Dogs, Parking Meters and the Rule of Law

There is a neighborhood area where the locals take their dogs to run with each other. It is a sizable park, not fenced but well away from pedestrian traffic, sometimes frequented by sunbathers in the early day. The dog people always come at dusk when they are off work, the dogs have been indoors all day and there are no people around. It has become an interesting little social subset, people of all ages, stripes and backgrounds joined by their care and love for dogs. The group is self selecting; the aggressive dogs, the less disciplined dogs, the dogs that run away are not brought to the park. The owners sit, some bring light folding chairs you see at high school ball games, and socialize while the dogs play. On Fridays people bring hor d'oeuvres and share some wine.

The city, like most, has a leash law. Any dog without a leash draws a 30 dollar ticket for its owner. It is a reasonable law. Dogs loose in the street can be a problem. Here in the dog park the dogs run in a controlled area without risk to themselves or others. But they are off their leashes.

Recently, drawn by the smell of potential fines, the police have moved in. They have actually begun to stake out the dog park and have started ticketing any owners there. Taking a law aimed at safety and quality of life in the city they have enforced the letter of the law to the detriment of both. Like parking meters which used to encourage the availability of parking spaces for businesses and now discourage parking at all, the leash law has become predatory. Initially the owners reacted by assigning lookouts, like pickets at a military camp, but gradually the group wore down. Now no one goes to the dog park.

Immigration and Our Failures

The integrity of the borders is likely to be a debated point this election. With 11 million illegal immigrants looking for work, subsidies and health care and an unknown number with bloody murder on their minds it should be. Bachman recently espoused a search-and-export plan for every single illegal, reminiscent of the ancient repatriation movement after the Civil War. Gingrich recently suggested a moratorium on illegals who have been here for 25 years. The suggestions will attract fire but do suggest a more significant question: How can a nation deal with a problem of this magnitude sensibly?

The American Mexican border is 1954 miles long and covers huge deserts, two major rivers, fierce heat and rugged hills. Twenty thousand border agents are spread along the border to enforce the country's immigration policy. Yet it is estimated that about one half million illegal immigrants cross the border every year. So far one suggestion taken seriously has been to build a fence along the border to contain the movement. While this effort has come a cropper the problem is no less serious. How can a border be defended?

There are some precedents. The Berlin Wall encompassed all of West Berlin for a distance of 91 miles and then also separated West Berlin from East Berlin for an additional 27 miles. There are some successful modern borders, North and South Korea, Israel and Everyone Else. These borders, however, have a characteristic in common: The willingness to kill the violator. The image of immigration units trapping and firing on drug dealers is one thing, trapping and killing families of illegals quite another. I do not mean to say that the failure of the nation to defend itself is a failure of will, like the horrid "Camp of the Saints", but there is a human and humane question here that complicates simple efficiency. Think of a military medical officer faced with a wounded enemy.

Illegal immigration is a journey, an illegal one, but a journey. It has a beginning, a trip and a destination. Unlike a vacation, the destination in immigration--legal or illegal--is more than geographic, it entails reward. At the end of the traveler's rainbow there is work, medical care, Walmart. We cannot influence the nature of the country the immigrant leaves and we clearly cannot efficiently interrupt the journey. But we can influence the rewards of coming to the U.S. illegally. First, any employer who hires non-citizens should be fined and jailed. This will be awkward as there is an industry of falsification of documents but we can manage it. Secondly, there should be no benefits for illegal immigrants, no health care and no schools. The notion that we cannot ask for identification because someone saw a bad World War II movie with "Papers, please" in it is absurd. And it is against the law to ask for identification in school applications.

That might be "Camp of the Saints."

Compartments and Psychological Homogeneity

A new phrase has emerged in contemporary conversation: compartmentalizing. It allows for the use of sets in thinking that may not overlap, that may be contradictory. It allows for a freedom in evaluation where someone might approach a new problem unencumbered by previous experience or decision. What used to be called inconsistent or cynical is now compartmentalizing.

I'm sure it has been around for a long time but I first noticed it with President Clinton who was excused his social behavior with this notion. The idea was that he was a competent leader, had been creative in managing the economy and his personal behavior was "something different", something to be examined by means other than were applied to the real reason he was there. This is more forgiving than the old utilitarian excuse that "at least he made the trains run on time."

In essence, this means that we are all watered by several different streams and we have different qualities with different growth and speed. So Michael Corleone can be a stone cold killer but a loving family man, Ted Bundy the Prince of Darkness to a young woman but a kind and interested conversationalist. It is in distinction to the "seed" notion of life--"psychological homogeneity"--which sees an individual as a whole, not as a crazy quilt of various and competing inclinations that break through to the surface at one time or another and under certain circumstances. And it feeds a modern need: We do not want to generalize, we do not want to judge.

