Modern ethics, politics, and science

Diagnosed a century ago.

First this:

Take note, however, of which economic class Mayor Bloomberg thinks he is saving from themselves. In his mind he's doing poor folks a favor when he assumes the role of portion police, but in reality he's merely showing his prejudice that poor people are disgustingly fat and too stupid to understand why. He must believe that they need the government to ban their bad habits, one after another, until they're eating organic arugula from Whole Foods.

New York's failed expedition into governmental nannying is symptomatic of its class structure. Rich people's scolding is really a form of snobbery masquerading as concern for poor people's well-being. Rather than admit that the underclass repulses them, wealthy New Yorkers try to strip away their repulsive behavior by force of law. Expect the trend to continue through the de Blasio years.

HT: Ace

Now for some G. K. Chesterton, from Heretics, written in 1905.

An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful.

[AND]

In practice the great difference between the mediaeval ethics and ours is that ours concentrate attention on the sins which are the sins of the ignorant, and practically deny that the sins which are the sins of the educated are sins at all.

[AND]

We are always talking about the sin of intemperate drinking because it is quite obvious that the poor have it more than the rich. But we are always denying that there is any such thing as the sin of pride, because it would be quite obvious that the rich have it more than the poor.

We are always ready to make a saint or a prophet of the educated man who goes into cottages to give a little kindly advice to the uneducated. But the mediaeval idea of a saint or a prophet was something quite different. The mediaeval saint or prophet was an uneducated man who walked into grand houses to give a little kindly advice to the educated.

[AND]

The old tyrants had enough insolence to despoil the poor, but they had not enough insolence to preach to them.

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Bad bad week for NBC News (UPDATED)

First Andrea Mitchell shows her ignorance.

Then there was Mark Murray’s “Bieberesque infantile homoerotic obsession” and “posterior-licking thoughts on the greatness of Barack Obama".

And for the trifecta they decided to accuse conservatives of racism and fell flat on their faces.

The really amazing thing was that they did this all in about 36 hours!!!!

Ed Driscoll:

for NBC, their news division is largely a closed ideological shop. As with all of the outbursts at MSNBC, the paranoid id of NBC News, who’s there to tell them it’s not a good idea?

UPDATE:

After I posted this, I tweeted Brian Stelter of CNN’s Reliable Sources:

An honest critic could do a whole show on NBC's bad week but what will @brianstelter do?

To my surprise, he quickly responded. To my complete non-surprise he downplayed everything:

Brian Stelter @brianstelter

So several different NBC employees said things you didn't like this week. is that why it's been a bad week?

Surely CNN & Fox News employees said lots of things others didn't like this wk. i don't think that's automatically a story.

He managed to to use all the usual evasion of the captive critic.

That’s just your [stupid right-wing] opinion.

It’s no big deal.

Fox does it too!

What he did not do was address the substance of any of the points.

The hateful unnecessary charge that conservatives were racist.

The ignorance and bias of senior NBC News figures.

The destruction of the fiction that leftwing MSNBC in no way influences NBC News and therefore the former should never reflect poorly on the latter.

Nor did he seem interested in the inspiring Twitter pushback launched by the redoubtable Michelle Malkin.

Oh well, he who laughs last……..

NBC, MSNBC sink to bottom of who the public trusts

Erik Wemple saw that there were larges issues at stake:

And now this Cheerios thing. The string of offenses raises doubts about Wolffe’s claim that the tweet from last night doesn’t reflect “who we are at msnbc.” Rather, the tweet appears to a careful observer to define precisely what MSNBC is becoming: A place that offends and apologizes with equal vigor.

The Erik Wemple Blog supports media organizations that muster strong apologies. Too often, mistakes are followed by stonewalling and a failure to repent. Apologies can be an important measure of accountability. Yet this string of meae culpae suggests that the apology may be morphing into an enabling device for the network’s tendentious and divisive attitudes. Sometimes a bad tweet represents the errant and unrepresentative thoughts of some employee managing the social-media accounts. And sometimes it represents institutional morays mores and prejudices.

Plus check out Ace:

MSNBC's Racist Cheerios Trolling Riles... The Progressive Media

If journalism had professional standards, this would be a career-ender

Of course, if journalism had professional standards Andrea Mitchell would never have had a career.

