Some advice in dealing with sibling fighting, from an op-ed in the NY Times

The New Neo Posted on by

Bad and even dangerous advice, I might add, although neither uniformly bad nor uniformly dangerous. The author’s general suggestion is to let them be to work it out themselves, and/or to treat (or punish) them equally, which is actually quite common advice [emphasis mine]:

Siblings offer early, on-the-job training in how to work and live with other people. They also provide a crash course in how to manage intense emotions: envy, hatred, anger. In children of all ages, but especially younger children, the urge to compete for parental attention is innate. Among teenagers, sibling conflict helps them work out their need to differentiate from family and to set their own boundaries. Overall, research suggests the benefits of sibling disagreements include increased skills in understanding others, negotiating, persuading and problem solving…

When it comes to sibling conflicts, there are rarely innocents. For the most part, kids who are hurting one another or getting hurt, physically or emotionally, were already doing something you’ve told them not to do, and you won’t know the truth until they’re giving the toasts at one another’s weddings.

When all you know is that he said and then she said and then somebody did something and then there were tears, try this: Treat them equally. If there’s an injury that merits sympathy, gather everyone up. “Oh, that must really hurt where she hit you. Oh, you must have been so mad to do that. What can we do to make things better?”

Alternatively, if you’re just frustrated with the lot of them, take it out on everyone equally. “That’s it, playtime is over. You — empty the dishwasher. You — bring down the laundry.” If everyone involved feels terrible, you can feel secure that you’re on the right track.

All those things are good advice if—and only if—the fighting is the ordinary sort of sibling conflict in which relatively equally matched and pretty well-adjusted kids are squabbling. But are there really “rarely innocents”? There is another form of sibling fighting that is basically sibling abuse, and we don’t know its actual extent although it’s certainly not the majority of cases (we tend to think of sibling abuse as sexual abuse, which also exists, but I’m not referring to that).

It is often difficult for a parent to tell the difference between mere fighting of the ordinary type and abuse. Advice like that of the Times columnist, who is a parent of four—the sort of advice you’ll often see coming from “experts” as well—is dangerous if that advice doesn’t also include guidelines that help a parent tell when the squabbling is actually abuse in which a more powerful (either emotionally or physically or both) sibling habitually torments another sibling who is, in fact, innocent of any wrongdoing. The fact of the latter sibling’s being alive as a natural rival and irritant is usually enough to spark the abuse from the other sibling in these cases, rather than any behavior (much less any guilty behavior) on the part of the victim sibling.

That situation must not be allowed to continue; it is dangerous for both siblings, but particularly for the victim, and has the potential to leave deep and lifelong scars. “Letting them fight it out” and “treating them equally” is exactly the wrong thing to do in that situation; it tells the victimized child that there is no hope of rescue, and encourages him or her to blame him/herself for the cruel acts of others.

This topic was a particular interest of mine back when I was in graduate school, which was over twenty years ago. I did a lot of reading, wrote a long paper on the subject, and found that there was little to no discussion of the distinction at that time except for the paper I wrote. I’m pleased to see that a quick Googling just now has revealed a host of articles about the subject, so it seems that the state of knowledge and awareness has improved at least somewhat. But back then, I also designed a research project with a questionnaire aimed at uncovering and studying the difference. I never performed the research, although I probably would have, had I been going for a PhD.

In my quick look at the offerings now available online on the subject, I didn’t see anything resembling the research I had proposed. Most of the articles are fairly general. This seems to be one of the more informational ones. For example:

We need more research to find out exactly how and why sibling abuse happens. Experts think there are a number of possible risk factors:

–Parents are not around much at home
–Parents are not very involved in their children’s lives, or are emotionally distant
–Parents accept sibling rivalry and fights as part of family life, rather than working to minimize them
–Parents have not taught kids how to handle conflicts in a healthy way from early on
–Parents do not stop children when they are violent (they may assume it was an accident, part of a two-way fight, or normal horseplay)

In my own paper, I emphasized those first three points as key. The literature at the time stated as a given that children fight in order to gain parents’ attention and favoritism, and that is of course often true. But sibling abuse tends to have the characteristic of occurring most often outside the awareness of parents, so it certainly does not have the function of gaining parents’ attention. Its distinguishing characteristic is that its goal is to hurt (not necessarily physically, although sometimes physically) the victimized child, and the abusing child does not want to be caught and does not want the parents’ attention called to his/her actions. So naturally, the more the parents are away and the children are unsupervised or inadequately supervised, the more opportunity the abusive child has to harm the other child. And the more the two are blamed equally by parents for whatever fighting they do see, the worse it is for the victimized child, and the more blame he/she takes on in addition to the abuse.

