The Business End of the Stick

Amendment VIII:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This is a short amendment, but it has large implications for our society.  Without getting too preachy about the numbers, take a gander at this: Worldwide Incarceration Statistics.  Please do not tell me that you think that is okay in a nation that reveres freedom as a founding principle.  Also, please do not fall away from the horror of that statistic by insisting that China probably has more people in jail than they let on, which may be true, but it actually doesn't matter because I don't want to compare my country to China when it comes to justice and human rights.  I don't care what they do, they're nasty, horrible, oppressive and all that stuff, but according to this, we're worse than them at locking people up.
So what's up? Are we inherently more criminal than other countries?  I'm thinking about comparing similar countries like the UK, Canada or Australia, which increases our shame (Canada is not even on the list in the article above, it's about 106/100K compared to 737/100K for the US).  Why on God's green earth does our northern neighbor only have 1/7th of our incarceration rate?  They have big cities, they have poverty and drug problems, what's the deal here?  It's pretty complicated, so I'm going to make a list:

1. The "War" on Drugs: Since I was a kid we have been engaged in a national struggle against illegal drugs.  Non-coincidentally, this also marks the explosion of the incarceration rates.  The terminology and the mindset we use here matters a great deal.  We have treated drugs as an enemy, and thus we have treated users, addicts, dealers and suppliers as the armies of that enemy.  I don't wish to engage in arguments about legalization or normalization of drugs here.  I am just convinced that the reason why our prisons are stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey has mostly to do with the zealous hatred inspired by the war on drugs.  We have allowed our enemy to define us and make us into precisely the sort of monster we thought we were battling in the Cold War: a state that scoops up "undesirables" and robs them of their freedom and submerges them in a dystopian "corrections" system where their chances of ever getting back to a "normal" life is practically nil.
2. Privatization of Prisons: I get it, we're a capitalist society, and since we're going to be locking up so many people, we ought to let somebody get rich off of all that wasted human potential.  It's a long standing human tradition: you fail, you lose, you break the law, you become someone else's slave or cash cow, you might as well do someone some good.  The problem is that the "corrections" system, in the best of all possible worlds, should be about rehabilitation and restoration rather than strictly about punishment.  Contracting that duty out to the low bidder, just isn't a very good idea.  It leads to what amounts to cruel and unusual punishments: poorly staffed prisons overrun with gangs, rapes, drugs and all the things you might hope would be absent from a place designed to get folk back on the right path.
3. Racism: Prisons are just full of black and brown people, at an alarmingly high rate. I'm not even going to go into more detail about this, because I'm just too sad.
4. False ideas of retribution and vengeance equaling justice: This is probably the root cause of a lot of our problems: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  We think collectively that the only way to have justice is retributive, not restorative.  Why, in 2016, do we still have capital punishment?  Why is our correctional system so out of whack?  It has to be a philosophical and fundamental problem with our approach.  We think more violence will make us safe.  We think fear of consequences will stop those who would do harm.  History has proven that both of these thoughts are fallacies.  The fact of the matter is that most of the people in the correctional system didn't start out with the intent to harm others (some of them did, so I'm not going to say we don't ever need to lock people up).  A lot of criminal journeys are simply the result of making some poor life choices, and far too many of them are related to addiction (see #1). the only solution to the problem is some very hard work of transforming our approach to dealing with crime. It's going to require a consistent focus on the criminal as a human being who is in need of restoration rather than a virus that must be quarantined and/or purged from the system.

What we have now is a blatantly unconstitutional system.  It is broken, it is cruel and unusual, it is excessive in some way at almost every turn. Justice is obviously not blind or equally applied across the socio-economic spectrum.  People who steal millions get lighter sentences than people who steal hundreds or sell a couple bags of dried leaves. Find anything in this that actually resembles justice.
It is obvious that we cannot let criminals run free in the world to harm the law abiding citizens and the innocent, but somewhere between anarchy and where we are now, there must be a place where the scales balance.

Common Law

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall otherwise be re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

In 1791 twenty dollars was a lot of money to most people, it meant that this statute was not meant to apply to every trivial little dispute that came down the pike.  In fact, there are several ways to calculate the actual value that a 1791 twenty-twen represents in today's dollars.  The results are interesting to say the least. You will of course notice that the low end of the spectrum is not that impressive, both the GDP deflator method and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) method tell us that $20 in 1791 is somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 today in terms of purchasing power.  However, as an indicator of economic power check out this analysis of what the different methods tell us.  Of particular interest to me was the fact that in terms of economic influence the share of GDP method is actually of value, yes that's the $1,690,000.00 figure.  The article referenced above compared Warren Buffet and John D. Rockafeller in terms of overall power, and found that Rockafeller with a mere $1.4 billion net worth was nearly four times as powerful in his day than Buffet with a net worth of $62 billion.
Why does this matter?  Because the world is different now than it was then and, as I have stated previously, we obviously need to do some interpretation, which leads us to less than black and white conclusions.  What should the threshold for a jury trial in a common law case be?  Surely even the strict constructionists don't want a bunch of $20 lawsuits clogging up the courts, right?  What about $500, is that worth the time and trouble?  Admittedly, $1.7 million is probably a bit of a high threshold but jury trials are expensive and time consuming, and forcing certain types of minor issues through jury trials has created a theater of the absurd in certain corners of the legal system.  Not to mention the fact that a jury is far from the sacred institution that our beloved founders probably envisioned.  These days juries can be misled and manipulated and sometimes just be wrong.  They can award exorbitant punitive damages because some defendant came across as smug, and they can deny justice to a plaintiff who is just frankly an annoying human being.  Juries are made up of humans, who have an emotional response to being stuck listening to a couple of angry neighbors arguing about cracks in the sidewalk or a tree falling on someone's roof.
But the large majority of legal stuff that happens is common law stuff, and so this ends up being really important.  Despite what TV might represent, most legal stuff is stiflingly boring.  It's lawyers and paperwork.  Ask a lawyer you know, we all know at least a few, most of them will be able to count actual arguments in front of an actual jury on one hand, and a good number of them will admit to never having done it ever.
But trial by jury is an important right we have, should we ever need it.  It is, however, in most cases in our best interest to not need it.  Which fact leads me to one of the overarching realities of making sense of our rights as citizens: often times the system requires us to be sensible about exercising those rights.  In college, I was required to take Business Law 243, a basic course in common law for us science types who might someday have some sort of interface with our esteemed legal system.  The professor asked us early on in the semester: "What are you allowed to sue people for?"  Most of us, being neophytes to the law started talking about negligence or serious harm depending on whether we focused on the cause or the effect of the infraction.  He fielded a few of our tentative answers, some of which sounded actually pretty reasonable.  Then finally, when he had had his fun, he said, "You can sue anybody for anything at any time."
The result was predictably stunned silence.  This was a man who had actually done a good bit of argument in front of juries, he looked vaguely like Perry Mason, which didn't hurt the over all impact, and had a large booming voice.  "Of course, you have to prove damages, and you have to make your burden of proof that there was intent or negligence or some of the things you were all talking about. None of your answers were all wrong, but you need to know that the law actually allows for civil lawsuits to be brought for pretty much any reason."  He went on to explain how and why frivolous lawsuits were punished by the legal system and how, in his opinion, tort reform was the single most important issue that needed to be addressed in our legal system to weed out the nonsense that just bogs us down and prevents us doing the really important work of peace and justice.
That is most of what I remember from BLAW 243, but it made an impression, and gave me a rather different trajectory on all things legal than I would have had otherwise.  And it also made me rather grateful that our system is separated out into civil and criminal law, and that we have lawyers who know what they're doing, or else we'd all be in a heap of trouble.

