Modern Times?

Walter Lippmann wrote The Good Society before World War II but some of it speaks to us today:

Although the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme, and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words. Their weapons are the coercive direction of the life and labor of mankind. Their doctrine is that disorder and misery can be overcome only by more and more compulsory organization. Their promise is that through the power of the state men can be made happy.

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must, by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come.

That's not to suggest the Mr. Lippmann was not right about everything he ever wrote- like most of us, his thinking evolved as he grew older.

Considering when he was writing the above, however,  his thoughts here are worth considering in these more -uh- modern times.

Freedom requires resisting "compulsory organization" in all its various guises.

UPDATE:
I think AG Session gets it right here:

Attorney General Sessions Gives an Address on the Importance of Free Speech on College Campuses
Washington, DC ~ Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Remarks as prepared for delivery

Thank you for that kind introduction. I am so pleased to be here at Georgetown Law and to be speaking at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution where the exchange of ideas is both welcomed and encouraged. Thank you, Professor Barnett for that introduction and for hosting me here with your students. And thank you students for letting me take part in this important conversation with you.

As you embark on another school year, you and hundreds of your peers across this campus will, we hope, continue the intellectual journey that is higher education. You will discover new areas of knowledge; you will engage in debates great and small; many of your views will be challenged and some changed. You will—if your institutions follow our nation’s historic cultural and education traditions—pursue truth while growing in mind and spirit. In short, we hope you will take part in the right of every American: the free, robust, and sometimes contentious exchange of ideas.

As you exercise these rights, realize how precious, how rare, and how fragile they are. In most societies throughout history and in so many that I have had the opportunity to visit, such rights do not exist. In these places, openly criticizing the government or expressing unorthodox opinions could land you in jail or worse.

Let me tell you about one such example. It occurred one autumn when a few idealistic university students came together as a group to advocate for a deeply felt political creed. Wanting to recruit others to their cause, they staked out some ground on a campus walkway popular with students and approached them as they passed.

They said things like: “Do you like freedom? Do you like liberty?” and then they offered to these passersby a document they revered and believed stood for these ideals: the U.S. Constitution. These young proselytizers for liberty did not block the walkway, did not disrupt surrounding activities, and did not use intimidation or violence to press their cause.

Nevertheless, a local government official labeled this behavior “provocative” and in violation of government policy. When the young people bravely refused to stop, citing their right to free speech, the local official had them arrested, handcuffed, and jailed.

This troubling incident could have occurred under any number of tyrannies where the bedrock American ideals of freedom of thought and speech have no foothold. But this incident happened right here in the United States, just last year, at a public college in Battle Creek, Michigan. A state official actually had students jailed for handing out copies of the United States Constitution.

Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack.

The American university was once the center of academic freedom—a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas. But it is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogenous thought, a shelter for fragile egos.

In 2017, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education surveyed 450 colleges and universities across the country and found that 40 percent maintain speech codes that substantially infringe on constitutionally protected speech. Of the public colleges surveyed, which are bound by the First Amendment, fully one-third had written policies banning disfavored speech.

For example, at Boise State University in Idaho, the Student Code of Conduct prohibits “[c]onduct that a reasonable person would find offensive.” At Clemson University in South Carolina, the Student Code of Conduct bans any verbal or physical act that creates an “offensive educational, work or living environment.”

But who decides what is offensive and what is acceptable? The university is about the search for truth, not the imposition of truth by a government censor.

Speech and civility codes violate what the late Justice Antonin Scalia rightly called “the first axiom of the First Amendment,” which is that, “as a general rule, the state has no power to ban speech on the basis of its content.” In this great land, the government does not get to tell you what to think or what to say.

In addition to written speech codes, many colleges now deign to “tolerate” free speech only in certain, geographically limited, “free speech zones.” For example, a student recently filed suit against Pierce College, a public school in southern California, alleging that it prohibited him from distributing Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution outside the school’s free speech zone.

The size of this free speech zone? 616 square feet—an area barely the size of a couple of college dorm rooms. These cramped zones are eerily similar to what the Supreme Court warned against in the seminal 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines case about student speech: “Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven.”

College administrators also have silenced speech by permitting “the heckler’s veto” to control who gets to speak and what messages are conveyed. In these instances, administrators discourage or prohibit speech if there is even a threat that it will be met with protest. In other words, the school favors the heckler’s disruptive tactics over the speaker’s First Amendment rights. These administrators seem to forget that, as the Supreme Court put it in Watson v. City of Memphis more than 50 years ago, “constitutional rights may not be denied simply because of hostility to their assertion or exercise.”

This permissive attitude toward the heckler’s veto has spawned a cottage industry of protestors who have quickly learned that school administrators will capitulate to their demands.

Protestors are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that insufficiently conform with their views.

