Wit & Whim

Dutch Empire and Trade

2012-01-27T19:25:00.000-08:00

A rare sunny it is, and a good day to write while there is a spot in the sun to be found.

Class today was focused on the Dutch Empire, and it was most satisfying. Dutch independence laid the groundwork for the first major market economy in early modern Europe. Little mystery, then, that the Dutch totally dominated trade over the next century, only to brought done by 80 years of sustained war, completed by a combined invasion of French forces, and heavy British naval assaults.

Dutch Merchant shipping during this time period went from being almost non-existent, to being much greater than the cumulative shipping tonnage of the rest of Europe combined. The Bank of Amsterdam was the first fully functioning merchant bank in the world, and issued the first stable bills of exchange.

My professor, in a move not foreseen, pointed out the power of corporate ventures to allow groups of middle class people to split the risk on an innovative venture, and how this led to the massive fiscal success of the Dutch middle class. 30% of all land and properties were in the hands of the urban middle classes; a fact previously unseen in history, possible only under a free market, where risk taking and group ventures are rewarding propects.

Dutch power was only brought low after 100 years if sustained war, with the final blow coming from a combined effort of England and France. The amusing thing is that the Dutch won these wars, but collapsed because of the disruptions to their trade fleets. They simply ran out of capital to continue their trade.

One might ask why England and France felt the need to bring the Dutch low.

The answer, quite simply, is that trade is that malicious acts of trade are just as damaging as malicious acts of war; the Dutch were masters of wresting trade from their competitors. Because there was such widespread wealth in the United Provinces, the Dutch were able to fund their efforts from many different sources. The Dutch middle classed was composed of hundreds of thousands of persons, willing to help finance massive commercial ventures in return for a share of the rewards. In the rest of Europe, one does not find the same phenomenon. All costs, in say France, Portugal, or Spain, were fronted by the crown, and the crown reaped all rewards. But the crowns were risk averse, and not only were they not as decisive, they also did not have the same amount of flexible capital as the Dutch merchant classes. Competitive Dutch trade companies did things more efficiently, and instead of consistently trading only in the same goods, actually assessed the wants of their Indian counterparts, and worked to supply higher value commodities to Indian spice traders. In time, the Dutch were masters of the Spice, slave, textile, and grain trades, and also were supplying the bulk of loans to the other European powers.

There was only one way that Spain, France, and England could hope to become competitive again. They attacked the Dutch.

The competitive trade of the Dutch was not harmless to these other nations. England went from being the foremost supplier of textiles to a distant second, not to mention the hunger caused by the UP using their grain monopoly to drive up prices. Portugal’s trade empire was wiped from the map. Spain lost their slave trade, was getting gauged on grain, and was being forced to borrow money from Dutch lenders in order to keep from starvation. France lost their trade in the Mediterranean as soon as the Spanish, driven by debt, were forced to open the strait of Gibraltar to the Dutch.

The world is and will always be at war. Trade is war. An act that damages another country’s trade has always been understood as an act of hostility, and nations have always fought to protect their economic best interests. Think of the Greeks, attacking one another for plunder, slaves, and land. Economic motivations have always been one of the strongest reasons for war, and it will always be that way.

Hostilities are not always commenced by the barrel of a gun, as the Dutch proved. The most brutally devastating warfare is waged in the market place. The Dutch won the Dutch-Anglo wars; a series of lopsided military victories, all three of them. But they were destroyed because of disruptions in trade.

George Washington’s farewell address is among the greatest orations in history; it also espouses some impossible ideals. There is no such thing as avoiding foreign entanglement, unless you intend to only trade amongst yourselves, and even then, your act of abstinence from trade may be seen as an affront by those who would like to engage in trade with your people. A free nation can never avoid foreign attachments, because there are simply greater goods to be gained by trading with the world than there are in remaining aloof.

Think on our involvement in the Quasi War with France. The French attacked because we were engaging in trade with England. We argued that our English trade shouldn’t matter, because we traded with France as well. But France understood what we were yet to learn. The act of trading with someone is a kind of alliance, to trade with someone’s enemies is an act of war. It has been, and always will be. In this era of global trade, we are tied to all at once, and we are directly interested in the maintenance of marshal peace in the world. Those who attack our partners in trade are our enemies, whether we own them or not.

By what right do we play world police? By what right do you jump in when someone attacks your friend on Facebook, or in a bar. We are responsible for our friends, whether we like it or not. Even when they have done something stupid, you protect your friend in the immediate future, but do everything in your power to ensure they do not make the mistake again.

Then there are those who just keep getting into fights and counting on you to jump in; they are leaches, and not true friends, and there may come a day when you must leave them to the wolves.

Musings Brought on by Germany and the Snow.

2012-01-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

Having written in German for the last 1 1/2 hours, I think it is time for a little bit of a break for my brain. So I am sitting here and watching the desolation of white accumulate; fully anticipating a desolation of wrecked cars to follow in good time.

I am writing on the Topic of the role of Germany in Europe, and I cannot write what I honestly believe. The role of Germany in Europe is one of growing insignificance; they can do nothing about the problems of Europe. For almost a century debt has been building, the institutions and mores which lead to excellence in western Europe have crumbled, and the problems have built energy with no real release.

Germany does not have the money to bail out Europe. Germany, France, and England do not have that much money. Germany, France, England, and the rest of the major economies of Europe do not have the money; in part because it is the major economies which are in such trouble. Portugal is a junk bond, Spain is likely to follow, and Italy is in the same category as Kazakhstan; that is to say, not a safe bet for the future. There is no money in Europe to reverse the crisis. It is not there. It is gone. It is long since spent on ambitious government programs, which failed to achieve, or even promote, their stated ends.

The mistake of bloated bureaucracy is arguably claiming its first victims since the Ottoman Empire. It is impossible to keep so many non-competitive agencies run efficiently; there is no organizational motivation for overachieving, and the direct result of streamlining the process might just be getting fired. What man throws away his own living so a business, from which he will not derive any gain, runs at lower cost? Not a wise man, or one who desires to feed his family. But that is ok, because bureaucracy cannot be replaced by anything else and has no natural opponent. It can merely appropriate the resources required to sustain itself.

Imagine, for a moment, the practices that American Banks would have if they had the power of taxation, and that they only had power to oversee and discipline themselves. Most would roll their eyes at the thought of the abuses and waste that would follow, but I would argue that this is exactly where government has gone.

The ruinous debt accrued by the members of the EU will, probably in every case, never be entirely paid off. Even the austerity measures in Greece are not enough to reverse the tide, and they are not permanent. Imagine if, a decade in the future, the UK had to implement such measures. You thought the Greeks had some crazy riots....

Germany in the midst of this problem is, indeed, the most stable figure. But they are not a Zeus in the coming of this storm; not a god who can stop the coming of this--I amuse myself--white desolation of western Europe, at best they are a vehicle well outfitted to weather the storm and help those that do not.

At their most important, I think they will be an emergency vehicle to help survivors of the crashes after the desolation has done its worst.

Welfare and the Promise and Problems of Democracy in Contemporary America.

2012-01-10T14:46:00.000-08:00

For those who need a little something to help them get to sleep, I present my final paper from Y401- Promise and Problems of Democracy in America. It naturally has many imperfections, but I liked it.

The last century of human history has seen a change. As methods of production grew more advanced, and the great economies of the world became more democratic, concerned citizens and government turned to the creation of procedures and policies with which to combat poverty and inequality amongst the people. The name that came to be given to such programs was welfare. The goal is plainly seen in the title; to vouchsafe the welfare of our fellow man. There is something undeniably noble in this ideal. But it is the enthusiast’s mistake to confound intent with result, and the efficacy of welfare is perpetually in dispute. To understand the effect welfare has on democracy, one might look to the great writers on politics; men whose ideas have been tried in the laboratory of history. And one must look to modern experience. America has now produced her own writers, who have dealt with the realities of the welfare state as it is implemented. It is from these two sources—from the great minds history and the American experience—that the answer to our question must be sought. Which is, how does a national welfare system interrelate with the promise and problems of democracy as understood in history, and specifically with democracy in the America?

Modern contributors to the topic of welfare, have too many perspectives to address all. We must confine ourselves to those which are arguably the most important to our analysis. One perspective finds its exemplar in the works of economic theorist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen. Justice for Sen is—in large part—a thing to be discovered mathematically, found in the freedom of choice and material condition of an individual. He subscribes to a variant of the Rawlsian truth that fairness is justice. From the standpoint of one such as Sen, the national welfare state is the only moral option. Theodore Dalrymple, a physician and psychiatrist who has worked in impoverished regions across the globe, approaches the issue from a more immediately human standpoint. He writes of the lives of his patients and how they are touched by the welfare state. The results of the welfare state he observes it in his patients are “the poverty of the soul,” a destruction of mores, and a permanent air of victimhood and entitlement. Dalrymple, while very interested in the effects of welfare on the soul of a people, does not write specifically on the economics, and does not deal as much with America directly. Charles Murray, in his work Losing Ground, argued that the welfare programs of the 60s and 70s demonstrably worsened the plight of the poor in America, in part morally, but in a much greater part economically. It is our purpose—with the above perspectives in mind—to address the issue of public aid to private persons and whether it is indeed conducive, or perhaps even necessary, to a the maintenance of a just and free regime.

Through the course of reading the great writers on democratic politics, there are certain lessons which colored the manner in which I have approached this issue. The first and most important idea comes from the Greeks, and stated simply, is the idea that justice requires friendship and an idea of the common good[1]. The second lesson is that law, civil or social, written or unwritten, educates the souls of the citizens, whether for good or for ill. The last lesson is twofold. Democracies tend toward equality, and there is no stopping this movement. The dark side to this trend is that men tend to prefer social equality and freedom over political equality and freedom, and will sacrifice the latter in order to obtain more of the former. Therefore, law should not be aimed at individual goods, but encourage an idea of something shared, or a common good.

What is the goal of government, and how does welfare advance this goal? A good place to start is in Aristotle, who lays out a pattern in his Politics of the workings and nature of regimes. In the first book he asserts that “man is a political animal” and is separated from animals by speech and his perception of justice and injustice[2]. Man is the most savage of animals when he lacks the virtues of political life[3], but the noblest when he engages in the pursuit of justice, which is only done through acts of politics[4]. To be truly human is to engage in a political order; to abstain is to be reduced to the level of a beast. The state is the people and the people comprise the state; they are one and the same[5]. And he again finds that a city is not just an association aimed at supplying for “minimum needs” but rather “for a finer purpose.[6]” The state is a whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts, and it exists for a higher purpose than mere sustenance, but to educate the souls of men for virtue.

The ideal regime espoused by Aristotle, as it was by Plato, is that of the philosopher king.[7] There is, however, a hint that Kingship is never truly his best regime, for a citizen, as he lays out the definition, is one who has part in ruling and being ruled, and so has the privilege to engage in the higher political life of the city. Such a citizen, he points out, can only be truly said to exist in democracy, which is the only regime in which the whole people may be said to partake of the goods “of ruling and being ruled[8]”; engaging in politics. Liberty and equality—“the great end of every democracy”[9]—are products of political life. They are “most realized when all alike share most fully in the constitution.[10]” This state of freedom, of ruling and being ruled, is rightly understood to be a state of equality.

It is however, in the very goods of democracy that the seeds of its demise are sown. “Inequality is everywhere at the bottom of faction, for …faction arises from men’s striving for what is equal.”[11] The first flaw lies in the impossibility of total equality for “in all states there are three elements, one class is very rich, another very poor, and a third in a mean.[12]” From their inequality there will arise a natural tension, and. in a regime that craves equality the poor will desire to get the wealth of the notables and do not know rightly how to rule, whereas the notables desire only to rule and do not know how to be ruled.[13] Aristotle says that there is in the aspirations of either side some injustice and inequality, for oligarchs believe that power should go to the propertied—violating the liberty and equality of the poor. But the masses would merely confiscate the wealth of the notables, thereby violating their liberty and equality. Neither the poor nor rich think to set up a moderate constitution, but rather “regard political supremacy as the spoils of victory.[14]” The separation in station and experience is also sufficient to render friendship and an understanding of common humanity unattainable, defeating the ultimate purpose of political association.[15]

The only means by which stability may be introduced into this tension, and by which political equality may be preserved, is if neither the rich nor the poor form a majority. The mean neither envies the rich, nor fears the poor. Moreover, being satisfied with their material station, but not burdened by the care of large properties, they more readily take an interest in politics and are more likely to govern in the interest of the whole and within the parameters of the laws.[16] Those regimes are best, where the class that is the mean is greater in number than both the rich and poor combined[17]. To this end it is necessary that the mean must grow and poverty be combated.

This would seem at first glance to be a line of thought sanctioning the welfare state as an entity conducive to the maintenance of a healthy democratic tradition, but such a leap would be unwarranted. It is written that it is desirable to grow the middle class in order to obtain the promise of democracy. How this might be done is a matter quite separate and still open for deeper inquiry. Aristotle does indeed speak of regime sponsored charity in his Politics, and of its potential goods and ills for a democratic order. He begins by writing about what it should not be; it should not be a stipend distributed by demagogues for “when people get it they want the same again: this sort of assistance to the poor is like the proverbial jug with a hole in it.[18]” Such a system would also play into the danger of a tyranny of the masses, wherein the multitude is a deviant monarch, which is in turned ruled by the influence of demagogues and not by law.[19]

Yet, it is “the duty of the true democrat…to see that the population is not destitute, for destitution is a cause of a corrupt democracy.[20]” In all versions of his stable democracies; it is necessary that the people be—to an extent—self sufficient; he uses farmers as an exemplar.[21] The goal of aid should be to establish the poor in positions of independence and dignity. To that end, Aristotle says that aid should be distributed in block grants, and directed into obtaining farmland, or furnishing the poor with businesses or the means to pursue a valuable trade.[22] He also makes note of how it is done in Carthage, where the notables take responsibility for the poor in their immediate neighborhoods, and look to setting up for them an occupation. This system is praiseworthy for multiple reasons, for it not only seeks to raise the destitute to a more dignified station, but the custom also teaches the notables that their assistance to the poor raises the whole.

Why does this virtue not come about by nature? The answer is found in the dangers inherent in freedom and equality, and in man’s self love,[23] for while man is possessed always of this self love, it is in democracy that he is freest to nurture it. Plato provides a necessary picture of the nature of democracy and the democratic man, particularly concentrating on his vices. Democracy is, says Plato, “a sweet regime, without rulers and many-colored, dispensing a certain equality to equals and unequals alike.” And in democracy the virtue and practices of man aren’t judged, so long as he is well disposed toward others. [24] Among the leading characteristics of democracy are its niceness and its plurality of persons, and in such a regime each man may “organize his life in it privately just as it pleaseth him.[25]” The democratic spirit delights in freedom and if it is not educated by good laws and customs it is left open to extreme license, to which the democratic man is naturally susceptible. For it is non-democratic to impose oneself on the freedom of another. The customs of the democratic man becoming thus unregulated, a young man, vulnerable to the opinions of his fellows, will soon be shamed out of his moderation. He is drawn into the license toward which the democratic man tends. Freedom being chief good sought by the democratic man, he will call his vices goods—for they are an act of his freedom—and he will learn to call “insolence good education; anarchy, freedom; wastefulness, magnificence; and shamelessness, courage.” He thus hands rule of himself over to his pleasures, and is a slave in his own body.[26]

Those who live under democracy, by nature, seek to be free of restraint, and consider such a state to be the only state worth living under[27]. Here, in the desire for absolute freedom, is where Plato finds the coming end of the democratic regime. For the desire for freedom in all things becomes a kind of anarchy, and even overturns just restrictions and societal order, so that pupil is insolent to teacher, and son to father. The least restriction of law is seen as a form of slavery, so that people cease to follow all statutes and customs in pursuit of freedom. [28] The citizens of a democracy, by this token, come to despise their political duties, and will only see to the governing of the city if they have something to gain from it. The leaders will begin to take the wealth of the notables and give it to the people, and the lower classes—forming the majority—will push for more of the same, and the result will be furious factional struggle.[29] Thus we draw from Plato a further word of caution as we go about the manner of putting together aid programs. Democracy is a regime in which men despise anything they see as a garnishment of their freedom; this extends not only to those things unjust, but in the absence of education it will extend to basic duty and responsibility. If he is not educated for virtue, the democratic man will put aside the good of the whole and pursue only his own pleasure and license. Therefore, any program of aid must simultaneously be targeted to educate for virtue.

With the foundation of the American republic modes of thought about politics would undergo a drastic change. As Hamilton states in Federalist 9 “The Science of politics…has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.”[30] The American republic is not going to be founded on the ancient models, and so the specific promise and problems of the American democracy will be separate from those of the ancients. The design of the American republic was put together with a key thought in mind: “Liberty is to faction as air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.”[31] The republic is intended to reduce faction, thereby to avoid the turmoil into which the Greek states were continually plunged. There are three chief tenets to this control of faction. One is that the government must be representative, so to remove government from the immediate impulses of the public[32]. Next, that it must be spread over a large territory, so that the majority will be too far spread to have common sectarian interests. [33] Third, that there be instituted a constant economic struggle, and that avarice be promoted. [34]

Examining welfare against this threefold plan, some immediate problems rise to the forefront. In the event of the success of a national welfare system, there might conceivably be a reduction in motive for factional conflict. However, if it is not successful, it merely serves to divide the entire nation into the factions of rich and poor, givers and recipients. And since the giving and taking will be done on a national scale, there can be no question of fellowship or a benefactor and beneficiary relationship twixt those who give and receive; it is all impersonal and does not advance the Greek goal of educating citizens about the common good, even while it promotes class struggle. The representative form of government is meant to moderate and curtail any use of political power as a weapon by one class against another, but as the ancients understood imperfectly, democracies tend to become more democratic with time, and to cast off their limitations. This process is arguably accelerated by the promotion of avarice. Because profitable economic faction is encouraged above the goods and dangers of political faction, material wealth and consumption is correspondently raised to a higher place over civic virtue.

Despite this notion of encouraging competition and avarice—which would seem contradictory to an older idea of the common good—there yet remains an idea in the federalist that the union will exist to—among other things—“advance the prosperity…of the commonwealth.” Hamilton notes in his argument for the power to lay and collect taxes that, without those powers, “How can [the union] undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged plans of public good?”[35] The intent of those writing the federalist is clear; it was a valid function of government to tax citizens and then use the proceeds from the tax in the pursuit of the public good. In fact it was necessary to The Federalist’s model that the government should have the power to act in the perceived public good; particularly in the promotion of economic goods.

The American republic was formed in lieu of stronger democratic aspects for a simple reason: democracies destroy themselves. The Federalist set out to secure the promise of democracy, while giving it a more stable form. But their framework extends only to governmental form. Their understanding of the promise and problems of democracy is incomplete, and so their analysis is incomplete. It is fitting, if only briefly, to look the visionary writing of Alexis de Tocqueville to understand how welfare might aid or hinder the maintenance of a just democratic order; particularly the maintenance of democracy in America.

In de Tocqueville are means by which democracy might be restrained from self annihilation. The first is retaining administration to localities, and withholding it from centralization, which would allow the national majority, “which has the tastes and instincts of the despot,” to use the vehicle of central government to impose its will on all.[36] The need for a decentralized government is coupled with the need for municipal involvement, for it is “in the municipality that the strength of free peoples resides.” And it is in the town that men are educated for liberty.[37] It is in this municipal life that men receive “a taste for order,” and come to appreciate the harmony of the different powers present in the state and to understand their rights and obligations.[38] The life of the township educates men for civic virtue. Indeed, individualism, egotism, and the ultimate tyranny of the majority are combated through the development of local liberty, which teaches men to value the affection and respect of their neighbors, and allows them to participate in a fuller and more satisfying political life.[39] And the true excellence of the federal constitution is that it allows for localized rule, while providing the security afforded by a federation.

