Saturday, June 30, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Arizona Immigration Law Upheld: Officers Must Ask for Papers
The Supreme Court decided on a split decision. They said that the Arizona Law determines that state patrolmen and other local Arizona law officers not only can ask but MUST ask for papers of anyone they believe is not a US citizen. President Obama meanwhile has attempted another endrun to claim that the Dream Act is now in force. What a nightmare.
(To an extent one could compare him to the hydra of Lerna. As soon as you chop off one head two more sprout in its place. Law is like fire. It can burn out evil. But this is to introduce us into a pagan discourse where I would like to remain within the Christian, as the mental resources of paganism are limited to immanentism and the violence that comes with it. We need transcendentals to bring us out of the pagan realm that the current president has brought us.)
The Executive branch does not override the SCOTUS or states' rights.
Arizona law substantially will stand (although three minor parts of the bill were struck down, the centerpiece holds).
The New York Times reports here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/supreme-court-rejects-part-of-arizona-immigration-law.html
As Lutherans, we too are split. As Christians, we are split. Many "progressives" believe that God is only a God of Mercy, since He sent Jesus. And that therefore the Law has been set aside in favor of the Gospel. Conservatives on the other hand believe that the God of Wrath (law) is still in force and that the Ten Commandments and laws pertaining to them are still in existence. That Leviticus itself is still in force (although most conservatives have been willing to forego the injunction to stone adulterers, and to discount the whole idea that a midget could never be a priest).
Obama is a simpleton of the progressives. He has the intellectual status of Gumby. Ok, that's too harsh. Let me say, there is no one on earth who represents him. He is a thing unto himself for which there is no name in any language but Obama. He believes that law no longer matters and that he is the arm of the Mercy faction, which should strike down Law itself. (Meanwhile, he hits abroad with the terror of Zeus -- raining bombs from drones upon his enemies.)
This is quite confusing.
If, as the Statue of Liberty states, the Ten Commandments is the essence of Liberty, and that it is therefore LAW that gives us freedom from chaos and from some of the aspects of sin to which we were formerly condemned, then the God of Wrath still exists. Therefore, illegals can be sent home.
If mercy is the only God that still exists, we must welcome anyone and everyone into our home, into our bank accounts, into our states, into our wallets, and whatever they wish to do with us or our children we must turn the other cheek.
If it is a good work to break the law, then President Obama is committing good works. But because he is going against the spirit of the law, then he is himself an outlaw, like Nixon before him.
Some spirits in the American commonwealth have become antinomian, like gnostics. Many of our great writers have gone in this direction. The differences are subtle. Pacifists generally have turned toward a God of Mercy, and against the God of Wrath. Some, like myself, argue that the very notion of goodness through works is itself a strange new heresy, which will bring all down before it much as Ahab killed all those aboard the Pequod (with the exception of Ishmael). Killing the white whale (or the white race) which Ahab falsely believed to be a good work is now instantiated in the legalized discrimination against George Zimmerman (he's a tub of butter, a mound of fat), on the basis of his whiteness, is a contemporary instance of this antinomian insistence on a partial law (Marxist in origin, but still, very difficult to define, since it doesn't speak in its own name as a Marxist originalism).
We must not presume that one group is more in touch with the law than the other. The law is the ONE THING that unites us and gives us a set of rules through which we can all appeal. Once the law is lost (as it was in the Heat-Thunder game by refs who obviously sided with LeBrawn) there is only chaos. The law was given to us as a gift.
It is unclear to me how the illegals amongst us can face themselves in the mirror, or knowingly corrupt their children by making them also into illegals. Nor is it clear to me why Obama feels that he should aid and abet these fugitives from the justice, even if it is to buttress his voting base along the lines of what ACORN attempted. The law is not something anyone should mess with. It's sacred.
Perhaps the notion of FORGIVENESS has gone too far, and made some people sick in the head. Does God forgive all of us, even hardened criminals? Did God forgive Pharaoh when he failed to let His people go? No, he struck down the first-born. He struck down Pharaoh's soldiers as they attempted to cross the Nile. He struck down Ahab and Jezebel as they attempted to revive Canaanite deities.
