Two good posts from Amit Ghate of Thrutch:

• Monks and Anti-Reason: A fantastic quote from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the abject and brutal slavery to which monks submitted themselves in the Middle Ages.
• Disproportionate Response: A brief discussion of the evil of the demand for “proportionate response” in war — with a fancy logo for fans of disproportionate response! Then again, I’m all in favor of responding proportionally to Islamic jihadists, so long as the proportion is something like 383 bijillion to one. (Lest anyone take that quip seriously, I’m actually in favor of taking whatever military action is necessary to swiftly defeat an enemy, at minimal cost and risk to one’s own soldiers and civilians, as well as those of civilized allies.)