Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

“You fire eating young bucks, listen to me. You don’t want to fight. I fought and I know. You all don’t know what war is. You think it’s riding a pretty horse , and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir! It’s going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet. And if it ain’t measles and pneumonia, it’s your bowels. Yes sir what war does to a man’s bowels – dysentery and things like that–”

                                              —Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind.

It was announced this week that women in the military will now be allowed to serve in combat roles. Some have hailed this as a step forward toward equality of the sexes; some have not been so sanguine, if I may use a non-risque double entendre.

Lawyer Ryan Smith writes that he “served in the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a Marine infantry squad leader. We rode into war crammed in the back of amphibious assault vehicles. They are designed to hold roughly 15 Marines snugly; due to maintenance issues, by the end of the invasion we had as many as 25 men stuffed into the back. Marines were forced to sit, in full gear, on each other’s laps and in contorted positions for hours on end. That was the least of our problems.

“The invasion was a blitzkrieg. The goal was to move as fast to Baghdad as possible. The column would not stop for a lance corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, or even a company commander to go to the restroom. Sometimes we spent over 48 hours on the move without exiting the vehicles. We were forced to urinate in empty water bottles inches from our comrades.

“Many Marines developed dysentery from the complete lack of sanitary conditions. When an uncontrollable urge hit a Marine, he would be forced to stand, as best he could, hold an MRE bag up to his rear, and defecate inches from his seated comrade’s face.”

Smith goes onto say “when we did reach Baghdad, we were in shambles. We had not showered in well over a month and our chemical protective suits were covered in a mixture of filth and dried blood. We were told to strip and place our suits in pits to be burned immediately. My unit stood there in a walled-in compound in Baghdad, naked, sores dotted all over our bodies, feet peeling, watching our suits burn. Later, they lined us up naked and washed us off with pressure washers.

“Societal norms are a reality, and their maintenance is important to most members of a society. It is humiliating enough to relieve yourself in front of your male comrades; one can only imagine the humiliation of being forced to relieve yourself in front of the opposite sex.

“Despite the professionalism of Marines, it would be distracting and potentially traumatizing to be forced to be naked in front of the opposite sex, particularly when your body has been ravaged by lack of hygiene. In the reverse, it would be painful to witness a member of the opposite sex in such an uncomfortable and awkward position.”

I take no position on the Defense Department’s decision, I have to assume they know what they are doing. While not officially in combat roles, female soldiers have been killed, wounded, and exposed to nasty and brutish condition in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and even in former wars. So it seems like a small step to officially include them in those roles. Those women in the front lines will now receive combat pay, and those who want a long term career will get their ticket punched for better promotion prospects. Few, if any, officers make it to flag rank without combat experience on their record. Anyway, I understand that the new policy still restricts women from serving in the infantry, which is mostly where the conditions Mr. Smith describes exist. I can’t speak for others, but, while it would not be any more disgusting for a woman rather than a man to poop in my face, I’m not sure, mechanically speaking, how they would whiz into a bottle. Not sure I want to know.

For Smith’s full article, see click on this link.

George Orwell is well known for his dystopian novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, as well as numerous other works of fiction and essays. One of the themes of Nineteen Eighty-Four was the totalitarian government’s invention of “Newspeak” to linguistically solidify control over the populace. He even added a postscript to explain the principles of Newspeak

Orwell explored the use of language and how it can be used to affect political thought in a 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” This essay not only accomplishes that purpose, but also gives many tips on how to write well

“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly. . . .

“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase—some jackboot, Achilles heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse—into the dustbin, where it belongs.”

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday
English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

In addition to reading the entirety of Orwell’s fine essay, I commend the more recent Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Cliches, as well as Frank Luntz’s 2007 book Words that Work. A great reference work is Robert Hartwell Fiske’s The Dimwit’s Dictionary, which contains “5,000 Overused Words and Phrases and Alternatives to Them” categorized as “moribund metaphors, infantile phrases, wretched redundancies, torpid terms” etc, that pollute the wordscape. Some of my pet peeves are “social justice” (which is to justice as fast food is to food) and “the downtrodden” (who’s dong the treading?). Furthermore, the prevalence of euphemisms, as well as the use of the passive voice in political speech, enables speakers to orate for house without saying anything they can be held to.

Please see

http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/05/how-a-federal-menu-labeling-law-will-har

I’ve been rather busy lately, so I haven’t written much except in the line of duty.  To keep things going, here’s a version of an essay from two years ago — pre-this blog — that might be interesting to the audience.  I’ll see if recycling works.