And yet, we don't get any instances of Christ striking anyone down. He raises from the dead, but he never kills anyone. He tells His followers not to use the sword to free Him when Pilate sends for His arrest. This is because Jesus still respects the Law. It might be an arbitrary law. It might be a law that personally wrecks His life. But Jesus still allows it to stand. Law is rational and objective. It allows us to live together. Obama attempts to hide his willfulness behind Works-Righteousness. But most of us see that he only wants votes. He's not caring about all, but just about those who might help him to win another election, and only insofar as they will, does he care for them. Obama denounces Officer Crowley and the entire Cambridge police department because that is his first reaction. He is lawless. He is partial.
The law on the other hand is for everyone, and should never be partial.
To waive away the God of Wrath (Law) in order to proclaim that the Gospel of Mercy is the only law that prevails is against the spirit of Christ. Christ Himself accepted the Law of wrath, even though it was a Roman law that worked in the ickiest possible fashion to have Him crucified after first being scourged and even though it was partial insofar as it had become the plaything of the Pharisees. But by allowing Himself to be crucified, He said that even when law is partial and problematic, it MUST be followed by all Christians including Himself, and so it is universal. To go against this is sinful. Therefore the illegals are sinful and their chief advocate is sinful because they are partial. Arizona is right (Brewer is right) because their thinking is universal because it is NOT based on the law of mercy. We must have law. The law is not about mercy. Mercy is not lawful. It's Gospel-ish. Law can't be about mercy for particular people. It has to be about wrath toward all. The communists don't like this because they want to use law against the wealthy, and against those they dislike, even against the police themselves, but don't like it when it is turned on their members, or used against them.
Tough. Law is either universal or else it doesn't exist, even when it is partial, and icky. Jesus' actions before the Roman tribunal exemplify the wrongness of the law, and the weirdness of it. Law is a terrible tool because it is universal and we are always partial, always brazen, always fallen. And yet, Jesus accepted this. So must we.
Law exists in time, and those of us fallen in time are always already partial. We cannot be otherwise. But here is this other thing, given to Moses on a mountain top. Whatever it is, it is profoundly connected with our freedom. Anyone who goes against it should be jailed, or given the maximum penalty.
(To an extent one could compare him to the hydra of Lerna. As soon as you chop off one head two more sprout in its place. Law is like fire. It can burn out evil. But this is to introduce us into a pagan discourse where I would like to remain within the Christian, as the mental resources of paganism are limited to immanentism and the violence that comes with it. We need transcendentals to bring us out of the pagan realm that the current president has brought us.)
The Executive branch does not override the SCOTUS or states' rights.
Arizona law substantially will stand (although three minor parts of the bill were struck down, the centerpiece holds).
The New York Times reports here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/supreme-court-rejects-part-of-arizona-immigration-law.html
As Lutherans, we too are split. As Christians, we are split. Many "progressives" believe that God is only a God of Mercy, since He sent Jesus. And that therefore the Law has been set aside in favor of the Gospel. Conservatives on the other hand believe that the God of Wrath (law) is still in force and that the Ten Commandments and laws pertaining to them are still in existence. That Leviticus itself is still in force (although most conservatives have been willing to forego the injunction to stone adulterers, and to discount the whole idea that a midget could never be a priest).
Obama is a simpleton of the progressives. He has the intellectual status of Gumby. Ok, that's too harsh. Let me say, there is no one on earth who represents him. He is a thing unto himself for which there is no name in any language but Obama. He believes that law no longer matters and that he is the arm of the Mercy faction, which should strike down Law itself. (Meanwhile, he hits abroad with the terror of Zeus -- raining bombs from drones upon his enemies.)
This is quite confusing.
If, as the Statue of Liberty states, the Ten Commandments is the essence of Liberty, and that it is therefore LAW that gives us freedom from chaos and from some of the aspects of sin to which we were formerly condemned, then the God of Wrath still exists. Therefore, illegals can be sent home.
If mercy is the only God that still exists, we must welcome anyone and everyone into our home, into our bank accounts, into our states, into our wallets, and whatever they wish to do with us or our children we must turn the other cheek.
If it is a good work to break the law, then President Obama is committing good works. But because he is going against the spirit of the law, then he is himself an outlaw, like Nixon before him.
Some spirits in the American commonwealth have become antinomian, like gnostics. Many of our great writers have gone in this direction. The differences are subtle. Pacifists generally have turned toward a God of Mercy, and against the God of Wrath. Some, like myself, argue that the very notion of goodness through works is itself a strange new heresy, which will bring all down before it much as Ahab killed all those aboard the Pequod (with the exception of Ishmael). Killing the white whale (or the white race) which Ahab falsely believed to be a good work is now instantiated in the legalized discrimination against George Zimmerman (he's a tub of butter, a mound of fat), on the basis of his whiteness, is a contemporary instance of this antinomian insistence on a partial law (Marxist in origin, but still, very difficult to define, since it doesn't speak in its own name as a Marxist originalism).
