Equality versus freedom

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been said many times by many people.

Solzhenitsyn:

Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.

And then there’s Robert Frost (in the excerpt that follows, Frost uses “justice” in the traditional sense rather than in the leftist “social justice” sense). That link I just gave is now dead, but I used the quote and the link in this post from 2016:

Frost was convinced that the conflict between justice and mercy in human affairs is an eternal and universal moral problem of humanity, and not merely a contemporary political partisan concern…

With these facts in mind Frost’s criticism of the New Deal as “nothing but an outbreak of mass mercy,” is clearly more than mere partisan politics. In 1936, in the midst of attacks on [his collection of poetry] A Further Range by the political Left, Frost wrote to Ferner Nuhn, a young New Deal acquaintance and friend of Henry Wallace, that “strict justice is basic” for a free society, and freedom implied that some people succeeded and others failed. The winners reaped the rewards of their talents and efforts, but what about the losers? Frost acknowledged that government “must do something for the losers. It must show them mercy. Justice first and mercy second. The trouble with some of your crowd is that it would have mercy first. The struggle to win is still the best tonic. . . . Mercy . . . is another word for socialism.” Frost believed that what was commonly called “distributive justice,” the attempt to spread the wealth of society to the masses, through graduated in-come taxes and other such devices, was really distributive mercy misnamed. Frost drew out for Ferner Nuhn the logical consequences of a system of socialistic mercy:

“The question of the moment in politics will always be one of proportion between mercy and justice. You have to remember the people who accept mercy have to pay for it. Mercy means protection. And there is no protection without direction. A person completely protected would have to be completely directed. And he would be a slave. That’s where socialism pure brings you out.”

From Milton Friedman:

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

Thomas Sowell says it in his book The Quest For Cosmic Justice:

Not only does cosmic justice differ from traditional justice, and conflict with it, more momentously cosmic justice is irreconcilable with personal freedom based on the rule of law. Traditional justice can be mass-produced by impersonal prospective rules governing the interactions of flesh-and-blood human beings, but cosmic justice must be hand-made by holders of power who impose their own decisions on how these flesh-and-blood individuals should be categorized into abstractions and how these abstractions should then be forcibly configured to fit the vision of the power-holders. Merely the power to select beneficiaries is an enormous power, for it is also the power to select victims—and to reduce both to the role of supplicants of those who hold this power.

And yet we find ourselves in a society in which the idea of an elite group dispensing “justice” – as in social or cosmic justice – and creating “equality” has been in the ascendance, especially among the young. As Frost also wrote (from that same post of mine in 2016, with its dead link):

In a letter to Bernard De Voto in 1936 Frost wrote: “The great politicians are having their fun with us. They’ve picked up just enough of the New Republic and Nation jargon to seem original to the simple.” In 1939, in “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Frost said: “More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts.”

The appeal to the young is always present, unless it is strongly countered.

Videos of the April 8 total eclipse

The New Neo Posted on by

I very much enjoyed these videos. They make me want to go out of my way to see one of the future total eclipses – although I’d have to go very far out of my way.

On April 8 I could have seen the total eclipse with much greater ease, although it still would have been a long drive. About a week beforehand, I actually tried to enlist someone to go with me, but I wasn’t successful and then I realized that I hadn’t planned far enough ahead and would probably be thwarted by traffic (and exhaustion) if I tried to go by myself. I had checked out some motels in places within striking distance, thinking I might stay overnight on the day before to beat some of the traffic, but they were full.

So I saw the partial eclipse, but that experience – although fascinating – is nothing like a total.

Enjoy:

This one just shows the crowd reaction and the darkness falling rather than the sun itself:

Does Hamas have a strategy?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Art Deco” observes:

I don’t think Hamas ever had what you’d call a ‘strategy’, unless there were co-ordinate campaigns planned which Iran and Hezbollah never implemented. It’s what Martin Peretz described 40 years ago in a review of a play, “A crazed Arab to be sure, but crazed in the particular ways of his culture. He is intoxicated by language, cannot discern fantasy from reality, and assuages himself with a momentarily satisfying but ultimately ineffectual act of bloodlust”.

