Pun Salad

And it's good to know that some people find too much of it is occupied by…

Imagine if there were only 1 brand of peanut butter, 1 brand of pasta sauce, etc. Rather than spend your time in the grocery wondering "Which brand shall I buy?", you'd have the mindspace to wonder: "What person shall I become?"

— @ratlimit (@ratlimit) September 23, 2024

You don't want to read my comments about this. Especially when James Lileks devotes some of his mindspace (and blogspace) to responding to @ratlimit in today's Bleat.

And don't get him started on pesto. Oh, wait, he got started on pesto in the next paragraphs.

You really want to read the whole thing. In addition to the text, Mr. Lileks has also mastered the craft of AI image generation, and there's a great example at the link.

Also of note:

• And by "are worse than ineffective", he means "actually kill people". Jacob Sullum's column has the usual way-too-long headline: Recent Overdose Trends Underline the Folly of the War on Drugs: Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Support Supply-Side Tactics That Are Worse Than Ineffective.

  The annual U.S. death toll from illegal drugs, which has risen nearly every year since the turn of the century, is expected to fall substantially this year. The timing of that turnaround poses a problem for politicians who aim to prevent substance abuse by disrupting the drug supply.

  Those politicians include Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who promises to deploy the military against drug traffickers, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose platform is also heavy on supply-side tactics. Neither candidate seems to have absorbed the lessons of the "opioid epidemic," which showed that drug law enforcement is not just ineffective but counterproductive, magnifying the harms it is supposed to alleviate.

  Not to be repetitive, but just a few days ago I tried to make a similar point about my local pols, who also fervently support "supply-side tactics". Sometimes I get pretty snarky about it:

  After all this time it turns out we could have STOPPED the flow of ILLICIT DRUGS for only $600 million or so! But NOW we'll just have to KEEP BUYING FENTANYL instead!

  — Paul Sand (@punsalad) May 23, 2024

• I still think we should nuke the moon. But Frank J. Fleming has moved on from that provocative blog post. Nowdays he has a substack, where he reveals things like Kamala Harris's Speech Clarifying How Much of a Threat Trump Is. A sample:

  I want to say once again that Trump is a threat to democracy and our way of life… but I also need to clarify that’s he’s not like a super big threat. Like we’ll be okay. You don’t need to hurt him to stop him. He’s a threat, so like vote against him, but not so dangerous you have to do anything other than that. He’s a somewhat threat to democracy… but it’s not that bad.

  I also need to mention Project 2025. This is something Trump supports and will destroy our freedom and our way of life… but like not in a really extreme way. Like if you’re saying to yourself, “I better do something outside the law to stop Project 2025,” then you’re taking it way too seriously. It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s terrible, but you’ll be fine if it’s implemented. So don’t think you need to hurt Trump to stop it.

  Frank's subscription goes for the low, low, price of $5/month.

• Wax off. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is ablaze about the latest news out of UPenn: Amy Wax is academic freedom's canary in the coal mine.

  Yesterday, the University of Pennsylvania completed its years-long end run around academic freedom to punish law professor Amy Wax. FIRE’s working hard to ensure Penn’s dubious tactics won’t become the new playbook for private universities, which, unlike public universities, are not bound by the First Amendment.

  Long under pressure to “do something” about the controversial Wax — who’s been widely criticized for her views on race and gender — Penn finally got its woman yesterday.

  After conducting a nearly two-year investigation of Wax, which extended more than a year since the last real hearing in her case, Penn announced the professor would indeed be sanctioned for “unprofessionalism.” She’ll keep her tenured faculty role and serve a one-year suspension at half-pay. She’ll also keep her benefits, an important fact given that Wax has been fighting cancer while battling Penn administrators.

  Penn is a private school that nonetheless makes First Amendment-like promises to respect its students’ and faculty members’ right to free expression. Whether on a contractual or moral basis, Penn should have kept those promises. Instead, it abandoned principle for the sake of expediency.

  Here in the Live Free or Die state, we had a couple of State Senators demand the firing of a Hamas cheerleader on the faculty of the University Near Here. I sent an email to one of them. Never heard back. But apparently cooler heads prevailed. That didn't happen at UPenn.