Crime and Punishment

Amendment VI:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory processes for obtaining witnesses in  his favor; and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

We have all heard the Miranda statute being practiced on TV cop shows, which includes elements from both amendment V and VI, and we think that is sort of what we need to know about our rights vis-a-vis the criminal justice system.  However, criminal justice is complicated, because crime is complicated.  One of the founding principals of our criminal legal system is that defendants are "innocent until proven guilty."  However, as  you may notice that exact phrase is not present in the primary statutes of the constitution dealing with criminal justice.  It must be assumed, and it can be assumed with reasonable certitude by the outline of how one accused of a crime is treated.
The important thing to notice here is that these codes enforce the ability of the accused to defend themselves.  It is also established that the jury system, and jurisdiction are important components of anything like a "fair" trial.
In reality, you can abide by the letter of these laws and still wind up with a horrible miscarriage of justice, because human beings are involved at all levels.  Humans investigate the crimes, humans accuse, humans defend, humans sit on juries, humans are prosecutors and humans are defense attorneys, humans are judges, and humans can always mess up.  Humans can be subject to emotional bias, racism, prejudice of all sorts, they can be offended by the nature of an accusation and the pathos of the victim, they can also be hardened by a victim that seems unsympathetic.  A legal process is designed, in theory, to go after the truth, but often the egos and failures of the human beings involved in it can make it about something else.
The wisdom of V and VI is that they attempt to account for some of these variables.  The massive work of tracking and analyzing case law is what makes attorneys earn their money. The terms of Amendment VI are fodder for lawyers: what is speedy? What is impartial? How to figure out what witnesses to call and when?  What is proper evidence?
Justice ends up being far from blind.  And also far from just, far too often.  The waves of exoneration that have been rolling in as old evidence is re-examined using available DNA testing methods is proof that this system has broken down more often than we would like to imagine.  The incarceration statistics of this nation, and the fact that we still practice capital punishment are signs that we have stalled on the journey towards a just society.
These basic guidelines cannot possibly have envisioned the world in which we live, even in terms of scale.  These basic guidelines could not have imagined the OJ Simpson Trial or the twenty four hour news cycle.  These basic guidelines could not have predicted that, one day, in certain kinds of cases, the victims and the witnesses would need to be protected as well from abuse by the very justice system.
These guidelines were a projection of an era that was already coming to an end.  These guidelines assumed that the justice system was primarily for land holding white men, and women, slaves and people of other races were going to be treated largely as property  They were almost two hundred years ahead of the war on drugs and the civil rights movement.  They were 130 years ahead of women's suffrage.  The were blissfully unaware that the society they knew would be entirely torn apart and reformed by a Civil War and an industrial revolution.  They were also seemingly naive about the fact that the future course of their society would take several steps back intellectually and culturally from where they stood at the high point.
I leave you with this bit of wisdom from Sir Terry Pratchett:

I guess we still have to work at this then.

Okay, VI is Going to Have to Wait

The Constitution will still be here later.  But lo, and behold, there's another tragedy that needs mourned, actually there are several that have gone down recently that don't necessarily get the press that Brussels or another Western nation might have gotten: Ankara, Nigeria, Iraq, people died at the hands of terrorists, lives were ended and families torn apart.  Lord, have mercy.  None of this is okay, all of them deserve a proper notice, but it was Easter week, and I had a funeral to prepare on top of everything else, so the blog got bumped out of the list of things to do.
Never fear though because the toxic phlegm blob has graced us with yet more senseless acts of violence, and this time it is in a time and place that demonstrates how clueless and benighted they actually are: they blew up a bunch of Christians in Lahore Pakistan as they celebrated Easter.  Don't get me wrong, I am not, in any way negating this as a brutal act of violence and evil.  And I understand that many Christians have become so enamored of the empire, power and privilege of Christendom that they may still react with violent speech and maybe actions of their own, but for those of us who actually pay attention to the actual Jesus story, this is absolutely not surprising.
First of all, let's start with the nature of Christian faith in Pakistan.  None of the people who were gathered to celebrate the resurrection in Lahore were doing so in the bubble of security that we in the west enjoy.  At best, they hoped to be left to their observance in peace, but they knew that, even with non-terrorist Islam (which is most of Islam) they are still on the infidel list.  Culturally that puts them in a minority, religiously, it means they really understand what it means to believe despite the threat of being "hated by the world."  If you have any understanding of world Christianity and the history thereof, you will know that this attack, far from dissuading or diminishing Christian community in Pakistan, will strengthen it and give it more power and credibility among the people there.  The church in Lahore needs our prayers, they need our expressions of shared faith and hope, they do not need us to save them, especially not by taking vengeance or trying to kill their persecutors.  That's not how this Jesus thing works, so put away your sword.
Second of all, I want to talk to you 'Merican Christians.  I want you to look at the pictures from Lahore, that is what persecution looks like.  It is not being forced to make cupcakes for a gay wedding or having the ten commandments removed from the courthouse lawn, or anything of the sort.  I also want you to go behind the surface stories, and pay attention to how the church in Pakistan responds to this.  I don't even know what exactly they're going to do yet, but I guarantee it won't be saber rattling and calling for vengeance.  Do not take your eyes off of Lahore after our news cycle leaves it, use this thing called the internet and continue to pay attention to them.  Watch what they do, watch how they heal, watch how they live into the resurrection that they were celebrating.  Pray for them sure, but also keep watching to see what the crucified Lord does in the midst of their suffering.  I'll bet you dollars to donuts it will be amazing, and it will shame the fear mongering, violence ridden sort of propaganda you are liable to see from so-called Christians in their comfortable western bubble.  But watch those hairless talking monkeys too, and compare and contrast.
Pay attention to how those who grasp at worldly power and security react to this tragedy, and pay attention to how those who genuinely hope and trust in the power of the crucified and resurrected Christ do it.
This is where genuine Christian faith shines.  This is where the families of the Mother Emmanuel church victims stand up at the arraignment and forgive Dylan Roof.  This is where we as a people of faith show that we know something that the rest of the world fails to apprehend: that love is stronger than death.  The way of the cross can be bloody to be sure, and things can seem dark, but for those in Christ that tomb always ends up empty, as it did yesterday, and as it will continue to be by the power of God in Christ Jesus.

Side Track

I'm halfway through the Bill of Rights, but I have to take a moment to comment on Brussels.  Congratulations Belgium, you have now joined the club that no one wants to join.  It's sort of like the parents who have lost children club or the HIV positive club, it's utter crap, but once you're in you just need to learn to deal with it.
Let me just say Belgium, that you're really like the last country I thought would be joining this list.  I mean, who is next? Amsterdam? Switzerland?  Seriously, these ISIS clowns are now just picking on the little kids on the block.  Seriously, maybe Lichtenstein or Monaco is more your size you band of festering rapist bullies.
You know what? I'm tired of treating Daesh like a serious thing, I think treating them like a serious thing is counterproductive.  The more seriously we take them, the more our fear builds up, the more power they have over us.  So let's take stock here, the basic reality is that we are not going to be able to defend the entire civilized world from these goat-buggering fools, because they are terrorists and cowards and they attack theaters and trains stations and airports, and places where normal people do normal things, and they can look like normal people doing normal things, but with bombs and guns under their windbreakers and in their fanny packs.
Also, everybody hates these guys already, everybody condemns these perfidious anal warts already.  Muslims, Jews, Christians, Atheists and Hindus alike, all say that Daesh is scum, even the Buddhists and probably the Hare Krishnas think they deserve to be cast off of the wheel of existence, but here's the thing, hate feeds them.  Fear makes them strong.  If we let our hate and fear run us, they win.
We have to be better than they are, and I'm not talking about military might.  There is no doubt in my mind that we could, with the proper exercise of political will and military strategy, utterly destroy Daesh, wipe them off of the face of the earth.  We could do it without using nukes, or we could just take that shortcut.  Whatever, we've got the muscles, but guess what?  If we do that we lose.  We lose our humanity, we have let the subhuman filth of Daesh take our humanity, and that will not easily grow back.
In case you can't tell, I would like to spit on Daesh, but they're probably not worth the saliva.
The internet is exploding with the same sort of impotent rage and hopeful but useless platitudes about thoughts and prayers and such.  Here's an idea, let's take away their platform.  Let's not call them anything anymore, not ISIS, not ISIL, not even Daesh (which I understand they don't like), let's not allow them to take credit for this stuff anymore.
Let's pay attention and report what really matters: people died today in Brussels Belgium as the result of a bomb.  People were shot in a theater in France in November.  Lives ended tragically and senselessly. Deal with that, don't pretend that knowing who did it or why makes any difference.  It doesn't, treat it like an earthquake or a tsunami: a tragedy.  Let's treat them as an inhuman problem, because they are exactly that: inhuman.
I'm not saying they're a different species, I'm saying that they have given up any claim to basic humanity.  Their actions cannot be justified by the rules of their own religion, or by their political aims, or by their suffering and poverty, they have gone way past that line and become sadists and psychopaths.  They are profoundly immoral by the standards of Islam.  They are brutal to everyone in their path, even the ones with whom they used to share racial, ethnic and national identities.  They have left behind almost every marker that would identify them as a part of the human race, every bond of fellowship and commonwealth has been abandoned for rabid hatred and brutal violence.
My greatest fear is not that we will suffer more savagery at the hands of these cretinous deposits of phlegm, we certainly will.  My greatest fear is that we will allow them to define us, and suck us into the primordial ooze of hatred and violence, and we will become like them.
To defeat them, we must remain better than them, we cannot take the fight to their level, because once we go there, we have lost.  When we commit to the killing of innocents, even if we call it collateral damage, we have lost.  When we lash out in anger and fear, we have lost.  When we torture and violate human rights, we have lost.  When we distrust our neighbors because of their race or their religion, we have lost.  If this enemy drags us into any of those situations, they will have won, even if we succeed in wiping them off of the face of the earth.

