Trying to Play it Safe

Is China abandoning its "limitless" partnership with Russia? In one sign that Vladimir Putin has "jumped the shark" It seems that his erstwhile Chinese BFFs are having second thoughts.

An article by HotAir's Allahpundit certainly suggests that China is reassessing its betrothal to Russia and Mr. Putin:

— On Monday, the Chinese ambassador to Ukraine met with authorities in Lviv to say that China “will respect the path chosen by Ukrainians because this is the sovereign right of every nation.” He also promised Chinese help with Ukrainian economic development after the war.

— The same day, Jake Sullivan held “intense” talks for seven hours with a Chinese official in Rome warning Beijing of consequences if it rescued Russia’s war in Ukraine by supplying Putin with military and economic aid.

— Last night, a German paper reported that the Russian foreign minister was en route to China for a visit when his plane mysteriously made an about-face and returned to Russia. It’s unclear why, but some speculate that Chinese officials may have decided they didn’t want the bad optics of meeting with him at the moment.

— This morning, the White House announced that Biden will speak with Xi Jinping directly tomorrow about the prospect of China providing Russia with aid.

— Today, a change has been detected in the tenor of Chinese media’s coverage of the war. CGTN is a state-run network with chapters in the west, a sort of Chinese version of RT. They ran multiple segments about Ukrainian civilians being killed within the past 24 hours and made no bones about who was responsible.

A cynic might say that it's not the human rights abuses and atrocities perpetrated by the Russian forces in Ukraine that have the Chinese feeling a bit anxious. After all, their own record with regard to the horrors perpetrated on the Uyghurs and others in China is not particularly heartwarming.

Rather, China is probably upset that the Russian invasion appears at this point to be an abject failure. The Chinese don't want to be associated with a fiasco, but neither do they want to file for divorce from their incompetent significant other just yet.

On the other hand, if it looks to them like Ukraine might actually prevail in this war they don't want to completely alienate themselves from Mr. Zelenskyy either.

The Chinese are walking a geopolitical tightrope, and they doubtless realize that a single misstep will be most unfortunate for them.

Read the HotAir article for more on China's predicament.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

In his great work The Republic the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) relates an allegory that is doubtless the most famous tale in all of Western philosophy and probably discussed in every introductory philosophy course.

In the allegory Plato invites us to imagine a cave in which prisoners have been chained since childhood. Behind them is a fire and between the fire and the prisoners there are men walking back and forth carrying burdens. The fire casts shadows of these men on a wall which the prisoners have all their lives been facing.

The prisoners see the shadows and hear the echoes of the men's voices and they mistakenly believe that these shadows and muffled echoes are reality. It is, after all, all they've ever known. They confer honors on each other for their ability to contrive clever interpretations of the shadows.

One prisoner, however, is released from his chains and dragged up and out of the cave where he beholds the world in the light of the sun. At first he can scarcely open his eyes, accustomed as they are to the darkness, but gradually he's able to see that a world that's infinitely richer than the world of the cave.

He won't believe his eyes but gradually he realizes that the world of the cave is all illusion, that the world he sees in the light of the sun is the true reality.

He would take pity on his comrades still chained in the cave. He would care nothing for the honors they value. He would count it all so much empty and meaningless chatter. All that would matter to him is the brilliance of the sun and the beauty and variety of the world.

He might even return to the cave to tell his fellows what he has seen, but they wouldn't believe him. They'd think he'd lost his senses, and if he tried to persuade them to join him outside the cave they may even kill him.

Plato's parable works on many different levels. For Plato the man who escapes the cave is the philosopher who escapes the realm of darkness and shadows and apprehends the world in the light of the Good, the Beautiful and the True. When the philosopher returns to the cave to seek to enlighten his fellow prisoners they refuse to listen to him and, perhaps like Socrates, he may even be put to death.

For Christians for two thousand years the cave represents the present world with its empty and meaningless pursuits and illusions. The sun is the absolute Good, Beautiful and True, i.e. God, and the world illuminated by this "Sun" is the really real.

When the "prisoner" seeks to persuade his fellows that they're wasting their lives debating about shadows when there's a beautiful, meaningful life awaiting them outside the cave, they often think he's gone insane, and, as has happened to millions throughout the last two millennia, they may even kill him.

Plato's allegory of the cave has endured for 2300 years because, whatever his original intent, it neatly captures a deep truth about reality and the human condition.

Why St. Patrick Is Celebrated

Millions of Americans, many of them descendents of Irish immigrants, will celebrate their Irish heritage by observing St. Patrick's Day today. We're indebted to Thomas Cahill and his best-selling book How The Irish Saved Civilization for explaining to us why Patrick's is a life worth commemorating.

As improbable as his title may sound, Cahill weaves a fascinating and compelling tale of how the Irish in general, and Patrick and his spiritual heirs in particular, served as a tenuous but crucial cultural bridge from the classical world to the medieval age and, by so doing, made Western civilization possible.

Born a Roman citizen in 390 A.D., Patrick had been kidnapped as a boy of sixteen from his home on the coast of Britain and taken by Irish barbarians to Ireland. There he languished in slavery until he was able to escape six years later.

Upon his homecoming he became a Christian, studied for the priesthood, and eventually returned to Ireland where he would spend the rest of his life laboring to persuade the Irish to accept the Gospel and to abolish slavery.

Patrick was the first person in history, in fact, to speak out unequivocally against slavery and, according to Cahill, the last person to do so until the 17th century.

Meanwhile, Roman control of Europe had begun to collapse. Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 A.D. and barbarians were sweeping across the continent, forcing the Romans back to Italy and plunging Europe into the Dark Ages.

Throughout the continent unwashed illiterate hordes descended on the once grand Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books. Learning ground to a halt and the literary heritage of the classical world was burned or moldered into dust. Almost all of it, Cahill claims, would surely have been lost if not for the Irish.

