About the best analysis of what the fallout will - and won't - be from the Alito draft leak I've come across so far

 Sarah Isgur, host of The Dispatch's Advisory Opinions podcast, makes the point at Politico that abortion has lost a fair amount of its status as a hot-potato issue due to the fact that opinions are pretty firmly formed and there's not much of an unconvinced populace to persuade.

Let me do some long excerpting here:

At its most basic level, there are two ways a political issue can affect an election. Either it causes a meaningful number of voters to switch from one candidate to another or it increases turnout by motivating people disproportionately on one side of an issue to vote who otherwise would have stayed home.

On the first point, the question is whether there are any voters left who would change their votes based on the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs. After decades of abortion litmus tests for candidates, what if the vast majority of voters already changed parties at some point to align with their beliefs on abortion or aligned their beliefs with their party’s increasingly firm ideological stand on the issue?

In the 50 years since Roe was decided, the two political parties have shifted to become almost synonymous with their positions on this singular issue.

At the 1972 Democratic Convention, 59 percent of delegates voted against an abortion-rights plank for the platform. Even as recently as 2009, 64 Democrats voted for an amendment to the Affordable Care Act restricting federal funding for abortions. In 2019, Kirsten Gillibrand campaigned on the idea that the Democratic Party should “be 100 percent pro-choice, and it should be non-negotiable.” As John Murdock wrote in National Affairs, Gillibrand “eventually left the presidential race not because her abortion absolutism was too radical but because it was too common.” Today, only two Democrats in the House identify as “pro-life” and the number may well be zero by 2023.

She then goes on to make the interesting point that the GOP used to quite diverse when it came to this issue:

The Republican Party wasn’t always uniformly anti-abortion. As California governor, Reagan signed into law a liberal abortion bill. Future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, writes Murdock, had “turned New York City into an abortion destination” as the first state in the country to legalize abortion without a residency requirement. George H.W. Bush’s father was the treasurer of Planned Parenthood, and Bush as a member of Congress “earned the nickname ‘Rubbers’ for his support for contraceptive access.” In the 90s, Republican Majority for Choice had chapters in nearly 20 states, an annual budget of a million dollars, and plenty of incumbents in both houses to support. Today, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are the last two pro-abortion rights Republicans in the Senate. Republican Majority for Choice closed down in 2018.

Dems' whole ally-of-people-of-color schtick probably won't help them here:

we do see data showing certain voting demographics within the Democratic base — young people, Latinos and Black voters — increasingly dissatisfied with President Biden, which is presumed to hurt Democratic turnout in down-ballot races in the fall. And while a reversal on Roe might motivate some younger voters, Democrats may be wary of campaigning on an issue that could further put off some Latino and Black Democratic voters, who are already more conservative than white Democrats on many social issues, including abortion.

Let us also remember that, comparatively speaking, folks ain't getting so many abortions lately:

At the same time, abortion has become less salient as a political issue. There are fewer abortions in the US than there were when Roe was decided in 1973 — at a time when abortion was illegal in the majority of states. Perhaps this explains why abortion has been steadily falling on the list of issues that voters mention as being the most important issue facing the country while other cultural issues — most notably, immigration — have ticked up. In fact, abortion didn’t even register at 1percent in any of the last four Gallup issue polls.

And outspoken lawmakers can huff and puff a lot, because they're covered by the fact that no one's presently pressing them to get into policy specifics:

The real political fight may be within the parties. Thanks to the Supreme Court, both Democrats and Republicans have been able to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to abortions, talking a big game but avoiding specifics on when abortions should be banned because Roe stood in the way of any real political accountability.

In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Elizabeth Warren refused to name “any limits on abortion” that she would support. But most Americans are unlikely to support elective abortions at 39 weeks. In the meantime, Republican state legislators have passed sloppily drafted laws that they knew wouldn’t go into effect under Roe, including laws that could criminalize the removal of an ectopic pregnancy — a tragic and common complication that will never result in a live birth and could kill the mother in the meantime.

Both parties are about to learn that legislative cosplay is all fun and games until the courts return the issue to voters and their elected representatives have to actually govern.

So placard-carrying activist types might want to consider whether their time is best spent trying to move the needle by such tactics on this. 

It's fairly clear that it's going to play out in such a way that it will come down to where one lives.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And no, I do not accept the binary-choice argument

 I have been taken to task for the decision I discuss in the previous two posts here at LITD. Some have the position that staying home and not voting is irresponsible. 

