tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82214427781900188422024-03-13T03:46:47.275-07:00Read no Further"Reading maketh a full man, conference, a ready
man, and writing, an exact man."—BaconMichael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.comBlogger124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-82565631161305760882016-05-15T20:58:00.000-07:002016-05-15T20:58:01.082-07:00Not Don Draper's style of flying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I flew this past weekend for the first time in 8 years. I have been flying since I was 3 years old, and flying used to be like being in a "Mad Men" episode--well-dressed, nicely groomed, well-spoken, well-behaved smokers sipping cocktails and enjoying restaurant-quality meals served aloft. And this was coach. In first class, you got wine.<br /><br />
Alas, those days are gone, unless you enjoy quite expensive private travel. Most of my flying experiences have been pleasant enough, but based on the articles I have read over the past few years, about loutish and impertinent TSA agents, sullen and insolent airline staff, and brutish fellow passengers, I had made up my mind that I would never fly again if I could help it.<br /><br />
That is not to be, since my son has been in Greece for 4 years and will be begin Ph.D. study in Britain this Fall. I will fly to New York in 3 weeks and see my son for the first time in 4 years and meet my new daughter-in-law, whom I've never met at all. They are flying to New York for Mark to present a paper at a conference at NYU.<br /><br />
This past weekend, I went to Washington for a family reunion. It was a very quick trip--flying to Washington Friday night, back in Memphis by midnight Saturday--but it was not nearly as unpleasant or inconvenient as I anticipated. Here are the pros:<br /><br /> * You can get great hotel + flight deals through Travelocity. Other sites may have even better deals - I don't know - but I was amazed at how spacious my room was Friday night, for the price I had paid. At first, I seriously thought they had put me in a suite by mistake. I was at the Holiday Inn Rosslyn - Key Bridge, perfecty comfortable, just a block down the street from the Rosslyn Metro station, and with a great view of Northwest DC and the Washington National Cathedral out my bedroom window.<br /><br />* You can visit your airline web site 24 hours before your flight time, do online check-in, and print out a boarding pass. (You can also do seat selection, if you wish.) I have known this was possible for about 15 years, but what I didn't know is that if you do this, you are considered a "preferred TSA pre-checked traveler" and get in a shorter line at the security gate and don't have to take off your shoes or belt--all you have to is empty your pockets and show your ID. No frisking, no wanding, no body scanning, and the agents seem noticeably more polite. Indeed, it was the first time I *hadn't* had to take off my shoes since 9/11. (And if you forget to do this at home, there are many kiosks throughout the airport where you can do your own check-in when you get there, including printing out your adhesive baggage sticker, and then all you have to do is take your bag to the counter, show your ID, and check in your bag.)<br /><br /> *If you are flying American out of Memphis airport and need to eat a light supper before an evening flight, you could do worse than eat at Home Team Sports, a café near gate C12. I had a perfectly serviceable Bloody Mary there and a grilled veggie sandwich that perfectly hit the spot and was very filling.<br /><br />* Airline terminal gates now have outlets for you to plug in your phone charging cord, and even some airline terminal restaurants and bars have these. This was a complete revelation to me.<br /><br />* If you are returning to Memphis from Reagan National and flying American, you could do worse than to stop in at the Kapnos Taverna, next to gate 37, a Greek-accented place with good food and a serious selection of wines and liquors, including Greek wines. I enjoyed a St. George Skouras red, and it reminded me of the Shiraz I usually have with my evening meal.<br /><br />* Airline gift and newsstand shops seem quite well stocked, selling the magazines I read, including Time, The Economist, and even Foreign Affairs; a selection of hardback and paperback books, and modern travel equipment such as noise-cancelling headphones, which I need to buy before my flight to Greece in September.<br /><br />* If you are flying out an airport 50 years old or older, such as Memphis airport, you can sigh with nostalgia at the sight of the empty brick alcoves that formerly housed pay phones.<br /><br /> * If you have reserved an airport shuttle with Super Shuttle, ferrying passengers from Reagan National to various hotels in the DC area, you will receive a text message while you are standing at baggage claim, welcoming you to DC and asking you to check in with the uniformed gate agent, to get you on your shuttle.<br /><br />Here are the cons:<br /><br />* You have to pay $25 extra just to check a single bag. I guess I was vaguely aware of this on some level but still found it deeply offensive.<br /><br />* If you're using "airplane mode" for your cell phone, you might as well just have the damn thing turned off, even if the airline provides WiFi. It just doesn't work--or at least, it didn't for me.<br /><br /> * Even if you are flying a major airline like American, and into a major city like DC, you may find yourself on a subsidiary carrier such as "American Eagle Airlines, doing business as American" and, worse yet, you are on the smallest airliner you've ever been on, unless you've been on a 50-passenger commuter plane or something. I'm pretty sure I flew an Embraer 175. Forget Boeing 737s--this plane makes you feel shrink-wrapped. I could hardly even reach for my wallet to pay for my on-board glass of wine without risking elbowing my seat-mate. I am just under 6 feet tall--if I had been 6' 3" or more, my head would have been brushing the ceiling. This would have been the perfect airplane for the days of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, when men were about 5'9" and weighed about 160 pounds. I understand that Memphis's hub status is gone with the wind, but this is what I would have expected if I were flying out of Dubuque or Owensboro. Holy crap. (In addition, I don't remember airplanes being this noisy, or at least not since my childhood days, flying the old turbo-props.)<br /><br />* The last time I flew, in March, 2008, on some budget carrier, you could only purchase wine or cocktails aloft with a credit card. On the flights I took this weekend, you could only pay cash, a retro touch that struck me as rather odd.<br /><br />* Your airline trip voucher may have a knife and fork icon indicating food service, but that actually means a "snack," which means a bag of pretzels or biscotti smaller than what you might get out of a vending machine. <br /><br /> * If you are flying to Reagan National and have made a reservation with Super Shuttle, mentioned above, and you have printed out your voucher from the Super Shuttle site with a confirmation number and even called to confirm that you are all set, they will<br /><br />
STILL
NOT
LET
YOU
ON
THE FREAKIN'
SHUTTLE<br /><br />
Even with a voucher with a confirmation number. Because your voucher doesn't have a *bar code* "And the driver can't get paid without a bar code."<br /><br />
You have to purchase another fare on the spot. Seriously. When you call their customer care number later that night to complain, the customer service agent will say "You should have had a bar code." It isn't until you reach a sane customer service agent the next morning that you get agreement that your voucher was, itself, evidence of payment, and you should have been let on the shuttle. I'm still waiting for resolution on that one.<br /><br />So what I learned this weekend is that if you're traveling by air, do your check-in in advance, so you can be a "trusted traveler," practice yoga, so you can contort yourself into the small seat space on a modern down-sized jet, and carry some cash, so you can buy a drink to help you get through the flight.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2016. All rights reserved.
Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-30904686172227702482015-10-15T20:07:00.002-07:002015-10-15T20:07:29.864-07:00Alas, the Bern, no longer so hot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In January, I went to a "Run, Warren, Run" organizational meeting. I have voted Republican most of my life, but my party has been hijacked by wingnuts and yahoos, and I am alarmed by the lack of accountability for powerful financiers. Of course, Warren didn't run, so many in the group turned their hopes to Bernie Sanders, as I did. As I see it, Bernie, no doubt out of noble motives, effectively ended his candidacy the other night when he cut off discussion about Hillary's e-mails.<br /><br />This evening, I got an e-mail from a member of the "Run, Warren, Run" group, repeating the viewpoint of some in focus groups that Bernie was the real winner the other night. I wrote the following reply:<br /><br />"This will be my valedictory message to the group. I'm the lifelong Republican who showed up at the Warren meeting, was sorry Warren decided not to run, and was prepared to vote for Bernie. Obviously, I don't agree with him on everything, but in a country where a man can be sentenced to 28 years for selling tainted peanuts but not one banker spends one night in jail over wrecking the economy, something is wrong. Bernie is strong medicine, which the country needs. Moreover, the candidates of my former party are either insane or forced to give a convincing imitation of it.<br /><br />"I wanted Bernie to win the other night and then to go from strength to strength. Hillary is a thoroughly contemptible person, in my opinion, and I fervently hoped Tuesday night would be her Waterloo.<br /><br />"That was not the outcome. Hillary won, and won big. Let's remember the difference between winning morally and winning a debate. Socrates, Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King all won the moral sweepstakes but didn't make out so well in worldly terms. Neither did Bernie the other night. He won the justice sweepstakes, not the debate. I say that, in part, as a long-ago college debater.<br /><br />"This happened, in part, because of things Hillary did and said and things Bernie did and said. She helped herself, and he helped her, but he didn't really help Bernie. Among the shoals he foundered on were:<br /><br />"1. Bernie said 'The gun bill was big and complicated,' to which Hillary replied, 'It wasn't that complicated to me, and I voted against it.' Hillary wins.<br /><br />"2. Bernie said 'I come from a rural state,' to which Hillary replied 'So only gun manufacturers escape accountability?' and, more to the point, O'Malley said 'We have a hunting tradition in Maryland, but we still passed a gun bill, without pandering to the NRA.' O'Malley does his bit, and Hillary wins again. (The other issue was, what nobody actually said, 'Bernie, the country isn't rural any more; we live in an urban and suburban society, and the question is whether you are prepared to govern who we are today, not who we were 100 years ago.')<br /><br />"3. Bernie said 'We need to learn from Denmark,' to which Hillary replied 'I love Denmark, but we're not Denmark--we're the United States.' Again, in debating terms, Hillary wins.<br /><br />"4. Bernie criticized predatory capitalism but gave no evidence of distinguishing between J.P. Morgan Chase and the Jiffy Lube on the corner. Both are manifestations of capitalism. Hillary's position was more nuanced: 'Sometimes, we need to save capitalism from itself.' I understand Bernie agrees with this, but Hillary articulated the more balanced view. Hillary wins.<br /><br />"5. Bernie semi-shouted the whole evening, which made his characterization of Hillary as shouting a little ironic. As The Economist said, if I remember correctly, 'Mr. Sanders seemed unaware that he had a microphone.' Hillary modulated her voice, for the most part, and seemed more calm and poised, while still engaged. Hillary wins.<br /><br />"6. Bernie failed to press the advantage with regard to Hillary's close ties to Wall Street. When she told her little Pollyanna story that 'I went to the Wall Street bankers and said 'Guys, you've got to stop doing that bad stuff, got to stop the foreclosures,' etc.' Bernie (or anyone else) needed to have said 'Yes? And? That somehow stopped the financial crisis or mitigated its effects? You personally going into a room full of bankers and telling them to stop? If what happened afterward is a measure of your effectiveness as a persuader, what can we expect from you when you confront Putin?' But he didn't say that. He called her 'A little naïve' in passing but really didn't press the point. Hillary wins--by Bernie's omission.<br /><br />"7. Bernie had a point about the possibility of Putin's Syrian escapade eventually blowing up in his face in his own country and making him withdraw, and that could happen, but the immediate question had to do with a President's willingness to use either military force or forceful diplomacy with characters like Putin to begin with. Bernie did not show that he was prepared for this. It's almost as if his thinking was 'Is Putin a Wall St. banker? No? Then why are we even talking about him?'<br /><br />"8. Finally, Bernie's greatest moral gesture of the evening also amounted to a kind of hara kiri. Let's look at the situation we have. The Secretary of State is fourth in line of succession to the Presidency. By the very nature of the office, the incumbent goes in knowing he or she will handle matters of a highly sensitive nature and that such material ought to be secured. Knowing this full well, Hillary kept official business on a private server, failed to turn it over to the government upon leaving office, as required, and, when confronted about it later, airily replied 'I opted for convenience.' By the most generous construction, such fatuous self-complacency on the part of anyone disqualifies him or her from being county court clerk, let alone one of the highest officers of state for the most powerful nation in the world. And we haven't even gotten to the question of whether she knew at the time that some of the materials were classified.<br /><br />"So what happened the other night? Anderson Cooper said, quite accurately, that Obama himself had referred to Hillary's actions as 'a mistake' and that the FBI is investigating her. A candidate for President owes the country a serious answer for his or her incredible lack of judgment on such a point and what it says about his or her fitness for the country's highest office. Hillary's airy impudence on this point ('Did I wipe my server? What you mean with a cloth?') is a walking attack ad for the GOP.<br /><br />"Now Bernie may have felt that strategically, he didn't care to be the one to take a meat cleaver to Hillary on this point. Fine. He could have said, what he in fact did say after the debate, that the FBI would do their investigation and events would take their course. Fine.<br /><br />"Instead, he forcefully intervened to dismiss the whole issue! That can't possibly be because a man of his intelligence is unacquainted with, or indifferent to, the simplest common sense requirements of handling state papers, but because, being Bernie, he wants to excoriate Wall Street bankers, and he wanted to get back to that point.<br /><br />"That's fine, Bernie. Wall Street bankers are a huge problem, but not our only problem. Hillary's dishonesty is another (as in her lying her backside off about her 'gold standard' comments about the Trans-Pacific partnership). And cyber-warfare and China flexing its muscles in the South China Sea are also problems (as I recall, only Jim Webb seemed concerned about either of those problems).<br /><br />"Anyway, as to Bernie's intervention on behalf of Hillary, in a way, it was a noble thing to do. And the moment he did it, Bernie might as well have said 'And now, friends, farewell,' and walked off the stage. His raison d'etre, as an alternative to Hillary, had now ended, and by his own hand.<br /><br />"Hillary won, Jack. The people in those focus groups who thought otherwise were stoned, or might as well have been. Bernie is now a noble might-have-been. Hillary will be the nominee, unless she shows up in a video beheading someone for ISIS.<br /><br />"I know that many reading this will emphatically disagree, and that's fine, and I can only say that I will always cherish admiration for Bernie and what he wanted to accomplish in reining in the wild excesses of Wall Street and holding predatory bankers accountable. I trust that his effort, like that of Howard Dean before him, will galvanize like-minded people of good will and that the movement will be the beginning of real, positive change in our society. My best wishes to all who work toward that end."<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2015. All rights reserved.
Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-26036825881529073142015-06-30T18:22:00.001-07:002015-06-30T18:22:56.601-07:00(570) Michael Huggins's answer to Would atheists agree that everyone believes in God, but it is just the definition of God that we all do not agree on? - Quora<a href="http://www.quora.com/Would-atheists-agree-that-everyone-believes-in-God-but-it-is-just-the-definition-of-God-that-we-all-do-not-agree-on/answer/Michael-Huggins?__snids__=1233332891&__nsrc__=4">(570) Michael Huggins's answer to Would atheists agree that everyone believes in God, but it is just the definition of God that we all do not agree on? - Quora</a>Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-2890340773267320432015-06-27T13:02:00.002-07:002015-06-27T13:04:53.145-07:00A timid facsimile of leadershipThis <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/0626/In-amazing-grace-of-Reverend-Pinckney-Obama-finds-his-voice-video?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekend_Best_of_Web&utm_campaign=20150627_Newsletter%3AWeekend%20%28UMP%29&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3AWeekly%2520Newsletter%2520%2806-27-2015%29">article </a>is well-intended, but it's simply false. Obama did not "find his voice" in eulogizing Rev. Pinckney; instead, as in just about every other crisis he has faced, Obama gave the impression of one who comes late to the party, makes tentative gestures in the direction of doing or saying the right thing and finally, emboldened or perhaps ashamed by the examples of those with more heartfelt conviction than he, makes a mighty effort to overcome his characteristic buttoned-up timidity. That's what we saw yesterday in Charleston: not a leader, not a prophetic voice, but a callow young man, "trying his wings" at "leading a black congregation," as he had seen done by better men than he, by launching into "Amazing Grace." Coming from the likes of AME Presiding Elder Norvell Goff, it might have been a majestic gesture; coming from callow Barry, it reminded me of nothing so much as Aldous Huxley's label "Arch-Community Songster," from "Brave New World."<br /><br />Obama's problem is that he is made of lemon jello and yet trying to lead a dangerous and challenging world. He isn't really a leader and not really a grown man; he is a glib, clever lad, forever trying on various costumes and poses in front of a mirror, to see which combination will have the best effect.<br /><br />The thing that came across in Charleston, as it had come across in Boston two years ago, was that he is still "trying" to be taken as a mature man, a morally commanding figure, a leader of stature. Trying. That pretty well sums him up. Because, sadly, trying is about the best Barry can do. There is something fundamentally missing from him. If you didn't see it yesterday, it was either because you wanted Rev. Pinckney and his fellow martyrs to be honored, or because, like many others, you are inclined to give Obama too much of the benefit of the doubt.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-8924316488759106662015-06-26T17:21:00.000-07:002015-06-26T17:21:07.605-07:00Lost in a fog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Celebrate this decision, if you will, but do not celebrate the Constitution, for the two have nothing to do with each other." - John Roberts, reading his dissent from the bench in the matter of the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage. Oh please. First, no one who was guilty of Roberts's craven dereliction of his duty as an impartial jurist in the Obamacare case yesterday has *any reason whatsoever* to complain about extra-constitutionality in this matter. Second, ironically, the gay marriage case was *more Constitutionally solid,* John, if you can get your head out of your black-robed backside and glimpse the light of day once more.<br /><br />In the case of the Affordable Care Act, affordable care for all is, to be sure, a desirable societal goal (as even Ted Cruz implicitly admitted when he signed up for it himself), but the act *as written* limited the benefit to people purchasing exchanges created by the freakin' *states.* Roberts simply ignored that and acted as though vanilla really meant double-fudge all along.<br /><br />But in the case of same-sex marriage, bizarre, exotic, and reprehensible as it may seem to some religious, there is *nothing*--as in N-O-T-H-I-N-G--in the Constitution that can be read as preferring, either implicitly or explicitly, opposite-sex over same-sex couples. Nothing, Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.<br /><br />
There *is,* meanwhile, the "inconvenient truth" of the 14th Amendment, which *is* part of the Constitution, and which says, among other things, that no one shall be denied "equal protection of the law."<br /><br />That means that unless you can establish an *intrinsic* disqualification for gays being married--as in, blind people cannot be airline pilots--then you have no Constitutional grounds to *deny* them marriage.<br /><br />In short, Roberts was letting his thinking be clouded, as so many others were, with centuries of irrational prejudice and acting as if religious standards were, somehow, part of the Constitution.<br /><br />Which they're not.<br /><br />So sorry, John, but you got it exactly backwards. Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-89616981773796625472015-06-25T18:16:00.001-07:002015-06-25T18:22:56.268-07:00You're a careless lad, but you're still my son<a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obamacare-decision-turns-john-roberts-conservative-dream-nightmare?cid=sm_fb_msnbc">Obamacare decision turns Roberts from conservative dream to nightmare | MSNBC</a><br /><br />
The history of Obamacare's transit through two Supreme Court challenges reminds me of a column by William F. Buckley, Jr. that I read years ago.Buckley said there was a liberal law professor at Notre Dame who used to confuse his students every year by passing out a collection of quotes criticizing decisions by liberal Republican Chief Justice Earl Warren in terms so harsh that one would have taken them for the most rabid propaganda of the far right.In fact, they were simply excerpts of dissenting opinions by Warren's associate justices. Their dismay was shared by some legal scholars, even those who shared Warren's progressive views. "Alphaeus Mason of Princeton applauded the decision in Brown v. Bd. of Ed," Buckley wrote, "but tore his hair at the legal reasoning behind it."<br /><br />Twice, now, John Roberts has shown good sense and a good heart while egregiously disqualifying himself as a constitutional jurist. Sorry, folks--it's open and shut.<br /><br />The Affordable Care Act needed to be saved, and the right's opposition to it was patently absurd. ACA was the spiritual child of what was originally a conservative idea, promoted by the Heritage Foundation 20 years ago. It is one of the best things that has ever happened to health care, and by deciding as he did, Roberts actually saved the GOP from impaling itself on its own perverse opposition, which would certainly have happened had ACA been gutted. The Congressional Budget Office only recently released a report projecting that if ACA were no longer in effect, the deficit would rise by $137 billion over the next decade.<br /><br />But Roberts is not the President. His position, as he noted in his written decision, is to "say what the law is" and "respect the legislature." In both of those, he has spectacularly and laughably failed.<br /><br />The first failure was in the first challenge, a couple of years ago, over the individual mandate. By no conceivable principle of logic or ethics can a government compel me to engage in economic activity in which I profess no interest. It may, to be sure, require me to have a license and insurance *if I wish to drive,* but it may not *compel me to buy a car in the first place.