The catch, of course, is that if much of the abuse takes place outside of the parents’ awareness, how would the parent ever know it’s happening? The articles I looked at recommend noticing behavioral signs such as nightmares, but those are relatively nonspecific. All I can suggest is to maintain awareness of the potential problem and to keep the lines of communication open, and also to be especially alert for it if there are marked differentials in size and age and personality between or among siblings. I would add “go for help to a family therapist,” but unfortunately many such therapists are not aware of the distinction and will give advice similar to that of the Times article, so be alert for that, too.

The illustration that accompanies the Times article is also typical of such “leave them alone” articles, because it shows equally matched siblings, which is so often not the case:

So, how common is such abuse? I’m not talking about single acts of sibling physical violence that are severe enough that they get reported to authorities as such (the only discussions I could find when I wrote my paper was of that sort of thing—for example, sibling murder). That link I gave earlier puts it this way:

Experts estimate that three children in 100 are dangerously violent toward a brother or sister. A 2005 study puts the number of assaults each year to children by a sibling at about 35 per 100 kids. The same study found the rate to be similar across income levels and racial and ethnic groups.

But “number of assaults” probably doesn’t measure what I’m interested in, either. It probably just is an estimate of hits, which is not the same thing as the incidence of physical and/or emotional abuse. I looked at one of the studies cited which is available online (see this), and it lumps in sibling assaults with assaults by children in general, so it’s not useful for determining the incidence of the phenomenon I’m talking about. I think it’s telling that, even among many researchers, the matter has been relatively neglected and/or minimized.

Interestingly enough, when I looked at the comments to the Times piece, nearly every single one I read was an objection to the article from a person who claimed to have been subject to sibling abuse that was unchecked and had serious negative repercussions for them. That certainly indicates a fairly high level of incidence, at least in the anecdotal sense.

The Thai cave rescue so far

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been going better than I’d expected.

A total of eight boys have now been rescued. Four more to go, plus the soccer coach.

Their rescued teammates are being treated in quarantine at Chiang Rai Prachanukroh hospital. Former Chiang Rai governor and rescue mission commander Narongsak Osotthanakorn said Sunday night that doctors were monitoring the rescued boys for any illnesses they may have picked up in the cave and supervising efforts to build up their strength after they spent more than two weeks with little food and no natural light.

Kids are resilient. But they’re also small and most of them don’t have a lot of fat reserves to get them through a bout of starvation:

Danish cave diver Ivan Karadzic…told CNN Monday that the boys were wearing several wetsuits to “minimize heat loss,” which is a concern due to their “very skinny” bodies and the cold water.

I’m really glad that things are going well so far, but it took a huge international effort to accomplish it.

An interesting question is how they chose the order in which the children would be rescued. Did the kids have any vote? The coach? Or was it up to the rescuers? I read the other day that they chose the weakest ones to go first. I assume that was because they were most at risk the longer they stayed in the cave. However, wouldn’t they also be most at risk in an arduous journey out of the cave?

We don’t know which boys were rescued. But neither, apparently, do the parents:

Another family member told CNN that they hadn’t been told which boys had been pulled out, and who is still trapped in the cave.

Here are some more details on the help the divers provide:

The most dangerous part of the journey out of the labyrinth cave system is the first kilometer, during which they are required to squeeze through a narrow flooded channel.

Rescuers need to hold the boys’ oxygen tanks in front of them and swim pencil-like through submerged holes. Having completed this section, the boys are then handed over to separate, specialist rescue teams, who help assist them through the remainder of the cave, much of which they can wade through.

Danish diver Karadzic told CNN Monday that the children are attached to the divers with a thin line, a commonly used tool in low visibility situations to minimize risk.

An intense effort.

On Democrats’ loss of power

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This post was prompted by reading Victor Davis Hanson on the Democrats’ loss of power.]

