Presumably President Madison left it behind shortly before the innauguration of James Monroe.
Barack Obama blowing the horn can only result in disaster. Apart from the sincerity curse, it is easy enough to predict that Obama sounding the horn would inevitably produce the angry ghost of Andrew Jackson to take it away, telling Obama:
“Woe to the coward, that ever he was born, who did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!â€
One special bane connected with modern liberal society’s regime of excessive tolerance is the ease with which the sexually inverted neurotic can rise from his knees on the public lavatory floor to ascend his own personal pulpit in order to impersonate the post-menopausal female moral authority figure and social reformer.
Glenn Greenwald, for instance, is a particularly resilient example. Greenwald succesfully survived a scandal which resulted from his exposure for having persistently used “sock puppet” false identities to lavish praise on his own blog postings. He more recently attached himself to the cause of “whistle blowers” like Edward Snowden and acted as go-between between the latter and Establishment newspapers. Pimping US Intelligence secrets to the Guardian and the Times is the kind of thing which, in today’s world, makes one a hero in certain circles, and the next thing you knew Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar was writing a check for $250 million to buy Greenwald his own media organization. Who better to manage such a thing than the man renowned as “the left’s most dishonest blogger?”
Even Michael Kinsley cannot abide Greenwald’s abrasive sanctimony, and Kinsley took the occasion of the publication of Green wald’s recent Snowden book, No Place to Hide, to carpet bomb the scoundrel with a scathing review published, amusingly enough, in the same New York Times.
“My position was straightforward,†Glenn Greenwald writes. “By ordering illegal eavesdropping, the president had committed crimes and should be held accountable for them.†You break the law, you pay the price: It’s that simple.
But it’s not that simple, as Greenwald must know. There are laws against government eavesdropping on American citizens, and there are laws against leaking official government documents. You can’t just choose the laws you like and ignore the ones you don’t like. Or perhaps you can, but you can’t then claim that it’s all very straightforward.
Greenwald was the go-between for Edward Snowden and some of the newspapers that reported on Snowden’s collection of classified documents exposing huge eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, among other scandals. His story is full of journalistic derring-do, mostly set in exotic Hong Kong. It’s a great yarn, which might be more entertaining if Greenwald himself didn’t come across as so unpleasant. Maybe he’s charming and generous in real life. But in “No Place to Hide,†Greenwald seems like a self-righteous sourpuss, convinced that every issue is “straightforward,†and if you don’t agree with him, you’re part of something he calls “the authorities,†who control everything for their own nefarious but never explained purposes.
Reformers tend to be difficult people. But they come in different flavors. There are ascetics, like Henry James’s Miss Birdseye (from “The Bostoniansâ€), “who knew less about her fellow creatures, if possible, after 50 years of humanitary zeal, than on the day she had gone into the field to testify against the iniquity of most arrangements.â€
There are narcissists like Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. These are self-canonized men who feel that, as saints, they are entitled to ignore the rules that constrain ordinary mortals. Greenwald notes indignantly that Assange was being criticized along these lines “well before he was accused of sex crimes by two women in Sweden.†(Two decades ago the British writer Michael Frayn wrote a wonderful novel and play called “Now You Know,†about a character similar to Assange.)
Then there are political romantics, played in this evening’s performance by Edward Snowden, almost 31 years old, with the sweet, innocently conspiratorial worldview of a precocious teenager. He appears to yearn for martyrdom and, according to Greenwald, “exuded an extraordinary equanimity†at the prospect of “spending decades, or life, in a supermax prison.â€
Throughout “No Place to Hide,†Greenwald quotes any person or publication taking his side in any argument. If an article or editorial in The Washington Post or The New York Times (which he says “takes direction from the U.S. government about what it should and shouldn’t publishâ€) endorses his view on some issue, he is sure to cite it as evidence that he is right. If Margaret Sullivan, the public editor (ombudsman, or reader representative) of The Times, agrees with him on some controversy, he is in heaven. He cites at length the results of a poll showing that more people are coming around to his notion that the government’s response to terrorism after 9/11 is more dangerous than the threat it is designed to meet.