I also wonder whether there was a larger plan to simultaneously include Hezbollah and Iran, and perhaps the West Bank as well. In a surprise attack this multi-pronged approach might have been even more devastating to Israel. But either it was considered too much and likely to turn the world against the Palestinians and their ally Iran, or the attackers got their signals crossed, or it was never planned that way in the first place.

But I disagree that there was no strategy in the October 7 attack. There was plenty of strategy. The Palestinians have known for many many decades that it is to their advantage to provoke retaliation from Israel though terrorism and then emphasize their own suffering – with numbers – in order to turn world opinion even further from support of Israel. There are so many propaganda advantages, and this is above all else a propaganda war.

Back in November, even the Wapo was acknowledging this [emphasis mine]:

The evidence, described by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries, reveals an intention by Hamas planners to strike a blow of historic proportions, in the expectation that the group’s actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response. … After breaching the Israeli border in some 30 places, Hamas militants staged a mass slaughter of soldiers and civilians in at least 22 Israeli villages, towns and military outposts and then drew Israeli defenders into gun battles that continued for more than a day.

… Some militants carried enough food, ammunition and equipment to last several days, officials said, and bore instructions to continue deeper into Israel if the first wave of attacks succeeded, potentially striking larger Israeli cities.

The assault teams managed to penetrate as far as Ofakim, an Israeli town about 15 miles from the Gaza Strip and about half the distance between the enclave and the West Bank. One unit carried reconnaissance information and maps suggesting an intention to continue the assault up to the border of the West Bank, according to two senior Middle Eastern intelligence officials and one former U.S. official with detailed knowledge of the evidence. Hamas had been increasing its outreach to West Bank militants in recent months, although the group says it did not notify its West Bank allies of its Oct. 7 plans in advance. …

Hamas meticulously planned and prepared for a massacre of Israeli civilians on a scale that was highly likely to provoke Israel’s government into sending troops into Gaza, analysts said. Indeed, Hamas leaders have publicly expressed a willingness to accept heavy losses — potentially including the deaths of many Gazan civilians living under Hamas rule.

“Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo, told Beirut’s LCBI television in an interview aired on Oct. 24. “We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”

And to even exaggerate the numbers and publicize them to the Western MSM, which will spread the propaganda around to great effect.

“They were very clear-eyed as to what would happen to Gaza on the day after,” said a senior Israeli military official with access to sensitive intelligence, including interrogations with Hamas fighters and intercepted communications. “They wanted to buy their place in history — a place in the history of jihad — at the expense of the lives of many people in Gaza.” …

…“They planned a second phase, including in major Israeli cities and military bases,” said a senior Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence. …

“Hamas knew Israel would strike back hard. That was the point,” Katz said. “To Hamas, Palestinian suffering is a critical component in bringing about the instability and global outrage it seeks to exploit.”

Even if its current leadership is effectively destroyed, she said, Hamas and its followers will continue to regard Oct. 7 as a victory. That’s partly because the group unquestionably succeeded in focusing the world’s attention on the Palestinian conflict, she said.

“It’s the first time I can remember that Hamas has become so prominent on a global scale,” Katz said. “So many people have already forgotten Oct. 7 because Hamas immediately changed the discussion. It put the focus on Israel, not themselves. And that’s exactly what they wanted.”

It wouldn’t have mattered that Hamas “changed the discussion” if so many in the West didn’t cooperate in that endeavor. But all of that was not an accident; it was Hamas’ strategy all along. The only question is whether Israel will give up in the face of all of the opprobrium. I don’t think they will, for the simple reason that their survival is at stake and now just about everyone in Israel knows it.