Having been converted to Christianity through the labors of Patrick, the Irish took with gusto to reading, writing and learning. They delighted in letters and bookmaking and painstakingly created indescribably beautiful Biblical manuscripts such as the Book of Kells which is on display today in the library of Trinity College in Dublin.

Aware that the great works of the past were disappearing, they applied themselves assiduously to the daunting task of copying all surviving Western literature - everything they could lay their hands on.

Book of Kells

For a century after the fall of Rome, Irish monks sequestered themselves in cold, damp, cramped mud or stone huts called scriptoria, so remote and isolated from the world that they were seldom threatened by the marauding pagans. Here these men spent their entire adult lives reproducing the old manuscripts and preserving literacy and learning for the time when people would be once again ready to receive them.

Irish scriptoria

These scribes and their successors served as the conduits through which the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the benighted tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruin of the civilization they had recently overwhelmed.

Around the late 6th century, three generations after Patrick, Irish missionaries with names like Columcille, Aidan and Columbanus began to venture out from their monasteries and refuges, clutching their precious books to their hearts, sailing to England and the continent, founding their own monasteries and schools among the barbarians and teaching them how to read, write and make books of their own.

Absent the willingness of these courageous men to endure deprivations and hardships of every kind for the sake of the Gospel and learning, Cahill argues, the world that came after them would have been completely different. It would likely have been a world without books. Europe almost certainly would have been illiterate, and it would probably have been unable to resist the Muslim incursions that beset them a few centuries later.

The Europeans, starved for knowledge, soaked up everything the Irish missionaries could give them. From such seeds as these modern Western civilization germinated. From the Greeks the descendents of the Goths and Vandals learned philosophy, from the Romans they learned about law, from the Bible they learned of the worth of the individual who, created and loved by God, is therefore significant and not merely a brutish aggregation of matter.

From the Bible, too, they learned that the universe was created by a rational Mind and was thus not capricious, random, or chaotic. It would yield its secrets to rational investigation. Out of these assumptions, once their implications were finally and fully developed, grew historically unprecedented views of the value of the individual and the flowering of modern science.

Our cultural heritage is thus, in a very important sense, a legacy from the Irish - a legacy from Patrick. It's worth pondering what the world would be like today had it not been for those early Irish scribes and missionaries thirteen centuries ago.

Buiochas le Dia ar son na nGael (Thank God for the Irish), and I hope you have a great St. Patrick's Day.

Just War Theory

I thought it it might be helpful to look at the current war in Ukraine in terms of what philosophers and theologians call Just War theory.

From the time of Augustine (c.400 A.D.) many Christian philosophers and theologians have thought about the question of the demands and restrictions the Gospel imposes on the use of force.

One result of that thinking has been a list of criteria that must be satisfied in any situation in which force, particularly military force, is contemplated. This is called jus ad bellum (justice in going to war).

These criteria generally include the following:

1. Just cause. Examples of a just cause for the use of force include: Defense against an unjust invader; Protection of family, home, or other innocent victims from direct harm; Recovery of goods unjustly taken; Protection of constitutional rights and liberties from government encroachment; Defense of allies who have been unjustly attacked, etc.

2. Just intent. The purpose of the war must be to establish peace or to protect the innocent. Hatred, economic gain, or the exercise of power are all illicit reasons for using force against another.

3. Legitimate authority. The war must be declared/waged by a legitimate government authority. A war declared by a terrorist organization like ISIS is by definition unjust.

4. Reasonable prospect of success. Deliberately protracted wars or wars initiated with no reasonable hope of success are unjust.

5. Last resort. When it's clear that no measure short of the application of force will avail, or that an attack upon one's nation is imminent, war is justified provided the other criteria are met. This requirement is problematic in that it's always possible to imagine yet another set of peace talks, etc. that could be embarked upon and which would delay war indefinitely.

Thus, governments have to exercise reasonable judgment in determining whether they have actually exhausted all practical options and have been left with no realistic alternative to war.

Just War theory also requires that wars not only be warranted by these stringent criteria (jus ad bellum) but that when fought they be conducted according to certain guidelines (jus in bello: justice in war). The two chief criteria of jus in bello are:

1. Discrimination. Civilians should never be deliberately targeted. This follows from the Christian imperative to be compassionate and merciful. It entails that prisoners not be mistreated and that property and livelihoods not be unduly or unnecessarily damaged.

2. Proportionality. The means employed must be no more brutal or violent than what is necessary to secure victory. It would be unjust to slaughter defeated and retreating enemy soldiers if they no longer pose a threat. It would be a disproportionate response, and therefore unjust, to respond to a cross-border raid with nuclear weapons.

As is no doubt obvious, the heat and stress of war and incipient war may create a lot of gray areas for those seeking to hold to the criteria of Just War, and there's often much room for differences in interpretation. Nevertheless, those who wish to wage war justly will strive to hew as closely to these principles as the exigencies of war permit.

Even so, I think it's clear to anyone who's been following the war in Ukraine that Russia is waging an unjust war. They fail the jus ad bellum test, particularly criteria #1,2 and 5, and they also fail the first criterion of the jus in bello test. The response of the Ukrainians is compatible with criteria #1,2,3, and 5 of the jus ad bellum test and #1 of the jus in bello test.

None of the other criteria really apply to their struggle.

The Russians from Vladimir Putin on down to those infantry troops who are shooting and raping civilians are war criminals, and one hopes that the world will not forget their crimes and return to the status quo ante once this conflict is over.

Those responsible for the death, terror and destruction visited upon the Ukrainian people should remain international pariahs as long as they live and as long as history is written.