Yet it is toward individualism that democracy tends. Equality of condition is the defining characteristic of the democratic epoch, and is most desirable to the democratic citizen,[40] and equality of condition begets an even stronger love for equality.[41] Further, the dangers of extreme equality are difficult to comprehend, whereas the evils which may stem from abuse of liberty are more immediately visible. Conversely, the goods of liberty must “be purchased by some sacrifices,” while the smaller pleasures of equality are more immediately felt, and do not require the same sacrifice to obtain. The “charms of equality…are within the reach of everyone” therefore “the passion that equality causes to be born…is powerful and general[42]” The democratic man wants liberty, but he wants it in equality. If he cannot have equality in liberty, then they will “want it in slavery.”[43] When men engage in political liberty they are “drawn away…from looking at themselves.”[44] As equality takes greater precedence over liberty, and the members of the regime become more alike to one another and simultaneously more self-sufficient, it gives rise to individualism, and the belief that one is free of the need for others.[45] This individualism has another name: egotism, an excessive love and preoccupation with self. So it is, individualistic and cut off from one another, that identity is lost, and man conforms himself to the dictates of the majority, resulting in overarching uniformity. In this uniformity, animosity toward any privilege is unbridled. Men gladly concede political prerogatives to the government, if they believe it will enforce equality of condition. It is in this state where, if a citizen needs help, he does not turn to his equals, to do so would admit an inequality, but he turns to the one unchanging and powerful entity he knows, which is the power of government.[46] And it is here that a democracy offers itself up to despotism. For the government becomes “an immense and tutelary power,” which seeks to secure happiness and comfort for all the citizens, desiring the citizens to enjoy themselves, it “anticipates and assures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs,” indeed, he continues, “Why may it not entirely spare them the trouble of thinking and the effort of living?”[47] This odd engine of popular sovereignty and paternalism is termed a democracy of unfreedom, which looks disturbingly like a strong, centralized, state with a robust national welfare system.

There is another problem—an evil, as he terms it—particular to the American democracy, which de Tocqueville noted in his work; that evil is slavery and the plight of the black race. Slavery raises many issues for de Tocqueville. He predicts that the differences between north and south, wrought by slavery, will lead to a civil war.[48] History shows that he was correct in his prediction, and yet the union came through the war intact. It is in his second prediction that we find a particular problem of modern American democracy, and that rests in the damage done by slavery to the ability of the slaves to participate in political liberty. For in enslaving only one single race, and casting it as an inferior to justify the slavery, the white race made it nearly impossible that white and black might be assimilated.[49] The end result being that a black race, long enslaved, will not enjoy the fellowship and support of the white race, so when they finally obtain liberty “they will not be long in abusing it.”[50] The question then arises, could welfare help to close the great rift in equality between the two races, and restore respect and dignity to that race so long held in bonds.

Booker T. Washington is among the first generation of newly freed slaves, and Up From Slavery is a firsthand account of the problem faced by the black community. His stance is that the black community must become economically successful before they seek political and social equality[51]. The first menace to black progress is that slavery has destroyed the value of labor in the eyes of the ex-slaves.[52] An appreciation for work has to be rekindled, and so he recommends an industrial, practical, education.[53] He expects whites to be more cooperative on economic matters, and so it is a base on which the black community may build up the esteem in which their race is held, by whites and blacks alike. His goal is separate but equal.[54] W.E.B. Du Bois understands that an industrial education is not sufficient, and that separate is not equal. In The Souls of Black Folk Du Bois is addressing a great truth which Washington overlooked, which is that freedom requires political equality. And that the manhood of the race will be destroyed by this lack of political self-determination.[55] He also understands the need for a respect for labor. Not work alone, but “work, culture, liberty, all these we need, not singly, but together.”[56]

The key to obtaining these is education, specifically a liberal arts education, which is the education of the soul. “It must develop men” and teach them that there are higher goods than money or physical pleasures.[57] The top tenth, therefore, are to seek a liberal education in order to lead and teach all others. “To make men,” he writes, “requires ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living.” The liberal arts education of the few is aimed at truth and righteousness, and from those so educated proceeds the common schools, and from the common schools, the industrial. In this manner, a standard is set, which points the endeavors of all at the attainment of ideals; that the workers learn to “work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay,” and that the thinkers “think for truth, not for fame.” [58] He understands the need for a higher goal than the attainment of wealth, for a political goal. The need for these goods is not confined to blacks. He includes both white and black in the need for this education.[59] Indeed, where blacks needed this badly in the south, one might point to the plight of white immigrants in the north. It is not, however, clear how our present welfare system might help with the attainment of these higher goals. On the contrary, it shifts dependence from the community to the nation, a whole too general for friendship. It also provides an escape for those who do have no appreciation for work, never elevating them beyond their lowly state, but keeping them perpetually at a level of subsistence just high enough to that it is not necessary for them to better themselves or turn to the philanthropic benefit of their fellow men.

The goals that characterized the beginning of the American welfare state had an idea of the common good in mind. Josephine Lowell Shaw wrote that it was not right to spend the public treasury on any place, unless it benefits the whole. Simultaneously, that caring for those physically incapable of caring for themselves is a public prerogative; it is merely something that human beings ought to do for others.[60] But she also understands the danger that it poses to industry, and that this generosity might lead to a never ending succession of open hands. Her fundamental principle of charity is one that all might find laudable “that all charity must tend to raise the character and elevate the moral nature, and so to improve the condition of those toward whom it is exercised,” and it must not “injure the character or condition of others.[61]” She does not, however, allow for doles to capable men as “this will often retard or entirely prevent the energetic action required on the part of the sufferers…to lift themselves out of their difficulty”[62]

Taking this early American view one might be staggered as they tried to apprehend the nature of our welfare system. Somewhere along the lines, the emphasis switched from societal good, to distributive justice. In this view, the purpose of society is to produce efficiency gains among the members. It is still understood that some are more naturally gifted, and make greater gains than others.[63] Therefore the welfare state must act as the arbiter of egalitarianism, and work toward social justice “by distributing social resources according to a principle of entitlement.”[64] The greater the separation created by a difference in capability, the less just it is.[65] And the chief importance of citizenship is in creating a legitimate claim to—and collectively pursuing—material entitlement.[66]

Any attempt to achieve social justice by such means requires a massive centralization of power, and does not begin to address how one decides merit, need, or what is an egalitarian distribution.[67] Merit is a matter infinitely more understandable on a localized basis, and national attempts to bring about equality are more likely to be a cause of inequality. They also must be perpetual, for “government must continually restrict human freedom” and transfer wealth from one group to another, in order to meet the demands of social equality.[68] In fact, in matters of combating poverty, the more economic freedom a country has—stronger property rights and less government interference in market transactions—the greater the per capita income.

Compare the above with the present situation of the American welfare system, where 59% of the national budget is dedicated to such programs,[69] a number that is set to increase exponentially.[70] The form is centralized, paternalistic, and often shields individuals from the natural consequences of their actions or the necessity of self-improvement. So it is that, in the wake of the “failure of socialist regimes to generate economic growth” that the “[social] fabric of the welfare state is now falling apart.[71] The welfare state rose out of the weakening of the family and community ensuing from industrialization,[72] but if one reflects on earlier thought, it becomes clear that, even while the national welfare system was designed to combat the problem of human inequality; it was not designed with regard to the specific promise and problems of democracy as seen in the great writers of history.

The present crisis provides an opening for true reform of the welfare system. The first principle is laying out our new system, is that it must encourage participation in the constitution. Next, it must be targeted to engender an idea of the common good. Also, it must be on a local scale, more reflecting the truth found in the Greeks and de Tocqueville, that civic virtue is found more in the politics of the municipality. And any welfare system must encourage the beneficiary and the administrators to act with merit, dignity, and strive for a higher ideal. The system I propose is a local system. Welfare requests would be heard by a council of citizens, selected by lot, as with jury duty; the council being comprised thirty persons for a number of population no greater than 50,000. The participants would be subjected to tests of knowledge and literacy, and would be required to surpass a moderate property threshold, in order to acquaint and interest those of comfortable means with the plight of their poorer brethren. Council members would hold office for 6 months on good behavior. Except in cases of extreme disability or old age, welfare would not be a stipend; it would be delivered in block grants in order to help the applicant achieve significant life goals on the road to personal improvement and independence. The money for such a program would ideally be drawn from a consumption tax, placing higher tariffs on luxury items than on necessities; thereby encouraging moderation as it funds the work of public charity. Whether or not there resides in my idea any greater wisdom than that of egalitarian redistribution, I know not. It is, however, the best solution of which I could conceive to deal with welfare and the promise and problems of democracy in contemporary America.

Aristotle. Poltics. Translated by T.A. Sinclair. London: Penguin, 1981.

Bois, W.E.B. Du. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003.

Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011. september 27, 2011. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/ (accessed november 2011).

Hibbert, Neil. "Exchange and Social Justice." Theoria, 2010: 26-50.

Hill, Peter. "Creating and Distributing Wealth." In Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny, edited by David Schindler, 1-17. Wilmington, De: ISI Books, 2003.

Kaplan, Amit, Noah Lewin-Epstein, and Asaf Levanon. "Distributive Justice and Attitudes Toward the Welfare State." Social Justice Research, 2003: 1-27.

Lowell, Josephine Shaw. "Public Relief and Private Charity." In Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics, edited by Frances Fox Piven, 3-11. New York: New York University, 2003.

Plato. The Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. Basicbooks, 1991.

The Long Term Outlook for Health Care Spending. 2008. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/maintext.3.1.shtml (accessed november 2011).

The Long Term Outlook for Social Security Spending. 2008. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8877/chapte3.6.1.shtml (accessed November 2011).

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Stephen Grant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000.

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Penguin, 2000.

[1] This view does not necessitate a wholesale rejection of a Rawlsian point of view; while fairness might not directly equal justice, it might be posited a just regime will almost certainly tend toward fairness.

[2] T.A.Sinclair, Trans., Aristotle. Politics, 60.

[3] He notes that humanity alone has design in its vices and that “Injustice armed is hardest to deal with” and the same capacity which allows them to attain higher things aids can also be turned to more bestial uses.

[4] Aristotle. Politics, 61. A sense of justice (dikaiosune) comes out of the arrangement of the state; there is no understanding of conscience. Sense of right is conveyed by form of government and laws.

[5] Aristotle. Politics, 246-7. He speaks of a state are as the organs of a body, and that each state will de different based on the members, and also that organs dot not live aside from the function of the whole.

[6] Ibid, 247.

[7] Found in Plato’s The Republic 5.473d and in the Politics 1288a15-30.

[8] Aristotle. Politics, 212

[9] Ibid, 362.

[10]Ibid, 250.

[11]Ibid, 298.

[12]Ibid, 266.

[13] Ibid, 411, 266-7.

[14] Ibid, 269.

[15] Ibid 207; 267 Justice must be aimed at benefit of whole community, and friendship is necessary to any sort of consideration of state as greater whole, which is only realistically possible for the middle

[16] Ibid, 267-8.

[17] Ibid, 268-9.

[18] Ibid, 374.

[19] Ibid, 250-1. “Such a democracy is the counterpart of tyranny among monarchies.”

[20] Ibid, 375.

[21] Ibid, 370.

[22] Ibid, 373-4.

[23] Ibid, 115.

[24] Allan Bloom, trans., The Republic of Plato, 236.

[25] Plato. Republic. pp.235

[26] Ibid. pp.239

[27]Ibid, 240.

[28] Ibid, 241-2.

[29] Ibid, 243-4.

[30] Clinton Rossiter, ed., Charles Kesler, comp. The Federalist Papers. 67.

[31] Federalist, 70 “The latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man.”

[32] Federalist, 76-7.

[33] Ibid, 78.

[34] Ibid, 86.

[35] Ibid, 187.

[36] Tocqueville. Democracy in America, 117-8.

[37] Tocqueville. Democracy in America, 46.

[38]Ibid, 54-55. Those powers being the liberty of the participants.

[39] Ibid, 208-11.

[40]Ibid, 202. Equality is necessarily a feature of democracy, where liberty may be found in other forms.

[41]Ibid, 201.

[42]Ibid, 203.

[43]Ibid, 204.

[44]Ibid, 207.

[45]Ibid, 205-6. The ultimate logical conclusion of popular sovereignty.

[46]Ibid, 300-3.

[47]Ibid, 306-7.

[48]Ibid, 160, 163-4.

[49]Ibid, 160-1.

[50]Ibid, 162.

[51] Booker T. Washington. Up From Slavery. (New York: Penguin, 2000). 154.

[52] Washington. Up From Slavery, 56-8.

[53] Ibid, 82-3.

[54]Ibid. 154. Metaphor of the hand; connected, but separate.

[55]W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003). 42.

[56] Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk, 14.

[57]Ibid, 80.

[58]Ibid, 66. Performing works of labor and thought because they are virtuous in and of themselves.

[59]Ibid, 65. Part of purpose is to show universality of plight of blacks.

[60] Lowell. “Public relief and private Charity,” 3-4.

[61] Lowell. “Charity”. 10.

[62] Lowell. “Charity”. 11.

[63] Neil Hibbert. Exchange and social Justice, 26-7.

[64] Hibbert. Exchange, 28.

[65]Ibid, 35.

[66] Ibid, 45.

[67] Peter Hill. Creating and Distributing Wealth: Whose Responsibility. 7-8

[68] Hill. Wealth. 8-9.

[69] Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011. Last modified Sep.27, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/

[70] The Long-Term Outlook for Social Security Spending. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8877/Chapter3.6.1.shtml. SS will account for 6.1% of gdp by 2030.

The Long-Term Outlook for Health Care Spending. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/maintext.3.1.shtml. Medicare will account for 7% of gdp in 2025.

[71] Epstein, Kaplan, and Levanon. “Distributive justice and attitudes toward the welfare state.” 2.

[72] Epstein, Kaplan, and Levanon. “attitudes toward the welfare state.” 2-3

Thoughts Brought on by a Return to Campus.

2012-01-09T17:59:00.000-08:00

First round of new classes began today. German for Teachers is going to be much better for than was Business German. The focus of the class will be on pedagogical methods, just taught in German, and mixed well with a study of the theory of German grammar.

I also have a week to write a three page German paper. "Whyfor," you might ask. Why so early? The answer is money. The German Heritage Society gives two grants for $1000 dollars for books and tuition in the next semester; one must first write a three page paper on Germany's place in Europe, so I will be working on that tomorrow.

I did not feel so lost upon beginning this class as I did last fall, I understood almost everything said and read, and even if my accent and pronunciation are still abysmal, at least I can parrot back everything in English.

Arabic 150 was an even better beginning. I remembered just about everything, including things I'm not sure that I remembered for the final. And not only did some of the most fun people from the last class migrate along with us, but this other section had a more willing and energetic group than the earlier class.

The fact that so much of the first class was actually devoted to us speaking the language and getting some of the basics to the point of being natural reactions. This semester is going to be a little more challenging, but I think it will be pleasant.

Sadly, the beginning of this semester will mean the end of unbridled reading. It is also, more happily, the end of unbridled screwing around. It means that I now have renewed reason to grumble about any hour that I spend at work, because I would obviously be spending that time on diligent study, not on reading web comics and restraining myself from starting internet fights. Ergo, every moment a manager has me doing a task that technically belongs to someone else, they are acting at odds with my needs as a student and destroying my future.

This tends to give me excellent ammo for silently fuming at the injustice perpetrated against me by the callous bourgeois management, which they will naturally come to rue in the fullness of time.

Campus is the same place it was last semester; a more hopeful picture of the teeming multitudes of man than the mall, but still not exactly inspiring. Myriads of students scurrying around, many of whom can be parceled off into the categories of the bright eyed and the dull eyed.

The bright eyed often wear stocking caps, skinny jeans, and an Ipod. They are the great drinkers of infinity, self described as libertarian, yet in favour of welfare programs and staunchly against capitalism. Some have long since given up on Obama, who did not bring the change they wanted, and now leave offerings at both the Ron Paul and Occupy tables. Confused creatures, they burn with a dozen conflicting ideologies and do not see the inconsistencies. Their ideas are unversed opinion, and their education consists merely in giving and receiving of that same opinion with like minded individuals. There is promise, and a drive to learn, but the awful crime is that, while they read and write well enough, no one has taught them how to think deeply.

The dull eyed manifest, at best, a certain vulpine cunning. They do not burn with ideals half understood, or with ideas of a better world, but with barely masked hunger. They tend to be the ones who carry the attitude that they are paying for a college degree; the professors are the equivalent of waiters. The students are paying for their time, so the professors should be waiting at the student's leisure. There should be no special faculty parking; they have to park farther away when they are at work. This group has no real respect for faculty, because they do not respect knowledge or ideas. They respect money. He who has money will have, sex, power. and entertainment, which are the gods of the vulgar.

To be sure, there are still a great many students who fall into neither class, and even a few for whom I feel a certain admiration. It is even possible for me to feel admiration for the bright eyed ones. But the harsh reality is that the vulgar carry the majority. And while it is not the same stranglehold that the mall advertises, the spectacle is more than enough to drive one into despairing misanthropy.

It is in such moments that I make a b line for the coffee place, which, though mediocre, still provides a caffeinated stimulant and is staffed by some generally decent types, and some which might be excellent.

But I am still disturbed.

These people will be determining the direction of the Nation in '12.

New Year's Post.

2011-12-31T23:07:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you missed it, I feel that it is my solemn duty to alert you to the new year that has overtaken us.

Time for the encouraging pep talk!

This is a time of great excitement and potential, and there can be no doubt that we will correct all of the things that we did wrong last year, just like we do every year.

Having learned so many valuable lessons in the past year, all that remains is for our now savvier persons to glide through this new year on auto-pilot. Our new found wisdom will propel us over those stumbling blocks of years past.

Gone are our inconsiderate nature, perversions, and bad table manners. We will get back in shape, reform our spending habits, and restore some measure of beauty to the English language as it is spoken among us. We will study harder, curse less often, and refrain from wishing for the immediate destruction of that jerk who cut in front of us and made us miss the light. Mankind finally has really got it's stuff together, and this years promising slate of presidential hopefuls bodes well for the political future of America.

We will all be better children, parents, siblings, and spouses. We will be patient, faithful, considerate, kind, and good. We will also be more amusing and easier to get along with, our senses of humor will enliven every hour, rivaled only by our extraordinary depth of thought.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps this year will continue on in the same pattern as all those that came before. Perhaps we will lie, cheat, and steal; despise our work, mistreat our friends, and speed in the construction zone.

Indeed, this next year will be much like the last; this ugly truth is the second most certain thing I know--narrowly edging out a Packers Superbowl victory in 2012, which took a close third.

Our paltry efforts will be thwarted--by ourselves--and the cycle will continue.

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

And here, at the end of a year of political and economic turmoil, these words seem grim indeed. We live in hard times, and do not want to believe that it must always be so. Death is the inheritance which men receive from their fathers, along with all the properties in that estate.

Yet worldly hardship is not the only thing that continues under the sun.

We are now a scant seven days removed from Christmas, the celebration of the birth of our Lord. Our God took on flesh and became a man, joined himself to us, and took on the inheritance which fell to all men. He brake our brokenness by sacrificing himself upon the cross, and gave us His very Body and Blood, to eat and to drink, in order that we should receive an inheritance, not as befits the children of men, but as befits the only begotten Son of the Father.

There is promise to be found in these words, because Jesus lives. He came once, to join himself to us, and still He returns again and again, in His living body and blood, that by Him we might be fed; and thus strengthened, come at last into his kingdom, which we inherit by that same eating and drinking.

And of course there is the final promise, that even as He became a man and ascended to His Father; He will at last return for us, and we shall follow in our perfected bodies, to go where he is gone.

Even if we, this year, persist in all the foolishness that has marked our past, it will be alright. Because our God has loved us, loves us, and will love us. He has given Himself, is giving Himself, and will continue to give Himself for us; for we were His, are His, and always will be His.

The Lord is good, and His mercy endureth forever. And thus it has been, is, and shall be.

A+D 2012

How Wisdom Gave Wit & Whim Indigestion.

2011-12-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

I think that college has come very close to teaching me a very bad lesson. In academic writing everything must be significant, analytical, and structured. The only topics worthy of attention are "serious" topics; the kind one spends countless hours researching, and agonizes about how best to present them. In short, you begin to confuse yourself into thinking that writing can only be worthwhile if it is well thought and pertinent to the plights of mankind. Poison.

I have written some excellent papers, thank you very much, but I like best the silly things that I have written for the sake of writing; for the love of a good phrase, and the simple joy that comes from using words well.

This is such an easy thing to lose sight of, and it is coming back into focus, and has been these last couple weeks. The difference is that I have been reading again, not purely for knowledge, or for an assignment, but for a story. I have a book full of clever little sayings about books, taken from men who wrote books. There is one in particular I enjoyed which was to the effect that reading a book is like making a friend, and that rereading a favourite is like meeting an old friend after a long absence.

I was feeling more than a little somber toward the end of last semester; heavy doses of philosophy and history--wholly undiluted--makes poor medicine for one such as me. The outlook is not good people but I digress. Let us not go down that road.

It is from this darkness that my friends are rescuing me, and I am afraid to say that there is something in me my paper friends can heal, where my flesh and blood friends cannot touch. Things (objectified people) like Evan and the Shewoof are also helpful, but the other cure is specific to the ill. I feel more myself, and work does not seem the same interminable chore that it really is--no joke. To this end, I actually have been in relative good humor at work--smiley, etc--despite needing to fold 800,000 dress shirts a shift.