The shock of the reversal the 2016 election represented to Democrats was and still is enormous. But the reversal wasn’t just because Democrats previously thought they were on the pinnacle and poised for near-permanent success, with Obama having permanently changed the direction of the country. The reversal was and still is shocking, truly shocking, because until 2016 the direction of the country had been almost relentlessly in the leftist direction for close to 90 years (since FDR), with only a few brief and incomplete moments of turning in the other direction.

Two of those moments consisted of Reagan and Bush, and only Reagan represented an actual conservative victory. Some of the time, moreover, even Reagan and Bush had to deal with a Democratic Congress. Bush was also preoccupied with the War on Terror, and he was otherwise quite moderate rather than conservative. As for the Gingrich Contract With America (another moment), Congress was Republican but the president was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, and Gingrich and company had to deal with that fact.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time since Coolidge that we have a conservative president (which, surprisingly, Trump is turning out to be, at least in the policy sense) and two houses controlled by the GOP. Reagan, a conservative, never had that luxury, because Democrats controlled the House for his entire presidency, and the Senate for a portion of it.

Trump’s Republican-controlled Congress could end in 2018, but for now Trump has both houses, another reason for Democratic angst. Plus, the Democrats really truly thought they’d get Congress back in 2018, perhaps both houses, and now they have some doubts about that (although it still could happen, of course).

When you’re used to a seemingly inexorable movement of politics in your favor, and the setbacks have been mostly small and temporary, it’s frightening to see a setback that could last longer. Or maybe, even, that the pattern has been broken and the movement in your direction may have ended when you least expected it to. And that’s another reason why the looming SCOTUS appointment has caused such hysteria on the part of Democrats—elections come and go, and things can change quickly with any election, but SCOTUS justices tend to last a long long time.

Hero worship and politics: persons vs. principles

The New Neo Posted on by

After writing about NeverTrumper Max Boot’s motives yesterday, I decided I have more to say.

And it’s not just about Boot.

On that thread yesterday, commenter “Ann” offered a quote from a piece Boot wrote back in May of 2016. I don’t recall having seen the essay at the time it was written, but it’s an illuminating look at what Boot was thinking at the time, and why.

My guess is that his reasons were similar to those of a lot of his fellow NeverTrumpers. So let’s take a look:

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview. Reagan had his faults, like JFK, but he was optimistic and gentlemanly. He was pro-free trade and pro-immigration. He believed in limited government at home and American leadership abroad.

That’s what I believed in too — and that’s what I thought the Republican Party stood for. That’s why, despite my disagreements with social conservatives, I worked as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Marco Rubio this year. All of those candidates, different as they were, recognizably represented Reagan Republicanism.

I don’t know about that; Reagan was certainly more conservative than McCain or Romney, and somewhat more conservative than Rubio, on most issues. I’m not even sure that I’d call McCain “gentlemanly” at all, either. But Romney was nothing if not gentlemanly, and all three were 1000% more “gentlemanly” than Trump is.

Just about everyone in the GOP is more “gentlemanly” than Trump is.

It was that word gentlemanly that practically leapt out at me when I saw it in Boot’s essay. I think the word is very telling—that, and his idea of Reagan as being an “inspirational figure.” Those two points made me suddenly see something even more clearly than before.

There’s a saying that you can’t reason someone out of a position that they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. I think what’s going on with Boot (and perhaps most other NeverTrumpers) is that he was initially inspired to become a Republican by hero worship of an inspirational figure and a gentleman, not by reason. The decision was emotional and the reasons were embedded in perception of the admirable personality of the emulated person.

Of course, Democrats are hardly gentlemanly. But Boot doesn’t really talk about that; apparently he doesn’t expect them to be, so it’s okay.

One conservative principle that Boot does mention being in favor of is “limited government,” but he is opposed to “social conservation” (although he doesn’t define that, and it can mean different things to different people). Boot is for the principles of “free trade” and “immigration,” and seems to think Reagan was as well.

So, if Boot and his fellow NeverTrumpers are looking for a gentleman for free trade and immigration—and if Boot defines the latter as including illegal immigration—then of course he will detest Trump with a white-hot passion.