Valor on the Cheap

One of the uglier and more irrational responses to the Russian atrocities in Ukraine is the attempt by people here in the West generally and the U.S. in particular to vent their frustration and anger by punishing anyone in any way associated with Russia.

Sometimes this nonsensical reaction is borne of righteous indignation, but often it's merely an attempt to showcase one's own moral righteousness.

It's an attempt, at least by some, to affirm their own valor without ever having to risk anything.

Tommaso Dorigo discusses some such efforts in a column at Science 2.0. He writes:

What reason can there be for firing an artist based on his or her nationality? .... given the presently ongoing prosecution of opposers of the Russian regime, who are we to blame anybody who refuses to publicly proclaim they disagree with their country's actions?

Musicians, athletes, para-olympiad atlethes - there seems to have been an escalation, a competition for the most absurd ban....

But we have reached the top with the recent suggestions, now circulating in the world of fundamental research, that scientists should stop collaborating with Russian colleagues, stop publishing papers with them, etcetera. What nonsense! Science unites countries - are we now going to take that attitude back, and create a divide?

Who do we think we are hurting if we stop collaborating with our Russian colleagues, if not the whole world?....

There are hundreds of Russian colleagues who are just as sorry as we are for the recent events in Ukraine, if not more. Many of those colleagues have even signed a letter that condemns the actions of their government, and in so doing they have exposed themselves to the risk of being fired, or even imprisoned.

And what is our attitude now - do we stop working with them? What do we think we are going to achieve by cutting ties with people who, exactly like us, consider the progress of human knowledge their mission in life?....

If we consider ourselves above the idea of countries having the right of invading other countries, if we believe that women and men are equal on both sides of the border, if we believe that what unites us (humanity, and love for knowledge and art) is more than what divides us (language, habits); if the feeling of wasting lives of Ukrainians as well as of Russians makes us weep the same tears, we have to stop this....

If we are against war we cannot be in favor of cutting collaboration and positive interaction among peoples, which can and should exist regardless of the decision of a warmonger that happens to rule one of these peoples....

What matters is what you can do to stop the war. If you can't do anything of that sort, then sit down and stop taking decisions that have nothing to do with that, and all to do with petty revenge.

The attempt to punish people who have nothing to do with Putin or his crimes, just because they are Russian, is inhumane and stupid. Even many of those boys who were sent to Ukraine by Putin didn't want to go, they don't want to be where they are nor doing what they're doing. Whether they survive or die their fate is tragic.

Those who seek to put on display how much they despise the horrors Putin is inflicting on both Russians and Ukrainians by punishing those who are completely innocent are behaving like brutish primitives. They need to be made to realize that wisdom and justice consist in judging people as individuals and not as members of a particular race, nationality or religion.

Faith and Reason

We often hear that there's a dichotomy between reason and faith. Reason, we're told, gives us a solid basis for our beliefs whereas faith yields beliefs that have no basis whatsoever.

This claim, however, belies a very shallow understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. Indeed, unless one has faith they have no ground for trusting their reason to lead them to truth.

By the term "faith" is meant "belief or trust despite the lack of proof." We have faith in this sense when we entrust ourselves to the surgeon to perform the operation skillfully and successfully or when we entrust ourselves to the competence of the flight crew when we board a jet.

We tacitly believe the surgeon and the pilot are competent even though we may not have proof that they are.

Modern Neo-Darwinian theory tells us that our reason, like all our cognitive faculties, has evolved to suit us for survival, not for finding truth. It needs be kept in mind that the survival of an individual or a species is only coincidentally related to truth.

If, for example, a belief exists that the more offspring a man has the greater will be his reward in an afterlife, that belief, if it's genetically based, will proliferate throughout the society with every subsequent generation since anyone holding it will doubtless have, on average, more offspring than those who lack the belief.

The belief has wonderful survival value for those who hold it, or at least for their genes, but the belief is false.

Another example: Atheists tell us that religion evolved because it offered comfort and solace and that due to these advantages religion has spread everywhere around the globe. Yet despite the acknowledged survival value of these religious beliefs atheists nevertheless believe them to be false.

In other words, evolutionary success often has nothing to do with truth, so why do we believe that reason has evolved as a reliable guide to truth? The answer is that we have faith that it is.

If it takes faith to believe that reason is trustworthy, what is that faith based upon? Some say it's based on the laws of logic which are independent of human reason, but as Michael Egnor points out in an article at Evolution News, it requires a measure of faith to think that the laws of logic are trustworthy.

Take Descartes' maxim that thinking proves the thinker's existence - "I think therefore I am." It would seem that there's no faith involved in this succinct proof, but as Egnor points out, that's not quite so. He writes:

For example, even Descartes’s assertion, “I think therefore I am,” is not something we can prove without faith. The problem lies in the “therefore.” We must tacitly assume the validity of logic — specifically the logic of non-contradiction — to link “I think” to “I am.”

If we do not have faith in logic, then it would be possible to think but not to exist. Of course we find this possibility absurd, but it is only absurd because of our profound faith in the validity of logic — in this case, the validity of the logical principle of non-contradiction. That is the principle inherent in the belief that thinking presupposes the existence of the thinker.

If logic were not reliable, there would be no logical connection between thinking and existence. Thinkers could think without existing.

We can't prove the axioms of logic. We accept them on faith. Nor can we prove that reason is trustworthy for to attempt to do so requires us to rely on a rational argument which itself requires us to use our reason. But to use our reason to prove that our reason is reliable is to commit the fallacy of begging the question.

The secular man and the theist are in the same boat here. Both must exercise faith in the trustworthiness of their reason, but the secular man must have faith that blind impersonal forces serendipitously gave rise to a cognitive faculty that purely by coincidence turns out to be a reliable guide to knowledge.

The theist has faith that his reason is a generally reliable guide to knowledge because she believes it to be the gift of a rational and good God who gives us this cognitive faculty for the express purpose of discovering truth.