1, 2, 3, 4, FIFTH

Amendment V:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or an indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising on the land or naval force, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

And the award for skillful use of the semicolon goes to Amendment V!  Everybody give her a big hand!  Seriously, given the gravity of the rights presented above, it really probably deserves more than one sentence, especially given the fact that at least a few of these things can and are probably open to rather wide interpretations.  "Capital or otherwise infamous crime," but not all crime, because that would be ridiculous, but where do we draw that line?  What makes us so sure that Grand Juries are some sort of safeguard nowadays, when mostly they just rubber stamp the recommendations of the prosecutor?  Does this Amendment V really protect us in practice?
This is where the rubber hits the road in our world today.  The television series Law and Order and its spinoffs have been on TV for decades near the top of the ratings heap in part because the interpretation and practice of Amendments IV and V, produces a stunning array of dramatic possibilities.
And here, as in so many other places, we need to acknowledge the fundamental wisdom of these principles, in that they can be applied as well as they are in a world that would have been absolutely unimaginable to the authors.  They have that in common with Biblical law.  But it is also necessary to acknowledge the very different worlds of the late 18th century and the early 21st century.
First of all, the majority of crimes that our legal system handles are not the "capital or otherwise infamous" type.  Traffic violations, drug offenses (possession and small time distribution), parole violations, DUI cases, debt default, I could go on, but the point is that the massive machinery of our legal system has and does function with these guidelines in place.  It has adapted and changed and will continue to do so.
For instance, in the early days prisons were few and far between. Jails were temporary modes of punishment for people with bad debts or who got a little drunk and disorderly.  Long term "storage" of criminals was rendered unnecessary by the gallows and the hangman.  The bar for capital punishment was lower than it is now.  Over the years we have raised that bar, for the better in my opinion, to a place where we can now honestly and truly consider whether depriving an individual of life is ever justified.  The arc of justice is bending towards a place where the savagery of the death penalty is no more.
In recent years voices have begun to raise around the issue of incarceration, or rather the inordinate level of incarceration we have here in these United States.  This gets into some rather muddy water though, because society relies on the rule of law and the ability to enforce those laws.  As much as I would advocate for restorative justice, I am not so naive as to ever believe that we can completely do away with retributive justice.  The problem with the system, as it now stands, is that we often deprive the poor of their life and their liberty, where we mostly just hit the wealthy in their wallets.  White collar crime is usually lightly punished while the crimes most often committed by poor people result in lengthy incarceration, which often and consequently perpetuates a cycle of crime and punishment that is very hard to escape.  A few years back Dave Chappelle did a sketch where he put the shoe on the other foot, he humorously illustrated a crack dealer getting the treatment that white collar criminals get.
Now that is funny, but there is a real human tragedy behind this reality.  As Bob Dylan's Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll points out, justice is not always blind.  The due process of law is not yet a level playing field, and so we still have work to do.  But "due process" and ideas of justice and the seriousness of depriving our citizens of life, liberty and property are still things that are worth holding on to tightly.  True justice is a lofty goal indeed, and an ever shifting one at that.  As much as I hate to admit it, this is probably why we need lawyers (just kidding lawyer friends, I love you folks).

Protection of the Law

Amendment IV:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

This is where things start to get complicated.  There are all sorts of things that are rather open to interpretation in this Amendment.  What does it mean to be secure? In the electronic age what is the definition of papers and effects?  What is unreasonable? What is probably cause?
All of these questions have been asked and answered numerous times through the evolution and revolutions of case law, but none of them has been answered once and for all.  And in many ways this Amendment is violated on a daily basis, often by statutory exceptions (cough: Patriot Act).  Most of the violations have been deemed "necessary" for the public safety.  Some have been recognized and proven to be violations: Stop and Frisk. But the thing about it is that, far too often, the government, and law enforcement have been caught with their hand in the Amendment IV cookie jar.  It's funny (not in the ha ha way) that the very people who often defend the violation of Amendment IV in the name of safety are also the biggest Constitution huggers around.
The fact of the matter is that, if you're going to have this as a right for the members of your society, you are going to inherently increase the danger that one malefactor can do to your society.  You are going to have to turn drug dealers and maybe even murderers loose if the police botch the warrant procedure.  You are either going to have to violate everyone's rights or you are going to have to let terrorists operate under the protections of this Amendment.
What is it going to be America?
Over the past 15 years (and probably longer than that in the "war on drugs") the answer has been: forget about Amendment IV, we want to be safe.  Now, I'm sure that there are legal types who can probably make an argument that exceptions need to be made and "extenuating circumstances" blah, blah, blah.  I'm not a lawyer, and I've basically been making the point that our laws of the land are indeed a work in progress, in need of constant vigilance and evaluation.  I get it.
I am just pointing out that Amendment IV is the place where we are faced most regularly with the dilemma of trying to balance freedom and security (No, I'm not going to use the Ben Franklin quote, because apparently it has been taken out of context, and I freaking hate that.)  A society where everyone was totally free would be anarchy of a dangerous sort.  Here's a good quote about that:

I don't believe in anarchy, because it will ultimately amount to the power of the bully with weapons. Gandhi is my life's inspiration: passive resistance.  I don't want to live in the Thunderdome with Mad Max    -John Lydon, the older and wiser persona of Johnny Rotten, writer and performer of the most famous Punk Rock song ever: Anarchy in the UK, by the Sex Pistols

Prefer a little more erudite source? Here is Henry Ward Beecher:

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

And Aldous Huxley:

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy, the second worst enemy is total efficiency.

So here's where we are: no law is perfect, and no guarantee of rights under those laws is infallible.  Our society, including the rights and principles we hold sacred, are a work in progress.  The work of lawyers, legislators and judges, as I understand it, is largely beholden to following the train of precedent, which makes the progress often times painfully slow, but necessarily so.  Sometimes we get scared and rush to give up our freedom too easily.  Sometimes we are arrogant and cling to freedoms that are damaging to our neighbors.  I see no evidence that we have advanced beyond either one of those tendencies, and so laws will always have the unenviable task of protecting us from ourselves.

