What It Was, Was Baseball

Sleep deprivation for a long-time Astros fan living on the East Coast last night.

My word, what a game, what a series!

Astros-Dodgers World Series Game 5: The moments that made us lose our damn mind

The Astros and Dodgers broke the game of baseball into a million pieces:

Words fail. Analogies go limp. A common refrain for a game like Game 5 of the 2017 World Series is that baseball is drunk. Baseball is not drunk. Drunk people don’t fall up the stairs, through a window, and explode upon contact with the moon. This is not a movie. Movies have plots, logical progressions from A to B. This is not an avant-garde movie, either, where the director was trying to be weird. Both the Dodgers and Astros really, really, really wanted to be normal, and they absolutely could not.

I admire the Dodgers, too.

This is just one of those events where both teams show "never say die" isn't just a slogan.

Thank goodness today is a travel day.

Why Do Some People Become Terrorists?

Is there any messier topic than the one that poses the question, "Why to people decide to become terrorists?"

As set out in the Foreign Affairs article, "The Game Theory Behind Terrorism", the answer to that question is of vital importance:

... U.S. counterterrorism has moved from a purely operations-centered strategy—for example, assassinating al Qaeda leaders or what the media calls “cutting off the snake’s head”—to analyzing what the Department of Homeland Security describes as “the dynamics of radicalization to violence” or the reasons why some individuals associated with violent extremism commit violence and others do not. This new perspective has roped in government bodies, activists, and data scientists who not only analyze terrorist social networks and messaging patterns, but also transmit counter-extremist narratives.
***
In 1960, at the height of the Cold War, Nobel Prize-winning American economist Thomas Schelling introduced the world to his “theory of strategy,” an adaptation of game theory to the world of international relations. In his book, The Strategy of Conflict, Schelling coined the concept of a “focal point” (now known as a “Schelling point”) to describe how individuals and nations reach an agreement when bargaining with each other. The process involves anticipating what the other person or country might do.
***
Although Schelling certainly could not have foreseen the application of this idea to defeating ISIS, it is eerily appropriate. If we apply the 16 squares scenario with radicalization, what we are trying to prevent is, in effect, this “psychic moment,” as Schelling calls it, when likeminded individuals all come to check the same box: engage in terrorism. Around 20,000 plus foreign fighters, many of whom grew up in prosperous, democratic countries, have already done so.
***
In Schelling’s theory, these individuals would have made their decision through “rational behavior…based on an explicit and internally consistent value system.” For jihadists, that value system is Salafism. Given the fact that most of the world’s Salafis are not violent, however, it cannot be the Salafi ideology alone that encourages violence. Moreover, given that ISIS disseminates a good deal of nonviolent messaging—it recently released its own set of textbooks on geography, history, and Arabic poetry for a course to “educate” future jihadists—it is not violence alone that attracts individuals to its worldview.

It is, rather, ISIS’ ability to sell and validate its worldview in light of distinct circumstances that Muslim communities either experience or observe. Specifically, for both those socially and economically disenfranchised by life in the developed world, as well as for those experiencing or witnessing the violent unrest in Syria, ISIS offers the promise of a tranquil and authentic Islamic state, full of opportunity for those who accept its authority.

I don't know about the "tranquil and authentic" thing, but as I have said before, young people who perceive that things are not as they would like are a potentially potent force, as we learned from Hitler and a few hundred other men on a mission -

Inspiring young men to causes bigger than themselves is an old, old story. With lots of unhappy endings.

But why do they young people get involved? I keep hearing and reading that they are disaffected by things like poverty, global warming and various prejudices. As in "Rising tension in France blamed on disaffected Arab youths" or "U.S. Is Trying to Counter ISIS’ Efforts to Lure Alienated Young Muslims"

I'm a simple minded guy, so I like fairly uncomplicated ideas about human motivation. It occurs to me that a key motivator for many young, idealistic people is the desire to "make a better world." We see it all the time in environmental activists and other people rallying around some common cause, probably even including those fighting against that part of global warming they attribute to the activities of mankind. Back in the day when I studied such behavior, I grew to really appreciate the "life positions" described in the psychological school of Transactional Analysis (TA) (yes, I know TA has lots of critics, but bear with me here). These life positions are best viewed in a simple chart:

the ok corral (franklin ernst, 1971)