Two years ago it was reported that one of outgoing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s final acts in office was not to pardon Billy the Kid. Long story short, a petition was brought by a lawyer alleging that Billy (or whatever his name was – there were several aliases), who famously died at the hand of Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881, deserved a pardon. The basis was that the Kid had made a deal with the territorial governor Lew Wallace to inform on other outlaws and kept his part of the bargain, while Wallace and Garrett reneged. The possibility of a pardon sparked outrage among the descendants of Garrett and Wallace, who maintained that such clemency would brand their ancestors as liars and murderers. Ultimately, Richardson decided that there was insufficient evidence of the bargain and whether Billy had fulfilled his part, and declined the posthumous pardon. The current Governor Susana Martinez has shown no inclination to revisit the matter.

Billy the Kid is but one of numerous Wild West figures who has been romanticized by film and literature. His story, or an embellishment of it, was perfect for the early 1970s when director Sam Peckinpah enlisted counterculture balladeers Kris Kristofferson (as Billy) and Bob Dylan (a minor character in the film) to play opposite established tough guy actor James Coburn (as Garrett) in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, released in 1973. Dylan wrote and performed the film’s theme song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” that became a popular hit. The film was predictable in its portrayal of the cattle barons, who had the territorial government in their pocket, against the more righteous settlers – a perennial theme of Western movies. The American libertarian streak often causes us to view nonconformists and contrarians – and on occasion, outlaws – as heroes. Sometimes rightly so; sometimes misplaced.

More interesting, and heroic, than Billy the Kid’s story are the life and endeavors of his nemesis territorial governor Lew Wallace. Wallace is not easy to romanticize, but his accomplishments were exponentially more substantial and lasting. Born in Indiana in 1927, and growing up there as the son of a West Point graduate and governor of that state, he aspired to be a lawyer, and enter public life. Wallace’s study of law was interrupted by the Mexican-American War where he served as an officer in an Indiana company of volunteers with General Zachary Taylor’s army. After the war, he completed his legal studies, was admitted to the bar of Indiana, and practiced law there until the Civil War broke out.

Wallace helped raise troops for the Union as adjutant general of Indiana, was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers in 1861, and later promoted to major general, then the highest U. S. Army rank. He ably served as a combat commander with Ulysses S. Grant’s army. Although there was some controversy about his not following orders on the first day of Shiloh, which supposedly resulted in Shiloh’s then considered horrific casualties. Wallace’s division nevertheless was in the thick of action and held the line on the second day, and the Union forces achieved at least a technical victory.
Wallace’s stand against Confederate General Jubal A. Early in 1864 at the little known Battle of Monocacy near Frederick, Maryland, although a tactical defeat, delayed Early’s thrust toward Washington D.C. long enough to save the capital from capture. Wallace received praise and a commendation from General Grant for Monocacy, although Grant never withdrew his criticism for the alleged error at Shiloh.

After the War ended, Wallace’s legal background became of service on the military tribunal that tried the Lincoln Assassination conspirators. He was subsequently appointed the presiding judge of the court martial of Henry Wirz, the commandant of the Confederate prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia, in which Wirz was convicted and hanged for war crimes.
Wallace also directed the United States’ efforts to help the Mexicans remove the French imposed government of Emperor Maximilian, who had seized control of Mexico in 1864. He served as the appointed governor of New Mexico Territory from 1878 to 1881, and then as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) from 1881 until 1885.

Wallace wrote several fiction and non-fiction works, including several biographies of fellow Hoosier, President Benjamin Harrison, and the historical novel The Prince of India or Why Constantinople Fell (1893). But Lew Wallace’s greatest accomplishment was his authorship of the number one best-selling novel of the 19^th Century, and possibly, ever – Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Ben-Hur outsold every book except the Bible until Gone With the Wind was published in 1936, and regained the top of the list again in the 1960s. By 1900, it had been printed in thirty-six English-language editions and translated into twenty others, including Indonesian and Braille. It was adapted in film at least four times, the most famous of which was the 1959 version with Charlton Heston. That production received eleven Academy Awards. The book reportedly was the first ever blessed by a Pope, Leo XIII, although Wallace never joined a church and lived, and appears to have died, a non-denominational Christian.

Lew Wallace died in 1905, and presumably, knocked on heaven’s door. Whether Billy the Kid had previously knocked – well, I’ll leave that to your conjecture.

Wallace’s statute is one of Indiana’s two in the United States Capitol Statuary Hall.

