In 1944, when I was three, I remember my father galloping around the farmyard on a farm horse without a saddle. In certain seasons his routine was, Get up early and milk the cows. Plough rich coastal bottomlands all day behind a team of horses. Milk the cows.
It was an essential civilian occupation, and had exempted him from military service.
The next year, as the war was winding down, he enrolled in a junior college. From then to 1952, he completed college and divinity school.
Having been ordained, a Protestant denomination sent him (and his family) to an American territory as a “home missionary.”
Being a PK (Preacher’s Kid) shaped my outlook.
There is a personage in the New Testament who Low Protestants call the Rich Young Ruler. He is mentioned in the first three Gospels as approaching Jesus of Nazareth to join his movement. One day, reflecting back on this, I realized that no one can be characterized as such in our society. In fact, in the American culture, no one can legitimately be called a ruler. Democracies hold that their citizens enjoy liberty and are not “subjects.” They are not subject to the will of another, as they would be under rulership.
This distinction is found in our common language. The Mayor is never spoken of as our ruler, nor the County Executive, the Governor, or the President. In cartoons where a saucer lands, its strange creatures say, Take me to your leader.
“Rulership is illegitimate in our society.” So far, I haven’t found it stated anywhere else. Prophet? Or fool?
Instead, such language as “the will of the people” appears routinely in our public discourse: “once the legislature, reflecting the will of the people.” Even Federalist 46 appears to err: “But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force.” Federalist 46 should probably have used different language, such as “But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the conclusion of the national deliberation and direct the national force.”
I can live in a liberal democracy because I can live with public policies reflecting the considered deliberation of the people, flawed though it sometimes may be. But neither I, nor anyone else, should ever consent to be subject to the will of another. As Immanuel Kant wrote in “What is Enlightenment?” to enjoy freedom is to enjoy freedom from tutelage. “Dare to know,” and to act on your knowledge without guidance from another.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
“I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.”
During the second administration of W. Bush, the late, inimitable Englishman Christopher Hitchens rejected the claim of practitioners of Islam that they had the right to prevent, by violence, the scholarly analysis of Islam, or the creation of any image whatever of the Prophet:
In “What is Enlightenment?” the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote,
/*****/
That is what bothers me about the way Bernie Sanders speaks to us. He lectures. He harangues. Constantly raises his right arm and points.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.
Judging by the recent election, so do most Democrats.
[Afterword: The Hitchens article cited claims to make a “case for mocking religion.” I do not. I seek to identify and correct the errors of organized religion, which, not honoring the insight of Jesus of Nazareth, that God is to be considered kind, generous, loving, and good, seems to prefer the red meat of the Jealous God; the God of Wrath.
For me, religion is a sensibility, an intuition that reality is deeper, richer, more profound and wondrous than the secular outlook imagines.]
[https://tinyurl.com/I-RefuseToBeLectured]
[http://www.indiana.edu/~cahist/Readings/2010Fall/Islam_and_Modernity/Kant_Enlightenment.pdf]
The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize … Islam … Islam makes very large claims for itself. …Implicit in American liberal democracy from the Founding is that rulership is forbidden. Our highest official is a “presider,” not a “ruler.” No one anywhere in our society can subject us to their will. And as Kant says below, no one can tell us what to think and say:
The prohibition on picturing the prophet … is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. … [He seems to be saying,] For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.
In “What is Enlightenment?” the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote,
Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] “Have courage to use your own reason!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.
/*****/
That is what bothers me about the way Bernie Sanders speaks to us. He lectures. He harangues. Constantly raises his right arm and points.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice.
Judging by the recent election, so do most Democrats.
[Afterword: The Hitchens article cited claims to make a “case for mocking religion.” I do not. I seek to identify and correct the errors of organized religion, which, not honoring the insight of Jesus of Nazareth, that God is to be considered kind, generous, loving, and good, seems to prefer the red meat of the Jealous God; the God of Wrath.
For me, religion is a sensibility, an intuition that reality is deeper, richer, more profound and wondrous than the secular outlook imagines.]
[https://tinyurl.com/I-RefuseToBeLectured]
[http://www.indiana.edu/~cahist/Readings/2010Fall/Islam_and_Modernity/Kant_Enlightenment.pdf]
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
The Court’s memorable language in Romer v. Evans.
Revisiting Romer v. Evans. “The state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”
In the ‘Nineties, Colorado Amendment 2 prevented local jurisdictions in that state from enacting or enforcing protections of gay people. The Supreme Court, in Romer v. Evans, struck that law down in memorable language.