There are times we should yield to the wisdom in the New Testament: By their fruits you will know them. Michael Corleone was a stone cold killer with a few exceptions; Bundy was The Prince of Darkness, but chatty. Both of these men may have something to say to us, just not much.

Sunday Sermon 11/27/11

Today was the first day of the new Mass and aside from "consubstantial" in the Creed was not very noteworthy. The music seemed particularly bad but that might have been regional. The gospel was another of the "prepare yourself while the master is away" gospels, not the exciting ones that inspired the book series of the vanishing spouses and workmen, "Left Behind," but the gentle reminder without the foolish virgins or unproductive servants. It does, however, have an unsettling line. The returning master is likened to "a man traveling abroad."

This is an extremely upsetting simile and I'll bet anything Christ delivered it with a smile. The notion of a traveling God, visiting the universe where man is not, invokes a shiver. What would he be doing? Sightseeing? Vacationing? Where would God go? Neptune? Alpha Centauri? What about us?

The Enlightenment, the reliance on reason, created tremendous problems for religion. Regardless of the various times and philosophies, religion relies on faith. The unreasonable, the miraculous, the the very essence of the unknowable was anathema to the Enlightenment and eventually this strictness created a reaction with a new reliance on the individual and the value of his own feelings, Romanticism. A quasi-enlightenment bridge for religion in this time was Deism. Deism was the belief in a God who created existence but did not interfere in life. The classic image was the Watchmaker, used by William Paley. (Paley asks himself what would he think if, while walking in a field, he came upon a stone? Not too much. But if he came upon a watch! What would that complexity imply!) God, as the Watchmaker, made this complex world but did not interfere with it. Once created, the watch ran on its own.

One can see this would be a highly satisfying analogy. Not only could a reasonable man look at the complexity of life and see the logic behind this complex Creator, he could rationalize why he need not hold God responsible when things went wrong. This analogy continues to this day in various guises, most recently in the Intelligent Design movement which argues the cellular information-based genetic system is a modern example of the computer oriented Watchmaker. So each age builds it own mirror.

The "traveling" master is anything but. We are his agents. Where we are, He is.

Cab Thoughts 11/26/11

The word "pharaoh" means "great house". I think it is literal, not meaning "family." Interesting that power is seen in a dwelling, like "White House."

So Michele Bachman shows up on the Jimmy Fallon Show and the band plays the song "Lyin' Ass Bitch" by Fishbone as she walks out. Now this is a comedy show and Bachman should expect the worst but the worst should not include gross disrespect. That the people on the show thought the joke was worth the disrespect--that is a real problem in the culture.

Barry Eisler, a thriller writer, turned down $500,000 to sign with St. Martin's publishing house and has signed with Amazon. This, if it continues, will be a major change in publishing and a blow to the publishers. Imagine Amazon just sending books to electronic readers without a stop at the publishing house. Huge. HUGE! I'm no longer a book collector, I collect antiques.

The Iowa caucus is in 6 weeks and the Republicans still look like the seven dwarfs. Ron Paul has tapped a hardcore angry crowd who will not give up. Gingrich looks to be a reasonable default candidate but he would be symbolic. He cannot win.

Women just hate Gingrich. He got tarred with the divorce papers somehow. The wife initiated the divorce and he brought some stuff to sign while she was in the hospital. The Dems just did a great job in smearing him. (The woman is still alive.) Gingrich is an intelligent guy with diffuse opinions that are not locked in to any passion (a negative with Republicans) but his real defect is that he loves power.

China is 20% of the world's population but the largest energy consumer in the world. Over 50% of the coal consumed is in China.
It is also currently building an incredible 27 nuclear plants.

Amy Chua, her family being my new poster child for the need for redistribution of personal wealth and talent replacing Gwyneth Paltrow, says that richest one percent of the people in the world have the wealth equivalent to 57% of the poor of the world. Wanna bet where those people live?

Is it true that Gingrich is a Catholic convert?

Yesterday was the anniversary of the sinking of The White Ship: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/White+Ship

JFK: The Movie and the Problem

The Thanksgiving holiday, one of the best holidays and certainly the best secular one, has been spoiled for everyone who was awake and thinking in the mid 60's by the assassination of Jack Kennedy. That promising shift from the generation of Eisenhower to its sons, to youth and its potential, to the charismatic and the virile was just stopped cold by Oswald in Dallas. We defaulted back to the older, ponderous Lyndon Johnson, a true guardian of the Old Guard. That loss--of youth, of hope, of promise, of beauty--has never been overcome and we are reminded of it every Thanksgiving. One only wonders how much of the unrest in the 60's and 70's was a result.