A frightening example occurred this year at Middlebury College. Student protestors violently shut down a debate between an invited speaker and one of the school’s own professors. As soon as the event began, the protestors shouted for 20 minutes, preventing the debate from occurring.

When the debaters attempted to move to a private broadcasting location, the protestors—many in masks, a common tactic also used by the detestable Ku Klux Klan—pulled fire alarms, surrounded the speakers, and began physically assaulting them. In short, Middlebury students engaged in a violent riot to ensure that neither they nor their fellow students would hear speech they may have disagreed with.

Indeed, the crackdown on speech crosses creeds, races, issues, and religions. At Brown University, a speech to promote transgender rights was cancelled after students protested because a Jewish group cosponsored the lecture. Virginia Tech disinvited an African American speaker because he had written on race issues and they worried about protests disrupting the event.

This is not right. This is not in the great tradition of America. And, yet, school administrators bend to this behavior. In effect, they coddle it and encourage it.

Just over a week ago, after the Orwellian-named “anti-fascist” protestors had successfully shut down numerous campus speaker events in recent months with violent riots, Berkeley was reportedly forced to spend more than $600,000 and have an overwhelming police presence simply to prove that the mob was not in control of the campus.

In advance, the school offered “counseling” to any students or faculty whose “sense of safety or belonging” was threatened by a speech from Ben Shapiro—a 33-year-old Harvard trained lawyer who has been frequently targeted by anti-Semites for his Jewish faith and who vigorously condemns hate speech on both the left and right.

In the end, Mr. Shapiro spoke to a packed house. And to my knowledge, no one fainted, no one was unsafe. No one needed counseling.

Yet, after this small victory for free speech, a student speaking to a reporter said in reaction, “I don’t think Berkley should host any controversial speakers, on either side.” That is, perhaps, the worst lesson to take away from this episode.

I know that the vast majority of students like you at the Constitution Center need no lecture on the dangers of government-imposed group think. But we have seen a rash of incidents often perpetrated by small groups of those students and professors unable or unwilling to defend their own beliefs in the public forum.

Unfortunately, their acts have been tolerated by administrators and shrugged off by other students. So let us directly address the question: Why should we worry that free speech is in retreat at our universities?

Of course, for publicly run institutions, the easy answer is that upholding free speech rights is not an option, but an unshakable requirement of the First Amendment. As Justice Robert Jackson once explained: “If there is a fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”

But even setting aside the law, the more fundamental issue is that the university is supposed to be the place where we train virtuous citizens. It is where the next generation of Americans are equipped to contribute to and live in a diverse and free society filled with many, often contrary, voices.

Our legal heritage, upon which the Founders crafted the Bill of Rights, taught that reason and knowledge produced the closest approximation to truth—and from truth may arise justice. But reason requires discourse and, frequently, argument. And that is why the free speech guarantee is found not just in the First Amendment, but also permeates our institutions, our traditions, and our Constitution.

The jury trial, the right to cross-examine witnesses, the Speech & Debate Clause, the very art and practice of lawyering—all of these are rooted in the idea that speech, reason, and confrontation are the very bedrock of a good society. In fact, these practices are designed to ascertain what is the truth. And from that truth, good policies and actions can be founded.

The Federalists against the Anti-federalists, Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. against George Wallace. Indeed, it was the power of Dr. King’s words that crushed segregation and overcame the violence of the segregationists. At so many times in our history as a people, it was speech—and still more speech—that led Americans to a more just, more perfect union.

The right to freely examine the moral and the immoral, the prudent and the foolish, the practical and the inefficient, and the right to argue for their merits or demerits remain indispensable for a healthy republic. This has been known since the beginning of our nation.

James Madison knew this when, as part of his protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts—the speech codes of his day—he said that the freedom of speech is “the only effectual guardian of every other right.”

And, in a quote that I am reminded of daily in this job, Thomas Jefferson knew this when he said in words now chiseled in the stone of his memorial, “I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Soon you will be the professor, the university president, the Attorney General, and even the President of the United States. And you will have your own pressing issues to grapple with. But I promise you that no issue is better decided with less debate, indifference, and with voices unheard.

There are those who will say that certain speech isn’t deserving of protection. They will say that some speech is hurtful—even hateful. They will point to the very speech and beliefs that we abhor as Americans. But the right of free speech does not exist only to protect the ideas upon which most agree at a given moment in time.

As Justice Brandeis eloquently stated in his 1927 concurrence in Whitney v. California: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

And let me be clear that protecting free speech does not mean condoning violence like we saw recently in Charlottesville. Indeed, I call upon universities to stand up against those who would silence free expression by violence or other means on their campuses.

But a mature society can tell the difference between violence and unpopular speech, and a truly free society stands up—and speaks up—for cherished rights precisely when it is most difficult to do so.