* Federal judge Fred Vinson of Florida laid out the whole history of Commerce Clause jurisprudence in his earlier decision. There really was nothing more to be said.<br /><br />But Roberts still said it. He called the individual mandate a tax, something the Administration itself denied, and, thus, saved glib, clever Barry, the man who had become president of Harvard Law Review without ever having authored a single article, from his own slapdash approach to one of his own "signature" achievements.<br /><br />It is important to understand this. Roberts did not function as a judge. He functioned as a sort of super-President, the President's wise and understanding dad, saving the young whippersnapper from his own sloppiness.<br /><br />He did so again today. Yes, of course it is obvious that the intent of the act passed by Congress was that people would buy insurance through public exchanges, even if states demurred.<br /><br />Well, then, they should have freakin' *said so,* thank you.<br /><br />But once again, glib, clever Barry couldn't be bothered with anything so tiresome as to actually draft a sound law. He perhaps expected the act to be hailed for no reason but that he had been the author and, as all right-thinking people know, he's just, well, so interesting and wonderful and everything.<br /><br />And so, once again, it was up to Dad Roberts to save Barry from himself.<br /><br />A jurist would have written that while the intent of the law was clear and its salutary effect on public policy evident, the law *as drafted* was defective, and that it was unwise to decide legal questions based on deliberate, if well-intended, misreadings of the plain language of a sloppily worded statute. Remember, this wasn't some tortuous deliberation of the original intent of men 200-years dead, as to what they must have meant by the 2nd amendment; this was an easy issue in response to the carelessly worded text adopted only a few years ago by an immature man who takes a little too seriously the admonition of the Gospel to "be careful for nothing."<br /><br />For Roberts to decide as he did showed a warm heart. For him to defend it on the grounds that he must "say what the law is" and "respect the legislature" is, under the circumstances, simply inane. Saying "what the law is" is precisely what the Roberts Court did *not* do; otherwise, the Affordable Care Act would be on its way, in redrafted form, back to face a hostile and wary Congress.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-2003207138054145432015-06-21T12:06:00.000-07:002015-06-21T12:06:47.834-07:00Huckabee's copout<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/huckabee-confederate-flag-controversy-not-presidential-election-issue-n379306">Huckabee: Confederate Flag Controversy Is Not a Presidential Election Issue - NBC News</a><br /><br />During the American Revolution, South Carolinians were under-represented in the Continental Army because so many adult males had to stay at home to keep slaves in order. Before the Civil War, South Carolina forbade postmasters to let abolitionist literature pass through the mails, and abolitionists were hounded out of the state in fear of their lives. South Carolina fired the first shots of the Civil War, in the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. Forty years after the war, when Teddy Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington as his dinner guest in the White House, a South Carolina newspaper editorialized that Roosevelt had turned the White House into a "coon café" and said it would be necessary to "kill ten-thousand n____s to put them in their place once more."<br /><br />In 1968, South Carolina was the site of the Orangeburg Massacre, in which police fired into a crowd of 150 blacks protesting segregation at a local bowling alley, wounding 28, mostly in the back as they ran away, and killing 3. As recently as 2012, South Carolinians cheered as Rick Perry told them in a campaign speech that "South Carolina is at war with the Federal government." In April of this year, Walter Scott, a black man, was shot to death from behind as he ran from a police officer following a traffic stop from a non-functioning brake light.<br /><br />No, Mike Huckabee, the continued presence of the Confederate flag over South Carolina's state capitol is not a "little issue," as you glibly described it to Chuck Todd this morning. It symbolically flies in the face of some of the most important decisions made by our national leadership, including the Emancipation Proclamation, Brown v. Board of Ed., and the Voting Rights Act, and if you can't see that it is an essential affront to the promise of American life for all and a matter of concern for any presidential candidate, you are a fool, a moral coward, or both.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-40623956068921067412015-06-21T08:49:00.001-07:002015-06-21T08:49:47.689-07:00Pinckney, then and now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have a love-hate relationship with the Sunday morning talk shows. They're too important to miss, but almost all of them feature John McCain and Donna Brazile, the one evading the obvious and the other patiently explaining why Hillary is a good candidate.<br /><br />
This morning's shows are a notable exception, featuring live broadcasts of the beautiful and moving worship service at historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, its first since the horrifying massacre of Wednesday night. As an atheist, I am happy to pay tribute to a group that has spent the week steadily living out some of the most powerful words in the Bible: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Listening to the opening prayer of Emanuel's presiding elder, I was reminded of a word, "gravitas," a quality we see too little in politics or in the culture at large.<br /><br />
Finally, I was reminded, alas, of the egregious religious illiteracy among the Chardonnay-sipping media, as seen when Jake Tapper asked Van Jones "So what about all this willingness to forgive? Is this some AME thing?"<br /><br />Ho<br />ly<br />crap<br /><br />
Pardon me while I take a moment to beat my head against the pavement. If Jake can't do any better than that, Brian Williams may not be the only one who needs to assume a lesser role in the news.<br /><br />
I visited Charleston for a weekend in '81 and attended worship services at historic St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Meeting St. I saw the grave of Revolutionary War patriot Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, one of our founding fathers. They were a noble generation but sadly tainted with the barbarity of chattel slavery. As Samuel Johnson said at the time, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?" Now, more than two centuries later, Pinckney's namesake, the late pastor of Emanuel Church, has been struck down by a vestige of the very dehumanizing impulse to which our ancestors were tragically blind. How much longer will we let this pollute our society?Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-25203821264338739022015-06-14T20:40:00.001-07:002015-06-14T20:40:27.781-07:00(661) Michael Huggins's answer to Are you afraid of being poor? - Quora<a href="http://www.quora.com/Are-you-afraid-of-being-poor/answer/Michael-Huggins?share=1">(661) Michael Huggins's answer to Are you afraid of being poor? - Quora</a>Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-18754283678528232082015-06-13T07:19:00.001-07:002015-06-13T07:20:30.020-07:00To the tumbrils!I just can't watch or listen to Hillary for long. She always comes across, to me, like a well-to-do woman whose gardener, housekeeper, cook, and chauffeur all called in sick the same day, who finds herself required to address a neighborhood group, none of whose members she knows or cares to know, since they are not members of her private club, but who is trying to make the best of a trying day before she goes home for a long soak and a massage.