But when I did a bit of research just now on Reagan’s attitude towards free trade, I mostly found short articles saying absolutely, he was for it. But then I found this, which was extremely interesting. It refers to a speech that Donald Trump made in July of 2016:

Part of his approach as president, [Trump] said, would be to “use every lawful presidential power” to remedy trade disputes.

“President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry,” Trump said. “I remember. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45 percent, and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100 percent, and that had a big impact, folks. A big impact.”

Reagan did impose those penalties on overseas motorcycle and semiconductor producers, though there is some question about whether the motorcycle and semiconductor tariffs were effective. (Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to an inquiry, but his prepared remarks included footnotes.)

However, Reagan’s record includes both free-trade and protectionist stands — a nuanced profile that suggests that Trump’s portrayal was partially accurate, but somewhat incomplete.

In a 1985 speech to business leaders, Reagan said that “our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets — free trade. I, like you, recognize the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and peace among nations.”

However, read in its entirety, Reagan’s speech articulates a distinct sense of balance about the merits and drawbacks of free trade.

“I believe that if trade is not fair for all, then trade is free in name only,” he said. “I will not stand by and watch American businesses fail because of unfair trading practices abroad. I will not stand by and watch American workers lose their jobs because other nations do not play by the rules.”

While Reagan said he would reject proposals by some in Congress and the private sector that were “purely protectionist in nature,” and while he reiterated that “our commitment to free trade is undiminished,” he added this: “Let no one mistake our resolve to oppose any and all unfair trading practices. It is wrong for the American worker and American businessman to continue to bear the burden imposed by those who abuse the world trading system.”

True to his words, Reagan’s record in office was equally mixed.

That’s certainly interesting. Trump apparently did his homework on Reagan.

In Boot’s 2016 piece he adds the following, after saying that Hillary Clinton would be a lot better than Trump:

My hope is that [Trump] will lose by a landslide, and the Republican Party will come to its senses, rejecting both his ugly, nativist populism and the extreme, holier-than-thou conservatism represented by Ted Cruz.

Another telling remark, because Boot displays almost as great an antipathy to Ted Cruz as to Trump, although for entirely differently reasons: Cruz is a conservative, but a “holier-than-thou” one. Is Boot objecting to the fact that Cruz is religious? Hard to say. But whatever makes Boot hate the conservative Cruz, it seems to again have much more to do with Cruz’s personality than with his policies.

I think that someone like Boot was initially attracted, not to conservatism’s principles, but to particular conservative figures he admired as people and as gentlemen who played by a rulebook that Boot has in his head. The rest was secondary to Boot, very secondary. It’s an odd approach to politics, by my way of thinking. I care far less about personalities than principles, and always have, whether I was a liberal or a conservative. In fact, I’ve not found any political figures in my lifetime “inspiring” with the sole exception of Winston Churchill, and by the time I heard of him he was on his last legs.

But apparently there are plenty of people on both sides who respond more to personalities than anything else. That was certainly apparent during the Obama era (remember David Brooks, who seems to have decided on the basis of Obama’s prefectly creased pantleg that he would become president). And it’s been extremely apparent with Trump’s candidacy and presidency. I’m always a bit surprised to discover pundits like Boot among that group, but I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Not at all. Emotion guides politics for a lot of people.

Max Boot joins George Will in saying that Democrats must win in order to purify the GOP, or something like that

The New Neo Posted on by

And in no uncertain terms:

Personally, I’ve thrown up my hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP. I don’t want to be identified with the party of the child-snatchers. ..

…a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for egregious obstruction of justice, rampant conflicts of interest, the demonization of minorities, the debasement of political discourse, the alienation of America’s allies, the end of free trade and the appeasement of dictators.

That is why I join Will and other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November. Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.

The GOP must be de-Nazified and de-Axisfied, get it? Because of course what’s happening now in the US with Republicans is exactly like that, and the Democrats are kind of like the Allies.