As Justice Holmes once wrote: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” For the thought that we hate.

And we must do so on our campuses. University officials and faculty must defend free expression boldly and unequivocally. That means presidents, regents, trustees and alumni as well. A national recommitment to free speech on campus is long overdue. And action to ensure First Amendment rights is overdue.

Starting today, the Department of Justice will do its part in this struggle. We will enforce federal law, defend free speech, and protect students’ free expression from whatever end of the political spectrum it may come. To that end, we are filing a Statement of Interest in a campus free speech case this week and we will be filing more in the weeks and months to come.

This month, we marked the 230th anniversary of our Constitution. This month, we also marked the 54th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham. Four little girls died that day as they changed into their choir robes because the Klan wanted to silence the voices fighting for civil rights. But their voices were not silenced.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would call them “the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity,” and I urge you to go back and read that eulogy and consider what it had to say to each of us. This is the true legacy of free speech that has been handed down to you. It was bought with a price. This is the heritage that you have been given and which you must protect.

So I am here today to ask you to be involved to make your voices heard—and to defend the rights of others to do the same.

For the last 241 years, we have staked a country on the principle that robust and even contentious debate is how we discover truth and resolve the most intractable problems before us.

Your generation will decide if this experiment in freedom will continue. Nothing less than the future of our Republic depends on it.

Things: Armed Ice Breakers? Combating Terrorism? Sea Piracy Map? Global war on Illegal Fishing? Foreign threats to U.S. energy independence?

Chuck Hill asks Will the CG Again Arm Icebreakers? Good question. Depends on how we perceive the Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic.

Interested in "combating terrorism?" Need to visit the Combating Terrorism Center at the USMA site for lots of good info and excellent publications:

Situated at the nexus of theory and practice, the Combating Terrorism Center serves as an important national resource that rigorously studies the terrorist threat and provides policy-relevant research while moving the boundaries of academic knowledge. The CTC’s distinguished scholars, international network of experts, and access to senior U.S. government leadership set it apart from any other like enterprise.

The ICC IMB Live Piracy Map shows where the "bad guys" are operating and Live Piracy Report tells what they've been up to:

Zones of ineffective law enforcement seem to be part of the pattern. Most incidents are not hijackings and kidnappings, but rather low level theft and robbery, so we've got that going for us.

Speaking of illegal activity, Indonesia Wants Global War on Illegal Fishing. Hello, China! But China is not alone as noted in West Africa loses over $2 billion to illegal fishing because governments don’t talk to each other:

Both international and regional vessels are guilty of contravening existing regulations, Greenpeace found during a ten-week surveillance voyage from February to May. It documented a number of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing practices off the coast of Mauritania, Senegal, Cape Verde, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone. After boarding 37 fishing vessels, the group found evidence of infractions like illegal shark finning, possession of incorrect net mesh sizes, and fishing without licenses or outside of permit areas. These illegal activities were carried out by vessels with Chinese, Italian, Korean, Comoros, and Senegalese flags.

I'm surprised the Spanish flag wasn't seen. See Looting the Seas:

Spanish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Josefa Andrés Barea said the subsidized foreign fishing licenses are vital. When Spain entered the EU in 1986, very few Spanish vessels were allowed in the Union’s waters. So fishing in foreign waters was — and still is — the only way for many ship owners to make a living. And if Spain isn’t fishing, she said, less savory global players will scoop up the catch instead.

"There's a fundamental problem here which is that major [fishing] powers like China will be there if we're not. And they don't have any rules,” Andrés said. “They're much more predatory than we are."

Sort of weak argument, isn't it? "If I don't rob you first, a worse thug might get you instead . . ." Part of the outrage is that the Spanish fleet, like the Chinese is heavily subsidized.

Speaking of subsidized, the Nigerian oil minister wants to cut back U.S. shale production because it's hurting Nigeria's oil sales. No, I'm not kidding, see Oil Prices's Nigerian Oil Minister Calls For Broader Policy To Limit US Shale Production:

Nigeria is hoping that OPEC will extend the oil production cut deal for the rest of 2017 as the challenge from U.S. shale is showing no signs of subsiding, according to the country’s Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachukwu. Kachikwu admitted that U.S. shale is OPEC’s biggest problem as production can be cut or boosted in a short time in response to changing market conditions, unlike conventional oil projects.

It’s worth recalling how two months ago, Reuters quoted sources as saying that two senior Saudi energy officials held closed-door talks with some of the biggest shale producers in the U.S., warning them OPEC would not extend the production cut deal to offset their growing output. Apparently, things have changed since then because an extension is near a foregone conclusion.
***
Speaking to media at the offshore Technology Conference, Kachikwu hinted that a policy initiative aimed at curbing shale output, or an agreement within the industry would help OPEC’s efforts. The likelihood of either of these happening is remote, particularly not with a President whose top priority is energy independence and not with an private shale oil industry that has suffered its fair share as a result of what some see as a price war initiated by Saudi Arabia and its allies and others see as a desperate attempt on the part of some OPEC producers to conceal their dwindling supplies.