Greenwald doesn’t seem to realize that every piece of evidence he musters demonstrating that people agree with him undermines his own argument that “the authorities†brook no dissent. No one is stopping people from criticizing the government or supporting Greenwald in any way. Nobody is preventing the nation’s leading newspaper from publishing a regular column in its own pages dissenting from company or government orthodoxy. If a majority of citizens now agree with Greenwald that dissent is being crushed in this country, and will say so openly to a stranger who rings their doorbell or their phone and says she’s a pollster, how can anyone say that dissent is being crushed? What kind of poor excuse for an authoritarian society are we building in which a Glenn Greenwald, proud enemy of conformity and government oppression, can freely promote this book in all media and sell thousands of copies at airport bookstores surrounded by Homeland Security officers?
Paul Delvaux, City Worried, 1941, Private Collection.
“Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has previously been experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced the prospect of a fundamental alteration of the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests.”
ARKHAM, MA -— Arguing that students should return to the fundamentals taught in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon in order to develop the skills they need to be driven to the very edge of sanity, Arkham school board member Charles West continued to advance his pro-madness agenda at the district’s monthly meeting Tuesday.
“Fools!” said West, his clenched fist striking the lectern before him. “We must prepare today’s youth for a world whose terrors are etched upon ancient clay tablets recounting the fever-dreams of the other gods—not fill their heads with such trivia as math and English. Our graduates need to know about those who lie beneath the earth, waiting until the stars align so they can return to their rightful place as our masters and wage war against the Elder Things and the shoggoths!”
The controversial school board member reportedly interrupted a heated discussion about adding fresh fruit to school lunches in order to bring his motion to the table. With the aid of a flip chart, West laid out his six-point plan for increased madness, which included field trips to the medieval metaphysics department at Miskatonic University, instruction in the incantations of Yog-Sothoth, and a walkathon sponsored by local businesses to raise money for the freshman basketball program.
Artist’s rendering of the Cthulhu, a hideous demon borne of pure malice that fewer than 3 percent of high school sophomores can identify.
“Our schools are orderly, sanitary places where students dwell in blissful ignorance of the chaos that awaits,” West said. “Should our facilities be repaired? No, they must be razed to the ground and rebuilt in the image of the Cyclopean dwellings of the Elder Gods, the very geometry of which will drive them to be possessed by visions of the realms beyond.”
These three waggish hunters are posing with three enormous punt guns, the sort of arm that was used to hunt waterfowl en masse during the reign of Queen Victoria, in front of a duck-billed dinosaur.
Sunstein, however, does adroitly read Epstein out of what he considers the qualified and legitimate body of Constitutional Law scholarship, identifying him instead as a covert member of an alternate “moral readings” school of constitutional argument, a school of thought pioneered (God help us!) by the egregious sophister Ronald Dworkin.
Epstein’s moral reading is all very nice, Sunstein condescendingly allows, but there are other readings. He moves rapidly to the favorite argument of the legal realist Oliver Wendell Holmes school of Nominalism: there is no consensus. The framers’ truths are not really self-evident, because non-classical-liberals, like Holmes and Sunstein, can simply decline to acknowledge them.
Finally, of course, Sunstein retires complacently to the conservative argument. The Classical Liberal Constitution was overturned once and for all during the New Deal. We now are bound by jurisprudential precedent going all the back to the Spring of 1937. 1787 to 1937 was a period of error which doesn’t count, but one must never presume to meddle with subsequent progressive rulings. The Bill of Rights is ambiguous, completely open to interpretation, and means whatever judges say it means. The decisions of post-New Deal courts are unalterable law.
Epstein did not write [a book steeped in the political thought of the late eighteenth century]. He is much closer to being an Anglo-American political theorist than an American constitutional historian. True, he did not produce his general theory out of thin air. What he calls “classical liberalism†certainly has some connection to the ideas of the great eighteenth-century liberal political theorists, including Locke and Montesquieu, and also to the thinking of America’s founding generation. But we have to be careful here. Epstein’s reading of the theorists and the Founders is not at all obvious or uncontroversial. There are other ways to read them. Many students of the liberal political tradition, such as Stephen Holmes, have raised serious questions about the supposedly libertarian nature of classical liberal theory. It is not at all clear that classical liberal theory, understood in historical terms, is what Epstein thinks it is.
For lawyers and judges, the broader point is that the general theory cannot be found in the Constitution itself. We might doubt, moreover, that as Epstein elaborates it, it would have commanded any kind of eighteenth-century consensus. Without detailed historical support, it remains unclear what it means to say that Epstein’s preferred general theory “animates†the text.