I leave it to the reader to decide which option is a priori more reasonable to believe.

Putin, MiGs and Corn Pop

Journalists as of Friday were reporting that the Russians were maneuvering heavy artillery into firing positions aimed at Kyiv in Ukraine, apparently with the intent of leveling the city.

Right now the Ukrainians could certainly use the 28 MiG fighter jets that Poland was planning on delivering until President Biden personally nixed the deal. The plan was to fly the jets to a U.S. airbase in Germany so that Polish jets would be transferred to Ukrainian pilots at an American base on German soil.

It would be a thoroughly NATO operation. Those fighters would be helpful in neutralizing Russian artillery, but Mr. Biden canceled our role in the process at the last minute for fear that delivering the jets would anger Vladimir Putin.

As the Wall Street Journal (paywall) opines this is a fiasco that's going to result in the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians, and the president's thinking on this matter seems incoherent:

The logic seems to be that sending lethal anti-aircraft and antitank weapons won’t provoke the Russian, but 28 fixed-wing aircraft would. That distinction is hard to parse, especially when the Pentagon is also saying that the Ukrainians don’t need the jets because their other weapons are more effective.

So sending less lethal aircraft will lead to World War III, but not arms that are really deadly?

Evidently, all Mr. Putin has to do is threaten nuclear war and Mr. Biden hastily and shamefully retreats:

The bigger problem is the message this fiasco sends to Mr. Putin about NATO. The essence of credible deterrence is making an adversary believe that taking certain actions will draw a response. By so ostentatiously not sending the fighters, and saying the reason is fear of escalation, Mr. Biden is telling the Russian what he doesn’t have to worry about.

Instead of deterring Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden is letting the Russian deter the U.S.

Mr. Biden likes to talk like a tough guy but has repeatedly shown himself to be, as the Texans say, all hat and no cattle. When our military proposed an operation to get Osama bin Laden, then Vice-President Biden advised against it.

As president he ordered the disgraceful evacuation of Afghanistan leaving dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans behind, as well as thousands of Afghans who helped us in our war against the Taliban. Because he didn't want to provoke the Taliban most of those Afghans are likely dead by now.

And, as the Journal reports, this month the Administration stopped the scheduled test of a U.S. nuclear missile after Mr. Putin issued a vague nuclear threat. The test had nothing to do with Ukraine, and Russia knew about it, but the Biden Pentagon stopped the test anyway.

Meanwhile, as the White House dithered over those MiGs, reports have it that Russia has been preparing to use chemical weapons on Ukrainian troops.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, tough-talking Joe from Scranton told a cringe-worthy and rather dubious tale of his encounter with a "bad dude" of his youthful acquaintance named "Corn Pop." It's too bad for the Ukrainians that Mr. Biden isn't as steely-spined with Vladimir Putin as he claimed to have been with old "Corn Pop."

How the Javelin Works

Journalists reporting on the war in Ukraine frequently mention the use by Ukrainian forces of a weapon called the Javelin which has been very effective, apparently, against Russian armored vehicles like tanks and armored personnel carriers. Ross Pomeroy at RealClear Science writes a helpful explanation of how the missile works. Here are some excerpts from his piece:

"This weapon allows a single soldier to target and destroy even the most heavily armored main battle tank with an almost guaranteed kill rate, at great range and with minimal risk," Army Capt. Vincent Delany wrote of the Javelin for West Point's Modern War Institute.

With the Javelin, a soldier using the portable, reusable Command Launch Unit (CLU) looks through an infrared sight to locate a target up to an incredible 2.5 miles away.

When the user spots a target, he operates a cursor to set a square around it, almost like cropping an image. This is then sent to the onboard guidance computer on the missile itself, which has a sophisticated algorithmic tracking system coupled with an infrared imaging device.

When the missile locks on to the target, the operator can launch the self-guided weapon and quickly relocate or reload to fire another missile at a different target.

The Javelin originally debuted in 1996, bearing a couple remarkable innovations. For one, it offers a "soft launch." David Qi Zhang of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute explained what that means in his Master of Engineering thesis on the Javelin.

"The first motor... produces enough thrust to launch the missile out of the tube and a safe distance away, but is completely burned before the nozzle left the tube, leaving no exhaust to hit the operator. The flight motor then ignites to propel the [missile] along its attack path," he wrote.

A second innovation of the Javelin is that it strikes from above. The missile rises high into the air, up to 490 feet, then blasts down on its target from a steep angle, striking the top of an armored vehicle or tank, where the armor is typically weakest.

Russian tanks are not helpless against the Javelin. Most are equipped with explosive reactive armor. When struck by a penetrating weapon like a missile, the armor detonates, blasting a metal plate outwards to damage the missile's penetrator and prevent it from piercing the tank's main armor.

The Javelin overcomes this by having tandem warheads, one to deal with the reactive armor plate, and the second to impact the tank's armor itself.

Modern Russian tanks are also equipped with a radar system called Arena, which detects incoming missiles and automatically fires a wide burst of projectiles to destroy or redirect them. But here, again, the Javelin reigns supreme, Delany says.

"The Javelin can defeat Arena while in top-attack mode, due to the missile descending from too steep an angle for the system to engage properly," he wrote.

Ukraine had been shipped roughly 77 launchers and 740 missiles before Putin invaded. Many, many more of each are now on the way courtesy of the U.S. and European allies. According to an article at NDTV as of a week or so ago at least 280 Russian armoured vehicles had been destroyed with the American Javelin missile, out of 300 shots fired.

By now thousands of these weapons are in the hands of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is one reason why the Russians aren't advancing very quickly on the ground but are instead bombarding cities either from the air or from a safe distance away with artillary.