We must not presume that one group is more in touch with the law than the other. The law is the ONE THING that unites us and gives us a set of rules through which we can all appeal. Once the law is lost (as it was in the Heat-Thunder game by refs who obviously sided with LeBrawn) there is only chaos. The law was given to us as a gift.
It is unclear to me how the illegals amongst us can face themselves in the mirror, or knowingly corrupt their children by making them also into illegals. Nor is it clear to me why Obama feels that he should aid and abet these fugitives from the justice, even if it is to buttress his voting base along the lines of what ACORN attempted. The law is not something anyone should mess with. It's sacred.
Perhaps the notion of FORGIVENESS has gone too far, and made some people sick in the head. Does God forgive all of us, even hardened criminals? Did God forgive Pharaoh when he failed to let His people go? No, he struck down the first-born. He struck down Pharaoh's soldiers as they attempted to cross the Nile. He struck down Ahab and Jezebel as they attempted to revive Canaanite deities.
And yet, we don't get any instances of Christ striking anyone down. He raises from the dead, but he never kills anyone. He tells His followers not to use the sword to free Him when Pilate sends for His arrest. This is because Jesus still respects the Law. It might be an arbitrary law. It might be a law that personally wrecks His life. But Jesus still allows it to stand. Law is rational and objective. It allows us to live together. Obama attempts to hide his willfulness behind Works-Righteousness. But most of us see that he only wants votes. He's not caring about all, but just about those who might help him to win another election, and only insofar as they will, does he care for them. Obama denounces Officer Crowley and the entire Cambridge police department because that is his first reaction. He is lawless. He is partial.
The law on the other hand is for everyone, and should never be partial.
To waive away the God of Wrath (Law) in order to proclaim that the Gospel of Mercy is the only law that prevails is against the spirit of Christ. Christ Himself accepted the Law of wrath, even though it was a Roman law that worked in the ickiest possible fashion to have Him crucified after first being scourged and even though it was partial insofar as it had become the plaything of the Pharisees. But by allowing Himself to be crucified, He said that even when law is partial and problematic, it MUST be followed by all Christians including Himself, and so it is universal. To go against this is sinful. Therefore the illegals are sinful and their chief advocate is sinful because they are partial. Arizona is right (Brewer is right) because their thinking is universal because it is NOT based on the law of mercy. We must have law. The law is not about mercy. Mercy is not lawful. It's Gospel-ish. Law can't be about mercy for particular people. It has to be about wrath toward all. The communists don't like this because they want to use law against the wealthy, and against those they dislike, even against the police themselves, but don't like it when it is turned on their members, or used against them.
Tough. Law is either universal or else it doesn't exist, even when it is partial, and icky. Jesus' actions before the Roman tribunal exemplify the wrongness of the law, and the weirdness of it. Law is a terrible tool because it is universal and we are always partial, always brazen, always fallen. And yet, Jesus accepted this. So must we.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
GIVE YOUR WEDDING GIFTS TO OBAMA!
On the Obama-Biden official website you can decide to donate your wedding gifts to Barack Obama's reelection campaign. Why do you need a "gravy bowl," the website says, when of course you need to help Obama's family stay on the gravy train?
http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/the-obama-event-registry
Government first, you know. Caligula insisted at Roman weddings that he should be first to have at the bride. Caligula argued it should be an honor that a divine personage would deign to mate with a mortal. When government decides that families don't matter, and churches don't matter, and that the government is God, and that the president is the Second Coming, who are you to hold out? The Democratic Party IS the party of God.
Coming soon: instead of sorrow over your parent's death, why not instead throw your parent into a pit, save the money, and give it to Barack Obama? After all, nothing could be as sad as Obama's not getting reelected. What do your parents matter when we're talking about the FATHER OF THE NATION, whose children resemble illegal immigrants (he said it, not me).
Instead of a bar mitzvah, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of a birthday, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of going to college, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of giving your house to your children in your will, will it to Barack Obama.