Ronald Dworkin, one of the greatest constitutional thinkers of our time, does not appear in Epstein’s book, but in my view Epstein is playing Dworkin’s game. Dworkin argued in favor of “moral readings†of the Constitution. In his account, the act of interpretation requires judges both to “fit†and to “justify†the Constitution. The requirement of fit imposes a duty of fidelity; judges cannot ignore the text (or other relevant materials). If they do, they are not engaged in interpretation at all. The requirement of justification means that judges should put the Constitution in its most attractive light, by identifying the moral principle or theory that makes the best sense of it. Dworkin urges that judges should be moral readers in the sense that they ought to be generating a morally appealing interpretation of the constitutional text. Inevitably, what counts as a morally appealing interpretation is a product of the active judgments of the interpreter.
Epstein is a moral reader. He objects that progressives ignore the constitutional text, and of course he cares about it, but he acknowledges that on many issues that matter, the text, standing alone, does not mandate his interpretation. Where the rubber hits the road, his real argument is not about Madison and Hamilton, the inevitable meaning of words, or the placement of commas; it is an emphatically moral one. Informed though it is by a certain strand in liberal thought, it reflects what he thinks morality requires. Of course other people think differently. There is an important lesson here about Tea Party constitutionalism as a whole, for the supposed project of “restoring†the original Constitution, or going back to the genius of the Founding generation, is often about twenty-first century political convictions, not about the recovery of history.
Like other moral readings, Epstein’s reading has to be evaluated in terms of both fit and justification. Does it fit with the original document? In some ways it does, but to make a full evaluation we would have to go provision-by-provision, and some of his judgments fit better than others. Most judges want their decisions to fit with precedent as well. Epstein is fully aware that on this count his approach fares poorly, and so he has to answer a genuinely hard question about how to treat precedents with which he disagrees. To his credit, Epstein puts his cards on the table: “In my view, the answer often turns on this simple question: does the original version of the Constitution or its subsequent interpretation do a better job in advancing the ideals of a classical liberal constitution?â€
Would our constitutional order be better if judges insisted on moving the nation in the direction of laissez-faire? Would Americans be freer? Would our lives be better? Epstein thinks so. But philosophers and economists have a lot to say on those questions, and there is no consensus, to say the least, that Epstein is right. If we do not accept the libertarian creed (or at least his distinctive version of it), we will emphatically reject his particular moral reading. And even if we did accept that creed, we would have to ask whether federal judges, with their limited place in our constitutional order, should insist on it. Consider in this regard the cautionary words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.â€
Epstein has written a passionate, learned, and committed book. But he is asking his fellow citizens, and the fallible human beings who populate the federal judiciary, to jettison many decades of constitutional law on the basis of a general theory that the Constitution does not explicitly encode and that the nation has long rejected. Epstein is right to say that in some contexts, a movement toward what he calls “classical liberalism†would be in the national interest. But a judicially engineered constitutional revolution is not what America needs now.
Just purchased: British Martini-Henry Interchangeable Carbine Mark I, manufactured in Enfield in 1887, and later rebarreled in .303 British. Shipped home from Bagram, Afghanistan by an American in January, 2013.
Wikipedia reports that a small number of Martinis have been captured from the Taliban:
Early in 2010 and 2011, United States Marines recovered at least three from various Taliban weapons caches in Marjah. In April 2011, another Martini-Henry rifle was found near Orgun in Paktika Province by United States Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault).
The Martini-Henry was the result of trials held in the late 1860’s looking for a permanent solution to arming the British Army with a metallic cartridge breech-loading rifle. In 1866, the War Department adopted the Snider patent modification of the Pattern 1853 rifle musket, but it was always considered a stop-gap measure. The Martini Henry was officially adopted in 1871.
Work began on a carbine version of the Martini-Henry in 1871 as soon as the M-H was adopted, but initial experiments used the full power rifle cartridge and those involved in the trial found the recoil excessive, preferring to stick with the Snider. Little work happened on the Carbine until 1876, when trials with a carbine specific cartridge occurred, and finally, in 1877, a carbine pattern was approved. This was intended as carbine for use by both the cavalry and the artillery, and it was designated the Interchangeable Carbine Mk I (IC1) and first issues began in late 1878. In any event, the Artillery found the weapon not suitable since it did not have provisions for a sling, or the use of a bayonet, and in 1879, the Artillery Carbine Mk I was approved, and this gun became exclusively a cavalry carbine, though it was still marked IC1. In 1879, if was found that the rear sight sometimes caught on the saddle bucket and two woodscrews were added to the stock on either side, just below the rear sight. These acted as studs for a leather sight cover.