I bow to no one in my discussion of Trump’s flaws, but I recognize his strengths—particularly since taking office. I have seen no obstruction of justice, egregious or otherwise. Rampant conflicts of interest are part and parcel of Democrats, more so even than Republicans, and certainly part of politics in general. Republicans are not demonizing minorities—if Boot were to pay attention to what is actually being said for the most part rather than what his MSM colleagues say is being said. As for allies being alienated—well, it depends on the allies (Eastern Europe seems rather happy). And allies would disagree with the policies of any robust GOP, even if Will and Boot designed that policy. I’m not too happy with the trade situation, but I’m willing to see what happens, and I certainly don’t put “free trade” on a pedestal either. As for “appeasement of dictators”—that’s what I saw with Obama, not Trump. In fact, the Democrats Boot wishes to put in power don’t just appease dictators, they revere and wish to emulate them.

What is it with these guys, Boot and Will and their ilk? Their revulsion to Trump is so great that they have joined forces with people they have worked against their entire lives—Democrats, liberals, and particularly the left, which, if Boot has been paying any attention lately, has taken over the Democratic Party.

I understand Trump-revulsion—particularly in people who consider themselves to be elite, who are prone to virtue-signaling, who work in an otherwise-liberal environment, who care a lot about style and being intellectuals, and who are susceptible to emotional appeals about children in “cages” (temporarily, and also under Obama, by the way). But I fail to understand this idea that empowering the Democrats is a great way to deal with it.

I think people like Boot and Will feel trapped between two awful alternatives. It’s what’s called an avoidance-avoidance conflict in the psych biz. Their Trump-avoidant gradient seems to be so steep that they cannot countenance anything to do with him, and they see no other alternative than supporting Democrats.

Boot and Will must turn on their former allies who do not share their revulsion. If Trump is evil, therefore anyone who supports him is evil, therefore those who oppose him (Democrats) must be friends: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[NOTE: Here’s my previous piece on George Will and his similar declarations.]

[NOTE II: And I wrote more on the topic of Boot and other Never Trumpers today, July 7: Hero worship and politics, persons vs. principles.]

ICE and DNA testing

The New Neo Posted on by

There are reports that the Trump administration is using DNA testing to reunite separated families at the border. According to Trump’s critics:

“This is a further demonstration of administration’s incompetence and admission of guilt. This further drives home the point we’ve been saying: They never registered parents and children properly,” RAICES communications director Jennifer K. Falcon said.

Falcon also said it’s not possible the migrant children — some as young as two months old — are giving their consent to DNA testing.

The organization said they’d never heard of conducting DNA tests to reunite families before and they don’t support the move.

They may never have heard of it, but perhaps they’ve heard of Google? Because it’s not that difficult to find articles about it that pre-date Trump, such as this one from 2014:

The right to family reunification has been an integral part of many countries’ immigration policies, and is derived from the protection of the family as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…However, many countries are enforcing more restrictive family reunification policies, imposing stricter requirements on those applying to enter the country. Even if applicants possess the documents required to prove their identities, the information is often rejected by immigration authorities, as they question their authenticity.

In this context, many countries resort to parental testing. Applicants are required to provide official documentation to prove their identities, such as birth and marriage certificates and passports. Providing such information is often difficult, especially in countries that do not use official documents to establish identity, or where those documents have been lost or destroyed due to politically unstable situations. But even if applicants possess the required documents, immigration authorities sometimes reject the information as they question their authenticity.

In the 1990s, some host countries began to use DNA analysis to resolve cases in which they considered the information presented on family relationships to be incomplete or unsatisfactory. Today, at least 20 countries around the world, including 16 European countries, have incorporated parental testing into decision-making on family reunification in immigration cases: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, and the USA.

USA? Under Obama? Now, fancy that.

Now, it’s not the same circumstances as the current ones with illegal immigrants at the border. The article is mostly describing the sort of family reunification that involves legal immigrants already here, who have applied to bring over other family. However, the idea is similar—which is that they must prove these people are actually family. And as the family of legal immigrants, one would think their rights would and should be greater than those of illegal immigrants, not less. And yet they are still subject to DNA testing in circumstances in which the documentation is not sufficient.

More here, this time about Germany:

However, German immigration offices will not necessarily accept these pieces of evidence for an existing family relation, and even in cases where legal documents are provided, it is a common administrative practice to ask the applicants for a DNA kinship report. There has been press coverage of a case where more than ten pieces of evidence were provided to the immigration authorities, but not accepted. Moreover, the German Federal Foreign Office has published a list of over 40 countries whose documents are not acknowledged by German embassies at all, because they assume that their system of identity registration lacks systematic and sound procedures. Applicants from these countries will find it extremely difficult to prove a family relationship by means of official documents or alternative pieces of evidence. To obtain permission to reunite with family members, they generally have to resort to DNA testing. Even German citizens may be asked to provide DNA evidence for their biological relation if they apply for family reunification with a foreign spouse and children from one of these blacklisted countries.