“[Justice] Kennedy felt that there was no possible justification for the law other than a specific animus against the group that it targeted, since its virtually limitless scope dwarfed the justifications that the state provided. …
First, the amendment is at once too narrow and too broad, identifying persons by a single trait and then denying them the possibility of protection across the board. This disqualification of a class of persons from the right to obtain specific protection from the law is unprecedented and is itself a denial of equal protection in the most literal sense. … the amendment raises the inevitable inference that it is born of animosity toward the class that it affects. Amendment 2 cannot be said to be directed to an identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective. It is a status-based classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit.”
/*****/
Digitalcommons_dot_law adds:
“‘These are protections … against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society.’ The Court concluded that Amendment 2 classified lesbians and gay men, not to further a proper legislative purpose, but to make them unequal to everyone else. In so doing, the state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”
[https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=lawreview]
[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/]
In the ‘Nineties, Colorado Amendment 2 prevented local jurisdictions in that state from enacting or enforcing protections of gay people. The Supreme Court, in Romer v. Evans, struck that law down in memorable language.
“[Justice] Kennedy felt that there was no possible justification for the law other than a specific animus against the group that it targeted, since its virtually limitless scope dwarfed the justifications that the state provided. …
First, the amendment is at once too narrow and too broad, identifying persons by a single trait and then denying them the possibility of protection across the board. This disqualification of a class of persons from the right to obtain specific protection from the law is unprecedented and is itself a denial of equal protection in the most literal sense. … the amendment raises the inevitable inference that it is born of animosity toward the class that it affects. Amendment 2 cannot be said to be directed to an identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective. It is a status-based classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit.”
/*****/
Digitalcommons_dot_law adds:
“‘These are protections … against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society.’ The Court concluded that Amendment 2 classified lesbians and gay men, not to further a proper legislative purpose, but to make them unequal to everyone else. In so doing, the state had impermissibly made them ‘a stranger to its laws.’”
[https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=lawreview]
[https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/620/]
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Many American Bernie Sanders supporters seem to believe the sacrifice of civil liberties is a small price to pay for guaranteed social welfare
Jonathan Zimmerman recently explained in USA Today why Bernie Sanders would be an inappropriate Democratic nominee for the presidency. The Latin American regimes he praises, ramming that upraised right arm at you, aren’t even remotely democratic socialism, as he seems to imply. They are Marxist, “dedicated to destroying freedom.” … “Yes, we learned, socialist economies provided health care, education and other state services to their citizens. But if you dared to criticize the state itself, it could remove your services — and, of course, your freedom — at any time.”
Zimmerman wrote that he and a young Barack Obama “took a class about socialism's dark side … entitled “The Sociology of Socialist Societies.” … A few students in the course gamely tried to defend these systems, arguing that the sacrifice of civil liberties was a small price to pay for guaranteed social welfare.”
/*****/
When I brought Zimmerman’s article to some American readers’ attention, some of them still defended Bernie Sanders and his persistent tendency to romanticize Latin American dictatorships.
One said, “ I don't think you understood what Bernie said. He never praised or ignored the governmental failings. What he DID do is recognize that even the worst people can do some good things -- like education and food for the people. Cubans are well-educated today, despite the Castro dictatorship. We can never have a good government if we throw every baby out with the bathwater.”
Another said, “ I’m not convinced that electing Bernie Sanders would lead to a fascist government. I do want all Americans to have access to affordable healthcare and post secondary education. Is there another candidate that advocates for that?”
I answered this last, “Nominating Bernie Sanders would lose a lot of moderates and people in swing states, increasing the likelihood that the current wretched situation would continue.
The recent surprise swing toward Biden suggests that the American people have begun to realize this.”
Zimmerman wrote that he and a young Barack Obama “took a class about socialism's dark side … entitled “The Sociology of Socialist Societies.” … A few students in the course gamely tried to defend these systems, arguing that the sacrifice of civil liberties was a small price to pay for guaranteed social welfare.”
As we’ve been reminded over the past few weeks, the Democratic presidential candidate is stuck in a Cold War time warp. Like the students in my class in 1983, Sanders continues to congratulate Cuba and other socialist regimes for improving the lives of their people. … The course did not romanticize socialism in any way. If Obama did the reading, he discovered that socialist societies oppressed their citizens in the name of a revolution that never delivered on its promise of human dignity and liberation.Zimmerman added, “Imagine if Sanders praised Hitler for reducing cigarette smoking or Mussolini for making the trains run on time.”
/*****/
When I brought Zimmerman’s article to some American readers’ attention, some of them still defended Bernie Sanders and his persistent tendency to romanticize Latin American dictatorships.