Sure, you say, but so what? It's my theory that many of the "disaffected" youth are not driven by poverty or the shrinking of glaciers in Greenland, but rather are acting out of a feeling superiority - they view themselves, as do many young people, as in a better position to see the bad things in the world and also believe they have the moral and spiritual superiority that allows them to take action to "improve" things (i.e. to change things to make the world as they believe it ought to be). Or, as TA would have it, they feel they are OK, but the rest of us are "Not OK" and they want to help us correct our thinking and behavior. Support for this idea can be found (somewhat tangentially, I admit) here:

. . . a distorted view of the principles of Islam and a violent and criminal interpretation of the obligation of Jihad constitute the main factor of their drive. Statements made in the course of interrogation by arrested terrorists (especially by supergrasses, referred to in Italy as ‘repenters’) as well as ideological documents disseminated internationally on the internet or items seized in the course of various judicial enquiries consistently show that the religious view of the world, obviously in the distorted perspective specific to terrorists, constitutes the main reason for their behaviour, whereas practically no importance attaches to the aspiration to liberate specific occupied territories or oppressed peoples.

There is also research that indicates that:

However, convenient ‘root causes’ like poverty, illiteracy, backwardness, fundamentalism, authoritarianism are hardly the considerations in sustaining terrorism or in winning recruits (Parashar, 2005). Claude Berrebi in a Rand Corporation study on the root causes of terrorism concluded that “If there is a link between income level, education, and participation in terrorist activities, it is either very weak or in the opposite direction of what one intuitively might have expected”

So, if not poverty, poor education or climate change, what?

Under Transactional Analysis, a person who holds the "I'm okay, you're not ok" life position:

It is a position of persons who feel victimized or persecuted, so victimize and persecute others. • They blame others for their miseries. • Delinquents and criminals often have this position and taken on paranoid behavior which in extreme cases may lead to homicide.

or as set here:

People in this position feel themselves to be superior in some way to others, who are seen as inferior and not OK. As a result, they may be contemptuous and quick to anger. Their talk about others will be smug and supercilious, contrasting their own relative perfection with the limitation of others.

Well, how does a religion that teaches that it is the only truth path, and that non-believers are less than a believer impact a personality like that?

I have an idea that with certain people, under the right conditions may see that the non-believers need to be taught a lesson - to be punished for not accepting the true path - or for their wicked ways.

Couple that with a network and ideology that reinforces that life position and you may just have a terrorist.

On the President's Speech

For some reason the President's inability to admit any error on his part reminds me of an aspect of the Fonz.



Mind, that's the only aspect of the Fonz I see they might share.

And the Fonz actually knew he was wrong, he just couldn't say it.

As opposed to being wrong and just not knowing it or knowing how much. Or maybe not even caring. Which is worst of all.

On the Media

We need some electronic media control in this country.

Self control.

They have too many talking heads covering stories with too little information at hand.

This leads to rampant speculation and ridiculous reporting. If "first reports are always wrong" then the media needs to pause to get the story right.

See the San Bernardino coverage.

Count the memes.

Just saying.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times is doing the kind of work that should be emulated by the electron pushers. See here. I'm not the only one to think so. See here.

College Sports: One UNC Alum's Thoughts

What follows may seem unrelated to either maritime or national Security but it is of some importance to our culture and to our national character.

As an alumnus of the University of North Carolina (and the father of two other UNC grads), it seems to me that one result of the recent  academic scandal ought to be a serious re-thinking of the place of athletics in the academic world.

I have enjoyed Tar Heel basketball and football over the years and rooted for the soccer teams, cheered on baseball, lacrosse and field hockey. But . . . I long have been dismayed by the incredible emphasis placed on the major sports.  This emphasis has turned these teams into minor leagues for professional sports while increasing the opportunity for corruption and misguided efforts of boosters to "help" the university field better teams.

In fact, according to the Wainstein Report on the scandal,  much of the most recent UNC academic fraud seems to rest at the feet of a relatively low level employee - who was also a major Tar Heel fan- to "assist" various sports teams by aiding and abetting puny/phony academic effort:

Despite her love for the University, she often told people that she had a difficult experience during her student years at Chapel Hill, feeling that she was left adrift by a faculty and staff that focused on “the best and the brightest” and failed to pay attention to students like herself who needed direction and support. Because of that experience, Crowder felt a strong affinity for students with academic or other challenges in their lives. She believed it was her duty to lend a helping hand to struggling students, and in particular to that subset of student-athletes who came to campus without adequate academic preparation for Chapel Hill’s demanding curriculum.