Here's a chart released by Ukraine showing Russia losses thus far in the war. Whether the Ukrainians have inflated the numbers or not is hard to tell:

The chart appeared in an article in The Sun which has some other information on the war.

The Arctic Tern

The Arctic tern is a remarkable bird. It flies from the Arctic circle to the Antarctic and back again every year. The amazing thing is that it makes each trip entirely over the ocean without stopping anywhere to rest. It even sleeps while airborne.

This brief but beautiful video explains some of the remarkable abilities of this bird and suggets that those abilities and structures are better explained as a product of intelligent design than blind, mechanistic processes. Give it a look:

Progressivism's Book of Genesis

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English thinker who wrote during the turbulent period of civil strife and struggle for power between King Charles I and Parliament.

His thoughts on the best political system for avoiding the calamitous consequences of war were put down in a book titled Leviathan (1651).

Leviathan is one of the first books of modern political philosophy. Hobbes' central concern was peace, more specifically how to avoid the calamities of civil war. He began with two principles or axioms from which all else follows:

1. Men are all engaged in a constant struggle for power over others.
2. Men try to avoid death with all their might.

The word "leviathan" means great beast and is used to describe the state or commonwealth as Hobbes saw it. Hobbes' book, historian Peter Ackroyd observes, has been called "the only masterpiece of political philosophy in the English language."

Be that as it may, Hobbes wrote that the worst calamity to befall men is war. In one famous passage he wrote these lapidary words:

In such condition [i.e. civil war], there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In a primitive state of nature, He argues, in which there is no government, the condition of man ...

...is a condition of war of everyone against everyone, in which case everyone is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body.

And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live.

And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.

Men in a state of nature are in a constant struggle each with every other for power and each lives in constant fear of violent death. Hobbes' solution is for all men to yield their own individual sovereignty and rights to that of one sovereign (or a committee) of rulers, whose will would govern all.

Once yielded that sovereignty can never be rescinded. There would be in Hobbes' state no such thing as liberty of conscience, which only leads to conflict and violence. The state will determine what religion people will follow. Justice and truth are whatever the sovereign determines them to be. Nothing the sovereign does can be said to be unjust.

This, of course, is big government on steroids. It's the blueprint for the totalitarianisms of the Nazis and communists of the 20th century, and it's the logical endpoint of contemporary liberal progressivism, even if many modern progressives would balk at going so far.

Progressivism is a faith that a government run by highly educated elites will naturally be the best way to prevent conflicts and protect individual rights. The bigger, more massive the bureaucratic state the more power it has over individual lives, the better able it will be to provide for the security and welfare of its citizens.

Government is the progressive's religion, and its book of Genesis is Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.

What Will Break First?

Jim Geraghty has a fine column today at NRO in which he asserts that: The Russian invasion of Ukraine will end when one or more of four things breaks:

• the Russian supply lines;
• the Ukrainian ability to effectively resist;
• the Russian economy;
• the patience of some armed individuals around Putin.

The explanations he gives for each of these four are interesting, and readers following what's happening in Ukraine will want to read his entire piece. I'll just highlight what he says about his first point.

He writes:

On Friday, there was a rumor that “Russia has resources left for the war until Sunday, after which they will collapse.”

There are numerous reports of Russian attacks as of this morning, so that rumor sounds like an exaggeration of a real phenomenon — that Russia invaded with far too few resources, that frontline Russian units are stretching their supply lines thinner and thinner, and that many Russian units are getting literally and metaphorically stuck in a quagmire.

Trent Telenko, a retired technical analyst at the U.S. Defense Contracts Management Agency, offered another fascinating assessment of the logistics and terrain challenges Russian forces are facing over at the ChicagoBoyz blog:

The head and first dozen or so kilometers of the southernmost column north of Kiev have been stuck there for EIGHT DAYS. The Russians have since rammed more and more vehicles into this monster traffic jam (idiotically “following the plan” Soviet-style) so the whole thing is now 65-70 kilometers long (almost 40 miles).

And, because the trucks can’t go off-road due to the Rasputitsa mud and tire problems, they’re stuck on the roads and the roads’ shoulders three vehicles wide for the whole 40 miles. That means fuel and resupply trucks can’t move on or off road to deliver anything to anybody.

So all the columns’ heads are now out of fuel and battery power. They can’t move north, south or sideways, and everything behind them is stuck because of the mud, and rapidly running out of fuel and vehicle battery charge too (assuming they haven’t already).

Nor can any of those columns defend themselves because they’re too densely packed. They’re just targets waiting for the Ukrainians to destroy them.

Only the Ukrainians had something better to do. They opened the floodgates of reservoirs around those columns to flood them and turn the surrounding areas into impassable quagmires for months – probably until July or August.

Probably several thousand Russian vehicles in those columns will be irrecoverable losses. Hundreds of Russian soldiers might have drowned.

This was not just a debacle, but an EPIC one. About one-fifth of the Russian force in Ukraine is now flooded or trapped and are definitely out of the war for good.

There's more:

In a November 2021 essay, Alex Vershinin of War on the Rocks explained why the Russian army would face intensely challenging logistical problems if it invaded, and why each Ukrainian attack on Russian supply-chain trucks would exacerbate those problems:

As a result of extra artillery and air defense battalions, the Russian logistics requirements are much larger than their U.S. counterparts. If an army has just enough trucks to sustain itself at a 45-mile distance, then at 90 miles, the throughput will be 33 percent lower. At 180 miles, it will be down by 66 percent.

The further you push from supply dumps, the fewer supplies you can replace in a single day. . . . The Russian army does not have enough trucks to meet its logistic requirement more than 90 miles beyond supply dumps.

To reach a 180-mile range, the Russian army would have to double truck allocation to 400 trucks for each of the material-technical support brigades.