Instead of putting money into the collection plate, just give the money to Barack Obama.
http://www.barackobama.com/news/entry/the-obama-event-registry
Coming soon: instead of sorrow over your parent's death, why not instead throw your parent into a pit, save the money, and give it to Barack Obama? After all, nothing could be as sad as Obama's not getting reelected. What do your parents matter when we're talking about the FATHER OF THE NATION, whose children resemble illegal immigrants (he said it, not me).
Instead of a bar mitzvah, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of a birthday, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of going to college, just give all the money to Barack Obama.
Instead of giving your house to your children in your will, will it to Barack Obama.
Instead of putting money into the collection plate, just give the money to Barack Obama.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
HOKE NAMED VP NOMINEE OF LUTHERAN SURREALIST PARTY
(Wendy after the election. This photo will be in every home, and on every sweater in America. Children will think of this woman in the way children used to think of George Washington. She will be the Mother of the Country. And also, Mama Nemo, to you, sir.)
MITT ROMNEY ORDERS A SANDWICH!
Big controversy today over a sandwich that Mitt Romney ordered at a convenience store in Pennsylvania. Romney wanted to contrast private and public innovation and said at WaWa's (PA convenience store chain) he had ordered a sandwich by typing it into a keypad. By comparison he talked about an optometrist who had to fill out by hand a 33-page government document (he wanted to change his address with the postal service). MSNBC, a violent communist news station, edited Romney's remarks... and made it seem as if Romney was amazed that keypads themselves exist. This in turn caused conservatives all over the country to compare this editing with what NBC (NBC owns MSNBC) did to George Zimmerman, editing out all the context to make Zimmerman look like a cave-dwelling racist from the Stone Ages. This lack of regard for the truth may yet catch up with MSNBC and their affiliated station NBC, as their credibility is increasingly questioned. But there are bigger issues! (Here's a link to a FoxNews station's coverage of the scandal: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/19/msnbc-edits-romney-rally-speech-portrays-candidate-as-out-touch/).
Princeton philosopher Peter Singer has argued that we should judge people by what they eat: following the popular adage, "you are what you eat." I imagine followers of Singer would like to know what kind of sandwich Romney ordered, and then compare it to the kind of sandwich that Obama typically orders (if Obama could follow the complicated typing out of the instructions without help -- heh heh).
WaWa's strikes me as a clean place packed with the latest in foodstuffs. One hopes that Romney didn't order foie gras, which is forbidden in Obama's native Chicago by orders of the city council. Just outside the city's borders some restaurants offer the forbidden meat as a delicacy, and some thousands have ventured out to the city's edge to taste-test the artificially enlarged liver of a dead duck. (It can be made of other fowl.)
Romney spent time in Paris as a youth, where they eat frogs' legs and all kinds of meats, including foie gras and eyes of newt. But I don't know of what he partook. Who knows what he eats! Obama might just order up a dog as a cold cut sub, though, forgetting he's no longer in Indonesia and can't have Fido on a bun. All our presidents thus far have been carnivores? Even Jimmy Carter? Is there a president anywhere on earth who is a vegetarian? Or a vegan? Is this a distracting side dish?
(Pictured above: an eggplant sandwich.)
Princeton philosopher Peter Singer has argued that we should judge people by what they eat: following the popular adage, "you are what you eat." I imagine followers of Singer would like to know what kind of sandwich Romney ordered, and then compare it to the kind of sandwich that Obama typically orders (if Obama could follow the complicated typing out of the instructions without help -- heh heh).
WaWa's strikes me as a clean place packed with the latest in foodstuffs. One hopes that Romney didn't order foie gras, which is forbidden in Obama's native Chicago by orders of the city council. Just outside the city's borders some restaurants offer the forbidden meat as a delicacy, and some thousands have ventured out to the city's edge to taste-test the artificially enlarged liver of a dead duck. (It can be made of other fowl.)
(Pictured above: an eggplant sandwich.)
LABOULAYE ON THE BASIS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
"[Edouard] Laboulaye saw in Puritanism the origins of democracy. For him, the first document of American history was the Mayflower Compact of the Puritans, which had established an absolute equality among the Puritans... The Puritans had also established self-government in the form of the New England town meeting" (Interpreting American Democracy in France, 60).
Unlike many French Catholic thinkers (who tended toward monarchism), "[Laboulaye] strongly believed that in the future the Catholic Church would have to make changes to come into harmony with the century, especially, as concerned the church's reliance on the state, often embodied in the concept of the so-called union of throne and altar" (60).