I am definitely going to need to keep pleasure reading in my schedule for next semester. I think this last semester, with its piles of very important reading nearly made me, prematurely, into an old man. But no, I am too young--and beautiful--to be old, so I will read novels.

Yes, I know you are all terribly bereft, but I like me better when I'm not trying to be profound.

POTUS.

2011-12-14T15:54:00.000-08:00

Beg pardon, but all the campaign related nonsense that is floating around right now has me snarky. There is almost certainly negativity to follow. Godspeed.

I don't think I want to vote for any of the Presidential candidates. The Republican selection is the absolute scrapings of the barrel--wholly unappetizing. But the present POTUS, with his weekly promises to act (in lieu of laws allowing him to act) as he desires, will probably drive me to vote for one of them.

I will not vote for Perry, Paul, Bachmann, Huntsman, or, most likely--it pains me to say--Gingrich.

Perry is an idiot savant. I don't care how effectively you balanced the budget of your state; I do not desire a President whom I feel a burning desire to muzzle every time he gets up to read his next list of ill considered remarks. On top of that, his particular brand of Christianity makes me bristle. Give me a nice staid catholic or something; not an ecstatic.

Ron Paul. It's funny to watch his followers lick their chops after they say his name, much like I imagine Grishnakh doing after he mentions the Nazgul; kind of savoring the taste of the name. Ron Paul campaigns tend to run like Nazgul campaigns; lots of men get attacked, and if one did not bother to read the appendices, then one might believe that the attack was the whole substance and purpose of his campaign. Paul has no apparent understanding of compromise, and even less of dignity.

Bachmann and Huntsman, thankfully, are well out of the running at this point. I think both--perhaps in childhood?--contracted the same disease as Perry resulting in diarrhea of the mouth.

And my dear, my very dear, Newt. He's like some sort of ADHD leprechaun; pointed in every direction at once and seemingly always purposing mischief. The man cannot hold a position for longer than 20 minutes, and then goes on to hold the opposite position next. Sure, I like his books. I like that he has cleverness and charisma; that he does not have the same hoof-in-mouth syndrome that so many of his peers display. I think he has more than enough promise to win the presidential election, and then proceed to total the Republican party...again. The one constant with Newt is his Ego: omnipresent and powerful.

The thing that sucks...if it comes down to one of them versus Obama; I will have to vote for him/*gulp* her. Lunacy, viciousness, and mediocrity are preferable, in so far as their personifications are less likely--I believe--to abuse executive power and act in a manner that usurps the power of Congress. A substandard piece that fits its place in the machine is better than the piece that believes it is a machine unto itself, damaging the machine by its action. This is called compromise. I might have to forgo ideological purity in order to move away from a greater evil.

Though I still refuse to rule out a miraculous showing from the Petersen Party.

Real Reading.

2011-11-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

I cannot wait to get to break. Not only does my poor over-taxed little brain need a while to chill, but I have some really serious reading to do, having only completed five novels since the outset of the school year. Was something wrong with me? Have I become lazy in my old age?

I was wondering why I wasn't reading as many books as I normally do. Something had to be amuck. I could not remember another period on record when the number of books I read was so low. It was only tonight as I was sifting through piles of school stuff, gathering together all of my research materials for both of my papers--you know, to take stock--that I realized the truth.

I figured out that I've read 16 complete books for school over the last three months; this number not even reflecting on the fact that a large portion of my assigned readings have been excerpts, and that I have read bits and pieces of countless tomes for my papers...It hit me that I've been doing a ton of reading.

For some reason this did not compute to me as being "real reading." Real reading is the kind you engage in just because you want to. Not for a grade, not because so-and-so said to, not because you need the knowledge, but just because you want it. Mandatory and semi-mandatory reading never seem to count for me, for it is a kind of forced virtue. I take more satisfaction from reading things of my own volition. Who knows why.

I suppose that I am fortunate that the reading I have needed to do this semester is reading which minds greater than mine would probably term real reading. In preparation for one of my papers I have read a book by Amartya Sen, two by Thomas Sowell, a collection of excellent essays on wealth and poverty, Democracy in America, Washington, Dubois, the complete Federalist, Suetonius, Polybius, the Politics of Aristotle, and--once more--The Discourses on Titus Livy. The other works, while not as notable, include a cursory overview of the history of economic theory, a book on the fall of rome, a book on Nero, and one on the relation of the emperor to the Roman army.

I also reread some Dalrymple, but that hardly counts. *nom nom*

Regardless of whether or not I have been reading good stuff, it has been leaving me too tired for Prague cemetery, which is simply not acceptable.

On the bright side, everything will be resolved shortly. There are two possible outcomes. One, I get all of my papers in on time and do not botch my German presentation or Arabic orals. Or option the second, all of the above does not happen and I throw myself on my sword.

It will be interesting to see how this falls out.

On the Idiocy of Arguing Traditional Marriage from a Lockian Liberal Point of View, and the Family

2011-11-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

There is no element more important to society than the family. A strong family is necessary to teach children morals, moderation, virtue, and care for their fellow man. The strongest familial education is one that includes religion, which is the ultimate arbiter of perspective; that is, we are each but a small part of the whole, and our greatest good comes from outside the self.

The family must be strong for a nation to have longevity, because there must be a structure in place to educate people to be good citizens, to place value on something other than the individual.

Many might say, there was not such a strong emphasis on the family in early American writings, and I would respond that it was because the family was extraordinarily strong. They did not speak of the necessity to strengthen the family because it was a non-issue.

There is no question in antiquity of the need for strong families. Augustus primary reforms and laws were aimed at restoring and strengthening the family and Gods to a position of reverence after all of the damage done to them in the chaos of the late republic.

The family is the basic building block of society. It is the fundamental unit through which citizens are produced and educated. It is necessary to have a full and traditional family, made up of a parental role model of each sex, and a larger extended family.

You cannot make such an argument from a purely Lockean perspective. If marriage is merely a contract for mutual advantage and pleasure; then there should be no real problem if those two ends are not being achieved. Further, if a contract is all it is, why not marriage between two women, or even three men? What grounds have you for garnishing their contract rights? As long as they are not transgressing another man in their contract; their is no sound argument from this perspective.

Much though it might pain many people who wanted to be sophisticated, have their cake and eat it too, as it were, a strong argument can only be made from an older conservative, largely religious, tradition.

The family must be strong to teach virtue, moderation, and how men and women ought to behave toward one another (I have no patience for those who want to pretend that men and women are basically the same outside of societal pressures; that doesn't jive with the chemistry, let alone with the possibility of the soul). The family is there to teach love and traditional values, without which, you wind up with materialism, greed, hedonism, Warren Buffet and his billion dollars in back taxes, and this occupy infestation, not bathing and despoiling parks.

Redistribution of Wealth.

2011-11-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

From the standpoint of one looking for economic and political stability, it is not a good thing that there is such a tremendous spread in wealth. A large, independent, middle class is indisputably the basis for a stable and moderate society.

That being said, income redistribution is an insupportable evil. Why would I say such a thing, if indeed it would be better for wealth to be spread more equally. My reasons are hardly simple, but let us touch them briefly.

In the first part, a redistribution of wealth requires a sacrifice of political liberty and equality in exchange for a possibility of greater social equality. Men are not equal under the law when the law is specifically constructed to take from some to give to others.

Next, government stepping in as the arbiter of financial support weakens the role of the family and community. Where caring for your elderly parents, your children, and day to day needs, used to be an action of the family and the community, it is now shunted off as a burden of the state, with the result that communities and families play a much lesser role in caring for one another.

Further, the machinations of government act as a barrier to the creation of wealth. Do not take my word alone on this; it is clearly demonstrated in Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson's "The Scope of Government and the Wealth of Nations," which surveys the correlation between the interference of governments in the economy and economic growth over a 36 year period.

The answer is not to force the rich to give up their goods. This attitude alone is exacerbating the problem, by placing the goods of economic choice over the good of political equality under the law. Greed is a product of our society; a society that measures a man by his material success.

Yes, material success is good, but a rich bastard is still a bastard, and a good portion of the best men I know are poor; they are also thoughtful and as virtuous as I can expect of my fellow men.

The same people who are infuriated that many of the wealthy live epicurean lifestyles are the same people who oppose the traditions, mores, and social restrictions which would discourage selfish wanton behavior. When a libertine preaches absolute freedom and radical individualism, why does he look for others to take responsibility where he does not?

That is the ultimate casualty. Tocqueville knew it would come. We are a nation of radical individuals, each feeling a general good will for his fellow Americans, but never touching them in any real way. Even our families must be shunted aside, because their demands restrict our individual freedom. Do not bother us with the problems of our extended family; we are responsible for ourselves alone, and material freedom and social equality are not just a civic religion; they are our Gods.

Conservative Ninjas!

2011-11-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Life in our house goes on much as it has this past age. The bothers and I are still energetic gluttons with hair growing on top of our feet, and while none of us has taken to pipeweed, we are looking forward to dealing with dragons in the near future.

Sickness takes it out of you. I missed a bunch of work and school, and it just took so long to feel as if everything were back on track, hence the long time since my last blog post. But that is over now, my goals are in cite once more, and my average German grades have improved on three consecutive items. Things are rolling.

I found out today that I missed a very important person on campus when I was giving status updates on the Shewoof. A one S. Roberts hadn't the fuzziest that she was married. Oh well, can't be expected to remember everyone all by myself.

For those who don't know, my sister and her husband have received priority orders from the conservative Illuminati and are currently stationed in the hostile bastion of Madison, where they are working quietly to affect commonsense and intelligence amongst the populace; a difficult and dangerous task.

Meanwhile, I hold the home front. I am currently tasked with passively collecting information and quietly spreading the message. I am seldom engaged on serious field missions, but for those stupid enough to challenge me, they find themselves eviscerated at the hands of an intellectual ninja.

I'm looking into ISI to help with my goals; I had a professor suggest them as a possible place to obtain scholarships/possibly get some of my future writing published.

Also, I talked earlier with one of my professors about staging an invasion of a certain foreign nation, which needs to give up on the Euro and return to the Mark. I have been put on the scent of things that I must do and people with whom I must speak to begin putting together the logistics of such a campaign. Such a campaign likely would have to wait until fall 2012/spring 2013, but it is, I'm assured, a realistic goal. The early plan would have my goal as Tübingen.

Three! Three blog post! Ah Ah Ah!

Postulates.

2011-11-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

There are times when there is no point in even having a conversation. I find nothing more aggravating than people standing in the campus green and debating the existence of God. There will be no winning on either side, and it almost always seems to end uncivilly. This argument bugged me more when I was younger than it does now, because I previously did not realize that it was indeed a futile conversation.

In life, one must have postulates. For me, the existence of God is the central postulate, and all other postulates extend from there. Without this central postulate, there can be no objective good, and we might as well just accept Thrasymachus justice. This is key difference twixt a Machiavelli and a Aristotle. Both are brilliant and have flashes of insight, but one believes that there is a higher eternal truth, an ideal which is most nearly approached through love and moderation, and the other is interested only in pragmatics, the how and why of power, and his ultimate virtu is not love and moderation, but military virtue.

I love my Machiavelli, but I understand that he is more interested in greatness than goodness, function rather than justice, and as a good little Rudisillian, I do not see how the two might be compared.

If there are no postulates, then all is a vacuum, and the only political matter is the question of what is pragmatic.

Take Darwin; if natural selection is the chief principle of life, then there is no natural right. Natural right presumes that rights are inherent in the nature of things; in human nature and the nature of something higher. But if there is nothing higher, and nature is constantly changing, how can there be any kind of transcendent natural right. You may do what you will to survive, but ultimately, if natural selection is true, then if it is prudent or beneficial for society to sacrifice you individually for the greater good, then that is the right of the masses.

I do not care to allow for any such abominations, so the central postulate is God, with further postulates deriving themselves from that center. Human life has value, because it is God's and he made it and ultimately it should serve him.

Property is similarly good. It is given by God to give us pleasure in this life. Property is best used, not when hoarded, but when used for the good of our fellows. This is not to fall into the myth that it would be good if all things were owned in common. If men held nothing in particular, then they would have nothing particular to give of themselves. Sacrifice and generosity require that there be something to give.

These are just a couple things extracted from postulates and the primary source in which is found the central postulate.

Then one might rightly ask, are we then to ignore these pesky little critters that want to argue about God? No. But do not hesitate to advise them that such an argument can only be fruitless, and that there are better topics to deal with. If there can be no definition of good, then there is no way that you will arrive at a solution that both believe to be good. There are many excellent topics of conversation; just stay away from God. God can become a topic once you have their respect and are not in danger of getting in a stupid fight.

I can toy around and play devils advocate and pretend as if my postulates did not exist, but that is not a serious conversation. It is a game, one in which I am testing my wits and seeing if I can win in their arena, but it is not going to be productive for either side. I used to play the Game with Bryan. We would both play the game, argue the other side, and it was never more than an exercise. Neither of us got anything, other than an enhanced talent for argument.

Along with postulates, there is key element contributing to my worldview: Skepticism.

Everything is taken with a grain of salt, and measured against what I know to be true. This is especially true of ideas. Events or the latest political factoid go in the absolute bull category until such time as I've had it from multiple reliable sources...or Mutti or Evan; that only requires one source.

That is not to say that I disbelieve everyone, rather, that the vast majority of info that is conveyed to me by conversation is half remembered, semi-factual, and highly exaggerated. Some sources are better than others, but people in general have poor memory, and they tend to latch onto the most sensational (often most dubious) aspects, leaving out many of the most important details.

"God is in the details!"

What Goes into a 401 Research Paper

2011-11-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

Research papers are coming.

This is not exactly my favourite part of the semester. While the research and writing may not be painful in and of themselves, there is the fact that it must be done to a concrete deadline, and that these papers reflect directly on your quality as a writer and your ability to think critically.

I only have two big research papers this semester, which is mostly because two of my courses are foreign languages, and making you write a long blogpost in German is hard enough. On the one hand, the research topic was niftily provided by the professor, and is on the matter of whether or how the actions of the Caesars impacted roman government as a whole and the day-to-day lives of the Roman people. The other paper is something trickier.

It starts with guidelines. Take a modern issue of your choosing, and examine it in light of the promise and problems of democracy. One must explain how the class has informed their theories on the topic, lay out how it fits, or doesn't, with the great writers of history, and make policy recommendations based on the analysis.

Not content with anything easy like citizenship or economic class, I chose an item that is going to require the most possible research and most difficult structure. I chose welfare.

Now, you might wonder, why in the devil did I choose welfare; it is a completely modern issue. That would be incorrect.

One can find examples of this being hashed out as far back as Plato, and there are few writers dealing with the question of politics who do not address the issue of government aid or stipends.

I will deal a lot with the ideas of charity, particularly charitos, and equality, with special attention to the distinction between social and political equality. The chief question being whether or not welfare is efficacious to the inducement of charity in society, and its effects on social and political equality. And on the matter of maintenance...I prefer using Machiavelli to modern studies; he has already told us all we need to know about the sustainability of the modern welfare state. "Human beings have endless desires...."

This paper is going to be a beast, but there still is time before December first, and I am already getting into research and bookmarking tasty tidbits for later examination. What I really need is modern pundits. if anyone knows of a source who writes with anything like clarity and elegance on this topic, please tell me. I do not know if I can use my favourite doomsday prophet, cause he is writing about Britain....

Brief Musings

2011-10-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

I am not too shy to claim wisdom, at least of a kind. The passing of the last few years has lead through a thorough reading of some of the foundational texts for western political and religious thought. In the course of these readings, I have taken the beliefs and givens which I held as a child and I have filled in beneath them a concrete ground. I can now draw my arguments from church fathers, the ancients, and the great thinkers across history. I am also able to draw from history examples of the consequences of ideas, and also a clearer picture of human nature and interaction.

I am wise, like Socrates is wise, but with a separate final conclusion. I know myself. I know that I am not an individual, untouched and sacrosanct in my inviolate sovereignty. I know myself as I fit into the place of human history; where the society I see around me has come from. I know myself in who I am to my family and friends. And, most importantly, I also have theological perspective, which informs my political perspective. We are all frail, human, and our time on this earth is brief, even as our empires and culture will be brief.

However, the fact that all of this is passing does not mean that it does not matter. We are given the earth, a life to live, and the society of our fellow man. These things are all good; they are gifts of surpassing value and should be cherished and cared for as such. Thus, politics matter. There is no more important earthly concern than that we should live justly, in peace, love, and charity with our fellow men.

Virtue amongst men is not only necessary for earthly peace, but as a curb on the vices that may prove damaging to faith. Politics, from the ancient perspective, should engage the attentions of the citizens outside the self, and interest them more in the good of their fellow men and society as a whole. Government is a terror to hold men away from evil, but in participating in government, the rulers are looking after and caring for the bodies and souls of their fellow men. Even if evil is only held off by terror, still, it habituates the person to the rejection of that evil.

Republican government, where all have a share in ruling and being ruled, but without the danger of mobocracy, is, I would opine, the most noble of the forms of earthly government; where all have the obligation to serve and are served in turn. If engaging in politics and looking after the good of your fellow men is rightly said to promote virtue of thought and action, then a system which encourages the greatest part of the populace to participate is likely to promote virtue and wisdom amongst men.

The constitution is bad.

Haha.

You so did not see that coming.

I argue that the constitution was the wrong choice to promote and maintain the virtue of the American people, and I got this out of extensive reading and a few hours of staring blankly into space. I think, however, that some of the best arguments are to be found in De Tocqueville and the anti-federalist.

"Liberty is to faction as air is to fire." The federalists knew that the great republics of history all destroyed themselves from within, by internal conflict. They had three answers to this question, as laid out in the Federalist 10-12.

First: A representative republic, not a democratic republic.
Second: Large territory.
Third: A bloodless war of commerce.

The first part is probably a good idea, regardless of the size of the territory. It is no good to have everyone governing at the same time. Even Aristotle's best democracy laid out in his politics is one where not everyone is able to attend all the time; one where the farmers are to busy to go into most of the time, and the day to day work is done by a few from amongst them and the more aristocratic contingent that lives in the city. In both cases, Aristotle and Federalist, the government is still answerable to the populace.

The Second part is where the federalist departs from all those who came before. No republican philosopher, ancient or modern, believed that a republic could be an empire. A republic requires an equal share in ruling and being ruled. How can one rule justly over those of whom one knows little or nothing? The ideal of ruling for a common, shared, good or interest flies out the window. That which is common becomes impossibly vague and damn near unknowable to the vast majority. The federalists praise this attribute as a means of holding down faction, but it equally discourages participation, and dissipates one of the most beautiful aspects of republican government.

The third means, the internal tension that will keep the government and society going, and keep faction from gaining sway, is avarice. Hamilton says it point blank. The way to make a strong union is to increase the means of gratification and "by promoting the introduction and circulation of the precious metals, those darling objects of human avarice." Greed is to be encouraged, because there is nothing so destructive to faction as radical self interest. But, notes Hamilton, this is the best way of increasing the overall wealth of the people, and it is here assumed that the common good is nothing more than the sum of individual interests.

I find the last means to be repugnant and destructive to the republican ideal. I wholeheartedly support the freedom to advance one's property and position without unjust restraint; that is, so far as your expansion does not transgress against the property or person of another. However, that this expansion of property should be the highest goal of man--or at least promoted as such--is unfathomable to me. I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, but I found it depressing, unsettling, and perhaps slightly evil. Man is to love God and man; amen. End of discussion. So it is unarguably a perversion to base the form of your government on the encouragement of avarice.

I think the anti-federalists had it right, and I might be a bad pragmatic for saying so, but I think it would have been better to take the risk of functioning as many federated states, each with it's own involved populace, then as a gigantic national entity, with very little commonality. The primary power being concentrated at the state level allows for greater, more meaningful, participation among the populace. Tension and competition among the states, though it leaves them more open to foreign threats, would similarly lend to a feeling of belonging in the state, as a part of a whole more than an individual.

Also, the ties of the confederation proposed by the anti-federalists were something more akin to those in the original Articles of Confederation; those being, a firm league of friendship and brotherhood; each state functioning as a part of a whole for the common good.

Once again, this is all highly idealistic, and perhaps a touch naive. If empire is the goal, then a gigantic national conglomeration, driven by the limitless energy of human avarice, is almost certainly the best vehicle. But look at the problems we are having now. We are the worlds sole super-power, but for how long. We have lost the civic virtue that we once had, we are spiraling deeper into debt, and the public interest in government is how it can benefit their station. This is not sustainable, and it is not good.

