I have a lot more time for Jane's frustration than most, but I believe what she is saying is "The state can't replicate the family", which is true. Without functional parents, what to do with "bad kids", becomes a tangle of institutions, regulations, and also neglect.

When social conservatives say the failure of the family is at the core of our problems, this is one of the things they are talking about!

Thinking about this walk in late October (now that I'm medically grounded for awhile). Worth it? Seems a lot more interesting than sticking to the West side

Everyone all excited about that bug essay, but Plato covered all this long ago, in one of his rarely read works, The Beetle: Socrates: Tell me, Philon, what is it that troubles you? Philon: Your indifference, Socrates. You speak of justice as though it belongs only to certain men. But surely all humans deserve justice? Socrates: What in particular do you mean? Slaves? Persians? Egyptians? Philon: Yes Socrates all of those. Socrates: Even though they worship other Gods? Philon: Yes, that doesn’t make them less human, less deserving of justice. Socrates: You cannot pour the same measure into every vessel, Philon. A person must possess the capacity for justice before he can properly participate in it. Philon: What of children then? Socrates: Because they have the capacity for it, though they do not yet possess it. That is why they are nurtured and ruled by their parents until they develop that capacity. Callicles: Philon, if I may, if you want to extend justice to every human, regardless of the strength of their will, why not to all creatures. Why not cattle. Why not dogs. Why not fish? Why not a beetle! Philon: We certainly should consider that as well. They are alive. They feel pain, that must count for something? Callicles: Something? Philon: Yes. And there are millions upon millions of them. Their number gives their suffering, however negligible, considerable weight. Socrates: Weight? Is the beetle capable of knowing what is just or unjust? Philon: We cannot say. Socrates: Of governing its appetites according to reason? Philon: Again, we cannot say. Callicles: Then why should its suffering govern us? Philon: Because suffering is suffering and it if a beetle suffers, which it most propabably does, given how it flees when I try to kill it, then it must be considered. Callicles: Then are suggesting that when I crush a thousand beetles beneath my feet, I have committed a greater injustice than when a tyrant murders a man? Philon: Perhaps, in aggregate— Socrates: In aggregate? Philon: Yes, if you sum up the injustice, there comes a point at which killing beetles becomes a greater injustice than killing a man, and you must admit once you have done that, you have done wrong. Socrates: No, Philon. Justice is not water or grain that becomes greater when you heap more of it together. A sum of many nothings is still nothing. Callicles: Philon. Hold on. Are you suggesting if I am to kill a million beetles to protect my crops, I’ve done wrong? Philon: Perhaps. It needs to be considered. Callicles: So we should let men be ruled by insects? Great, now I’ve heard it all. See Socrates, this is where your thinking ends. First we let the weak men control the strong, and then we are ruled by beetles. Socrates: I have been agreeing with you Callicles. Your scorn should be towards Philon, not me. Callicles: Look what you have done Philon. You have made me agree with Socrates, and that gives me greater pain than all the suffering of all the beetles in the world combined. Socrates: The feeling is mutual. Callicles: Fuck it all. I'm going to get drunk, and find some young men to wrestle with. Socrates: Wait for me Callicles, I need a big glass of meed as well. Beetles. Ha!

With content like this, hard to see how I keep coming up short

For a decade people have been telling me I need to read De Tocqueville -- and now that I'm reading it, they have been right. Yet part of the reason I didn't read it before was I didn't want to be influenced -- I wanted to come to my own conclusions. Yes, even 200 years later. While I'm only 1/5th of the way through, so it's early, and while I have quibbles with it -- I think he is too extreme in his enthusiasm, which given his circumstances is understandable -- I'm more impressed with how what he finds and what I've found are shockingly similar. Despite the time gap. A thick culture built around a balancing of independence and faith -- or as he writes “Americans have succeeded somehow to meld together in wondrous harmony: namely the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty”. And, "…. we see them seek with matching zeal material wealth and moral pleasure: Heaven in the other world, comfort and freedom in this world.” A prosperity theology — a Careerist Christianity — we call the American Dream, which I've argued is our shared functional Thick Culture. He has a line "The entire man comes full formed in the wrappings of his cradle… something similar happens in the case of nations: they always carry the marks of their beginnings" and I've been skeptical of such extreme foundational determinism, but reading Tocqueville, and comparing it to what I've seen in my 15 years traveling the US, I'm more open to it now.

As to the question of foundational determinism -- I do believe that pre-civil war US was a functionally different nation from post. What we know of today as the US, really didn't take shape until the "reforms" post civil war -- not just elimination of slavery, but formation of central banking system, federal economic policy, 14th amendment, Land grant colleges, etc. But the thick culture — Careerist Christianity, the American Dream — survived that transformation

I went to the ER last week for a Pulmonary embolism -- which I probably got from flying. A short write op on that, and the risks. walkingtheworld.substack.com…

To add to the deluge --- What's funny about this is it might be single worst image to argue against immigration. These are probably children of high skilled Indian immigrants (mostly around Dallas area), who came for jobs in IT, engineering, and finance. Most are probably citizens now, as are their parents, and they have done very well, by all measures. High skilled Indians are as model an immigrant group as you can find, by whatever metric, you look at. For Eco types they add to the GDP/capita, so graph goes up (they do not end up on social services, they are gainfully employed.) For the social fabric types, they have strong families, low crime, high social functionality, and so that graph also goes up. For the cultural realist types (things like group characteristics are real, and matters), Hinduism might be the OG prosperity theology -- the idea that material success is evidence of cosmic/divine favor* -- so they fundamentally align with the American Dream. That these kids are at the game, indistinguishable other than ethnicity, is snapshot of all of that. American kids being American kids. Maybe your argument is we need a time-out and so you want a new Johnson-Reed Act to halt immigration for several decades to a trickle, to allow a period of assimilation, to strengthen the social fabric, to put American workers first, etc. But even that act wasn't a freeze, and wasn't neutral, favoring immigration from different cultures over others, specifically at the time Northern Europeans (and Latinos because farming industry lobbying), and any new act, based on the same SimCulture mentality, would almost certainly want the kids pictured below. Or to put it another way, this tweet/photo might be the worst argument for the "smart" anti-immigration cause, because it is simply racist/retarded argument. *PS: That is an over-simplification, but the reality is high status Hindus don't have any problem reconciling their faith with career ambition, and wealth. The reconciliation was done long ago, as anyone who ever attended an Indian wedding can tell you. Gold Gold Gold

The scene you wake up to after going out for a walk, your lung start burning with each breath, your chest rippling with pain, and so you flag down a car and ask them to take you to the ER Pulmonary embolism -- no joke, but I'm out of the woods, discharged after 40 hours in the hospital and into a few weeks of taking it easy and munching blood thinners

Thanks to all the kind words. Remember, when flying, or driving, wiggle those toes every hour! Now back to regularly scheduled programing. PS: Finally reading Tocqueville (after many many suggestions) for Catherine Project.