Virtue signalling at the Oscars and Penelope's suitors

It used to be the Academy Awards were an event that all Americans had a stake in. Every year, people would latch on to their particular favorites and cheer or moan as they won or lost when the envelope was opened. People's partisanship for one nominee or the other was always good natured. No one whose favorite actor or actress or director or film lost was disappointed for more than a minute. And, the next morning around the water cooler, opinions and preferences were shared enthusiastically, to be sure, but also graciously.

Now, all that has changed. Instead of talking about which actor played the best role, Twitter obsesses over which one made the most biting anti-Trump quip. Instead of arguing over whether Denzel's performance was truly good enough to merit a win this year, the opinion makers whine that he lost because he was black. Gender or immigration issues are shoved in our face at every turn. The Awards have been ruined by the poison of left-wing politicization. They have become another platform that the Left, in its utter tastelessness and disregard for anything sacred, has seized, as if it were just another university building, for the dissemination of political propaganda.

Instead of serving to unify America, the Awards ceremony has become just another symbol for how fractured the country is into Blue and Red. The Blues laugh uproariously at every stupid Donald joke and nod their heads in empathy, their mascaraed eyes (both men and women) tearing up, as one Hollywood celebrity after another strides to the podium and virtue signals:

Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily with the intent of enhancing that person's standing within a social group. ... [T]he term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as the platitudinous, empty, or superficial support of certain political views on social media. ... Cited examples of virtue signalling towards certain issues include: ... celebrity speeches during award shows.

Could there be a more apt description? Meanwhile, the "deplorable" Reds watching at home on TV (unless a few of them are paraded through the building to demonstrate the Academy's deep regard for the "common man") realize that once again they are being mocked and condescended to by the elites, and just flip to another channel.

I don't know if I have ever seen such self-serving and off-putting cowardice and conformity as was on display at the Awards the other night. As people pontificated about the need to show tolerance for diverse opinions, I kept thinking: "Unless, of course, the diverse opinions happen to be coming out of the mouths of Conservatives. Those opinions are beyond the pale." I kept hoping that some truly courageous actor or actress would step up to the microphone and express a contrary point of view. My hopes were, of course, in vain: whoever expressed such an opinion would be committing professional suicide in politically correct La La Land, in the same way one would commit professional suicide in Silicon Valley or South of Market by, say, wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat to work. I am always struck by the way in which those who signal themselves most tolerant of diversity simply cannot abide the expression of opinions that are truly diverse from their own.

The Academy Awards are not alone, however, in having been poisoned for a large part of the nation. The NFL, too, has been infected by the venom of left-wing politicization (with Colin Kaepernick being the NFL's chief virtue signaller, while at the same time one of its worst play-calling signallers). Even players and coaches in the NBA now feel the need to virtue signal. In fact, the liberal press expects them to. Woe unto anyone on the Warriors (as Mark Jackson found out) who should express a slightly politically incorrect point of view about gays. Every day for Steph Curry is a minefield as he has to express politically correct opinions criticizing the transgender bathroom law in Charlotte, NC, his home town. Watch what you say, Steph!

All of these activities -- watching the Oscars, attending an NFL game, cheering for your favorite NBA team -- were once national pastimes we all, young and old, shared; they were safe harbors to which we could retreat for a few hours to escape the vicious moralizing and self-righteousness of the Left. Now no more. These treasured common pastimes have been poisoned by the ceaseless virtue signalling of the so-called Progressives.

Every time I see Leftists laughing uproariously at stupid Trump jokes, whether delivered by celebrities on the Academy Awards or the buffoonish Alec Baldwin bawling "Yuuuuuuuge" on SNL, I am always reminded of the laughter of Penelope's suitors in Book 20 of the Odyssey. Odysseus had gone to the Trojan War and was thought to have been shipwrecked and lost on the way home. He had disappeared and hadn't been seen or heard from for 10 years. All the local princes of Ithaca had descended on his palace to vie for the hand of his wife Penelope in order to become the new king of Ithaca. The haughty suitors passed their days at the palace in feasting, drinking, and debauchery, eating Penelope out of house and home. But Odysseus had not been lost and had now returned home, disguised as a beggar. He is about to reveal himself, string his mighty bow, and dispatch the reckless suitors to Hades in a shower of arrows, thereby reclaiming his wife and throne. To help him accomplish this, his patroness, the goddess Athena, blinds the suitors' minds to what is about to happen. A fog of delusion descends over their thinking and they laugh uproariously, hysterically, at each other's jokes, oblivious of the impending doom.