The republican ideal is that individuals and culture should be intrinsically tied with government, but now the government has become so far removed from the people, that few would even count themselves as a meaningful part of the process. And for all of this removal, still it has managed to become more democratic the whole while, with popular votes deciding everything, and a populace that refuses to think about or take responsibility for the consequences of their votes.

Americans have become like those dangerous boy kings who lock themselves in with their harems, appoint rulers in their stead, and behead them when their blundering has brought the nation to a crisis point. We hold the power, but we have divorced ourselves from it's proper use. We have our individual interests, our precious objects of avarice, do not bother us with the common: it does not exist. Let us pursue our freedoms as we wish, and do not dare to curb our vices.

We made a mistake all those years ago. Clever men claimed that empire and republic were compatible, and we chose empire. The republican ideal was lost and now, as De Tocqueville said we would, we careen further into mobocracy and away from the things which made us great in the first place.

I suppose I am a true conservative; a better conservative than I am a liberal. I ache for an idea of the common good, something that might rekindle the idea in our society, but it is too far gone. I cannot reconcile my theology or my principles with the central goal of government being the promotion of individual interest rather than the common good. But the reality is, those who think they have in idea of the common good in modern times do not. They have totalitarian ideas about forcing the individual interest to bow to the common good. None of them is looking for a government structure which habituates men to virtue and care for their fellow men, but one that forces them to it.

So our constitution is the best that I can ever hope to find. At least it preserves men from tyranny and allows for some to escape their license in favour of liberty; ours is perhaps one of the few constitutions on earth where true liberty is yet to be found, but it is not found in the majority, and nor would they probably be interested. Serving one's own desires is a lot less work than serving your fellow man.

Perhaps I'm overthinking it....oh, by the way, I ask only one thing: in the future, if I'm staring off into space, just realize, that blank look is not really a blank; I am writing, foo.

Think on Feet...Feetnotes!

2011-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

Between last night and this morning I had a minor panic thing.

In German, we were assigned to find a German job application, and write a cover letter to hand in with our CV. I had a minor issue. In the course of several hours of hard search, I was not able to find a single job in Germany for which I was remotely qualified. Even German internships require that you have had prior internship or work inexperience in the chosen field.

Later, still panicking, I met up with Dr. Roberts, who laughed, grinned, and said that she should have stressed that our ads could just be made up. It is, apparently, the case in Germany right now, that many young Germans are going through four or five Internships before ever getting a serious job. So someone like me, from the American way of doing things, would be competing for low level internships with 25 year old Germans with B.A.s and two or three internships under their belts.

No wonder it is so extraordinarily hard to change career in Germany. :-/

That said, when I finally had this conversation with her, I had about an hour and a half to write a cover letter and put together a fake ad. It was lucky that I remembered at this time that a local law office seeking interns had sent out a message to the history majors, and I was able to do a quick translation on this piece to make it work for my ad.

The cover letter came to me more easily than I expected, so I'll be eager to get it back and see how many times I just slipped into English for a few sentences. If my German was actually German, then the speed with which i churned out that letter is good, if not....not good. ;-p

Alright, this has been a pleasant break, but soon it will be time to finish off this pesky little Polybius paper, which, although I love the topic, still constitutes a minor annoyance and item on the to do list.

Travails.

2011-09-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

Tests can be a lot of fun; the equivalent of a high octane Sporcle quiz, dealing only in interesting information. Some tests, however, are more akin to seventy-five minute torture sessions.

I had one of these last week, and it was not a matter of the subject matter being beyond me, but more a function of needing to write out 3 major essays and one minor essay--after the 30 multi choice-- in the time allotted. I felt like my hand was going to fall off at the end, and I had just barely managed to scribble out the last essay in outline form.

After this debacle, I was on my way to German in the language lab, and feeling slightly crumby. There must have been some kind of magic in the upholstery of the chair I chose, because I had just lowered myself into it when I was galvanized into decisive action. I went to my professor, told said professor that I had not finished in a satisfactory manner, and requested permission to type my essays next time.

So far was my professor from objecting to my typing the next installment, he offered my the opportunity to redo the entire test, with more time if needed. I declined to retake the whole test, but did get to finish my essay on Rousseau, which was excellent.

But if I thought that my troubles were over, I was so wrong. Two days later I had a presentation in German. This was not going to be a problem. I had my notes into neat bullets, my info was good, and I had already practiced the entire presentation twice; both times very smooth. Before class I was able to speak in German with the professor and the other students. Everything was going well....

When it came to my turn I was still absolutely confident, until I actually started. To say that I drew a blank would be false. I did not draw a blank, but rather, the entirety of my presentation came crashing to the forefront of my mind all at once, leaving me as stunned as a freshly clubbed baby seal.

I did not really begin to reclaim my mojo until midway through, which is going to be tough on my grade. That thought did not help my recovery, any more than the fact that I was screwing up in front of a group of lovely women--never helps.

Like I said, I did not remaster myself until the latter half, but was able to salvage a bit. On the bright side, mine was definitely not the worst, and I was one of only two people who went along with the instructions and did not read a written presentation. There were also five people who failed to have the presentation ready, so we all get to be mediocre together!

I resumed my seat, and then proceeded to rapidly regain my ability to speak German. It only seems to kick off when there is something at stake, id est, my GPA! ;-p

Vox Polpuli, Vox Dei

2011-09-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

We are rapidly becoming a more democratic nation, and this is a most calamitous trend.

The chief desire of the democratic citizen is freedom, or license. The best democracy is where men are most free and equal. Democracy, however, is but a third part of what our republic should be. Ancient philosophers understood that democracy, just like kingship and aristocracy, would destroy itself and evolve into something else. In all three, the principle is the rule of men, the will of men, is supreme. When these rulers follow the law and make themselves subservient to it, then is greater stability achieved in the regime, for a time. But men, it is rightly said, have endless desires and where men are greater than the law the law must eventually fall victim to our desires.

In democracy people want to enjoy freedoms, and this comes to mean the freedom to do what they want and enjoy themselves. Nothing is so useful for procuring luxuries and a good time as money. So the democratic man will come to prize money, even as he covets the pleasures it buys. Men will go seeking riches, and the few best suited to this hunt will find them. The rest of the populace will simultaneously hate these men and desire to be like them. In a pure democracy, these men will be at odds with the masses and there will be blood.

A republic is rule of form, with elements of the three classical governmental styles. It is supposed to have an executive power, a conservative aristocratic streak, and a popular element. No element should be greater than the others, and each should have the power to cancel the others out, so that acts of government require the combined will of an executive (hopefully possessed of integrity of character and judgement), the aristocratic element, and the people. This prevents any attack by one constituent part of the regime against any other. This is to make it so the form cannot implode, after all, whatever dies was not mixed equally.

How does one keep such a form, where no one party may destroy another, from eroding? Cicero uses a word which becomes key to the maintenance of a republic: commonwealth. The form of the city is where men live together, bound by an idea of right and justice. But what is this right? It is certainly not the 'right' of the democratic citizen. He later draws out that this right in the commonwealth, or republic, is liberty.

Stay with me here.

Liberty, again, is not the right to do whatever you please, but the right to participate in and enjoy the fellowship of the commonwealth. Man is, for Cicero, a social being. Just like the Greeks, he recognizes that the highest most fulfilling good for men is to live in friendship (I'd like to inject communion) with one another. The greatest good of the republican is the service of his city and participation in sociable and political works.

The nature of liberty is, here especially, quite separate from what one finds in Locke or Hobbes. It is the right to participate in the life of the city, but this right is inherently tied to obligation. Machiavelli fully supported the right to free speech, with the understanding that one had the duty to use it for the betterment of the city. According to this idea, man is never really at liberty, except when he acts in love for his fellow men.

This is a lovely idea, but it is hardly a likely scenario, given the state of human nature.

How then is man to tame the demons of desire and discipline himself. The answer is the same, all the way until that putz Hobbes...I think I might have alluded to the answer.

Men must be taught to love their fellow men, and religion is sited as the only force capable of bestowing this discipline. Religion, taught in the home, by a strong family, is the foundation and backbone of a republic. It teaches men to look outside of themselves for good, and that there are greater goods than fleeting physical pleasure. It teaches men to behave.

The key to maintaining a republic is religion. Machiavelli argues that a people must be religious to be free, because religion is the way of escaping, not only our own license, but the license of others taken against us.

I live in a world that is less religious as time passes; even among those who attend churches, few are actually religious, or even have an idea exactly what it is they believe. Human nature can never be tamed, but it can be curbed. Where man have no interest in doing what is honest, decent, and good, then they will follow their desires wherever they run. Chasing the perfect hedonistic freedom of the alcoholic.

More and more, Americans chafe at anything they perceive as a check on their freedom; they have no taste for the liberties of the ancients. Pleasure is the chief good of the average American now, and by pleasure, I mean stuff. De Tocqueville also predicted this rather neatly. It was the excellence and religiosity of the people that allowed America to be a great republic, and now that the people have changed, the country will continue to change as well. Even as we have infinite desires, the form will follow, but with the same ends. We will continue on, a democratic empire, and then, like all empires and all democracies, we will collapse.

Well Spotted.

2011-09-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

I really need lessons on taking a compliment. It is a rough business, and I am yet to figure out how to do it gracefully.

Earlier, while getting coffee, someone commented on my looks. I--naturally--felt the compliment to be just, but I am still uncomfortable receiving praise, and received it as I receive all such comments: a trifle awkwardly. Naturally, I thanked the person, but I feel as if that is only a partial completion of the social ritual, the latter half of which is nothing short of arcane mystery. And when I receive a compliment is the one time that, for reasons unknown, I find it damn near impossible to look someone in the eye.

I think part of the discomfort, especially when it comes to remarks about looks, is that it is has nothing to do with any virtue of mine, other than basic care of my person.

Clothing is even harder, but for a very different reason. When my dress is complimented as being tasteful, or looking particularly neat, the first thing that goes through my head is, "well spotted." I know when I am well dressed, and though I realize they are paying a compliment, my first reaction is not pleasure and I have no idea why. I enjoy compliments from close friends and family--approval from those whose approval I seek--but I'm uncomfortable with getting the same from acquaintances...let alone strangers.

How does one receive a compliment well. It is totally beyond me; I have seen it done remarkably well, but I am unable to imitate. It vexeth greatly.

Plebeian Assembly

2011-08-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

This morning it felt and smelt of fall. It was one of my beloved rainy mornings, and world seemed just a little sleepy; the streets were blessedly empty. A good way for any morning to begin.

Consternation was soon to follow. My roman history class shows every sign of being fascinating, but it has a problem which is rather difficult to escape on a college campus. my fellow classmates are all cynics, and they are searching hard for a theme they have been taught to seek in all history--a theme which has been given to them as the motive power of all historical events.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I mean class struggle.

None of them there seem to want to understand what made Rome great; they are there to figure out why it was not as great as purported, and why we are so much better. Nevermind that Rome boasted an average standard of living that was not to be matched again for 1400 years, or that they valued and perpetuated a form of government that has proved to be the only form which reliably provides freedom and liberty to its citizens.

Rome is evil because there are the rich and the poor, and the rich--as is the case in all history--wield the majority of the political power. It is demonstrably even more evil, because they were a patriarchal society; this is unforgivable.

One thing in particular that the class seems to be having difficulty with is the Roman ideals of duty and honor, and why they leave so much to trust. Why are Roman officials given such a tremendous amount of unchecked power. My classmates keep asking questions, and are almost disbelieving when the professor assures them that the system was almost never abused during the first 500 years of the Roman republic, and that Roman officials held their offices as sacrosanct.

They cannot understand why the Romans held their duty so high, and that is because Americans are not a particularly dutiful or responsible people anymore. And that, as would be noted by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Machiavelli, and other great republican philosophers, is because we lack the Romans chief virtue and duty. Americans do not believe in the gods. Religion has been the source of moral vigor through all ages of men. Men should be good, because that is what the gods desire of them. De Tocqueville and Jefferson knew Americans must be religious for the system to work, they did not particularly care what religion, just so long as there was a system of belief to keep their desires in check.

The early Romans were extraordinarily religious; they did not go to war against obviously inferior enemies if the omens were bad; they subjected their judgements and actions to the portents of the gods.

Where there is freedom, freedom must be used well for the society to survive. Where the gods are the highest good, then their service must be a course of action which is esteemed among men. And where the gods--as is, again, almost universally the case--demand just and honorable action amongst men, then will the people be constrained to virtue, lest they lose place in the eyes of men and the gods.

In the eyes of the Roman Consuls, the good of the state, their families, and their own persons, was inextricably tied to their serving the desires of the gods; they did not abuse the offices, because they believed that the gods--and men who also fear the gods--would deal with them accordingly and also with their household.

These notions are very difficult for my class to grasp. The physically apparent is the real, not this god gobbledygook. Moral truths do not exist as abstract concepts, and the highest good is equality...which is not at all an abstract concept.

They expect the Roman officials to act in their own interests, but they fail to realize that the Roman officials believe that they are acting in their interests, because they place their highest interests outside of immediate physical goods and pleasures.

A concept most difficult for college students to grasp.

Walking the Dogmeat

2011-08-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

Today I went for a long walk. I walked in the pleasant afternoon rain. I walked in the excellent, if bizarre, company of Dogmeat. Walking is not a new thing to me; I'm rather a practiced hand--foot?--at it, and I fancy myself to be quite the fine walker. More than a walker, I style myself a flaneur, one who walks about for the pleasure of observing his surroundings.

As I made my way through the twisting neighborhoods south of Rudisill--Dogmeat padding alongside--I could not help but notice a vast difference in this jaunt from my previous nine years meanderings. The difference I found was further underscored by my earlier return to the old house on the other side of town.

In our adventures in Harrison Hill, Old Mill, and Beyond, Dogmeat and I witnessed a constant and varied stream of humanity; people walking, People sitting outside and talking, a massive block party, joggers (cute joggers!), etc. This right on the heels of being in the other neighborhood for more than an hour and not seeing a soul. The emptiness just felt wrong, but that same emptiness was my companion for countless miles when I lived at the other house; it is not something I will miss.

Dogmeat is fantastic company; there is never a lag in the conversation, and even if you never get a chance to respond...that is quite alright, because his enthusiastic delivery produces such echoes that it substitutes well enough for any response from his audience. Of all the people I saw about today, none were as interesting or hilarious as my companion, who has been agonizing over discovering what is is that makes an excellent character death, and why such deaths are important for good drama.

He asks an excellent question. Drama is for enjoyment, but good drama should also bring a little wisdom. Aristotle spoke of the purpose of good drama being the vicarious suffering of the crowd, through the characters of the Greek stage. Drama allows you to experience complex and powerful emotions in a safe environment. At the end of the play there is catharsis, all the emotions slide off of you and you can go happily on your way. You can experience, joy, love, pride, righteous anger, and heartbreaking grief, then go happily on your way when the story ends.

Death is the most powerful subject for drama. No matter how brave a man may be, all men fear death. Death is evil; in a perfect world it would not exist, and there is man or faith strong enough to tame our fear of the unknown. The Greeks believed death to be the root cause of all evil, which is perhaps a mere reversal of the truth; evil being a removal from God, which is the beginnings of death. Whether viewed as a symptom or a source of evil, death is the most frightening specter with which men must contend on earth, and it is in the face of death that the best and worst qualities of man are brought explicitly to light. To evoke the strongest emotions and drive home a lesson in the most striking manner, it is only natural to deal in the strongest subject matter.

The death of a hero is particularly affecting because we have this perverse habit of associating ourselves with them. Even if we do not compare ourselves directly to them, we still want to exhibit the same excellence they embody. Take Snape as an example. He spends the majority of the series being reviled, and in the last book is revealed as a hero whose life has been one of repentance and quiet self sacrifice. Snape is not a glamorous hero, but he is among the most beloved because he did right even when it cost him greatly; he did good without any thought of return for him personally. His sacrifice, his love, are effectively amplified tenfold by the fact that he dies alone and without reward. His excellence is held in greater esteem and he becomes--oddly enough--a role model of selfless love and sacrifice; a martyr, really.

Death is also necessary to suspense, especially in any kind of a series. A series that deals with any kind of subject matter which includes danger, but which does not kill any major characters, quickly becomes unbelievable and the illusion is broken. We are willing to suspend disbelief as much as we are able for the sake of a good story. But when characters ride into peril again and again without any loss, we are no longer able to keep ourselves fooled. Such a version of heroism might work for young children, but in a world plagued by flag-draped caskets, bloodless victory rings false.

I think one may learn a lot about a person from the characters they appreciate; I have always wondered about those whose favourites almost always included those who held and wantonly exercised power over others...but that can wait for another post.

Praying Hands

2011-07-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Germany does not boast the most impressive array of renaissance artists, but "Praying Hands" by Albrecht Durer is a piece of such simple and deep pathos that it is almost certainly more likely to be recognized by the average protestant than the works of arguably--very arguably--greater Italian counter-parts like Ghiberti, Tintoretto, or Masaccio.

The hands pictured by Durer have seen many years. They are not straight and smooth, but course, rough, and battered by a lifetime of hard and often fruitless work.

It is the position of these hands that brought this painting to the forefront of my mind today. This afternoon my dear mother informed me of a minor war of words being waged on Facebook, which appears to have been caused by someone misunderstanding, or failing to reflect on, why some fold their hands in this position.

When I was younger, I learned to fold my hands this way in imitation of the Acolytes at my church. The young learn action by imitating those they admire, and while I was hardly a babe in arms, I was yet a little while removed from the curiosity which would question why they held their hands this way. Even at that time, however, I could understand one aspect of this posture; it was orderly. All of them had their hands folded the same way; there was no sloppiness, no "basket catching" of certain appendages. My Grandfathers had stressed the importance of posture when talking to another man, so why should it be better to stand in a slovenly manner while one is addressing God?

At the time that was enough for me, and even if the reasons above were all I had, they would yet be enough, but it was later--when I joined the Corp--that I learned the other reason for folding hands in that manner.

Reflect with me for a moment....

Why do we fold our hands? Is it merely parents setting a good example, so that their children do not squirm and pinch one another; that we might preserve ourselves from a superfluity of naughtiness?

As if having our hands busy and eyes closed for a moment could stem our sinful nature.

No. It is a reminder and a confession.

The worn, beaten, tired hands in Durer's depiction are a reminder.

A warped, sinful, and most astute German monk is reported to have said "Wir sind alle Bettler." And so Durer's hands are depicted in a position of supplication. Rudisillian Hands, Durer's "Praying Hands," Choir Hands...all are beggars hands.

The hands folded thus are a reminder to the self, and also to others, that we are all beggars; grubby, sinful, broken, and entirely unworthy of the feast to which God Himself has invited us.

That is why I fold my hands in this manner; that I might remember who I am, and who God is for me--the provider of feasts and everlasting life, to a creature, infected with death, and incapable of feeding itself. A beggar.

Now. I understand that there was also a distressing charge of pietism laid at the feet of those who fold their hands in this manner, or any who use rubrics that all Christendom has not been catechized over. There was also concern of the uncatechized being made uncomfortable by these gestures.

This whole line of argument saddens me. I would be only too thrilled to answer any questions about 'gestures' that I make during the service. But I have never been asked. I have had the pleasure of viewing multiple snide exchanges on this front, but never has anyone--outside the Rudisillian vein--ever asked me. I hesitate to toss around the favourite eighth commandment, but why do my brothers not come to me if I have made them uncomfortable, rather than go to each other behind my back.

Worship, I think all would agree, is something we engage in with the voice and the body; I admittedly take delight in discovering previously unknown (to me) hymns and rubrics for this purpose. When I see something that I am unfamiliar with, I ask about it. At the age of ten I thought crossing oneself was something Roman Catholics did, but it was through asking Pastor Gehlbach that I came to understand the significance behind the act and the remembrance of my Baptism. The fact that I was not catechized did not make crossing bad, but it did mean that I was in further need of catachesis. I still need catachesis. I will continue to need catechesis until I am with Our Lord in heaven. At which point, I have cause to hope, the contemplation of Godly things will never feel like an interminable chore.

Until then, I fold my, calloused, sweaty, corrupted hands like Durer's beggar, who awaits the day when his struggles end. A beggar who awaits the day when he will finally dine at the King's table, not as a beggar, but as family.

Wir sind alle ja Bettler.

Bubble Wrap Them Gently....

2011-06-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had diversity training? Thank goodness I had it with someone fun, because with the materials at hand, it might well have been stultifying.

Green. Yellow. Red.

Green Light: If you were having a high tea with your Grandma, your Great-Grandma, a posse of nuns, the Queen, and a team of ACLU lawyers, then you will probably be making "Green" conversation.