One said, “ I don't think you understood what Bernie said. He never praised or ignored the governmental failings. What he DID do is recognize that even the worst people can do some good things -- like education and food for the people. Cubans are well-educated today, despite the Castro dictatorship. We can never have a good government if we throw every baby out with the bathwater.”
Another said, “ I’m not convinced that electing Bernie Sanders would lead to a fascist government. I do want all Americans to have access to affordable healthcare and post secondary education. Is there another candidate that advocates for that?”
I answered this last, “Nominating Bernie Sanders would lose a lot of moderates and people in swing states, increasing the likelihood that the current wretched situation would continue.
The recent surprise swing toward Biden suggests that the American people have begun to realize this.”
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Worldwide pandemics and the culinary customs of Communist China
Perhaps the world’s nations should have a word with China concerning culinary customs which appear to repeatedly result in deadly worldwide pandemics.
1. “The Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan.”
2. “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated … [from] millions of live birds … still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets.”
3. “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. … high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”
/*****/
‘The Guardian’: “Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus. Freshly-slaughtered meat from wildlife and farm animals is preferred over meat that has been slaughtered before being shipped. Nearly 20,000 wildlife farms raising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.
Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.
But the Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan in early December, prompting a massive rethink by authorities on how to manage the trade.” — Michael Standaert in Shenzhen
/*****/
Melinda Liu in ’The Smithsonian’: “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated in the Middle Kingdom and were triggered by avian viruses that evolved to become easily transmissible between humans. Although health authorities have increasingly tried to ban the practice, millions of live birds are still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets each year. In a study published in January, researchers in China concluded that these markets were a “main source of H7N9 transmission by way of human-poultry contact and avian-related environmental exposures.””
/*****/
Wikipedia: “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from asian palm civet to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was also later found in raccoon dogs (Nyctereuteus sp.), ferret badgers (Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like coronaviruses in Chinese bats.
Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”
1. “The Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan.”
2. “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated … [from] millions of live birds … still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets.”
3. “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. … high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”
/*****/
‘The Guardian’: “Peacocks, porcupines and pangolins among species bred on 20,000 farms closed in wake of virus. Freshly-slaughtered meat from wildlife and farm animals is preferred over meat that has been slaughtered before being shipped. Nearly 20,000 wildlife farms raising species including peacocks, civet cats, porcupines, ostriches, wild geese and boar have been shut down across China in the wake of the coronavirus, in a move that has exposed the hitherto unknown size of the industry.
Until a few weeks ago wildlife farming was still being promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich.
But the Covid-19 outbreak, which has now led to 2,666 deaths and over 77,700 known infections, is thought to have originated in wildlife sold at a market in Wuhan in early December, prompting a massive rethink by authorities on how to manage the trade.” — Michael Standaert in Shenzhen
/*****/
Melinda Liu in ’The Smithsonian’: “At least two flu pandemics in the past century—in 1957 and 1968—originated in the Middle Kingdom and were triggered by avian viruses that evolved to become easily transmissible between humans. Although health authorities have increasingly tried to ban the practice, millions of live birds are still kept, sold and slaughtered in crowded markets each year. In a study published in January, researchers in China concluded that these markets were a “main source of H7N9 transmission by way of human-poultry contact and avian-related environmental exposures.””
/*****/
Wikipedia: “In late May 2003, [SARS] studies were conducted using samples of wild animals sold as food in the local market in Guangdong, China. The results found that the SARS coronavirus could be isolated from masked palm civets (Paguma sp.), even if the animals did not show clinical signs of the virus. The preliminary conclusion was the SARS virus crossed the xenographic barrier from asian palm civet to humans, and more than 10,000 masked palm civets were killed in Guangdong Province. The virus was also later found in raccoon dogs (Nyctereuteus sp.), ferret badgers (Melogale spp.), and domestic cats. In 2005, two studies identified a number of SARS-like coronaviruses in Chinese bats.
Phylogenetic analysis of these viruses indicated a high probability that SARS coronavirus originated in bats and spread to humans either directly or through animals held in Chinese markets.”
Monday, February 24, 2020
The crisis of democracy we’re now facing was predicted sixteen years ago. We didn’t believe it; and we took inadequate measures to prevent it.
“We’re an empire now”
In 2004 Ron Suskind wrote:
“The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' ... 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.” (Emphasis added)
The aide was predicting RepublicanWorld, which is an emergent effect of the pathological chief executive elected by minority vote in 2016.
1. ‘Empire’ means ‘an undemocratic authoritarian society.’