 

The Thing About Laws

Amendment III:

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

I almost skipped over this one, because let's face it, this just doesn't come up very much nowadays.  We haven't had a war on U.S. soil in over 150 years, so the reality of roaming brigades of soldiers commandeering the family farm and making demands on the citizenry is not really a thing that anybody worries about.  Even if we did have a military deployment in this country, we have an extensive infrastructure here already, and as the military has demonstrated more than necessary lately, they can build their own houses even on foreign soil.
So what is important about this?  Is it just a historical lesson?  If I remember my history classes correctly a lot of what went into this document was a response to the excesses and over-reaching of the British Crown.  The Quartering Act was one of the four "coercive" acts passed by Parliament to crack down on the disagreeable belligerence of the colonies (like wasting all that perfectly good tea, never get between a Brit and their tea).  In order to flex their imperial muscles a bit, and to kill two birds with one stone, they said that the Empire had the right to occupy public houses and unoccupied space in order to shelter the increasing number of redcoats that were necessary to maintain decency and order in the colonies.
As is usually the case with such things it rather quickly exceeded it's intended scope, and as antagonism grew so did the danger to the safety of the colonists.  To people trying to make a go of it in the harsh New World, life was precarious enough without having to shelter and feed a platoon of soldiers who you didn't particularly want there. Not to mention the rather predictable assaults on the virtue of wives and daughters, and maybe even sons, by armed men far from home.  Now I'm not sure of exactly how all this played out, but we have stories, and I'm guessing that behind all of those stories is some kernel of truth, and it probably wasn't rated PG.
At any rate the people who lived through this were rather keen on making sure that this new Government didn't start down that road, so they added this to the Bill of Rights.  This also foreshadows the principle of the sovereignty of the individual that is going to shape many of the coming amendments.  Statutory protection of the people from the abuse of those in power is rather important principle for a democratic-ish republic to have.  They had had enough of kings and emperors, and their armies.  In fact, there was this idea, in the beginning, that maybe we didn't even need a standing army, in fact the colonists tended to distrust such things for reasons that might be apparent above.  Watching the British burn Washington DC to the ground in the war of 1812 brought an end to that nonsense.  Nation states need armies, militias are not going to cut it, as we talked about yesterday.  They need men (and women now) who are trained and supplied and thoroughly prepared to engage in disciplined combat against other trained and supplied forces.
The maintenance of such a force requires a professional and perpetual effort, not ad-hoc enlistment of gun-ho yokels with muskets.  You cannot and should not maintain this force by imposing upon the citizens directly, so as much as we hate taxes, they are a necessity.  The alternative is having poorly trained and disciplined militia staying in your den and harassing your women folk en route to losing whatever skirmish they got in rather badly.
As much as I dislike war, I understand the necessity of the military, and I am thankful that those who serve are well trained and well equipped, and I'm glad they're not camped in my back yard.
Okay, so that's that right?  Well, there's another important thing that I think Amendment III demonstrates: laws are meant to address certain things at certain times.  Some, like Amendment I tend towards universal "self-evident" truths, but most of them are going to live their lives and maintain usefulness in perpetuity primarily as mileposts and markers in history.  That is good and right, but it throws up a challenge to those who seem to want to hit the rewind button and go back to the original intent of the Constitution and govern according to the Bill of Rights (which is something I believe I heard Ted Cruz say in one of the debates). There are only ten of them, and Amendment X says that there absolutely should be more coming (but I'm getting ahead of myself).
Next up: Secure Persons.

Second Amendment Illustrated

Amendment II:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

No, Obama is not coming to take your guns.  The Government is not going to pry them out of your hands, cold and dead or otherwise, but that is actually because of Amendment V not Amendment II, so let's leave that for now.  Let's talk guns.  I just completed my Maryland hunter education course on Saturday, so I spent the day with a fairly broad cross section of the American public, who were learning how to go out in the woods and hunt without shooting each other in the face (former VP Cheyney?  Did you pay attention in class?).  People who use firearms for sport, and as I found out, police officers and game officials, are required to take this class to ensure that they have a basic level of firearm safety awareness. So good on us.  There were people in class with all levels of experience, from people who have never held a gun before to people who had been hunting and using firearms since they were kids, but still need that little yellow card.  There were also some NRA types there, who could be nudged into spouting the usual rhetoric about the second amendment right and issuing dire warnings about the need to complain to your legislature about the "blah, blah, blah, they're gonna take our guns."
Anyhow, with such a fresh picture in my mind of the state of gun ownership in America, I'm going to do this with pictures.  First of all, when the Second Amendment was written, gun looked like this:

Not this:

Now I understand that technology is cool and all, but you just can't go on a shooting rampage with a muzzle loader, but you can with a semi-auto long gun with a 15-30 round magazine.  The second gun is supposed to be wielded by people whose job it is to fight people, most likely people that have guns of a like character.  If you want to hunt, you use guns like this:

Those are shotguns. They are, hands down, the most useful sort of firearm for putting food on the table.  If you really need a rifle, and you are allowed to use one (meaning you don't live in the flatland where a rifle bullet can travel like 5 miles). You might perhaps need the venerable 30-06 with a scope to take out Bambi.  That looks like this:

Still looks cool, you still feel mad, bad and dangerous to know carrying it through the woods, it still makes a big old bang.  Those are pretty much what you need to kill any animal it's legal to kill.  And those don't look much like the guns that are used in most of our alarming mass shootings.

But what about self defense?  Okay, let's talk about that.  Most people thinking about defending their castle from the bad guys think about this:

Which looks pretty nice, and would certainly win you the scary award.  But the thing is, the gun pictured above is not very effective, self defense wise, because, even under the best of conditions, a capable marksman is going to have to practice and train regularly to be able to hit the broad side of a barn with a handgun.  Add the adrenaline and stress of an actual home invasion and, well... good luck.  For defense, I would much prefer this: 

Yup, that's a shotgun again.  This time dressed up in his "get the hell out of my yard," costume.  Notice the snub barrel and the reliable pump action that really doesn't jam without some serious help.  Also notice how you would hold that thing, with two hands and an intuitive aiming stance.  Also note how you can buy non-lethal rounds, from bean bags to rubber pellets to rock salt that will definitely put a hurtin' on your would be violators, but which will let them live until the police get there to take them to the pokey.  And I can't think of a single piece of legislation or regulations that would "infringe" on my right to own and use one of these in a safe and reasonable manner.

But the second amendment says militia right, so it technically doesn't even deal in any of this common sense.  It's actually talking about the units used during the American Revolution, farmers and other civilians who took up their muskets to help fight the British.  Now we believe a lot things about the Militia, most of them are not true.  See combat is a tricky thing.  During the American Revolution, the Militia were primarily used as a distraction so that the regular Army of actual trained soldiers could do it's thing.  In other words our dear General Washington wrote to his nephew: 

I am wearied to death all day with a variety of perplexing circumstances, disturbed at the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, who never had officers, except in a few instances, worthy of the bread they eat.

Hmm. that leads me to a thought about one of the more propagandist positions of the NRA and others who are against reasonable gun control, which is that the citizens of this free nation need to be ready to take up arms, if (the implication is usually actually when) the government decides to take away all our freedoms, rather than sitting around writing up papers that guarantee it.  Now I have several pieces of news on this front.  The first is that, thankfully, the government has never been over-run by maniacs who decided to impose military rule.  Good for us, because the second piece of news is that if these guys:

Are sent after you, you are in big trouble, I don't care how many of these:

these:

or even these:

you have in your basement.

Know why you're in trouble?  Because those guys have more training, even if you have the same gear, they know how to use it better, and they know how to work together, and they have been conditioned to do so to rather devastating effect.  Oh, and they have these:

So, if you want to "defend" yourself against your own government, you know, good luck with that.