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<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-ready-make-pitch-1st-official-campaign/story?id=31737370">Hillary Clinton Gets Ready to Make Her Pitch at 1st 'Official' Campaign Rally - ABC News</a>Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-20865291654540563022015-05-31T10:28:00.001-07:002015-05-31T10:28:22.930-07:00(692) Michael Huggins's answer to Is it weird for a 15 year old to think very deeply about things? - Quora<a href="http://www.quora.com/Is-it-weird-for-a-15-year-old-to-think-very-deeply-about-things/answer/Michael-Huggins?share=1">(692) Michael Huggins's answer to Is it weird for a 15 year old to think very deeply about things? - Quora</a>Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-35967420500807153122015-05-31T09:14:00.001-07:002015-05-31T09:14:46.881-07:00(691) Michael Huggins's answer to What would you do if one day you wake up and discover that you are the last person alive? - Quora<a href="http://www.quora.com/What-would-you-do-if-one-day-you-wake-up-and-discover-that-you-are-the-last-person-alive/answer/Michael-Huggins?share=1">(691) Michael Huggins's answer to What would you do if one day you wake up and discover that you are the last person alive? - Quora</a>Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-88507424459650999442014-05-30T13:07:00.000-07:002014-05-30T13:11:28.585-07:00Final payments?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Noah Millman engages in a <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/taking-reparations-seriously/">thoughtful examination</a> from a conservative point of view of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Ta-Nehisi Coates's call for reparations</a>, which is the cover story of this month's issue of <i>The Atlantic</i>. I also read Coates's article and was impressed by his eloquence and depth of research in making his case. He certainly articulated one point very well: you don't kick someone and then expect him to be whole and healthy the moment you stop kicking him and walk away. Agreed. Millman agrees with Coates that reparations are morally just.<br /><br />Here are my questions about the whole matter:<br /><br />1. Does race exist? I seem to see an awful lot of articles from liberal spokesmen saying race is a social fiction with no basis in biology. Is that true or isn't it? If it is true, then just who would we be making reparations to?<br /><br />2. Should we make the matter more definite by offering reparations only to those who can document their descent from slaves? Or to all blacks now living? For that matter, with the rise of inter-racial marriage, would people be eligible whose racial makeup is now black only to a small degree?<br /><br />3. Is there or is there not a complex of poor mental and emotional management that aggravates poverty--or, as some call it, "a cultural pathology of poverty"? As far as I can recall, Coates mentions the issue only once in his entire article, and only to wave it away. Really? No one has any difficulty about invoking the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance"><i>Deliverance</i></a> image of a certain type of white, or of talking about "trailer park" or referring to benighted sections of Appalachia where a large part of the population is addicted to oxycontin. Few people, for that matter, seem to mind candid discussions of alcoholism, incest, and spousal abuse among Native American populations. Are blacks exempt from such discussions, when considering black poverty?<br /><br />4. Considering the checkered history of lottery winners and what often happens to them after their windfall (speaking of West Virginia, remember the case of businessman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner)">Jack Whitaker</a>, who won the $314 million lottery in 2002 leading, in part to his own granddaughter's death of an overdose at 16, two years later), what expectation should we have, if we paid out a lump sum to each member of a particular population, as to how much things would change? The author of this article raises a similar point.<br /><br />5. Granted that slavery is unique in American history, so was what we did to the Native Americans. The same list of questions applies.<br /><br />6. And, while the injustice is not unique, there is, as I mentioned above, Appalachia, a region exploited for generations by coal and other polluting industries, leaving a legacy of birth defects, premature deaths, poisoned rivers, poverty, addiction, etc. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Comes-Cumberlands-Biography-Depressed/dp/1931672008"><i>Night Comes to the Cumberlands</i></a> documents the misery of this part of the country. Should the government require all businesses who have ever done business there, or their legatees, to make reparations? If so, to whom? Those who live there now? Those who have moved away?<br /><br />To do justice to Coates, his strongest concrete recommendation is simply that Congress pass a bill calling for the concerted study of the question, and one can hardly disagree with that (while noting the tendency of some politicians to effectively bury a problem while pledging to "study" it). In any case, should the bill be passed, the questions above are certainly among the ones that I would wish to have studied, and answered.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2014. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-49414505551385887522014-05-24T08:05:00.000-07:002014-08-13T09:22:28.623-07:00Speculation and revelation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This occurred to me last night as I read Richard Hofstadter's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006LSVB1M/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk"><i>Anti-Intellectualism in American Life</i></a>:
The virtues of intellectualism are virtues only in the absence of revelation.<br /><br />Intellectualism is the pursuit of ideas for their own sake, but only in the service of the presupposition that, since the truth is not already known and may, perhaps, never be known by all with final certainty, we must continue to search for it, grope for it, chip away at it, with the continuing desire that more and more it may be revealed, so that we may transmit it and, in the very search, become more adept in that activity that gives humanity its unique dignity--the life of the mind.<br /><br />But if, on the other hand, the real truth were that a Supernatural Entity stood perfectly ready to reveal Itself to all serious seekers, speculation and conjecture, no matter how well-intended, no matter how subtle or on what firm conceptual foundations, would be superfluous. We would not need to speculate on what was revealed to us already. We might, indeed, seek to refine our understanding of that revelation only in refining our practice of more immediate and efficient submission to the truth revealed, but not only would there be no need to speculate on what the truth "might" be, the very speculative and critical habit of mind would be counter-productive.<br /><br />If there is really revelation, then our only attitude should be "You, O Supreme One, have spoken; we hear and obey. We ask only that you clear away any obstacles to our understanding that we may obey more quickly and fully."<br /><br />In other words, the attitude that ought, in the values of the author of Genesis, to have been true of Adam and Eve.<br /><br />If, on the other hand, there is no true revelation from "above"--or if it is generally acknowledged by any person of sense that such a revelation, even if it existed, would be impossible, either to discern at all, or at least to distinguish from the various fallible impulses of our minds, then the disinterested pursuit, and critical examination, of ideas, must, indeed, be the highest activity of the human mind.<br /><br />But there is a paradox here. If there were a God, He must have created the human mind, as He must have created everything else, for its highest use (by "highest," I mean "the greatest exercise of its most distinctive qualities")--e.g., speculative, critical thought.<br /><br />But if there were a God, and He was willing to disclose Himself and His aims clearly to mankind, it must also be true that speculative, critical thought had become superfluous--in respect of the truths revealed, anyway--so that He must be in the position of having created an instrument, the human mind, for which the exercise of its highest faculties was unnecessary--rather like crafting a Stradivarius violin, but only in the expectation that it need be used for nothing more intricate than to perform "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2014. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-73333618037074844222014-04-07T18:17:00.002-07:002014-04-07T18:17:19.231-07:00Levels of disaster<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>On one level, the whole sorry saga of Malaysian Flight 370 is faintly ridiculous. The ill-fated airliner flew into oblivion while Malaysian air traffic controllers simply couldn't be bothered to notice that an airliner was flying over their territory, drastically off course. On another level, the loss should be a wakeup call to aviation administrators to collect data from planes in flight in real time, something that is technologically feasible and long overdue.