2. ‘Judicious study of discernible reality’ is the basis of Justice, Democracy, Science, and Scholarship.(1) An ‘empire’ based on their absence is a doomed barbarism whose primary achievement is calamitous human suffering as it collapses under the weight of its internal contradictions.
3. We’ve seen ‘we create our own reality’ before. It’s usually called ‘the triumph of the will.’
4. Democracy is based on the love of knowledge. ‘Empire’ is based on obsession with ‘power.’ The Big Lie is its characteristic mode of discourse.
To quote Andrew Sullivan, This has to end, but we cannot yet see how it will end.
(1) Author’s current working hypothesis: All justice is liberal; all democracy is liberal; all science is liberal; and all genuine intellectuality is liberal.
Liberalism is the methodology of the good life. It is the central idea of what Naipaul called “Our Universal Civilization.”
In 2004 Ron Suskind wrote:
“The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' ... 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.” (Emphasis added)
The aide was predicting RepublicanWorld, which is an emergent effect of the pathological chief executive elected by minority vote in 2016.
1. ‘Empire’ means ‘an undemocratic authoritarian society.’
2. ‘Judicious study of discernible reality’ is the basis of Justice, Democracy, Science, and Scholarship.(1) An ‘empire’ based on their absence is a doomed barbarism whose primary achievement is calamitous human suffering as it collapses under the weight of its internal contradictions.
3. We’ve seen ‘we create our own reality’ before. It’s usually called ‘the triumph of the will.’
4. Democracy is based on the love of knowledge. ‘Empire’ is based on obsession with ‘power.’ The Big Lie is its characteristic mode of discourse.
To quote Andrew Sullivan, This has to end, but we cannot yet see how it will end.
(1) Author’s current working hypothesis: All justice is liberal; all democracy is liberal; all science is liberal; and all genuine intellectuality is liberal.
Liberalism is the methodology of the good life. It is the central idea of what Naipaul called “Our Universal Civilization.”
Thursday, January 9, 2020
NYC Bar Association implies that “The norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice” unmask “Social Justice”
On many campuses “Social Justice” is doctrine. Andrew Sullivan: “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based “social justice” movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well.” This is a problem for law faculty as well as any other higher education staff who have bar accreditation.
In a current article in Business Insider, the NYC Bar Association charges that US Attorney General William Barr violates “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice.”
The reason is that under the politics of identity there is no equality. There is, Sullivan argues, “the idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make. And that campus orthodoxy is now the culture’s as a whole.”
If Social Justice had “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice,” it would be just. These are some of the elements of actual justice which Social Justice lacks:
Due process, including
In a current article in Business Insider, the NYC Bar Association charges that US Attorney General William Barr violates “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice.”
Mr. Barr's recent actions and statements position the Attorney General and, by extension, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) as political partisans willing to use the levers of government to empower certain groups over others," the letter said. "These statements are the latest examples of a broader pattern of conduct that is inconsistent with the role of the Attorney General in our legal and constitutional system and with the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice.Social Justice does not meet these standards because it is indifferent to them. Its identity-based values result in the same deviation from universal justice that the New York City Bar Association accuses Barr of, seeking to “empower certain groups over others.”
The reason is that under the politics of identity there is no equality. There is, Sullivan argues, “the idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make. And that campus orthodoxy is now the culture’s as a whole.”
If Social Justice had “the norms and standards that govern the fair administration of justice,” it would be just. These are some of the elements of actual justice which Social Justice lacks:
Due process, including
The presumption of innocence
The presumption of equality
Rules of evidence
The right to legal counsel
The right to confront witnesses or accusers
The right of appeal
The right right to trial by impartial jury, rather than the “community” which accused them in the first place, and is hardly likely to be impartial
Constraint by the laws
Lacking the norms and standards of justice, Social Justice is a contradiction in terms. On campuses where Social Justice is de rigueur, staff having legal accreditation have the difficult choice between upholding the standards of their profession and risking dismissal, or countenancing the travesty of Social Justice and risking disbarment.
/*****/
In the Business Insider article Sonam Sheth wrote:
/*****/
In the Business Insider article Sonam Sheth wrote:
The New York City Bar Association asked Congress to investigate AG William Barr for political bias and weaponizing the DOJ
In October, Barr "launched a partisan attack against 'so called progressives' for supposedly waging a 'campaign to destroy the traditional order,'" the letter [from the NYC Bar Association] said. Barr accused these individuals of "marshal[ing] all the force of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values" in order to achieve the "organized destruction" of religion.