Heh. Energy independence for the U.S. means it's a buyer's market.

Update: The Saudis are whining,too. See Saudi Arabia Whines US Has Too Much Control Over World’s Oil. Have I mentioned I get some pension money from a couple of U.S. energy companies? Well, I do.

Things to Read and Consider - Energy Edition

From the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the "Short Term Energy Outlook"

U.S. crude oil production averaged 9.4 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2015, and it is forecast to average 8.9 million b/d in 2016 and 8.8 million b/d in 2017.

From the Peak Oil website, I Was Wrong About Peak Oil:

But two lucky things happened to delay this Peak Oil economic disaster. First, horizontal drilling and fracking allowed drilling companies to pump oil and natural gas out of hard to reach areas. As a result, the supply of oil (and its substitute natural gas) went up, with a commensurate reduction in oil and gas prices. Second, the availability of less expensive alternative forms of energy (particularly wind and solar) — combined with concerns about global warming — have reduced demand for fossil fuels.

I don't think "luck" had much to do with it. Good engineering and science, on the other hand, matter greatly.

An older article from the Audubon Society Will Wind Turbines Ever Be Safe For Birds?:

Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in

Photo Source

North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy. And yet, it’s also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries: more than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states.

The wind industry has the incentive to stop the slaughter: Thanks to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it’s illegal to kill any bird protected by the Act—even if the death is "incidental," meaning it occurs unintentionally on the part of the wind farm. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act recommends that to avoid eagle deaths, specifically, companies seriously consider where they site their wind developments, and that they also limit turbines’ impact using techniques like radar to detect incoming birds....

Oh, not just birds, bats, too, because of, you know, "unpredictability," (emphasis added)

Professor Fiona Mathews, of Exeter University, said: "The findings highlight the difficulty of establishing with certainty the effect of major developments before they occur.

"This is a real problem for the planning system.

"In most countries the system of Environmental Impact Assessment is based on the assumption accurate assessment of risks can be made in advance and so appropriate steps can be taken to avoid any adverse effects - or if the bad effects cannot be mitigated, then the development should not be permitted to go ahead.

"Our work highlights this can be difficult to achieve in practice as animals do not always behave the way we might anticipate."

While on the topic of wind turbines, there is the question of unintended consequences, even without their bird killing aspect, as set out in this Meteorology News blog post, Could Windmills Alter the Weather?

Photo Source

Scientists Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland have shown that installation of a massive wind farm covering the bulk of the central United States into central Canada would effectively “steal” energy from the atmosphere. As anyone who has studied basic physics may recall, in a closed system such as the Earth’s atmosphere, energy is conserved, that is, it cannot be created or destroyed. As air flows through the blades of a gigantic, 300-foot wind turbine tower, the wind energy turns the blades. This energy is robbed from the atmosphere, effectively slowing the wind speed proportionally. The greater the array of wind turbines, the more energy is removed from the atmospheric flow and the slower the ambient wind will travel.Slowing wind speeds by 5 or 6 miles per hour – while it sounds negligible, could have significant impacts on the large-scale atmospheric flow and yield consequences we do not yet understand.

I have not really looked at the environmental impact statements required of these "green" turbines, but . . .

Conservative estimates are that it would take at least a quarter-million wind turbines to meet the United States’ energy needs. Installation of such an enormous array of wind turbines would have a profound impact on the atmospheric wind flow over the surface of the United States and perhaps even other nations.

Hmmm. "Could have . . ."

In retrospect, what seems an ironic use of the "butterfly effect" to promote wind power in the HuffPo:

Mathematician, meteorologist and chaos theory pioneer Edward Lorenz was the man behind the butterfly effect. The simple, appealing idea embedded in the analogy that if a distant butterfly flaps its wings a few weeks later you might have a hurricane on your doorstep.

How many hurricanes might a quarter-million wind turbines cause to arrive on your doorstep? What is the impact on taking millions of birds and bats out of our world?

Newton's third law seems applicable "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It seems we don't yet know what all the reactions might be, but as noted above, there are many "laws" of science that apply to windfarms - including the first law of thermodynamics.

So, what is "green?"

Unsafe Places U.S. Cities with Highest Murder Rates Per Capita

So, I was reading that New Orleans has recorded its 113th murder in 2016, as set out here. That got me to thinking about whether that was a high number given that city's population.

out

That sent me off to looking for data on per capita murder rates for U.S. cities, which I found neighborscouts.com, which has a convenient list of the top 30 cities in terms of murder rates per capita (as opposed to just a raw number).

