Maggie's Farm

Tu quoque. "You, too."

It's the old "So's your old lady" from the schoolyards of yore. It is a primitive and immature, but often effective, fallacy.

Like most fallacies, Tu Quoque subsumes aspects of other fallacies: Ad Hominem, Red Herring, etc. Tu Quoque appears to brings doubt upon a claim by pointing out a real or imaginary problem with the claimant rather than responding to the claim.

It is a perfect type of fallacious argumentation for relativists: "You Americans think you are virtuous, but you had slaves 150 years ago - so don't preach to us about virtue."

"You complain about civil liberties in China, but meanwhile you torture and abuse prisoners in Gitmo."

"How dare you criticize my American Express bill when in 1989 you went out and bought yourself a Corvette."

"Don't talk to me like you are so perfect."

Tu Quoque. Shut them up and put them on the defensive, while ignoring their point. Excellent for ignorant juries, and also perfect for marital disputes - keeps them going on merrily for years.

The Swamp: a new book about the history of the shrinking Everglades by Michael Grunwald. Do we love the Everglades? We do. One quote from Grime's review in the NYT:

For at least a century and a half, the Everglades wrestled with an image problem. Today, looking at its endless acres of swaying sawgrass, Americans see precious wetlands, home to the egret and the orchid. But for earlier generations, the Everglades was simply a swamp, a mosquito-infested wasteland. "The first and most abiding impression is the utter worthlessness to civilized man, in its present condition, of the entire region," wrote Buckingham Smith, a Harvard-educated lawyer and historian sent by the government to study the Everglades in the 1840's.

Until I read this piece at TCS, I was not aware that terriers practiced law. Yes, this is the Chinese Year of the Dog - whatever that means - but in my house, as in Sally Baliunas' house, it is always the Year of the Dog. 

Terriers don't really do it for me, but to each his own. Dogs are the best kind of people, whatever the make and model. Under the surface, they are all Grey Wolves, apparently, just as all men are killers beneath their civilized skin. 

Image: The ancestor of the Chihuahua - the Grey Wolf, which once lived from Egypt to North America, and which happily survives in small numbers in America.

I took this picture of a duck a few days ago. I have been told it is pretty good as wildlife pictures go... so I'm sending it to you knowing that many of you are sportsmen and will appreciate her it. Perhaps you would be so kind as to help me identify this healthy babe duck, fellas?

Click continuation page for my charming photo.

Please refer to our Reification -  Part One if you want to catch up. I needed two posts to just mention all of the ideas "reification" raises.

This is because taking a close look at abstract words can lead one into the deadly whirlpool abyss of meaning and lack of meaning, and the next thing you know, you wonder whether you yourself are alive and real...and then you wonder what "real" means...and then you go fishing.

Berger and Luckmann, authors of one of my favorite books of all time, The Social Construction of Reality, define reification as:

"the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, in non-human or possibly supra-human terms."

Example: I feel like breaking that jerk's nose. Therefore, I have an "angry feeling".  No, you don't. You can't "have" a "feeling." Sometimes the reification fallacy is simply turning verbs into nouns.

Abduction is the mechanism of reification. How so? There is a human need to integrate meaning, to find a coherent sense of things. The cognitive mechinism of reification is something called "abduction", which is one way in which the human brain links phenomena into something meaningful to the brain. C.S. Peirce and Bateson considered it a critical function of the brain.

What abduction does (there's the fallacy at work) is to impose what Berger and Luckmann would term a culturally-determined "logico-linguistic" framework on things, so that they will seem to make sense.

Example:

My friend died.

It must be because of God's will (or bad luck, or bad Karma, or whatever). There's the adbuction - the imposition of a prepared format on a phenomenon.

Thus God's Will, Bad Luck, or Bad Karma, or Whatever, act purposefully on the world and on life. There's the reification.

Thus it is difficult to talk about anything to talk about anything without committing some reification fallacy or another. Thus the limits of language and verbal thought. And here we stop, before descending deeper into this black hole from which the only rescue is spiritual and not verbal-logical.

The Wikipedia definition, with good links, here.