Sorry, but I want the eternal record book to show that I participated in the furtherance of neither brand of darkness that prevails on our political landscape. 

When you vote Democrat, you sign on to this kind of thing:

The Biden administration is doing that now on what officials call "gender-affirming care" for young people who believe they are transgender. "There is no argument among medical professionals -- pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. -- about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care," Dr. Rachel Levine, who, as U.S. assistant secretary for health, is the highest-ranking transgender person in the administration, told National Public Radio Friday. The next day, Levine made the case in a speech at the "Out for Health" conference at Texas Christian University.

 

A month earlier, to observe "International Transgender Day of Visibility," Levine's agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, released an information sheet on "gender-affirming care" for youth. "For transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the health care system," the department said.

The information sheet included a chart detailing "gender-affirming care." It listed four specific types of care, with a definition and comment on whether or not it was "reversible." The first type of care was "social affirmation," which it defined as "adopting gender-affirming hairstyles, clothing, name, gender pronouns, and restrooms and other facilities." That can be done "at any age or state," HHS said, and is "reversible." Indeed, while there is debate about the wisdom of such efforts, they are, in fact, reversible.

But the department listed three other approved treatments that are not reversible -- puberty blockers, hormone therapy and "gender-affirming surgeries." The chart defined the first as "using certain types of hormones to pause pubertal development," which it recommended "during puberty." It called such treatment "reversible," although there is great debate about that, and in any event, it is hard to see how delaying the age at which a child reaches puberty can be reversed, since the child will never be that age again.

 

HHS defined hormone therapy as "testosterone hormones for those who were assigned female at birth" and "estrogen hormones for those who were assigned male at birth," recommended from "early adolescence onward" and labeled "partially reversible."

 

"Gender-affirming surgeries" were defined as "'top' surgery -- to create male-typical chest shape or enhance breasts," or "'bottom' surgery -- surgery on genitals or reproductive organs," or "facial feminization or other procedures." Such measures are "typically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence" and are obviously "not reversible."

 

Levine says there is "no argument" about the value and importance of these treatments. But in fact, all three of them -- puberty blockers, hormone therapy and "gender-affirming" surgeries -- are quite controversial. 

Got that? "No argument." 

This is a perfect example of the you-will-get-your-mind-right foundation of the way Democrats conceive of this nation's future.  

There is to be no argument over the obliteration of the basic design of the universe, nor about the primacy of identity politics in all aspects of public life,  nor about the notion that the global climate is in some kind of trouble requiring an abrupt abandonment of human advancement, not about the virtuousness of wealth redistribution.

I'm no Republican anymore, but I sure ain't on board with this agenda, either. 

 

How things went in the heartland, where I live, bolsters my conclusion that I made the right decision by staying home

 The primary results in my state and its neighbor to the east confirm that the Very Stable Genius remains the kingmaker of the Republican Party:

In Tuesday’s Indiana and Ohio primaries, Trump once again ran the table: All 22 of his endorsed candidates won. He threw his support behind almost every House GOP incumbent running for reelection — and a few hopefuls in open seat primaries — and his preferred candidate won in every case. His pick in the the highest profile race of the day, the Ohio Senate GOP primary, also won the nomination largely due to Trump’s endorsement power. 

Of course, the J.D. Vance victory is the most noteworthy, at least partially so because Vance is the kind of throne-sniffer who used to be vehemently anti-Trump. Here's some of what he said prior to his transformation:

In deleted tweets first discovered by CNN’s KFile, Vance wrote in 2016 that he would not vote for Trump in the presidential election and instead] support Evan McMullin, a former CIA operations officer who ran as an independent. Vance also called Trump “reprehensible.”

“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” he wrote in October 2016.

In another deleted tweet – this one sent following the fallout of the infamous Access Hollywood tape – Vance wrote, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.” 

And in a tweet from March 2017, he wrote, “In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump’s voters who fought him the most aggressively.”

He's of that breed that includes Rick Perry, Ted Cruz and Kayleigh McEnany. What gets into these people? What causes that kind of grotesque transformation?

Whatever it is, I don't want any of it rubbing off on me.  

 

Primary Day: what's a non-Trumpist conservative to do?

 It's now 2 o'clock in the afternoon here in Indiana. On any other Election Day, primary or general, I would have gone to the polls hours ago.

I'm not inclined to go at all today.

