09+PM+1606x787.bmp.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull D. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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I'm showing this one in color to make its waterlines easier to read. This is a more stable, forgiving boat, because of the second chine above the waterline. It will plane more easily because it has a lower deflection angle and straighter run. I've had to use a transom bow to get the bilge panels to develop without excessive stress, and the entrance angle is twice that of the first hull we considered in this post, the narrow one with hiking racks that would be impossible for most people to sail.<br />
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Finally, let's consider an even more stable and forgiving boat:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hRkbRwpNFOaDvpAMQUIdrJR16JtUwbJc88ztRi3A1E1mJScGR0kJ6HiRn7wHuT2toWQZ6e5g9QvUMFK2q3fnNH-ggq6xv-T8yr4OzjzXGLefRwIDyTol2fj-7wnZFBSFXwY4T4m6ujY/s1600/Drake+class+without+deck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1600" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hRkbRwpNFOaDvpAMQUIdrJR16JtUwbJc88ztRi3A1E1mJScGR0kJ6HiRn7wHuT2toWQZ6e5g9QvUMFK2q3fnNH-ggq6xv-T8yr4OzjzXGLefRwIDyTol2fj-7wnZFBSFXwY4T4m6ujY/s640/Drake+class+without+deck.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hull E. Illustration by John MacBeath Watkins</td></tr>
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This boat, with a waterline beam of about 4 feet on a length of 14 feet, would be the pleasantest and most stable daysailer of these three. It has the narrowest entry angle, and would likely throw the least spray. However, the wider waterline beam would make it slightly slower to weather in a chop than hull C. I've attempted a faceted version of hull B, but without the extremely narrow waterline or the extreme flare to the topsides.<br />
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These exercises are intended to give an idea of the sort of compromises needed to produce something that incorporates what we've learned about hull shapes without forgetting what we've learned about what makes a boat a practical daysailer.<br />
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Doubtless there are people better qualified than me trying to solve the riddle of making a practical daysailer with good performance, and some of the older designs are still quite popular, for good reasons. Some classes, like the El Toro and the Windmill, still support the home builder. And demographic patters, such as the trend toward more people living in cities, make it difficult to find space to build or keep a boat of any sort. But the separation between racing and daysailing boats continues apace, and it doesn't seem like the best way to promote the sport.<br />
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-65742867145636413232018-04-16T16:47:00.000-07:002018-04-16T16:48:36.795-07:00Trump's denials about his sex life must be taken with a pillar of salt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
Jonathan Chait, writing in <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/im-a-peeliever-and-you-should-be-too.html">New York magazine</a>, has invented the term "peeliever" for those who believe the notorious "pee tape" of President Trump watching hired prostitutes pee on each other on the bed that President Obama and his wife had slept on during their visit to Moscow.<br />
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There's plenty of levity about this, and a twitter hashtag for <a class="twitter-hashtag pretty-link js-nav" data-query-source="hashtag_click" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/peeliever?src=hash" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: #1c94e0; font-family: "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration-line: none; white-space: pre-wrap;">#<span style="color: inherit;"><strong>peeliever</strong></span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> . But the tape isn't the main problem, and the matter has serious implications.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We know that two women say that they have been paid to keep their silence about having sex with Donald Trump. Steve Bannon, formerly a top aide to Trump in the campaign and the White House, claims there were "a hundred." I think we can safely say with some confidence that the number of women who have been paid for their silence is somewhere between two and infinity.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And Trump has also used non-disclosure agreements extensively in his business dealings and with his White House staff. The number of people who have information they have sworn not to reveal about President Trump is unknown to the public, and he probably doesn't even have a precise count in his own head.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">This means that there is a lot of information our president doesn't want revealed. We don't know how much of this is about sex and how much is about financial dealings that might not look good in the light of day. We do know that it is highly unlikely that he has managed to keep all of his secrets from foreign intelligence services.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And there's no point in paying someone for their silence unless the information is damning enough that you could be blackmailed over it. So, we have a president who has been compromised. Vladimir Putin doesn't need to have actual tapes of the alleged incident involving the prostitutes to have a hold on Trump. There are a thousand other things he could hold over the man. Personally, I've tended to believe that what Putin knows that is most damning is financial, rather than sexual. If he knows something that could bring down Trump's little empire, that would probably give him a firmer hold over Trump than anything sexual.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump tried to set a "red line" that investigators would not cross, that line being investigation of his finances. Robert Mueller is not the sort of man to be stopped by rhetoric, so it appears that he has begun looking into the president's finances.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, perhaps at some point, Americans will know what Putin knows.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">As to the president's sex life, it's a little hard to know what public disclosures could bring him down. We've known since the Jefferson administration that fathering illegitimate children does not disqualify one in the eyes of the voters. We know this because Jefferson's opponents in the press were not shy about revealing his relationship with Sally Hemmings. (Hemmings was the mixed-race half-sister of Jefferson's late wife, fathered by Martha Jefferson's father, John Wayles, with one of his slaves. Sally's mother Betty and her children, who were Wayles as well, were given to the couple by Martha's father. There was some seriously messed up stuff going on in those days.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">From an article published Sept. 1, 1802, written by James T. Callender:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is well known that the man, Whom is delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age.</blockquote>
Jefferson was already president when this was printed, and was re-elected despite it. In any case, it had been an open secret prior to Callender's articles.<br />
<br />
Grover Cleveland got elected despite the publicity his opponents gave to the fact that he had fathered an illegitimate child. Further, the woman who had that child claimed that he had raped her.<br />