The always-interesting Kling takes a look at the Jewish Liberal-Left, and maps out a cultural-historical narrative which explains it. Here's his summary:

His thesis is that a historical-cultural template is applied to circumstances, but that the template doesn't always fit reality. Thinking "inside the box", so to speak. At TCS, read the entire interesting piece.

A re-post from our dusty archives -

Lanchester in The New Yorker reviews two books on the subject of happiness. Interesting stuff. A Quote:

He (McMahon) points out that the Founding Fathers, who queried, crossed out, and haggled over every line of the Declaration, let the “pursuit of Happiness” stand unedited and unamended. But he also points out that the eighteenth-century understanding of “pursuit” was rather darker than it might seem now. Dr. Johnson’s dictionary defined it as “the act of following with hostile intention,” and McMahon adds that “if one thinks of pursuing happiness as one pursues a fugitive . . . the ‘pursuit of happiness’ takes on a somewhat different cast.”

The legacy of that ambiguity is with us still. We are pursuing happiness to this day, and it is by no means clear that it is a happy process. The self-help section in any bookshop is easy to mock—indeed, it sometimes seems that the titles of self-help books are almost mocking themselves—but there is nothing to mock about the people standing in front of the shelves looking for guidance. In fact, the advice in self-help books is, by and large, pretty good. The trouble is that it is very difficult to take.

Read entire.

"Searchin' high, searchin' low,
Searchin' everywhere I know,
Askin' the cops wherever I go,
"Have you seen Dignity?""

Only Bob Dylan could create such a hard-rocking, clever, imagistic song about the hunt for an abstraction. (A rare piano version of Dignity: dignitypianoversion.mp3 - quick download. Official version of Dignity on Greatest Hits, Vol. 3)

Reification isn't on the usual lists of fallacies, but it deserves to be. I define it as the error of handling an abstraction, or a mental construct, as if it were a Real Thing with Real World Substance.

It comes to mind because The Professor, a corporate law professor, noted this week that a "corporation" is not a thing, but rather is a legal abstraction. He addresses the question of "Who owns a corporation?"

Often, it is almost impossible to speak about anything without slipping into reifying fallacies, because having a word for something almost makes it a "thing," and language is full of metaphor anyway. And what is a word? Roger Brown's classic pre-Chomsky linguistics text Words and Things - which I highly recommend - deals with such subjects beautifully and memorably.

What seems to happen with abstractions and mental constructs is that they accrue associations over time, lending them the appearance of substance without a substantial core.

Psychology is famous for such errors. "The id is at war with the superego." Well, that is a metaphor and a kind of professional shorthand, but there is no "id" and there is no "superego." They are theoretical constructs. Similarly, there is in fact no "Unconscious." There are such things as un-thought thoughts, and un-felt feelings and un-felt desires, but there is no thing "unconscious."

Thus the common Reification Fallacy is to to treat such constructs as if they were real things, objective things with real-world impact, rather than as lazy excuses for not saying what is really meant.

The good, but brief, Wikipedia entry offers a few good examples:

"Give peace a chance." Peace is not a thing, so it cannot do anything. It works as bad poetry, but it says nothing.

"Right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Huh? An abstraction like a "right" cannot act on the world. It is high-falutin', inspiring nonsense. As a mental construct, the word "right" can mean whatever anyone wants - including a "right to free car insurance" or a "right to a child" or a "right to 8 week's vacation" or a "right to a stress-free life." Whatever! Because it's all imaginary, you can fill in the blanks!

Got some of your own favorite reifications? Add 'em to Comments.

If you are new to Maggie's, check our category Fallacy of the Week. More on Reification Fallacies next week. This is getting too long for the average blog-reader's ADD, according to our ADD-disabled Editor.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, Kansas - 1895

Is this a hoax or not? It is not, after further research. For details of its provenance, read footnotes on page here.

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken
from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society
and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10.Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10.Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

The top of the test states > "EXAMINATION GRADUATION QUESTIONS  OF SALINE COUNTY, KANSAS
April 13, 1895  J.W. Armstrong, County Superintendent.Examinations at Salina, New Cambria, Gypsum City, Assaria, Falun, Bavaria, and District No. 74 (in Glendale Twp.)"