I know there are honorable people of good character running for various offices on the Republican ticket, which is how I've always voted (except when I wrote Evan McMullin for president in 2016; in 2020, I wrote in a Republican, Ben Sasse.) (Well, there was 1980, when I still had my head up my ass and voted for Barry Commoner.) I even know some of them personally.

But push is going to come to shove, either in this election cycle or the next, and they'll have to come down on one side of the fence or the other regarding the glaring question: Do they repudiate Donald Trump and the drool-besotted cult he commands?

90 percent of the Republican Party now consists of cowards and/or nuts and/or sycophants, at least to some degree. Some are not completely given over to this abnegation of character, but enough so that they do the wrong thing when doing the right thing is imperative.

Mitch McConnell is often lauded as the Senator's Senator, the guy who unflinchingly takes into account political realities, who plays the long game, who is willing to keep his cool and move forward with his aims with steady bearing. 

But there comes a point at which all that statesmanlike demeanor can't conceal the fact that he puts dragging the Republican brand over the finish line above consistency regarding a political figure he knows to be unfit, unhinged and repulsive.

In early 2021, there was a two-week span between what McConnell said about Trump's culpability for January 6 and, well, this. And he gave that classic politician's waffle as his excuse: we must move on and look forward:

Less than two weeks after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that there was “no question—none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking” the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol—while simultaneously voting to acquit on impeachment—he told Fox News on Thursday evening that he would “absolutely” support Trump if he is the Republican nominee in 2024.

Ahead of Trump’s big speech at CPAC on Sunday, Fox anchor Bret Baier asked McConnell to weigh in on the widespread assumption that the former president will be the frontrunner should he decide to run again.

At first, McConnell hedged a bit, saying, "There's a lot to happen between now and ‘24” and adding, “I’ve got four members, I think, that are planning on running for president, plus some governors and others.” With no incumbent Republican running, McConnell said, “It should be a wide open race and fun for you all to cover.”

But when Baier then asked him directly if he would support Trump should he become the nominee, McConnell answered, “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.”

Earlier in the interview—McConnell’s first since the Capitol riot—when Baier confronted his guest with the cognitive dissonance between the remarks he made on the floor of the Senate 12 days ago and his renewed embrace of Trump, McConnell told him, “My point is what happened in the past is not something relevant now, we’re moving forward. We’ve got a new administration.”

Last month, Jonathan Swan of Axios confronted him about this glaring contradiction and got this response: 

“Help me understand this,” Swan said. “I watched your speech last year in February on the Senate floor after the second impeachment vote for Donald Trump.”

Swan was surprised that McConnell could support a man he called “morally responsible” for an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“After you said that about him, I think it’s astonishing!” Swan said.

“I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party,” McConnell explained.

Swan wondered if there is anything a Republican nominee could do that would lose McConnell’s support. 

The senator couldn’t think of anything.

“Well, that will mean that whoever the nominee is has gone out and earned the nomination,” McConnell argued.

Swan then pointed out that McConnell was seemingly holding “two concurrent conflicting positions,” but McConnell insisted he wasn’t “inconsistent” at all.

“I stand by everything I said ... because I don’t get to pick the Republican nominee for president. They’re elected by the Republican voters all over the country,” McConnell said.

After Swan noted that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said she believes “there are some things more important than party loyalty,” McConnell said, “Well, maybe you ought to be talking to Liz Cheney.”

Swan then insisted his question wasn’t meant to be a “gotcha.”

“I’m actually trying to understand. Is there any threshold for you?” Swan asked.

“You know, I say many things I’m sure people don’t understand,” McConnell responded.

Can it get any lamer then that?

Then there's House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has been caught red-handed saying, in January 2021 - to Liz Cheney, no less - that the Very Stable Genius should resign:

Just days after the Jan. 6 riot, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy told a fellow Republican lawmaker that he would recommend to then-President Donald Trump that he resign, according to audio of a call shared with MSNBC and aired Thursday night.

In the Jan. 10, 2021, call, McCarthy can be heard telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that he planned to tell the president he should step down following the violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.

McCarthy, R-Calif., also indicated that he thought impeachment would succeed in the House and possibly the Senate.

“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said in audio that aired on "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Weeks later, McCarthy was one of the throne-sniffing sycophants who made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. And earlier this year, he gave his endorsement to Cheney'sprimary opponent, Harriett Hageman.  

