The world is kicking my butt this week, so abject apologies for not participating in a bunch of interesting discussions here and out in the blogs in general.

A few things I'd be blogging about if I can get some time:

Should you invest in the long tail? - very interesting, and read Anderson's reply.

The far-right's patriotism problem - not so much, but it's a nice trigger to talk again about '68ers and patriotism

Moving to the middle is for losers - again, not so much but a good hook to use to discuss real centrism and whether Obama qualifies as such

Blogs, Participation and Polarization - a fascinating study

Lipscomb on Swiftboating

My friend and traveling companion Sean LaFreniere and I awoke at first light on the shores of Montenegro. We originally planned to catch a bus or a taxi up the mountains into Kosovo, but we still had a few hours before it was time to drop off the rental car. So we took a brief detour into nearby Albania, the country that, at least until recently, had the reputation for being the most politically, economically, and criminally dysfunctional in all of Europe.

Robert Young Pelton's Web site Come Back Alive still warns would-be travelers about the region where Sean and I were headed: ?In just a few short years Albania has had the distinction of changing from a country with the most paranoid and overcontrolled communist state ever to a country without a state. It was tricky, but Albanians have risen to the challenge to become Europe's most lawless people at the turn of the century?Being a foreigner, unless you happen to know a couple of the local banditos, you stand an excellent chance of being fleeced. The minute you walk in the door and open your mouth, the $ sign will start ringing for just about everybody there - except you.?

Whether that was still true of Northern Albania or not, I didn't know. Neither did Sean. And we were going in there with Belgrade plates on the car, which might not have been the brightest idea we came up with on our trip. The majority of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were displaced by Serb forces during Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic-cleansing campaign in 1999, so showing up in Albania with a Serbian car only made our detour more potentially dicey than it already was.

If you drive from Montenegro to Albania you will first pass through the beautiful and prosperous ethnically-Albanian region that straddles the border.

The Albanians of Montenegro were lucky, I thought as we approached the customs agents, to live under Josip Broz Tito's relatively lenient communist system in Yugoslavia instead of suffering Enver Hoxha's full-bore Stalinist regime just a few miles away in Albania proper. Hoxha, who ranks among the most thoroughly oppressive tyrants in history, made Tito's dictatorship look libertarian.

The most enduring physical legacies of Albanian communism are the remains of more than 700,000 military bunkers Hoxha?s regime installed all over the country as part of his mass mobilization campaign for the entire society. Everyday civilians were expected to hunker down in these things with machine guns and fight off an invasion from ?bourgeois imperialists? or internal counter-revolutionaries. Rounded one-man concrete pill boxes still proliferate across the country in fields, in backyards, on the side of the roads, and even on beaches.

Post-communist Albania was an economic catastrophe, and what little progress had been made after the dismantlement of the regime came apart in the late 1990s when both the economy and the authority of the state unraveled. Albania ? especially Northern Albania where Sean and I were headed ? became by far the most lawless and chaotic place in Europe.

The country now, though, is in a transitional period. The terrible extremes of both oppression and anarchic lawlessness are past.

?Bunkers!? Sean said.

Sure enough, just up ahead, perhaps only a mile or so past the border, were a handful of Enver Hoxha's 700,000 bunkers.

Read the rest at MichaelTotten.com

So as I start putting down some thoughts on the Supreme Court when I read an oped in LA Times that reminds me of how stupendously different a world their Editorial Board lives in from the one I occupy.

Dean Esmay Kevin D links to the column - which proposes a kind of 'cap and trade' be applied to gun deaths, with the gun manufacturers held responsible for the deaths.

In other words, rather than telling gun makers what to do, performance-based regulation would tell them what outcome they must achieve: Reduce deaths by guns. Companies that achieve the target outcomes might receive large financial bonuses; companies that don't would face severe financial penalties. Put simply, gun makers -- whose products kill even when used as directed -- would have to take responsibility for curbing the consequent public health toll.

I'll ignore for a moment the interesting notion that artifacts - rather than those who wield them - are responsible for what is done with them, I'll suggest that my response as a gun manufacturer would be simple: if you want to solve the problem of crime with guns, arm those who aren't criminals.

So, let's embrace their proposal. Let's hand over gun regulation to the folks from Colt, Springfield Arms - but why limit it to the manufacturers - let's take all the industry and turn the problem over to them. The management of Gunsite and folks like Massad Ayoob can sit down with the gun manufacturers can devise the new policies and programs around firearms regulation. Mandatory firearms training. Must-carry laws. Castle doctrines widely applied. Re-activation of the Civilian Marksmanship Program in schools.