According to the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas "this test is the original eighth-grade final exam for 1895 from Salina, KS. An interesting note is the fact that the county students taking this test were allowed to take the test in the 7th grade, and if they did not pass the test at that time, they were allowed to re-take it again in the 8th grade."

(Image is the Grapetown, Texas, one-room schoolhouse, built around 1880. Please leave your guns on the front porch, kids.)

For a related link on historic American education, click here.

Stock up on
canned goods smokes and
beer. Big snow
on the way to New England. Gotta get my snowplow cranked up and ready.

What is a Nor'easter, and why are the winds from the northeast when a storm system is moving to the northeast? It's complicated. Try here.

The CSM has been doing a fine series on the New Churches. This is one I think I'd like to go to. Quote:

Clearly, there are varieties of megachurches. Yet visits to this one in Milford, Conn., suggest deeper explanations for their appeal. One of the oldest towns in America, Milford boasts Cape Cod houses on shady streets, a beachfront on Long Island Sound, and miles of strip malls along US Route 1. It's becoming a bedroom community for New York City.

Started with the aims of reaching the unchurched and creating a faith community that "demonstrates the kingdom of God on earth," Kingdom Life Christian Church (KLCC) has had a visible impact on members, on Milford, and beyond.

Bible-focused, with dynamic leadership, highly structured youth programs, and adult home fellowship, the church is drawing people from communities all along I-95.

At a Wednesday night Bible study in the hotel ballroom-style sanctuary, a friendly, buoyant group of about 600 is surprisingly diverse: white, Latino, and black; children and parents, all with Bibles in hand. (Teenagers have their class in another building.)

And I love this quote from Pastor Ramirez:

"God's going to knock us out of our comfort zones," he cautions the gathered faithful. "God is at work in the world ... and is building a spiritual city, a spiritual Jerusalem.... Every stage is going to be uncomfortable ... until we are in the divine order."

Read the whole piece. Wonderful. Image from the CSM article. (And yes, if you want to, you may mock and satirize this without fear of beheading!)

Am I happy with warrantless searches? No. Do I feel that the President would deserve to be fired if he didn't watch international calls to suspected terrorists? Definitely. He would be fired in a New York minute. I think John has the final word here, and I doubt I'll have anything to add to it.

And it is about time to bring the NYT and the WaPo up on espionage charges. Do it now. These folks are dangerous, and endangering all of us - and themselves - to try to sell newspapers that no-one wants to read anyway. Whose side are they on in this war? And how come I could go to jail for twenty years for this, while they can do whatever they want to sell their papers? If they have some special exempt privilege, then why not me, as a blogger? They ain't any better than me. Is the Administration afraid of them? Better be afraid of me: I vote too, and we get 100s of thousands of hits per month.

Something tells me that these newspapers either want a Caliphate which advocates wife-beating and the hanging of gays and policed speech, or are blinded by hostile, psychotic partisanship. (I hope the latter, but why won't they just admit that they are Leftist propagandists, and quit the pretense? I'd be fine with that.)

Nice green underwear from Lands End. The Constitution is not a suicide pact and free speech does not extend to the revelation of defense secrets or threats of violence. What color of clean underwear do you want to be wearing when the Jihadists nuke Dubuque and London and Copenhagen and Oslo and Munich and Rome?

One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.

Dr. Karl Menninger

This should keep my
study cozy after work,
for the next couple of
months. Love the splitting, but hate the stacking.

This what you might call a Connecticut logpile, not a Vermont pile (which would be 100 times larger). I am only on my second cord for this mild winter.

That's my spring-loaded splitting maul. A cool tool.

Key quote in the piece in Commentary noted by Powerline today:

If information about the NSA program had been quietly conveyed to an al-Qaeda operative on a microdot, or on paper with invisible ink, there can be no doubt that the episode would have been treated by the government as a cut-and-dried case of espionage. Publishing it for the world to read, the Times has accomplished the same end while at the same time congratulating itself for bravely defending the First Amendment and thereby protecting us—from, presumably, ourselves.