Yellow Light: Anything that might be misconstrued or make anyone uncomfortable. The vast majority of social interaction falls in this category, just so you know. (The examples for this during training had all the trainees saying that the people in the scenario were being oversensitive.)

Red Light: Hurtful things and other un-nice things. Zero tolerance: One offense equals three strikes. Examples sounded like they were excerpts from conversations recorded earlier in the day on the sales floor.

The yellow one was bugging the snot out of me. The literature said that, even if 99% of recipients would not be offended by the comment, the comment is inappropriate because there is that 1% who will take offense. I think that one percent needs to grow up. It's like the people who give you a hard time when you hold the door for them. There is nothing offensive in the gesture, but some eyes read offense into it.

Retail may not be the toughest work, but you still have to deal with difficult people, and--as I have learned from observation--people who are high strung do not do well with demanding customers. Take a chill pill, get over yourself, and grow a thicker skin; you are not that big of a deal and if whatever is said is a bit ambiguous, do not assume maliciousness on the part of your coworker.

There was a long (weeks) debate staged--for my benefit--between two of my coworkers on whether I was the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, or John Dillinger. And this debate was based on nothing more than my dress, speech, and ethnicity...I don't know about you, but I think that almost qualifies as a red light. I might push for an apology.

If I was a humorless fink. ;-p

Wanted: Font Visible Only to the Writer....

2011-06-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

There I was, halfway into writing the blogpost that would be my Pulitzer, when the shewoof begins reading over my shoulder, causing me to spaz and accidentally close it. There are very few things that make me spaz so badly as having some nosy interloper gawking at my unfinished work. File that topic away for later....

The majority of all drafts that I write never make it to publication, and this is indubitably for the better. The editor can't stand pompous tripe, and suggests that I find some other rag to publish it. I am really very lucky; this attention to detail has doubtless spared me many face-palm moments (whose the palm? Methinks there would be no shortage of candidates).

Blogging, especially for someone of my relative youth and inexperience, strikes one (yes, one is me) as an inherently egotistical practice. The egotism consists in my assumption that my opinions are worth positing--that all must, naturally, benefit from the wisdom of what I have to say.

Simple scenes from my day might actually make for an interesting blog, but I deal with enough difficult customers and workplace drama; I have no desire to relive them. Plus, part of being the man in the suit department is learning to have an attentive ear and a discreet tongue. The job gives us a little extra gravitas, and it doesn't hurt that we are the only people in the mall whose job is to look and act like the personification of dignity and refinement. We may fall a little short, but that doesn't stop the little children from falling silent as we pass over. People say many things that I would not tell a stranger, but I am a man of the clothes, and whatever I am told is between me, my clients, and God.

Work is not as satisfying a topic, and if I did start lampooning people--which is more fun--there is always the risk that they would find this. Danger, danger, danger. Roasteth not they, who ringeth on occasion thy escaped commissions, in thy number, lest they become wrathful and smiteth thy productivity.

Daily life...worked, worked more, sat in secluded spot and read, pausing to snarl at anyone who got too close. Haz red lawtz of buks! Hid phone and worked on forgetting where he put it, so that he could avoid answering why he does not want to go to party with *insert acquaintance*, the highlights of which are cheap alcohols and (hmmhmmhmm's) perceptibly unwashed friends. I haven't the prerequisite vaccinations. Greek with Winn. MMH: the man who speaks in parables. Such would be my blog material for today, and never once would it be a satisfying brain stretch.

This leaves me with ideas, which are very dangerous to work with and often unstable. The reason that so many of my posts never make it to publication, is that the ideas explode before I can get them under control. I wind up with a bubbling, babbling, mess of cluttered tangents and acrimonious disappointment over the ultimate reality of fallen humankind. Ideas present the only challenging engagement; the only one where I feel that I can sharpen myself.

When someone reads my raw ideas over my shoulder it is unnerving; the words are dangerous, not yet contained in the tight phrasing that will preserve their meaning intact. A raw idea that has taken only rough form in words is a perilous thing; it is the product of my intellect, bared for others to see, but not yet polished or corrected to convey the form fomenting in my mind. In this primitive state, an idea is not only easily twisted, but its volatile interim form--which is often typed in haste--might itself be a perversion of what I desire to express.

It is for the same reason that I spaz that I am not ashamed to think my ideas worth reading. I do not deliver the questionable product of one who does not consider or respect the importance of ideas. I deliver the questionable product of one with a hearty respect for the delicate and precise instruments of language, and for the ability of said vessels to bear--with some measure of purity--ideas; the product of my reason distilled into words faithful to my meaning.

I am not given--at least too often--to puerile ranting and other iniquitous word vomit. At least I will not often post such things here. But every once and awhile you will have to put up with a sermon.

Having said all of that good stuff, there is no way that I can proofread this in my current state. So I leave you with my combustible, possibly bamboozling, and entirely undistilled thoughts. Drink responsibly.

2011-06-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

It is such an easy thing to allow a blog to fall into neglect. I have the most time to write when things are slow on the home front, but I bore myself with the banal material and chafe at my own self-satisfied pomposity. And when something worthy of chronicling does come up, well, there never seems to be much time to spare for blogging. No, that's not true. I could easily find time to blog. I find plenty of time to putz around.

Since the end of this last semester I have been lucky enough to remain busy with work, be that selling suits or demolition on the new house. Penney's continues to provide for moderately enjoyable work at a decent wage. There are of course aggravations, some from customers, others from colleagues, and still more from bosses who think that the fact that I do the extra work the others won't means that they should demand even more from me. But these are all petty annoyances, and are usually easily dealt with. The Job remains pleasant, the pay decent, and the mall a fascinating den of skankitude...with a Starbucks, for those really bad days. =-p

Last semester ended well enough. A's across the board and some very positive feedback from a couple of my professors. Next semester features Arabic, Promise and Problems of Democracy (my first full 400 level), Roman History, and Business German. It will just the thirteen credit hours. Five classes and 20+ hours a week at work is an experience I'll save for once I'm a more polished student.

I've been reassessing my future career choice, and I beginning to lean toward rodeo clown. If that falls through, I can always go for ward of state or pimp. Last semester I wound up spinning more than enough sophistries, "making the weaker argument the stronger," as it were. I actually wrote a paper that directly contradicted my own feelings on a topic, which got perfect marks and glowing commentary, but I didn't really get any satisfaction out of it. I take no satisfaction in winning an argument when I know I'm wrong, and law would certainly require just that. Nein, danke. Ich möchte lieber etwas befriedigend machen.

Enough. I need to stretch the writing portion of my brain; it will take a little while.

Short Night

2011-04-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I completed a staggering feat. I started working on a research paper in the afternoon, and turned it in early the next morning. Granted, my subject knowledge was already exceedingly strong, and I already knew the sources from which I wanted to draw my support, but it was still a grim battle with fatigue to churn out such a staggering work of astute comparative analysis.

One never really realizes how much church there is during holy week, until the rest of one's time has been greedily gobbled by work and homework. Only in retrospect can I see the crunch, I did not even think of it at the time, and I was so concerned with other matters, that the paper sort of snuck up on me. It does not make matters easier that Bartky does not believe in giving a month's notice, as he realizes the class will procrastinate the first to weeks anyway. So he elects to procrastinate for us, and gives us the paper without any extra procrastination time.

The result is that today I am tired. For most this would be a big problem, and I will probably find myself crashing in the middle of my last class/my drive home, but to this point in the day I have only marked an increase in my ability to assimilate information with which I am presented...which could not have come at a worse time.

Today, music for the listener class was dealing in Modernism. My poor, confused, addled, and possibly unbalanced, teacher was talking about it in almost rapturous terms. He finds music from this period to be the most interesting....Interesting, I say, is certainly a word for it.

Atonal, poly-tonal, arrhythmic, and disquieting; the "music" drifted from one place to another with no semblance of development--as is found in previous classical music--and no real functional harmony or recognizable melody--as is found in, what is that word I am looking for, music. It was a serious of increasingly dissonant and ugly sounds, which ended--by God's mercy and providence alone--without once resolving any of the tension. I did not get any catharsis to purge all the bad juju that was being pumped into my system, and toward the end I was left with a vein pulsing unpleasantly in the side of my head.

I am not someone who is a stranger to discord in my music.,and I can definitely appreciate dissonance as a device in music. While dissonance adds interest to a consonant piece, a piece that is made up entirely from dissonant ideas is not interesting; it holds as little interest as an unadorned consonant piece, and it is painfully ugly to boot. I have been searching for an adjective that truly encompasses the achievements of modern music, and I think I finally found it.

Blegh

Nuremburg.

2011-04-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

I joined battle with half a classroom today. I had one ally to my name, but as it was Scott, who is TA for two professors, I felt like I was in good company.

The topic that we were engaging was Nuremburg, and whether or not it was a case of victor's justice, or if it was indeed a fair and just trial.

Scott and I both pointed out a massive inconsistency in the trial. The Leaders of Soviet Russia were as guilty, if not more guilty, of every charge brought against the Nazi leadership by the London Charter than were the Nazis. If you look at the death tolls, the simple fact is that Stalin was more deadly, and he did not confine himself to dissidents, Jews, and "defective" people. The Soviets went after every cultural and ethnic anomaly; the cossacks--or anyone else with Tatar, Turk, or Alan blood--were also subject to genocide. Why were Russian judges sitting to convict Nazis of these atrocities?

Nuremburg was victor's justice; it was selective justice. We dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we firebombed Dresden and every decent sized town in Japan. We did what we felt we had to do to win the war, and we have better excuse for being on the defensive, but the fact remains that it is the victor who gets to decide what is counted as an atrocity before the law.

The charges leveled by the London Charter could almost be a summary of WWII, of war in the abstract. The Nazis would have executed Russian and American leaders for war crimes if they succeeded. One of the ugly aspects of war is that the loser dies.

If you appeal to some higher ideal of justice in justifying the trials at Nuremburg, you need to understand that the victor was guilty as well, perhaps not to the same extent as the foe--at least in the US case--but more than guilty enough. War is hell. If men understood history; they would know that war is never good or desirable.

When we won the war, it was the triumph of our perspective over theirs. Our perspective is certainly many times better, but we were by no means blameless. The Nazis were evil, but they thought of it as progress; the next step in the evolution of humankind and civilization. Had they won they would have been the heroes of history, and the Russians would have been what the Nazis are to us, and justly so.

Whoops! out of time.

Another Rainy Day. Aweseemo!

2011-04-19T13:51:00.001-07:00

I don't believe I can possibly impress upon the reader the extent of my love for rain. It is not just the delight of having the myriad droning, bleating, sounds of the world covered over in the gentle wash and echo of the rain. Nor is it the sight of the tastelessly and scantily clad masses scurrying for cover as they shiver. Nor is it even the pungent and oddly cheering wormsmell and greenness that blot out all the unpleasant smells, which the constant passing of thirteen-thousand people and their jalopies leaves behind. One would not have the whole of it, even if one were to add to the first three pleasures, the delight which comes from the markedly pleasant sensation of rain on the face...I need hardly get started on the difference wrought by the release of days of pressure built up in the joints.

I do not much care for cloudy days, but I love a rainy day; thunderstorms are even better. I never think more clearly than when I am walking, and the rain only serves to aid this effect. For the last three days I have felt rather bogged down. Yesterday, it was well beyond me to write anything cohesive, and all my attempts to research turned immediately into headaches. I spent the entire day reading novels, and there seemed times when even those seemed like they might be a bit much.

Today, it simply is not so. I wrote two paragraphs of German in twenty minutes, spoke in full--cohesive--sentences during German class, held my own in an argument in Ulmschneider's class, and described the Concert that I had been to this weekend in terms that would make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

(Couldn't help myself)

Rain, when I actually get up to go mess around in it, is a most remarkable restorative. I have heard much of the waters at Bath, but what need have I of Bath when I regularly receive, in pleasant droplet increments, waters from the heavens!

One should also note at this point that people do not often take note of their facial expressions as they walk into the rain, making for some particularly amusing displays. A word to the wise, do not walk around with your mouth wide open and your lips pulled back over your teeth. With the the right affectation, even the loveliest faces can be transformed into something rather grotesque. When in doubt, do not walk around with your mouth open...please.

Alright, seerius biznez.

For years, think 14-18, I considered my life a crusade; a crusade to annihilate every single negative homeschooler stereotype in the minds of all sentient beings that I encountered. I was determined to have a thorough, intelligent, amusing conversation in every establishment that I entered, especially if it sold coffee. I considered myself an ambassador from the homeschooled of the world to those of a more "normal" background. I was tired of the socialization question. I was tired of the doubt,the disapproval, and the condescension. I would not allow myself to be branded with a negative stereotype, and I dared anyone to talk with me for three minutes and try. Most of the time, when my background finally came up, my partners in conversation were shocked; they would never have guessed that I was homeschooled, and wondered if I was the norm or the exception. I always answered that Home school kids came in as wide and varied types as did those who went to regular schools.

If a negative stereotype is in the way, it must be removed. This is, and has been, my attitude.

That said, in German today, the three most accomplished students--excluding one--said that they would be ashamed of their American identity when traveling in a foreign country, and cited stereotypes that Europeans have for Americans as the reason.

Needless to say, das gefällt mir nicht gut. I like all three of these people, but the first word that comes to mind is cowardice. They would not even try to represent their countrymen well, one of them (who is possibly my favorite person of the three) went so far as to say that he/she/it would apologize for being American. At this point I was fairly dumbfounded. You would apologize for what you are, your heritage, based on the fact that the other person doesn't like it? The KKK wishes that King had thought like that.

Disassociation. Can there even be self worth? Can a person with the idea that they are a complete and valuable being believe that the culture they came from is a thing of which to be wholly ashamed? These are also the people who are gradually turned to agreeing with controlling government. The citizens of this country cannot be taught, so government needs to lead the way. Problems are not dealt with through personal interaction, but by government interdiction.

OK. The grotesque, loud, gluttonous, obnoxious, American tourists of the world do exist, but that does not mean that you say "sorry, I'm American." It means that you stand as a counterbalance. You go out into the world and change the stereotypes, you grind out the impression of the loud American tourist, and you leave a positive idea in its place. You do not apologize for your background because the other person has prejudices against it. You tear down the prejudices, that you may be judged according to your own merit.

The Brilliance of the Sun and of Marx

2011-04-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well. It is a sunny day outside, warm, clear, with hint of a cool breeze to drive away any threats of humidity. The masses have affected an ungainly waddle, which an expert on the ground judged to be the result of the return of the flip-flop. Student elections are in session, and students only vote if there is free food to go with the vote. The classroom atmosphere has changed, the eager beginnings and smooth mid-semester stride are long since passed. Attitudes range between those who have taken on an almost inhuman intensity, and those who just seem glazed over and sleepy.

It is in this intellectual climate that we began on Marx. By the end of the lesson, Bartky actually had some of the students nodding along, agreeing with the precepts. To those of us who had a few minutes to linger, he confided that sections on Marx always end up with him getting some newly converted Marxists coming to his office, and that it is always necessary to correct them.

If you are someone for whom the Metaphysical has always appeared to be gobbledygook, then Marx may seem like your balm and tonic. He understands the problems that you see manifest in liberal ideals and capitalism. He even has answers to finally stop the madness, bring about full conscious knowledge of the "species being," and promote the universal love and brotherhood of all mankind. His theories make such sense; they make no appeal to God or higher nature, only that which is physically demonstrable.

The final step of false sophistication. A system that claims itself scientific, posited with no regard to anything so abstract as morals or higher ideals, only equality and sustenance.

In every case this political system has failed and met with disaster, genocide, and tyranny.

Marx, for all of his supposed realism, fails to understand human nature. He actually thinks that human desire would be content with pleasant subsistence. He fails to understand that human desires are infinite, and that the anarchy he dreams of would be chaos. He is just another sort of idealist and refuses to deal with the ugliness that is everywhere apparent. He wants to believe that men would be just and good, if only all these human machinations got out of their way.

He makes a disastrous mistake that Machiavelli, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other philosophers could have told him would lead to ruin and bloodshed. He sweeps away all the religion, morals, and conventions that bind the monster and tyrant that sleeps in every human breast. All the higher authorities that direct man to a higher good--a good which Marx would not acknowledge--are swept away, and man sets out to satisfy his ambitions and appetites, free of all restraint.

Nonetheless, the picture of a world free from division and struggle that Marx paints is so tempting, and the methodical, scientific, process by which he goes through the creation of such a world lends such confidence. But it is like staring at the sun. It is beautiful, but it is not obtainable on earth, and by staring after it you only damage your own sight, so that you cannot even see the good that surrounds you.

Fast

2011-03-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

Lenten fasts are an excellent practice, not only as a preparation, but as an opportunity to take advantage of one's own self-conscious piety as a tool for moderation and discipline. The knowledge that it is a Lenten fast lends so much more weight than just a regular attempt at self-moderation. When I select my fasts, I always go with an aspect of my life that I know requires a bit of reining in.

I always try to augment specific Lenten fasts, giving up a particular vice, with a general moderating of all my frivolous pleasures. I will not drink any of my beloved desert/coffee items from Starbucks during this time. This is an item that I will not miss for the most part, but it is a greatly immoderate favorite use of my funds. So also, I will not buy any new clothing during this period. This is another thing that I will not miss terribly, but it is a favorite method of tending my vanity.

My point in fasting is not to cast myself into physical discomfort so much as it is to make me realize that, nice though these things might be, they do not make me content, nor are they where I find my happiness. On the contrary, the more I indulge the more I desire, and the less content I become with that which is mine.

I do not think that I am alone in this. The more I feed my vices the stronger they become, and worse I am at managing them. It becomes an addiction.

We have gone chasing happiness in the guise of a thousand petty drugs, but when the first sensation passes we are left with an empty hunger; a desire for more. We know it has killed others, but we have it under control. We understand what we are doing, we only stray from God in moderation; a little bit of sin, easily inoculated by the boundless grace of God.

Lent is stern stern call, and in our addiction it is jarring: repent.

There are no safe sins, no gray areas, and all sin is corrosive to faith and leads only to death. We take the good things God has given out of his divine providence and mercy and we pervert them. We look to goods and pleasures for lasting pleasure, identity, and meaning, as if we could draw these things from material possessions.

Worse, we grow frustrated at our inability to derive meaning and happiness from the worldly goods he has given, and chase after things which we have not been given. We are so sure that God is holding out on the best things--the ones that would finally make us happy. Or, more likely, God never enters our minds as the provider of our worldly goods, and we chase after our desires counting everything we obtain as our due.

And if it is our due that we desire, then it is our due that we shall receive.

There is a just rebuke in Ash Wednesday. We are dust, and to dust we shall return; a point we are all too quick to forget. Our Lord does not tell us this in order to throw us into despair. He reminds us of who we are, that we might remember who he is.

Ash Wednesday is a reminder: stop looking to the things of this world for happiness and meaning, it is all dust, as are we. Where your treasure is, there also your heart will be. Stop trying to join yourself to the dust of this world; it leads only to death.

It is a strange irony that it is in dust that we find our hope. Not all dust is dead. In the midst of trials and trepidations, dead family, false friends, bad drivers, and empty coffeepots, there is but one dust in which our trust is well-placed.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, dust of our dust, bore our form, fell lifeless to the earth, and rose triumphant, in order that he might draw our dust to him. We are dust, and yet he put on our dust that we might be his bride. We are dust, and to dust shalt we return; to the risen dust of Our Lord in heaven.

The fast will not be comfortable, but rejoice, even as we fast in this world we know that we shall never fast in the next. Discipline yourselves, my brothers. Trust not in the dust of this world, nor in your own dust, but in the promise of Him who took on dust for us.

We are heirs to the Kingdom of God, spotless and pure, the Blood of God running plenteously down our lips and in our veins. Let this be our pleasure, identity, and trust.

Rejoice my brothers, and fast. For our treasure is infinitely greater and more precious than all those things from which we now abstain.

...So How Did You Spend Spring Break?

2011-03-08T17:17:00.000-08:00

I just finished with The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. I now have the pleasure of waiting years for the next.

Over the course of 1100 hundred pages I was never left to wonder where it was going, or whether it might have been done in fewer pages. It is compelling, clever, fun, and leaves me regretting that it is not longer.

Given a deeper reading and examination, I might be able to give account for its excellence. At present, I merely say that the story departs from the familiar pattern. The hero is excellent, but he makes human mistakes, loses more often than he wins, and you know that, when the story ends, there will be something that destroyed his excellence and left him--seemingly--a normal man.

