Sunday/Mount

On this Day:
1327
Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
1709
Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
1865
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1978
Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees the United States to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl.
1979
Convicted bank robber Patty Hearst is released from prison after her sentence is commuted by President Jimmy Carter.
1979
The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile.
Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

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The most useful work in the coming years will be about leveraging AI to help improve and reform liberal democracy, the rule of law, separation of powers, free speech, coordination, and constitutional safeguards.--Cowen

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Would a local politician meeting with other city government officials about how to resist immigration law be a RICO offense?

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Productivity is rising in UK.
The last time productivity increased meaningfully was during the pandemic. This was misleading. Average output per hour worked increased only because lower productivity workers in retail and hospitality were disproportionately losing their jobs.

New ONS figures suggest the same thing is happening, but happening slowly.

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The distinction seems to be this: if you are a criminal or suspected criminal, you cannot be pursued if you are also an illegal immigrant.

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Sunday/Mount

Today is the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.

Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

Here are two minority reports:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
--Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77 

Perhaps too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!                          
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

And Blake's summary of unresolved conflict:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole; 
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.                          
--William Blake