And he and his spokesman told a stinking rotten lie about the January 10 call:

McCarthy released a statement Thursday calling the report “totally false and wrong.” His spokesman, Mark Bednar, told the newspaper, “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign.”

And where does he stand on Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar?

- Any update on your conversations with Congressman Gosar and Greene?

KEVIN MCCARTHY: Yes, I've talked to Greene. I'm still waiting to talk to Gosar.

- And?

KEVIN MCCARTHY: I've talked to them.

- But you said-- I think you told Jake and [INAUDIBLE] that there's no place for--

KEVIN MCCARTHY: There isn't no place for that. There's no place for what has gone on with that organization by far, and there never will be in this party. And it'll never be tolerated.

- And will she go again?

KEVIN MCCARTHY: Yes.

- Do you--

KEVIN MCCARTHY: No, she will not go again.

- Did she get-- any repercussions for her?

KEVIN MCCARTHY: Look, my conversations with my members are exactly that. And I appreciate you asking.

- Well, I-- on this topic, I mean, three years ago, when Steve King made comments that are [INAUDIBLE] to this, you supported kicking him off his committees--

KEVIN MCCARTHY: I removed him from committee.

- Yeah. And obviously Greene and Gosar are already off their committees. You said in November that you'd return them to their committees. And you said they might even get better committee assignments. Do you stand by that still?

KEVIN MCCARTHY: They have the ability to be able to get committees based upon that time when it comes.

Speaking of MTG, her primary opponent, Jennifer Strahan, was supposed to be the Great Georgian Hope, a foil to Taylor Greene's clown show, someone actual conservatives could enthusiastically support. Then she pulls this:

I have been very clear from the get go that I support President Trump...I believe that he has had the best policies I've seen in my lifetime... I proudly voted for Trump in 2016 & again in 2020 & if he's our Rep nominee, I will gladly vote for him again in 2024

Thanks for nothin', Jen.

Now it's 2:47. I don't have forever to make my decision. 

And I sure as hell am not going to vote Democrat. A perusal of this site's posts quickly makes clear that I hold them in the same regard from a moral standpoint as I do Republicans. 

But I just don't think I can go down to my customary polling place and get in line.

I can't perpetuate the spiritual rottenness that is at the core of the Republican Party.  

 

 

 

The leak of the draft in the SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case - initial thoughts

 1.) At this moment, far and away the most pressing question is, who leaked it? It seems pretty damn likely it was someone, like a clerk for a progressive justice, who wanted to catalyze a firestorm. A pre-emptive strike, if you will. The Justice Department must spare no resources in finding out who it was, and meting out the severest possible punishment.

2.) Why do I state this so strongly? I'll let this paragraph from a National Review editorial this morning explain:

The legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s vital constitutional duty to pronounce authoritatively what the law is in cases where it is called to do so hinges on the integrity of its process. The Court has thus been admirably disciplined about maintaining the secrecy of its deliberations until rulings are announced. Without that discipline, the Court’s decision-making would be subjected to intense political pressure — the very antithesis of a system that insulates the judiciary from politics so that cases can be decided pursuant to law, without fear or favor. The Court’s vital constitutional role, vindicating a rule of law not men, would be destroyed. Worse, the leak could inspire violence against the Court or the justices.

3.) Here's what to remember when stare decisis is brought into the discussion/screaming match:  If we as a country had never questioned that concept's sacrosanctness, Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson would never have been overturned. 

4.) That the opinion was authored by Alito and not Roberts is noteworthy, to say the least. Roberts is an enigma; Alito is not. Let us remember that Roberts opined in 2012 that the Affordable Care Act individual mandate was a tax, thereby letting the ACA live to see another day (and still impose bureaucracy and redistribution on our health care system). On the other hand, in 2015, his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges took straight aim at the use of the substantive-due-process concept as the basis for the majority opinion:

Roberts reminded the Court that its leading substantive due process precedents require any claimed right to be “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.” In short, legal history matters enormously. There can be no “right” that blatantly contradicts the laws widely embraced by states at the time the Constitution or the 14th Amendment was ratified.

5.) Bravo to Alito for forthrightly stating that the Roe v. Wade decision was shoddy in the extreme and had nothing to do with relying on the U.S. Constitution, as has been acknowledged for decades:

"What is frightening about Roe," noted the eminent constitutional scholar and Yale law professor John Hart Ely (who personally supported legalized abortion), "is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers' thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation's governmental structure. … It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."