This story begins where the last one left oft, with a three part silence, the deepest of which is the brooding silence of a man who is waiting to die. The colorful story of the young life of a legendary hero unfolds against that backdrop. The odd part is that it is not an old man waiting to die, the hero telling the story is still young, and you are left to read with the curiosity of how this came to be, and why he is so far fallen.

The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear are a pair of the best told stories I have come across, and I love stories.

Now I get to deal with the lag that comes after finishing an excellent book. These are always harder to get over when it is good fantasy, which is so very rare and enjoyable.

There is also something remarkably regenerative about reading a good piece of fiction. When you rise out of stale textbooks and ponderous philosophy into the pleasure of a good story, it is like like leaving a vegan world for a paradise of ice-cream and umami. Veggies are nice, and they are very good for you, but a body begins to hunger for other things.

It is gratifying to get into good fiction, but this was good enough that I am sitting here with a simple, cheery, gratified, and contented feeling.

Insert O'Pat/O'Mike Noise Here

2011-03-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

I have made it through three tests, now I have one more to go. I have realized the insanity of combining as much work and school as I do, and will have to cut back a little next semester. I am very fond of school (and money), so it will not be an easy decision. But I have filled two bluebooks today, and written out 10 short answers and 3 brief essays on the test sheet for the other professor, so my wrist is snapping and popping, and my brain is trying to kill me...or so this headache would make it seem.

I am usually pretty good at absorbing information, but after this much work, I just do not have much left in the way of higher brain functionality. It would be easier if I hadn't had to pick up some hours after losing a pair of suits associates, then i would have had a little more time to mull. Mulling is the way I pass my tests. I do not cram, I do not even study in the way that most people do. I take long walks with a vacant expression on my face; this is my process. I think better when I am moving, and if I have sufficient time to ponder it, I do not need to hear most subject matter more than once. The problem comes when I have no time to walk, and when there is time for a walk it is nine o'clock at night and eight-hundred degrees below zero.

My first two tests went smashingly, I thought. The third either went well, or poorly, depending on the level of specificity required. I had difficulty remembering the exact dates on the medieval composers, even if I could remember what 20-40 year period they operated in. Everything else went well.

My last one is going to be another where I fill the bluebook, and then I will need a bionic hand, because this one has informed me that it is getting a divorce from my body if I put it through another test. He gave us sample questions to look at, and they are all crazy hard and require actual thinking. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to think tonight.

On the bright side, I understood everything in German today, though that is in sharp contrast with the hiccup that was my German midterm. So, whatever comes out of the midterm, and least my knowledge of the German language is better than it will reflect.

On the brightest side, when all of this obnoxious testing is over, I am going to go home and collapse into a chair and read The Wise Man's Fear, and will also do horrifying violences/death to any who try to oppose this course of action. Ya dig?

One month until the next 25 page batch of written is due at once, but I won't get the topics until after spring break, so I get to take a week to take a breath.

To Every Hobo a Suit...or Not

2011-03-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

A sad reality has struck me. I have known it for a long time, but only now do I actually feel the enormity of what it was I saw.

Men do not wear suits, and those few who can be found in a suit, really do not wear them very well. The suits I see have rolled collars, gaping necks, puckered backs, strained buttons. Men seldom make the mistake of choosing a suit that is too large; they but suits that cling to them in the hope that it will be slimming.

They don them in this shameless style because they do not understand the marvelous metamorphosing power of a decent suit; the power to broaden your shoulders and make your gut appear, not bloated, but as part and parcel of your steady, consequential, masculinity.

Last week I fitted at least four gentlemen of more than forty years who claimed never to have purchased a suit. All of them ultimately elected the cheapest available option. All seemed chagrined over having to buy a suit, and almost seemed to wear the fact that they had never worn a suit as a bizarre badge of honor; as emblematic of their freedom.

I could not begin to guess at how the suit became so thoroughly stigmatized, but in selling suits for a short week, I have already been exposed to every kind of dread, both real and affected, at the prospect of buying and wearing a suit. Most who are buying these suits console themselves with the fact that they only need to wear one once or twice a year.

Precious few of those who know nothing about suits put themselves in our hands; they seem almost mistrustful, as if they are convinced that we, the salesmen, cannot possibly have their best at heart. Never mind that no one has more interest in making our clientele look good. The opposite is true of those who are well versed in suit lore. Those who know suits generally listen to us, especially when it comes to fit.

JCPenney is the only major menswear tailor/retailer that saw an increase in sales last year. The market saw a 12% loss in net sales, but we had a 7% gain. We gained because sales are increasing exponentially in the cheaper suits we sell. Market share has been falling for our executive line, which is designed by Hart-Marx, and picking up in the synthetic suit area. I will not say that all of these suits are tasteless. Some of them are actually rather neat, but the cheapening trend is just illustrative of the loss of a suit's value in the estimation of the buyer.

Many men treat it as a wanton extravagance to spend anything on a suit. I go over to Macy's pretty regularly, and it is normally empty--or near it--in the suits department. They have a glut of suits that are on incredible sales. The problem is that there are few who would recognize that buying a decent Tallia that has been marked down from $600 to $250 as a good deal. A good deal has nothing to do with the amount of quality you get for the price, it is about how little you have to spend to outfit yourself for a given occasion. The $150 dollar polyester suit beats out the Tallia because the price difference is one whole Colts' ticket!

I don't know if there is much to be done. I think that all one can do is wear suits well and hope that others seek to emulate.

Update of Status.

2011-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

This is the first time since my last post that I have had time to think about writing something for pleasure. And while I would much prefer to bore you all to tears with my latest discoveries in the dusty tomes of dead white dudes, there are matters of real life to be addressed.

As you may know, Evan--that's right, the one with the beard--has recently proposed to my darling sister. If this came as a great surprise, then allow me to express my fervent desire to study you, that I may figure out how you managed to survive to this point in life.

We are all extraordinarily thrilled that Bethany had the good sense to fall for someone of his quality. The same need not be said of him; the good taste inherent in his character as an educated and intelligent man necessarily dictates that he notice hers.

Evan is a man whom I feel, not only good, but relieved to see with my sister. One wants the best for their siblings, especially for the Shewoof, and I think she found it in Evan. I mean, seriously, he is a bit of a dork and socially functioning/not mortifying to associate with. He and Bethany might be the last of their race; goodness knows, you cannot take the rest of us anywhere.

On a infinitesimal minor note--and in brief, for time is fleeting and there is always homework to be done--I have been promoted to suits full time and, pending further training for the next few weeks, I will be an officially certified tailor. This comes with a commission, and I can expect to make a minimum of $12-13 an hour, although I averaged more like $15 my first day.

Alas, enough! Time flies and Vasari waits.

An Evil Mindset.

2011-02-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

We are all Hobbesian. I just finished Leviathan this afternoon, and the shift in thought is pretty obvious. People speak of Machiavelli as a philosopher of evil, which I have already challenged. If asked to finger such a one, my first glance would not fall on Machiavelli.

I assert that Hobbes is a philosopher of evil.

In Hobbes all things have liberty, and that liberty resides in unrestricted action. Liberty and license are the same thing. By nature, man has the right to do as he will, but this is a state of war with all other men, and they are likewise free to do with him as they will. The highest goal of man being the maintenance of his life, he may join himself to other men and surrender a measure of his freedom in order to form a collective will, or commonwealth, to protect his life. The highest good is the preservation of life, property, and public order.

What is Liberty in Machiavelli? Liberty is an inherently political quality; it is the attribute bestowed by participation in the life of the city, particularly in the making of law. The life of the citizen is not just about the safety granted by the protections of government, but that the richest possible life is found in a civic existence in service to your fellow men. It also bears note that Liberty in Machiavelli does not exist aside from duty. A man who shuns his responsibilities is not partaking fully of the life of the city, and so does not truly have liberty. This liberty, as a matter of course, involves the engagement of man's reason in service to his fellow men and society.

I need hardly say that I much prefer the latter version.

I also take objection to Hobbes writing on "The right of nature by which God reigneth over men." He sticks to his same logic that he used throughout. The "right of nature" dictates that God should be worshiped for no other attribute than his power. Not his goodness, nor our creation, but only for his power. In other words, we worship God, not because because he gives us faith, or because he created us, but because his power is infinite and his will irresistible. Basically, we worship god for the same reason we form societies: 'cause we really don't want to be squashed.

Hobbes also argues that there is no Divine law, save where it coincides with the laws he sees necessary for the cessation of the state of war. He argues that the laws of the old testament are not the laws of God, but the laws of the contemporaries. And he would go on to say that justice is what the sovereign or commonwealth says it is, so long as it keeps men from the state of war. The times change and there is no eternal law or ideal; there is only the pragmatic needs of the time. Martyrdom should not be an issue, because people should--at least publicly--adhere to the religious practices of the commonwealth. Civic law is the only real law. God is an abstraction.

Machiavelli speaks of good law, and good law is aimed at teaching the life of the city to the citizens. Civic law is needed to maintain order, but good citizens are shaped through religion.

Neither one of the two is someone from whom I would take theological pointers, but at least Machiavelli is compatible with a christian faith. If you take many of Hobbes thoughts about nature to their stated and logical conclusion, it is not only incompatible with Christianity, but there are elements which are antithetical to the christian faith.

I'll get back to this in good time, but it is time for homework.

VROOOM!

2011-01-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

I had visions for this morning, most of them included me sitting and drinking coffee in a comfy chair and collecting much needed adipose tissue. But, to paraphrase the good people at Despair, There is nothing the world likes so well as the taste of really sweet dreams.

At first the ungodly "waw waw waw" was either an alarm clock, or perhaps some variety of wounded poultry. I had no such luck. It was Janeane, who is infinitely harder to silence than an alarm clock, or--Iimagine--any specimen of wounded poultry.

After my ears adjusted enough to resolve the squawking into a message, I realized that she expected me to get up. Alright, it could be worse...a lot worse.

She started telling me something about our mission, a narrow and rapidly closing window of opportunity, of which we needed to take advantage. There was to be no time for showers or coffee. I grabbed the first three clothing items that came to hand, and also the first hat that was not a baseball cap.

Upon Janeane seeing me--you can guess what she looked like, and she was even the one who noticed it--she commented that I looked like an African dictator. We looked like we would be perfectly at home at a anti-military protest.

"Oh," says she, "you'll have to follow in the van" *wicked laughter joined by my own cackling* She then proceeded to try and open the garage door, which made some really pitiful noises and refused to go up. So we unhooked the garage door and pushed it up.

I get into the van never having driven an Oldsmobile Sans-Muffler, so I was in for a bit of a shock when it started with the sound of an enraged 2000lb bumblebee...or maybe just a small aircraft. I spent the drive to the interstate giggling at the sound and slowly losing my hearing.

Upon arrival at the dealership, I turn off the van before I collect a flock of sales people. Jeneane figures out where to take Sven, and comes over to the van right after. I warn her that what she is about to hear is life-changing, but she did not seem to take me seriously. When the van start with the roar of a thousand dragons with operatic aspirations, she immediately dissolved into laughter; she had underestimated its joyous power.

We then spent a large part of the ride back discussing how best it might be fitted with machine guns and modified to carry extra child-soldiers.

Add to this that I was punch drunk and lagged from getting no coffee, everything seemed funny.

Rambling Mannish

2011-01-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

Imagine you walk into a room. Imagine that, having walked into this room, your first thought is "where was the net?" That is right, you just found yourself in the middle of the 1990s...but wait; that cannot be right. The young gentleman over there looks just like one of the people from class...history class!!! As I am walking over to see why wardrobe sent him in skinny jeans, I see a group of individuals that I know to be incapable of comprehending history, and who would have no hope of navigating it. I breathed a minor sigh of relief. Something weird was going on, but at least I was in the right time.

The room was crowded and more people pressed in with every second. Tempers were already flaring at the lack of seating, which made me glad to find a comfortable seated in the second row. Still trying to understand what was going on, I turned to the wise old crones next to me to see if they had any valuable information. They chatted with me rather amiably and explained that teachers were showing up in force.

Aha. It clicked.

The big--really big--hair, of a primarily up-do variety; the near criminal inattention to dress; the effeminate males, with reedy, simpering, voices; the tight jeans on men, though not like skinny jeans, which do not cling to certain regions of anatomy so tightly as to leave little to an already horrified imagination; and the smug superiority that permeated the air; it all pointed to something I should have guessed: teachers, a lot of them.

The ladies next to me continued to chat with me and we got on pretty well...until I dropped the bomb that I was homeschooled, at which point the temperature from that quarter got really, really, chilly. Think, "do not make eye-contact or respond to him in full sentences" chilly.

It seemed that I was probably in for a quiet wait until the proceedings began, then Paul Lagemann showed up, introduced me to Brian Bosma, and sat with me for a good part of the show, at least until he left for his other event. His advent and comments did nothing to improve my neighbors views on me, and they did not verbally acknowledge me when I thanked them for allowing me to sit with them.

As we neared the beginning of the meeting the natives were getting really restless. A one even stormed out yelling about the lack of seating, still more were discussing the untruth of Mr. Bosma's opening speech, before it was delivered, naturally.

During the course of Bosma's speech there was general hooting, tittering, and a couple moments where a particularly large delegation from the teachers union drowned him out in unified shouts. Things got much more civilized as the proceedings moved on, but the room never lost its tension. Loud interruptions were pretty regular, all questions from self-identified public school teachers were delivered in an accusatory tone, and often sounded less like questions than the denunciations in the Stalinist show trials I have been reading.

That said, the representatives were cool under fire and managed to keep things pretty light. There was a gentleman, (who, oddly, looked rather like the frilled lizard from the Rescuers Down Under), several rows behind me--with whom Paul is acquainted, and who is, Paul assured me, the biggest asshole in Fort Wayne--began listing some very questionable practices that would be introduced by this bill. The Speaker, however, came prepared and was able to give the actual wording, which was, oddly, nothing like what the other gentleman would have had us imagine. The Speaker managed this with good humor and treated the whole thing as if it were an understandable mistake based on common hearsay...He gave it a nice spin despite the fact that the gentleman in question was well up to date on this bill and knew that he was characterizing it poorly, if not lying outright.

The general tone of the meeting was simple. If you say that schools could be doing better, you are saying that teachers are not trying, which is untrue. The vast majority of teachers always give their utmost every day and evaluations are an insult. Not only that, but teachers are professionals and deserve to be payed like doctors and lawyers. Give teachers more money. Also, charter schools are predatory institutions, founded for the sole purpose of wresting funds away from the other public schools, and they do not have the same noble, selfless, interest in the children that the proper, union monopolized, public schools do. One teacher, who looked like Angel Marie from the cabin fever scene of Muppet Treasure Island, advocated some form of legislation that would force parents to take an interest in the education of their children.

I reflect, in retrospect, on the fact there has been so much grief over the public schools forcing failing students to "homeschool" in order to bring up their averages and obtain incentives.

There are school teachers that I know and appreciate, one of my beloved grandmothers was a school teacher, but I find these excellent individuals to be an exception. There is a certain self-aggrandizing sanctimony that has found its way into that profession, and an homage to a one size fits all educational style that irks me. And when they get into a really big group, they just feed off of each other. If someone fails to learn under their program, it is not their fault, it is the fault of the child and the parents. Never mind that people learn differently and at different paces. I shudder to think where I would be if I had remained in that system. My whole creative process is unorthodox and begins with a long walk, which is definitely not part of the program.

The room would not accept that there were innovations which they had not yet attempted. When the speaker said that charter schools would lead to greater innovation, there were angry shouts of "you are saying that we don't innovate" and other variations on the same. Anytime Bosma tried to speak up and clarify that he was not saying that public school teachers never innovate, merely that current bureaucratic mechanisms restrict any real freedom on that front, he was shouted down with more of the same.

The bright side in all of this was that I got to rub elbows with a bunch of lobbyists and enjoy the looks on my professors faces as various pieces of policy were discussed. Good stuff.

I came out of this with raw skin on the right side of my face, which I began rubbing part of the way through the event, and a brighter outlook on the whole system of government. There were two productive voices from the audience, and both called to attention things of which the speaker was not previously aware, one of which was a bit of unintended consequences in the recent tax laws, which the speaker was very genuinely concerned about (trust me, there were times when you knew he wasn't as concerned as he said).

The system works! And if you can brave men in 501s that are 501 sizes too small, you too can change the world.

Operation Extra Credit

2011-01-26T21:29:00.000-08:00

I'm posting a brief, informal, report that was commissioned by my mostest favouritest professor, Elliot Bartky, who I found out today is also revered by the staff at the Barnes & Noble at the mall.

Anyway. Here are my thoughts on the proceedings, and the ideas--and lack thereof--bandied about.

On Wednesday I had my first experience with a town hall meeting. The primary topic of this meeting, as my reader knows, was education; more specifically, it was about a bill that is being introduced in the Indiana House of Representatives that is aimed at the promotion of charter schools and alternatives to the public schools. Brian Bosma, the Speaker of the Indiana house, had the daunting task of the apology of said bill before a passel of agitated school teachers. His opening remarks were an attempt to lend some perspective to the debate. We are in the midst of a fiscal crisis and there will be no increases in spending. The challenge is to improve education without spending more money. The speaker appeared to believe that the means for this improvement was the competition and improvisation that would—in theory—be generated by a charter school option, and by the increased efficiency that would be found in the ability to remove teachers whose classes show no signs of improvement. Mr. Bosma also spoke of the necessity for specialization and innovation in education.
The overwhelming response of the teachers may be found in the words of one rather amusing—and equally incomprehensible—gentleman. He said one thing that the whole room understood, and that was that one could lead a camel to water, but could not make him drink. In essence, that most teachers are doing all they can, but the task of learning falls to the student. The teachers who spoke also voiced frustration over the fact that they receive no help from the parents, who take no interest in the education of their children. One teacher noted that a huge difference between her exchange students and their American counterparts was that the foreign students took responsibility for their failure.

I had the pleasure of writing my first major research paper on the issues with the American education system and delved into the structures that yield such success in Western Europe, and I am thereby armed with the necessary knowledge to note that she is describing a symptom of excellence, not an underlying cause as she believed. She fails to realize that men are by nature wicked, and that they do no good thing unless forced. In the systems that her exchange students, be they European or Asian, come from there are set and serious consequences for failure in school performance. In the German education system, a student who fails to measure up in the eighth grade is not going to university. Americans believe in opportunity and second chances, and so institutions like IPFW seek to extend opportunity to those who have neglected their mind in a way that is ridiculous to Germans.

In the absence of dire consequences for failure, one would hope that the young people would have been instilled with a proper value for education and personal achievement in the realms of academia. This is not the case. The messages our society and our schools send to the young are many, but among these are the messages that all lifestyles and choices are equal and you need to do what is right for you. No lifestyle is objectively better than another; good is subjective, and most take more pleasure from indulging their appetites than in the discipline of their minds. Therefore, since a good life is subjective, the standard by which many judge it is in physical pleasure experienced. We have removed the safeguards of the ancients and of the realists and cynics. Not only have we denied an objective good, but we have furthered the damage by softening the consequences for those who fail to take advantage of their educational opportunities.

Coming from an extraordinarily unorthodox educational background, I am entirely sympathetic to the argument that there needs to be competition, innovation, and more opportunity in the realm of American schooling, and will seriously consider supporting the bill Mr. Bosma championed if I find it—on closer acquaintance—to be as promising as it was made to sound. That said, it is a small step and fails to address the fundamental issue that American educators face. The teachers were right. Student attitude is the greatest problem. But the attitude merely reflects the attitude and values of the society and family in which they grow. What the teachers fail to recognize is that it falls upon them to change the way their students view education, and the only way for them to do so is to alter their students’ values. Teachers spend more time with many children and teens than do the parents, but they do not take responsibility for teaching values. Furthermore, public school teachers cannot go about teaching that some lives are more full and valid, because they then run the risk of invalidating one of their students.

As things are presently ordered, public school teachers cannot repair the real damage in the American school system. Charter schools, since all participants get to make that choice, would be able to teach values, as a private school can. They would not necessarily do so, but there is at least the outlet or opening of such an option for those who were not previously able to send their children to a pricey private school. Although, I humbly submit that the best way to get the parents genuinely involved in the education of their child—indeed, to improve the education of the whole nation—would be to take ten percent of that $5500 a year that goes to the child’s education and make a rule that the parents receive it if the kid makes the honors roll.
These are but my humble musings on the proceedings and I can only hope that they at least resemble the kind of report you were hoping to receive..

Ghosts.

2011-01-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

Our house has ghosts. This is the only possible explanation for the many odd noises that pervade our house at night.

At least once a week I wake to the sound of shouts and other loud semi-human noises, when I raise myself up on my elbows, the voices fall silent. But, clever ghosts that they are, they use the voice--and at times the body--of my beloved brother Jonathan to convey their messages from the beyond.