None of this is new, and none of it is specific to Hamas only. It was the strategy of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War (written by John McCain in 2013):

Giap was a master of logistics, but his reputation rests on more than that. His victories were achieved by a patient strategy that he and Ho Chi Minh were convinced would succeed—an unwavering resolve to suffer immense casualties and the near total destruction of their country to defeat any adversary, no matter how powerful. “You will kill 10 of us, we will kill one of you,” Ho told the French, “but in the end, you will tire of it first.”

Giap executed that strategy with an unbending will.

Plus this from Bui Tin, who had been a colonel on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army:

[The American antiwar movement] was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. …

The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

It wasn’t just American opinion, either. Much of the West turned against that war, and the MSM certainly did so as well.

Knife attack in Sydney [scroll down for UPDATE]

The New Neo Posted on by

A man only identified so far as a 40-year-old killed 6 people and injured eight others in a knife attack in a Sydney mall:

The man stabbed shoppers as he moved through the shopping centre – including a mother and her nine-month-old baby.

– Video footage appears to show a shopper confronting the attacker on an escalator in the centre by holding a bollard [see this] towards him.

– Emergency services were called to Westfield Bondi Junction at around 3.30pm, following reports that multiple people had been stabbed.

– A female police officer who was nearby went into the centre alone and approached the attacker who had by this point moved to level five of the shopping centre.

– The officer shot the attacker after he turned to face her, raised a knife and lunged at her.

– The officer conducted CPR on the attacker until the arrival of paramedics, who worked on the man; however, he could not be revived.

Knives can be very very deadly, and of course just about everyone possesses one. Five of the six dead are women; I don’t know how many of the injured are women. Did the killer target women, or is it just that most of the mall shoppers were women?

In addition, we have this statement:

Police did confirm the attacker acted alone and was known to them. They also said that they do not believe his motive was related to terrorism.

“If it is the person we believe it is, we don’t have fear for that person holding an ideation,” Webb said.

“In other words, that it’s not a terrorism incident.

“We believe that this person acted alone and there’s no ongoing threat to the community.”

I’ll believe it when you tell me more about the attacker – his name and his history, for starters. He could be a random crazy. Or he could indeed be a terrorist, although a free-lancer.

The baby is in critical condition; the mother has died. Absolutely horrific.

The police officer who shot the killer is reported to have been at the mall on an unrelated matter. It’s a good thing she was there, because the death toll almost undoubtedly would have been higher if she hadn’t been already on the scene.

It might have been lower, however, if some of the regular shoppers had been armed, or if the assailant had the notion that they might be. Gun laws in Australia are quite strict:

In the last two decades of the 20th century, following several high-profile killing sprees, the federal government coordinated more restrictive firearms legislation with all state governments.

Gun laws were largely aligned in 1996 by the National Firearms Agreement. In two federally funded gun buybacks and voluntary surrenders and State Governments’ gun amnesties before and after the Port Arthur Massacre, more than a million firearms were collected and destroyed, possibly a third of the national stock.[1]

A person must have a firearm licence to possess or use a firearm. Licence holders must demonstrate a “genuine reason” (which does not include self-defence) for holding a firearm licence[2] and must not be a “prohibited person”. All firearms must be registered by serial number to the owner.

In December 2023 National Cabinet agreed to implement a national firearms register within four years.

None of the articles I’ve seen mention whether the mall was a gun-free zone.

RIP to the victims.

UPDATE: Random crazed killer it is: the perp had a history of mental illness (schizophrenia) and obsession with weapons, especially knives.

We now have pretty good drugs for schizophrenia, but it’s not unusual for patients to make a decision to go off them without telling anyone. It’s possible that happened in this case, although that’s a total guess on my part.

Five women were killed and the sole male victim is said to have been a security guard. This makes me wonder once again whether the killer was targeting women.

And now, just a couple of minutes after writing the above paragraph, I read this:

Chilling footage showed Cauchi ignore a man who had bravely attempted to confront him during the attack.

Speculation has been raised the knifeman had been targetting women.