<br />
And, of course, Bill Clinton got elected and re-elected despite a series of allegations of sexual misconduct.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/hmake/cartoonsite/cartoonimages/cartoontoned/voice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="349" src="https://www.ibiblio.org/hmake/cartoonsite/cartoonimages/cartoontoned/voice.jpg" width="388" /></a></div>
But here's the problem. We know about the sexual misconduct of Jefferson, Cleveland and Clinton in part because none of them went to the lengths Trump has to keep matters secret. You can't blackmail someone by threatening to reveal something that's on the front page of every newspaper in the country.<br />
<br />
The fact that Trump has used non-disclosure agreements and his allies at the National Inquirer have been willing to buy and kill stories means that there is a lot of derogatory information about him that isn't public.<br />
<br />
We know that he has in the past bragged about sleeping with a lot of women. We know that he has compared the danger he might have got sexually transmitted diseases to the danger of serving in Vietnam. He has said he is a "germophobe," but we know that the porn star he had sex with says he didn't use protection, and that is not behavior most psychologists would connect with being a germophobe, if that is indeed a DSM-recognized condition.<br />
<br />
We should therefore take his denials about the pee tape, and other aspects of his sex life, with a pillar of salt, not just a pinch.<br />
<br />
The man has plenty of secrets, and if foreign intelligence services don't know a lot of them, they are not doing their job. He may have been the right candidate to win the presidency, but he's a lousy candidate for a security clearance, and that means he's a danger to his country.<br />
<br />
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-86884920180844904582017-12-14T14:49:00.000-08:002017-12-14T15:41:08.938-08:00A design to teach students to sail classic rigs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
I've been thinking through the logic of a new sort of sail trainer, the object of which is to get people to learn to sail with traditional rigs.<br />
<br />
As some of those who follow this blog know, I helped start a sail training course called Sail Now at the Center for Wooden Boats. As the classes have evolved, more and more the classes are taught in Blanchard Junior Knockabouts, 20-foot spoon-bowed keelboats that are tractable and pleasant to sail. Unfortunately, some of the students come out of this feeling that the only boats they can sail are those like the BKJ.<br />
<br />
The Center for Wooden Boats is a museum founded to preserve, not just the objects, but the skills, associated with classic boats and wooden boats in general.<br />
<br />
Near the end of his life, Dick Wagner, who founded CWB, wrote a letter to the Collections Committee complaining that the fleet was becoming too homogeneous, with plenty of sloops about the same size, but fewer and fewer boats with traditional rigs. It occurred to me that part of the problem is that the boats that get used are the boats we train people to use, feeding a cycle that causes fewer and fewer people to use the great little classics we have on the dock.<br />
<br />
Here's my proposed solution, which I am tentatively calling the Adept class:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-LZnhKdlH1HWBON7Ear1xUy06fea-IPjfxCFduCR_PFCrta9PD1jtFFtCk4OVajpeUGhPfsnNMdecCOXis1KT2DB0M8FC-_OJfVEUGx4JguGBAefCd6YEVEFHw-KeTfHBAMUOPK-W-4/s1600/Adept+with+sprit+rig+11-16-2017+11-48-06+AM+649x837.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="837" data-original-width="649" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh-LZnhKdlH1HWBON7Ear1xUy06fea-IPjfxCFduCR_PFCrta9PD1jtFFtCk4OVajpeUGhPfsnNMdecCOXis1KT2DB0M8FC-_OJfVEUGx4JguGBAefCd6YEVEFHw-KeTfHBAMUOPK-W-4/s640/Adept+with+sprit+rig+11-16-2017+11-48-06+AM+649x837.bmp.jpg" width="496" /></a></div>
These are the criteria for the boat:<br />
<br />
<b>W<span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">e need a boat that has room for an instructor and two students that has a traditional rig. This boat should be self-rescuing, with a cockpit that drains itself if the boat capsizes, adding a level of safety absent in most of our fleet. We also need a boat that performs well enough to interest sailors and keep them coming back to use them.</span></b><br />
<b><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The boat should increase volunteer engagement. I propose that this boat should be designed to be built stitch and glue, so that unskilled volunteers can build it. This will also decrease costs, so that the boat can be built for the materials cost of about $1,200 - $1,500, including sails (possibly volunteers assembling a kit from Sailright.}</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The boat should perform well enough to reward good sailing with good performance, but be forgiving if the sailor makes mistakes. </span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It should be easy to reef at the dock, for strong winds or light crews, and should be easy to depower if the wind comes up.</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">To this end, I propose that the boat should have certain characteristics.</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It should have a sprit rig, which, with the snotter led aft so that the crew can easily adjust it under way, can be depowered by scandalizing the rig.</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It should have sufficient displacement to carry three people, a weight of around 500 lb., and a sufficiently sturdy hull for livery use, at least 300 lb.</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It should have a fairly broad beam, around 6'. Length should be about what can be achieved with two sheets of plywood, to minimize cost, which means less than 16'. Waterline beam should not be excessive, so that the boat performs well, but something close to the full beam should be reached not far above the waterline, so that as the boat heels, it quickly gains stability. Most sail training boats have flare closer to the deck line, a practice more suitable to racing boats.</span><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">To achieve a sufficiently large cockpit with a 15' boat, it should have a single sail rig with the mast well forward.</span></b><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">I envision setting this boat up like a Woods Hole spritsail boat, with a long, open cockpit running almost the length of the boat. I'm hoping I can convince the folks at the Center for Wooden Boats that this project is worth while.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">The lines for the boat allow plenty of displacement, one of the major differences between this and racing classes, and a narrow waterline flare to a chine just above the waterline, so that the boat will feel lively, but stiffen up as the boat heels. The bottom is a warped plane, which should help it hop on a plane now and then. A monohedron hull, with the same V most of the way back, would offer better control when planing at high speeds, but I don't expect this boat to plane all that often or all that fast. All panels are developed as a section of a cone, so that the boat can be built stitch and glue.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "tahoma" , "calibri" , "geneva" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmpn-31_WydgCHbwGqUGAWYPZBxCzL4k8Xq36k6cQoft2_k5rJcR-cbM9XkJnaH_pdrJVp8zAcdRJmW6gz-c5L-mVcE4lCJE-GgWkYr-jt_h6egbsHBVgRx55tvTZr9J4dH_OJMjzSBw/s1600/15%2527+sail+training+dinghy+10-27-2017+2-47-21+PM+1383x806.bmp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="1383" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmpn-31_WydgCHbwGqUGAWYPZBxCzL4k8Xq36k6cQoft2_k5rJcR-cbM9XkJnaH_pdrJVp8zAcdRJmW6gz-c5L-mVcE4lCJE-GgWkYr-jt_h6egbsHBVgRx55tvTZr9J4dH_OJMjzSBw/s640/15%2527+sail+training+dinghy+10-27-2017+2-47-21+PM+1383x806.bmp.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-5133154435716542142017-11-27T17:11:00.000-08:002017-11-27T17:27:26.574-08:00How Trump is destroying American power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