We’ve already seen videos of Russian soldiers looting shops and grocery stores for provisions. This is day twelve of the war; numerous reports indicate Moscow expected Ukraine to capitulate within a couple of days.

The longer Russia takes to subdue the Ukrainians the more their supply chains will be harassed and degraded. Not only is more weaponry entering the theater from the countries to Ukraine's west, but it looks like Poland will also soon be delivering Russian-made MIG fighter jets, which will further increase the hazards to Russia's supply lines.

When this war started twelve days ago all the experts were saying that the Ukrainians were fighting valiantly but that an eventual Russian victory was inevitable. Yet if Ukraine can hold out for another week or two the number of Russian troops who surrender may well turn into a flood, and if that starts happening there may be reason to hope that the whole Russian miltary effort will collapse.

Experts are often, if not usually, wrong.

Read the rest of Geraghty's analysis at the link.

No Promissory Notes, Please

One of the profound mysteries in biology that no materialistic theory like Darwinian evolution has ever been able to explain is how an organism develops from a fertilized egg. The video below shows the development of a chicken embryo, and as you watch it ask yourself how the cells know where to migrate to and what structures to form when they get there.

Ask yourself, too, how these cells know when to move, when to divide and when to differentiate.

What controls and choreographs all of this and how did that control system evolve?

A computer programmer can program a computer to control machinery in a factory so that it performs specific functions in a specific sequence in a very rudimentary version of what's happening in the embryo, but then the computer programmer is an intelligent agent.

How does all that happens in an embryo come about by undirected, mindless chance? I wish someone who thinks it did would explain it to me because the only explanation of these sorts of biological mysteries I've ever found are along the lines of, "It just did, somehow, and someday we'll know how."

Perhaps, but scientific promissory notes, especially notes whose maturity date is never specified, are very unconvincing as reasons for believing something that's otherwise very difficult to believe.

Here are a few other mysteries that seem to defy any materialistic or naturalistic explanation. I'd like very much to have someone explain how any of these could've evolved by those blind, mindless purposeless processes. And no promissory notes, please: Animal migration and navigation, insect metamorphosis, sexual reproduction, the first living cell, and human consciousness.

There are lots more, but those would make for a good start.

Anyway, here's the video:

The Incredible Maiden Voyage of the Barnacle Goose

I thought it might be well to take a break from the terrible events occurring in Ukraine this week, and inject a little awe and wonder into our day. To that end, I chose to write about the incredible manner in which young Barnacle geese leave their nest.

The Barnacle goose is a resident of Greenland but occasionally wanders south in the winter into the Middle Atlantic states of the U.S. It's perhaps the most handsome of all the geese seen in North America.

One thing that makes Barnacle geese especially interesting is the manner in which their young are fledged. They're hatched on ledges high up on cliff faces, but their natural milieu lies in the water hundreds of feet below.

Watch this video to see the remarkable manner by which they get from the ledge to the water:

That any of them survive this first "flight" is surely one of the wonders of the animal kingdom.

A Few Thoughts on How Things Stand, Nuclear - Wise

Vladimir Putin recently ramped up Russia's nuclear readiness status which raises a lot of questions about nuclear weapons. Moreover, some in the U.S. in Congress and in the media have called for the introduction into Ukraine of American air power which could certainly escalate to a nuclear exchange.

The Heritage Foundation's policy analyst for nuclear deterrence and missile defense, Patti-Jane Geller, has been asked by The Daily Signal to give her thoughts on these matters, which she does by answering six questions posed to her by the Daily Signal.

I've listed the six questions she addresses in bold along with one or two of her sentences that give a succinct summary of her more detailed answer. If you're interested in her more extensive responses I encourage you to read the whole article:

1. Putin put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert during the invasion of Ukraine. What is the likelihood he would use nuclear weapons, and on who and what? "The simplest answer to this question is that while the likelihood is not high, it is not zero either."

2. A nuclear attack by Russia on the United States seems extremely unlikely. But what should be the U.S. response, and that of NATO, if Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear weapon? "Ukraine is not a NATO member, and therefore the United States does not extend its nuclear umbrella over Ukraine. Nor are the United States and NATO currently involved in the conflict militarily, so they have no obligation to respond using military force."

3. Just out of curiosity, how much of the United States could be reached by a Russian nuclear attack? "All of it."

4. Does the United States have an adequate missile defense system in place under the worst-case scenario to defend itself or to defend allies from a Russian nuclear attack? Do Eastern European allies have adequate missile defense systems? "Many Americans find it hard to believe that we have no way to defend against a major Russian nuclear attack."

5. By most counts, Russia has several hundred more nuclear warheads than the United States. How relevant is this? Or would such a conflict bring such annihilation that it almost wouldn’t matter? Concerning strategic warheads [warheads mounted on ballistic missiles which could travel thousands of miles] there's a rough parity. Concerning non-strategic "battlefield" weapons [nuclear weapons of relatively shorter range and lower blast yields designed for use on the battlefield] the Russians have a 10 to 1 advantage over the U.S. (2000 to 200)

6. Anything else about Russia’s nuclear capabilities that Americans should keep in mind as Putin’s rhetoric harshens? "As much as U.S. policymakers might like to wish away nuclear weapons from existence, unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote. Putin’s recent inflammatory rhetoric, nuclear saber-rattling, and military actions in Ukraine are proof of the need for a strong, modern U.S. nuclear force."

"Basically, That's Wrong"

Vice-preident Kamala Harris was asked recently to explain in layman's terms what's going on in Ukraine. Her answer indicates that she has a pretty low opinion of the intelligence of the average layman:

OH… MY… GOD

Q: “What’s going on in Ukraine?”

Kamala: “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine so basically that’s wrong.”
pic.twitter.com/gDJDJQVsWb

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 1, 2022

We've arrived at another distressing point in our cultural decline when our highest political officials talk to Americans as if they were talking to a class of pre-schoolers.