Austin American-Statesman columnist writes one of the most reasonable analyses of the tension between the right to keep and bear arms and the interest of society to protect its members. It is well worth a read.

Herman begins by repeating the oft heard mantra that doing something about guns would be worthwhile “even if it saved only one life.” He then points out the obvious that such standard is not a driving force in societal decisions. In the real world there are, there must be, acceptable levels of death. The main example is the carnage wreaked by driving while intoxicated. Even though it’s a recognized problem, and serious one at that, we do not ban, or even seriously restrict, the use of automobiles. We do restrict somewhat the sale and use of alcoholic beverages, legally forbidding their possession by minors, etc., and prescribing increasingly serious punishments for those caught driving under the influence. Banning intoxicating liquors has been tried – and met abject failure. In seeking to minimize misuse, the focus should be on the users, not the object or the substance.

The writer points out there is one way that recent examples of misuse of firearms has been different. Virginia Tech, Aurora, and Sandy Hook all involved numerous lives lost in one fell episode. Herman asks what would happen if all DWI related deaths reported last year occurred in one place on one day? There would be a hue and cry to ban alcohol by quite a few who have the public’s ear, despite the overwhelming majority of people who use alcoholic beverages responsibly. The notorious, if not widespread, misuse of liquor was the principal driving force of Prohibition, and was a key goal of the Progressive movement of a century ago.

Herman concludes with a point that all, or nearly so, of us at least tacitly accept. “What if all of the tobacco related deaths occurred on one day? What if all of the coronary-related deaths attributable to junk food and bad diets occurred on one day? What if we did everything we could that would save one life? What would happen is that we would have a society in which we would not want to live?” Which is precisely what would make the life most precious to each of us not worth living.

For Ken Herman’s column see http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/herman-guns-rights-and-acceptable-levels-of-death/nTjhX/

But liars can figure.

 “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

Carl Bialik aka the Numbers Guy, writes in this weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal that “Many people, including holders of graduate degrees, professional researchers and even editors of scientific journals, can be too easily impressed by math. A mathematical model (T_pp=T₀ – fT₀d²r – fT_pd_f) is developed to describe sequential effects.

“Did that second sentence make the first more persuasive?” Bialik asks rhetorically. “It did for most participants in a recent intriguing experiment whose result suggests people often interact with math in a way that isn’t very logical. Other research has shown that even those who should be especially clear-sighted about numbers—scientific researchers, for example, and those who review their work for publication—are often uncomfortable with, and credulous about, mathematical material. As a result, some research that finds its way into respected journals—and ends up being reported in the popular press—is flawed.”

I have long suspected that many experts, particularly of the self-proclaimed variety, use esoteric mathematics as kind of a mumbo-jumbo idol to bolster their opinions and bamboozle us pedestrians. That at least has been recognized in the courtroom for the past 20 years (See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993)) 

Economics is a fertile discipline for this kind of obfuscation. I recall the scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind where mathematician John Forbes Nash tests our a formula and has an eureka moment that Adam Smith was wrong. As it happens, Hollywood, which never misses a change to discredit what doesn’t fit in with its left-wing fantasies, was wrong. That never happened. Economists make some valid observations and construct theories that fit facts, mostly in the past as it happens. Few of them are based upon pure mathematics. It is unlikely that human behavior will ever be reduced to a differential equation, however complicated it might be.

Here’s a link for Bialik’s article.

The study by Kimmo Eriksson that Bialik cites is here

Harry Binswanger, who has written about and promoted Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy and taught philosophy courses at U.T. Austin CUNY Hunter College, now writes on the gun control issue in Forbes magazine.

“The answer I’ve come to is radical: reject entirely the collectivist mindset. Don’t look at populations; don’t ask: among 300 million Americans, would law X result in more lives being saved than lost? That sort of cost-benefit analysis is amoral; lives are not balanceable one against the other. And, in practice, it leads to endlessly battling statistical studies. I realized I should not take a God’s eye perspective, looking down on the flock, seeking to preserve the herd. Mankind is not a herd.

“The principle is ‘individual rights’–your rights and mine.

“Rights define the proper limits of state action. They recognize the areas within which the individual is sovereign, entitled to act on his own judgment, free from interference by his fellow man and by the state. The fundamental right is the right to life. Its expressions are the right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. As the Declaration states, government is established ‘to secure these rights.’