Image, for those too young to know, is from Spy vs. Spy

We will try a dull fallacy today, to prove our seriousness - Tautological Fallacies

"Tautology" has a grammatical meaning (a redundancy, or stating the obvious), and a related logical meaning. Most logical syllogisms are tautologies, which means that the statement is true by a given definition, and thus advances little while appearing to say something new. That is the boring thing about syllogisms and, anyway, we rarely think syllogistically.  But it can distort, when the premiss or definition contains a definition error. You must be alert to error in the premiss, whether stated or, more commonly, implied, before bothering to think about the conclusion:

Simple example: All good girls should get baubles for Christmas, and Ginny is a good girl. Therefore Ginny must get baubles in her stocking. (That is a perfectly logical tautology.)

Example: Child molesters are chronic repeat offenders, therefore Billy Bob is probably guilty this time.

Example: All mammals bear live young, and milk to their babies, but the platypus lays eggs. Therefore, the platypus is not a mammal.

Example: Opponents of global warming measures are ignorant of science and oblivious to the looming climatological crisis. Clinton and Bush, therefore, refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty.

Example: Republicans want children to starve and go without education, and want to bomb innocent Iraqi children. Sen. Joe Lieberman is one of those latent Republicans, and therefore is comfortable with killing Iraqi children.

Example: It is no surprise that Republicans voted to continue killing and torturing innocent Iraqis (see the implied definition? Tautological Fallacies are more effective when the definition is covert, or implied, rather than stated. It is a specialty of The New York Times.), but the number of Democrats who voted with the majority was disconcerting to anti-war Democrats.

Recent tragic deaths of children in New York City have resulted in a massive pointing of fingers where? At the City. Not at the parents. Blame the poor social worker who is probably doing her best to juggle and salvage all of the hopelessly dysfunctional homes she has on her roster - as if anyone could, regardless of the numbers of social workers. Even one social worker per family couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together.

Is it realistic to expect a city government to be 100% effectively in loco parentis, with a population of 8 million? I don't think so. NYC has an enormous and very professional department of social services. And yet the press seems to approach it that way: anytime anything goes wrong in this world, it's a government failure. But these deaths are, in fact, not signs of government failure as much as they are signs of family failure.

Blaming government for everything that goes wrong in this world reveals a deeply dependent attitude towards government - it reveals the immature fantasy that government could make life nice and safe for everyone, if it only wanted to. As if it were a perfect parent, or God. But even God doesn't make everything nice and safe, does he?

I don't mean to be nihilistic here, and not hard-hearted - just realistic. Being alive is intrinsically risky: most years, 43,000 American adults die in cars, and 2500 kids. No matter what efforts are made, hurricanes will come, mines will cave in, people will get sick, planes and cars will crash, families will unravel, and bad people will do destructive things. (And trial lawyers will bring law suits, claiming that if we had crystal balls, the event could have been prevented.)

Stories of kid's deaths and murders are heart-breaking, especially when there are two-year waiting lists for adoption. If people can't handle kids, or life, the caring thing to do is to give the kids to someone who can, and who longs for the responsibility and the chance to give love and care and protection. Those are things that even a perfect government could not provide.

Gelinas at City Journal wrote about the deaths here: Why Didn't anybody save Nixmary?

Dang. The reporters I call won't write up my evidence that he did. I figured they'd be suckers for my story. They say I have evidence, not proof. They worry about proof when we are in a Class Struggle? And didn't Jesus teach his socialist revolutionaries "What is proof?"

I did hear some tap-tap-tap on the phone a few months ago, but it turned out to be a water leak from the gutter but it was suspiciously aimed at my keyboard and f-ed it up. Then I had some computer problems, and that should be a sure sign of secret government hacker intrusions, so it's very possible they were into my email, but the only emails I get are "Naughty Farm Girls" and my favorite "Fat Girls get Frisky" etc which I hope Bush and those CIA boys enjoyed. I know the dog was barking very loud the other night to warn me the FBI was going through the garbage, and it could have been raccoons - but you never really know for sure, do you?