Or, and I just had this depressing thought, maybe that's how Ms. Harris talks to everybody!

In any case, I'd like to ask her what she means when she characterizes one country invading another, deliberately killing and terrorizing its citizens and destroying its cities, by saying that "basically, that's wrong."

Is that the strongest censure she can think of? Would she say that "basically," child abuse is wrong or that "basically," the holocaust was wrong?

Thankfully, she didn't use the one timorous construction so popular today among those who can't bring themselves to condemn any behavior, no matter how iniquitous or vile - she didn't say that killing thousands of civilians, including untold numbers of children, is "inappropriate" or "not okay."

Even so, must our leaders speak about right and wrong, good and evil in such milk-soppy language as Ms. Harris did employ? Why is she - and not just her - so reluctant to say categorically that what the Russian political leadership and many in the Russian military are doing in Ukraine is pure, unadulterated evil?

Why are so many so reluctant to speak as if evil really does exist?

Do They Really Want a Nuclear Holocaust?

I find it beyond shocking that there are calls on Twitter and even in the halls of Congress to introduce American fighter jets into Ukraine to establish a no-fly zone (NFZ).

I'm stunned by this because surely they understand what they're calling for. A no-fly zone is not like some invisible force field over the country, it's an edict that requires enforcement.

If a NFZ were declared NATO aircraft would have to patrol the skies over Ukraine and shoot down any Russian aircraft that entered that airspace. They would also have to take out any ground-based radar and anti-aircraft missiles systems manned by Russian troops.

This would entail the loss of a lot of Russian lives at the hands of NATO, which would certainly elicit a Russian declaration of war against Europe and the U.S. That war might start out with conventional weapons, but it wouldn't stay that way. It would quickly escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, intermediate range nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

It would be mutually assured destruction. Our cities would be blasted into smoldering, radioactive piles of rubble. It astonishes me that anyone could seriously want this.

The Biden administration has a lot to be held accountable for in this current war. They waited too long to try to arm the Ukrainians, they passed on an opportunity months ago to build up the Ukrainian air force, and they waited too long to impose sanctions.

When the sanctions did come, they were too mild and the administration inexplicably delayed in targeting the right people and institutions and still haven't targeted Russia's petroleum and gas industry.

Nevertheless, they've done the right thing in refusing to heed the calls for a no-fly zone. Ukraine is not Iraq in the 1990s, the Russians aren't the Iraqis and Putin is not Saddam Hussein. Hussein could do nothing about our no-fly zone over the Kurdish areas he wanted to obliterate. Hussein didn't have nuclear weapons. Putin does. A couple thousand of them.

Arm the Ukrainians, demoralize the Russian army, but don't introduce American or NATO forces into this war unless Putin attacks a NATO country. To do so would be to invite a nuclear exchange nobody would win and everyone would lose.

How Far Will He Go Before...?

If there was any doubt about the evil of Vladimir Putin and his henchmen the last day or so should've dispelled it. In the last 48 hours the Russians have tacitly and explicitly threatened nuclear war with the West, attacked civilian sites with rockets, allegedly employed a type of bomb called a vacuum bomb that's banned by international law, and dropped cluster bombs on a school, among other places.

Russia appears to have used banned cluster munitions to indiscriminately shell civilian areas in Ukraine's east that had stood up to Vladimir Putin's invasion in what would constitute a war crime.

Kharkiv, which has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the war so far, was hit by rockets fired from Russian positions on Monday - with video showing a shopping centre in the Serpnia area blanketed by explosions. A military source told MailOnline that the videos showed 'cluster' munitions had been used.

'The BM-21 Grad is a multiple launch rocket system used for 'area denial', dropping cluster bombs on a concentrated area,' the expert said. 'It's mainly used on enemy troops before an offensive. Used against civilians, it's not only a war crime, but has only one purpose – to spread terror and alarm among the civilian population.'

Graphic images and video revealed streets littered with the bodies of dead and badly wounded civilians, with other images showing spent BM-21 Grad rocket cartridges laying in the streets and having fallen through apartment roofs.

Cluster munitions were also used to destroy a school in Okhtyrka, activist group Amnesty said, in which three people including a child were killed. The attack 'appears to have been carried out by Russian forces, which were operating nearby, and which have a record of using cluster munitions in populated areas,' Amnesty said.

'There is no possible justification for dropping cluster munitions in populated areas, let alone near a school,' secretary Agnes Callamard added.

The Russians have also deployed hundreds of assassins from a private militia run by an oligarch and Putin crony. These killers are tasked with killing Ukrainian officials and particularly President Volodomyr Zelensky:

More than 400 Russian mercenaries have been flown in from Africa to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, it was revealed last night.

A private militia known as the Wagner Group allegedly has orders from Vladimir Putin to take out Zelensky - and 23 other government figures - to allow Moscow to take over its eastern European neighbour.

According to the Times, the army-for-hire, run by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin - a close ally of the Russian president who is often dubbed 'Putin's chef' - was flown in five weeks ago and is being offered a huge sum for the mission.

The highly-trained operatives are said to be waiting for the green light from the Kremlin to pounce, with their hit list also including Ukraine's prime minister, the entire cabinet, mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir - both boxing champions who have become iconic figures on the front lines of the capital.

One wonders how far Putin will go before someone in his government or military decides that he simply can't be allowed to go any further and acts to put an end to the misery this man is inflicting on Ukraine, Russia and possibly upon the rest of the world.

Deliver Them from Evil

When the Taliban were closing in on Kabul Afghanistan's president absconded with his family and his wealth. Not so the courageous president of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky. He and many members of his administration and Parliament are not just ordering the Ukrainian people to fight, they're fighting alongside them in the streets even though Zelensky knows he's marked for death by Vladimir Putin.