The use of DNA testing is considered to be an appropriate measure to prevent fraudulent uses of family reunification.1

The article goes on to say it’s frequently used in Germany, not seldom used.

Here’s an article that focuses more on the US. It was published in February of 2016, so it’s also pre-Trump.

DNA testing policy was officially implemented [in the US] on July 14, 2000, through an administrative memorandum written by Michael D. Cronin, then Executive Associate Commissioner of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The goal of the memorandum was to “provide guidance” to the USCIS field offices about using DNA testing for parentage verification within the family reunification process.

The policy has several key facets. It states that testing is voluntary in that the immigration official may only suggest, not require, DNA testing. The policy also cautions immigration officers that DNA testing should only be used when necessary. Per the policy, DNA testing must be paid for by the petitioners…Once the immigration official in charge of the case receives the test results, he or she weighs the test results in the context of other evidence and makes a decision.

Under the current policy, DNA testing essentially functions as the gold standard to validate the authenticity of the claimed relationship in cases where documents cannot validate it.

If it was fine then; why not now? Trump.

Here’s another article about what they do in Europe (it’s from December 2016), describing a situation more analogous to the one in the US that we’re talking about today: children who come with a purported relative who may not be a relative. It mentions that if the children are kept with that adult, it can entail serious risk because that person can be a smuggler or abusing the child:

According to the Protocol on unaccompanied children, DNA testing must be performed on children at risk. In practice, however, DNA tests are only carried out at sea-port border points – Algeciras, Tarifa, Motril and Malaga, all of which are in the Andalusian Autonomous Community – and in the Autonomous Cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Tests are not used for children arriving at the airport.

Establishing the family links between the child and the accompanying adult is often difficult given the lack of documentation or spelling mistakes when registering. The same family name is often spelled differently on the documents issued to the persons, which sometimes hampers proving a family connection.

DNA tests, as used in some parts of Spain and in some cases in Slovakia, are not a possibility available to all Member States given their high cost.

So, cost seems to often be a limiting factor.

It’s also the case that DNA doesn’t help in a family in which adoption has purportedly taken place, or can cause problems when there has been infidelity on the part of the mother that led to the conception of the child.

[NOTE: Here’s a piece about abuse of the asylum system in the US.]

Entering the Thai cave: inherently risky

The New Neo Posted on by

This is one of the better articles I’ve seen describing the inherent risks of the cave rescue in Thailand.

And if you (like me) wonder why the coach and the boys went into the caves under these conditions, you’re not alone:

The Tham Luang Nang Non caves are known locally as off-limits, a dangerous place where parents warn their children not to go into, especially during monsoon season.

“I was very worried about what would happen to them. The caves are a dark and scary place. I wouldn’t dare to ever go in there,” says 14-year-old Kittichoke Konkaew, whose close friend, Nuttawut Takumsong, is among the 12 young teammates and their coach who inexplicably defied local warnings and wandered deep into the cave.

Reports are that it was some sort of initiation that the group cooked up, a kind of dare gone bad:

The 12 Thai footballers who have been found alive deep in a cave may have ventured in as part of an initiation, one of the divers who helped locate them has said.

The boys, aged 11 – 16, reportedly went into the Luang Nang Non Cave with their 25-year-old coach in an effort to write their names on the walls.

They were “wading in and trying to go to the end of the tunnel, sort of like an initiation for local young boys to… write your name on the wall and make it back,” Ben Reymenants told Sky News.

This makes a certain amount of sense as an explanation. Kids—and especially boys of that age, but kids in general—like to dare each other and do risky things. In a group, individuals will often take risks they wouldn’t have taken had they been alone. They egg each other on, and no one wants to appear to be a fraidy-cat in front of the others.

I did some risky things as a child in a group, after being dared, things I would never ever have done had I been by myself. Fortunately, none of those things resulted in anything other than a scary experience and an upsetting memory.

