Gongol.com Archives: December 2023
December 16, 2023
Nothing automatically makes early risers into saints
One of the silliest exercises in modern life is the attempt to incant one's personal circadian rhythms as a character judgment. Some are morning people, some are night owls, some are in-between, some change over time. We're all over the map, biologically, and the average natural "day" cycle for a human might actually be 25 hours, which doesn't fit any model usefully at all. ■ People ought to work with the patterns and practices that suit them best, not what someone arbitrarily suggests as a rule. If going to bed early makes a person feel good, then there's nothing wrong with that. But for others, late night is prime time to get things done. ■ It doesn't do any good for the productivity-obsessed to amplify capricious guidelines like "nothing good happens after 8 on a weeknight". That's utter nonsense; feel free to check in with the Pope at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and see how much trouble he's getting into. ■ What difference is 3:10 in the morning, when experienced as the waking hour of a Benedictine monk or when it's just after a forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center has issued the regularly-scheduled Day 3 Convective Outlook? There's no moral dimension to the time on the clock, and it seems particularly arbitrary to get picky about who's up at what times when everyone's a little bit of a night owl on December 21st, purely out of necessity. ■ People ought to be awake when it feels natural and right, and be asleep when they're tired. Winston Churchill took naps while in pursuit of victory during World War II, then worked until midnight. It's neither good nor bad to be active at any particular hour -- as long as the pursuit is good, the time is immaterial.
Congress has passed legislation inside the National Defense Authorization Act prohibiting any President from unilaterally withdrawing the United States from NATO. It was a joint effort, led by Senators Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio. ■ The Constitution gives the President broad latitude to negotiate international agreements, but only out of necessity: In Federalist Paper No. 64, it is explained like this: "Thus we see that the Constitution provides that our negotiations for treaties shall have every advantage which can be derived from talents, information, integrity, and deliberate investigations, on the one hand, and from secrecy and despatch on the other." ■ But that same Federalist Paper contemplated the possibility of things turning bad: "As to corruption, the case is not supposable. He must either have been very unfortunate in his intercourse with the world, or possess a heart very susceptible of such impressions, who can think it probable that the President and two thirds of the Senate will ever be capable of such unworthy conduct." Note that "Publius" (in this case, John Jay) implicitly acknowledges the possibility of a President being corrupted -- which is why the very high bar of Senate supermajority approval is required. ■ Lots of people find ways to hyperventilate about their opponents coming to power, but the seriousness of their concerns is revealed by the actual steps they take. In this case, there are real and non-trivial concerns about the potential for NATO opponents to engage in dirty tactics to undermine the alliance and its interests. Influence operations are everywhere. ■ This re-assertion of Senate authority -- legitimate since the adoption of the Constitution -- is a timely act of national self-interest. Rules that make our own behavior steadier and more predictable reinforce the conditions that make good alliances possible.