In November, Barr "vilified" progressives and "the Left" during a speech to the conservative Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention. The letter accused Barr of characterizing "the other side" as people who "oppose this President" and doing so in "highly partisan terms."
The attorney general accused progressives and the left of launching a "holy war" and using "any means necessary" to engage in "the systematic shredding of norms" and undermine the rule of law.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
The Enemy Within
The Enemy Within (Posted elsewhere a few months ago)
“You will rule or ruin in all events.”
This “enemy” first prevented the Founders from including an anti-slavery plank in the Constitution. Lincoln:
In 1860 Lincoln faced plantation owners’ demand that slavery be extended to the territories which were being added to the original thirteen states. At Cooper Union, according to Wikipedia, he reasoned, “the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (but not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery.”
The Southern Democrats refused to take no for an answer. Lincoln charged:
Beginning April 12, 1861, the plantation states of the Confederacy committed an act of war. Near Charleston, South Carolina, they fired on Fort Sumter, a military installation of their own country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
The Confederate states, defeated in their war against the United States and compelled to release their slaves, never, in their hearts, rejoined the country they had attacked, or accepted its principles of equality and liberal democracy. [As a personal note, in 1964, having graduated from a college in the Pacific Northwest, people in Texas and Arkansas told me I was from “Yankeeland.”]
There was a postwar period of Reconstruction. Wikipedia: “Blacks remained involved in Southern politics, particularly in Virginia, which was run by the biracial Readjuster Party.[206]
Numerous blacks were elected to local office through the 1880s, and in the 1890s in some states, biracial coalitions of Populists and Republicans briefly held control of state legislatures. In the last decade of the 19th century, southern states elected five black U.S. Congressmen before disfranchising constitutions were passed throughout the former Confederacy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era
Like an abscessed tooth in the body politic, the Jim Crow South thwarted Lincoln’s aspiration that his beloved country, “shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
A century after their ancestors attacked us and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of us, the ruthlessness of the sullen, resentful enemy within was evident in their response to a crusade for reform: “The brutality displayed towards the [Civil Rights] Campaign's demonstrators and King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", written while he was incarcerated, brought national and international attention to the civil rights movement.” https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/martin-luther-king.htm
On the eve of the slaveholding plantation owners’ traitorous attack on America (wrongly, the “civil” war), the Confederacy, relative to the industrialized United States, was like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; feeble industrial output; fewer scientists; fewer professionals; more superstitious; in all, far more backward.
Since modern war is won by materiel (cannon, shells, gunpowder, combat engineering), those who made treasonous war on the United States would, predictably, lose, provided they did not overrun our America before we could ramp up our inherently superior war-making capacity.
“This good free country of ours,” as Lincoln called it, endured early setbacks and eventually ran those whose betrayed their nation in the sordid cause of “property in man” into the ground.
Today the descendants of the treasonous slaveholders impose their mindless backwardness on our entire nation. Relative to all other industrialized democracies, the United States is “like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; … more superstitious; in all, far more backward.” The sullen, resentful neo-Confederates impose on Americans worse, more expensive health care; shorter life expectancy; hostility to reproductive rights; higher infant mortality; higher maternal mortality; and a gap between rich and poor that shocks the conscience.
No other modern liberal democratic nation endures a ruthless politicization of the courts; practices wholesale voter suppression; or teaches its innocent children that evolution is a wicked fallacy.
In no other modern liberal democratic nation are racial minorities routinely shot by fascistic public safety officers; or schoolchildren massacred every few days by machine guns in the hands of psychotics in the defense of an RKBA ideology ferociously defended south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In no other modern liberal democratic nation are the citizens of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” resigned to such an appalling state of affairs because the Undead Confederacy controls the Congress, the Courts, and the Presidency through a generation’s cynical abuse of the machineries of democracy.
What we have lost:
Roosevelt’s New Deal was blocked until he proposed to alter the composition of the Court, whereupon the Nine realized that the better part of valor was to cease being obstructionist.
/*****/
Notes I’ve transcribed approximately from what Belkin said:
/*****/
In closing:
The liberal democratic nation Lincoln thought he had preserved by defeating the slave-holding rebels has had its government hijacked by brutal, ruthless, sullen, angry Rule or Ruin neo-Confederates nursing centuries-old grudges. Belkin: “They prioritize party over the national interest.”
To them, we are not in their nation. We are in “Yankeeland” and they are implacably opposed the American idea we represent.
Nevertheless, it is our country, not theirs; we are in the majority; the future is not theirs to determine, but ours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
“You will rule or ruin in all events.”