New Orleans is on that list, in 7th place (39 per 100,000), behind such lovely spots as East St. Louis, IL (#1), Chester, PA (#2), St. Louis, MO (#3), Gary, IN (#4), Detroit, MI #5), Camden, NJ (#6).

A surprise to me was Rocky Mount, NC at #17 with 16 murders in its 56,535 population, or roughly 28/100,000.

East St Louis's rate is about 100/100,000. The national average is 4 per 100,000.

Chicago hit 500 homicides over the Labor Day weekend for 2016 for a projected rate of 24.1 per 100,000 citizens. Interesting dive into Chicago homicides here.

NYC has a 2016 projected rate of 3.8/100,000.

Why the higher murder rates? Gangs, drugs, lack of jobs? Culture?

According to this, the U.S. "intentional murder" rate puts it at #108 in the world, which is better than 110 other countries, including Jamaica, Russia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and the deadly Honduras.

The relevance to national security? It's the societies that are formed in areas in which law enforcement is subverted by enforcement of other codes of behavior that based in groups that are outside of the mainstream culture and which act to protect turf or to induct new members or punish "disloyal" members - enforcing their own "laws" by murder and intimidation that can pose a threat to the larger culture. I don't know who is in charge in East St. Louis, but I doubt it's the police.

UPDATE: Foreign Affairs covers the the world in The End of Homicide:

The world has never been safer than it is right now. Most forms of violence have dropped precipitously over the past few centuries. Although conflict deaths recently spiked (the war in Syria accounts for one third of all war-related killings today), fewer people are dying from warfare than at virtually any time in human history. Terrorist violence also increased over the past two years—especially in six countries the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia—but it still pales in comparison to rates in the 1960s and 1970s. Most impressive of all, homicidal violence is in steady retreat almost everywhere, especially the West.

The lethal violence that persists is unevenly concentrated. Almost half of the roughly 430,000 annual murders around the world are generated by just 25 countries. A handful of states in Latin America—Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela—account for one quarter of all homicides on the planet. As many as 47 of the 50 cities with the highest murder rates are located there.

Unaccounted for is a criminal enterprise like North Korea - which may have a low homicide rate, but is hell on its citizens.

Fiction, Science Fiction and Military Strategy and Thinking

On very rare occasions I am asked to suggest some sort of reading list for prospective Naval officers. Or even for prospective Marines.

It has been my usual practice to refer the person seeking advice to the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program which contains a very good selection. Most of these are historical or "current events" in nature, such as Joel Holwitt's Execute Against Japan or Robert Kaplan's Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.

There are some great books on the challenges of war at sea on that list, as well there should be. These include James D. Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.

On the other hand, sometimes there are recommendations for books in the "speculative" fiction arena - which some might call "science fiction." These would include Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers about which the keepers of the CNO list wrote:

The rigors of military life, the sacrifices that such a life entails, the raw fear before going into battle, the burdens of leadership—all are captured masterfully. Like most sci-fi that stands the test of time, Starship Troopers is about much more than futuristic hardware and shootouts with space creatures. It is, above all, a novel of ideas, a book that stimulates thought about citizenship, responsibility, duty, and the role of the individual in society.

Another recommendation, retired CPO Jeff Edwards'The Seventh Angel which we are informed "... focuses on the crew of a fictional Arleigh Burke destroyer and the civilian technicians operating an unmanned robot submersible to stop a rouge actor with nuclear weapons."

Yes, there is other fiction on the lists, including Patrick O’Brian's Master and Commander ( don't stop with the one book, the whole series is terrific). I assume that C.S. Forster's Hornblower series lies somewhere on the list. The slightly more risque Dewey Lambdin Alan Lewrie series may or may not be there, but it is quite good, even if a little historical stretching goes with it.

But I digress.

As a young officer serving in a ship you learn that one key thing is to be "forehanded." This is not just a tennis term, but rather another was of saying "looking to the future." It means learning to contemplate what actions you would take "if . . ."

As in "What would I do if the rudder stopped responding?" "What steps would I take if there was a fire in a berthing area?" "What would I do if a fleet of enemy ships suddenly appeared to threaten the jeep carriers which I am escorting?" You can make up your own scenarios. Some you can base, like the last one in my sequence, in a historical context. Others? Well, if you like (and the watch is sufficiently boring), you can get into odd thoughts - "What would I do if a flying saucer suddenly appeared over the ship?"

It isn't too much of a leap from that to appreciating the authors of science fiction - who mostly write about "What if ...?" Better than than, as the introduction to old radio series X-1 announced,

These are stories of the future; adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds.

Which gets me back to the point of this post, if you bear with me a little longer.