The Big Daddy

Amendment 1: Freedom of religion, press, expression, Ratified December 15, 1791

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech; or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As I mentioned in the last post, it is rather telling to see what gets put first on the list.  What's the first limit that the newly minted United States Congress chose to put upon themselves as a government?  Don't mess around with religion.  Contrary to what you might have heard, there was never an idea that this nation was supposed to be 100% Christian.  If there is any way in which these United States can be called a Christian nation it is because, as one of our founding principles we have given our citizens the right to be otherwise.  These freedoms: religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, are in fact a result of the rather sordid history of Christendom, and the realization by many that witch trials, hundred year wars, crusades and inquisitions were rather not what Jesus was talking about.
There were people here who had come as refugees from persecution, real persecution too, not the type that is often felt when a privileged group all of the sudden has to face a level playing field.
It was remarkable for these men, of this era, to see that religion, any religion, must not be declared illegal, and that no religion should ever become the "official" religion of the nation.  For men of this era, every bit as beholden to the status quo as Old King George III, to understand that free speech, problematic though it might be, must be guaranteed in a free society.  For these men that now held the reigns of power in a new world to believe that the press can and should be allowed to function as more than just the mouthpiece of the principalities and powers.  For these crafters of the Republic to allow those very people they honestly and rightfully feared to assemble and protest.  These things were all remarkable.  To endorse them as the law of the land was borderline miraculous.
These men were not commoners, nor were they particularly charitable to each other or to the huddled masses.  They feared the very people they had stolen from Africa to help forge their empire as slaves.  They feared the restless indigenous population.  They feared the common farmers and publicans, they were not, in any sense, truly democratic, but they were the first to really take on the idea that government could be for the people, by the people, as Lincoln would say in the Gettysburg address almost 70 years in the future, after this grand enterprise almost came apart at the seams.
But the wars of religion, the naming of heretics, the suppression of the masses and the brutality of governments that brooked no dissent had worn thin.  So these imperfect men recognized their imperfection.  They saw within themselves the germ of tyranny and decided to limit the growth of the infection by naming and delineating more fully the "unalienable rights" that their Declaration of Independence had first introduced.
These days it's easy to forget what these words about freedom really mean.  It's easy to think, after two centuries that freedom of religion is just a code that was used to mean Christian hegemony, but that is not what they meant then, and it is certainly not what a living law could possibly mean now, where self identified Christians are well on the road to being a minority, and actual Jesus followers have been a minority for a long, long time.
The guarantee, to be able to worship how you will, to say what you will, and to be able to stand up for yourself (and others, we probably forget that too often) against the powers, is essentially a Christian dream, and it is all we should ever ask of our government.
When Satan tempted Christ with the promise of worldly power, Jesus said, "No Thanks." I don't think he has changed his mind.  I think the thing that we ought to want as a people is a place where the Government does not try to get between us and God, and certainly one where the Government doesn't try to represent God, it will do it badly if history is any teacher.

Starting a Government

This is the place where what I know about how the human mind works comes in a little handy.  I, by virtue of being a student of the Bible and also a Presbyterian, have some experience with legal charters of various sorts.  In Seminary we learned about the various and sundry covenants that underlie the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures.  We took some time to learn about the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest examples of a Suzerain-Vassal treaty, which means a binding legal agreement between a king and his subject.  We learned about the similarities between that Code and the covenant between God and Abraham and later the Law of Moses.  Biblical "constitutions," I will use the Ten Commandments for example, usually present the most important rules and regulations first, and then start to hammer out the details. The first commandment recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy as being given by God directly to Moses is: "have no other God's before me."  That rule is the king of all rules that follow, if any of the other rules should happen to conflict with that rule, they take a back seat.  Yahweh was really, really not a fan of idolatry.  Other rules follow, the nine other rules of the Ten Commandments but also 619 prohibitions found throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and a bunch of prescriptions to go along with them.  But the Big Ten were the benchmarks. The law, even laws literally set in stone, are always in need of interpretation.  That's why the Hebrews have a tradition called Midrash, in which the texts of the Scripture are continually debated, questioned and interpreted.  That is why the actual Constitution can fit in your pocket, but there are legal libraries devoted to the implications of those laws.
Foundations are important when working with laws, and we generally work from the most sacred and important principles, outward into (mostly) less crucial matters of particularity. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has two sections, one is a Book of Confessions, which is a historical record of the Creeds of the Church, going back to the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed (325 CE), and going forward to the Brief Statement of Faith (1983) and most recently the Belhar Confession.  We don't use the Creeds as a manual for our church government, we use them as principles and examples, we have a second part to the Constitution called the Form of Government that gives us the nitty gritty, Robert's Rules of Order business.  We start with the principle and move into the practice, we establish our ideal and then deal with reality.
The Constitution of the United States of America, also follow this principle in its Articles.  Article I describes the Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, how they are selected, what they are responsible for and what limits they have put upon them.  Limits were super duper important to people who were essentially doing this because they were tired of all that Monarchist nonsense.  It is fairly clear that the Congress is supposed to be the real mover and shaker in this system. They have far and away the most stuff to do, but because they were working with a fairly new idea: democracy, it wasn't entirely clear how best to make this work.  If you think that all the folks at the Constitutional Conventions agreed on stuff, you need to examine your assumptions and read a book once in a while.  John Adams once referred to Thomas Paine's Common Sense as "a poor, ignorant, malicious, crapulous mass," and said that Thomas Jefferson's "soul was poisoned with ambition." So yeah, they didn't always play nice, and maybe the Trump is not such a new phenomenon.
But they did, except for the random closeted loyalist, agree that democracy was the way to go, but they did not inherently trust the masses of people to make smart choices (seems like remarkably prescient wisdom at the moment), so they put in safeguards against any one person or group of people getting too much power.  They sensed the danger of men like Napolean Bonaparte coming to power and engaging in megalomaniacal power grabs.  Many of them were Deists rather than actual Christians, but because they were still essentially steeped in the intellectual legacy of the Protestant Reformation they held a fairly firm grip on what human sin could do if left unchecked.  And so they checked it, by designing their system with strong brakes and built in redundancies.  Some of our frustration with our government is a product of design.  It is meant to move slow and have to clear obstacles of its own invention.  The men who put this together were not afraid of arguing, and noticed that spirited opposition tended to make the final outcome stronger.  If you want to get a law passed in those days, it had better be well thought out and airtight or else you were going to have men like Adams and Jefferson rip you to shreds.
Article II establishes the Presidency (Executive), because in the Congress was obviously going to be entirely too unwieldy to actually perform certain necessary functions.  In a world of kings and queens, who was going to represent us?  Also, if Congress did somehow go off the rails there needed to be some elected office that might be able to correct them.  The process for the election of the Executive was more complicated than for Congress, the requirements upon his character and person, more rigorous, however, it was seen that in military action and foreign affairs, we needed a person in charge.  The Executive power was rightly limited, and the process of impeachment defined should he be convicted of acts unbecoming his office: treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.
But these two branches were not quite enough on their own.  Triads and triangles are really some of the most stable structures, so they added the Judiciary with Article III.  The Judiciary's job is to handle evaluation the laws through the process of legal argument and case law.  Their job is to act as the ultimate check and balance.  They are not elected, but appointed by the President, and they serve for life, or until they voluntarily step down. They function as a high court and a final word on matters relating to the Constitution. Their scope of operations is narrow and well defined, and they are not expected or permitted to go outside of it.
Articles IV deals with states rights, it is necessary to define the roles of individual state governments within the union.  Article V provides for the Constitution to be amended.  Article VI is the article that binds us together as a union of states that ratify the document, and Article VII is the actual ratification by representatives from the first thirteen states.
And there you have the thumbnail sketch of the Articles of the Constitution of the United States of America.  I have to say, it's such a sensible, well worked system, that you might think it could just stand all on its own.  But, well, not so much.  It was ratified on September 17th, 1787.  The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights are going to come in barely four years later: December 15, 1791.