From such a tiny acorn of "good intentions" the road to hell so often is paved.

That there were other aiders and abettors who allowed academically poorly prepared athletes (a) into the university in the first instance, (b) fostered an environment in which minimal "athletic eligibility" became more important that raising these athletes to the level where they were capable of doing the work expected of other students at the university and (c) those who looked the other way in order to maintain some level of "plausible deniability" as to their own knowledge of this scheme is a major issue.

Somewhere there ought to be a special roasting pit for those who have allowed the concept of "1 and done" to flourish. If the NBA/WNBA want to take 17, 18 or 19 year old kids and let them mature before allowing them to play with the big people - well, let the NBA and WNBA fully open its "minor leagues" to those young men and women and stop this travesty of pretending that this current plan is in the best interest of anyone except certain college coaches. I don't think it hurt Madison Bamgarner much that he was able to be draft by Major League Baseball without having to pretend to be a college student.

In fact, it's that "pretending" that makes me most angry. We end up "pretending" that some of our college athletes are "students" because we "pretend" they are qualified or even interested in being in college and then allegedly create an elaborate support network to "pretend" they are getting the help they need to balance their athletic lives with the demands of their sports.

Face it, college is not for everyone. And among those who are fit for college, athletes are not the only ones with time issues. What's the level of support for the kid working his/her way through college by working part or full time and squeezing school in when time and money permit? You know, the one who didn't get a full scholarship (that includes room and board and tutors) to a great university and doesn't want to drown in debt to get a degree? My neighbor, a Korean war vet, took something like 8 years to graduate from Virginia Tech because he worked to get the money for school and to support his family along the way. Not a hero in battle, perhaps, but if I was one of his kids who had better lives because of his efforts to improve himself, I would be very humbled. Heck, I'm just his neighbor and I'm humbled.


In order to truly work through this issue, you have to look to the "big money" that has brought this corruption into the house of academia. A great deal of that money flows from the television networks which pay billions to provide coverage of college football and basketball. More comes from the purveyors of athletic attire and shoes. The late William C. Friday, once President of the UNC system was prescient when he said (William Friday: Power, Purpose, and American Higher Education:)

"No one who has an interest in college sports can fail to see the power of money."

One response to corruption in college sports was the 1990's establishment of the Knight Commission whose purpose is

"to ensure that intercollegiate athletics programs operate within the educational mission of their colleges and universities."

Moreover:

As Chairman James Knight said at the time, “We have a lot of sports fans on our board, and we recognize that intercollegiate athletics have a legitimate and proper role to play in college and university life. Our interest is not to abolish that role but to preserve it by putting it back in perspective. We hope this Commission can strengthen the hands of those who want to curb the abuses which are shaking public confidence in the integrity of not just big-time collegiate athletics but the whole institution of higher education.”

We saw this as a goal worthy of a foundation which identified higher education as one of its primary interests, for the abuses in athletics programs had implications reaching far beyond football stadiums and basketball arenas.

In a cover story shortly before the Commission was created, Time magazine described the problem as “an obsession with winning and moneymaking that is pervading the noblest ideals of both sports and education in America.” Its victims, Time went on to say, were not just athletes who found the promise of an education a sham but “the colleges and universities that participate in an educational travesty -- a farce that devalues every degree and denigrates the mission of higher education.”

Exactly.

Only now it is 24 or 25 years later and we are still in the same boat. Academic integrity has been sold - not in a big money way, not in point shaving, not in a "big bang" of corruption, but instead eroded away in little chunks, piece by piece, bit by bit by both misguided "fans" and those who may have profited from either encouraging the erosion by action or inaction. Big money for coaches, big profits for networks.

Sad.

Quite frankly, I would rather watch college teams full of students who plan to go on to become doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants or whatever who play for the love of the sport and a degree. I'll even accept good athletes who seek majors in sports management or Exercise and Sport Science - but I would prefer they earn those degrees.

What to do? Go Ivy League and not offer purely athletic scholarships? Raise minimum GPAs to participate in varsity sports? Put players on athletic probation for not performing in the classroom?