"Laboulaye considered the Carolinas of almost equal importance because of their lawgiver, John Locke" (60).
"He was especially interested in Montesquieu, whose views on the separation of powers and the restraints on authority greatly interested him... He proudly pointed out, for example, that [George] Washington's library included a carefully marked copy of Montesquieu..." (62-63).
During the Napoleonic Regime and the July Monarchy (1830-1848) only about 1% of the French population could vote even though the French state was supposedly founded on the principle of the People as legitimation. Laboulaye however believed in enlarging the electorate to include not only the poor, but also women. "He cited John Stuart Mill approvingly for his advocacy of women's suffrage" (63).
Unlike many French Catholic thinkers (who tended toward monarchism), "[Laboulaye] strongly believed that in the future the Catholic Church would have to make changes to come into harmony with the century, especially, as concerned the church's reliance on the state, often embodied in the concept of the so-called union of throne and altar" (60).
"Laboulaye considered the Carolinas of almost equal importance because of their lawgiver, John Locke" (60).
During the Napoleonic Regime and the July Monarchy (1830-1848) only about 1% of the French population could vote even though the French state was supposedly founded on the principle of the People as legitimation. Laboulaye however believed in enlarging the electorate to include not only the poor, but also women. "He cited John Stuart Mill approvingly for his advocacy of women's suffrage" (63).
Saturday, June 16, 2012
NEW SUMMER POETRY CONTEST: THE CHURCH
To complete our trilogy of summer poetry contests dealing with the three orders, we now turn to the church. The family brought out our best poems. The state brought out our worst. Now, it's time for the church. Let's see how this goes. The church poems should either address the church as a whole or specific experiences in the church, either good or bad. Let's leave it open until July 4th, just to mix church and state for no good reason. Then we will vote on the 5th with all the same rules we usually apply: can't vote for own poem, only one vote per participant, and poems should be less than forty lines. Here's my opener:
ARK OF THE COVENANT
A frail vessel afloat on the sea,
Silver in luminescence: our church.
ARK OF THE COVENANT
A frail vessel afloat on the sea,
Friday, June 15, 2012
Summer Reading
A journal in England called Quarterly Review asked me what I'm planning to read this summer. I responded here:
http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=892
What are you planning to read this summer?
http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=892
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
THE FRENCH IN THE AMERICAS: Edouard Laboulaye
France early on discovered America. Its explorers and Jesuits and the Recollects (a kind of Franciscan) swept across Canada. Why were they so easily beaten by the Americans?
Edouard Laboulaye, the French lawyer who specialized in the American constitution, and who was the driving force behind the Statue of Liberty, speculated in 1852 in an article entitled, "La France en Amerique," that France had only sent soldiers, adventurers, missionaries, and woodsmen to America. Meanwhile, the English had sent colonists. These colonists were largely Calvinist in nature. They brought with them not only the musket and the axe, but the Bible.
While the French cavorted with the Indians, intermarried with them, and accepted them, the Calvinists converted them, and when they couldn't, destroyed them.
All over the Caribbean, a different variety of colonist had landed. Mostly they wanted large estates, and to enjoy the pleasures. The American Calvinist had a completely different mission. Their mission was not libertine in nature. It had instead to do with "la liberte de la conscience," (p. 308) [freedom of conscience], which meant to install a government that was the mirror of their religion.
L'Etat et Ses Limites [The State and Its Limits], par Edouard Laboulaye (Paris: Charpentier, 1863).
The French had only conquered the surface of the American interior. The colonists had set down deep roots.
While the French adventurers yearned to return to France, the colonists wanted only to be free of England. And eventually they were. The French in America once owned huge tracts of land. They controlled the interior, most of Canada, and even Mexico. Today, all that is left is French Guyana, a few islands off of Maine, along with Martinique and Guadeloupe. Nowhere in these regions is anything approaching the industry and power that the American colonists set in motion. Sleepy backwaters where a few prisoners were sent in the hopes that they would prove as enterprising as Franklin and Pitt? Fat chance.
In Guyana prisoners were sent for a spell, but had to remain at least as long again as pioneer colonists in the jungles, in the French effort to colonize the jungle. But these were criminals. Criminals are already lacking in enterprise, and have nothing to offer to anyone but stealth and criminality. How can they set enterprise in motion? how can they develop into a nation of laws?