Opening a Can of Worms

I am tired of it.  Sick and tired, in fact, of politicians, some of whom are actually lawyers, answering questions about their policies (or lack thereof) or attacking their opponents using The Constitution of the United States of America, as a show stopper or a nuclear weapon.  The other night Ted Cruz stood on a public stage and said that, as president he would govern by the Constitution, and he clarified with the The Bill of Rights, he just said it over and over again, not elaborating, illumining what exactly he means by that.  It's driving me freaking nuts.
It really shouldn't surprise me, he seems to use the Bible the same way, which irks me even more, but then again, I'm kind of a Bible person, so it's sort of not fair for me to pick on people who haven't been trained properly in exegesis.  What I'm going to do then, is enter the arena of the Constitution of the United States of America, as a layperson, trying to simply deal with the words on the page.  I can't claim to be a lawyer, and I'm not going to try and suss out the "original intentions" of the framers or anything Scalia-esque, I'm just going to walk through the first ten amendments to the document called the Bill of Rights.  Not all in one blog post, I'm jumping into a series here, mostly to keep myself sane, because as I re-read the Constitution it strikes me as an extremely sane and well reasoned document.
Before we get to the Bill of Rights, though, let us give some thought to the preamble and the Seven Articles of the Constitution itself.  The preamble, which was probably one of those things you had to memorize in seventh grade social studies class, is actually a useful statement of purpose for what follows:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That's aiming high.  That is kind of beautiful and it makes the current miry bog of our political life all the more shameful.  The purpose of this document, outlined in the preamble is not to become a sort of hallowed and sacred scripture to be used as a bludgeon, but rather to provide a framework and a set of tools in which "a more perfect Union" might be created, and worked out.  "More perfect" is a rather key phrase, in a process where everything is being hammered out and argued by some very headstrong and educated men.  "More" in that context would seem to imply that it is always the goal to be a work in progress, which it has been, and will remain, if we're true to the very nature of the work.
I see a rather disturbing correlation between those who want to treat the constitution as etched in stone, and those who would, via the most literal hermeneutic, to wring all the life out of the Word of God.  They are too often the same people.
No one of these lofty goals can be established "once and for all." Each one is an ongoing struggle in which we all must engage.  Let's take them a point at a time.
Establish Justice: Justice to Thomas Jefferson included owning slaves.  Justice to Abraham Lincoln had no consideration of allowing women to vote.  Justice to Teddy Roosevelt saw segregation as an absolutely normal and healthy way of forming this more perfect union.  We grow more just, by recognizing injustice and challenging it, and because of human nature, there is always more injustice to be found.  We have to grow, we have to always engage that process, even and especially when it is scary.
Insure Domestic Tranquility: For a long time, this meant keeping the white landowning men happy.  And until that really ran smack into the preceding tenant, it was, more or less a matter of putting on some powdered wigs and arguing it out in clever and verbose speeches.  Until the Civil War happened, and the house was anything but tranquil.  Then it was the challenge of reconstruction, immigration, westward expansion, industrialization, WWI, prohibition, the Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Civil Rights (MLK and JFK both assassinated), Vietnam, The Cold War, the Middle East, Terrorism, 9-11 and so on and so forth. And now this election, tranquility appears to be something we have utterly failed for a rather long time, but it's still worth a try.
Provide for the Common Defense: Now this is where I'm going to disagree with some of my more hawkish friends, but I honestly don't believe that the common defense of the United States should involve fighting wars on the other side of the world.  That would appear to me to be a more colonial sort of activity.  But I will admit that here the framers of the constitution could honestly never have envisioned the world as it is now.  While this was being written, the sun had not yet set on the British Empire, and the colonists were frankly thanking their lucky stars that King George III had lost his stomach and his money bags for fighting a war on the other side of the ocean.  What this meant then, and what this meant now, are admittedly radically different.  We're going to run into this again when we get to the second amendment, so I'll leave it for now.
Promote the General Welfare: Again, what that means and who it applies to, have changed radically over the past two hundred years.  In the beginning the "general welfare," did not include blacks, natives, hispanics, or really even women other than as a romantic accessory to white males which ought to be safeguarded and protected as particularly valuable property.  The landowners had a certain noblesse oblige to take care of all of those lesser creatures, but that was more a matter of private character than legal requirement.  Now the table of general welfare has had to grow dynamically and must always keep growing, any stagnation or regression leads to suffering and unrest.
Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity: "Blessings of Liberty," is pretty much what we're going to be looking at in the Bill of Rights.  But it's going to become pretty obvious that the need for continual evolution and growth is necessary here and everywhere.  The word "posterity" means that the intent was always to look down the road past the immediate and on to the life of their descendants.  The ideas put down in this document are not simply a flash in the pan they are a singular investment in the world of the future, and that precludes anything like a static interpretation of what follows.
Next up: The Articles.

Outrageous Outrage

I have been outraged three times today, and it's barely 10:00 AM.  None of these outrages actually involved any personal affront or even a traffic situation.  It was simply the course of reading the news.  I am at the point where I know which news outlets to flat out avoid.  I try to digest things with an understanding of different perspectives, and I try to avoid things that I know are blatant fear mongering.  However, when you run across a well written, in depth article from a trustworthy and generally non-biased source, and it still makes you want to spit hot nails...
I'm not even going into what my three morning outrages are, they all involve politics and quite frankly, I'm all outraged out.
I would like to reflect on the feeling that I have about the relative healthiness of all this outrage.  I feel like it can't be good for me, or for anyone really.  The thing is though, outrage is sort of like donuts. As much as you try to avoid it, as much as you refuse to go out of your way to go to Dunkin' Donuts, from time to time they're just going to show up at a meeting or somewhere you have to be, and they're there, glistening at you, and I just don't have the emotional resources to resist that sort of temptation.
I know I can get my outrage fix anytime by going to Fox News or MSNBC, I can got either left or right to find something that will enrage me.  So I try to go for trustworthy sources only, this usually means traditional media sources like the NY Times or the Washington Post, which are now well established and accessible online.  This morning though, two of my three outrages came via the bastion of boring moderation that is Bill Moyers, he's practically Jim Lehrer for the love of Cronkite.  Great googly-moogly, this is PBS territory, this old time actual journalism.  And the things, which I'm still not going to go on about, were pretty well investigated and detailed reports, not click bait.
But outraged I was, and am, and I'm feeling a little like this is only going to get worse from here on out, because the things that I find so outrageous are not easily fixed, and maybe cannot be fixed at all. They are tied into the confluence of money and power and that, unfortunately seems to be the way it is and was and ever shall be, world with out end. Amen.
The outrage inside me, which sounds like Lewis Black in case you need an audio aid, is saying that this is not okay.  The outrage says that accepting this degradation of human society as unavoidable or inevitable is a horrible cop out, and probably precisely what the robber barons and super-thieves are banking on.  I'm going to vote, I'm going to vote with my outrage and I'm going to try to transmute that outrage into hope instead of despair, but until then, I want some other actions to take.  But what?  What to do about the stew of genuinely outrageous things that confront us every day, whether it's some political boondoggle, some economic hornswoggle, or the latest mass shooting (which has no pithy colloquialism to describe it, thanks be).
That is, for me where the spiritual struggle kicks in, because the path to battling outrage begins with me, the same place that the struggle to eat healthy does.  Back to that outrage: donuts analogy.  Junk food is easy and fast and readily available, as is outrage.  Healthy eating requires preparation and planning and education.  Checking the available information, seeing if it's too high in fat or sodium, seeing how many calories you're actually shoveling down your gullet.  It gets tedious and sometimes it's downright impossible, but there really aren't any shortcuts.  And there are times that your willpower is going to flat out fail you, and that boston creme donut is going in no matter what.
I honestly don't think I can avoid being outraged about the way things are right now, but that means I need to make wiser and more conscientious decisions in other areas.  I'm going to need to consume less junk, stay away from the slanted and biased, which are presented in gluttonous amounts.  I need to eat a healthy balance from reliable sources and make sure I don't neglect viewpoints that differ from my own (veggies), make sure I get enough solid facts (protein), and make sure also that I read enough hopeful things to sustain my energy (good carbs) for the inevitable injustice, violence and greed that will pollute my diet eventually.
I have the feeling that it's going to be a long year.