Did the University of Chicago do the right thing when it killed its successful  intercollegiate football program in 1939? Interesting thoughts here:

“In many colleges, it is possible for a boy to win 12 letters without learning how to write one,” Robert Maynard Hutchins, the university’s president, had written acidly of sports in The Saturday Evening Post. He particularly disparaged football, deriding as myth the idea that the game produced men of good character or instilled a sense of fair play. Indeed, for a college to be a success on the field, he said, it must be something of a scoundrel beyond it.

Seventy-two years later, what Hutchins called the “infernal nuisance” of college football is troubling more university administrators than ever. Ohio State, Miami, Southern California, North Carolina and on and on: it is as if global warming were affecting the number of big-name colleges in hot water.

But, now, football is back at Chicago - at a lower level:

In 1969, football returned as a varsity sport, oddly enough during the Vietnam War era when many rebellious students were comparing blocking and tackling to bombing and strafing.

Since then, the game has been thriving on its own measured terms in N.C.A.A. Division III, free of the highest level of competition. Winning is a preference and not an obsession. Players, though zealously recruited, are not given athletic scholarships. Championships are won but little noticed.

So, can a major public state university do what private Chicago did and move down levels to something like Div III, or is the money way too big?

Somewhere between the Ivy League and Division III the answer lies.

In the meantime, I may cut the cable TV (as my personal protest against big money to college sports) and focus on the smaller, less tainted sports and those "club" sports like UNC Rugby where professionalism seems not to have taken over.

But is there a connection to national security and maritime security? CDR Salamander has thoughts on some athletic recruiting issues at the military academies at The Moral Warping of D1 Sports Shows its Head Again. Along those lines, think about these words from here:

If the institution and their supporters are prepared to wink at -- if not also to participate in -- cheating against the rules by athletes, can the schools stand against cheating anywhere else?

Is it OK for students to cheat in class? Does anybody want to be represented by a lawyer who cheated to get through law school -- or to be operated on by a surgeon who had to cheat to pass the medical school exams?

Can colleges and universities continue their traditional posture of upholding the highest values of personal character and integrity when they themselves display so little of either?

Well, what level of cheating are you willing to accept as our national standard?

Are such things related to the false representations so prevalent in the political ads for people seeking high offices in our government?

What is the standard we accept as "okay" for our military leaders as they discuss our security needs?

The Slippery Slope of Thought Crimes: 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.'

The estimable Victor Davis Hanson offers up a peek in to the slippery slope of "Who Among Us Will Cast the First Bid for Donald Sterling’s Clippers?" :

punishing words and deeds without trials and on the basis of outraged public opinion

If the NBA establishes the precedent that it can force the sale of an owner’s property because of one’s illiberal speech, however odious, what now is the new standard of behavior? A sort of descending French Revolutionary justice, predicated on the sound and fury of the mob?

Harry Reid believes the Washington Redskins owner should be targeted next for his insistence on keeping the Redskins logo. Should he too be forced to sell and by whom—his fellow morally superior owners? Should the Orlando Magic owner, Doug DeVoss, be hounded out of the league—as was recently suggested—because he opposes gay marriage? How many owners don’t believe in the idea of man-made global warming? Oppose illegal immigration? Doubt the wisdom of affirmative action? Can we scour their emails, tap their phones, or ask the public for their private indiscretions?

And who will police the police? Oddly, some of the very public officials who weighed in on the Sterling matter themselves have a sorry record of racist speech—and in the public, not illegally taped private, realms. Could any of them in their retirement pitch in to buy the Clippers?

Reminds me of the trial Alice in Wonderland:

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out ‘Silence!’ and read out from his book, ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.’

Everybody looked at Alice.

‘I’m not a mile high,’ said Alice.

‘You are,’ said the King.

‘Nearly two miles high,’ added the Queen.

‘Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,’ said Alice: ‘besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.’

‘It’s the oldest rule in the book,’ said the King.

‘Then it ought to be Number One,’ said Alice.

The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. ‘Consider your verdict,’ he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.
***
‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.

‘I won’t!’ said Alice.

‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

I hold no brief for Donald Sterling.

Except, of course, those concerns all of ought to have about mob rule egged on by those with the loudest mouths. A "pack of cards" indeed.