This “enemy” first prevented the Founders from including an anti-slavery plank in the Constitution. Lincoln:
“I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this Government. We had slavery among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more …” — Lincoln-Douglas Debates http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page44.html
In 1860 Lincoln faced plantation owners’ demand that slavery be extended to the territories which were being added to the original thirteen states. At Cooper Union, according to Wikipedia, he reasoned, “the federal government can regulate slavery in the federal territories (but not states), especially resting on the character of the founders, and how they thought of slavery.”
The Southern Democrats refused to take no for an answer. Lincoln charged:
“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech#Summary
Beginning April 12, 1861, the plantation states of the Confederacy committed an act of war. Near Charleston, South Carolina, they fired on Fort Sumter, a military installation of their own country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
The Confederate states, defeated in their war against the United States and compelled to release their slaves, never, in their hearts, rejoined the country they had attacked, or accepted its principles of equality and liberal democracy. [As a personal note, in 1964, having graduated from a college in the Pacific Northwest, people in Texas and Arkansas told me I was from “Yankeeland.”]
There was a postwar period of Reconstruction. Wikipedia: “Blacks remained involved in Southern politics, particularly in Virginia, which was run by the biracial Readjuster Party.[206]
Numerous blacks were elected to local office through the 1880s, and in the 1890s in some states, biracial coalitions of Populists and Republicans briefly held control of state legislatures. In the last decade of the 19th century, southern states elected five black U.S. Congressmen before disfranchising constitutions were passed throughout the former Confederacy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era
Like an abscessed tooth in the body politic, the Jim Crow South thwarted Lincoln’s aspiration that his beloved country, “shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
A century after their ancestors attacked us and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of us, the ruthlessness of the sullen, resentful enemy within was evident in their response to a crusade for reform: “The brutality displayed towards the [Civil Rights] Campaign's demonstrators and King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", written while he was incarcerated, brought national and international attention to the civil rights movement.” https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/martin-luther-king.htm
On the eve of the slaveholding plantation owners’ traitorous attack on America (wrongly, the “civil” war), the Confederacy, relative to the industrialized United States, was like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; feeble industrial output; fewer scientists; fewer professionals; more superstitious; in all, far more backward.
Since modern war is won by materiel (cannon, shells, gunpowder, combat engineering), those who made treasonous war on the United States would, predictably, lose, provided they did not overrun our America before we could ramp up our inherently superior war-making capacity.
“This good free country of ours,” as Lincoln called it, endured early setbacks and eventually ran those whose betrayed their nation in the sordid cause of “property in man” into the ground.
Today the descendants of the treasonous slaveholders impose their mindless backwardness on our entire nation. Relative to all other industrialized democracies, the United States is “like a third-world country: Lower per-capita income; lower average educational level; … more superstitious; in all, far more backward.” The sullen, resentful neo-Confederates impose on Americans worse, more expensive health care; shorter life expectancy; hostility to reproductive rights; higher infant mortality; higher maternal mortality; and a gap between rich and poor that shocks the conscience.
No other modern liberal democratic nation endures a ruthless politicization of the courts; practices wholesale voter suppression; or teaches its innocent children that evolution is a wicked fallacy.
In no other modern liberal democratic nation are racial minorities routinely shot by fascistic public safety officers; or schoolchildren massacred every few days by machine guns in the hands of psychotics in the defense of an RKBA ideology ferociously defended south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In no other modern liberal democratic nation are the citizens of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” resigned to such an appalling state of affairs because the Undead Confederacy controls the Congress, the Courts, and the Presidency through a generation’s cynical abuse of the machineries of democracy.
What we have lost:
One person, one vote (gerrymandering, voter suppression)In the Amicus podcast of 3/29/19 (about 33 minutes in), Aaron Belkin suggests that extreme conditions require strong measures. “It’s time to bring a gun to a gunfight. … The progressive agenda is DOA unless we protect it from the courts.” Belkin argues that the Framers left it up to the Congress keep the courts from getting out of hand, by leaving the composition of the courts to the legislature.
Impartial justice (McConnell’s theft of the Garland Supreme Court seat; a minority president* who has already made two lifetime Court appointments)
The ability to pass laws restoring democratic principles without a corrupt Court striking them down using crazy constitutional interpretations.
The power to expel a president* who is tanking democracy.
Capacity to remedy policy risks like climate change and health care, currently blocked by spiritual wickedness in high places.
Roosevelt’s New Deal was blocked until he proposed to alter the composition of the Court, whereupon the Nine realized that the better part of valor was to cease being obstructionist.