Mahan wrote in his "Introductory" to The Influence of Sea Power:

It is not therefore a vain expectation, as many think, to look for useful lessons in the history of sailing-ships as well as in that of galleys. Both have their points of resemblance to the modern ship; both have also points of essential difference, which make it impossible to cite their experiences or modes of action as tactical precedents to be followed. But a precedent is different from and less valuable than a principle. The former may be originally faulty, or may cease to apply through change of circumstances; the latter has its root in the essential nature of things, and, however various its application as conditions change, remains a standard to which action must conform to attain success. War has such principles; their existence is detected by the study of the past, which reveals them in successes and in failures, the same from age to age. Conditions and weapons change; but to cope with the one or successfully wield the others, respect must be had to these constant teachings of history in the tactics of the battlefield, or in those wider operations of war which are comprised under the name of strategy.

It is however in these wider operations, which embrace a whole theatre of war, and in a maritime contest may cover a large portion of the globe, that the teachings of history have a more evident and permanent value, because the conditions remain more permanent. The theatre of war may be larger or smaller, its difficulties more or less pronounced, the contending armies more or less great, the necessary movements more or less easy, but these are simply differences of scale, of degree, not of kind. As a wilderness gives place to civilization, as means of communication multiply, as roads are opened, rivers bridged, food-resources increased, the operations of war become easier, more rapid, more extensive; but the principles to which they must be conformed remain the same. When the march on foot was replaced by carrying troops in coaches, when the latter in turn gave place to railroads, the scale of distances was increased, or, if you will, the scale of time diminished; but the principles which dictated the point at which the army should be concentrated, the direction in which it should move, the part of the enemy's position which it should assail, the protection of communications, were not altered. So, on the sea, the advance from the galley timidly creeping from port to port to the sailing-ship launching out boldly to the ends of the earth, and from the latter to the steamship of our own time, has increased the scope and the rapidity of naval operations without necessarily changing the principles which should direct them; and the speech of Hermocrates twenty-three hundred years ago, before quoted, contained a correct strategic plan, which is as applicable in its principles now as it was then. Before hostile armies or fleets are brought into contact (a word which perhaps better than any other indicates the dividing line between tactics and strategy), there are a number of questions to be decided, covering the whole plan of operations throughout the theatre of war. Among these are the proper function of the navy in the war; its true objective; the point or points upon which it should be concentrated; the establishment of depots of coal and supplies; the maintenance of communications between these depots and the home base; the military value of commerce-destroying as a decisive or a secondary operation of war; the system upon which commerce-destroying can be most efficiently conducted, whether by scattered cruisers or by holding in force some vital centre through which commercial shipping must pass. All these are strategic questions, and upon all these history has a great deal to say. ***

It is then particularly in the field of naval strategy that the teachings of the past have a value which is in no degree lessened. They are there useful not only as illustrative of principles, but also as precedents, owing to the comparative permanence of the conditions. This is less obviously true as to tactics, when the fleets come into collision at the point to which strategic considerations have brought them. The unresting progress of mankind causes continual change in the weapons; and with that must come a continual change in the manner of fighting,—in the handling and disposition of troops or ships on the battlefield. Hence arises a tendency on the part of many connected with maritime matters to think that no advantage is to be gained from the study of former experiences; that time

so used is wasted. This view, though natural, not only leaves wholly out of sight those broad strategic considerations which lead nations to put fleets afloat, which direct the sphere of their action, and so have modified and will continue to modify the history of the world, but is one-sided and narrow even as to tactics. The battles of the past succeeded or failed according as they were fought in conformity with the principles of war; and the seaman who carefully studies the causes of success or failure will not only detect and gradually assimilate these principles, but will also acquire increased aptitude in applying them to the tactical use of the ships and weapons of his own day. He will observe also that changes of tactics have not only taken place after changes in weapons, which necessarily is the case, but that the interval between such changes has been unduly long. This doubtless arises from the fact that an improvement of weapons is due to the energy of one or two men, while changes in tactics have to overcome the inertia of a conservative class; but it is a great evil. It can be remedied only by a candid recognition of each change, by careful study of the powers and limitations of the new ship or weapon, and by a consequent adaptation of the method of using it to the qualities it possesses, which will constitute its tactics. History shows that it is vain to hope that military men generally will be at the pains to do this, but that the one who does will go into battle with a great advantage,—a lesson in itself of no mean value. (emphasis added)

In science fiction we can find examples of the underlying principles Mahan writes of being applied to "could-be years ... on a thousand may-be worlds."

"What if?" Let's face it, reading Mahan can be a tough slog. But . . . science fiction writer David Weber uses Mahan to set up his novels in the Honor Harrington series (get the first book in this series, On Basilisk Station, free here). These books are quite readable. What does Mr. Weber say of this series?