Spinning the Sexual Revolution or Everything Old is New Again

The year was 1967. A young grad student was teaching an English class at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. One of the assignments he handed out was to read and do paper on Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." This short poem, for those of you who may not recall it is as follows:

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Okay. At the time - some 47 years ago - this poem created a scandal - an academic freedom and free speech scandal- one of the agents of which was a man named Jesse Helms, then a local Raleigh television editorialist.

While there are a couple of different versions of how Mr. Helms (later U.S. Senator Helms) got involved - see a UNC oral history here (which incidentally gets Marvell's first name wrong) -

What happened was that Michael Paull who was this young graduate student, assigned his class to write a theme on Marvell's poem, "To His Coy Mistress" which is, you know, like twenty-five lines long or something. Well, I can't remember what it said, but there was a misinterpretation and one of the freshman coeds told her mother that she had to write a poem on "my first seduction" which was not true. At least that's what the mother reported at a dinner party to Jesse Helms who was then a radio commentator in Raleigh, now our Senator. And the mother told Jesse Helms that her daughter had told her that she had to write on "my first seduction" and the assignment was given by a young male graduate student.
***
.... So Jesse Helms called the University and asked what was going on. "Are your young male graduate students trying to seduce the freshmen coeds this way?" And they didn't know anything about it, you know, and they said they'd call back. But in any event, Jesse went on the air.
***
During his editorial and complained that the University was assigning…. That the freshmen coeds had to write about their love affairs to the young graduate students who naturally were trying to seek out what was doing around. So that was the thing. And as soon as Jesse…. And he said, "What are they doing about it?" Well, immediately Carlysle Sitterson, the Chancellor, removed Paull from his teaching assignment to a research assignment, so he was no longer a TA, a teaching assistant, he was an RA, a research assistant.
***
All twenty-two of Mr. Paull's students signed petitions requesting his return to teaching duties. Between two hundred and three hundred students and faculty members organized into the Committee for Free Inquiry and asked that Mr. Paull be reinstated and that a review board be set up in the English department. Some newspapers expressed concern. The Greensboro Daily News declared, ‘The spectacle of a great University reassigning its instructors at the behest of a bullying television station is hardly believable.’ The Daily Tarheel campus newspaper headed its editorial, ‘Who's afraid of Jesse Helms? The University, that's who."’ So it went. They did appoint a committee in the English department to review the whole situation. There are five members; five tenured senior members of the faculty were appointed to look into it and this was a fig leaf. You can't just put him back and acknowledge you were wrong. So you have a committee and the committee…. Another report here is nineteen pages long and there were distinguished people on the committee and they recommended that he be reinstated, that it had all been an misunderstanding. And he was reinstated.

You should get the idea - a right wing assault on the academic freedom to teach great poetry because of sexual innuendo.

So now, we circle back - again to Chapel Hill, and this time not in a classroom supported by state funds. No, this time to a bar - a shortage of which there is not in Chapel Hill and which you are free to walk in and out of if the ambiance is not to your liking - and to this UNC Student Gets DJ Fired for Playing 'Blurred Lines,' Because Rape Culture :

On Saturday night, University of North Carolina student Liz Hawryluk asked the DJ at a local haunt, Fitzgerald's Irish Pub, to stop playing Robin's Thicke "Blurred Lines," because it "triggers" victims of sexual assault. After Hawryluk spoke out about the incident on social media, Fitzgerald's fired the DJ.

Hawryluk told Jenny Surane at The Daily Tarheel that after she complained to the DJ about the song, she was asked by management to leave the bar. "Fundamentally, all I was aiming to do is to create a safe space in the Carolina community," she explains. "In a lot of ways, violent or graphic images that allude to sexual violence are triggers."

Okay, apparently the most offensive lines in the offending song are:

And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me
[Pharrell:] Everybody get up

Oh, mercy.

How different are the concepts in Marvell's work and that of Thicke's work? How tender are our youth?

Everything old is new again.

My advice to those who are distraught by our culture and seek "trigger" labels on everything comes from Shakespeare - the only safe thing to do is to "get thee to a nunnery."

Otherwise, there is no safe haven.

In fact, I'm pretty sure a study of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus would need major trigger warnings - especially Act 2 Scene 4, when Lavinia is returned from being raped and mutilated.

What next? Banning the Bard? All that war and murder and stuff.

Better get after those Greek playwrights, too, I mean Sophocles - murder and incest?