It's a little like our president, a chance product of a strange liaison between an African adventurer and his American victim, herself an odd and naive flibbertigibbet who wandered through the third world without much of any notion of what she wanted to achieve. How can the product of such a union set enterprise into motion? Or have any clue as to how to do so? In four years from now all memory of Obama shall be swept away, and all we will have left is the colossal debt.
America at its origins had no nobility, and lazy people were few and far between. Industry distinguished the colonists from the American Indians, who smoked drugs, got all whipped up, and then went around scalping. They hadn't even got around to the discovery of the wheel, much less laws given by God.
Within a few years, American colonists had founded Pittsburgh, the Manchester of America. There, an enormous industry developed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Boston sprang up, and with it, churches. New York was filled with bustling enterprise. The forests were flattened and gave way to agriculture. Only in the south where Episcopalians set up palatial estates based on slavery was there a different attitude established on American soil. But even then there were enterprising men: Washington, Madison, and Jefferson were all raised in Virginia. All had slaves, but all had the beginning of doubts as to the propriety of the institution. In the north, the Calvinists would soon develop abolition as a cri de coeur, and this spread to the south via Baptists. The Statue of Liberty has chains at her feet, but the chain is broken. This is Laboulaye's congratulation toward America for ending the sick institution.
America is one construct, and always was. In another article in the Laboulaye collection "Pourquoi le Nord Ne Peut Accepter La Separation" writes of the need for the French to support Lincoln, in spite of the enormous hardship it had created not only for the French (who had no access to cotton) but to the English (who had been thrown out of work by the lack of cotton). Laboulaye sketches the vast strategic nature of support for the North. The Louisiana Purchase was given in part by the French to the Americans in order to create a rival to England. Napoleon gave New Orleans and all around it to the Americans at a bargain basement price "de donner a l'Angleterre une rivale maritime qui tot ou tard abaisserait l'orgueil de nos ennemis" (Napoleon cited in Laboulaye, 383). [to create for the English a maritime rival which sooner or later would knock down the pride of our enemies]. In this, Napoleon had succeeded, but if the country had been torn in half, Napoleon's ambition would not have succeeded. Two thirds of the water of the US flows out through New Orleans, Laboulaye writes. Thus, whoever owns it, owns America. Why should it be left in the hands of slavers who do not believe in the central idea of America? (Liberty.)
If the Union were undone enormous armies would have to be raised by the two nations, and there would be new barriers in terms of customs, and trade could not circulate freely between the divided states. Kentucky would be split in half, as would Missouri. Artificial boundaries of defense would be added to natural ones such as the Rio Grande. The Mississippi would be cut in half. Laboulaye was one of the stoutest defenders of the American constitution, and in this article of 1862 (translated and republished in newspapers throughout America) gave voice to some of the most important American ideals (even though he was French). This is echoed in his Statue of Liberty (the statue was HIS idea, even if another sculptor put it together, and if many Americans and French paid for its installation). Hooray for Edouard Laboulaye. Hooray for America!
Edouard Laboulaye, the French lawyer who specialized in the American constitution, and who was the driving force behind the Statue of Liberty, speculated in 1852 in an article entitled, "La France en Amerique," that France had only sent soldiers, adventurers, missionaries, and woodsmen to America. Meanwhile, the English had sent colonists. These colonists were largely Calvinist in nature. They brought with them not only the musket and the axe, but the Bible.
While the French cavorted with the Indians, intermarried with them, and accepted them, the Calvinists converted them, and when they couldn't, destroyed them.
All over the Caribbean, a different variety of colonist had landed. Mostly they wanted large estates, and to enjoy the pleasures. The American Calvinist had a completely different mission. Their mission was not libertine in nature. It had instead to do with "la liberte de la conscience," (p. 308) [freedom of conscience], which meant to install a government that was the mirror of their religion.
L'Etat et Ses Limites [The State and Its Limits], par Edouard Laboulaye (Paris: Charpentier, 1863).
The French had only conquered the surface of the American interior. The colonists had set down deep roots.
While the French adventurers yearned to return to France, the colonists wanted only to be free of England. And eventually they were. The French in America once owned huge tracts of land. They controlled the interior, most of Canada, and even Mexico. Today, all that is left is French Guyana, a few islands off of Maine, along with Martinique and Guadeloupe. Nowhere in these regions is anything approaching the industry and power that the American colonists set in motion. Sleepy backwaters where a few prisoners were sent in the hopes that they would prove as enterprising as Franklin and Pitt? Fat chance.