Today show host Karl Stefanovic said he had ‘no words’.

‘I don’t care what the excuses are, and I hope there’s a special place in hell reserved for him, given the fact that he walked past men, and didn’t do anything about it and attacked women,’ he said.

‘A woman with a baby.’

Seems to be young women he was intent on attacking – plus the baby. I haven’t read anything describing the victims who survived (they are now reported to number 12), and whether they were young women, too. One of the murder victims was Dawn Singleton, 25, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. She was engaged to marry her childhood sweetheart.

The killing of Dexter Reed: the police as Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

In Chicago, a black man named Dexter Reed was killed by police after he shot one of them during a traffic stop. The media covered it in the usual manner:

Three weeks ago, Dexter Reed out of Chicago shot by police during a traffic stop. He is Black, a hundred shots were fired. Here’s the family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why does the police keep doing this to young Black African men? If he was supposed to be pulled over for a traffic stop, why did they have four guns pointed at him? He was scared.

BANKS: He had just bought his new car three days before that and he was just riding around in his car.

He said “Mom, I’m going for a ride.” And they killed him. They killed him. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS: Reed’s family is upset and we’re so sorry. There’s nothing like losing a child. But they’re not telling you the truth.

Dexter Reed opened fire on police. After he was pulled over, he shot at police first and they returned fire. His gun was recovered and he’d emptied his clip.

We’ll show you the video in a second. But look at these headlines. Seatbelt violation ends with Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.

Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.

Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.

Not one of those headlines tells you that Reed is the one who started the shootout.

Watters also points out that some of the officers were black.

At this point, The Chicago Tribune is calling for some cool:

The first and most obvious lesson: If you’re stopped by police and asked to roll down your window or get out of your car, do so. And if you shoot at police, they will — and should — shoot back. Lost by too many in the anger over Reed’s death was the fact that he shot a police officer who, as Mayor Brandon Johnson properly noted on Tuesday following release of the multiple videos offering views of what happened, was lucky to escape with the injuries he did.

But according to the left and much of the MSM, police are not allowed to protect their own lives, much less the lives of the public. The paramount concern of the left much of the media is protecting the lives of people – often criminals – who don’t cooperate with traffic stops and who attack police during them.

Why do I liken the attitude of the left and the MSM towards the police as akin to their attitude about Israel? Because even self-defense is not allowed, if it ends up causing the death of someone labeled as “oppressed,” no matter how violent, threatening, and guilty that person (or group) is. There’s also similar language from those doing the criticizing [emphasis mine]:

… COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten felt free to share her opinions far and wide, including during a conveniently timed appearance at the City Club. Among the most questionable of those was her view (injudiciously expressed in advance of a completed investigation) that the cops’ response to Reed’s multiple shots at them wasn’t “proportional.” Police shot 96 times while Reed fired considerably fewer shots, although there have been conflicting reports of how many.

So, are we now going to criticize — or, as some want, prosecute — police who fail to count how many bullets are flying their way before shooting back and ensuring the number of shots is “proportional?” Even after a fellow officer has been shot? We are asking officers to risk their lives every day on the streets of a city awash in guns, many of them illegal. (Reed was facing past charges for illegal gun use.) Requiring cops to respond “proportionately” when someone is shooting at them not only is unreasonable; it will make recruiting new officers even harder.

A Chicago police officer’s job only has gotten more dangerous. Cops were shot or shot at 68 times in 2023 versus 55 times in 2022, WGN-TV reported. The number of people shot by police dropped over that same time frame to 11 from 18.

The care taken by police doesn’t matter to the forces determined to demonize them. And the people who suffer most from this are the black residents of Chicago. But the critics don’t care when there are lies to be told, facts to be omitted, and propaganda points to be made.

Do people understand war anymore?

The New Neo Posted on by

I think many many people these days do not understand what war is. The terrible nature of war itself has combined with modern “smart” weapons and humanitarian impulses to dampen the resolve of many people in Western nations, even against the most vicious and destructive of enemies.