Rescuer dies in attempt to free Thai soccer team trapped in cave

The New Neo Posted on by

This is very bad news:

A former Thai Navy SEAL volunteering in the Tham Luang rescue has drowned in the cave after falling unconscious during his return dive from the trapped boys.

SEAL commander Arpakorn Yookongkaew told a news conference today that the rescuer was working in a volunteer capacity and died during an overnight mission in which he was moving oxygen canisters…

The death underlines the intense risks of the mission to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach who have been trapped since June 23.

“Intense risks,” indeed. I have been disturbed and worried about the chances for rescue ever since I first heard the news about the trapped boys and an explanation of the physical realities of the situation. I deeply hope they are rescued and that not a single one of the other heroes (which I think is the proper word: heroes) trying to assist them has any sort of mishap.

We have become used to technology being able to conquer so many things and aid in so many situations. But it has its limits. Let’s hope those limits are not reached in this case:

So far, more than 130 million litres of water has been pumped out of the cave at a rate of 180,000 litres an hour, but rescuers are still struggling to plug every water source that flows into the cave and water levels beyond the T-junction where the boys are trapped has been agonisingly slow to drop.

Mr Narongsak told reporters overnight that it was still too dangerous to try and shepherd the boys out underwater…

Above ground, hundreds of infantry men and a number of volunteer “bird nesters” — men who scale mountains in search of the valuable and edible swallows nests that sell for hundreds of dollars — continued to hunt for alternative “chimneys” into the cave and a safer exit route for the boys.

New equipment is also expected to arrive today that can measure the thickness in the cave walls in the hope of finding a point that might be thin enough to drill through.

Perhaps that might be a better bet.

How SCOTUS became dangerous

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an excellent article on the history of the Supreme Court, written by Roger Kimball. Highly recommended.

An excerpt:

Responding to [Alexander] Hamilton [who felt the Supreme Court would be the “least dangerous” branch of government], the anti-federalist writer “Brutus” warned that the Constitution did not provide an effective mechanism for reining in judicial arrogance:

There is no power above them, to control any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controlled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself.

The place allocated to the judiciary by the Founders sought to circumvent the evils that “Brutus” envisioned. And had the judiciary kept within those bounds, all might have proceeded as the Founders intended. But we have had some 250 years of hermeneutical ingenuity expended on twisting the Constitution to serve partisan ends. The co-optation and perversion of the judiciary into a policymaking organ furthering a leftist agenda has been part of that process.

I will add that of course an institution will try to take on more power over time. The Supreme Court is certainly no exception. However, the justices of the Court are not actually completely independent of the executive or of the legislature, at least in theory—that is, prior to their taking office. After all, the executive appoints them and the Senate has to approve them. But after that, they are home free—unless they meet the standard for impeachment, which is a very high bar indeed.

Justice Kennedy, whose imminent retirement has sparked a lot of the current brouhaha about SCOTUS appointments, was one of the most powerful people in the US for many years, because he was the swing vote on the Court. And yet he was unelected. It was not a good situation, but that was the reality.

On ending Roe v. Wade

The New Neo Posted on by

Megan McArdle is pro-life, but she believes that Roe v. Wade rests on such shaky legal grounds that it needs to be reversed and the decision left to the states. What’s more, she does not think that would constitute a disaster; she thinks it would finally spark a more meaningful discussion of the issue and more fine-tuned laws than under Roe. It’s worth reading the whole thing.

I wish I could be as optimistic as McArdle. I perceive each side in the abortion argument to have large elements that are so intense they brook no compromise and no allowances for the opposite side. The two sides can be summarized as abortion is always murder and abortion is a basic right that should be allowed at any time on demand.

Just as an example, WaPo columnist Jen Rubin (who seems to hold the latter view) recently got a lot of traction for some remarks about Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders needing a “life sentence” of being made uncomfortable. But that publicity actually obscured a statement she voiced concurrently about the right to abortion.

Here’s the quote, in which Rubin is referring to Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and stating what should happen if these two Republican female senators vote to approve Trump’s (as-yet-unnamed) pick for SCOTUS [emphasis mine]:

“The message to those two women by Democrats by pro-choice women in those two states — by the entire states of Maine and Alaska — has to be simple. You vote for this, Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski, you have voted to criminalize abortion — this is on you. And we’re not going to accept these nonsense excuses that, ‘Well, because he said he was in favor of precedent, this won’t count, you can vote for him.’ No! It has to be all-out, on the ground in those states.”

