After years of procrastination, I began writing a history of my son Eric. A middle-aged couple triumphantly brought its first child into the world and lived to tell about it. I wrote it near Christmas time, and it was our own miracle of birth and beginning. In the process we came into possession of a nine-pound device exquisitely designed to provoke suffering in nearby adults.
Gotta Have the Right Philosophy of Parenting
Any baby is a massive workload. Twins would have been suicide material for me. Since we only had one arrive at first, and that turned out to be all, we came up with a philosophy of parenting that doubled the job.
Eric came when we were both in our mid-thirties. Like many intense, earnest creatures around age 30, my dear wife Sherry had had time to study life and get it pretty well figured out. She had worked so hard to be grown up, had scrutinized the ins and out of life, and had arrived at ANSWERS. Me, too. I was a thirty-year-old know-it-all if one ever walked the planet. Sherry used to call me her “righteous autocrat” because I had my mind so made up about so many things. Other than that I was really liberal and generous and voted for Jimmy Carter.
More than I, Sherry had pondered nest-building and nurturing, and came up with firm convictions about how to do it. A couple of years into my marriage, I saw that, if something involved home or family, Sherry could give a little, but in most things it had to be done her way or die. She had read books explaining that, every time a baby was left helpless to cry, this screwed it up more emotionally for the rest of its life. This meant that, the second the baby started to fuss, you put your life on hold until it was soothed.
Unlike my wife, I had not duplicated the research labors of Benjamin Spock in my spare time, but minimal stress for the baby made sense to me. Naturally this meant maximal stress for the parents.
In those days I was quick to embrace ideas that made life harder rather than easier. My favorite sport was distance running, a form of suffering incarnate. If I had to go up two floors in a building, I refused to ride the elevator. I wanted a challenge, I wanted commitment, I wanted, in short, to suffer and feel like my life reached a higher plane because of it.
I had come into possession of a nine-pound device exquisitely designed to provoke suffering in nearby adults. It had a wide range of features that caused pain in their backs, in their noses, and in their pocketbooks.
This “suck-sleep-poop-and yell” device also provoked love and delight in said adults, in grand quantities. This delight helped them live in denial of just how much they were suffering, for a few months or a few years, anyway.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
SUPREME COURT REPORT
Third Issue
Feb 12, 2010
Behaving Better than Bin Laden
Hispanics have finally risen into the top tier of government lawyering. A yet unposted issue noted the rise and role of Alberto Gonzales as our chief law enforcement officer, without saying the title he bore--US Attorney General.
I referred briefly to Gonzales’ role in Bush justice policies after September 11. Some in the US seemed to feel that the terrorists’ killing huge numbers of civilians, rather than focusing on military targets, left us morally free to operate outside the traditional rules of battle and international affairs. The foe is an amorphous, stateless, mobile group, largely not susceptible to being defeated by ordinary military force. They operate in the shadows; so could we. In line with this, University of Utah's Susan Miller points out that torture has been the “business-as-usual” method of punishing and interrogating enemies, time out of mind.
These are points not to be ignored, but I am wary of using them to justify an amoral campaign by a nation that
a) set the model for representative government,
b) urges the expansion of human rights
c) declares itself to be the example for that expansion, and
d) is now in a class of its own as to economic and military power in the world. I think we need to
behave
better than Osama bin Laden,
better than the Japanese who started wars of aggression and forced pilots to commit suicide by kamikaze,
better than Eqyptian or Czech interrogators who may torture their prisoners and treat them inhumanely in dozens of ways that don’t actively qualify under the definition of “torture.”
The White Man’s Playground
Since the first black was put on the Supreme Court in 1967, it has largely remained a White Man’s Playground. There have been about four times as many white appointees as minority ones, and about five times as many men as women. I said President Reagan’s appointing O’Connor reminded me of the Mormon leader changing the rule about black men being priests. Both Reagan and the LDS president continued an ageless pattern of discrimination. Then, under pressure, they gave in one time, and wanted to be treated as if they were fair and equally kind to all groups. They were not!
I noted that conservatives seem to care most about preserving what they see as the purity of the law, and white males seem best able to preserve it. I failed to explain why: For at least 4,000 years, law in European societies and their colonies has been of the white males, by the white males, for the white males. That, far more than a questionable legal pedigree, is why William Kristol was upset by the nomination of Harriet Miers, first nominated to fill the seat now occupied by Samuel Alito. My God, it was pointed out, in 1987 she gave money to a Democrat! Doctrinal adherence, rather than fairness to groups long excluded, was and surely remains Mr. Kristol’s priority. His group temporarily has lost the hegemony by something between five and 15 percentage points of votes cast. This is a grand miracle, given that about 2005 I picked up a hitchhiker near Primm, Nevada, who said, “How come nobody likes us liberals any more?”
Scott Simon in about 2005 said, “Imagine that the Democrats were restored to majority in Congress, oh, 12 years from now.”
I thought that highly unlikely—far too quick. Yet by 2006 John the big government hater predicted forlornly that a Democrat would probably win the presidency in 2008. That Democrat was a black man, and a woman would have won had he not appeared on the scene. After 43 anglo-saxon males in the office, the presidency has temporarily stopped being a White Man’s Playground.
Third Issue
Feb 12, 2010
Behaving Better than Bin Laden
Hispanics have finally risen into the top tier of government lawyering. A yet unposted issue noted the rise and role of Alberto Gonzales as our chief law enforcement officer, without saying the title he bore--US Attorney General.