You know, there are cultures which use rape as a means of warfare. Like for as long as humankind has roamed the earth.

Grow up, it's a tough world out there.

Allowing the future to prevail . . .

Out with the old . . .

There is a great deal of discussion in Navy circles about both "new technologies" (see e.g. fuel from seawater and railguns at sea and lasers get deployed on a 40-year old+ ship), and new thinking - "disruptive thinking", "additive manufacturing" and much more.

The Littoral Combat Ship sorta leads the way in demanding new technology to make it work right - UAVs, UUVs and perhaps USVs being essential to its missions. The LCS experiment with specialized command modules for ASW, AAW and ASuW clearly fall into this category.

Having just finished reading Buell'sThe Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and now reading Potter's Nimitz, I was struck by how rapidly these relative "old fogies" adapted to the concept that the "battleship' era was over and the age of "aircraft carriers and submarines" had begun. I guess it is fair to say that both Nimitz and Spruance had done some serious thinking and study of such matters before the war, but still - in a world of "battleship admirals" these two leaders adapted quickly because they were ready for the future when it became the present.

Perhaps this is not clearly stated enough - but as I am also reading the revised version of Gilder's Wealth and Poverty, there is something in this section that caught my attention:

.... creative destruction is always the essence of growth.

UCAV

From this fact arises the central question about any system of political economy, any platform of a political party, any inspiring scheme of leadership: will it allow the future to prevail? Will it favor the promise of the unknown against the comforts and passions of the threatened past? Little else matters. As at every other point in the harrowing course of human history, current technologies and productivities are inadequate to a rapidly growing and, above all, increasingly demanding world population. As at every other historical epoch, faithless and shortsighted men attempt to halt the increase of knowledge and the advance of technology; they dream of “stationary states,” “economic equilibria,” “alternative lifestyles,” “diminishing technological returns,” “ecological stasis,” and “a return to nature,” all the while mumbling of “the threat of scientific progress.” Such fantasies, endlessly refuted and endlessly recurrent, are the prime obstacle to the survival of civilization.
Gilder, George (2012-07-31). Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century (pp. 321-322). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

As you might know, "creative destruction" was not Gilder's idea, but came from Joseph Schumpeter, as set out in this nice summary:

3-D "print"

Herein lies the paradox of progress. A society cannot reap the rewards of creative destruction without accepting that some individuals might be worse off, not just in the short term, but perhaps forever. At the same time, attempts to soften the harsher aspects of creative destruction by trying to preserve jobs or protect industries will lead to stagnation and decline, short-circuiting the march of progress.

... in with the new

In the economy, buggy-whip makers and their employees will suffer when buggies get replaced by automobiles even if they apply the "best" of all management practices. In the Navy, "creative destruction" (or perhaps in the case of battleships, actual destruction) will cause "battleship admirals" to have to find new places to work. Gas turbines and efficient diesel replace steam ship power plants, making fuel from seawater replaces long logistics lines . . . Railguns and lasers go to sea. Ships may not need to have magazines for powder and shot . . .

So? My least favorite justification for proceeding in a certain fashion has always been, "We've always done it this way."

It seems that now is a great time for the Navy to embrace change and to "allow the future to prevail."

"MYOB"

So this morning, I was reading Roger L. Simon's "‘Mind Your Own Beeswax!’: How Social Conservatives Can Win By Losing" which discusses, among other things, the need for social conservatives to get out of the business of trying to use the tools of government to enforce rules against things they are against, while objecting to "liberals" using the tools of government to enforce things they believe it.

As Mr. Simon writes,

It’s interesting how some of those who most vociferously object to government interference in our economic affairs are most desirous of government interference in our personal ones.

I’m referring of course to social conservatives, who want to legislate our morals and values according to their views.

The examples he uses are abortion and same-sex marriage. His fundamental question is why is either one of these issues a matter for the government to be involved with?

Take marriage. I suspect the reason the American states first got involved in issuing licenses for marriage was to prevent "race mingling" (among other things) as set out here:

By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks, “mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, “Mongolians,” “Malays” or Filipinos. Twelve states would not issue a marriage license if one partner was a drunk, an addict or a “mental defect.” Eighteen states set barriers to remarriage after divorce.