6.) The whole abortion conflagration is of a piece with the general obliteration of a historically (and biologically) grounded notion of what human nature is. I know I keep hearkening back to Carl Trueman's book, but that's because it lays out how we got here so methodically. 

I'll once again reprint the short review I wrote about it at Precipice last November:

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman examines the process over the last few centuries by which sexuality became the overriding factor in summing up an individual human being’s identity. Throughout the work, he reminds the reader that this has not always been the case.

The first major figure in his lineage of thinkers who brought us to our present juncture is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose essential contribution was the focus on the inward psychological life, as opposed to presumptions, norms and institutions developed over the course of a society’s evolution. From Rousseau we get the notion that the individual can decide for himself or herself what will best enhance well-being.

He puts together three figures from the Romantic period of English literature - Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake - as having given us the view of “feelings and instinct as lying at the heart of moral action and what it means to be truly free and truly human.” Shelley, in particular, was pretty radical in embracing this position, asserting that monogamous man-woman relations was harmful to expressions of the way people naturally are.

He puts together in one chapter another trio, this one from a few decades later. There are important distinctions to be made between Nietzsche, Marx and Darwin, but together they did much to point Western civilization in a materialistic direction. Their common basis was viewing the world as having no significance or meaning beyond that imparted by human action.

Next up, Trueman discusses Freud, with particular interest in Freud’s concept of happiness as being rooted in genital pleasure, and what that has meant for the whole field of psychoanalysis. 

He then looks at the roles played by Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse in bringing together the lineage of thinkers, in particular Marx and Engels, who put the power dynamics between society’s classes front and center, and the primacy of sexuality in the search for a stable society that Freud brought to the table. 

Trueman does a great job of presenting the case that the surrealist movement in art moved the entire impetus along. Ditto his look at how Hugh Hefner’s putting the sheen of sophistication over the commercialization of erotic arousal has had ramifications up to the present day.

Trueman’s meticulous. You may find yourself going back to previous chapters to reread something that seemed arcane at the time, but that you now see as having planted the seeds of future developments. By the time you get to the chapters on how eroticism and a therapeutic framework triumphed in our culture, and, finally, how transgenderism came to be mainstreamed in an alarmingly short time, you can see the thread tying it all together with unsettling clarity. 

Along the way, I was introduced to some minds I had at best only a glancing acquaintance with who have informed Trueman’s thinking. Now I’m inspired to further investigate Philip Reiff, Augusto Del Noce, Alasdair McIntyre and Charles Taylor.

A few weeks ago, in another Precipice piece, I did acknowledge that some caution is warranted in finding the degree to which one ought to align with Trueman:

The case could be made that one ought to be wary of Trueman, given his friendship with Rod Dreher. Dreher is one of those once-admirable conservatives - reliably Christian, no less - who have undergone a dismaying and perplexing transformation. Dreher’s been spending an increasing amount of time in Hungary, because he greatly admires Viktor Orban. Orban is poised to seriously dent the European unity that has been such a support to Zelensky and Ukraine. Dreher’s also on record as claiming that Tucker Carlson is the most important - and he means that in a good sense - commentator on American television today.

Trueman has also gone after David French, falsely painting him as motivated to write for Time and The Atlantic to be accepted by secular culture elites. 

But even if one doesn’t wade into the internecine squabbles among evangelical intellectuals, there are other grounds on which to argue that we’re treading on entirely unexplored territory. 

A look at the sweep of history reveals how recent this experimentation with the basic dichotomy of human nature is. In what culture, anywhere in the world at any time prior to the last thirty years at the outside, did marriage ever mean lifetime union of two people of the same sex? Where were the men who felt that they were women and vice versa, even after Rousseau and Shelly had begun the process of eroding our civilizational foundations?

But ultimately, he has secular substantiation for his basic point on his side:

A look at the sweep of history reveals how recent this experimentation with the basic dichotomy of human nature is. In what culture, anywhere in the world at any time prior to the last thirty years at the outside, did marriage ever mean lifetime union of two people of the same sex? Where were the men who felt that they were women and vice versa, even after Rousseau and Shelly had begun the process of eroding our civilizational foundations?

But wholehearted enthusiasts of such experimentation are hot to silence and marginalize those who point this out. More saddening is the sight of those who claim to want to restore conservatism to its commonly understood foundation saying, “This stuff is a done deal. We’ve expanded the definition of what it means to be human and that’s that.”