NBC Foreign Affairs Editor Andrea Mitchell: Iran Was "More or Less an American Ally" Before Bush Ruined It All With His Axis of Evil Speech

Deep-cover MSM flacks like Howard Kurtz and Brian Stelter always make a distinction between MSNBC (hard opinion like Fox) and NBC News (a trusted news sources). Kind of hard to maintain that fiction when the trusted journalist reveals themselves to be a stupid and biased hack.

Exit question: What would serious journalist Andrea Mitchell say if Sarah Palin had said this?

Old habits die hard

Pete Seeger hated Solidarity.

Pete Seeger Remembrance of an Historic Night. Not What You'd Expect Me to Say

He was a real lover of freedom and justice.

Not sure what Roger Ailes was thinking

A couple of weeks ago i posted this:

It was interesting that CNN had time to join in the Megyn Kelly bashing but no time for a story of huge importance to the nation and the craft of journalism.

But come on, shouldn't Fox News care about this sort of thing?

In an odd way, Howard Kurtz's move from CNN to FNC has made each network more liberal.

The trend has only strengthened in subsequent weeks. Kurtz brought his traveling circus to Fox so now we get to watch clowns like Dava Milbank and Ana Marie Cox explain away the faults of the MSM. Like good little corralled rebels, they praise their colleagues with faint damns.

Meanwhile, over at CNN, Reliable Sources continues its leftward drift. They take special delight in bashing Fox no matter what the big media stories are that week. Brian Stelter is happy to be Anita Dunn's lapdog.

Related:

New job, same old Howie

Dr V.

Steve Sailer makes a telling point:

On January 25, 2002, J. Clifford Baxter, the former chief strategy officer of Enron, shot himself in the head. This was widely viewed not as condemning but as confirming the journalists, such as Bethany McLean of Fortune, who had broken the Enron story.

Today, if the Enron executive had been wearing women's clothes when he killed himself, there would be a full-fledged agonizing reappraisal of the journalistic inquiry into Enron. How dare anyone report that Enron was run by "conmen" when the appropriate noun is "conwomen!" Why is the press worrying about details of accounting when proper pronoun usage is all that really matters?

The tame media critics were unanimous in their opinion that Grantland made terrible mistakes with their story on the con artist inventor. Both Reliable Sources and On The Media tacitly endorsed the idea that groups like GLAAD should have the power to shape or kill a story.

I wonder if those same domesticated critics think that this should apply to all activist groups?

Before the New York Times prints a story about the Roman Catholic church should they run it by Bill Donahue and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights?

Standards and their opposite

Gavin McInnes states the obvious since the entertainment industry seems to have lost track:

I like pop culture, too. Allen’s Husbands and Wives is a very well-made movie, and it’s hard not to tap your toes to Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana.” But legally, a song and dance doesn’t absolve you of rape. It’s fun to go to movies, and listening to music is a blast, but we’re meant to be a civilized nation. If our entertainers fuck children, let’s consider throwing them in jail. At the very least, let’s have a moratorium on giving pedophiles the lifetime achievement award.

I find it striking that Joe Paterno became anathema to college football because he once employed Jerry Sandusky. Yet Hollywood can celebrate men like Allen, Polansky, and Liberace.

Let's not forget Jeffrey Epstein and his BFF's Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos:

"The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty."

Benghazi in a nutshell

Bryan Preston:

Benghazi: Obama Administration Lied Before They Lied

In the fall of 2012, the Obama White House was focused on re-election to the point that it was shutting its real duties out. President Obama was shutting his own real duties out, campaigning far more than governing. He hadn’t met with his jobs council in months. He was skipping his daily security intel briefings. The Sept. 10 release was sent out to make him look presidential, without actually performing the duties of president. There was no security meeting, and no forces were actually moved around anywhere to gear up for the 9-11 anniversary. There was a conference call, a conversation, and a press release.