In the suitors Pallas Athena
stirred up uncontrollable laughter, and addled their thinking.
Now they laughed with jaws that were no longer their own.
The meat they ate was a mess of blood, their eyes were bursting
full of tears, and their laughter sounded like lamentation.
Godlike Theoklymenos now spoke out among them:
"Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces
and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness;
a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered
with tears, the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars.
All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them
as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun
has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.

Just as Penelope's suitors were oblivious to the doom right before their eyes, laughing uproariously at each other's stupid jokes, so the Leftists of our day seem oblivious to the doom that they themselves are preparing for themselves in the next election. They laugh uproariously at their own "in" jokes, not realizing they are alienating larger and larger swathes of voters in the heartland, who will deliver to them in the elections of 2018 and 2020 a slaughter even more devastating than the ones they have suffered in the last several years. Keep laughing, suitors.

La La Land, Fred, Cyd, Steve, and Gilda

La La Land is going to win the Oscar this evening for Best Picture. I think that's great. I have been in love with Emma Stone ever since her punk tirade in her father's face in Birdman. Who would have thought, based on Superbad? And I am sure that many women are in love with Ryan Gosling.

But, for sheer choreographic romanticism, I don't think anything can top Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in Dancing in the Dark. With the New York skyline and Central Park in the background, Astaire, the greatest tap dancer, nay, the greatest dancer who ever lived, does not tap a single step in this scene, but instead humbly restrains himself in order to frame and showcase Ms Charisse. She has an air of classical balletic training about her, so graceful in her mere walking in the beginning of the scene, casting flower petals down on the ground. And that wonderful white dress, necklace, and flat shoes she is wearing are the paragon of elegant understatement. The natural escape into the carriage at the end of the scene is a wonderful post-climactic denouement.

And then, of course, there is the comedic takeoff by Gilda Radner and Steve Martin on SNL, a masterpiece in its own way.

My prejudice against same-sex marriage, or, the palimpsest of human nature

My basic moral intuition regarding marriage (call it a prejudice if you will) is that it is an institution between a man and a woman. I find my intuition reinforced by the vocabulary of my natural language, English, which includes such words as marriage, wedding, husband, wife, bride, groom, spouse, matrimony, nuptials, and conjugal, all of which have traditionally been used to refer to a relationship between a man and a woman. I do not feel any moral compunction or unease about having this intuition; that is, my natural sense of morality or sense of natural right or justice does not persuade me that there is something morally wrong with feeling the way I do; in brief, I have no sense of guilt for feeling this way.

Holding these beliefs, how do I make my way in today's modern world? Suppose that my son came to me and said. "Dad, I am gay. I want to marry my same-sex partner. We want you to attend our wedding as a sign that you publicly acknowledge that our union is, in fact, a marriage." How would I respond? Well, I certainly would be happy that my son had apparently found the love of his life. Furthermore, I would certainly be eager to attend the ceremony to share in the joy of the celebration. On the other hand, I would have to wrestle with the intuition I outlined above. One possible course of action I could take would be simply not to be frank with my son about my feelings and, instead, silently do whatever he asked me to do. Parents often follow this course of action with their adult children, biting their tongues. And, almost certainly, this is the course of action I would choose, if only for the sake of preserving the peace in my family.

However, if I were to be frank with my son, I would be forced instead to say the following:

Son, I do not believe that this union is a marriage. I could pretend that I do, but then I would simply be concealing the moral intuition -- call it a prejudice if you will -- that I hold in my heart of hearts, namely, that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. Just as you expect me to respect your beliefs, I hope that you will respect my beliefs and not condemn me for holding those beliefs. On the other hand, if you do condemn me and you (and possibly the rest of society) think that my views are evidence of some kind of moral depravity or evil on my part that merits condemnation and opprobrium, there is nothing I can do to change that judgment and I respectfully submit to it. It may truly be that my soul has been deformed beyond repair by years of bigotry and that you and the rest of society are better able to recognize this depravity and avoid being infected by it yourselves. Perhaps, society will evolve to a higher, better plane when individuals like me have died off or been purged from the planet. I simply do not believe, however, that I am going to burn in the lower rings of Hell for thinking that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I do not believe that my opinions are a sign of moral deformation but instead think them sound and defensible. Furthermore, I think a higher good is served by allowing different people to have different opinions on this matter than is accomplished by forcing all people to think the same way. Please do not interpret the fact that I hold these beliefs as evidence that I have some kind of moral objection to your homosexuality or that I am not happy for you or that I somehow find fault with your partner as a person [I have a gay brother-in-law who is a saint] or that I am somehow rejecting the legality of your marriage. The question of whether your marriage is legal has been answered, at least for the time being, by the recent Obergefell decision of the Supreme Court, which, while it stands, declares your marriage a legal fact. But, the legal status of your marriage and my personal feelings on the matter are two distinct things.