“To secure them against what? There is only one thing that can deprive a man of his life, liberty, or property: physical force. Only guns, clubs, chains, jails, or some form of nonconsensual physical contact can kill you, injure you, or negate your ability to act on your own judgment. The proper job of government is to protect the individual’s rights by wielding retaliatory force against the force initiated by criminals or foreign aggressors.

“. . . the government may not descend to the evil of preventive law. The government cannot treat men as guilty until they have proven themselves to be, for the moment, innocent. No law can require the individual to prove that he won’t violate another’s rights, in the absence of evidence that he is going to.

“But this is precisely what gun control laws do. Gun control laws use force against the individual in the absence of any specific evidence that he is about to commit a crime. They say to the rational, responsible gun owner: you may not have or carry a gun because others have used them irrationally or irresponsibly. Thus, preventive law sacrifices the rational and responsible to the irrational and irresponsible. This is unjust and intolerable.

“The government may coercively intervene only when there is an objective threat that someone is going to use force. The remaining issue is: what constitutes an objective threat?

“An objective threat is constituted by specific evidence of a clear and present danger to someone’s person or property. For instance, waving a gun around (‘brandishing’) is an objective threat to the individuals in the vicinity. Having a rifle at home in the attic is not. Carrying a concealed pistol is not (until and unless it is drawn). Yes, there are always borderline cases, but rational standards, such as ‘clear and present danger,’ can be set.

“Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That’s collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make.

“People understand the wrongness of collectivist thinking in other cases. They would indignantly reject the idea that a member of a given racial group is under suspicion because 10 percent of those with his skin color commit crimes. But the individualist approach also applies to gun ownership and concealed carrying of guns: group ratios offer no evidence about what a given individual will do.

“The fact that a certain percentage of domestic quarrels end in a shooting is no grounds for saying your ownership of a gun is a threat to the members of your household. Likewise, the fact that there are a certain number of accidental injuries from guns is no justification for regulating or banning the ownership of guns for everyone. And The tragic fact that the psychotic killer at Newtown used a gun to kill school children is zero grounds for disarming teachers and school personnel.”

See Binswanger’s complete article at this link.

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.

                   – The Beatles

Thought you’d escape a tax hike because you make less that $400,000 per year?  think again.

From John C. Goodman, CEO from the Dallas based National Center for Policy Analysis:

Here is a brief summary of the taxes that will kick in next month, courtesy of Americans for Tax Reform.
Medical device tax: $20 billion. This 2.3% tax on gross sales could amount to a very large percent of after tax profit ? thus encouraging an industry that is providing very good domestic jobs to relocate overseas. Meanwhile, the burden of the tax will be reflected in higher prices for anyone who needs an artificial knee or hip or a pacemaker.
Flexible Spending Account (FSA) limits: $13 billion. Roughly 35 million Americans use FSA accounts to pay medical expenses not paid by the employer’s health insurance with pre-tax dollars. These accounts are especially important to chronic patients with substantial out-of-pocket drug expenses. FSAs can also be used to pay for day care and services for special needs children. Currently, there is no legal limit on how much an employee can deposit in the account, but many employers cap the annual contribution at $5,000. After January 1, however, contributions will be limited to $2,500 ? effectively cutting the tax advantage in half.
Surtax on investment income: $123 billion. Democrats often say they merely want to return to Clinton era tax rates for the highest-income taxpayers. They conveniently omit the fact that ObamaCare adds 3.8 percentage points to those rates ? bringing the highest marginal tax rate up to 43.4% for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples earning above $250,000. Add on a 13% state tax in California, and some taxpayers will be paying more than half of all they earn to the government. The new tax hits dividends, capital gains and other investment income.
Limits on itemized medical expense deductions: $15.2 billion. Currently, people can deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5% of income if they itemize. Next year, that threshold will rise to 10%. This means a higher tax burden for those who have the misfortune to have large medical bills. It is literally a tax on the sick.
Higher payroll tax: $86.8 billion. The Medicare payroll tax is currently 2.9% on all wages and self-employment profits. Under this tax hike, wages and profits exceeding $200,000 ($250,000 for a couple) will face a 3.8% rate instead. This is a direct tax hike for small business owners, who are liable for self-employment taxes in most cases.

A solution? Goodman and his colleagues at the NCPA have a reasonable, revenue-neutral proposal: push back the start date of the five new ObamaCare taxes and pay for that by pushing back the start date of ObamaCare.

See John Goodman’s article http://healthblog.ncpa.org/fiscal-cliff-who-won-who-lost/.

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” — G.K. Chesterton