<br /><br />On a third level, the level at which a 3-year-old kid in New Zealand, a child of one of the plane's passengers, is continually asking his mom, "When will daddy be coming home," it's heartbreaking. <br /><br />The plane and its passengers are almost certainly lost. It would be good if they could locate the craft, or at least its black box, and then get to the business of honoring the memories of the dead. Hopefully, this will be an alert to responsible authorities to get their heads out of their back sides and start paying attention to airline safety in a world still large enough for an airliner to vanish.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2014. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-56162801587407492672014-04-06T16:43:00.004-07:002014-04-06T16:50:13.594-07:00Seeing, not wanting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>Sometimes, you get in a frame of mind where you are simply a spectator of each moment as it happens, not holding an opinion about it but merely observing, and all the struggles of your self-will--the girl you want to ask out, the boss you want to tell off, the new car you are saving up for--are still present to your conscious mind but become something of an irrelevant side show, a movie running in a small corner of your mental screen, with the volume turned off.<br /><br />This may happen through some mental discipline such as meditation or simply by a small triggering event, as simple as suddenly noticing a falling leaf or watching someone pedaling a bicycle. Everything is the same and yet everything is suddenly changed. Every leaf on a tree or pebble on your path is a matter of grave and deep interest. You seem to see everything and need nothing. In its own way, it is like seeing an X-ray of the world.<br /><br />You know that within 15 minutes, you may very well be back to your customary egotistical, complaining, deluded self, but while the sudden detachment lasts, it is as though you are on a different plane, and you begin to think what may bring the feeling back again. Since you know it is possible, you know that when it returns, you will welcome it.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2014. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-23005916571512072352013-11-17T21:14:00.003-08:002013-11-17T21:14:38.501-08:00It's just 50 years, but in a way, it seems like 200<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If you were born after 1980, it may be hard to imagine the small but important ways in which the world of 50 years ago--the world of my childhood--was different from today. There were no ATMs. Postage stamps cost 5 cents. There was no internet, no e-mail, no Twitter, no Netflix, no cable TV, no cell phones, no Wikipedia. Most cars did not have seatbelts. There were no SUVs--people bought large station wagons with fake wood panels on the side. Telephones had dials on them, but the very first pushbutton phones had been introduced. We had not yet been to the Moon.<br /><br />Most people smoked. Most men wore hats, and most women wore hats to church. Most women wore dresses. Many cars were still not air-conditioned.<br /><br />When you flew on an airplane, you were served an actual meal, served with tableware and napkins, like a restaurant meal but on a plastic tray.<br /><br />Real-time TV broadcasts across the ocean only became possible in 1963, with the introduction of the Telstar satellite. My parents called me into our livingroom to watch a real-time broadcast of French people singing folk songs.<br /><br />Many TV shows were in black and white, and if a show was in color, that was special. A peacock symbol would come on TV, and the announcer would excitedly say, "The following program is brought to you in living color!" Words like "sex," "pregnant," etc. could not be mentioned on TV. Married couples in TV sitcoms were shown going to sleep in twin beds, not touching. Seriously.<br /><br />What did this mean on the day Kennedy was shot?<br /><br />Walter Cronkite had to announce the news first on audio only, because it took 20 minutes to get a camera set up.<br /><br />Half the President's cabinet, including the Secretary of State, next in the line of Presidential succession after the Vice President, was on a government plane flying from Hawaii to Japan. Their only connection to the day's events were radio transmissions to and from the White House situation room. When they heard what had happened, they turned around. Their being informed and turning around was a matter of a couple of hours.<br /><br />When a federal judge in Texas, Sarah T. Hughes, was tapped to go on Air Force 1 to administer the oath of office to Vice President Johnson, she said, "Is there an oath?" No one could find it, and they had to devise one.<br /><br />CBS News didn't know for a couple of hours if President Johnson had been sworn in, or where he physically was.<br /><br />Compared to today's instantaneous communications, via Twitter and other means, this all sounds like the era of parchment and quill pens. And yet it was only 50 years ago.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-84629201189653795032013-11-17T17:56:00.002-08:002013-11-17T17:56:36.714-08:00Little clues, large truths<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Small details can yield real insight into who and what a person is. In a book of reminiscences about life in Washington, DC, compiled by Katharine Graham, I read that one Washington socialite summed up President Herbert Hoover by the fact that, while listening to a performance of a Beethoven sonata, he absent-mindedly clinked the change in his pocket.<br /><br />Making my way through John Ferling's excellent <i>Jefferson and Hamilton and the Rivalry that Shaped America</i>, I read that Jefferson had Hamilton to dinner one evening when they were both new members of Washington's first cabinet and were just getting to know each other. Hamilton noticed portraits of John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir Francis Bacon hanging in Jefferson's house and asked who they were.<br /><br />"The three greatest men that the world has ever produced," Jefferson answered.<br /><br />"The greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar," Hamilton replied.<br /><br />At once, Jefferson saw how great the gulf was that separated him from his soon-to-be antagonist.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-23547375241706268702013-11-16T17:41:00.002-08:002013-11-16T17:41:34.993-08:00All is lost and much is missing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I think I'll head to Studio on the Square to see the new Robert Redford movie, <i><a href="http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2679">All is Lost</a></i>. No, it's not about my dating life but about a man sailing the Indian Ocean alone, who must struggle to survive after his boat is struck by floating debris from a cargo ship. That part, sadly, is true: the world's oceans are now dotted with islands of floating garbage, some several acres in extent, from causes ranging from losses from cargo ships to the Japanese tsunami of a few years ago. Other than that, it occurs to me that, in the current cultural context of movies, the title "All is Lost" may refer to the fact that the movie contains no car chases, no explosions, no romantic interest or bedroom scenes, no other actors at all, and almost no dialogue. In other words, the viewer's interest must be held by the eloquent expressiveness of the face of a 77-year-old actor, which is kind of like being on a 4-hour walk with nothing but one's own thoughts to keep one company, an unthinkable condition for many.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-11453133145476162062013-11-09T17:46:00.001-08:002013-11-09T17:46:57.818-08:00Gaiety then and now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I suppose there could hardly be a better time to read historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Thousand_Days.html?id=JsqBEdFx-fQC">A Thousand Days</a></i>, his 1965 memoir of the Kennedy White House, than this month. Schlesinger's combination of an observant eye and his historian's instinct for little-known facts lead him to paint a vivid picture of Camelot; we learn, for instance, that the core thought of "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do your country" is one that Kennedy had turned over in his mind for quite some time, but it also echoed a sentiment in a Memorial Day speech given by future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in 1884. We read that Kennedy caustically dismissed Eisenhower as disloyal to old friends and only interested in playing golf with "a bunch of rich guys that he met after 1945"; on the other hand, speaking of Barry Goldwater, whose politics and background were the polar opposite of Kennedy's own, Kennedy called him a man of character and decency.