The administration had been warned that security in Benghazi was deteriorating and an attack was likely and would be deadly, repeatedly. The black flag of Islam was already flying over government buildings in Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Libya, was gaining power. Terrorists had already attacked the Red Cross and the British embassy in Benghazi, forcing both to abandon the city. The last remaining target of three that al Qaeda had stated its intent to attack was the US facility. But Clinton’s State Department consistently denied requests to beef up security, and Obama couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about anything but winning re-election.

The attack happens. It’s clear from the beginning that it was an attack, the military briefed administration officials that it was an attack, but the State Department had been denying field requests from Benghazi to beef up security, and there’s a paper trail of those denials. Obama hasn’t been attending to his daily intel briefings. Obama, derelict in his duty every bit as much as Clinton, has been campaigning on the theme that “al Qaeda is defeated and on the run.” Well, here they are to spoil that particular campaign line and re-write their own in the blood of four Americans.

The inconvenience of four dead Americans could not be allowed to become speedbumps slowing Obama’s path to re-election.

On that last point: We must never forget that Candy Crowley and CNN were complicit in this campaign strategy.

Educating military leaders

A good essay by Major General H.R. McMaster

Studying War and Warfare

He takes as his starting point Michael Howard's brilliant essay "The Use and Abuse of Military History" and its application to the US military's future.

I wrote about the Howard essay here:

Strategy and Execution: Business and the Military

A multi-part series on military education begins here:

Military Schools and Business Education

See also:

Doctrine and Fad Surfing

A point that should not be forgotten

But Klein didn’t want to be a lone voice lying in the wilderness. Thus, he created the now infamous JournoList, a listserv that he and other MSM types used to coordinate their misrepresentations of the news. As Tucker Carlson put it in the Daily Caller, “Again and again, we discovered members of JournoList working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians.” Klein denied this, but immediately took the listserv down and still refuses to give anyone access to any related files.

That the Post didn’t fire Klein after the JournoList scandal is a scandal in itself, but he remained and continued his crimes against journalism.

Here.

Football fuss

Ace of Spades:

America Shocked to Learn Professional Athletes Gin Themselves Up Into War Fever and Then Trash-Talk Opponents

Iowa Hawk:

These low class NFL players need to stop the trash talk, and get back to suffering crippling injuries for my entertainment.

The evolution of football

Steve Sailer:

The Flynn Effect of NFL Passing

The rules have obviously opened the door for high-scoring offenses with Bill Walsh being the great innovator.

Another factor is coaching philosophy: High scoring teams are built to maximize their output when things go well.

Ron Jaworski:

With some teams, the difference between their first-string and back-up quarterback isn't that much, but if your number one guy is a superstar, its an entirely different story. One time, Jon Gruden and I were attending a Colts practice before one of our ESPN games, and we were standing next to their offensive coordinator, Tom Moore. Tom is 'old school' in every sense of the word. He's been in the NFL for over thirty years and has signaled in every play call of Peyton Manning's career. As we watched, we were surprised to see Manning taking virtually all the reps in the session. Jon asked Tom why he wasn't giving some snaps to Peyton's backups. Moore is a man of few words, but when he talks, thos ewords carry weight. He looked us both in the eye, paused for a moment, then said in that gravelly voice of his, 'Fellas, if "18" goes down, we're fucked. And we don't practice fucked.'

With Manning in 2010 the Colt's won 10 games. When Manning missed the 2011 season, they went 2-14. With new franchise quarterback Andrew Luck they bounced back to 11-5 in 2012.

Really old school coaches like Don Shula built their teams for resilience when things went badly. Shula twice took teams to the Super Bowl when forced to play most of the season with his back-up quarterback. In his undefeated 1972 season, Earl Morrall, not Bob Griese, started a majority of Miami's 17 victories.

An apparently unspeakable truth

The New England Patriots have not won a Super Bowl since the NFL made them stop cheating.

The roots of abolition

The main strength of the abolition party lay among the middle and lower classes, and this support had been created by faithful adherence to the text, that to uphold slavery was a crime before God, and consequently that its abolition must be immediate and unconditional.
Antislavery Recollections in a Series of Letters, Addressed to Mrs. Beecher Stowe, Written by Sir George Stephen, at Her Request

Found here:

Slavery’s Abolition And History’s Truth

Yes, worse than Watergate

From PowerLine:

New frontiers in scandal management

The charge that Richard Nixon attempted to misuse the IRS for political purposes made its way into the second of the three articles of impeachment against him. Nixon “endeavoured” to misuse the IRS, in the fancy British spelling of the word used in article 2. As I have repeatedly tried to point out (here, here, here and, most recently, here), Nixon’s efforts to misuse the IRS were futile. They went nowhere. Nixon and his henchmen desired that the IRS “screw” the administration’s political opponents, but their efforts were a pathetic failure.

Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield astutely complained that the IRS was a “monstrous bureaucracy…dominated and controlled by Democrats.” As we have come to see, Caulfield was on to something. By contrast with Nixon’s failures to misuse the IRS, the IRS has very effectively “screwed” Obama’s political opponents, and we have yet to learn what the president knew and when he knew it.

Previously:

WORSE THAN WATERGATE

Finally, most of the illegal and immoral actions at the heart of Watergate were carried out the Nixon campaign: i. e. private citizens with no legal power nor any special protections.

With the IRS scandals we have something far, far worse. Here are government employees breaking the law and wielding their enormous power on behalf of one political party. Further, we have the incontrovertible fact that the party which benefited from this abuse of power has obstructed any and all attempts to ascertain the scope of the abuse and to punish those who did wrong, covered for the wrong-doers, or were negligent in preventing the wrong-doing.

Perhaps worst of all, we have a media which is unconcerned with this scandal.

A hero turns 100

Poland’s unsung war-time hero turns 100

General Stefan Ba³uk, one of the last living members of the elite special-operations paratroopers of Poland's WWII Home Army celebrates his 100th birthday today.

Having fought in the September 1939 Campaign, he then joined the Polish armed forces in the West, serving with the 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade.

After training in Glasgow, Scotland, to be a parachute commando, he was dropped into Poland in April 1944 and worked for the Home Army’s department engaged in the production of false documents for Polish intelligence officers, made photo documentation of German military installations in Warsaw and took part in the Warsaw Uprising.

After the war he was imprisoned by the communists, and subsequently worked as a taxi driver for several years, before focusing on photography.

Diversity is our strength

Unless you mean intellectual diversity on campus.

Obama's Failure And College Political Culture

One thing that struck us when we were visiting colleges our kids were considering and that then struck our kids as college students was the uniformity of left wing views at elite colleges. By our daughter's account, the difference between Oberlin, where she started, and Chicago, which she transferred to, was that while at both schools most students took left wing views for granted, at Chicago they were at least curious as to why someone might disagree. At Oberlin the default assumption was that if you didn't agree you were either stupid or evil.

"Where are the nukes?" the AP man asked a SAC officer on the scene. "You're sitting on one of them," he replied.

The Final Flight of Buzz 14

Frank Luntz is part of the problem

A great article from last year:

Frank Luntz and Focus Groups are Destroying the GOP Message

Meanwhile, it is becoming obvious that Luntz has become a prisoner of his own results over the years, and as such, has become obsessed with what misinformation voters already believe. He seems to have lost interest in the value of persuading voters to believe the truth. To Luntz, and to Karl Rove, and in fact most to Republican consultants, a poll or a focus group is not the starting point for voter education, it is the end point for candidate capitulation. This explains the constant surrender in the arena of ideas by candidates and spokes persons who are ostensibly on "our side."

As advertising legend Bill Bernbach said:

We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them

Why steak?

Or the uncommon virtues of white bread.

A tour de force by Steve Sailer:

Steak and a Baked Potato

To my taste, a giant slab of steak gets repetitious compared to taking a smaller amount of beef and chopping it up and stir-frying it with vegetables like the Chinese do. And the Chinese approach is much cheaper since you don't need such high quality beef.

Of course, Ruth's Chris Steak House is largely in the traveling salesman business. And much of America's traditional fare is what traveling salesmen thought a safer bet after they had heard about that one horrifying chapter in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle:

RTWT

This is so true

Jim Fisher True Crime: Writing Quote: Procrastination:    

A primary reason writers procrastinate is in order to build up a sense of deadline. Deadlines create a flow of adrenaline. Adrenaline ...