One of the more surreal moments in the presidential campaign was when Donald Trump, at a rally in Tampa, Florida, June 11, 2016, walked across the stage and literally hugged an American flag -- even though his campaign is now being investigated for colluding with the Russian government and its minions to win the campaign.<br />
<br />
In retrospect, it might be more accurate to say he molested the American flag while working with the Russians to subvert what it stands for. He campaigned on a promise to make America great again, but he's been hollowing out the State Department in a way that reduces American power abroad.<br />
<br />
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, recently tweeted, "The purposeful gutting of American power abroad is mystifying. If you
didn't know better, you'd think some rival government was running our
foreign policy."<br />
<br />
And Rod Dreher, a staff member for <i>The American Conservative</i>, recounts this quote from an interview with Northwestern University Prof. William Reno about an exchange with the former foreign minister of an East African country:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-america-gorbachev/">"We spoke several months ago while I was in his country to meet with army officers for my research on civil – military relations. Well read and well informed, he expressed distress over what he saw as the Trump Administration’s attack on the foundations of American power in the world. He compared Trump to Gorbachev...</a> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-america-gorbachev/">"He explained that Russians know Gorbachev as the man who destroyed a superpower. He said that “Trump is your Gorbachev” because he is also destroying his country’s global power. He noted that Trump was systematically undermining the architecture of American power, such as NATO and all sorts of other arenas of cooperation that make America essential in the calculations of other countries. He pointed to people like Sebastian Gorka and took the time to find out who he and some of the other advisors actually are. His country, he explained, prefers to get advice from “reality-based professionals” and wondered how others in the American political establishment could tolerate people who are so harmful to American power."</a>*</blockquote>
The full interview is worth your time, I recommend clicking on the quote and going to the interview. When a publication like The American Conservative is worried about a Republican president destroying American power, you know things are getting bad.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/361783-state-department-wracked-by-departures-under-trump-report">The Hill</a></i> reports that:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“These people either do not believe the U.S. should be a world leader, or they’re utterly incompetent,” Dana Shell Smith told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/us/politics/state-department-tillerson.html">The New York Times</a>. Smith was the ambassador to Qatar until she resigned in June.<br />
<br />
Aides for Tillerson have also reportedly depleted much of the department's diversity by firing most of the department's leading African-American and Latino diplomats.</blockquote>
<br />
Having a diplomatic corps that looks like the world could only help deal with the world, but the Trump administration doesn't want that.<br />
<br />
Very few Republicans (Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is an exception) have raised an alarm about this, and that may be related to the fact that they see as their greatest enemies not foreign powers, but their fellow citizens of the opposition party.<br />
<br />
In late 2014, I <a href="http://booksellersvsbestsellers.blogspot.com/2014/11/how-democracy-ends-sjem-wiemar-problem.html">wrote</a> about the role of the liberum veto in the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a topic that might seem remote until you consider how the paralysis of government that plagued that empire resembled what happened when Republicans became the 'party of no' during the Obama administration.<br />
<br />
One aspect that I did not emphasize at the time was that part of the reason for the paralysis was that foreign governments were bribing legislators to use their liberum veto to serve the interests of the commonwealth's enemies.<br />
<br />
This has become more relevant as the story of Russian interference in the most recent presidential election unfolds.<br />
<br />
Certainly much of what happened in the Polish-Lithuanian Sjem, the commonwealth's legislative body, had to do with divisions within the polity, but part of the problem was the willingness of legislators to advance the interests of other countries with the exercise of their veto.<br />
<br />
It showed a lack of patriotism. And part of what we are now experiencing is a lack of patriotism.<br />
<br />
This is hardly our first rodeo. Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, was a director and shareholder of Brown Brothers Harriman, an investment bank set up for German industrialist and Hitler ally Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler's rise to power. (Thyssen was big in coal and steel, and benefited financially from Hitler's rearmament of Germany, and Brown Brothers Harriman helped him set up front companies to move money around the globe.) BBH was seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but strangely was not dissolved to benefit the taxpayers but returned to its stockholders after the war. Far from being prosecuted, Prescott Bush was able to sell his stock for a fortune after the war and used this wealth as a base for his election to the U.S. Senate.<br />
<br />
And we all remember that Charles Lindbergh, who was widely praised in Nazi Germany for his efforts to keep America from aiding Britain in its war with Germany and advising America negotiate a neutrality treaty with Germany. When President Roosevelt criticized his position, he resigned his commission as a colonel the the U.S. Army Air Corps. He even considered moving to Germany as late as 1939, but German friends advised against the home he wished to lease because it had been owned by Jews.<br />
<br />
Lucky Lindy also had some pretty racist views, but seems to have been motivated more by anticommunism than antisemitism. He was active in a group called America First, a term which has cropped up again in the Trump administration.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The thing is, we had a House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate people suspected of being fellow travelers with Communists, but we never had such an agency to help deal with Quislings.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Those on the right have never felt they had to answer questions about their patriotism, even when they have aided hostile foreign powers. Those on the right seem to get a pass on the issue of patriotism from pretty much everybody. The right was happy to accuse President Barack Obama of deliberately reducing American power, but it now appears those accusations were aspirational, and they were really voicing what they intended to do.<br />