<br /><br />I'm reading a description of the similarities and differences between Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, twice the Democratic nominee for President and, later, Kennedy's Ambassador to the UN. Schlesinger says that visits to the homes of either Kennedy, in Massachusetts, or Stevenson, in Illinois, "had very much the same mood and tempo--the same sort of spacious, tranquil country house; the same patrician ease of manners; the same sense of children and dogs in the background; the same kind of irrelevant European visitors; the same gay humor"...umm, how's that again? Gay humor? Well, no, not *that* kind of gay (though just such rumors were floated, at one point, about Stevenson, because of his lifelong bachelorhood, but in fact, he was just as much a ladies' man as Kennedy). It's funny...this book was written only 48 years ago, but almost no one uses "gay" any more in its traditional sense, as Schlesinger used it. How the world has changed.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-86586044057452723322013-10-16T14:26:00.001-07:002013-10-16T14:33:02.446-07:00Is Cruz crazed?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some straight talk from <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/10/16/is-the-shutdown-caucus-happy-now-boehner-cruz-lee/">Jonathan Tobin</a> of <i>Commentary</i>, who was as stalwart as anyone on blaming the debt crisis on Obama but still recognizes facts when he sees them:<br /><br />"...after weeks of suffering the opprobrium of the mainstream media as well as increasing the distrust felt by many Americans for their party, what exactly did the GOP accomplish via the shutdown tactic?<br /><br />"Did trying a government shutdown defund ObamaCare? No. Did it force President Obama to make a single tangible concession to Republicans or give way on something that would help them fight the battle against growing deficits and debt or the ObamaCare fiasco further down the line? No. Did it weaken and further divide the Republican Party? Yes.<br /><br />"That leaves us with one more question: Are those that egged Boehner on to force a shutdown fight happy with these results?"<br /><br />Well Ted Cruz took the gamble of his career. He's betting that his party is as nutty as he is. He will either be proven right and ride this sorry episode to the GOP nomination in 2016, or he will be the object of a huge and richly deserved backlash. I honestly don't know which will happen.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-73161007431357546572013-10-15T16:27:00.000-07:002013-10-15T16:27:54.392-07:00How long, O Cruz...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We are a government of laws and a civil society that resolves its differences peacefully (unless you're an American citizen living somewhere that someone can fire a drone at you). Still, as I watch us dragged to the brink of default and the loss of the world's confidence by a group of ignorant, impudent know-nothings, I confess I have thought a great deal about a speech I read in Latin 45 years ago when I was 16, Cicero's first oration against Catiline. Granted, Catiline was plotting a violent coup, which Ted Cruz is not, but the effects of Cruz's behavior will cause a great deal more damage and hurt many more people than Catiline ever dreamt of. Here is the passage that keeps coming back to me:<br /><br />"You ought, O Catiline, long ago to have been led to execution by command of the consul. That destruction which you have been long plotting against us ought to have already fallen on your own head.<br /><br />"What? Did not that most illustrious man, Publius Scipio, the Pontifex Maximus, in his capacity of a private citizen, put to death Tiberius Gracchus, though but slightly undermining the constitution? And shall we, who are the consuls, tolerate Catiline, openly desirous to destroy the whole world with fire and slaughter? For I pass over older instances, such as how Caius Servilius Ahala with his own hand slew Spurius Maelius when plotting a revolution in the state. There was—there was once such virtue in this republic, that brave men would repress mischievous citizens with severer chastisement than the most bitter enemy. For we have a resolution of the senate, a formidable and authoritative decree against you, O Catiline; the wisdom of the republic is not at fault, nor the dignity of this senatorial body. We, we alone,—I say it openly, —we, the consuls, are waiting in our duty.<br /><br />"The senate once passed a decree that Lucius Opimius, the consul, should take care that the republic suffered no injury. Not one night elapsed. There was put to death, on some mere suspicion of disaffection, Caius Gracchus, a man whose family had borne the most unblemished reputation for many generations. There was slain Marcus Fulvius, a man of consular rank, and all his children. By a like decree of the senate the safety of the republic was entrusted to Caius Marius and Lucius Valerius, the consuls. Did not the vengeance of the republic, did not execution overtake Lucius Saturninus, a tribune of the people, and Caius Servilius, the praetor, without the delay of one single day? But we, for these twenty days have been allowing the edge of the senate's authority to grow blunt, as it were. For we are in possession of a similar decree of the senate, but we keep it locked up in its parchment—buried, I may say, in the sheath; and according to this decree you ought, O Catiline, to be put to death this instant. You live,—and you live, not to lay aside, but to persist in your audacity.<br /><br />"I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I wish not to appear negligent amid such danger to the state; but I do now accuse myself of remissness and culpable inactivity."<br /><br />I am also reminded of how Old Hickory referred to his own Vice-President, whose Union-threatening obstructionism was on a level with that of Cruz, as "John Catiline Calhoun."<br /><br />Our entire way of life cannot be held to ransom by ignorant, perverse fools. Something must be done, and I'm not sure what it is.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.
Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-57048913622955021392013-10-15T11:25:00.000-07:002013-10-15T11:25:04.474-07:00When do I know enough to say no?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I saw the following question on <a href="http://www.quora.com/">Quora </a>this morning:<br /><br />Since we can't know 100% of the knowledge of the universe, what are the grounds for atheism?<br /><br />My answer:<br /><br />The premise of the question is flawed. Even if we did know every fact about the universe, God, if he existed, would be over, above, and anterior to the universe, so complete knowledge of the universe would tell us nothing about a Being who had been outside it all along.<br /><br />God is not like a sound pitched on a frequency too high for us to hear. If he existed, he would necessarily be on a different plane altogether, living in a realm of being that contained ours and could affect it but could not, itself, be changed by anything that happened inside the universe.<br /><br />Aside from that, the question could logically apply to a great many things. Since we don't have all knowledge, what are the grounds for not believing that<br /><br />- Apollo rained a hail of arrows into the camp of the Greeks besieging Troy, because they had dishonored his priest, as recorded in the Iliad?<br /><br />- A giant raven hatched mankind out from under a turtle shell, as described in some ancient Native American traditions?<br /><br />- The infant Hercules strangled snakes that had been sent to kill him in his cradle?<br /><br />- During the rule of Sulla, a loud and dismal trumpet blast filled the afternoon sky over Rome, amazing everyone with its intensity and with no discoverable origin, causing the sages to believe that this heralded the beginning of the 8th great age foretold by the Etruscan sages, as recorded in Plutarch's life of Sulla?<br /><br />- The spirit of Augustus rose from his funeral pyre and was received into the realms of happiness by the Olympian Gods, as attested by someone who attended his funeral?<br /><br />- The Angel Gabriel dictated the Qu'ran to Muhammad word for word?<br /><br />- King Arthur, as a boy, drew a sword from a stone?<br /><br />- Davy Crockett killed a bear when he was 3 years old?<br /><br />- The Angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and showed him gold plates inscribed in ancient languages?<br /><br />Lacking all knowledge, I can't disprove any of those things, so this objection is not peculiar to atheism. It suggests, rather, what I often find to be true, that the religious share my skepticism toward all *other* religions but their own, while theirs, by a fortunate exception, is true and proven.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.
Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-70824504439095180362013-10-14T19:52:00.001-07:002013-10-14T19:52:05.873-07:00The effort to be broadminded<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I haven't posted in about a year, and one reason is that they changed the Blogger editor some months ago and, true to form, when technical people try to improve something, they make it useless and inexplicable. Time was when this facility was mostly intuitive and easy to use; now, I can hardly figure how to do half of what I once did with ease, and that's what passes for enhancement.<br /><br />
But to the subject of this post: as I commented to someone last week, I follow media sources all across the political spectrum—in print and online, from <a href="http://www.redstate.com/">Redstate.com,</a> <i><a href="http://www.humanevents.com/">Human Events</a></i>, and <i><a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/">Commentary</a></i>, on the right, to <i><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/">Mother Jones</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a></i> on the left, while my own views are somewhere between <i><a href="http://www.economist.com/">The Economist</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/">The New Republic</a></i>. Similarly, on cable news, I feel I ought to look in on everyone from <a href="http://www.hannity.com/">Hannity</a> and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html">The O'Reilly Factor</a> to <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/">Jon Stewart</a> and <a href="http://www.billmaher.com/">Bill Maher</a>. So tonight, I tuned into what I thought would be Hannity, intending to change to <a href="http://tv.msnbc.com/shows/the-last-word/">Lawrence O'Donnell</a> at 9:00 (i.e., to go from Hannity to sanity), but to my surprise, I found some pretty young blonde hosting something called the <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/the-kelly-file/index.html">Kelly File</a> which, in its own way, is even farther out than the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files">X-Files</a>, and is so offensively stupid that I am reminded of how Elvis, in his last days, used to <a href="http://www.elvisblog.net/2007/11/04/the-strange-odyssey-of-elvis-shot-up-tv/">fire a gun at the television set</a>. Ms. Kelly reminds me of a quote near the end of Flannery O'Connor's story "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Good_Man_Is_Hard_to_Find_(short_story)">A Good Man is Hard to Find,</a>" where the Misfit says "She would have been a good woman, if there had been someone to shoot her every minute of her life." One of her guests was another pretty young woman from some college conservative organization that calls itself something like "<a href="http://enlightenedwomen.org/">The Association of Enlightened Women</a>." Got it.<br /><br />Anyway, I'd be happy to interact with either of these two young ladies, though in a way that I needn't describe in public and that would earn me the epithet of "old goat." I can't see that either has anything of value to add to a discussion of politics. Anyway, speaking of "old goat" reminds me of the commercials I keep seeing for something that sounds like "reptile dysfunction," though it's actually about something else. It's interesting that although the male models in these commercials are as gray as I am, the women can't possibly be a day over 45. I too would be delighted to meet someone of 45, but I hardly expect it as a universal template for social life for men my age.<br /><br />And now, back to watching empty-headed Fox News pundits extol the sleazy, cynical, shameless exploitation of 80- and 90-something vets by the Tea Party to protest a shutdown that the Tea Party started in the first place.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2013. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221442778190018842.post-90061667781110891952012-10-19T15:46:00.001-07:002012-10-19T15:53:35.787-07:00Weekend choices<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Home and ready to begin the weekend. I've listened to my daily voice mail, a telemarketing call from some outfit wanting to know who in my house suffers from back pain. Next, I read that the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/19/prince-harry-s-ex-chelsy-davy-s-night-out-with-the-young-royal-set.html">young royal set is planning a big evening out</a>, which is certainly a load off my mind. Actually, they could try something different and plan a big evening <i>in </i>and get started reading the next issue of <i><a href="http://www.economist.com/">The Economist</a></i>. I don't get my copy until Saturday, but since they live in the UK, I'll bet theirs has already been delivered. Or, if they still want to go nightclubbing, I suppose they could read it in their cell phones, as I sometimes do during lunch.<br /><br />
If they were visiting my apartment, they could look at the issue of <i><a href="http://newsstand.aarp.org/#Home&Document=69828">AARP Magazine</a></i> that I got just today and check one of the headline stories, in which Bette Midler promises to reflect on "<a href="http://pubs.aarp.org/aarptm/20121011_PR?folio=17#pg19">What I know now</a>." What I know now is what I've known for months: that if Romney wins, this country will eventually turn into Guatemala, as noted in <i><a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/108185/blue-states-are-scandinavia-red-states-are-guatemala?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=22eae4cd0b-TNR_Daily_101812&utm_medium=email">The New Republic</a></i> just the other day.<br /><br />
As to the rest of <i>AARP Magazine</i>, the next big article is "Make the Most of Your Fifties: Energize Your Brain, Your Body, and Your Sex Life!" I'd say I've got a pretty good plan of attack on the first two; the third is perhaps best expressed by the title of the old hymn, <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUiqncJE_dI&feature=fvwrel">Precious Memories</a></i>.<br /><br />
Anyway, my big night out will consist of getting off my energized backside, walking 3 miles down Poplar Avenue to the <a href="http://www.malco.com/">Paradiso</a>, and catching <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w918Eh3fij0">Argo</a></i>, followed by a walk back home and a chance to take off some of the calories I absorbed when I ate that banana nut muffin at work today. But speaking of memories and the carnal side of life, I'll spare a thought for lovely Dutch actress <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/arts/sylvia-kristel-60-dies-starred-in-emmanuelle.html">Sylvia Kristel</a>, the star of the long-ago <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOXacenEk8">Emmanuelle</a></i>, who has died at 60 of cancer. Her film, considered incredibly daring in its day, was rather coolly antiseptic for something purporting to celebrate the pleasures of the flesh, but Kristel gamely played along, and her pretty face and quiet intelligence perhaps lent the picture more than its subject matter deserved.<br /><br />© Michael Huggins, 2012. All rights reserved.Michael Hugginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03526679655270747708noreply@blogger.com0