She then suggested that they may be “phony” in claiming to be “pro-choice” as she added: “Those women Have to be put under a glaring light so that they finally have to make a choice that actually does go against their party. Unless they were just phony pro-choice women all along — which is distinctly possible.”

Later in the show, after claiming that Sanders’s criticism of the press amounts to an “incitement to violence,” claiming that journalists’ “lives are on the line,” Rubin recommended that a million protesters should mobilize to intimidate Sanders as well as Senators Collins and Murkowski.

“Let’s get a million people to go to Maine or a million people to go to Alaska and start putting pressure on those Senators. So it’s perfectly civil to do that — no one is telling them to be violent protesters, but we’re not going to let these people go through life unscathed. Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press — after inciting against the press. These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that’s a life sentence frankly.”

“These people” seems to have included Republican senators Collins and Murkowski. The idea of Rubin (and others) is that there can be no turning back; no allowing states to decide. Even a Republican who would facilitate that process is so guilty, so beyond the pale, that that person should be harassed for life. She (and many others) does not believe an anti-Roe position is a legitimate position with which she happens to disagree, but rather that such a position is an absolute evil.

And of course many of those who believe abortion is murder would say the same of the opposition to their point of view. I see the clash of these two extreme groups as escalating the conflict in this country in the next few years, if a Roe challenge is successful. And I say this despite the fact that I think—as does McArdle—that the legal reasoning in Roe was abominable and that overturning it would be the correct legal result.

[NOTE: My own views on abortion can be found here.]

On the Democratic Party: what was Perez thinking?

The New Neo Posted on by

You’d think that even if he thought it, he wouldn’t say it.

I’m referring to the statement of DNC chair Tom Perez that socialist Ocasio-Cortez represents “the future” of the Democratic Party.

Now, it’s possible that Perez—who has tilted left for many years—is a closet socialist, and that was what sparked his remark. Hey, maybe the entire Democratic Party is composed of closet socialists. But my real question is, whether Perez (or the Party in general) believes in socialism or not, why would he think it a good idea to say so? Why let the cat out of the bag, as it were?

In other words, why would he think this a winning strategy? Surely he’s aware that Ocasio-Cortez’s win was in a primary in a district with an atypical demographic and an election with extremely low turnout, against a fellow Democrat with low popular appeal. Does he think the future of the Party is to run increasingly leftist radical candidates in safely true-blue enclaves of large liberal cities? That won’t be getting the Party very far.

Does Perez (the child of legal Dominican immigrants, a doctor and the daughter of a diplomat) believe that the Democrats’ encouragement of illegal immigration and then amnesty and eventual citizenship will change the makeup of the US so much that it will soon resemble Ocasio-Cortez’s district?

Does he think the only thing that matters is that candidates like Ocasio-Cortez are young and telegenic, and that’s enough?

Does he think the Party’s only path to victory is to energize younger, more radical voters to come to the polls?

Did he think hardly anyone on the other side would even pay attention to what he said?

In contrast to Perez, Alan Dershowitz begs to differ. Of course, Dershowitz is not the chair of the Party. In fact, he’s being shunned, a prelude perhaps to being drummed out (as Joe Lieberman was):

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday he won’t let radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders steal the spirit of the Democratic Party and doubled-down on his attack on fellow liberals who “shunned” him at Martha’s Vineyard.

“I won’t let the Democrats steal my party from me. I want to regain the center,” Dershowitz told WABC Radio’s “Curtis and Cosby” show, noting that he will remain a Democrat as “as long as there’s some chance the Democratic Party can return to normalcy.”

“I want to make sure that the radical Left, the woman who got elected in the Bronx and Queens to Congress on the Democratic ticket, that they and Sanders and others don’t represent the Democratic Party,” he continued, referring to socialist Ocasio-Cortez who pulled off a shock victory last week against incumbent Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley.

“I want a fight within the Democratic Party to restore it to the days when it was a great centrist party, when it united people rather than divided people,” he added.

I think Dershowitz is fighting a losing battle.