<br />
One definition of a political gaffe is "accidentally telling the truth." When Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) said about tax cuts, "My donors are basically saying, 'Get it done or don’t ever call me again,'" he was doing just that. His donors are very rich people who care more about money than about their country. They don't care if the deficit explodes, they don't care if the foreign service is so decimated that foreign ministers don't even know who to talk to at the local embassy.<br />
<br />
Because they don't care about their country, they care more about whether a president will sign a tax cut than whether he is destroying American power.<br />
<br />
And it's not just the Republican donor class. Many of the votes that put Trump in office were supplied by Americans who hate their fellow Americans so much that they elected Trump to battle against "liberals" with the aid of Russia.<br />
<br />
Anyone who talks to conservatives on line has run into people who don't care that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails, as long as it nobbled Hillary Clinton. I've run across some who didn't care that many of the things said during the campaign were lies, because "it worked, didn't it?"<br />
<br />
These are people who feel stronger ties to Vladimir Putin's Russia than to Americans in San Francisco. They are more conservative than they are American. The American flag represents something that was new in the world when this country was founded, a nation based on ideals rather than on ethnicity and religion. From the first we imperfectly embodied our ideals, proclaiming that all men are created equal, yet enshrining slavery in the Constitution, but we've made progress over the years, and during the Cold War America came to be seen as a beacon of freedom.<br />
<br />
We've come to represent an international order that seeks consensus rather than conquest. Our military adventures have often been either futile or have boomeranged against us, but our soft power has been consistently important and beneficial to the nation.<br />
<br />
Trump's treatment of the diplomatic corps shows that he does not understand American power, does not understand why we are seen as the essential nation -- or worse, that he sees this and rejects it, seeking to reduce us to the sort of gangster state Russia has become, a state that prefers conquest to consensus.<br />
<br />
<br />
*http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-america-gorbachev/</div>
</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-36490594263735422702017-10-19T17:04:00.001-07:002017-10-20T11:44:34.955-07:00Plague and the medical neglect of the poor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by Jamie Lutton<br />
<br />
<div>
<span class="im"></span><br />
<div>
<span class="im">I am worried about
the Black Death outbreak in Madagascar, and am thinking about Trump's
FEMA response to the disaster in Puerto Rico - how they are linked </span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
<span class="im">in a chain of unholy possibilities. </span></div>
<span class="im">
<div>
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div>
The
government in Matagasgar -- a military junta has been running the
country since 2009 - - has been not able to -- or has ignored the 'black
death' or bubonic plague outbreaks that happen every year there. The
average citizen in Madagascar lives on less than $600 dollars a year.
Even though this country abounds in natural wealth, like gemstones, this
money does not filter down to most of the population. </div>
<div>
<span class="im"><br /></span></div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
<span class="im">Bubonic plague has been carried by rats on that island in rural areas for decades.</span></div>
<span class="im">
<div>
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div>
After
the rice harvest is over in the drier highlands, there is a die-off of
rats who endemically carry the bubonic plague. The disease then is
carried by hungry fleas to humans, who catch it, from September to
April, directly from the fleas of the dying rats. Rats are so common in
rural areas, they are a food source for the people there. </div>
<br /><span class="im"></span>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
<span class="im">But this year is different. This outbreak has come earlier, and is a different form of the plague. </span></div>
<span class="im">
<div>
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div>
There
is a pneumonic plague outbreak - and instead of hitting the rural
areas, the crowded cities are under siege. As of
Oct 19, there were about 74 deaths and over 700 cases of this more
serious form of the plague. unlike bubonic plague, which 30 to 60% of
the victims recover without treatment, 100% of penumonic plague victims
die <span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-aBn">within three days</span>, sometimes 24 hours. There is no pattern of survival with this version, it is as fatal as rabies is. </div>
<br /><span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"></span>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im">
</span>
<div>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im">This form of the plague seems to have jumped into the population from an untreated case of the bubonic
plague. Or perhaps more than one. According to the CDC, 10% of the
untreated cases of bubonic plague morphs into penumonic plague, so with
hindsight, with so many cases of every year here, this was bound to
happen sooner or later. This version of the disease reaches the victim's lungs and is
spread from person to person as an aerosol disease, spread by coughing
and breathing. </span></div>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im">
</span><span class="im"><span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The
Index case seems to have spread it across the country as he took public
transportation, a shared
cab that he was in for many hours, as people were dropped off and
picked up. .He appeared to think he only had a bad cold or case of
malaria, util he suddenly died. His body was not tested for plague,
and was buried without any precautions, or </div>
</span></span><br />
<div>
with
tracing who he had contact with in his trip across the country. They
did not realize they had a plague case until more people had died. </div>
<br /><span class="im"></span>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
</div>
<span class="im">
<div>
The<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: x-small;"> pneumonic plague outbreak there could turn</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;"> into an international crisis, like the Ebola outbreak in 2015</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> did in Africa, where it also jumped
into cities where it had never been seen before, and into the poor
urban population there. As penumonic plague is spread by breath, coughing
or spitting, this is much easier to catch than Ebola is, which is
spread mostly by blood contact, as when a body is handled after death or when a caretaker touches the body fluids. </span> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: x-small;">The authorities in Madagascar have closed the schools and many </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: x-small;">businesses in the face of this outbreak, which has terrified the local population. </span></div>