This is what I would have to say if I were being frank with my son. If I had chosen the path of not being frank with my son, there would have been a disconnect between what I was saying publicly and what I was thinking in my heart of hearts and I certainly would have felt some moral distress about the existence of this disconnect. A similar disconnect existed between the public pronouncements and the private thoughts of many people who ended up voting for Donald Trump in the recent election. These people kept their preference for Trump to themselves in an attempt to avoid the opprobrium and condemnation that would be heaped upon them if, before the election, they publicly avowed their support for Trump and his policies (or opposition to Hillary and her policies). But, then, when they entered the privacy of the voting booth and consulted their heart of hearts, they could not bring themselves to pull the lever for Hillary and instead cast their ballot for Mr Trump. The polls failed to capture this disconnect between public declaration and private thought, which is why they wrongly predicted a comfortable victory for Hillary.

More importantly, this disconnect points to a more general condition in American society today: one segment of society -- we may call them, arbitrarily, the influence makers -- is trying to drag other segments of society away from traditional ideas about morality and justice and towards new ideas and thinking on these subjects. One of the main tools the influence makers use to try to move people and society in the direction they want is scientistical argumentation, which is the misuse of the methods characteristic of the natural sciences to try to persuade the state to enact policies that have a bearing on man and society. If people resist these sophistical, scientistical arguments, they are labeled "deniers" and condemnation and opprobrium is heaped on them for continuing to "cling bitterly" (to use Mr Obama's phrase) to traditional ideas about morality and justice. The threat of this opprobrium prompts people to conceal their true opinions and prejudices and not to state them publicly. The organs of our society that measure popular opinion, namely the polls and the media, then conclude, based on their observations of public declarations (and probably their own prejudices in favor of the new morality), that the influence makers are doing a better job of moving society than they actually are.

The phenomenon of the disconnect between what one is willing to say publicly versus what one thinks or does privately is referred to in the social sciences as social desirability bias. This disconnect is also inherent in such phrases as "the silent majority," which implies that a large segment of the population holds certain beliefs that they are unwilling to acknowledge publicly because they might subject themselves to the opprobrium of being labeled as, say, "deplorables." Nevertheless, in their heart of hearts they, yes, cling to their private intuitions, believing sincerely, as I do, that these intuitions are morally unexceptionable in spite of the drumbeat they hear every day against these opinions in the media and from the influence makers.

The nature of these intuitions may best be captured by the term "prejudice," which I have already used several times above. In today's parlance, the term has a uniformly negative connotation. (This can be seen by the almost uniformly negative examples supplied by the Wikipedia article on prejudice.) But, that was not always the case. I use the term prejudice in the positive sense that Edmund Burke, the 18th century British political and moral theorist, ascribed to it, as described by Russell Kirk, in his book The Conservative Mind:

At times, Burke approaches very nearly to a theory of collective human intellect, a knowledge partially instinctive, partially conscious, which each individual inherits as his birthright and his protection. Awake to all the mystery of human character, interested in those complex psychological impulses which associationist theories cannot account for, Burke implicitly rejected Locke's tabula rasa concept as inadequate to explain the individuation of character and imaginative powers which distinguish man from the animals. Human beings, said Burke, participate in the accumulated experience of their innumerable ancestors; very little is totally forgotten. Only a small part of this knowledge, however, is formalized in literature and deliberate instruction; the greater part remains embedded in instinct, common custom, prejudice, and ancient usage. Ignore this enormous bulk of racial knowledge, or tinker impudently with it, and man is left awfully afloat in a sea of emotions and ambitions, with only the scanty stock of formal learning and the puny resources of individual reason to sustain him. Often men may not realize the meaning of their immemorial prejudices and customs -- indeed, even the most intelligent of men cannot hope to understand all the secrets of traditional morals and social arrangements; but we may be sure that Providence [or perhaps the process of evolution], acting through the medium of human trial and error, has developed every hoary habit for some important purpose. The greatest of prudence is required when man must accommodate this inherited mass of opinion to the exigencies of new times. For prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice may sometimes degenerate into these. Prejudice is prejudgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason. [comment and emphasis added]

In Burke's understanding, then, prejudice is a positive force in the human community, a set of intuitions that organizes and structures society, not unlike language or religion. The intuitions I listed at the beginning of this post, intuitions that have been considered unexceptionable since time immemorial, fall under the heading of this kind of positive prejudice that Burke had in mind. In recent times, however, the term has acquired an almost entirely negative connotation: if someone accuses me of acting out of prejudice these days, that is perhaps the most serious charge that can possibly be leveled against a moral being. The term does not even need to be qualified as "bad prejudice," so utterly has it been drained of any positive connotation.