I referred briefly to Gonzales’ role in Bush justice policies after September 11. Some in the US seemed to feel that the terrorists’ killing huge numbers of civilians, rather than focusing on military targets, left us morally free to operate outside the traditional rules of battle and international affairs. The foe is an amorphous, stateless, mobile group, largely not susceptible to being defeated by ordinary military force. They operate in the shadows; so could we. In line with this, University of Utah's Susan Miller points out that torture has been the “business-as-usual” method of punishing and interrogating enemies, time out of mind.
These are points not to be ignored, but I am wary of using them to justify an amoral campaign by a nation that
a) set the model for representative government,
b) urges the expansion of human rights
c) declares itself to be the example for that expansion, and
d) is now in a class of its own as to economic and military power in the world. I think we need to
behave
better than Osama bin Laden,
better than the Japanese who started wars of aggression and forced pilots to commit suicide by kamikaze,
better than Eqyptian or Czech interrogators who may torture their prisoners and treat them inhumanely in dozens of ways that don’t actively qualify under the definition of “torture.”
The White Man’s Playground
Since the first black was put on the Supreme Court in 1967, it has largely remained a White Man’s Playground. There have been about four times as many white appointees as minority ones, and about five times as many men as women. I said President Reagan’s appointing O’Connor reminded me of the Mormon leader changing the rule about black men being priests. Both Reagan and the LDS president continued an ageless pattern of discrimination. Then, under pressure, they gave in one time, and wanted to be treated as if they were fair and equally kind to all groups. They were not!
I noted that conservatives seem to care most about preserving what they see as the purity of the law, and white males seem best able to preserve it. I failed to explain why: For at least 4,000 years, law in European societies and their colonies has been of the white males, by the white males, for the white males. That, far more than a questionable legal pedigree, is why William Kristol was upset by the nomination of Harriet Miers, first nominated to fill the seat now occupied by Samuel Alito. My God, it was pointed out, in 1987 she gave money to a Democrat! Doctrinal adherence, rather than fairness to groups long excluded, was and surely remains Mr. Kristol’s priority. His group temporarily has lost the hegemony by something between five and 15 percentage points of votes cast. This is a grand miracle, given that about 2005 I picked up a hitchhiker near Primm, Nevada, who said, “How come nobody likes us liberals any more?”
Scott Simon in about 2005 said, “Imagine that the Democrats were restored to majority in Congress, oh, 12 years from now.”
I thought that highly unlikely—far too quick. Yet by 2006 John the big government hater predicted forlornly that a Democrat would probably win the presidency in 2008. That Democrat was a black man, and a woman would have won had he not appeared on the scene. After 43 anglo-saxon males in the office, the presidency has temporarily stopped being a White Man’s Playground.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
SUPREME COURT REPORT
Fifth Edition
January 27, 2010
Catastrophe at the Court?
Where is Harriet Myers when we need her?
A 5-4 court decided Citizens United v. FEC by overturning part of the McCain-Feingold law. In November I wrote "This case, so far as I know, is about how overtly money can run and buy the country and its political agents." Led by Chief Justice Roberts, the court drastically expanded the free speech rights of corporations. Some commentators have told us that our basic mistake was passing a law over 100 years ago that made the corporation a legal person. Now, as a person under the law, the corporation's right to speak undoes the spending limits placed on it by existing, and now unconstitutional, law.
Business largely runs and controls the strings of power in the United States, as it is now. This grave extension of the financing right of corporations to directly support candidates increases what was already much too large for a good democracy, or republic.
The court ignored lengthy findings by Congress that money tends to corrupt the political process. According to one liberal pundit, it also ignored a hundred years of related decisions about campaign finance, including its own decision in a case not more than a few years old. Between then and now, O'Connor retired and Alito took her place. Where is Harriet Myers when we need her?
Often the results of court decisions are not just what was expected. We can only hope that will be the case here. It does appear that Congress' power to change this effect is quite limited.
As Daniel Shorr said on the radio today, "It is not a good time for Democrats."
It recalls some of the year-after-year feelings I had during the Bush administration.
Fifth Edition
January 27, 2010
Catastrophe at the Court?
Where is Harriet Myers when we need her?
A 5-4 court decided Citizens United v. FEC by overturning part of the McCain-Feingold law. In November I wrote "This case, so far as I know, is about how overtly money can run and buy the country and its political agents." Led by Chief Justice Roberts, the court drastically expanded the free speech rights of corporations. Some commentators have told us that our basic mistake was passing a law over 100 years ago that made the corporation a legal person. Now, as a person under the law, the corporation's right to speak undoes the spending limits placed on it by existing, and now unconstitutional, law.
Business largely runs and controls the strings of power in the United States, as it is now. This grave extension of the financing right of corporations to directly support candidates increases what was already much too large for a good democracy, or republic.
The court ignored lengthy findings by Congress that money tends to corrupt the political process. According to one liberal pundit, it also ignored a hundred years of related decisions about campaign finance, including its own decision in a case not more than a few years old. Between then and now, O'Connor retired and Alito took her place. Where is Harriet Myers when we need her?
Often the results of court decisions are not just what was expected. We can only hope that will be the case here. It does appear that Congress' power to change this effect is quite limited.
As Daniel Shorr said on the radio today, "It is not a good time for Democrats."
It recalls some of the year-after-year feelings I had during the Bush administration.
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