The End of an Era

Our long running involvement with Victorian England came to an end last night, well at least the Downton Abbey part of it did.  What perhaps was not always obvious to fans of the show was the way that the fictional Crawley family was in fact a parable for a very real transition that is in some ways still ongoing.
Part of the charm of the show, in addition to the delicious snark of the Dowager Countess, was the way that we were able to look, with sufficient chronological distance, on the habits and customs of an era that has since vanished from the earth.  If I have any quibbles with the show it is simply that it sometimes took the paradigmatic differences between the historical setting and the audience rather for granted.  The most likable characters were also the ones who accepted our modern values (think Tom Branson, and Cora Crawley, who was literally an American with many of the attendant libertine values).  The most definitively Victorian characters (The Dowager, and Carson) took time to get to like, even if they were amusing.  And to the very end of the show there were still instances where modern audiences were left wondering what in the actual world was motivating people.  With regard to the central drama of the final season: the romance between Edith and Bertie Pelham with the complication of Marigold (a child born out of wedlock to Edith), the whole scenario seems rather like a mountain being made out of a molehill to modern sensibilities, and Bertie's mother calling Edith "damaged goods," practically makes you want to slap her upside her aristocratic head, hard.
Why compassion and just plain common sense can't seem to take precedent over propriety and appearances is, I think, part of why the drama is so intriguing to folks these days.  We get to feel just slightly superior to these people who, had we lived in the era, been certainly considered our betters.
I found Victorian sensibility infuriating at times, but I also glimpsed its value, and so was able to mourn the passing of an era with the characters of Downton.  The value came in terms of dignity of human beings.  The servants had dignity, the peasants had dignity, and the Lords and Ladies had dignity of a sort that had become so inflated that it was brittle. Admittedly part of this assumption is based on the particular slant allowed to us by fiction, not all Lords were as beneficent and gracious as Lord Grantham, nor as personally concerned with the struggles of their tenants and servants, but I think Grantham gives us a rather good sketch of what the ideal was supposed to be: a man of privilege who understood and felt the weight of his responsibility for those to whom he was Lord.  Dissolving that bond has not eliminated the aristocracy, but it has put the rest of us on shakier ground.  These days it is rare to find an aristocrat that feels such a powerful sense of responsibility towards the "little people." Perhaps it was rare then too, but history tells us that it certainly was a value that many of the landed class took rather seriously.
The way of life was, in a word, spectacular, and largely mutually beneficial, but it was, as I said, brittle.  Scandal was so dangerous because it dropped the mask of superiority.  Common townspeople could have affairs and illegitimate children and simple deal with some tongue clucking from the neighbors, but for a daughter of the Lord to be proved "immoral," threatened the very order of things.  The commoners had to accept that the aristocracy was of a higher quality than themselves.  American ideas like equality and democracy were a death knell to those assumptions.  The Dowager and Isobel Crawley had a conversation about moving into the future during the finale last night, where Isobel, ever the chipper foil to Violet, was talking about how things must always move forward.  The Dowager in her typical wry way, said something along the lines of, "If only we had a choice."  The clear implication was that if she had her way she would gladly retreat into the past, back to the time when the order of things was not quite so uncertain.
But the character of the Dowager was often one of the most powerful counter-agents to the true Victorian code.  She would often encourage her grand-daughters or even her Butler (in the finale) to do things that were quite out of order from a traditional way of thinking.  She was both a lament of the passing of Victorian society, and a symptom of that passing.
I sometimes wonder if we haven't kept the worst of the Victorian ethos and discarded the better aspects.  Because it seems that inequality, prejudice and class conflicts are still very much alive and well, and we have much worse manners about all of it than we used to.
In the end, I'm not sure that Downton Abbey really balanced its perspective with regard to the central theme of the ending of an era.  The modern prejudice against the rigidity of class was always there, with only a few glimpses here and there to how it actually worked, and why it endured as long as it did.  It let us celebrate and then mourn a little for something most of us never even knew about, and it always helped us learn a little bit more about human beings and the various faces of dignity.
Good show old chap.

Enough

Enough with the fear.
Enough with the hate.
Enough with the anxiety.
Enough with the name calling.
Enough with the illogical rhetoric.
Enough with the false prophets.
Enough with idols and emptiness.

The curve of a bare winter hill is enough.
The morning sun on a glossy black raven is enough.
The skeletal trees pinking with buds is enough.
The quiet of a church is enough.
The purr of a cat is enough.
The wiggly greeting of a dog is enough.
A kiss from your love is enough.
A hug from your kids is enough.
Enough is a word we don't use often enough.

Enough is Enough.

Lessons to Be Learned and Schadenfreude

Disclaimer: This is still not me defending Donald J. Trump.
Welcome to Schadenfreude Wednesday. The day after Super Tuesday.  The Trump train is still cruising down the track, and the pundits are starting to "do the math," that tells them that it's going to be hard for Rubio to catch him.  Trump continues to defy logic and now has both liberals and conservatives soiling their trousers.  Let's be honest though, this is much more embarrassing for conservatives. If Hilary manages to avoid indictment for the next few months, Dems who have been feeling the Bern are just going to sigh and vote blue, with maybe a bit of a sad backward glance at an chance we almost had at "political revolution." But it will be much, much worse for Republicans if they have to face the choice between Hilary and the Donald (or Ted Cruz, more on that in a minute).
I'm no political expert, but Rubio seems like the last hope for the GOP.  But he's got problems with the way the game is played these days.  I disagree with Rubio's general ideology, but I will give him a nod as seeming at least a bit sincere in his desire to actually be in the political game.  I also find him, well, a little bit annoying.  If Trump is that arrogant blowhard that's always talking about his Camaro and how much ass he kicks, Rubio is... well... Brainy Smurf, you know the one who always reminds the other Smurfs what "Papa Smurf always says..."
Rubio is also not much older than me, and in the political game that's still wet behind the ears.  He lacks gravitas, I could seriously see Donald Trump and Chris Christie shoving him into a locker and giving him a wedgie (the way this campaign is going that is probably not outside the realm of possibility).  Trump has drug this campaign into a pro wrasslin mindset (see previous post), and that is not a world where sincere little mama's boys play really well except as fodder for a butt kicking.
I can't really root for Rubio, because I fundamentally disagree with the heartlessness of many of his conservative doctrinal positions.  If I needed a reminder of the fact that the Republican race is basically a competition between two different types of repugnance, I need look no further than the, "Hey I won my home state" victory speech of Raphael Edward Cruz.  Cruz launched into a diatribe of Tea Party talking points that makes me absolutely cringe, particularly because they concern our involvement and misadventures in the Middle East.
First was Israel, which I'm aware is a major can of worms.  Cruz is of the opinion that the only truly American position vis-a-vis the modern nation state of Israel is unconditional support.  Never mind that the settlements are against international law, never mind all the humanitarian problems.  Never mind that our unthinking and unyielding support for what has been happening is actually the fuel of so many terrorist groups that... okay, let's just say there are problems. (Disclaimer: I am not saying Israel has no right to exist, they do, but things need to change, and for better or worse, we're probably the only nation on earth that has the influence to make those changes happen, but "unconditional support" precludes that option.)  And furthermore, I happen to know that Tedward's rabid support of such things is due to a peculiar brand of apocalyptic Christianity that has influenced the politics of this issue for decades.  Cruz worries me because he is a true believer, a zealot if you will.  I'm not ever sure what Trump believes in, except for the power of hair spray.  I know what Ted Cruz believes and it's freaking cray cray.
Cruz's follow up to his "Screw the Palestinians and all this wimpy neutrality" plank, was his promise to "Tear up this Iranian nuclear deal on day one."  Now I get really serious really fast whenever I hear the words Iran and nuclear in the same sentence.  I am also of a mind that I really would prefer not having another war in the Middle East.  I have two young men that I am fairly fond of who are in the Marines at the moment, and I don't want them getting in harm's way.
I am of the opinion that brokering any kind of deal with Iran on the subject of their nuclear capability was practically an act of diplomatic sorcery, and I give my long-faced, boring friend John Kerry big ups for getting that done.  Is the deal perfect? No, no diplomatically negotiated treaty ever is, but it makes us all a lot safer for quite a while, and thaws out one of our last truly frozen international relationships.  It also leads to fewer Iranians suffering privation, which, I believe, eventually leads to fewer terrorists and less violence.
But the Cruz missile thinks it's a bad deal. Why? Well, Obama for starters, oh and money.  I can't do anything with the first part because haters gonna hate, but the second part is easy.  First of all, even if I buy the $150 billion dollar price tag that Cruzites have slapped on this (which is difficult to substantiate and involves mainly what Iran will gain as a result of lifted sanctions and the restoration of frozen assets not some check that we are going to write them).  By contrast, the war in Iraq cost us from $1.7 TRILLION to over $2 TRILLION.  A TRILLION is a thousand billions.  And that, by the way, was financed by the American taxpayer.  I'm no math whiz, but that seems like a pretty thin pretense for calling a diplomatic agreement a disaster.
The thing is that many people in the GOP are so afraid of Trump that they're forgetting that Cruz is the second place guy right now.  It would be trading an arrogant narcissist for a certifiable sociopath.
Now look, if you've got yourself one nutjob that's pretty normal. If he's the front-runner you can make lots of excuses, but when you, as a political party with a long history of being the rational voice of conservatism are faced with this sort of situation in which both options are really bad, maybe you have done something wrong.  Maybe your flirtations with people's fear and prejudice have actually blown up in your face. Maybe in your rush to have God bless America you have let in some of the most cracked and cynical forms of Christian dogmatism.  Maybe the stench of your constant obstruction of our duly elected chief executive finally wafted into the noses of your own constituency and maybe they're supporting Trump, not because they're uneducated rubes, but because they're simply tired of you sitting on your hands while they wrestle with real problems.  Maybe they realize that something is better than nothing.  Maybe they're so fed up that they're just going with the man who entertains them the best.  Any way you slice it, put down the fiddle Nero, Rome is burning.
As much as I enjoy watching you squirm through this, I'm also a little worried about where this is going to go from here, so you know, maybe learn from this?  Just a little?  Pretty please?