In the mid-20th century, governments began to get out of the business of deciding which couples were “fit” to marry. Courts invalidated laws against interracial marriage, struck down other barriers and even extended marriage rights to prisoners.

It was also during the early 20th Century that serious efforts were made to eliminate "defectives" in our society from reproducing in the name of "eugenics." An interesting history of efforts to "perfect" society by sterilizing those deemed "unfit" can be found here:

In 1914, eugenicist Harry Laughlin published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law that proposed to authorize sterilization of the “socially inadequate” – people “maintained wholly or in part by public expense.” The law included sterilization of the “feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependent” – including “orphans, ne’er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers.” Laughlin’s publication was the basis for Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act, passed in 1924, which was first tested in the well-known Buck v. Bell case.

As seen by the nearby map, which came from here,the idea was popular. Why? Well, it was a "progressive" attempt to protect and improve the species, as set out here (pdf):

The term eugenics was originally coined by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton (1822–1911) in 1883 to mean ‘truly’ or ‘purely’ born (Galton, 1883). It was redefined by Galton’s American disciple Charles B. Davenport
(1866–1944) as ‘the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding’ (Davenport, 1910). Eugenic theory was based on a belief in the genetic inheritance of a large number of social traits. At that time ‘genetic’ meant largely Mendelian heredity
where very complex traits were thought to be governed by one or two genes.
***
Between 1910 and 1935 Laughlin wrote up what became knownas the ‘model sterilization law’ that was used, in modified form, by a number of states (Reilly,1991). Through contacts with influential members of local chapters of the American Eugenics Society (AES), Laughlin and other eugenicists lobbied in a number of state legislatures on behalf of compulsory sterilization laws for institutionalized individuals deemed to be ‘genetically inferior’. In virtually all cases, itwas claimed that sterilization of genetic defectives
now would save millions of dollars in the future (Figure 2). By 1935 over 30 states had passed such laws. Well over 21,000 such sterilizations had taken place by 1935 and well over 60,000 by the 1960s (Paul, 1974; see Note). A court challenge to the onstitutionality
of such laws, Buck vs Bell in Virginia, was staged by pro-sterilization forces in 1925. The law was upheld at the state level and by the US Supreme court on appeal in 1927. It was in writing his majority opinion on this case that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the oft-repeated phrase ‘Three generations of imbeciles are enough’ (Lombardo, 1985).
***
It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe in any detail the character of the progressive movement, but a few of its most central tenets will suggest how closely eugenic thinking managed to fit in with progressive philosophy. On the one hand, progressivism supported the ideology of scientific planning and management, that is, the new complex economics and other social developments could not be left simply to laissez-faire practices.

Get the idea? The law was structured to forbid certain marriages that, in the scientific view of the day, would weaken the species. Further, the state acquired the power to sterilize the "unfit" so that they could not reproduce.

Now, some states are considering financial restitution to some of those who were sterilized. See here:

An effort to compensate survivors of North Carolina's defunct sterilization program with cash payments received a jolt of bipartisanship when Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis vowed to see it through this year.

Thousands of North Carolina residents in the 20th century received surgeries through a state-sponsored eugenics program that left them unable to reproduce. A state panel often authorized sterilizations for people it found mentally feeble, promiscuous or too poor to raise children.

Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue supports $50,000 payments to the living victims. Tillis was one of four sponsors - two Democrats and two Republicans - of a compensation bill for the same amount.

"Every once in a while I feel like you have the chance to make history. Th
is is one of those chances," Tillis said on the House floor this month during debate on the bill. "This is an opportunity to say, 'we're going to put this to rest.'"

While lawmakers agree the program represents an awful chapter in state history, the idea of going further and securing monetary compensation for the victims has been a hard sell this year, especially for Tillis' fellow Republicans.
***
North Carolina laws enforced from 1929 to 1974 led to more than 7,600 people undergoing sterilizations. Some chose to be sterilized as a form of birth control. Up to 2,000 people who were sterilized may be alive. The state has verified 118 victims who are still living.

Then-Gov. Mike Easley formally apologized for the program in 2002. Compensation supporters say the tax-free money is a concrete way to show the state's regret. No other state with a similar program has agreed to make payments like North Carolina is considering.

Due to budget issues, the payments have yet to be authorized.

So, would you trust the state to now decide whether your genetic make up is so screwed up that you should not be allowed to procreate? Or should the state decide that certain persons are too big a drain on society to be allowed to continue living if they so choose?

