Trump's Diesel Deal

 Trump has announced a plan to acquire some diesel fuel from Putin’s Russia, ignoring and probably violating a law he signed less than a month ago putting sanctions on energy exports from Russia, a law intended to help Ukraine in its war with Russia. Some people have accused him of treason because of it. In a legal sense he is not a traitor to the United States. He is a traitor to what the United States stands for. He has disgraced our country by siding with a hostile foreign tyranny against a wronged friendly nation in wartime.   

He did not even get much for his betrayal. The whole deal is farcically sick. The great deal do-er abandoned our principles and sold out our friends for a little over 5.9 million barrels of diesel fuel, which is about two days worth of diesel consumption in our country and less than two day's worth of diesel production at American refineries. You have to wonder what he would have given Putin for something that mattered.

I have seen people claim that he is Putin’s puppet. I do not think that is accurate. I think something almost as bad is. I believe he likes and envies Putin and would like to be his buddy and to be able to rule the same way the Russian does (and the same way other tyrants such as Xi do).

 The deal does offer a good way for  testing commentators and journalists on the right. Those who oppose it deserve approval. Those who keep quiet might get a benefit of the doubt. Those who support it should not be taken seriously when talking about defending freedom or when criticizing Democrats for being too cozy with our enemies. 

Sprague De Camp Nonfiction

 

L. Sprague de Camp is mainly known as a writer of fiction – especially science fiction and fantasy. Much of it is still in print, and more can be found in used bookstores on on Ebay. I have found that he also wrote some interesting and worthwhile nonfiction, sometimes in collaboration with his wife Catherine.

Lost Continents is a history of the Atlantis and related myths from the time of Plato to the 1950s, a survey of literature on the subject, and an amusing treatment of various crackpots and their theories of lost continents and of various cultists who included tales of lost continents in their doctrines. It covers its subjects thoroughly.

The Heroic Age of American Invention is a history of American inventors and inventions in the 19^th Century. De Camp was an expert on patents and patent law, and there is a little too much inside baseball on patent fights and litigation, but the stories are fascinating and informative.

The title of The Ancient Engineers is misleading. The book actually covers remarkable feats of engineering and design in various cultures from the building of the pyramids to the Renaissance.

Citadels of Mystery has another fairly misleading title. In considering several remarkable structures built in places around the world in pre-industrial times, it refutes a number of fantastic theories and clears up some mysteries about their origins. It treats the cultures that built them fairly and objectively, rejecting spurious 19^th Century racial theories while also avoiding sappy romanticizing of the sort popular in our time.

De Camp was a fair and thoughtful historian here, and a good writer. That is a fine combination, and these four books are worth reading.

Merz on Free Speech

 

A few days ago Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a point of ridiculing the notion of free speech as a wrongheaded American libertarian quirk. He is an easy person to ignore, but his comment does deserve an answer. I thought of this one:

Herr Merz:

A little over eighty years ago men of my father’s generation did some serious business in Europe to guarantee, among other things, that we did not have to care what Germans thought about free speech. We still don’t.