</span><span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="color: black;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">You
can buy antibiotics over the counter in Madagascar, there is no
controlover this. People are dosing themselves like mad, trying to
treat this on their own.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
</span></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Madagascar's
care for their poorer citizens has sharply declined in the past 9 years
or so, the infrastructure to support public health nurses and doctors
has withered away from neglect and a disinclination to spend any money
on the health of the people there. </div>
</span><span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This
is where it can get dicey if a type of pneumonic plague arises that
is resistant to antibiotics, which could happen pretty quickly since
the people are dosing themselves</div>
<span class="im"><div>
with all kinds of antibiotics that they can buy over the counter</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</span></span><span class="im"><div>
There
is a type of tuberculosis that is resistant to antibiotics as people
who had it and were treated with antibiotics did not finish their dose
of pills, and a version of this disease evolved that can not be treated
easily, as it is resistant. And this version of tuberculosis is now
spreading all over the world. </div>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Watch
the news. If this disease jumps to Africa, out of Madagascar, into
their more crowded and poorer nations, this could be a terrible
catastrophe. Thousands could die, if this disease is half as contagious
as the seasonal flu. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What with the 1% writing
off the poor nations, and poorer parts of nations, we could all be in
trouble This is the price of ignoring the poor, and cutting aid to them,
as can be seen in Trump's proposed budget. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</span><div>
The
world is a lot smaller now, with passenger jet travel being quite
affordable, international tourism and business trips linking all the
major cities to each other, so that a sick person could travel thousands of miles in a day with ease. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</span><br />
<div>
Madagascar
was devastated by cyclone Enawo in March this year, with 80 dead, and
with 276 thousand losing their homes. This devastation might have
triggered this latest outbreak of the plague, as the tens of
thousands struggled to rebuild, and not able to fight dirt and garbage,
with their living conditions degraded. We see this after
every natural disaster; it is very had to stay clean and control food
waste and human waste, which is where rats thrive. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Does
this not sound like the conditions right now in Puerto Rico, where tens
of thousands are driven to drink unsafe water and catching diseases
from that water.? We are already seeing many deaths of
dialysis patents and patents on oxygen because there is no electricity to
drive the machines that keep them alive.</div>
<br /><span class="im"></span>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
<span class="im">All it
would take would be to have the rats that are already taking advantage
of the garbage and chaos to start spreading this disease, or another
disease. Haiti, after their last earthquake, now has endemic
cholera on the island, brought there by peacekeeping forces from Asia,
cholera that was not endemic before.</span></div>
<span class="im">
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The plague can be fought - antibiotics we now have can cure it. But what about other diseases out there?</div>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Epidemic disease like influenza in the Far East, and this disease arises in areas
that are dirty and with a lot of poor people crammed together close
fleas on rats (or pigs and chickens, with the flu) and who have
governments who do not fund clinics or nursing care for their poor. </div>
</span><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As
anyone knows who owns a cat or a dog even in Seattle, pet fleas are
damn hard to control - consider what the challenge is for a poor family
in Madagascar without ADVANTAGE flea treatment on hand when they are fighting the fleas from the rats that have just died. . </div>
<span class="m_5699723312446307781gmail-im"><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The
black death has come back in a pandemic every 700 years. During the
Justinian Roman Empire in the 680's, the late 1340's in Western Europe,
and now this outbreak. Both those previous times, half the known world
died. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</span></span></div>
<div>
Even
though we know much more about epidemic disease than doctors did even
100 years ago, when bubonic plague was first analyzed and described
correctly,</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Every
flu season, a version of the flu goes around the world, killing
thousands of people who are very young or old, have weak immune systems,
or did not get their flu shots, or have complications from other
illness. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What
kind of toll will this disease take? And if not this year, next year,
as long as the government in Madagascar refuses to take care of their
weakest and poorest residents, by finally suppressing the bubonic plague
completely. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What
disease could arise in Puerto Rico and sweep the world? And if you
think I am being an alarmist, 5% of the world died in the flu epidemic
of 1918, which was probably set off by the unsanitary crowded conditions during World War l. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And
if not this year, what about next? What will happen in the future in
Madagascar, Puerto Rico, or some other neglected and poor corner of the
Earth, where the poor have been written off' by the 1% because they are of color, or speak the 'wrong' language?</div>
</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-4816916514411882152017-10-07T18:01:00.001-07:002023-06-11T21:14:11.016-07:00The most successful large Utopian experiment in history<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
America is the most successful large Utopian experiment of all time.<br />
<br />
Up until its founding, nations were made up of territories where a majority of people belonged to one ethnicity, whose language, religion, customs, and appearance were similar enough that people could recognized their fellow citizens as "one of us."<br />
<br />
In contrast, consider this charge against King George III in the Declaration of Independence:<br />
<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.</blockquote>
Not only were they building a new country not based on ethnicity, they were upset that the king was not allowing them to encourage foreigners -- people who were not English -- to come to this land and become citizens.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