Forgotten witch hunts

Instapundit on the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria

This was, of course, only one of numerous such dumb cases. But “dumb” is too kind a word. Evil might be better. And in asking this question “Why did psychotherapists and investigators conclude that these fantastic allegations were true?” it’s worth noting that the supposedly scientific nature of our current age doesn’t seem to provide much protection against mass hysteria, with tragic consequences.

From the comments, a point worth remembering:

The Travis County District Attorney at the time was Ronnie Earle. Tom DeLay could offer some commentary about what happened to the Kellers.

Earle was not unique as a progressive willing to jettison justice in pursuit of hysterical headlines. Massachusetts's Martha Coakley remained fiercely committed to persecuting Gerald Amirault. Her predecessor, Scott Harshbarger, also pursued the witchhunt beyond all limits of reason. Instead of opprobrium, he was rewarded with the presidency of Common Cause.

The laughable intellectual foundations for the "expert testimony" in these cases was brilliantly exposed by Frederick Crews. Yet, prosecutors and cops happily relied on it to ruin innocent people's lives.

Benghazi: Not a closed case by a long shot

Thomas Joscelyn

The New York Times Whitewashes Benghazi

David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times has published a lengthy account of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. While much in Kirkpatrick’s report is not new, the piece is receiving a considerable amount of attention because of this sweeping conclusion: “Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.”

But how much effort did Kirkpatrick expend to uncover any possible al Qaeda ties? Judging by the Times’s glaring omissions, not much.

Kirkpatrick’s piece totals more than 7,000 words and yet he fingers only one suspect out of the dozens who took part in the attack. Another suspect, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, is briefly mentioned, but only then to dismiss the notion of his involvement.

Three from Powerline:

Fools and knaves: New York Times edition

The Times story is a transparent attempt to provide cover for Hillary Clinton’s upcoming run for POTUS in 2016. I find it incredible that the Times produced such a lengthy story filled with statements that are so easily refuted by facts that are readily available to anybody with half a brain and an Internet connection. There are so many misstatements that it is hard to know where to begin.

Ansar al Sharia and their link to Al Qaeda…Downplaying the important connection between Al Qaeda and Libya in general as well as Ansar al Sharia specifically is perhaps the most appalling thing about the story the Times tells. The links are deep and extensive which I will demonstrate. The Al Qaeda presence in Libya, contrary to the Time reporting, is wide and deep.

Why won’t Obama target Benghazi ringleader?

The Times has identified Islamic militia leader Abu Khattala as the ringleader in the attack. Yet, as West notes:

Not one sentence in the article explained why the administration allows Khattala to strut freely around Benghazi today. President Obama authorizes drone strikes to kill dozens of Islamists each year. Why is Khattala off-limits? That is the real story.

It certainly is one of them.

David Kirkpatrick doubles down on bogus

David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times continues to claim that, notwithstanding the reporting of his own newspaper, claims of an al Qaeda connection to the Benghazi attack are “bogus” or, alternatively, “tenuous” (which is it, David?). How does Kirkpatrick square his claim with the Times’ reporting? By mischaracterizing that reporting.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The Shadowy Imam of the Poconos

As 2014 dawns, the world continues to keep me furnished with material. For example, the current political shakeup in Turkey turns out to be a mashup of various obsessions and hobbyhorses of mine, such as byzantine conspiracy theories, test prep, the naiveté of American education reform, immigration fraud, the deep state, and even the Chechen Bomb Brothers’ Uncle Ruslan.

This lattice of coincidence begins with Turkey’s prime minister Recip Tayyip Erdoðan, who is presently besieged by graft scandals following police raids on his inner circle.

With Turkey’s traditional ruling classthe secularist Kemalist generalsfinally neutralized by the Ergenekon show trial, the Muslim civilian factions now appear to be plotting against each other. It is widely assumed among Turkish conspiracy theorists (i.e., roughly 98% of all Turks) that the prosecutorial assault on the prime minister was at the behest of Erdoðan’s former political ally, Fethullah Gülen, a powerful and mysterious Muslim cult leader holed up since 1999 in, of all places, the Poconos, where he has become America’s largest operator of charter schools.