In Guyana prisoners were sent for a spell, but had to remain at least as long again as pioneer colonists in the jungles, in the French effort to colonize the jungle. But these were criminals. Criminals are already lacking in enterprise, and have nothing to offer to anyone but stealth and criminality. How can they set enterprise in motion? how can they develop into a nation of laws?
It's a little like our president, a chance product of a strange liaison between an African adventurer and his American victim, herself an odd and naive flibbertigibbet who wandered through the third world without much of any notion of what she wanted to achieve. How can the product of such a union set enterprise into motion? Or have any clue as to how to do so? In four years from now all memory of Obama shall be swept away, and all we will have left is the colossal debt.
America at its origins had no nobility, and lazy people were few and far between. Industry distinguished the colonists from the American Indians, who smoked drugs, got all whipped up, and then went around scalping. They hadn't even got around to the discovery of the wheel, much less laws given by God.
Within a few years, American colonists had founded Pittsburgh, the Manchester of America. There, an enormous industry developed at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Boston sprang up, and with it, churches. New York was filled with bustling enterprise. The forests were flattened and gave way to agriculture. Only in the south where Episcopalians set up palatial estates based on slavery was there a different attitude established on American soil. But even then there were enterprising men: Washington, Madison, and Jefferson were all raised in Virginia. All had slaves, but all had the beginning of doubts as to the propriety of the institution. In the north, the Calvinists would soon develop abolition as a cri de coeur, and this spread to the south via Baptists. The Statue of Liberty has chains at her feet, but the chain is broken. This is Laboulaye's congratulation toward America for ending the sick institution.
America is one construct, and always was. In another article in the Laboulaye collection "Pourquoi le Nord Ne Peut Accepter La Separation" writes of the need for the French to support Lincoln, in spite of the enormous hardship it had created not only for the French (who had no access to cotton) but to the English (who had been thrown out of work by the lack of cotton). Laboulaye sketches the vast strategic nature of support for the North. The Louisiana Purchase was given in part by the French to the Americans in order to create a rival to England. Napoleon gave New Orleans and all around it to the Americans at a bargain basement price "de donner a l'Angleterre une rivale maritime qui tot ou tard abaisserait l'orgueil de nos ennemis" (Napoleon cited in Laboulaye, 383). [to create for the English a maritime rival which sooner or later would knock down the pride of our enemies]. In this, Napoleon had succeeded, but if the country had been torn in half, Napoleon's ambition would not have succeeded. Two thirds of the water of the US flows out through New Orleans, Laboulaye writes. Thus, whoever owns it, owns America. Why should it be left in the hands of slavers who do not believe in the central idea of America? (Liberty.)
If the Union were undone enormous armies would have to be raised by the two nations, and there would be new barriers in terms of customs, and trade could not circulate freely between the divided states. Kentucky would be split in half, as would Missouri. Artificial boundaries of defense would be added to natural ones such as the Rio Grande. The Mississippi would be cut in half. Laboulaye was one of the stoutest defenders of the American constitution, and in this article of 1862 (translated and republished in newspapers throughout America) gave voice to some of the most important American ideals (even though he was French). This is echoed in his Statue of Liberty (the statue was HIS idea, even if another sculptor put it together, and if many Americans and French paid for its installation). Hooray for Edouard Laboulaye. Hooray for America!
Monday, June 11, 2012
Monaco Needs Poet!
Front page story in WSJ this weekend about how countries around the world are sending a poet to the Cultural Olympics this summer in London (to run parallel with the sportive Olympics). However, Monaco can't find a single poet. They looked everywhere, and couldn't come up with one. Monegasque is a language along the lines of Occitan or Provencal, which up until WWII had over 10,000 speakers. During WWII this area was interrupted (the Italians owned it briefly and moved people around). Today there are still a few hundred speakers and road signs are in Monegasque and in French. Historically, there appears to be a few poems in the language called Monegasque. One is about a fart, and the other is about a fig. But the article does not end in despair. An 87-year old woman named Paulette Cherici-Porello published a book of poems in the 1980s in Monegasque. She said she's too old to go to London (thanks, anyway), but her book is being reprinted for friends family and a few students of this language (there are no copies available in libraries or bookstores). Other countries that couldn't find a single poet: Liechtenstein and Gabon, Brunei, Palau and Vanuatu, Guineau-Bissau, and the Central African Republic.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
THE STATE: A POETRY CONTEST
THE STATE
It sends a letter, a quiet one among many.