America was founded not as an ethno-religious state like those of Europe, but as an experiment in building a society based on reason. Americans would have no king, no nobility, no state religion. People could worship as they saw fit, they could speak their minds, and they could select their leaders -- or, should they find their leaders needed to be removed, they could remove them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There was nothing else like it in the world. There had been democratic and republican states in the ancient world, but not states without a state religion. Even the Netherlands, governed as a republic after 1649 and considered a bastion of free speech, was an ethnically homogeneous state that had its founding in a war between Catholics and Protestants.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are countries where more than one language is spoken, such as Switzerland and Belgium, but America never has had an official language. The Pennsylvania Dutch (ethnically Deutsch, that is, German) developed their own version of German. Our 8th president, Martin Van Buren, spoke Dutch as his first language, as did most of the residents of Kinderhook, N.Y., where he grew up (he was the first president born after the American revolution, therefore the first president born an American citizen.) Thorstein Veblen, one of America's most famous academics and the inventor of the concept of conspicuous consumption, had Norwegian as his first language and only started to learn English when he went to school (he was born in Wisconsin to Norwegian immigrant parents and had plenty of Norwegian-speaking playmates.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I frequently get old books in German that were published in Chicago, because many German-speaking communities in America wanted books in their language. The truth is, 18th and 19th century America was more multicultural than melting pot, which was fine, because America was not founded to be an ethnic or religious state. It was intended to be a bold experiment to find a better way for humanity to live together, to reduce conflict and increase happiness. Consider the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.</blockquote>
<div>
No medieval king or queen would have recognized this as a proper way of governing. The sovereign served God, not the people, and God's earthly representatives gave their approval (or not) to the sovereign's reign.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We have lived so long by the founders' principles that we no longer appreciate how unique the experiment is. Faced with enemies who wish to frame conflicts in ethnic and religious terms, some wish to respond in kind, instead of playing to America's strengths, such as a tolerance of differences that allows us to absorb instead of conquer, and a freewheeling, vibrant culture that attracts others, instead of subjugating people outside of it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Click on the "rethinking liberalism" label below in red and you'll see a list of posts exploring this heritage.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-2298789182835569672017-09-08T19:10:00.001-07:002017-09-08T19:10:55.342-07:00Shibboleths in belief and identity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
One of the remarkable things we've seen with the polarization of American politics is the rise of the shibboleth.<br />
<br />
A shibboleth is something that defines the identity of a group. The biblical basis for the term is found in Judges 12, when the men of Gilead were fighting the men of Ephraim. It was a rout, and the Ephraimites tried to flee to their homeland, but the Gileadites got to the fords on the Jordan River first.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="reftext" style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #aa4400; font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1px; margin-right: 2px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: text-top;"><a href="http://biblehub.com/judges/12-5.htm" style="color: #0092f2; text-decoration-line: none;"><b>5</b></a></span><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was </span><i style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">so</i><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, </span><i style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Art</i><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"> thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; </span><span class="reftext" style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #aa4400; font-family: "arimo" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 14px; margin-left: 1px; margin-right: 2px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: text-top;"><a href="http://biblehub.com/judges/12-6.htm" style="color: #0092f2; text-decoration-line: none;"><b>6</b></a></span><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce </span><i style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">it</i><span style="background-color: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "trebuchet" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"> right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.</span></blockquote>
<br />
In this case, it was just a word that the Ephraimites could not pronounce to save their lives, but over time it has come to mean what you say to prove you belong to a group. In many cases, you must say you believe certain things.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For conservative Republicans, shibboleths are things like Birtherism (the claim that President Barack Obama was not born in America,) or claiming to believe that Obama is a Muslim. Another is claiming to not believe in climate change.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
No amount of evidence will shift these beliefs, whether it's Obama's long-form birth certificate or the fact the Obama for many years attended a somewhat controversial Christian church. Evidence won't shift such beliefs because they were not adopted based on evidence, or any real notion of objective truth. They were adopted to cement a sense of identity.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Normally, when we think of truth, we think of something so logical, so well supported by evidence, that we cannot help but believe it, even if it is inconvenient to do so. But shibboleths are things that you can choose to believe, because it is convenient, because it establishes your bonafides as a member of a group, or even because it annoys people you don't like (which may also establish you as part of a group.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In many forms of communication, the intentions of the speaker are of the highest importance. To someone who believes climate change has the potential to wipe out humanity and most of the large animals on earth, those who deny climate change no matter what the evidence is appear to be speaking in bad faith. Those who deny climate change, as near as I can tell, do so as part of their identity. More evidence just appears as an attack on their identity, and continuing to deny climate change provides the satisfaction of pissing off those fucking liberals.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I keep seeing climate change deniers try to show bad faith on the part of the scientists who have actually studied this. In part, this is a tactic of agnotology, the science of creating ignorance, and simply serves those who do not want to stop selling fossil fuels. But in part, it's a matter of both sides thinking they are arguing on the same ground. Those who claim climate change is real offer their proofs as if they matter to the climate deniers, and those who deny climate change assume this is a belief that liberals have adopted as part of their identity.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Conservatives have told me that liberals are pushing the climate change narrative because the solutions are liberal ones, like regulation and international treaties. To me, this is an odd argument. Surely, we are not expected to believe that conservatives will only acknowledge the reality of problems conservatism can solve? And in any case, shown that a problem exists, shouldn't they display the superiority of their ideology by showing us a conservative solution?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the denier assumes that belief in climate change is as much of a shibboleth to the believer as to the denier. Therefore, to them, the conversation isn't even about evidence. Evidence, to them, is a marker in a game that is really about identity.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-18801700429723656492017-08-21T12:24:00.000-07:002017-08-21T12:24:55.141-07:00Eclipse, as seen through trees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1ZCmHULdyLoOS0VtA5XLblSBWl0uBLY-Y-Gd8Z-HJWAveLW7A8xa_gbNaZEGH9h6RmAadKJkXFbEUw=w123-h220" /></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1ZCmHULdyLoOS0VtA5XLblSBWl0uBLY-Y-Gd8Z-HJWAveLW7A8xa_gbNaZEGH9h6RmAadKJkXFbEUw=w123-h220" /></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