Maybe Rand Paul or Ron Wyden should ask some questions based on this:

[Graham E. Fuller, the former CIA station chief in Afghanistan] came to my attention last spring when I wondered how the Tsarnaevs who blew up the Boston Marathon had gotten refugee status in America despite being Trouble with a Capital T. As I surmised, the Bomb Brothers’ uncle Ruslan Tsarni, a murky player in Beltway circles, pulled some strings. Why did some Chechens have strings to pull in America? Beyond all the geopolitical raison d’État, Fuller’s daughter Samantha Ankara Fuller used to be married to Uncle Ruslan.

Orwell meets Sartre

Living in 1984, compliments of our neighbors

Lynching Free Speech

The end of free speech will not necessarily come when there are soldiers in the streets, secret police in the alleyways and a mustachioed man screaming at you on a television set that can’t be turned off no matter how hard you turn the knob or click the buttons.

Some of these things existed in totalitarian countries, but they were there to sweep up the hardened dissenters who refused to be silenced. The vast majority of citizens did not have bugged phones or men in trench-coats following them around.

That was what their friends and neighbors were for.

The first line of offense by a totalitarian society against freedom of speech is crowdsourced to the people in the streets. No secret police force is large enough to spy on everyone all the time.

Nor does it need to. That is what informers are for.

Some of the informers are committed fanatics. Others do whatever they are told. And the worst do it for the pleasure of destroying someone else. Whatever their varying motives, ideology or malice, such people become even more dangerous in groups where they become a morality mob.

The Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984 is repeated on a regular basis in our society today with hysterical lynchings like those of of Justine Sacco; one of a long list of disposable victims of opportunity. The Two Minutes Hate was a Pavlovian exercise to stimulate the hate reflex. Modern counterparts like #hasjustinelandedyet with its overt malice are the genuine thing.

Related:

A Totalitarian Wind

John Ziegler still makes sense

Surprisingly, this time he gets a fair hearing

See interview here.

Q: Just recently one of the attorneys on the case in the attorney general’s office asked that, and he said, “Based on the evidence, they said, ‘Did Joe Paterno cover this up?’” and he said, “Absolutely not, and I’m basing that off of the evidence.”

A:Right. Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Sandusky case, said to CBS that Joe Paterno was not involved in a cover up. And I believe he said that because of the very interview that I had with his office that I released in my book where Joe Paterno makes it clear that he was not involved in any sort of cover up. He was not even in the loop of the final decision as to what to do with Sandusky. But what really gets me about this Paterno thing is had no motive to engage in a cover up. In fact he would have been a hero had he been the person who put Jerry Sandusky behind bars. And, by the way, sometimes we miss the most obvious truths in a story this complex: without Joe Paterno’s testimony, not only did Curly and Shultz not get indicted, but I believe that not even Jerry Sandusky gets indicted because no one would be backing up Mike McQueary’s testimony, they would be going up against Jerry Sandusky without any witnesses. So Joe Paterno is a large part of the reason that Jerry Sandusky is in jail today. That’s No. 1. The first article about Joe Paterno by Sara Ganim, who won a Pulitzer Prize, which she didn’t deserve in this case, November 5, 2011, has a headline, “Joe Paterno Praised for His Reaction to Child Sex Abuse Suspicions.” The reality is that Joe Paterno did exactly what he was supposed to do.

Fighting the narrative

Most of the MSM has been happy to let Chris Kluwe play the victim card even to the point of amplifying his harsh accusations against his former coaches (AKA the guys who cut him).

A couple of brave souls have the temerity to look at the facts instead of relying on self-serving agit-prop:

A Rebel Without a Kluwe

Crybaby Kluwe: Gay-Marriage Stance Cost Me My Job

Bottom line: Kluwe was old, expensive, and mediocre. Hundreds of NFL players fit that category each year and get their walking papers.

Deadspin and its media echoes decided to ignore Occam's Razor so they can use Kluwe to fight "homophobia" in the NFL.

P. D. James on the purpose of the mystery story

The mystery is an affirmation of a moral law that murder s wrong but men are responsible for their own deeds; and however difficult the problem , there is a solution. All this, I think, is rather comforting in an age of pessimism and anxiety.
Rebecca Eaton, Making Masterpiece

Related:

Heroes of our civilization