Let's give them a decade or two to see how the policies work - after all we've let folks like Jeffrey Fagan and Stephen Sugarman set the policies for the last 40 years. Fagan testified against the death penalty to the New York Legislature, and also opposed life without parole for juvenile murderers. Sugarman is a Boalt law professor who believes in applying performance-based regulation to, among other things, salt in prepared food and to fast food with the intent of managing childhood obesity.

No, I don't seriously envision turning over firearms regulation to the NRA. But it's honestly just as sensible as the proposal in the Times. More so, possibly.

I'm chuckling just thinking of the look on the Times Editorial staff as the new regulations are announced.

The folks at St. Martin's Press were kind enough to send me a copy of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jerry White's book 'I Will Not Be Broken: 5 steps to overcoming a life crisis'.

Now, because I tend to be such a deep thinker (irony alert...) I don't read many self-help books. I tend to think life is too complex to manage in five steps of any kind of process. But they had sent me the book, and I had some time to read...

..and I came away damn impressed. It's not a well-written book by any means; it follows the classic self-help model of point: example, example, example, example, restate point. But the message underneath is worthwhile enough - actually, let me restate that - the message underneath is one that people ought to know and the steps are ones that actually help you get there.

White was a student in Israel when he wandered into a minefield in the Golan Heights and stepped on a 15-year old landmine, losing his foot. Years later, he decided to do something for the others who has been injured as he was.

Here, in his own words, is what the book is about:

We called this effort the Landmine Survivors Network. Corralling the voices of mine "victims" around the world, we set out to ban the use of landmines and help survivors get legs and find work. This mission has sent me around the world, to the floor of the United Nations, the halls of Congress, foreign embassies, palaces, and local hospitals. Along the way, I've met a great many survivors from all walks of life. We've had very practical conversations about what works and doesn't work as we seek to achieve success in our lives ... to walk a path of growth and renewal.

With this book, I share what I've learned.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's not quite that simple. I believe you have to decide it will make you stronger. Experience has taught me that happy endings can never be taken for granted. They must be chosen. When I was in the hospital for six months in Israel, no one did my physical therapy for me. No one underwent the pain or the fear of six operations for me. I would have liked for someone to, maybe. I confess, the first time I was put in a wheelchair, I sat there and waited for someone to push it for me. I had just had another surgery, I was weak, in pain, exhausted. And when I looked up at my nurse, she looked down at me and laughed. "If you want to move, push." And so I did. And I continue to do.

Whether we like it or not, personal determination is required to build resilience - to become fit for whatever the future may hold. We have to tap inner resources and develop some emotional muscle. It's both a discipline and our responsibility.

No one can do it for us.

The good news is, we are not alone. We are surrounded by survivors who have gone before us, and their examples will help mark the way forward. Their experiences show us that with the right support, everyone can recover and thrive. As we overcome hardship, there is laughter and hope and love waiting for each of us. But it is crucial for us to want those things. Frankly, I have always craved those things. And life has treated me pretty well.

The book is a simple list of the steps he took to make sure life did treat him pretty well after he was injured, and a host of anecdotes about others who have walked a similar path.

It applies, he suggests, not only to those who undergo massive life-changing events like he did. It applies to all of us who face the typical setbacks and failures that life brings us.

My own life is fortunately free (so far) of any such Major Event - but I've had a host of minor ones that could have left me different, more passive, more bitter, more of a victim than I turned out to be - and so has every one of you, I'll wager.

What did it take to thrive in spite of those? What would it take to thrive in spite of the kinds of things we all imagine on our darkest day - the death of a child, a spouse, an accident that leaves our bodies marked or incapable?

Well, I have to say that this book offers a recipe for what it would take.

And more - it offers a worldview that suggests that being tested by those things and coming out the other side can leave us better people.

The path to positive survivorship I have described in this book, with its action-oriented guidance, is drawn from the lived experience of survivors themselves, including my own. But there is real science and years of research behind it.

I think it's important to look at how trauma inflicts its damage. Humans have suffered from injuries, conflict, and natural disasters throughout history. But it wasn't until 1980 that we put a label on the residual effects of trauma: post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Since that time, PTSD has become a popular area of research, in part because it is considered one of the only psychiatric disorders whose cause is an external event. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that research about the consequences of mass violence and war broadened to include studies of social, cultural, moral, and spiritual factors that influence our human response to trauma.

