Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
I hope you had a good Easter! Yet again, my newsletter drafted the previous week spills over to the next…
Updates
We received a good diagnosis last week – Sylvia’s thumb should heal just fine as long as it remains isolated and protected. Her growth plate was not affected by the break and as more bone grows it should pull the existing bone back from an almost 45-degree angle to straight.
When she was cleared from breaking her leg last year, the X-rays showed that, while the bones were still broken, they were completely enclosed by new bone growth.
Growth plates in children really are remarkable!
It’s starting to warm up here in Leadville – into the 40s most days and sunny. This will likely be the last week of skiing for the season. It’s been a good season on the whole, besides the broken thumb. Lots of improvement by the kids and lots of time skiing with friends and family when the come to visit. Next year we plan to get a set of high-powered walkie-talkies and let the kids pair off if they want to ski more independently.
News
Trump got a bit of a reprieve last week. An appellate court reduced the size of the bond he has to post by over two hundred million dollars and extended his deadline for posting the bond. It’s still a huge amount of money, especially when added to other settlements he has been charged to pay. But at least we have avoided (for now) the political tinder of an aggressive Democrat attorney general seizing significant property from the current Republican presidential candidate.
Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, went public last week at an astronomical valuation of over eight billion dollars. Currently, it is trading at a valuation a little north of six billion dollars. Even at a tenth of that valuation, Trump stands to make quite a bit of money from this company when he is free to sell or borrow against his shares in six months.
Also, last week Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) of FTX cryptocurrency fame was sentenced to 25 years in prison for embezzling customer funds. An interesting wrinkle to the story is that with the huge rally in cryptocurrency, and one or two bets SBF made paying off, it looks like customers will be made entirely whole and that even investors may see some of their money too. But, as the judge noted, SBF was not being convicted for “losing” anyone’s money – he was convicted for stealing it. A banker cannot legally take customer money and gamble it in Vegas, even if he returns the money later.
The EPA released major emissions restrictions for cars and trucks last week. The truck regs are especially bad (see this WSJ op-ed for details) and totally unrealistic and counterproductive.
Reflection
We celebrated the Seder meal with friends this past Thursday. As a family we had done some elements of the Seder meal before but having it with friends and adding more elements really made it special. The amount of symbolism and foreshadowing of Jesus in the Jewish Passover feast is remarkable – the blood of the lamb on doorposts so that death will pass by; breaking of the bread (Matzah). Why three pieces of Matzah? And why is only one of them broken?
The Matzah itself symbolizes Christ – stripes, blackened parts (“he was bruised for our transgressions”) – and the hidden part that, when found, brings a reward. Having the meal with a lot of children also draws out how the message is for all ages – the tangible elements, the traditions, and the story.
It made me reflect on how most Christians don’t think about days as “holy” anymore. Christmas and Easter are certainly “special,” but are they holy? And what would it mean to treat those days as holy? The idea of Sabbath has seen a resurgence in certain Christian/evangelical circles, and that may come close to recapturing the idea of holy days.
Yet for much of history, Christians had holy days (holidays) that involved meaningful rituals and practices. Post Enlightenment, however, we have seen a “disenchanting” of the world (see Charles Taylor). This could lead to a Sacred–Secular divide with the scope of the Sacred shrinking. But even for those (like me) who don’t believe there is a Sacred-Secular divide, everything can take on more and more of a secular tinge rather than a sacred tinge.
This is not all bad. Christian freedom is real, and we are not bound by Jewish law or by Christian customs. But I still wonder if most Christians have not gone too far in “every day is the same” thinking. Can any religion really survive, really be found meaningful and satisfying, when it lacks robust conceptions and practices of holiness? Or rather, can it have robust conceptions and practices of holiness without special rituals and days?
That’s what I was musing over during Holy Week.
Writing
My essay about the economy being the social “body” and culture or the “higher things” being the social “spirit” came out at Law and Liberty last week. I modified and extended it from when I shared snippets a few weeks ago. I’ve also begun drafting a piece about different classical liberal positions on Florida’s ban of social media use by children under 14. Here is my initial framing:
To ban or not to ban social media?
Is Florida’s ban on social media accounts for children younger than 14 consistent with a free society and limited government? Here are three possible classical liberal positions:
1) Yes, because governments play a role in protecting children, especially in public settings.
2) No, because parents have the primary role in protecting their children.
3) No, because there is no clear harm being protected against by this ban.
Classical liberals are not anarchists. They believe in well-defined, small, limited government that promotes social order while leaving as much space as possible for innovation, contract, self-determination, and civil association. Most of their political philosophy, however, centers on the rights of consent-granting adults. At this level, there is relatively little disagreement. But when it comes to children, more disagreement emerges.
Most classical liberals have little objection to local laws regarding public decency, or ordinances restricting panhandling, vagrancy, homelessness, etc. Some disagreement exists among classical liberals about whether broader restrictions on pornography, recreational drugs, seat belts, and alcohol consumption are justified. But few would argue that the state has no role at all in regulating such activities.
Which brings us to Florida’s ban on social media accounts for children under 14. Putting aside practical implementation problems for now, is this the kind of behavior the state can rightfully ban? An affirmative classical liberal position would rest on three premises. First, that participation in social media generally or likely results in harm to children who use it. Second, the state has a legitimate role in preventing harm to children above a certain threshold. Third, the threshold of harm prevention by the state falls in a public or social setting, and social media constitutes just such a setting.
I also have op-eds looking for a home: one on Florida’s ban on cultured meat, one on the SEC’s new restrictive rules, and one on what a free enterprise environmental policy agenda should look like.
Game Corner
We played a game called Kingdom Builder several times last week. The basic setup and play are simple, but there are a lot of variations. You have a board made up of four quadrants. There are different kinds of terrain (mountains and rivers, grassland, forest, canyon, dessert, and flowers). There are also about half a dozen city hexes. Each player has forty settlements (like a settlement in Catan) and will place three settlements on their turn on a terrain determined by flipping a card.
The main rule for placing a settlement is that you must play adjacent to one of your existing settlements if you can. So, once you’ve placed a settlement, your future options become more limited. You can fill up a certain terrain area, which may allow you to jump to that kind of terrain somewhere else on the board (i. e. if you are adjacent to a grassland area with only two open hexes, after you place your first two settlements on the adjacent grassland, you can place your third on a grassland anywhere on the board.)
The variation for the game comes from special ability tiles that change each game. These tiles give you special abilities like placing an additional settlement or moving an existing settlement subject to certain conditions (on the edge of the board, at the end of a line of three existing settlements, on any adjacent water, etc.) To get such a tile you must have a settlement adjacent to the special ability hex on the board. These can really change the trajectory of the game depending on your strategy.
The other variation has to do with what counts for points at the end of the game. You always get three points for being adjacent to one of the half dozen cities that are in every game. But then at the beginning of each game you flip three occupation cards that tell you about bonuses. The Miner, for example, gives you one point for each settlement that is adjacent to at least one mountain hex. The Lord means that whoever has the most settlements in a quadrant gets twelve points, and the person with the second most gets six points.
It takes a few tries to really understand the dynamics of having to place adjacent to existing settlements if you can. And you have to learn a variety of special ability options and a variety of bonus/scoring conditions. But once you have that down, even relatively young children can play without much trouble.
Have a great week!