The View from Right Field

“The Difference Between a Lady and a Diplomat” – And the State of Humor Today.

Arnold Kling wrote a very nice article, “The Aphorisms of Merle Kling,” about his father in “In My Tribe” today.  I particularly liked the joke that the elder Mr. Kling heard around the Political Science Department at Washington University, where he spent his whole career:

“What’s the difference between a lady and a diplomat?

If a lady says no, she means maybe.  If she says maybe, she means yes.  And if she says yes, then she is no lady.

If a diplomat says yes, then he means maybe.  If he says maybe, then he means no. And if he says no, then he is no diplomat.”

Obviously, this joke would be considered totally inappropriate today.  Which is one reason we have so little humor today: you can’t be inappropriate.

Peggy Noonan on “The Rape of the Israeli Women” – And Why Some Progressives Don’t Seem to Care

The Wall Street Journal had an article, “The Rape of the Israeli Women”, by Peggy Noonan last week on the absolutely horrible things that Hamas terrorists (or militants, or whatever you want to call them) did to Israeli women on October 7.  I don’t want to talk about it; you can read it in the Journal or here.  Ms. Noonan also talked about why many women on the progressive left don’t seem to care about what was done to Israeli women.

Here is a letter to the editor that I wrote to the Journal:

Victims – and Real Victims

From Jemima Kelly’s column in today’s Financial Times:

“There might be another lesson to be drawn from all this as well.  In recent years many on both the right and left have become embroiled in a culture of ‘competitive victimhood’.  Ukraine has shown the world not only what genuine victimhood looks like, but also the value of true heroism.” ¹

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¹ Jemima Kelly, “How Ukraine has created a rate moment of consensus,” Financial Times, April 8, 2022.

Communist. Fascist. Racist. What’s Next?

From what I read in the newspaper and hear on the radio, apparently I am a racist because I am not in favor of changing the name of Lake Shore Drive to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Drive.¹  The fact that “Lake Shore Drive” is a classic Chicago street name, known pretty much around the world, right up there with “State Street, that great street,” and “Michigan Drive, the Magnificent Mile,” doesn’t matter.  Jean Baptiste Point DuSable was a Black Haitian and not wanting to name Lake Shore Drive after him is racist.²  It’s sort of like Humpty Dumpty:

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that's all.’”

Writing Constitutions – And Judging Those Who Write Them

This week’s Economist has a review of Linda Colley’s new book on the history of written constitutions, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen.  The book covers the writing of constitutions from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present.  According to the review:

“Above all, Ms Colley argues, the need for innovative, written constitutionalism was driven by the evolving nature of war. … Governments’ need for ever-more manpower to fight these wars – and ever-growing tax revenues to pay for them – led to crises at home that could only be tackled by the concession of new rights and promises of wider political participation. … 

How Will Their Great-Grandchildren Look at Today’s Woke Leaders?

One of the favorite activities of the woke seems to be looking back in history and re-judging our leaders of the past based on the standards today.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; their statues have to come down.  Abraham Lincoln didn’t treat Native Americans right, not to mention all of the racist things he said; schools need to be renamed.  Ulysses S. Grant owned a slave¹; his statue must come down.  And so on.  It is never a matter of looking at the total of what these people did or looking at what they did in light of the times in which they lived.  Or even looking to see if they helped push the direction of history a little bit in the right direction.  If they didn’t fully live up to our standards today, their statue comes down; the school is renamed. 

Do Ph.D.s Really Make People Special?

Given that just about everybody else in the world (or at least a lot of those on Twitter and in newspapers) has commented on Joseph Epstein’s article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, let me put in my two cents worth.  I read the article before “the ship hit the sand,” as they say, so my reaction was not affected by what other people said/screamed/etc. 

Basically, I thought the article was hilarious.  Because I did not see it as making a big deal about Jill Biden.  I saw the article as making a comment, an accurate comment, I might add, about the pretentions of some of those who have college degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree – and especially those who have some sort of doctorate.

Flying the Flag on the Fourth

The first thing I did when I got up on the Fourth was to get out the ladder and put up the flag.  We aren’t home on the Fourth of July very often, but this year we were.  (Surprise!)  And I figured it would be an important year to make sure the flag was up.  I was right.

There didn’t seem to be as many flags as I remembered in years when we have been home (or on Memorial Days, etc.), which I sort of expected.  A couple of people on my wife’s high school class Facebook group said they weren’t flying the flag this year because, well, you know.  Which was a viewpoint I expected and which was the reason I put ours up first thing Saturday morning.

Is Elizabeth Warren a Native American or an American Indian?

The answer, of course, is neither, as even Elizabeth Warren says now.  But what I found interesting about the Texas Bar registration card Senator Warren filled out in 1986 is not that she claimed be a race that she isn’t, but that she got the name wrong, at least to today’s standards.  Because she didn’t write “Native American.”  She wrote “American Indian.”  Which is I believe is now considered inappropriate and not sufficiently “woke.”¹

And which is yet another reason why it is so tiring to talk about issues today.  Not only do you have to get the answers right, you have to only use the most up-to-date terms when doing so.
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¹ I think that is the proper word, but I am not sure.  Because I definitely would not be considered sufficiently “woke.”

How Could Angela Merkel, Such a Great Leader, Vote Against Same-Sex Marriage?

Germany has voted to legalize same-sex marriage.  By a vote of 393-226, the Bundestag approved the measure today.  What was most interesting to me, however, was this article in The Washington Post: “Why Angela Merkel, known for embracing liberal values, voted against same-sex marriage.”

As the article says, Chancellor Merkel “welcomed over 1 million refugees, abandoned nuclear energy over safety fears and has urged President Trump to respect human rights.”  The clear implication of the article is: Given all the right and proper views she has and all the right and proper things she has done, how could she possibly vote against same-sex marriage?