The two world wars of the 20th century caused an enormous amount of suffering and carnage and were fought for the most part by and in developed Western nations. Those wars were characterized by imprecise bombing that killed many civilians, and then the use of two atomic weapons to end the war. Then, by the time of the Gulf War, technology had advanced to the point where we began to be able to bomb more precisely, and that ability has only increased since then to the point of being able to destroy a single building without damaging adjacent ones.

So people – especially young people – have become accustomed to the idea that a war can be waged by only killing the bad guys, and even as few of them as possible. Such a thing, however, is not possible.

The situation has the unintended effect of allowing terrorists to win wars by their tactic of putting civilians in harms’ way. The Palestinians’ entire war strategy rests on this, and most of the West cooperates. Thus, the unrealistic expectations held by so many modern Westerners about war end up enabling evil to flourish.

Commenter “Shadow” writes:

I’m reminded of this piece by Daniel Greenfield that I read over a decade ago and never forgot. https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2012/11/war-is-answer.html

Israel kicked the can down the road for too long. Its fear of killing civilians emboldened terrorists to use human shields, and prolonged the conflict because it could never get enough of the bad guys. It should have been over years ago. Now people on both sides are suffering today. You cannot fight a war kindly. You perhaps cannot even fight a war morally in any normal sense of the world – even the Allies did terrible things. War demands the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good. There is no way around it.

“The plan for perpetual peace is really a plan for perpetual war.”

“The humanitarian impulse makes the anti-humanitarian impulse inevitable. The more precisely we try to kill terrorists, the more ingeniously the terrorists blend into the civilian population and employ human shields. The more we try not to kill civilians, the more civilians we are forced to kill. That is the equal and opposite reaction of the humanitarian formula.”

If Israel had heeded this warning years ago, the UN would have been angry, of course, but Israel wouldn’t be in the position it’s in now.

And academia and the internet spread the stupidity around. Widespread historical ignorance does its part, too.

Why oh why did the clock readout on my phone have to turn pink?

The New Neo Posted on by

My phone recently updated, and to my surprise the time readout on my lock screen turned bright pink. Barbie pink.

In the last phone update before that, the numbers had turned thick and clumsy, whereas before they had been elegantly thin and yet still readable. I didn’t like the change, but it didn’t bother me unduly. But now they were thick and pink, a sort of ghastly pink that only a 4-year-old could love.

I finally found a way to change it back, but it took quite a while and some searching to figure it out.

So, why do programmers do this to us? It seems, as best I can reconstruct what happened, that the new “improved” idea was to take a color from the photo on each person’s lockscreen and use that color for the clock numbers for that person as well. And it turns out that there’s a fair amount – although not an overwhelming amount – of pink on the photo I use, which is of my grandchildren.

Changes such as this may seem small, and they are small. But they are often jarring and unwanted. At least there was an option to turn it back to a neutral color.

Chris Rufo on the plagiarism accusations against black female professors

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “AesopFan” helpfully offered this tweet from Christopher Rufo, relevant to this post from yesterday concerning whether black female professors are disproportionately involved in plagiarism:

I was wondering whether there had been an attempt to study this systematically, and that answers the question: sporadically but not in comprehensive research.

As commenter “OBloodyHell” adds, however, that if such research is ever done, then:

1 — if it turns out that it is a racially-founded problem, it will be suppressed.
2 — if it turns out that it is happening across the board, well, then it will be suppressed because… face it, it’ll be mostly liberals doing it.
3 — what won’t be found is and evidence that anyone is being oppressed. But that will not be the merdia spin no matter what happens.

(I assume that “merdia” is a purposeful misspelling, so I didn’t correct it.)

I will add that, if #1 or #2 turn out to be the case, and these results are reported, the plagiarism will be minimized in importance (as happened with Claudine Gay) or even considered an outdated concern of an oppressive culture devised by evil white males. This would be in line with similar attacks on “meritocracy.”