On Burke's view of prejudice, the recent Obergefell decision runs the risk of being just the kind of "impudent tinkering based on the scanty stock of formal learning and the puny resources of individual reason" (scientistical argumentation) that we might want to avoid. Obergefell is a giant step away from the traditional prejudices and moral intuitions of the human race that have prevailed for thousands of years and represents perhaps the most significant attempt to reengineer traditional morality that has ever been attempted. And this monumental alteration of the relationships in society was based on the votes of a mere 5 judges in Washington. The magnitude of the change was aptly captured by Justice Scalia in his dissent in the decision:

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.

Actually, Scalia's assessment understates the enormity of the change. There can be no doubt that, if this decision stands, it will be not merely the overthrow of 135 years of American law, but a watershed event in human history.

It is highly questionable, however, whether such a step, so contrary to age-old human -- perhaps even biologically conditioned -- moral intuitions can survive on a permanent basis. The Obergefell decision would have us believe that human nature is essentially a tabula rasa on which the court can inscribe whatever views it rationally has concluded all good citizens should hold. Whether human nature is such a tabula rasa, or is more like a palimpsest, on which the original, underlying scribblings of nature will begin to seep back to the surface, remains to be seen. It may turn out that it is as impossible to disabuse people of their intuition that same-sex marriage is not real marriage as it is to convert a gay man or woman to heterosexuality. Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.

Today's history lesson from dad to sons: Robert Bork, Ted Kennedy, and the coercion of the ugly and deplorable: the son responds

In response to my email, my son sent me a link to this article without any further elaboration.

I responded to him.

Son,

I assume that what you mean to say by sending me this link is that when the state is killing people unjustly (or allowing people to be killed unjustly), then the people (for example, the protesters in Berkeley) are justified in destroying property to protest and fight back against the state. To quote from your article:

One cannot discuss the immorality of damaging property without devaluing the rage that brought protesters to this point. You, too, have to decide which one you value more: human life or property. As Vinz so eloquently says in the film La Haine, when rage spills into the streets after a brutal police beating left a young man from the ghetto on life support: “A homeboy’s dying; fuck your car.”

Of course, why should those fighting against murderous injustice stop with the destruction of property? Thomas Jefferson famously said: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." On the other hand, it must be noted that it is not a very long step from this kind of thinking to the worst excesses of the French and Russian Revolutions, which also started out as movements to overthrow tyranny and injustice, but devolved into nightmarish reigns of terror, where all who did not "think correctly" were guillotined or shot in the head. For example, I am reminded of the exchange between Zhivago and the correct-thinking Red rebel leader Strelnikov. Strelnikov has destroyed an innocent village as an example to reactionary Whites:

Strelnikov: The private life is dead - for a man with any manhood.
Zhivago: I saw some of your 'manhood' on the way at a place called Minsk.
Strelnikov: They were selling horses to the Whites.
Zhivago: It seems you've burnt the wrong village.
Strelnikov: They always say that, and what does it matter? A village betrays us, a village is burned. The point's made.
Zhivago: Your point, their village.

In other words: if the movement so requires, fuck your village.

All that said, I find myself forced to acknowledge the validity of the point you make, Son, namely, that there are times when oppression has become so great that it requires resistance in the form of destruction of property or even of life itself. Perhaps the best summary of this kind of thinking is in that other famous work of Mr Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. ... Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. ... They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. ... And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Today's history lesson from dad to sons: Robert Bork, Ted Kennedy, and the coercion of the ugly and deplorable

Below is an email I recently sent to my two sons.

Son,

The other night I posed a question to you (I recently posed the same question to your brother):

Suppose I own a house that I want to rent; suppose further that I am a racist and/or homophobe of the worst kind and I refuse to rent my house to blacks and gays. Should the state have the right to compel me to rent my house to people to whom I don't want to rent it?

In my opinion, the fact that the state forbids me to refuse to rent my house to anyone because of their race or sexual preference is a diminution of my freedom, regardless of the repugnance of my motives. After all, I own the house and I should be able to do with it as I please, not to mention that, as a practical matter, it is nearly impossible for the state to peer into the mind of a landlord and detect the exact mix of motives that leads him to refuse to rent to one individual or another.