What I didn't know when I pitched the ideas to Jim was that he had been looking for someone to write an interstellar Horatio Hornblower series for the better part of 20 years. As soon as he read the first sentence of the proposal -- "Honor Harrington is a 6'2" female, Eurasian starship captain in the service of the Star Kingdom of Manticore" -- he basically told Toni Weisskopff "Write him a contract. No, make it two contracts! No! Make it four contracts!" I don't know for certain that he ever read all of the other proposals at all . . . and given the Honorverse's success, I'm not going to complain if he didn't!

As for the reasoning process that led me to create this particular literary universe, I knew that I wanted to do a military novel, that I wanted it to be about a very long running war, that I wanted to have "good guys" on both sides, and that I wanted it to be of a naval character. I actually started out looking at the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage, but I decided that the naval aspects of those wars were too limited. Seapower in those wars was really primarily logistical -- transporting armies and keeping them supplied -- rather than the sort of "command of the sea" warfare in the tradition of Alfred Thayer Mahan that I really wanted to write about. Which, of course, caused me to turn to the wars that Mahan had actually analyzed -- the Napoleonic Wars between the British Empire and Revolutionary and later Imperial France.

Once I'd chosen my historical template, I sat down and constructed the basic universe: political units, available technologies, naval strategic and tactical doctrines, historical evolution, etc... And, I will confess, I deliberately constructed my navel technological toolbox in a way which would create something with clear parallels between three-dimensional space-going warfare and the two-dimensional broadside warfare of the eighteenth century.

So, Mr. Weber took that part Mahan wrote about "conditions changing" and set it in space far in the future. He kept the principles of war - logistics (Mahan calls them "communications"), the tyranny of time and distance, and that part about "the proper function of the navy in the war; its true objective; the point or points upon which it should be concentrated" - and placed them into the future. The point being that whether it's the French and English fighting 200 years ago or the Star Kingdom of Maniticore fighting the Republic of Haven 2000 years from now, the underlying principles of war will apply.

Mr. Weber also writes the Safehold series in which a human world has intentionally kept itself from being high tech but into which a change agent is introduced who faces the challenge of pushing progress while evading both in-planet and extra-planetary enemies. A relatively rapid change from oared galleons to steam powered war ships and from spears to gun powder parallels the same process in our history, as it should since Mr. Weber intended that to be the case. Again, the underlying principles of war govern. But under it all, lurks the question "What if . ..?"

And shouldn't that be the fundamental military question for both strategy and tactics? As in "What, given constraints of a limited budget and trained manpower, should our strategic naval posture be?" "What if we had 10% more funding?" "What if we had 10% less?" "What strategic changes does nuclear power for warships bring?" "What about laser weapons?" "Robotic and semi-robotic vessels and aircraft?" "What are the threats to a modern fleet by a modern swarm attack?"

Things to ponder on one of those nights on an independent transit of the Pacific or in other quiet moments.

Reading good science fiction can help stimulate that pondering.

By the way, the Commandant of the Marine Corps reading lists can be found here. Yes, there are scifi books on them. The Coast Guard Commandant's lists can be found here. A list I prepared last year is here.

Sea Service Commercials

One thing to ponder

From Powerline:

Another scandal, even more important, was revealed by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Duty. Obama ordered an intensification of our effort in Afghanistan, while admitting privately that he expected it to fail. Approximately 80% of the fatalities our military has suffered in Afghanistan have taken place on Obama’s watch, not because he was pursuing a strategy that he sincerely believed to be in America’s interest, but because he cynically calculated that sending Americans to die in a useless campaign (as he assessed it) would benefit him politically. This is a scandal approximately a billion times more newsworthy than the Christie administration’s closing a lane on a bridge.

So, exactly how many of those who knew of this "cynical calculation" resigned rather than be a part of this debacle?

I suspect that the answer is somewhere less than 1.

From Napoleon

Maxim LXXII. A general-in-chief has no right to shelter his mistakes in war under cover of his sovereign, or of a minister, when these are both distant from the scene of operation, and must consequently be either ill informed or wholly ignorant of the actual state of things.
Hence it follows, that every general is culpable who undertakes the execution of a plan which he considers faulty. It is his duty to represent his reasons, to insist upon a change of plan--in short, to give in his resignation rather than allow himself to be made the instrument of his army's ruin. Every general-in-chief who fights a battle in consequence of superior orders, with the certainty of losing it, is equally blamable.
In this last-mentioned case, the general ought to refuse obedience; because a blind obedience is due only to a military command given by a superior present on the spot at the moment of action. Being in possession of the real state of things, the superior has it then in his power to afford the necessary explainations to the person who executes his orders.
But supposing a general-in-chief to receive a positive order from his sovereign, directing him to fight a battle, with the further injunction, to yield to his adversary, and allow himself to be defeated -- ought he to obey it? No. If the general should be able to comprehend the meaning or utility of such an order, he should execute it; otherwise, he should refuse to obey it.