</div>
<br />
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
Seattle did not have a total eclipse. We were at 91.9 percent, which was enough to give us some spooky light, a drop in temperature, and a bit of an eclipse wind.<br />
<br />
I didn't buy the glasses or anything, just relied on standing by a deciduous tree casting a shadow on bare, level ground, in this case the sidewalk. The gaps between the leaves act as pinhole cameras.<br />
<br />
<img alt="" border="0" height="356" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PRgPkho6ZpXXM6t1OxwuZHuLamwqsZkcVIzCZlC32f2Sj3nyzM328X_HDOggYcfwGJCpopCl1gSmKg=w394-h220" width="640" /><br />
<br />
After the eclipse came as close to totality as Seattle would see, I drove to work, watching the progress of the moon over the sun in the images case by trees along the way. When I arrived in Ballard, the eclipse was almost over, and the images cast on the sidewalk there were becoming less sharp-edged.<br />
<br />
<img alt="" border="0" height="357" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uxo4Uw_eKiu3MUhGDE4XmrvAi1EVsPCjt_rIbndM2SJvHsQXMI9kJ_dgZzyUx_wNRNfCv7yM0sApAQ=w394-h220" width="640" /><br />
<br />
A kind soul allowed me to look through his eclipse glasses, but I didn't get an image of that.<br />
<br />
When I got to work, Beau didn't greet me as I came in. I found him hiding in one of the aisles, looking a little shaken. Cats don't get a warning for these things.<br />
<br />
I used to race against a 6 meter sailboat that was named Eclipse, and had an image of the sun painted on the waterline. As it heeled, it eclipsed that sun image, but not this way:<br />
<br />
<img alt="" border="0" height="640" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/1ZCmHULdyLoOS0VtA5XLblSBWl0uBLY-Y-Gd8Z-HJWAveLW7A8xa_gbNaZEGH9h6RmAadKJkXFbEUw=w123-h220" width="357" /></div>
Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-37359815935279144352017-08-12T18:01:00.001-07:002017-08-12T18:43:32.215-07:00Without truth, the sleep of reason produces monsters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
<br />
The way the word "truth" is used in ordinary language, it seems to mean, "that which I believe without question." Yet it is often discussed as if it were something outside of human consciousness, a sort of metaphysical monster that guarantees that we will have something to hang onto in a world of conflicting claims.<br />
<br />
But what if, like other words, it is simply one of the categories we use to think with? Would that make it any less essential or powerful?<br />
<br />
Compare this to property. We know that property is not objects, which exist whether they are owned or not. Property is a concept that allows us to build customs and institutions that regulate the desire to possess things, and reduce conflict over who gets to use what.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/230px-Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes - The sleep of reason produces monsters (No. 43), from Los Caprichos - Google Art Project.jpg" border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/230px-Francisco_Jos%C3%A9_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters"<br />
Goya</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: center;">Let's consider truth the same way. The world exists, and events occur, whether we know of them or </span><span style="text-align: center;">not, just as object exist whether we own them or not. Truth is a concept that allows us to build customs and institutions that regulate our desire to know things, and to share that knowledge. When we speak the truth, we are making a claim that we have made a good-faith effort to ascertain the facts, and that we are making a good-faith effort to communicate what we have learned. If I look at the thermometer and announce that the temperature is 70 degrees Fahrenheit, I am making a good-faith report based on a perception I trust, of an instrument I trust. The reading on the thermometer is a physical fact, which can be referenced by others who doubt my perception.</span><br />
<br />
We all know how to lie. It is one of those useful social skills that can save us from conflict or help us get what we want. There are those who think that, because we sometimes have difficulty knowing truth, that there is really no such thing, in which case all language is about power and persuasion, and none is about truth.<br />
<br />
One of the more jaw-dropping moments in recent American politics was when Donald Trump-supporting CNN commentator Scottie Nell Hughes said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308438-trump-surrogate-theres-no-such-thing-as-facts">“There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts, and so Mr. Trump's tweet, amongst a certain crowd — a large part of the population — are truth."</a></blockquote>
<div>
She was referring to President Trump's preposterous claim that he had only lost the popular vote by 2% because 3 million illegal immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The man Hughes was defending alleged that the father of one of his Republican opponents was involved in the Kennedy assassination, and that Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, would go to jail if he was elected. When asked by a Wall Street Journal reporter if his rhetoric had gone too far, he replied, "No. I won."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But truth is not about winning. Truth can be powerful, but it is not about power. When we say something and claim it is true, we are making a claim about our intentions and our sincerity in speaking. We're saying that we are not trying to make excuses, or manipulate the listener, and we are saying we are not in doubt, that we sincerely believe what we are saying, and that we have arrived at that belief by trying to conform it to the known facts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The claim that we are telling the truth may itself be a lie, but we know what kind of lie it is. It is a lie about our intentions, or the extent of our knowledge. The claim that we speak the truth is a claim of good faith, and the claim that someone is lying is a claim that they are speaking in bad faith.</div>
<div>
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Ms. Hughes was making a claim about facts that is fatuous at best and bad faith at worst. Her claim is that because many people believe something, it is true, even though they may believe something said in bad faith by a fabulist with only the most tenuous grasp of truth himself.</div>