• It's funny how things change in forty years. Last month's print Reason excerpted a 1984 article in its Archives section at the rear of the issue. Given the wonders of modern tech, we can Read the Whole Thing: Telecommuting: Will the Plug be Pulled? (And you have to keep telling yourself: written in 1984.)

  In at least one instance, local authorities have shut down a computer home worker because telecommuting violates local zoning laws. There is ample precedent for outlawing computer home work under federal labor regulations. And unions are sounding alarms about the prospect of expanding home work.

  Meanwhile, publications such as the left-liberal Nation magazine are carrying the rhetorical banner against home work. A 1983 Nation article bearing the title "Home Computer Sweatshops" keyed into people's revulsion at the exploitation of workers attributed to 19th-century low-wage factories. "A wide expansion of electronic home work," warned the article, "will have serious social consequences."

  Now, I would imagine (without actually checking) that there's at least one Nation writer bemoaning companies that are (um) strongly encouraging their workers to return to their offices. And I bet the word "sweatshops" appears.

Recently on the book blog:

Gee, it only seems to have been a couple months since I read America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson, another effort to examine where the Founders' heads were at when they decided to split up with Britain, even at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Ah. That's because it has only been a couple months since I read that book.

I liked Thompson's book quite a bit, and I liked this one, by Jeffrey Rosen, quite a bit too. You might expect (given the titles and subtitles) there to be a lot of overlap, with both authors covering pretty much the same ground. Instead, the books are complementary, with each author emphasizing things the other didn't discuss much. That's the way it seemed to me, anyway. History professors: if you're teaching a course on the guiding philosophies of the American Revolution, you won't go far wrong in assigning both these as texts. (Probably also Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; although I haven't read that, it got the Pulitzer.) (I really should read it, I own a copy.)

This book was inspired, more or less, when Rosen noticed that Cicero's Tusculan Disputations appeared on the "goodreads" recommendations of the American thinkers of the day, including Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. After some more research, he came up with a "top ten" authors of works that inspired the founders, with particular emphasis on that mysterious "pursuit of happiness" phrase that Jefferson worked into the Declaration.

Without further ado: (1) Cicero, Tusculan Disputations and On Duties; (2) Marcus Aurelius, Meditations; (3) Seneca, Essays; (4) Epictetus, Enchiridion; (5) Plutarch, Lives; (6) Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates; (7) David Hume, Essays; (8) Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws; (9) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Treatises on Government; and (10) Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Even a dilettante like me recognizes this list as pretty Stoic-heavy.

And I can't help but think: can you imagine Donald Trump or Kamala Harris reading any of these works? Let alone discussing them knowledgeably?

Anyway: Rosen examines the lives of the Founders (and some post-Founders), showing their philosophical underpinnings: Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley (!), Louis Brandeis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, … And a lot of Adamses: John, John Quincy, and Abigail weighs in thoughtfully too. It's "warts and all" coverage. Jefferson, Mr. All-Men-Created-Equal, is specifically excoriated for his slaveholding ways, and occasional racist remarks. In a memorable section, it's noted that James Wilson lived a profligate lifestyle, and died "as he railed against his creditors." Tsk.

And, as a bit of red meat thrown to us anti-Progressives, Rosen bemoans the transformation of the Presidency by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson "in precisely the direction the Founders hoped to avoid". (Wilson was pretty upfront about this, demanding that the government move away from its clunky "Newtonian" machinery of the Founders, and into a "Darwinian" conception of a "living Constitution".)

Rosen convincingly argues that the "pursuit of happiness" was viewed as seeking eudaimonia, the life lived in virtue, moderation, peaceableness, and reason. He distinguishes that from hedonia, or base pleasure. He contends that's Where It All Went Wrong for America, when the latter pursuit shouldered out the former. Certainly, as a sometimes-conservative, I'm open and sympathetic to that argument. (But as a sometimes-libertarian, I wonder if there isn't room for both.)

A style note I found interesting: Rosen often refers to "enslavers" instead of "slave owners"; "enslaved people" instead of "slaves". This seemed clunky to me, maybe a tad "woke", but I (eventually) got it: a small linguistic nod to the reality of the relationship between those in bondage and those that held them in bondage. It's not a dry pigeonholing of people into two states; it emphasizes the ongoing oppressive action of enslavement. So I'm all for it, despite (and maybe because of) the clunkiness: it reminds the reader of the evil reality.

It's why I often say "baby killing" instead of "abortion".