/*****/
Notes I’ve transcribed approximately from what Belkin said:
Court packing is the moderate, workable way to stop our radical court from continuing to sabotage democracy. …
Court making bizarre convoluted decisions against people of color, women, and workers. …
Packing threat saved FDR’s New Deal.
Packing is honest and people understand it. …
A generation of ruthless judicial politics which put W. in the presidency for no reason. …
No reasonable concept of democracy supports throwing millions of votes away because of gerrymandering. …
Campaign on bold, clear ideas.
Ruthless Republican judicial politics.
Revitalize democracy by reforming the courts.
Theft of open seat (Merrick Garland).
Illegitimate judicial appointments by pres. elected by minority.
Trump should not be making lifetime appointments.
Time to bring a gun to a gunfight.
They prioritize party over the national interest.
Tell the truth.
‘Balls and strikes’ grossly disingenuous.
The Supreme Court has spent the last generation attacking workers and women and brown people.
What the voters saw in the Kavanaugh hearings.
The connection between Kavanaugh and the theft of the Garland seat and the destruction of democracy.
Five presidential candidates have admitted that something needs to be done about the courts.
The voters understand that Trump is tanking democracy.
How to fix broken democratic institutions.
We are in deep trouble.
Change our beliefs when new facts dictate.
/*****/
In closing:
The liberal democratic nation Lincoln thought he had preserved by defeating the slave-holding rebels has had its government hijacked by brutal, ruthless, sullen, angry Rule or Ruin neo-Confederates nursing centuries-old grudges. Belkin: “They prioritize party over the national interest.”
To them, we are not in their nation. We are in “Yankeeland” and they are implacably opposed the American idea we represent.
Nevertheless, it is our country, not theirs; we are in the majority; the future is not theirs to determine, but ours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter
Saturday, September 21, 2019
About people coming to America and taking American jobs
Worker spending is a major pillar of economics. Everyone who comes into America and goes to work creates at least as many jobs as they take. With their pay they buy all the things of life, from groceries to cars to houses. This creates or expands industries which employ people. New jobs. This includes our own children (that’s where most of the “job takers” comes from).
Example: America at the founding had three million people. It now has one hundred times as many, most born here. And one hundred times as many jobs.
So don’t worry about new people taking jobs. They create jobs.
You can count on it.
Monday, September 9, 2019
On liking to read the same book over and over
Rebecca Jennings, in "In defense of reading the same book over and over again": “We know how Harry Potter will end, and, more importantly, how that ending will make us feel.”
I like to read Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy over again because it puts me in touch with the moral order. The story contains ordinary people who display decency and moral courage when confronted with someone in need; or a situation that needs rectifying. I find the same qualities in the Harry Potter series, and in a mainstream bestseller such as Nelson DeMille’s Up Country.
Aristotle’s Poetics suggests that the arts enable us to have, vicariously, experiences we need to experience in order to broaden our awareness and deepen our humanity.
Like Jennings, we return to works that afford us this.
I like to read Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy over again because it puts me in touch with the moral order. The story contains ordinary people who display decency and moral courage when confronted with someone in need; or a situation that needs rectifying. I find the same qualities in the Harry Potter series, and in a mainstream bestseller such as Nelson DeMille’s Up Country.
Aristotle’s Poetics suggests that the arts enable us to have, vicariously, experiences we need to experience in order to broaden our awareness and deepen our humanity.
Like Jennings, we return to works that afford us this.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Are House Democrats bent on extending the Trump stranglehold?
On July 15, Tara Golshan and Ella Nilsen wrote:
AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley are demanding that moderate House Democrats, including “veteran black lawmakers who have worked their way into the inner circle of House leadership,” conform to their own concept of radical wokeness. “Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff] commented as well, with his tweet comparing current moderate Democrats to the Southern Democrats who enabled segregationist policies in the 1940s.”The issue was the border funding vote, the best option available to the Democrats at the time. AOC, Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley, freshman House members, are adopting a hard line which leaves veteran, experienced House members no choice. A minority of four are attempting to dictate to a much larger majority having generations of experience.
First, this is not democracy. Second, this sort of intolerance is abhorrent to the American voting public, both Democrats and Republicans. There could be no better way of extending the Trump stranglehold for four more years.
-*—
Tara Golshan:
Late Friday night, the official Twitter account for House Democrats, managed by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — fired off an incendiary tweet about Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, accusing him of “singling out out a Native American woman of color,” Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS).Since then, Chakrabarti and another AOC staff member, communications director Corbin Trent, have been dismissed.