Being wide awake at this point, I start to make my way to the stairs...but wait, what was that?!

"Aha," I say to myself, "a Sus Scrofa Domestica has found its way into my beloved sister's room!" I haste me down the hall to make bacon of the interloper before it has time to begin gobbling fripperies.

But what is this? It has escaped somehow! I crane my head around the door, but there is none but the sister to be found.

At this point I know something is amuck.

I am about to turn to go back to the stairs, when such ferocious snarling as no man has ever heard breaks out from the master bedroom. "Gadzooks," I declare, "some pack of ravening beasts is eating my parents!"

At first I am tempted to make good my escape, to leave my loved ones to the wolf/bear/sabre tooth tiger/emo vocalist that is devouring them. Then, however, I come to my senses and realize that this is a moment every boy dreams of; that is, saving others from a ravening animal by sheer, masculine, strength and rugged good looks.

Granted, there would not be any girls around to see it, but I could hope for a good retelling. Anyway....

I burst boldly through the door, but, hark; there is no sign of the monsters. So much for glory.

At this points, tired from the anticipated battle, I begin to head back to my room. That is when i realize that the monsters did not go out the window--as I had first thought, but had doubled through the office and gone down the hall to take up their villainies in room in which I began! What is more, it sounded as if they were right on top of Jonathan and preparing to maul the life from him....

When I finally got there, however, it had made another neat escape.

At this point I realized that there was no use sleeping, so I took up my watch downstairs. I browse Gmail, Facebook, and Drudge for any clues on how to deal with these monsters.

At long last, I head back up the stairs to try and get back to sleep. All at once, all of the noises from all the strange occurrences break out at once! I rush to each door in turn, but each room appears empty when I get there.

That is when I realized; the house is full of very noisy ghosts.

Fumble Rules

2011-01-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

My beloved and unceasingly pestilential readers have clearly noticed that my proofreading habits have been pretty abysmal of late. It was with that in mind that I picked up Fumble Rules by William Safire. While normally I would have carried this book around for awhile only to deposit it someplace obscure, today I was actually moved to read this ugly little book. I was not disappointed.

"Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague."

The fatal flaw of most books concerned with grammar is that they tend to be incredibly wordy, even to the point of sending one into a coma, which can be extraordinarily dangerous if one is poised on the railing between the family room and the kitchen; this book exposes one to none of that danger. Safire offers fifty rules to promote good grammar and usage, and does so using right and wrong examples. The examples he uses are not, however, of a purely abstract nature, but using examples that are recognizable or satirical. The book is succinct and humorous; it took me all of half an hour to peruse and, basic though it was, it made me think about some of the things that I do--or sometimes fail to do--instinctively.

It makes for an amusing little read. And I have no doubt that a perusal of this book would be of great benefit to the vast majority of Americans.

One should not, however, so much as consider reading Fumble Rules if one has not yet finished reading the complete Connie Willis, but I am a fool. My reader must excuse me therefore, I must return to the priority that has been neglected: All Clear.

Books and Words.

2011-01-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

I ordered some of my textbooks just after Christmas. One of them has arrived, two are well on their way, but one has not yet been sent. I bought it from a Barnes & Noble affiliate seller with a high rating, but I now know there is no way I'll have it for the first week of class, and maybe will not have it for the second; that would be if it was sent today. Not well pleased, as they were paid almost two weeks ago, and my product still isn't on route.

I'm really looking forward to this semester, as it is the first when all of the classes I'm attending are classes that I really wanted just for their own sake. Not just to fill out the bureaucracy approved checklist, but because I thought each class would be interesting.

I start my morning with Poly-324/Hist-325, Modern Political Theory, which will be taught by my favourite professor that I have had thus far, Elliot Bartky. We will be reading Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau, Marx...and two other books I cannot remember right now. Tasty.

From there I have Poly-200, Political Crimes and Trials, with Prof. Ulmschneider. I hear that she is challenging and rather interesting, so I'm looking forward to this. I also love legal and political analysis, and it looks like we will be taking a close look at the trials of Nazi war criminals.

Then I will continue to Mus-101H, which is an Honors music for the listener class, and as stultifying as that might sound to some, it is a hole in my education that I am only too aware of, and which is the more glaring because I hang around with those who actually understand the music to which they are listening.

German is next. I will have Lee, which means it will be fantastically well structured and orderly...and probably a touch easier than it should be. I do not, however, object to being more sure of my A's. ;-p

Finally, the pièce de résistance, I have Hist-222, Renaissance and Reformation, which is taught by Dr. McKenzie. The good doctor not only has enthusiasm and wit, but is also a history professor at CTS, which means he has real strength when it comes to the theological minutiae of the reformation and will not talk about it as a matter of pure class struggle.

I'm going to have so much reading and writing to do for this semester, but this is as it should be. Last semester was a constant procession of piddling little--but remarkably time consuming-- assignments of no revealed purpose.

*cough*theater*cough*

I have my own ritual for preparing for return to school, besides the obvious German vocab and other such pursuits. The internet is a teeming and mired net of idiots; there is always an ample array of asinine arguments awaiting annihilation. This time it was--what sounded like--a young man who claimed that words have no power. I would not usually bother, but everyone else who posted agreed with him. It had to be stopped.

Needless to say, after about a week, the opposition and his supporters had allowed that the comment was fallacy, but I have to wonder what brought him to that point in the first place. I have this horrible feeling that it is a virulent mutation of the old "Sticks and Stones" fallacy. Broken bones heal, as a matter of course. Doctors expedite the process, and can ensure that the healing goes well. One cannot make the same guarantees when it comes to a bruised psyche.

Words hurt, and the damage is a lot harder to diagnose than a broken bone, but just as debilitating. There was a time when I never sang if I thought someone other than my mother might hear me, this lasted from the time I was 5 to well into my teens. This came out of the fact that one kid told me that I had a bad singing voice. Now I would be able to shut that voice out because I know differently and the voice was not one that I would respect.

Think, however, of what it would do to you if someone you loved dearly told you one day that they didn't love you anymore. I have never, and never expect, to be subject to that pain, but I cannot imagine how that would hurt. Harsh words from a friend that you expect to be on your side are sharp enough, but coming from someone you look up to...they are necessarily devastating.

Even working retail, harsh words from random members of the unwashed masses have the effect of leaving me red faced and struggling to hold on to my civility. I do, but my face is burning as though it was slapped. There is no attachment between us, but their words still have the power to cause me internal disquiet and physical discomfort.

Strong enough words are sufficient to drive men to the belief that murder is right. No dictator or tyrannical regime says "yeah, that's right, we are the bad guys and are just basically evil." Words were the engine of the Maoist Revolution, of the Bolshevik Revolution, and of the Nazi rise to power; noble words about egalite and fraternite. All that is required for this perfect society is to remove the obstacles....

These promises fell through; it could be no other way. This is not where men may see perfection on earth. The people of China, Russia, and Germany suffered terribly. Earthly rulers promised them brotherhood, goodness, and justice, but brought them death.

Words are more powerful than sticks and stones: Thanks be to God.

Many fall to wicked words, yet by the Word are all men made alive. Our Lord claims us in Holy Baptism, drowns and destroys the old man in a torrent of water and word, and places His own name upon us; that we might have true fraternite with Him before the Father in heaven. It is by the Word that we are given the Body and Blood of God, for us sinful men to eat and drink in order that we might live.

There is no life outside words, for it is through His Word that Our Lord makes himself known to us. And in Him alone are found the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.

Words have power. By word are bones, bodies, hearts, and minds broken. By the Word will they all be made whole and perfect in Jesus Christ.

Lamp Post

2011-01-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

Lamp Post, Aged 5, died earlier this afternoon when some privileged white girl ran him over. Lamp Post was fond of the outdoors and was especially good with dogs. According to those who knew Lamp, he was "a beacon in the darkness."

It is as yet unknown what caused the accident which ended Lamp's bright future, but locals are suggesting it might have been deliberate. Fort Wayne Police say they believe the accident to be tied to illegal drag-racing, but are withholding all further comment pending a formal investigation.

German and History...Now, What Will You Do With That?

2011-01-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

I honestly have no idea what I want to do with myself when I am done with my studies. The military would be a tempting option, except for the fact of the difficulty in starting a family.

I have always been fascinated by the law and would love to work with the law...but I do not know whether that would translate into my loving the lawyer profession, and I cannot help but notice that nobody likes lawyers.

The military would be a more tempting route, if I knew what one would have to do in order to be a JAG, which would do quite nicely. This would be a fantastic way of combining two of the things I have always wanted to do. If only I could find a way to pursue it. Plus, I'm yet to hear of people hating on scummy JAGs....

Several of my professors have encouraged me to remain in the academic realm; this would be interesting, but I am not holding out for this. I realize that a large part of getting entry into this field requires pedigree, and pedigree costs a lot of money, so I am thinking that this is unrealistic, barring massive financial aid.

What will I be able to do with my degrees? I intend to be able to research, write, think, and argue well in at least two languages. I intend to be generally well educated and have a mind disciplined to absorb and process information in such a way as to understand and make use of it, and I intend for these arts to be habit. I also hope to have an understanding of the course of human affairs and of humanity as a whole. Um'kay?

Working in my capacity as an exalted sales clerk at JCP has taught me one thing: I absolutely need a job that constitutes a challenge and the full utilization of my mental faculties, and the sooner the better.

I don't suppose there is any kind of intellectually taxing, part-time, employment? In my current job I am a replaceable piece, perhaps one of excellent quality, but still infinitely replaceable. On some of the recent slow days I have had the luxury of examining what I do, the value of what I do, and measuring it against my inflated ideas of what I could potentially be doing. What I do right now could be done by any number of other people, maybe not with so much pizazz, but more than adequately.

The great part of what I do right now is scramble for ways to silence my own critiques of my customers taste and assure them of how right their choices are. I have long since learned that it is useless to try and sway customers into any path other than their own. I essentially help people to feel good about their poor impulse control and encourage them in indulging it further.

I feel that the only time when I am actually useful is the time when I am straightening, and this is most emphatically not the first priority. It is about Customer First service, which includes getting people to buy more stuff than they need or came for and getting them to apply for credit cards. Customer First is the tag they put on anything they want to sound good, whether it is providing the greatest service or no.

I am paid for my time, and it is nice to have the money, but I cannot help feeling that I am wasting my time. The work I do requires little talent and it seldom feels like I have accomplished anything. I guess this is the nature of part time work. There are sales goals, ratings, and credit goals, but I have noticed that the first two are almost exclusively affected by the time of year and stock we have on hand. New stock makes for better numbers. Customer satisfaction is at its very highest when we have a lot of new stock in. As our stock dwindles, our numbers dwindle. The employees remain the same--some good and are some rude--and yet the numbers fluctuate between the 55 and 80%. We do not change the way we serve customers, and some of the highest numbers were during the busiest times.

No one cares how knowledgeable and courteous an employee is if you don't have anything they want. And people are satisfied, in spite of absent employees, when they are able to find the product they want for a reasonable price. I might point to the Macy's at our mall as an example of people paying ridiculous prices for the product they want, in spite of cold and unhelpful employees. My point is: The store has goals, but I have learned that employee impact on those goals is minimal; it is about merchandise. There are no realistic, individual, goals...except credit applications, which I am dead against. The terms of the card are bad and it is way too easy to get, encouraging people with no money to spend more of what they do not have and pay 27.9% interest on it. No way.

As far as departmental numbers go, I have learned that I can go out and work to the best of my ability, and have many people thank me profusely, but the Men's numbers can still end up low for the day if we don't have the merch. This has been really frustrating for me lately as we have been stripped of anything tasteful, and I hardly want to work because I realize that my presence is basically useless. I cannot help the majority of customers because I don't have what they want.

Which leads to another issue. I hate being servile to belligerent people. They come in with this attitude that because they are a customer they are incapable of wrongdoing or pigheadedness, and that however rude and brusque they may be, it is all justified by the fact that they are acting in the defense of their seven dollars of which you are trying to cheat them...and then it turns out that the employee was right, but most managers have no spine and the customer gets the seven dollars anyway and the employee is forced to endure their smug glare.

Once again, belligerence and rudeness are things I can deal with, but are frustrating when combined with a sense that I am accomplishing nothing. If I have to deal with irate and often dishonest people, I would much prefer to at least accomplish something in the process. I am also not paid enough to be talked down to by people of rather questionable hygiene.

I have realized that I am in a slightly better funded position then I was before I took this job, but my position is similar to this summer in the sense that I feel like I am doing nothing.

That is another reason why I do not want to just enter the Military. From what I hear, the vast majority of military jobs include a lot of "doing nothing." And if I do indeed go into the military, I do not want to get stuck "doing nothing." I am capable of whatever I need to be, but my ADD self is not built to twiddle the metaphorical thumbs. I have a mortal fear of boredom and uselessness.

I want a job where I do something challenging that has value. How is that for specificity?

And here I was, dead set on not whining, and it spilled out anyway. It's not like I'm working third shift at a gulag or anything. I blame it all on lack of sunshine.

Hair Cut

2010-12-23T11:08:00.000-08:00

I always look forward to haircuts with something akin to dread. This feeling dates back to some overpriced and frightening experiences in my earlier days.

The one that sticks out is when I went to that salon that is over by the Aboite branch of the library. Aside from the fact that it cost 24 dollars--before tip--the trip also bears the dubious honor of leaving me with the worst haircut I have ever received; a most scarring event. I also happened to be cutting my hair at its longest point, so I was going from awesome but impractical soccer player hair, to "my hair, what have you done to my hair!" I payed quietly and went home to let my dear mother fix it, as I was not about to trust them with what was left of my hair.

So, if you ever wondered why it is that I always seem to go so long between haircuts, you now know that it is because I have some sort of irrational dread surrounding them.

Place Tongue Firmly in Cheek.

2010-12-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

I always wonder if the fact that I am poking fun at myself comes through, or whether I seem like a little Napoleon. My favourite brand of sarcasm is that of which my target is blissfully unaware, and I hope that my self deprecations are not as stealthy as some of the sarcasm; that is to say, please tell me that people don't actually take my self-aggrandizing hyperbole seriously.

It was something that I began doing with my brothers and Winston some years ago. We would go about listing all of our virtues, getting more ridiculous with each utterance, and then we would finish by congratulating each other on how humble we are.

So, for future notice, when you ask whether I'm doing well in school, or am going to get an A, yada, yada, yada...I hope it is not taken seriously when I answer "Of course," or, "What would you expect?" I spend whole weekends with exam results nibbling at the back of my brain. These answers are actually me just poking fun at myself.

The same can be said of almost any of my other ego-maniacal sayings; I like poking fun at others, and I see no reason not to let myself in on the action. I often feel like I am working an inflated reputation and expectations, whether at work or school; this is just my own little method of laughing at them.

Bow Tie Guy.

2010-12-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

Did I ever mention that I gave up my campaign to have our store carry Bow-Ties? While I have succeeded in talking a decent number of young men to wear bow-ties--my proof being their bow-tie clad figures coming to greet me while I worked--I find that I no longer wish to encourage too much in this direction.

I do not want the bow-tie to make a strong comeback; it is my own, personal, beloved, and distinctive swag. Not only is it my swag, but I am yet to come across anyone in my age range who really pulls it off as well as I do. Indeed, the only person I've seen who can do it better is the gentleman from whom I stole the look.

Now, let me make this very clear. I love my bow-ties, and it is perfectly understandable if you love my bow-ties too. You need, however, to realize that you cannot pull it off. Ok, I'm sure you looked cool enough in your plain clothes, but you do not have the bone structure to carry off that tie; it is eating your head; take it off. Your greasy hipster wannabe self just looks like a stereotypical creep in that tie. You are changing the default bow-tie wearer in people's head from me, to limp-wristed catamite. Knock it off!

Bow-ties, generally speaking, are a mistake. Carrying off a bow-tie is, on the one hand, about physique. You need to be a specimen that does not invite ridicule, neither a pip-squeak, nor an antediluvian neanderthal of local gym fame. You have to be the well carried average; a very tall or very short man in a bow-tie makes one reach for an umbrella to stop the inevitable jet of water that will issue from said tie. When you walk, did not shuffle, tromp, or sachet. You must walk like a man! Head up! Shoulders Straight! And, for the love of all that is good in this world, pick up your feet!

The other hand, physique is but one part of the Bow-Tie Ethos. Attitude and personality are the other half. A certain reserve is required or, once again, you may have people reaching for their umbrellas. If you are too reserved, you will have people looking over their shoulders for you as they unlock their doors at night; this is by no means a desirable effect. People want the guy in the bow-tie to be cheerful, but dignified. Deep down they really want to respect the bow-tie, but you must be moderately playful, lest you strike them dumb in grave awe.

To master the bow-tie is no little thing, grasshopper, but if you do, great rewards are yours for the taking. The man who wears his bow-tie well often enjoys, free coffee, excellent restaurant service, excellent service anywhere, a marked increase in thoroughly amusing flirtation, greater respect (often awe) from a large portion of mankind, assumed honesty, and a +5 bonus in all social interactions with ladies and black men between the ages of alive and dead.

On the marked downside, one does not receive the same kudos from large portions of the Onslow school of masculinity, but...sacrifices, sacrifices....

I can honestly say that life has been a lot more interesting since I donned my symbol of office (which office is "Bow-Tie Guy"). I am separate, memorable, and respected, which is quite a coveted set of attributes for a young man with a face that--unshaven--marks him younger than he actually is. I do not care for idea of a bow-tie trend because, at this moment, I am totally outside the lines of stereotypes. I am a physically fit, sociable, and moderately attractive young man, with my own distinct and bold, yet somehow classic, look. Not only that, but my manners and mannerisms match with the look, which, now that I've written all of this, might be the thing that actually separates me most, and frustrates me most about potential copy-cats. I feel a twist of anger and contempt when I hear the term--beg pardon, but I am not censoring tonight--motherfuckers, being used by the troglodytes who are wearing the bow-ties that I inspired them to buy.

Maybe in my head I was taking what I read in Paul Fussell too seriously. I believe in the power of uniform to civilize, and for me there is no article of menswear that bespeaks civility quite like the bow-tie, but I need to reflect; putting the physical incarnation of epicurean narcissism--the nineteen year-old American male--in a bow-tie will not turn him into a human being all at once. A bow-tie is not, after all, full military, dress style, uniform--complete with thirty six gleaming brass buttons

I am, however, selfish. I do not answer the above reflection with "give it time and more bow ties," but rather, "Oh noes, they are covering the symbol of office with their sub-simian first impressions. Hide the bow-ties!" I have a good thing going, and I don't think company is going to make it any better. So I now discourage many potential imitators, and have long since given over the fight to have bow-ties at work.

To try and summarize the above. Bow-ties, good. Young males, bad. Young mans get young mannishness on bow-tie; not good. Hide bow-ties. That's about it.

More For Less.

2010-12-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

I have learned recently--this coincides with the advent of my disposable income--that it is so easy to impulse-buy. It is the art of the deal--"bite now, because you may never get another chance this good when it comes to this item." Never mind that you had absolutely no desire for the product before you saw it, and that it will almost certainly be cheaper in the near future.

I never was an impulse buyer; I was the person who waited more than a year before buying a new product, in order to buy it at greatly reduced prices. I would read dozens of reviews and learn as much as I could before I even considered a purchase in the realms of technology, music, or shoes.

Working in a Men's clothing department has introduced a new challenge to my buying habits, and I admit that I did not handle it well at the outset. It is not easy to be constantly surrounded by various attractive clothing items, knowing that I have ways to procure them for a "bargain price." There something about constantly being surrounded by that "deal" language that is particularly toxic. It has taken me months to build the antibodies required for financial prudence, and the only real defense is contempt.

Unless you love an item you see in a department store, it is the height of imprudence to buy it at full cost, but carrying this thought too far leads to the thought that you would be a fool not to buy the item that is on an amazing sale. "I can dress myself for a pittance of what that gentleman spent last week, aren't I clever." I give myself a pat on the back for having made another brilliant purchase.

The amusing part of this is that there is no prudence in any such action. I often buy, not because I need or really want desperately, but because I am getting a deal. The other, more dangerous, side of the equation that drives--or, has recently driven--me to spend, is my vanity, which is not dampened by the constant praise heaped by my bosses and co-workers, to which praise I might just be moderately addicted.

It is the analysis of these two aspects that has me the strength to resist a couple of the more delicious temptations that grace the racks at work. My new awareness and discipline means that--aside from one corduroy sport-coat which was marked to almost nothing, just for me--I have made no clothing purchases since buying a shirt and tie to replace one on which my Starbucks had geysered...that was before Halloween.