At any rate, today I ran across the article Civil Rights -- A Challenge written by Robert Bork in New Republic Magazine back in 1963 making many of the same points with respect to pending legislation that eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's short and worth a read, but here is a quote that captures the essence of Bork's argument:

Professor Mark DeWolf Howe, in supporting the proposed legislation, describes southern opposition to "the nation's objective" as an effort "to preserve ugly customs of a stubborn people." So it is. Of the ugliness of racial discrimination there need be no argument (though there may be some presumption in identifying one's own hotly controverted aims with the objective of the nation). But it is one thing when stubborn people express their racial antipathies in laws which prevent individuals, whether white or Negro, from dealing with those who are willing to deal with them, and quite another to tell them that even as individuals they may not act on their racial preferences in particular areas of life. The principle of such legislation is that if I find your behavior ugly by my standards, moral or aesthetic, ["deplorable" would be the term used today] and if you prove stubborn about adopting my view of the situation, I am justified in having the state coerce you into more righteous paths. That is itself a principle of unsurpassed ugliness. [comments and emphasis added]

Since the time he wrote this article, Bork has been viewed as an arch-villain by the Left. And yet, many of the arguments he made (with which I agree) merely seek to defend the freedom of the individual against the invasion of an ever more powerful state into areas of life that should be kept private. Note that Bork's argument is not that racism is not ugly and abhorrent, but that the proposed remedy, namely, laws that try to legislate morals, control how individuals think, and tell people what they may and may not do with their private property, is much worse. In this day and age when violent protesters in Berkeley set fires and break windows in the Student Union Building to coerce and bully the University of California into cancelling the lecture of a person whose views they find ugly and abhorrent, and when the University meekly submits to this coercion, Bork's warnings seem prescient.

Bork is one of my great heroes (along with Antonin Scalia). Both were "originalists" and fiercely opposed to "substantive due process" arguments based on the 14th Amendment. In 1987, Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court. The Democrats, led by Senator Ted Kennedy (JFK's younger brother, notorious for his alcoholism and the Chappaquiddick incident), launched a despicable campaign to defame and smear Bork. The Senate eventually voted to reject his nomination, depriving the Court of one of the great legal minds of the late 20th century. This was the opening shot in the war for control of the Supreme Court that continues down to this day with the Republicans refusing to confirm Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee to replace Scalia, and the Democrats now mounting a campaign to oppose Trump's nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

BTW, as a result of Bork's rejection by the Senate, the verb "to bork" entered into the English vocabulary. I recently proposed that the matching term, "to garland," be added to the English language. ;>)

Love,

Dad

Two GOP Senators Say They Will Oppose Education Nominee Betsy DeVos

So reports WSJ.

If Republicans can't even get behind the friggin' Education Secretary, that spells trouble for the rest of Trump's cabinet. Imagine what RINO senators like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will do when they are called on to vote for Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA.

Susan Collins just ought to get it over with and switch parties to the Democrats. I am so tired of her posturing.

As for the emails, letters, and phone calls Lisa Murkowski received from her constituents expressing opposition to DeVos, I would bet money they they came largely from Democratic school teachers egged on by the teachers' unions. WSJ reports:

Ms. Murkowski said that she would also vote against Ms. DeVos because thousands of Alaskans have called, emailed, and shown up in person to voice worries similar to her own.

Really? How likely do you think it is that thousands of Alaskans spontaneously woke up one morning and thought it was important to importune their senator to oppose Betsy DeVos? How many of them knew beforehand who Betsy DeVos was? Much more likely is that the letter writing and phone calls were part of a smear campaign organized by Democrat operatives. The Republican Party needs to investigate what went down in Alaska. How many of the emails came from public school teachers? How many of the emails were form letters provided to them by the teachers' unions? The teachers's unions just rolled Lisa Murkowski and she probably doesn't even realize it.

The Republican Party also needs to go into the states that Trump won and where Democratic senators are up for reelection in 2018 and egg on some of their own partisans to write emails to their own senators, telling them: if you vote to reject DeVos, you will lose my vote in 2018.

This development plainly reveals what the Democratic strategy is going to be with respect to Trump's cabinet and Supreme Court nominees: seek to bully weak-kneed Republican senators in states with small populations that can be easily mobilized. The Republicans need to wake up and oppose the fast one the Democrats are trying to pull.

Then Senator Obama, talking about Chicago politics, once said: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Well, the Democrats have come out with their guns blazing. The Republicans need to roll out the bazookas, defending Trump's nominees with the same kind of shameless and steely chutzpah with which the Democrats defend their own.