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The seller was at pains to distance himself from liability by describing the carbine as a Collectors-Item Only, Not for Shooting. But whoever re-barreled it obviously re-barreled it in order to shoot it.
Martinis were re-barreled in .303 and actually issued to Native Auxiliaries and to some reserve troops long ago.
I found a discussion about shooting .303 Martini-Henrys on a Maryland Shooters Board. One obviously knowledgeable member retorted to warnings against:
The Martin Enfield is more than up to the pressures of modern ammo, which by the way is quite a bit lower in pressure than the original loading. While the actions are indeed over 100 years old, that has little bearing on their ability to withstand use. Metal stress is cumulative, making use and condition much more important than simple age. As single shots, I suspect these fired a lot less ammo than many if not most bolt action military rifles. Further, these do not suffer from the brittle nature of many of the earlier bolt action rifles well past WWI. Further, since they were never frontline rifles in their ME form, they didn’t see the abuse either. A final consideration is the inherent strength of tilting block actions that have far greater bearing area in their knuckle than any common bolt action has in its locking lugs…and of course is complete immune to boltlug shear. While failures through receiver stretch and cracked blocks do occur, I’m unaware of any catastrophic failures….unlike many more “modern†arms half their age. There are sound reasons why many fine sporters using smokeless and BP rounds continue to be built on Martini actions, often approaching 140 years in age.
As to the disparaging remarks on not worrying about the troops, the Brits have had and continue to have some of the most stringent proofing laws in the world, while the US continues to have none. Whether military or civilian, every single firearm is proofed by an independent proving house as a matter of national law when new and whenever it receives major rework, such as a new barrel or being re-chambered. Simply put, they were and continue to be subjected to significantly greater quality control and assurance throughout their life than just about any other nation’s firearms.
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If a Zulu Impi suddenly appears over the hill, I’m going to be ready.
My Yale classmate, Charles Lipson is Professor of Political Science, specializing in international relations and international political history, at the University of Chicago.
This Chicago Tribune editorial demonstrates that Obama has lost the moderate professoriate,
At a recent meeting with two dozen Chicago leaders, some Democrats, some Republicans, I asked a simple question, “Can anyone name a significant American achievement in world affairs over the past five years?”
The room was completely silent. Since the group had traveled widely, I posed a second question, “Have any of you visited countries where relations with America are better than five years ago?” Again, silence.
These were people who zip all over the globe and deal with senior officials. Many had backed Barack Obama’s historic presidential candidacy in 2008 and his re-election in 2012. Yet they were stumped when asked to name any recent achievement in American foreign policy.
Over the past few months, I have posed the same questions to a variety of groups, some American, some European and Asian. Can anyone think of a major American success on the global stage? Can anyone name a stronger bilateral relationship? Silence. There’s usually an awkward pause before they begin grumbling about America’s sinking stature and incoherent policies. …
Today, the Obama strategy is a smoking ruin, torched by reality. That’s why nobody, including Hillary Clinton, can name any foreign policy achievements. The president has not acknowledged these gaping failures or devised a new approach beyond his rhetorical “pivot to Asia,” which infuriated our allies in Europe and the Middle East.
The president needs to articulate a coherent new strategy to contain a belligerent Russia, a rising China, a nuclear-obsessed Iran, and a resurgent al-Qaida terror network. He needs to finalize trade agreements with Europe and Asia, both to buttress our economy and to strengthen our alliances. He needs to stop voting “present” on the Keystone XL pipeline and give Canada an up-or-down decision. He needs to assure Europe that America is rapidly developing alternatives to its dependence on Russian natural gas. In short, he needs to stop lurching, rudderless, from crisis to crisis, outmaneuvered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs, and even the Syrian Baathists. It’s time for the president to discard his old, failed strategy, formulate a new approach, and offer some leadership before he, too, passes the baton.
This editorial is behind a subscription firewall. To get around it, just Google “America’s meltdown abroad.”
Back in the late 1980s, some Finns evidently shared their home with a pet elk (the animal we call a moose in this hemisphere). Personally, I would never let my moose sit on my waterbed.
A very rare Khanda hilted sword with serrated edge and of Cobra form
This formidable example is 98cms [38.6″] long from end to end.
The blade is 82cms [32.2″] long, 4cms [1.6″] wide with a weighted tip 9cms [3.5″] wide.
The large Khanda hilt has a pierced knuckle bow and langet ends and a curved pommel spike. The grip is bound with layers of coated twine.