Allow me to boil down some of the research jargon. Put simply, traumatic stress - not just everyday traffic jam stress - is caused by a confrontation with helplessness and death, a complete loss of control. And it is more common than you may think. Life seems to lose meaning and predictability. Our worldview is altered. From childhood, we all develop expectations about how the world will treat us. We are influenced by our upbringing, personality, cultural norms, and belief system. After a catastrophe, new information must be thought through until the negative experience is integrated into a new world-view. This is what we call the coping process.

Thankfully, most of us will never fight in a battle, witness a massacre, or find ourselves trapped in a minefield. And many of us will muddle through adversity without ever exhibiting any dramatic psychological scars from their trauma. Why the difference? It turns out that nearly every survivor of disasters, injuries, or assaults will face either positive or negative long-term consequences. What intrigues me is that positive outcomes - growing stronger through crisis - are not at all uncommon.

Am I suggesting that disasters bring blessing? Yes, depending on how we respond to them. In many cases, crisis will catalyze unexpectedly positive outcomes. But again, this happens only if we decide it will, if we are willing to search for meaning and purpose and thereby rediscover our common humanity. It's not the crisis itself that is important, but how we respond to it. Hundreds of survivors I have met describe how they grew stronger post-crisis.

There is a new term for it: post-traumatic growth (PTG). Also called "adversarial growth," I am referring to the development of positive attitudes and goals that can come out of even the most ghastly experiences.' Researchers now believe that PTSD and PTG actually result from the same mental processes. A survivor experiences predominantly negative or positive consequences depending on events and feelings they experience after the trauma. As we discussed earlier, strong and caring social support can ensure growth, whereas isolation and social antipathy will foster the symptoms of victimhood. So resilience isn't about the depth of trauma we experience, but, rather, about what we think about our trauma - how we process our personal nightmares.

This ties closely with Dave Grossman's analysis in 'On Combat'.

What kind of person bears no scars, has suffered no disappointments, and has a personality unshaped by failure? A child.

What Grossman and White are talking about is growing up, and learning to take a grown-up's pleasure in the world as it is as yourself as you are.

The highest recommendation I can give a book comes in the form of postage - when I put it in an envelope and send it to my sons to read, it's something I believe well worth reading.

This book is sitting on the dining table in an envelope, headed to Biggest Guy tomorrow.

Draw your own conclusion.

Hezbollah is alarming its Lebanese opponents by expanding its territory through the purchase of property outside Shia areas in Lebanon. Former civil war-era President Amin Gemayel went on television Thursday and said what many Lebanese have feared for months now while this has unfolded.

?There is some sort of military preparation starting from Niha in Jezzine all the way across the entire Western mountain range with military surveillance posts set up from Jezzine to Sannine all the way up to Laqlouq,? he said.

If he weren?t talking about an army that really does build massive and sophisticated military infrastructure ? including deep tunnels and a high-tech surveillance system in Beirut?s international airport, of all places ? I might suspect he was paranoid or exaggerating.

Amin?s Phalange Party is a vehicle for mostly parochial and sectarian Christians, and it has a dark past, as do most parties in Lebanon. His concerns, however, are echoed at the more broad-based and mainstream online magazine NOW Lebanon. ?These are preparations for war,? says an editorial earlier this week, ?or rather preparations to ensure that if there is a war, Hezbollah?s adversaries won?t be able to fight one. The party knows better than to enter Christian, Druze or Sunni areas. So it has opted for control of the high ground ? high ground overlooking the territories of its foes but also controlling lines of communication between mainly Shia areas in the northern Bekaa Valley, the southern Bekaa, South Lebanon, and Beirut?s southern suburbs . . . [W]hat is taking place today has so transgressed the red lines of all communities that what we will almost certainly see in the near future is a dangerous logic of communal self-defense taking over.?

Even if these moves by Hezbollah are being misinterpreted by the overly anxious, NOW Lebanon is correct to point out the danger for the simple reason that they are perceived as threatening. Everyone in Lebanon knows all too well why the ?logic of communal self-defense? is an ominous development.

Communal self-defense means sectarian self-defense, and sectarian self-defense means exactly the same thing in Lebanon that it means in Iraq: militias. If the police and the army cannot or will not disarm Hezbollah ? and they cannot and will not ? then the only self-defense options remaining are personal and communal. Robert Heinlein famously wrote that an armed society is a polite society, but he didn?t know the Middle East very well.

Read the rest at COMMENTARY Magazine.