An aspect of the assassination that has dogged its shadow has been the shameless exploitation of the atrocity by writers, politicians and artists. This exploitation, which has become almost a cult, believes--or says it believes--that the assassination was a conspiracy of a number of men, groups or organizations. Every aspect of the event has been picked over, every inconsistency of life magnified, every possibility made a probability. The result is that the event, right before many of our eyes, has been completely recreated and, like an alternative universe, continues without interference with its own laws, experts and history. It is very like those academic musings run wild. "If, instead, you assume that history and archeology was 300 years wrong--or falsified--and Moses was actually alive in the court of Akhenaton...." "If, instead, you assume there is a unexplained and unexplainable driving force in history..." "If, instead, you assume that everyone is possessed at birth by sexual urges towards their immediate family...." It is another victory of the Art of the Plausible.

This is nowhere more revolting than is seen in the movie "JFK" where a seemingly respectable director rewrites the assassination story according to a man whose grasp on the event is dangerously close to psychosis. Oliver Stone writes a story of the assassination through the eyes and the belief set of James Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, who had arrested, charged, indicted and tried a local community figure, Clay Shaw, for involvement in the Kennedy murder. Shaw's arrest was virtually random. There was no evidence against him other than the word of a psychiatric patient who failed a lie detector test and refused to testify. How an American citizen could come under such unreasonable, whimsical charges has never been explained. But Garrison persisted and then Stone followed up after the laughable trial (where the jury took longer to find their seats than to find "not guilty") with a movie inexplicably presenting the Garrison thesis as within the same time zone as reason. Of course, all the facts of the assassination were changed to implicate the innocent, the shooting presented was almost a complete fiction and this all was delivered by Kevin Costner, a credible actor, with certainty and outrage. Anyone who knew anything about the assassination walked from the theater with their collective heads spinning. But many with less of a good grasp left alarmed and resentful. This constant barrage of misinformation has done a lot to undermine this country's credibility and value in the minds of its people who, after all, own and run it.

There are two bad lessons here. The first is there are people and industries in the world who, even in those cultures with the highest of ideals, will do anything, say anything, publish anything to make a buck. If possible they will take the Plausible-made-Art and create an industry of it with historians, academics, and franchises. The second is that they often hide their entrepreneurship in the gowns of Art. How many of our greatest artists have questioned the reliability of memory, the interaction of history and art--even to the point of their blending? So Stone calls Julian Barnes and Cormac McCarthy as witnesses for his defense.

Stone is more Goebbels than John Huston here. He is everything that is wrong with businessmen gone rogue. His product is harmful to the society, toxic to the young and delivered without an ounce of social conscience. The real story about Garrison is how is it possible that Clay Shaw could be treated like a Kafka character in the United States. Another would be a clarifying and cleansing explanation of all the facts and evidence that has been gathered over the years about the murder. This might set the country at ease. But there's probably not much money, or return on arrogance, in this. Instead why not take advantage of the distressed and confused citizens, contribute to their malaise and cash in.

In 1976 the U.S. House of representatives created a commission, The House Select Commission on Assassinations, to investigate all the evidence in the murder again. This time they applied all the newer technologies available as well. Aside from the single and erroneous "fourth bullet thesis" not a single new conclusion was reached. Instead this august deliberative body concluded there was no evidence of a conspiracy--but they believed one existed anyway.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a tricky word. It means gratitude but it implies more than something to be grateful for, it implies something to be grateful to.

In the fall of 1621 the Plymouth settlers had a celebratory meal with a local Indian tribe as part of a traditional English harvest festival. There are two accounts; no mention is made of a Day of Thanksgiving but they were probably happy; since their arrival they had a 50% mortality. It lasted three days. A Day of Thanksgiving, a day the English would have considered religious, was first held in the new land in 1623 following a needed rainfall. Various days of thanksgiving were celebrated by the country over the years, the first in commemoration of the end of the Revolution by Washington. In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, Lincoln formally made Thanksgiving an annual event.

It is interesting to see these two men, Washington suspicious of organized religion and Lincoln harder to read, celebrating an official Thanksgiving, but both seem heartfelt, Lincoln's surprisingly so. Washington's is almost a mirror of the mindset of the time. The two proclamations are below.

The Thanksgiving Proclamation
New York, 3 October 1789

By the President of the United States of America: a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor--and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.'

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks -- for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions--to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually -- to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn [sic] kindness onto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord -- To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease [sic] of science among them and us -- and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New-York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Washington

Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence [sic], have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

Abraham Lincoln