Just Desserts

Disclaimer: This is not me defending Donald Trump.  I have been observing the catastrophe that has overtaken our democracy of late, and have seen this coming for a while.  There is still a part of me that thinks Trump is deliberately trying to sabotage the process and show it for the sham that it has become.  There is still a little voice inside my head that suspects that he can't possibly be this crass and clueless.  Part of me remembers the Donald Trump of the feud with Vince McMahon in the world of professional wrasslin'.  It is a sad, sad commentary that the world of foreign objects, blatant cheating and impotent referees is more or less analogous to our national electoral process.
But wrasslin' does teach you some important things about human nature.  One of those things is that Heels (bad guys) are mostly more fun to watch than Baby Faces (good guys, called faces for short).  Growing up the best heels were Rowdy Roddy Piper (may he rest in peace), Ric Flair, Terry Funk and of course the master of slimy conniving: Bobby the Brain Heenan (manager).  Wrasslin' has always had a flair (pun intended) for giving us villains, and also making sure that eventually they were brought to justice.  I was a wrasslin' fan in the 1990's when a paradigm shift happened courtesy of one Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) and one Stone Cold Steve Austin.  Up until these two, almost any wrassler of consequence had to fit into a mold of Heel or Face, they could very easily switch back and forth, because wrasslin fans have an amazing talent for suspension of disbelief, more so than even Sci-Fi fans.  Predicting a Heel turn or a moment of redemption for a Heel was really the most interesting part of being a fan who was no longer a little kid.  Little kids grow up rooting for the faces, getting emotionally involved with the farcical drama and really hating those lying, cheating heels.
But let me tell you, there is a moment of swelling glory when someone does something noble and right in order to fulfill honor.  The classic example is a Heel, having just lost the inevitable finale to a long feud, where he had won all earlier contests by dubious means, finally extending his hand for a congratulatory handshake.  Sometimes the handshake is "real," a sign of hard won respect, and basically a truce, maybe even the beginning of a mixed and redemptive partnership.  Other times the handshake is just a ruse so that the vanquished heel can get in a couple of cheap shots before running away to more dubious shenanigans.
This is how professional wrasslin' works, everybody but small children and the exceedingly stupid know it, but it doesn't matter because that's the way we are entertained, often by feeling morally and intellectually superior to the actors.  Nobody said it was highbrow entertainment, but it was entertainment.  When the Stone Cold/ Rock paradigm shift happened, things got confusing, characters no longer had to fit the molds of heel and face, they could be dishonorable cheaters one minute and gallant heroes the next.  They could flaunt authority, drink beer, insult the audience and still draw plenty of cheers.  It was reflecting a postmodern perspective before almost anything else the world of entertainment that had mass appeal.  I know that sounds weird, but I believe it bears weight.  TV shows started reflecting the same ambiguity: NYPD Blue and Law and Order, showed us that the good guys weren't always good and that maybe the bad guys story was a little more complicated than it was in Magnum PI.
Donald Trump is a creature of this reality.  Literally, he was actually involved with wrasslin' during this era.  He played the part exceedingly well, and no, he wasn't a wrassler, he was a character, he was basically himself, but he was also playing a part in a drama, where he demonstrated his ability to out power-broker Vince McMahon, which he did, with Vince's full cooperation.  One could tell that they were birds of a feather.  Men who would do anything, make people love them or make people hate them, if it served the story they were telling and made them money in the process.
I have been watching Trump staging a real life episode of Piper's Pit for almost a year now, and I'll tell you, I have often been suckered in to the act, despite the fact that I know better.  But now the danger is growing real, it's like this time where Brian Pillman seemingly lost it on an episode of Raw and went to someone's house (I believe it was Steve Austin) and Pillman seemed to not be acting all of the sudden.  Now it was obviously not a total shoot (as they say in the business about a scene that gets out of control and goes off script), but it did seem kind of disturbing and real.  .
Trump has turned the Republican Primary into a shoot, and now the people who thought they were in control of the script are in a panic mode.  The problem right now is that all they've got is a couple of stooges to ride to the rescue. Cruz is every bit as unnerving as Trump, but not as likeable and Rubio is the definition of an untested rookie baby face.  Neither one of them knows anything about the game that Trump is actually playing here, which is not nice politics.
Even if my theory is true, and Trump really is trolling the system, the disturbing truth has been revealed: large numbers of people are willing to support and vote for a man who embodies our most shameful and base instincts: fear, anger, hatred, the will to power, (I can almost hear Yoda saying, "The path to the darkside are they).  Several people have observed that Trump is essentially the candidate we deserve for all of our sins as a nation. Others have said that they (optimistically) suspect that Trump will moderate once he runs the gauntlet of the primary which now has even the Republican establishment sharpening their knives against him.  I used to sort of trust that second one, but I also know that sometimes the role you play runs away with you.
As far as the first charge: that Trump is the candidate the Republican Party and we as a nation really deserve, if that is at all true than we need to learn some very hard lessons.  Has our fear run away with us?  Have we sold out too many of our ideals?  Are we really a nation that is that much about surface and bluster?  Are we really that disingenuous?
I'm asking myself these questions, even though there was never really a chance that I would ever vote for Trump (or Cruz, or Rubio for that matter) because even if I'm rooting for the other side, heel turns can happen at any time, and even stranger things than that (if Rocky Maivea can become The Rock, and Stunning Steve Austin can become Stone Cold, anything can happen).  I just hope we're not all headed for some sweet chin music from the Heartbreak Kid.