So, yeah, we all know about politicians and political calculations. What do we know about our generals and other leadership who could have put a stop to this abuse by a timely and public resignation?

Friday Fun: Old School Films

How do you learn to do things for yourself? One of those films they used to show us back in the old days (yes, with - gasp- a projector) when a teacher took ill and there was no ready substitute.



You can read Emerson's Self-Reliance here.

And, of course, some guy writing a counter-essay for the NY Times critical of Emerson at The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’. Some fun stuff in the comments section.

*Yes, I fixed the typo in the post header.

The "Entitlement Mentality"

So, I'm reading the Wall Street Journal guest editorial by Congressman Paul Ryan, "The GOP Budget and America's Future" (budget available here).

But the best part of the editorial to my mind lies in the following comment and counter-comment to the piece:

Marianna Landrum Wrote: And the Ryan budget takes from most of us and gives to the rich. Tax the very wealthy instead of taking away programs from others. You will have a society of the very rich and and [sic] undereducated and struggling group at the bottom. The last Republican administration started working towards that goal so now you want to finish it. A backwards looking approach.

Paul Cooper Replied: It says a great deal about where you're coming from that you see a failure to take more from the rich as giving to them, and a failure to provide more to you as taking from you. Your sense of entitlement is grand indeed. (emphasis added)

Well said, Mr. Cooper.

Things to Read

Richard Clarke: China's Cyberassault on America - WSJ.com:

Senior U.S. officials know well that the government of China is systematically attacking the computer networks of the U.S. government and American corporations. Beijing is successfully stealing research and development, software source code, manufacturing know-how and government plans. In a global competition among knowledge-based economies, Chinese cyberoperations are eroding America's advantage.
***
In 2009, this newspaper reported that the control systems for the U.S. electric power grid had been hacked and secret openings created so that the attacker could get back in with ease. Far from denying the story, President Obama publicly stated that "cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid."

There is no money to steal on the electrical grid, nor is there any intelligence value that would justify cyber espionage: The only point to penetrating the grid's controls is to counter American military superiority by threatening to damage the underpinning of the U.S. economy. Chinese military strategists have written about how in this way a nation like China could gain an equal footing with the militarily superior United States.

Spengler's Zombie Economy:

Nobody has taken any risks, so there is no risk to liquidate. There isn't much money to make, either. Welcome to the monetary equivalent of the Night of the Living Dead.

From Investors Business Daily Big Corn Eats the GOP, where the Republicans won't kill the ethanol monster that eats $6billion+ in tax payer money to enrich a few in a program that ought to shot, hung, electrocuted and have a stake driven through its heart:

Ending this madness should be a no-brainer. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find another public policy that has so utterly and completely failed to live up to any of its promises . . .

Expanding ethanol use was supposed to lead to greater energy independence. But oil imports have climbed right along with the sevenfold increase in ethanol production.

It was supposed to help the environment. But various studies have found that it does little, if anything, to reduce smog or greenhouse gas emissions.

It was supposed to keep gasoline prices down. Anyone filling up these days can see how well that's worked out.

What it has done is raise food prices. As demand for corn goes up, so does its price, along with the price of every other food that relies on corn. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that up to 15% of the rise in food prices from 2007-2008 was due to the increased use of ethanol.

Things to Consider

Like the world's largest diesel (or indeed, reciprocating) engine, the Wärtsilä RT-flex96C:

The Wärtsilä RT-flex96C is a two-stroke turbocharged low-speed diesel engine designed by the Finnish manufacturer Wärtsilä. It is currently considered the largest reciprocating engine in the world, designed for large container ships, running on heavy fuel oil. It stands at (13.5 metres (44 ft)) high, is 27.3 m (90 ft) long, and weighs over 2300 tonnes in its largest 14-cylinder version — producing 109,000 brake horsepower (80,08 MW).

It was put into service in September 2006 aboard the Emma Mærsk. The design is based on the older RTA96C engine,[2] but revolutionary common rail technology has done away with the traditional camshaft, chain gear, fuel pumps and hydraulic actuators. The result is better performance at low revolutions per minute (rpm), lower fuel consumption, and lower harmful emissions.

Information from Wartsila here:

Wärtsilä RT-flex96C and RTA96C low-speed marine diesel engines are tailor-made for the economical propulsion of large, fast container liners.

For all sizes of large, fast containerships from around 3000 up to more than 10,000 TEU capacity, at service speeds of around 25 knots, the RT-flex96C and RTA96C low-speed engines provide a comprehensive engine programme for power outputs from 25,320 to 84,420 kW.

Ship and engine photos from the  "Emma Maersk" website.