I suspect, "death panels" aside, most of us want the state to keep its nose out of this business.

I do not want to step deeply into the abortion issue. I do note that there are some in the history of abortion in this country who saw the issue as being part of the eugenics process - a means of ridding society of the unfit who will become a burden on the taxpayers. Birth control was seen a way of perfecting the human race:

Let us first of all consider merely from the viewpoint of business and "efficiency" the biological or racial problems which confront us. As Americans, we have of late made much of "efficiency" and business organization. Yet would any corporation for one moment conduct its affairs as we conduct the infinitely more important affairs of our civilization? Would any modern stockbreeder permit the deterioration of his livestock as we not only permit but positively encourage the destruction and deterioration of the most precious, the most essential elements in our world community—the mothers and children. With the mothers and children thus cheapened, the next generation of men and women is inevitably below par. The tendency of the human elements, under present conditions, is constantly downward.

Turn to Robert M. Yerkes's "Psychological Examining in the United States Army"(1) in which we are informed that the psychological examination of the drafted men indicated that nearly half—47.3 per cent.—of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children or less—in other words that they are morons. Professor Conklin, in his recently published volume "The Direction of Human Evolution"(2) is led, on the findings of Mr. Yerkes's report, to assert: "Assuming that these drafted men are a fair sample of the entire population of approximately 100,000,000, this means that 45,000,000 or nearly one-half the entire population, will never develop mental capacity beyond the stage represented by a normal twelve-year-old child, and that only 13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence."

Making all due allowances for the errors and discrepancies of the psychological examination, we are nevertheless face to face with a serious and destructive practice. Our "overhead" expense in segregating the delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying—I have sufficiently indicated, though in truth I have merely scratched the surface of this international menace—demonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet hardheaded "captains of industry," financiers who pride themselves upon their cool-headed and keen-sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements of the community.

At the present time, civilized nations are penalizing talent and genius, the bearers of the torch of civilization, to coddle and perpetuate the choking human undergrowth, which, as all authorities tell us, is escaping control and threatens to overrun the whole garden of humanity. Yet men continue to drug themselves with the opiate of optimism, or sink back upon the cushions of Christian resignation, their intellectual powers anaesthetized by cheerful platitudes. Or else, even those, who are fully cognizant of the chaos and conflict, seek an escape in those pretentious but fundamentally fallacious social philosophies which place the blame for contemporary world misery upon anybody or anything except the indomitable but uncontrolled instincts of living organisms. These men fight with shadows and forget the realities of existence. Too many centuries have we sought to hide from the inevitable, which confronts us at every step throughout life.

Let us conceive for the moment at least, a world not burdened by the weight of dependent and delinquent classes, a total population of mature, intelligent, critical and expressive men and women. Instead of the inert, exploitable, mentally passive class which now forms the barren substratum of our civilization, try to imagine a population active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most contented and healthy sort. Would such men and women, liberated from our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and inertia, be deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink into a slough of complacency and fatuity?

No! Life for them would be enriched, intensified and ennobled in a fashion it is difficult for us in our spiritual and physical squalor even to imagine. There would be a new renaissance of the arts and sciences. Awakened at last to the proximity of the treasures of life lying all about them, the children of that age would be inspired by a spirit of adventure and romance that would indeed produce a terrestrial paradise. [Margaret L. Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter XII]

Well, we all know where carrying that plan of eliminating the "unfit" has led in the past.

In some cultures, the "unfit" who don't follow mainstream thinking are branded as "infidels" and forced to convert or die.

All of which brought me back to a book I read when I was about 13 or 14. Eric Frank Russell's planet of Gand, which introduced me "MYOB" - and you can read about it here:

‘A man has duties. He has no right to refuse those.’

‘No?’ She raised tantalizing eyebrows, delicately curved. ‘Who defines those duties—himself or somebody else?’

‘His superiors most times.’

‘Superiors,’ she scoffed with devastating scorn. ‘No man is superior to another. No man has the slightest right to define another man’s duties. If anyone on Terra exercises such impudent power it is only because idiots permit him to do so. They fear freedom. They prefer to be told. They like to be ordered around. They love their chains and kiss their manacles. What men!’

Amazing what happens when you allow other people to mind your business.