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But strangely enough, people may "believe" something for reasons having nothing to do with truth. Some beliefs become tribal markers. People on the far right tend not to believe in anthropomorphic climate change, regardless of the evidence presented, not because they are sincerely trying to understand what is happening in the physical world, but because in their own social milieu, such a belief is necessary for social acceptance. </div>
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Perversely, the more peculiar a belief is, the more effective a tribal marker it can be. To believe President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. even after all the evidence of his birth in Hawaii had been presented was to show yourself to be part of a certain group, known as birthers.</div>
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But this belief is not based on a good-faith effort to ascertain the facts. It is a belief held in the face of contradictory evidence and in spite of it. People may assert that they believe it without question, but what is lacking is the good-faith effort to align their belief with the known facts. This is a belief that defies facts in the service of a cause: For holders of this belief, Mr. Obama could not be a legitimate president, therefore he had to be in some way disqualified from being a legitimate president. The birther belief system is not about truth, it is about power, and it is no surprise that one of its adherents came into the presidency intent on destroying any legacy that may have stemmed from the two terms of our first African-American president.</div>
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It is one instance of the fact that the lies people believe together can be stronger than the truth we know alone, because it can lead to collective action.</div>
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Donald Trump first came to political prominence as a birther. It should therefore be no surprise that his strongest adherents are people who would prefer that there should be no such thing as facts, because they get in the way of using language in the service of power.</div>
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Truth can subvert power. We can know things about our leaders that disqualify them from leading, we can know things that make their policies seem wrong-headed or even corrupt. Those who would make it seem impossible to know truth are attempting to suppress it.</div>
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Truth requires effort to ascertain facts and sincerity in reporting them. A passive and cynical people are easily led, because they will not make the effort or trust the sincerity required for truth. Those who report on Vladimir Putin's methods in ruling Russia say that he does not so much try to foster a particular set of beliefs as try to create an environment in which no one can discern the truth.</div>
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The more poisonous our politics become, the harder it is to maintain a place in our public discourse for truth. But politics is the means by which our individual moral judgments become the rules and policies we all must live by. To have that process corrupted would be fatal to our politics. </div>
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We must have truth to which we may apply our reason; otherwise, how are we to agree on the rules and policies our moral judgments point toward? Without truth, reason slumbers, and the sleep of reason produces monsters.</div>
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7137314056817048755.post-92049885207773666432017-07-18T15:41:00.003-07:002017-07-18T15:42:54.358-07:00On the importance of labeling the inept clown posse in Trump's scandal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
by John MacBeath Watkins<br />
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We must, without further delay, label participants in Donald Trump's Russia collusion "the Inept Clown Posse."<br />
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Watergate had a compelling name, especially when you consider that the water gate to the Tower of London is also known as "Traitor's Gate."<br />
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From Wikipedia:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Prisoners were brought by barge along the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames">Thames</a>, passing under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge">London Bridge</a>, where the heads of recently executed prisoners were displayed on pikes. Notable prisoners such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More">Sir Thomas More</a> entered the Tower by Traitors' Gate.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitors%27_Gate#cite_note-2">[2]</a></blockquote>
The people who committed the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate Hotel also had a water-themed name: The plumbers.<br />
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Once we've labeled the Inept Clown Posse, we can start working on a name for the scandal as a whole. So far, we don't have a colorful geographic label for it, like Watergate or Teapot Dome. The Trump Collusion, provided that collusion is proven (and many claim that the Donald Trump Jr. meeting to receive proffered Russian government help in the election has settled that issue) has a certain, Robert Ludlum-y, "The Subject Predicate" feel to it.<br />
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Language gives us the categories we use to think about things. The connotations of the terms we use -- the feelings we associate with the words -- are an important part of the way the label resonates with listeners.<br />
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Trump yearns to dominate every relationship. Calling him and his co-conspirators the inept clown posse points to the greatest source of his weakness, his own incompetence and that of some of the people on whom he relies most heavily. The Trump Collusion encapsulates the problem, and has an appropriately third-rate pulp spy novel feel that goes to the heart of Trump's willingness to court the aid of Russia, a country the last Republican nominee for president called our<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/mitt-romney-says-russia-is-no-1-geopolitical-foe/"> "number one geopolitical foe."</a><br />
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Trump, and many in the Republican Party, saw his Democratic opponent as his biggest political foe, and defined a hostile foreign power as an acceptable ally in defeating her. This willingness to accept the aid of a foreign enemy against his domestic opponent shows that he cares less about being an American than about beating an American. The most likely reason he hasn't released his income taxes is that they would show how dependent he is on Russian money, and demonstrate to all those willing to see that he places his own avarice over the good of his country.<br />
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Now, I'm not claiming Inept Clown Posse is definitely the perfect label for him and his enablers. It does fail to capture his subservient behavior toward Vladimir Putin, or his adoration of people like Putin who have managed to eliminate the democratic limits on their power. But I submit that at least for now, it carries the right connotations to make him an object of ridicule, which is one of the worst things that can happen to a would-be strong man.<br />
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Booksellers versus Bestsellershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03146868037718518596noreply@blogger.com0