7.) This leak, and the case to which it pertains brings to the fore once again, as these "culture wars" battles always do, the essential question of whether there is a basic architecture to the universe and, if so, if there's any cost to us flouting it. I think I'll further flesh out this point in a Precipice piece, but, for now, I want to make sure that this point is out there. 

 

 

 

 

Nancy Pelosi's visit to Kyiv, and thoughts it has triggered about the Alamo

 I concede the validity of the this-latest-example-of--recent-visits-by-leaders-of-Britain, Poland and the Baltic states-is-to-a-large-degree-grandstanding argument. Very little in this universe is pure. 

Still, I think it sends a damn important signal. 

I'm sort of free-associating here, but just before I decided to write this post, I had reason - never mind the specifics - to consider the unique spirit of independence that is part of the Texas character.

I will say that if you've never spent much time in Texas, or specifically in San Antonio, don't mess with booking your hotel room in some chain place or swanky modern place. Get a room at the Menger Hotel, which was built in 1859, just as San Antonio was becoming a city and beginning to surround the Alamo area. 

And then go to the Cinemax across the street and watch the re-enactment movie about the Alamo massacre. 

In 1836, when the battle took place, people - yes, of Northern European extraction - had been settling into the compound called the Alamo that had originally been established as a religious community for many years. Davy Crockett, from Tennessee, had been among them. After Mexico's securing of independence from Spain in 1821 and the subsequent rise of the dictator-general Santa Ana, that land had become an expansionist victory for the newly established nation-state. But at that point, there was not much but wilderness around the compound, and the people within had come to develop a strong sense of it being home.

Scouts from the Alamo went out and came back with reports that Santa Ana's forces were coming northward, and were within a couple of weeks of reaching where they were. 

Things came to a head after one guy in the Alamo community, William Barrett Travis, called all the men into the courtyard after dinner one evening. He took his sword out of its sheath and drew a line in the dirt. All those who were with him were to so indicate by coming over the line. He said that if anyone had a problem with the collective decision to defend the walls of the Alamo, he would respect that decision, and no hostility would be shown to that man. One man took that position, and the community wished him well as he walked away. 

There is a statue of Travis unsheathing his sword in the Menger Hotel lobby. 

What happened when Santa Ana's forces arrived was a complete bloodbath. Literally, as in blood flowing down the walls. Not a single man defending the Alamo survived. 

Mexican forces rounded up the women and children and huddled them in an inner chamber. 

The whole Mexican victory soon became moot, however, as Texas won a territory-wide victory and became an independent nation for nine years, and then part of the United States of America.

At this point, the Alamo, in the 1830s a lone outpost surrounded by wilderness, is in the middle of downtown San Antonio.

The parallel I hope you are seeing is that the defenders of the Alamo were willing to face the prospect of every last one of them dying. In fact, that's what happened. 

That's the spirit animating the defense of Ukraine. 

So, sure, these visits by leaders from other countries to Kyiv are not rolling back Russian aggression. But they are making the statement that there is such a thing as the West, which is driven by a set of laudable values, and that they stand with good people who will not be trampled into submission, whatever the cost. 

Sunday roundup

 Daren Jonescu is a writer I agree with more often than I disagree with him. Sometimes I do indeed wonder where he is coming from, but there is no such perplexity regarding this piece entitled "A Border Dispute." He's spot on:

“Why should the world risk nuclear annihilation over what is essentially just a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine?” So ask the Glenn Greenwalds and Tucker Carlsonsof the world. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that such people are not being directly instructed by the Kremlin to pose the question that way, but that it represents their sincere, independent view of the situation. How shall we answer them?

How, that is, shall we answer a question deliberately framed so as to obscure or deny most of what we actually know about the nature and development of the situation: about its recent antecedents and parallels, about the explicit statements and aspirations of the Russian president, about the past century of Russian brutality against neighboring countries, about the moral and rhetorical distinctions between the Western democracies and a strongman tyranny under the lifetime control of a former KGB officer who openly pines for the glory days of the USSR, about the obvious one-sided reasons for the continued “cold war atmosphere” between Russia and the NATO countries today, about the ongoing war of terror and mass murder against the civilian population of a sovereign country? 

BTW, the Ukraine invasion is making Russian TV weirder and scarier by the day. 

I'm utterly certain that I'm a Christian, but prayer is something I still head-trip about. (That may just be one more manifestation of my tendency to overthink everything.) I did find this piece by David Deaval at The Imaginative Conservative  titled "Deepening Prayer and Hearing God'sVoice" helpful in that regard.