The Geyser of coffee is another expense, but we have to take baby steps here; had I not been caffeinated this afternoon, readers of tomorrow's News Sentinel would have been reading about the Penney's supervisor who mysteriously drowned in the mall fountain...Coffee is the last thing I need to cut before finals.

Thankfully, clothing is the only place where I have made rash purchases, and I remain restrained as ever in most areas.

More later...post midnight, brain no work no more.

Groverous Chilvalry.

2010-11-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

In the course of pretending to not read, there were a great many little gems I read, one of which I will share with you today.

When I was rather young--think five here--I had a book that revolved around Grover, you know, the blue fellow from Sesame Street. Part of the reason I think I was five, was because Grover was going to school for the first time, and I imagine that is the reason that I, who had just turned five and was entering kindergarten, received this book in the first place.

The great conflict of this work revolves around lunch in the cafeteria. The girl sitting with Grover wants to trade her Bologna sandwich for his PB&J. Grover does not really want to trade sandwiches, and he really hates Bologna, but he sees how much she really wants to trade. Ultimately, Grover decides that he will trade his own beloved PB&J for her Bologna, just to make her happy. And even though he went out later and shed some solitary tears of hunger and frustration, he did the right thing and built on a new friendship.

From a young age I was--remarkably enough--moved by this sacrifice.

It was with still powerful childhood memories of Grover in mind that I agreed to take a co-workers shift for this coming Friday. It will be her birthday, and they were not going to let her take the day off, no matter how early she asked, and no-one else would take the shift.

I really did not want to take that shift, and the fact that I took that shift means that I get to be a stress puppy for the next week, but I knew that it would make her happy, and I know that it is good.

It sounds funny, but this is one of the standards against which I hold myself. It is simplistic, innocent, over-simplified, and totally brilliant. This chivalry is not just pretty words and kind gestures; it is the will to sacrifice his own comfort and peace for the happiness of others.

Now, I have to work on the other part of chivalry shown to us by Grover; that is, not making my loved ones suffer with me...but that is going to take some practice.

Anyway. Yeah. No. My basic ideas of chivalry did not come from extensive study or the words of great men, just the story of a little monster trying to do the right thing.

Learning to Chill

2010-11-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

Last night, while in an advanced state of tired, I failed to set my alarm properly. This morning I woke up at 8:15. I decided to forgo any chance of making it to my first class and just prepared for the second, which was, as I later found, impossible.

Have you ever seen me draw? It is perhaps the only thing in this world that is more painfully twisted than my handwriting. Today we were tasked with drawing a character we could play for a children's show. We are supposed to teach the chillun' something, through the doings of this character. As expected, the drawing of this character was a horrifying process, and not in the least successful. I have, however, made great strides in another area.

When it came time to show around my abysmal little pièce de résistance, I felt no real qualms. This is in contrast to a couple years ago, when it would have resulted in a massive coronary...or at least a bright red blush. I am not so embarrassed by little trifles like that anymore, and I haven't the fuzziest why.

H'anyway.

It was odd how every person in that class appeared to have gone through a pretty cruddy morning. Lot's of stressed people, two who were rear-ended, one who had his identity stolen, and my comrade who sits next to me, Abdul, who hat a flat tire and pulled out his spare to find that it was also flat, which explained the fact that he was half-an-hour late.

Our dear professor was working with a tough audience, but he did a fantastic job of adjusting the atmosphere, mostly through a reading of the Times art section...complete with commentary. The more I go through this class, the more I appreciate how much an actor he really is. He has an incredibly commanding presence, and many of the weird things he does are calculated to some effect or other. I think the class is going to get a lot more out of him than just an average lecture-style class. He does not have us just taking down terms by wrote; he has us messing around with them, and he manages to make all of it funny and lively. We will be going through the textbook and it all becomes a production.

Moving along.

I've been researching the Partition of India, and I've been surprised by a lot of what I've seen. The vast majority of Muslims around the time did not want independence, nor did they desire the end of British intervention. The Muslims knew they were the minority party, and all the majority of them really wanted was the end of legal discrimination against Muslims. The extreme sect was small. Religious violence became much worse as the idea of a Muslim state gained credence.

I cannot understand where this European idea of "It's having trouble? Chop it up!" came from. They see that the Sikhs and Hindus have issues with the Muslims, so they decide to segregate them. Imagine some well meaning third party, seeing racism in the US during the last gasp of the Klan, and--instead of trying to reconcile the issue--deciding to chop off Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi as the United States of Black Folk. Do you think that this would have stopped violence against black people??? No! There would have been a massive upwelling of violence. Take a part of the US of A and give it to a minority, just because there are some people abusing them? The streets would have run with blood.

This is what happened in India.

Instead of continuing to try and reconcile, they had the land segregated, and in doing so, took land that many in India begrudged. It became a matter of Muslims against everyone else. You took a population with a pittance of Muslim extremists and put them through massacres and displacement. Muslims belong on the other side of the mountains. You go there, everyone else can stay here. They created a whole state, humiliated, poor, laden with refugees, and thirsty for revenge, no longer welcome in the land they once called home.

Perhaps it would have gone this way whatever happened, but I have my doubts. It might have taken a hundred years; they might have had their Klans, Bloods, Aryans, and Black Panthers, but they would have gone through it and come out together. Instead we have the state of Pakistan, which never really got to its feet. The vast majority of the population is dirt poor, the government is corrupt, and the whole country has a chip on its shoulder. It was not a country forged by a willing revolution, but by a blood soaked expulsion.

The fact is that the Muslims, in general, looked to the Brits to hold down the violence and--at least among the rich Muslims--the plan was to bribe the British into putting pressure on the Indian Congress to obtain toleration for Muslims. A loud minority of Muslims won out and got their own state; a proper Muslim state with a marginally religious, marginally representative, military governance. The people who were expelled from Dehli, who left the bodies of loved ones behind, blamed the British for this abortion of a Partition. They called them independent and did not do a damn thing when the massacres started; it was no longer a British interest, and they gave them self determination; they should have thanked the British.

Disaster. A nuclear nation of 170 million wronged zealots; this is what the partition of India means. There is an attitude in a small part of the literature that I have read that views the partition of India was all for the best, but I am not buying it. The only way to fight prejudice is for those who hold the prejudice to understand those they despise; to truly know something is to love it. What confirmed racist would come out of a year spent in a black community as a racist? Even if he maintained his dislike of the culture; it would be tempered by understanding. He might still feel contempt, but I doubt that he would be capable of hating his neighbors after that time. No matter how twisted you are, the experience changes you, whether you want it to or not.

I'm in no mood for proof reading, so I'll hope some of that was moderately coherent. ;-p

The Peoples Opium.

2010-10-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Theater class was interesting today. My professor was laying down the riot act; you either vote, or forfeit rights to whine about the results. You are making a tacit consent. He then posited that America was in a decline of power; not a small recent trend in his mind, but one that is ongoing. He said that this election is important because it is a choice between continuing with the remedy envisioned by the democrat party, or taking a chance on a republican remedy. In his opinion this is a key election in deciding the fate of America, which he postulated without making a single comment that would tell you what party he supported. Deftly done.

Marx said that religion was the opium of the people. While I disagree with this in many respects, I believe he is not entirely removed from the truth. Optimism is the opium of the people. Optimism is often needed to dull the pain of difficult situations, but optimism is just a drug to keep you from fainting while dealing with the problem. The problem is with those who cling to the opium and refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of their problem.

Polls were taken during the class, and all libertarians believed the USA was in long term decline.
The same was almost true of republicans, with one dissenting. None of the democrats agreed that we were in decline. Some of the democrats were thoroughly displeased that anyone would suggest we are in decline.

There is a reason they got strident; they know their cure is not working and in the end all they can do is cry for more optimism. A patient read about a course of treatment that was done abroad. The experts claimed that it would restore his system to order; that it would not only clear up his current illnesses, but prevent him from future sickness and pain. There would, of course, be some pain, but it would be negligible when compared to the results. The man worked for years to try and be put on this regimen.

In the mean time, the patients who had already begun treatment were not getting better, but worsening. The doctors then started realizing they had made a mistake; they were killing the patients. Immediate action was taken to try and scale back the treatment, but it was met with resistance. The patients did not feel worse, and the treatment sounded so promising; they just needed more time and, naturally, more opium.

Even as the doctors abroad were retracting some of their claims about the treatment, our first patient demanded it all the louder. The doctors began to cave and started into the early stages of the treatment. His family tried to warn him about the news from across the ocean, but he insisted it was because the foreign patients had been too old; their health was already failing, but he was vital and strong. A short time into the treatment the convulsions from pain started to set in, but that did not change his mind; all he needed was more opium.

Democrats want so badly for this plan to work; it is the fulfillment of their dreams. It would mean a civilized society where men take care of each other. Our body is imperfect, and if this theoretical treatment works we would be nearing perfection. It isn't working. Our body is wracked with pain and the treatment doesn't work; it hasn't worked on those who have been taking it for years and it never will take in us either. They can't stand to face the fact that the perfection they desire is impossible, so they tell us to shut up, take our optimism, and wait and let the treatment take its course.

It is a pity that their elected treatment is a daily bleeding, with optimism to take out the sting of the knife.

Utility Team.

2010-10-19T19:13:00.001-07:00

I have every intention of putting in a transfer application to the utility team at Penney's soon. I am already a noted useful, helpful, hardworking, commodity within the store, so it will be no sweat with Winston's recommendation. My reasons for wanting to switch are many, but I'll give you a taste of the main ones.

1) My managers know that I will take on about any task and not complain about it, because of this they come right to me with work, and do not go to whinier co-workers.
2) I get to deal with all of the hassles of the customers, without being in a position to pad any of the numbers that lead to raises. I work like a dog, am sometimes treated like a dog, but it doesn't show in their numbers.
3) I like the members of the utility team more than a lot of the men's people.
4) Next week I am scheduled for 27 hours. When I was hired I was promised that I would not work more than 20 hours during a school week. I have had to have this fixed 5 times now, and despite the fact they keep promising it will never happen again, it keeps happening. Utility will mean that I am only needed 12-20 hours a week.

I am good at what I do, and my managers are under pressure to keep the department preforming during a recession, but a deal is a deal and I hate being lied to. And I have now been lied to several times. I owe them nothing.

New Vegas

2010-10-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

You may have noticed in the course of your acquaintances with me, but I am a total, shameless, geek. It is only with the utmost self control that I do not, this instant, rush out the door, drive to best buy, park on the curb, rush through the store, and procure Fallout: New Vegas. I have this love/hate relationship with post apocalyptic literature. I find it fascinating, but tend to scratch furrows in my face over the dystopian quality. The Fallout series combines excellent post-apocalyptic environs and stories, with a refreshing spritz of hope, and the ability to influence the world.

I get the same brand of satisfaction from civilization. You bring order from chaos--or vice versa--with civilization having a global perspective, and Fallout having a very personal, human, perspective.

I will wait until the game of the year edition comes out, but it is going to hurt.

Blasphemy

2010-10-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Douglass Preston and Lincoln Child write some fantastic word crack. Every time one of their books comes out I consume it with eager ferocity.

Blasphemy was a disappointment.

Douglass Preston is a good writer, but in this last solo effort he sacrificed his story telling to his agenda. I felt sorry for him. A solid fifth of the book was a strident defense of the big bang. The big bang, as my distinguished readers already know, depends on the theory that things happen without a cause. The big bang just happened; it is without causality. There can be no proof in the absence of cause, so this must be a frustrating position to hold. He spends long segments expounding on theory, which would be better titled hypothesis, since it comes in the absence of observation and evidence.

He also spends time showing what barbarians the christian evangelicals are. In the course of his book various christian groups take steps and perform lunacies that would never happen outside the imagination of a man who wants to blame them for the fact that the richest, most powerful, nation in the world has not yet established anything near an egalitarian utopia where science is the unquestioned rule of thumb.

He has, without his knowledge, touched on something. The story involves hysteria over a super-collider. It makes one reflect on the uneasiness over the Hadron. What did people get so worked up about? Last time I checked, the vast majority of Evangelicals pay lip service to the ideas that 1)God created the world and 2) He has already determined its end. That said, what was all the worry over the Hadron? Yes, the people who made it said they expected to recreate big bang conditions. Why did so many Evangelicals find that so alarming?

We men are weak and we are liars. Men doubt even as they confess. Many Christians were worried about the Hadron, not because it implied that some wicked scientists disbelieved God, but because they disbelieved him; they were worried that the scientists would be right. Men are weak, but, thanks be to God, for he is merciful and forgives our shortcomings.

Stridency exposes the weaknesses and imperfection of our faith, just as Preston shows his own weakness and fear in his. There is no element of the natural world that will stand as an argument against God or a rebuke of true faith, because the universe is his and he made it.

Like a Man.

2010-10-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

I love the order of the divine service. I am yet to find any aspect of it that is arbitrary or accidental; it all has a purpose.

In his sermon on Sunday, His Excellency My Pastor made an important distinction. The Kingdom of God is not like a wedding feast; it is not to feasts that Christ compares His kingdom, but to men. The Kingdom of God is not like a feast, but like a man; The Man, Jesus Christ.

It is so easy to listen without comprehending, and it is only yesterday another--obvious--aspect of the brilliance of the liturgy became clear to me, with the help of Pastor's correction on perspective. The Divine Service is a feast--The Feast--in which the Kingdom of God comes to us in the form of a man; The Man. The Kingdom of God is perfect and to be perfect is to be like Our Lord. We cannot clothe ourselves for this occasion, so He clothes us in his own innocence. We are not, however, merely being prepped as guests, but as His own bride; that we might be joined to Him in His Flesh, complete, whole, and in union with The Kingdom of God. The Divine Service is the wedding feast in which we are joined to the Kingdom of God, through the Flesh and Blood of the Man, Jesus Christ.

It is not just that The Kingdom of God is opened to us by Our Lord, but that is comes to us in the person of Our Lord, who joined Himself to our humanity that we might be joined, in Him, to the Kingdom of God.

It is just a little thing, but I get great pleasure of these little things.

We Are No Different.

2010-10-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

An item or service is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. The same is true of wage slaves.

The country is outraged by corporate greed and the incredible amounts of money made by CEOs and other high corporate officers. I am astounded too, but I am more astounded by the fact that people cannot understand why it happens.

Take Lebron James, if you know nothing about basketball, then the tens of millions that he makes are ridiculous. If, however, you do know basketball, then you already know the reason; he is the best and everyone wants him. The pay is competitive.

As for those who would argue that CEOs from companies that fail should have their pay confiscated, would they make the same argument for Kevin Garnett's stint in Minnesota? He was a constant MVP candidate and even won it one round and he made top dollar, but his team was still consistently at the bottom. Does a team failure mean that the star should never have been paid?

None of us could do the things that a CEO does. They have to be brilliant and charismatic, masters of grand scale business stratagem and relationships; they have to be creative, calm, and in control in exceedingly high stress environs; they have to be exceptional in a passel of areas where we wouldn't know where to begin and they have to keep it up for between 70-80 hours a week. You could not do what a CEO does anymore than you could do what Lebron James does; the same goes for me.

The board of directors of a company are always people with a firm vested interest in the company's success; they choose CEOs who they believe will increase the worth of their stock. And please, tell me, when was the last time you heard of a star player telling a team owner "no, don't pay me tens of millions of dollars, I don't really need that much."

Would you say no if someone offered you 20 million a year? Don't lie to me, and don't lie to yourself. We'd all take it, and we are really just jealous that we aren't the ones who get the offers.

Tired, not Sleepy.

2010-09-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

*Danger*

*Point of no return*

I am at war. There is no enemy except the one within, and my task is not to fight him, but to keep him disciplined. The most annoying thing about this battle is that, in my everyday surroundings, the longer and better that I hold my discipline the more it becomes a burden. It is abnormal in the eyes of society, and abnormality is a grievous sin. I will not comply and my non-compliance is often misconstrued as dysfunction.

I do not have a girlfriend.

There is a lot of weight in that phrase. Healthy American males of my age are expected to form romantic attachments. If they do not form any attachments of this kind, it is often thought that 1) We are not sufficiently attractive, or, 2) We are merely anti-social. What on earth could possibly be wrong with me? Why is that child unable/unwilling to attract a mate? Has he been gelded? Is he afraid???

My pride would just as soon answer them by doing as they expect. What better way to shut them up than to give up and form the expected romantic attachment.

That pride, however, is directly attached to the reason I have never yet developed such an attachment.

I am, whether you have seen this side or not, an extremely emotional, passionate, person. The only reason you see this is a need to vent because of my wounded pride. I form strong attachments easily, just as I can come to hate your guts on a whim. You are either family, or a nuisance. On top of all this, as some of you well know, my self control is not always the most satisfactory. You see at all where this is going? No?

If you are somehow blind, deaf, or mentally afflicted, you may have failed to notice that I am, or aspire to be, a little old fashioned. I am not only a religious zealot, I am also a total romantic. I want to fall in love once, share my bed with one woman, and do so until I die. I am a virgin and I intend to remain that way until I am married. Furthermore, I have no intention of getting married until I am in such a position that my as-yet-non-existent affianced be able to work or stay home as she wishes.

I have absolutely no desire to form a powerful attachment when I think I am years from being ready to form a family. I'm twenty, a virgin, and human; not to mention that it is generally assumed at my age that dating and sex go hand in hand. I have no desire to form a fleeting liaison to fulfill "needs." I will hold on, discipline myself, and wait until I can form something lasting. I do not deceive myself into thinking that I will find any idyllic 'happily ever after' situation, but (here are my greeks again) I aim for perfection, that when I fall short, it is good.

Now, since I have a good head of steam.

Those who read here already know this, but it feels good to write it in a moderately public place.

I am a twenty year old male, not yet at my peak. I have a strong body and a strong mind. I prize education and moderation. I am deeply religious. I am proud, stubborn, and self-confident. I am not a fool. I am not ignorant of the depth of my self denial; those who are not twenty year-old male virgins are those who do not understand. I am not silly, prudish, or quaint. I am principled, self-disciplined, and educated. I have reasons for the things that I do, and while I respect your right to judge me, I reserve the right to scorn the judgment of any who volunteer it.

Fellow Employees

2010-09-14T18:24:00.001-07:00

I should note that not all areas of my work are disappointments. The fellow employees are more than decent and my time is normally spent in constant movement.

The suit guys are some of my favorites. Tom is the picture of quiet dignity; Mike is hilarious; Dave is a study in confidence and charisma; and Greg is probably the most positive and friendly person in the store.

In the Mature Men's area the regulars are: Cathy, who is on the quiet side, but polite; Kim H, who is the most competent and useful person in the area; and Kim K, who makes for excellent conversation.

Young Adult's regulars are: Tony, a geek, with whom I feel kinship; Josh...yeah, Josh; Kurtis, who is a wellspring of sexually explicit comebacks; and Kirk, who manages to maintain dignity and be on fire for the lord at the same time, which is to say, unique.

The Floaters including: Me, my favourite person in the store, bar none; Heather, who seems to have Jacqui's disease and begins shivering violently every time we cool the building enough for the metal racks to stop glowing; Amy=energy.

The supervisors: Tabbitha, whom everybody loves. She's nice, but she has a jello spine. Denise is forceful, no bull, and cuts straight to the point. Denise gets things done. Lynn, the head of our department, knows everything. She is remarkably patient with stupidity, but she is not someone to mess with.

LP: Jim is a retired cop. He is quiet, calm, and amazingly unobtrusive; he heads our security side. Gabe the MP. Possibly my favourite besides Winston. He is funny, with a little nerdy, and just a touch of biker dude. Kim, the queen of loss prevention.

Children's: All of them are crazy anorexics who apparently have religious issues with eating fat. I'll take things upstairs for them, but I don't stick around long enough to catch the crazy...Tisha is okay though.

The other Honchos: Joe, my favourite "other honcho" sort of like a taller, preppier, version of my uncle Todd. Deanna, Devil Wears Prada, Streep, kapische. Pat is the person who trained me, and she is pretty decent, but has the air of someone forever tired...might it be because she is in charge of keeping all of our buggy terminals working? Janie is in charge of aesthetics, which means that she is another anorexic, perpetually clad in black leather with boots longer than my legs. Javonte...he really does think he is God's gift to womankind. I actually like him though, at least he knows his captain smooth gig is funny. The Other I know is the manager in training, Jessica, sie ist ein Besserwisser. We're okay, which is a relief, considering that we met when I accidentally created a bunch of work for her.

Enough, there are more, but I am ready to go eat something.

...Which reminds me of my other mother, Winston, threatening to force feed me earlier.