But I wish I could show that he spied on me. I could go on TV, be famous, write a book, get lots of chicks - or at least one chick maybe (even if she doesn't shave her armpits), and be a Hero of The Movement, like Kerry or Jerry Rubin. Oh, that was 30 years ago? What's it called now? It's all over? And you say chicks prefer military guys nowadays... aw sh-t. Am I too old to sign up?

Hey Dude, please spy on me. I am definitely a certified beer-powered anti-Establishment Revolutionary and a walking talking danger to capitalism - wanta see my disability card? Not working and getting my share is my heroic personal revolt against The System. I would have even voted for McGovern but I was drunk that day. I am so totally supporting Osama's People's Socialist Revolution in Iraq and Afghanistan against the Capitalist System. So listen to me now, Mr. CIA Agent: Viva Che; Make Love not War; Impeach Earl Warren  Nixon Warmonger Babykiller Johnson; Ho-ho-Ho Chi Minh, NFL  NLF is Gonna Win; US Out Now; Hell no - we won't go; 1-2-3-4-, We don't want your f-ing War; Smash the Glass of the Ruling Class; Support our Troops - Bring them Home Now;  America, Love it or Leave It, Draft Beer not Boys; Peace, Baby; Power to the People, Go Steelers and all that other happy horsesh-it.

If the government won't spy on me after saying all that, what can I do to be groovy?

The Fallacy of Accident was one of Aristotle's orginal Fourteen. It is a simple fallacy: Confusing a generalization, or "rule of thumb", with a universal generality. The term "accident" refers to the formal logic definition of the term: "A circumstance or attribute that is not essential to the nature of something, " like the color of a cow. That is, an irrelevant or incidental detail.

All the cows around here seem to be brown. This animal is brown. This animal must be a cow.

These might seem easy to identify and to deal with, but sometimes they are subtle, and sometimes people get hung up on the words, instead of the sense of the thing. We live by Rules of Thumb, and they serve us well. That's the problem, on rare occasions. Sometimes, keeping the generalization unspoken (when many might object to the generalization if it were overt) adds to the effect:

"Katrina proved Bush wants to kill blacks."  This is a near-psychotic generalization  in which an implied (hostile, and a total lie) generalization - "Bush hates Blacks" - is put to partisan use to exploit bad weather, employing the Accident Fallacy to alienate black voters in the future.

"Books are meant to be read." True statement but an obnoxious, obesssional type might object to the fallacy in it. Art books are to be looked at, not read. In this simple case, the exceptions are overlooked. We call that "poetic license."

"This murder case has all of the earmarks of the Boston Strangler, so we must redouble our efforts to find this evil demon." More complex here, because the rule of thumb breaks down in the face of "copycat" criminals, a common phenomenon amongst the non-creative bad guys who no doubt were not permitted enough time to finger-paint in nursery school.

"Moslems seem sensitive to the cause of the Jihadists, because their silence communicates support." Here we have a generalizing assertion with a non-trivial fallacy embedded in it. What if a majority of Brit and US Moslems feel intimidated by the Mullahs? They may be cowardly, but not supportive, like many Germans during the Nazi era. Or they may be quietly supportive. Who knows?

Thus there are more subtle forms in which Accident can insinuate itself into writing, and into our brains, without alerting itself with a sign. Our own brains must provide the signs before we are lead down the primrose path to illogicality. Therefore always watch out for the unstated generalizations, or assumptions, which are concealed in an assertion.

From VDH's "Making Sense of Nonsense," in which he attempts to resolve all of the contradictory conversation about Iraq and the Middle East:

"So how do we make sense of what seems so nonsensical? Rather easily — just keep in mind four general talking points about America’s recent role in the world and most things gradually become clearer.

• Point One (for Americans): My own flawless three-week removal of Saddam Hussein was ruined by your error-prone postwar peace.
• Point Two (for Middle Easterners): We are for democracy — unless you Americans help us obtain it.
• Point Three (for Europeans): We are privately for and publicly against what you do.
• Point Four (for everyone else): When angry at either the United States (or yourself,) just blame the Jews in America, and Israel abroad.