The serpentine blade is a very unusual form that resembles a hooded cobra and would have taken some time and expertise to complete.
the edges are serrated and a medial ridge runs from the base through to the tip with the exception of the wide hooded area that has been hollow forged.
In profile and in hand the sword has the overall forward curve and weight of a large Souson Pata or Kirach and is surprisingly well balanced.
A very rare type of Indian sword, likely from the late 18th century in good as found uncleaned condition.
Seizo Fukumoto carves his way through a wall of human flesh, dragging an unconscious chick behind him.
A kirareyaku is an actor who portrays the unfortunate victim of a samurai sword cut. The word means literally “acting cut.” Other translations include: “chopped up actor” and “the role of being slashed.”
Seizo Fukumoto has carved out, as it were, an impressive career as victim of the Japanese sword.
Fukumoto’s career spans a half century, originating in the postwar heyday of Japanese cinema. Since then, he has gushed forth rivers of fake blood and been cut to ribbons that would stretch for miles. He has been killed on screen more than 50,000 times — more than once in some films.
In the postwar era, period dramas, including samurai films, were an important form of thinly veiled criticism of modern society and institutions. But such obliqueness is no longer necessary.
Now 69, Fukumoto recalls landing his first job in the movies as a stuntman and extra with Toei studios in 1959.
“When I was younger, our studio had some 400 stuntmen and extras,” he remembers. “I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be on screen. The best way to do that was to become a ‘chopped-up actor’ and to fight with the stars.”
Fukumoto’s art is known in Japanese as tate, a stylized sort of stage combat that combines elements of martial arts, dance and kabuki theater. Its use in Japanese film has influenced foreign cinematic styles from “spaghetti Westerns” to Hong Kong kung fu flicks. But few Japanese actors practice it today.
In a trademark move, Fukumoto is dealt a fatal blow, then bends over backward, seemingly suspended in midair for a moment of final agony before crumpling to the ground. He says his movements have an awkward grotesqueness to them; it’s called buzama in Japanese.
“Whenever we die, we have to do it in a way that is unsightly or clumsy, not graceful,” Fukumoto explains. “In this buzama, we find beauty. To die in an uncool way is the coolest.”
He’s never been the leading man, but Fukumoto has still managed to attract a large and loyal international following. But despite his fame, his career as professional sword fodder is almost by definition self-effacing.
Fukumoto in one of the numerous period costume dramas he has acted in for the Toei Company’s film studios since he began work there in 1959.
“I’m not a great traditional artist or craftsman,” he insists modestly. “It’s just that I’ve been doing this for 50 years, and I want to pass on something of my chanbara technique to the younger generation.”
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Fukumoto-san will soon be appearing in a starring role.
A true kirareyaku is one who can make viewers cringe in their seats, “the one that can make them ask, ‘Is he OK?’ ” Mr. Fukumoto said.
The 71-year-old thespian got into acting at age 15 and soon became fascinated with playing the antagonist on screen. At night, on his futon, he would ponder flashier ways to drop dead in a sword fight. One of his signature moves is the “ebi-zori,” or prawn bend, in which after being struck, he arches his body backward like a prawn, then goes into convulsions, twitching and grasping before dying.
“The way my characters die has a huge impact on the impression the lead character gives in a film,” Mr. Fukumoto wrote in a 2012 essay. Ebi-zori is the perfect way to go, in his opinion, because the camera can remain focused on the hero’s gallantry while the kirareyaku actor also gains screen time by turning his face toward the audience as he falls dead.
Now, after being cut up by swords thousands of times, Mr. Fukumoto is getting his chance for the spotlight in a movie that opens in Japan in July. “Uzumasa Limelight,” will be the first film in his career in which he plays the lead role.
“I kept refusing the offer initially, telling them I couldn’t do it. It was a crazy idea,” Mr. Fukumoto said. “I was nervous once the filming started as well. I’d never had so many cameras set up right in front of me and focusing only on me.”
Before his latest movie, one of Mr. Fukumoto’s biggest roles was appearing in the 2003 Tom Cruise film “The Last Samurai,” playing a taciturn swordsman.
“This time around I had lots of my own lines, which I’d blow so often and cause trouble for my co-stars,” Mr. Fukumoto said.
The quasi-autobiographical “Uzumasa Limelight,” directed by Ken Ochiai, is a story about a retiring kirareyaku who befriends a young actress played by Chihiro Yamamoto.
Mr. Fukumoto’s character mentors the aspiring actress, whose dream is to become a samurai movie star.