[Jeffries wrote:]
Who is this guy and why is he explicitly singling out a Native American woman of color?At the time, [Saikat] Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff] referred to moderate Democrats who advocated for the Senate plan [as] the “New Southern Democrats,” and said they were “hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.” (Southern Democrats in the 1940s were on the whole conservative, and were opponents of civil rights efforts, including early attempts at desegregation.) Chakrabarti … [saw those members] as enablers of a racist system.
Her name is Congresswoman Davids, not Sharice.
She is a phenomenal new member who flipped a red seat blue.
Tensions between House Democratic leadership and progressive lawmakers have been escalating in recent weeks, as progressives see leadership as dismissive of their demands and influence in the party. Chakrabarti sits at an interesting intersection of this dynamic. He works for Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist member whose viral internet presence has helped her platform to dominate conversation at the national level in a manner that has struck the ire of entrenched House members. And he founded Justice Democrats, a progressive group working to unseat ideologically moderate Democrats, some of which are veteran black lawmakers who have worked their way into the inner circle of House leadership.
Until now, Pelosi has publicly dismissed progressives’ influence and privately told the House majority to maintain a spirit of unity. But the internal strife within her party keeps boiling over into the public.
The AOC four have been referred to as the progressive, left, or even most liberal part of the Democratic Party. This is a category mistake. AOC belongs to a separate tradition not compatible with the fundamental values of the Party, which trace back to two Enlightenment documents, the Declaration and the Constitution. Those values, originating in western Europe, constitute Enlightenment liberalism, and they are centered on equality; the rights, dignity, and autonomy of the single person; universalism; cooperation; toleration; and a passion for optimum outcomes for everybody.
The AOC group's values come from a dark central European mindset which produced Marxism, Freudianism, and fascism. Behind the scenes, they assume that humanity is afflicted by original sin, and they assume that human existence is a zero sum game: when one group gains something, another group loses something. The AOC group's values imply conflict.
The Democratic Party comes from a heritage which imagines win-win solutions and speaks of "enlightened self-interest," in which voluntary service to the public good makes one's own life better. Democratic values imply cooperation and voluntary association; AOC values imply that life is a war of all against all, and favor obligatory membership in a collective in which the group is all and the individual is nothing.
AOC's left is inherently backward and reactionary, not progressive. The modern world, by contrast, is liberal. Democracy is liberal, science is liberal, justice is liberal, and true intellectuality is liberal. All favor openness, cooperation, free communication and freedom of thought, the conviction that no gender or ethnicity is better than another, and complete equality of opportunity for everyone regardless of background. There is no overlap between the AOC outlook and the outlook of the Democratic Party, between an oppositional, adversarial, subversive outlook and an outlook whose most famous three words is “We the People.”
Saturday, August 3, 2019
Caitlin Flanagan’s acerbic remarks about ‘justice critics’
‘Truth stands independently of social opinion,’ Robert Pirsig wrote: and that’s one reason ‘social justice’ is an oxymoron.
Caitlin Flanagan:
Unaesthetic philistines telling art what to do is nothing new, from the boy-meets-tractor diktat of Soviet Commissars to Plato’s condemnation of Graeco-Roman mythology for showing the gods chasing each other’s wives.
Kudos to Flanagan for daring to critique puritanical dictatorship-of-virtue justice critics and the boring bowdlerized didactic art they would foist on us. Ars grātiā artis
Caitlin Flanagan:
The justice critics, the ones who want to count up every movie’s sins against approved sensibilities, say that the film is nostalgic, a term intended to damage it. Only another artist would understand the way that Tarantino has deployed that potent force. Guillermo del Toro tweeted that the movie was “[chock-full] of yearning,” that it was “a tale of another time that probably never was but feels like a memory.”The justice critics want to subject art to ‘constraints and considerations extraneous’ to it. [The phrase comes from Classicist Mary Lefkowitz, who once declared, “Academic freedom is the freedom to profess a discipline according to its recognized content and procedures, free from constraints and considerations extraneous to that discipline.”]
The justice critics aren’t interested in fictions that feel like memories. They want movies that adhere to their vision of the way the world should be. To them, the movie is too white, too violent toward women, and too uninterested in Margot Robbie, whose Sharon Tate has few lines. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody reviled the picture, calling it “ridiculously white.” But Charles Manson was a white supremacist, a fact that does tend to put a lot of white people in a movie.
Unaesthetic philistines telling art what to do is nothing new, from the boy-meets-tractor diktat of Soviet Commissars to Plato’s condemnation of Graeco-Roman mythology for showing the gods chasing each other’s wives.
Kudos to Flanagan for daring to critique puritanical dictatorship-of-virtue justice critics and the boring bowdlerized didactic art they would foist on us. Ars grātiā artis
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