The Volvo Fallacy, aka the Fallacy of Misleading Vividness, is committed when a rare but memorable occurance is given undue statistical weight and meaning because of its dramatic nature.

The "Volvo" comes from the guy who changed his mind about buying a Volvo, despite safety reports, after hearing someone tell him that he knew someone whose Volvo had the wheel fall off on the highway, and crashed and died.

This fallacy works because the vividness factor emotionally overpowers one's statistical sense and one's common sense, resulting in a superstitious-like reaction.

Fifteen years ago, I noticed a $100 bill half-hidden in a pile of leaves at the edge of a parking lot I frequent. I still cannot park there without a glance at that spot, even though I am a rational human. 

Another: I heard somebody choked to death on a steak at Bob's Angus Steak House, so I will never go there again.

Another: I will never take a flight out of Boston again, after 9-11.

Another: I will move from DC to northern Vermont if someone stops the govt from searching for nukes. This is a good one, because the statistical likelihood is an unknown, making it even more vivid in the imagination, and possibly rational.

How can this fallacy be exploited? Try this one: Don't try to convince me that hunting is safe. Four years ago, I heard that a deer hunter killed a game warden by mistake in the woods. (The statistical facts that driving to work, flying in a plane, living in Washington DC, or playing high school football, are more dangerous is ignored.)

Dear Abby,

Some of my best friends tell me that I must have a fear and anxiety problem if I buy into the idea that Presidential authority needs to be increased during wartime. They say that's what Presidents always try to do, and wars are just a good excuse to scare us and take away our freedom. Plus there is always one war or another anyway.

But other friends tell me that I'm right to want the government to protect me from the mad bombers, because I can't do it myself. I'm just too busy and flustered to have time to monitor the Al Quaida phone calls to Boston and LA, but someone has to do it. That's what we hire them to do, and we fire them when they don't do it.

And my boyfriend says FDR did the same thing, and he was the Father of our Country. Who is FDR? I am just so totally confused now, and worried that all of this disagreement could damage my friendships. So what's a girl to do?

Sincerely,

Mixed-up in Minneapolis

From a piece this week in the CSM re the Alito hearings:

"It's hard to get people to understand what the court means in their daily lives," says Debra Ness, President of the National Partnership for Women and Families, which is stepping up e-mails that make it easy for people to contact senators.

"If courts become a less conducive branch for advocacy, we will turn to the other two branches of government," she adds.

Precisely. That is where "advocacy" belongs -  in the other two branches. Persuade voters, if you can. It is hard work, though, compared to fund-raising and hiring lawyers.

A Must-Read

Our server was ill with the avian flu this morning so I couldn't post this piece by Anderson at City Journal earlier. It is titled The Plot to Crush Rush and O'Reilly, and he touches on all of the critical free speech issues which are raised by campaign finance "reform," the covert roles of Soros and The Pew Foundation, blogging, and the media. And of course that chump John McCain.

It is an extremely important and disturbing piece for anyone who believes that free political speech matters. I won't even bother quoting from it. Just Read it.

I decided to re-post our Wood Duck entry from last March, mainly to remind those with streams and marshes to begin to plan to build or buy, and put out, new duck houses before March. There are a few reasons to plan now: for one, it's a easy time to put out your nest boxes - you can get out on the ice, punch a hole in the ice, and hammer your post into the mud. Second, the males arrive early so it's nice to have everything in place when they arrive. If you clean out your old nest boxes in the winter, don't be surprised to find something roosting in there - screech owls or whatever.

The male Wood Duck is the most flamboyant and exotic looking bird in North America. They have just returned here, where I live - saw a few on Sunday afternoon. It's getting late to put out nest boxes, but not too late quite yet. Assuming you have water - streams or ponds or marshy lakes. Their growing population relies on human intervention, because dopey humans cut down the dead trees they like to nest in.

Build duck nest boxes: Click here: Wood Duck . Buy them: Click here: Duck Houses at BestNest.com!  with good instructions re nest box placement, and learn about "Woodies":  Click here: All About Birds