At the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley shows how "BLM's Anti-Police Racket Is Coming Undone."

At The Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan engages with listeners to his podcast. A taste:

This next listener dissents over the Haidt convo:

I try not to be a scold, but sometimes the temptation is too great. Early in your talk you talked about how you didn’t understand young kids these days — why they are killing themselves at a high rate, since everything for them is so much better than it was in the old days. It sounds just like all of us old guys not getting youngsters. Haidt did talk about how he learned to approach unfamiliar cultures like an anthropologist — a good place to start for us old folks. 

While I agree with you about the proliferation of gender types, it was not so long ago that homosexuality raised the same kinds of questions that you ask, and it was looked at the same way. Some people questioned the reality of such a thing, or saw it as a simple choice that perverse people made, or as a psychiatric illness that required treatment, and of course as a crime. I don’t think you intend to imply any of those things, but you do seem to veer in that direction. How people’s identity is created is still an open question — and someday we may know more. 

That said, I agree with you that medical interventions for children is very very premature and should not be happening. Let people grow up first. 

You seem to imply that biology supports a simple dichotomy, but sexual expression is more complex than that. As for cultural/religious acceptance, Joseph Campbell, in The Hero Of A Thousand Faces, discusses some civilizations that saw gender as fluid and containing both male and female elements.

One more thought: although Plato then, and others now, did raise questions about democracy, I fear that the Republican answer is to emulate the worst counter-examples, such as their current infatuation with Orbán’s near dictatorship. Prof. Haidt mentioned Karen Stenner’s work, The Authoritarian Dynamic, in which she reports that 20% of the population has an authoritarian personality type. She also talks about the conditions that stimulate it to express itself — fear and anxiety, the kind that is stirred up by demagogues and unscrupulous politicians, namely Trump. Stenner’s book also has suggestions on how to tamp down the fear. Maybe a conversation with her is in order.

Thanks for the tip. My best response to my reader’s first point is probably at the beginning of my chat with Bari, where I try to make distinctions between the gay and trans movements, and why the conflicts are inevitable and intrinsic. As for fluid gender, I agree! I don’t believe in a gender binary, just a sex binary. In fact, one reason gender expression exists at all — and is comprehensible at all — is precisely its tension with a fixed, binary biological reality. 

But I also think this over-states the relevance of “gender identity” for the vast majority of humans. Most of us don’t get up every day thinking of how we are a man or a woman and where we fit on a spectrum — because we don’t really have many conflicts. This looms much larger for trans people for whom it is a daily challenge, and to a lesser extent for gay people whose affect contrasts with the stereotypes of their sex. But for most of us, our gender expression is simply our personality packaged in a binary form of biology. And this isn’t just on a scale of Barbie to G.I. Joe. And seeing it that way — as gender ideology does — strikes me as a regression, not a way forward.

And, now, in case LITD isn't enough of a BQ fix, herewith some recent contributions to other venues:

At Merion West, I assert that "The Term Woke Is Losing Its Punch." 

At Ordinary Times, I examine the cultural impact of the Rhythm changes:

Far and away, the most famous and utilized contrafact is the chord changes to “I’ve Got Rhythm” by George Gershwin. He composed this tune for the 1930 musical Girl Crazy. 

What it introduced into American music was the I-VI-II V7 chord sequence, with a cycle-of-fourths middle-eight section that starts two steps above the key of the song and allows a resolution, in eight bars, to the key.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of this codification to the development of American popular music, and, indeed, popular culture.  

The entire form, or sometimes just the A section with a different middle eight, shows up all over the place.

It’s come to be known as the Rhythm changes.

Certainly it’s been used with other melody lines in jazz. Charlie Christian’s “Seven Come Eleven” is over the Rhythm changes, as is “Oleo” by Sonny Rollins, and I’m only scratching the surface. 

It’s been used in a pop context as well.

I give three examples of that context: the Flintstones theme, "Sherry" by the Four Seasons, and "Like Love" by Andre Previn, and why they are artifacts from a time when post-America was America, and had a sense of vitality and loveliness. 

My second-most recent piece at OT is "Confessions of a Rock and Roll History Teacher."

At Precipice, my Substack, I return to a theme I frequently write about there: the infinitesimal piece of real estate on which a non-Trumpist conservative stands. 

And my second-most recent piece there is titled "Disney."

Well, that ought to keep you out of mischief on this first Sunday of May.