When the Americans offered to spirit Zelensky out of Ukraine he responded that what he needed was ammunition, not a ride.

The stories of incredible courage coming out of Ukraine are as heart-breaking as they are inspiring. A Ukrainian soldier blew himself up on a bridge to slow the Russian advance.

Thirteen Ukrainians on an island in the Black Sea refused to surrender to a Russian warship and were all killed in the subsequent bombardment (although see here).

Middle-aged women are taking up rifles in Kyiv to fight the Russians in the streets. Unarmed citizens are standing in front of tanks to block their advance.

The stories of heroism are everywhere in Ukraine.

In the Lord's prayer is the petition to God to "deliver us from evil." May God deliver the brave Ukrainians from the evil that has come upon them, delivered by a man who will doubtless go down in history as one of the most evil European leaders of the last one hundred years.

Ukraine's Resistance

Television news reporting on the war in Ukraine has been a bit short on the details of the fighting. Strategy Page, however, has an extended column on the war in Ukraine, and one part provides some particularly interesting insight into what's going on outside Kyiv.

This is an excerpt from their column dated February 25th:

As expected, not a lot of the nearly 200,000 Russian troops now near the Ukraine borders actually entered Ukraine. All, or most appeared to be volunteers, rather than the one-year conscripts that comprise half the strength of the armed forces. Few of the conscripts and even fewer of their parents are eager for the conscripts to be fighting neighbors.

Russian airborne forces managed to take an airport ten kilometers outside Kyiv. Efforts to use that airport to bring in additional troops were disrupted by the Ukrainian use of Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles as well as rifle and machine-gun fire at low flying aircraft.

The airport was quickly attacked by a Ukrainian army rapid reaction force organized and trained for retaking key locations seized by Russian airborne forces.

While the area around the airport was soon surrounded by regular reservists and armed volunteers, the Rapid Reaction unit retook the airport before the Russians could use larger transport aircraft to bring in more troops. [Today's news brings word that the Ukrainians have shot down at least two Russian transport planes, each capable of transporting up to 150 troops].

Russia appears to have underestimated the preparations Ukraine has made since 2014 to deal with this kind of invasion. In addition to 150 local defense units (of at least battalion size [400-800 troops]) arrangements were made to quickly arm, train and deploy volunteers, which includes all physically able males aged 16 to 60.

The regular army obtained more portable anti-aircraft weapons and trained special units to deal with any Russians that seized key objectives. All those armed Ukrainians were more of an obstacle than the Russians expected.

The invaders are using about a dozen main roads from the border to objectives inside Ukraine. Within hours all those roads were under fire from the armed locals. Even convoys with numerous armed escorts were fired on and the Russians did not have enough troops to clear the roads of armed hostiles.

Some convoys were halted by roadblocks, and at least one Russian reconnaissance platoon was captured.

While the Russians control most Ukrainian airspace and coastal waters, land areas remain under Ukrainian control. An amphibious assault on the major Black Sea port of Odessa failed and most ground advances appear to have stalled as well.

The Ukrainian newspaper, The Kyiv Independent, reports that as of February 26th the Russians have lost 3500 soldiers, 102 tanks, 536 armored vehicles, 14 fighter jets, and 8 helicopters.

I don't know how trustworthy those numbers are, but if they're in the ballpark it seems that Vladimir Putin is so far paying a steep price for his decision to invade Ukraine.

Mystifying Policy

As readers of Viewpoint can discern, I'm not a fan of President Biden. Now's not the time to get into the reasons, but I did hope that he would do all he could to make war in Ukraine such an ugly prospect for Vladimir Putin that the Russian president would find some way to save face and back out.

I thought that the best way to do this was to arm the Ukrainians with such an arsenal of defensive weapons that Mr. Putin would count the cost and choose not to invade. I have to say that Mr. Biden has deeply disappointed. However much he equipped the Ukrainian military, and that seems to be a classified secret, his use of sanctions is mystifying.

He has sanctioned several big Russian banks which means that the Russian people, already poor, will be made a bit poorer, but he has declined to sanction Mr. Putin himself, and worse, he has declined to sanction Russia's oil and gas industry.

Even as he's ostensibly trying to cripple Russia's economy we and our NATO allies are still buying Russian fossil fuels! Gas and oil make up 50% of the Russian economy, but Mr. Biden has decided that neither Americans nor Europeans are willing to pay $4.00 or $5.00 a gallon for gasoline in order to help the Ukrainian people.

Of course, had he not turned us from being a net exporter of fuel to being a net importer reliant on Russian petroleum for 10% of our fuel, we'd still be energy independent, as we were under Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden wouldn't be in the ridiculous position of allowing Russia to continue to sell its chief export while also seeking to stifle the Russian economy.

Nor is it clear that the sanctions Mr. Biden unveiled on Thursday will do much to help the Ukrainian people in any case. He admitted as much himself when he said that we'll have to wait a month or so to see if they're working.

The Ukrainian people don't have a month to sit around waiting to see how Mr. Putin's Russia is holding up under Mr. Biden's sanctions. I'm sure they'd like a bit more help this afternoon rather than next month.

I also don't know why, if the sanctions won't bite for a month, they weren't imposed a month ago. Nor is it clear why they were imposed at all if, as Mr. Biden acknowledged, they weren't intended, contra Vice-President Harris, to be a deterrent.

If they weren't a deterrent then they're just punishment, but why not save thousands of lives and do something before Russia launched its invasion to perhaps make them reconsider?

I'm not a military expert nor am I a statesman steeped in international finance, but none of what President Biden has done in Ukraine, just like none of what he did in the Afghanistan pullout, nor what he's doing on our southern border, makes any sense to me.

I don't think it makes any sense to many other people either, least of all the Ukrainians.