It could be an ad for all I know. I file
it neatly along with a 1000 others, meaning
to get to it, and return to Facebook, where
people at least have Faces, and aren't incorporeal
entities whose vagueness is their calling card, and
mode d'emploi. Turns out it was an insurance bill!
OMG, I missed it, it must be my fault, but if it was
so important why wasn't it sent Certified Mail?
The state sends a helicopter to my residence with
Seal Team Six on board, and firebombs my house
as a precautionary measure, then goes through the
carnage looking for bodies to decapitate, or to dump
in unmarked bags in distant oceans. But we were in
some dingy office in some other corner of the state,
measured, and taxed, for some incomprehensible
Purpose, or dare I say Porpoise? My wife and I try.
There are shin guards to remember for soccer, and
yearly and quarterly taxes. A green card to consider.
The tires must be pumped to specification. Milk for
children, fat-free preferably, and lots of green
vegetables. Pay the dental fees, dot your i's, get
braces, take off and put on the safety wheels, do your
homework, get the kids' clothes ready for the morning,
fix the plumbing, it's time for the Memorial Day Parade.
Would you even consider not going and to forget those
who've fallen for the state? Don't f--- with the state!
From steeple to steeple call out to the People, Don't
mess with the People, or we will cripple you, but don't fear
we reserve 7% of jobs for the disabled, for We are the
State! We can enable you or disable you, but pay
attention, Bozo, because we are the State! When we
return home to the fire-bombed debris a note says there
is a number to call, we call it, and out comes a senior medic
with a note of Apology in his voice, the medic says protocol
Required it, but in no time we'll have another house, let this
lapse in our attention to the State never be Repeated.
We should all live as one Corporation, One Community,
with justice and equality! and that we would be rehabili-
tated, after a mandatory sacrifice of our left legs and arms.
WALKER WINS RECALL
A huge gap appears between Republican and Democratic candidates, and people. Walker was hated for trying to cut back on union pensions but claims to have helped the Wisconsin budget.
The left believes everyone should have a nice house and a nice job with a nice pension no matter what they do for a living or if they are competent.
Righties believe that the market should determine your pay rate and where you live.
Lefties think the rich get rich simply because they have advantages. Their mom and dad, their upbringing, etc. They want equality at the price of liberty.
Righties think the poor should get a job and work their way up, and not be so lazy. They want liberty at the price of equality.
Walker wins. Does this mean that Obama will lose Wisconsin? If he does, will he lose the election, too? We can only hope for change.
I want the economy to move again, which can only mean that free enterprise begins to take risks again. Which means government has to get off their backs. I think that blind quadroplegics with no apparent family should get a bailout to the tune of a small apt., and a bowl of food.
I don't think he or she should get to play with the Oklahoma City Thunder just because every corporation is supposed to put 7% disabled on their corporate team.
Although maybe such a person would help the San Antonio Spurs.
We need to make America competitive. This means we need to open up the private sector and cheer on our entrepreneurs, and the governors who make their lives plausible.
The left believes everyone should have a nice house and a nice job with a nice pension no matter what they do for a living or if they are competent.
Righties believe that the market should determine your pay rate and where you live.
Lefties think the rich get rich simply because they have advantages. Their mom and dad, their upbringing, etc. They want equality at the price of liberty.
Righties think the poor should get a job and work their way up, and not be so lazy. They want liberty at the price of equality.
Walker wins. Does this mean that Obama will lose Wisconsin? If he does, will he lose the election, too? We can only hope for change.
I want the economy to move again, which can only mean that free enterprise begins to take risks again. Which means government has to get off their backs. I think that blind quadroplegics with no apparent family should get a bailout to the tune of a small apt., and a bowl of food.
I don't think he or she should get to play with the Oklahoma City Thunder just because every corporation is supposed to put 7% disabled on their corporate team.
Although maybe such a person would help the San Antonio Spurs.
We need to make America competitive. This means we need to open up the private sector and cheer on our entrepreneurs, and the governors who make their lives plausible.
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Bloomberg Attacks Large Sodas
Mayor Bloomberg has decided that NYC restaurants should not be permitted to sell sodas larger than 16 ounces. Those who violate this size standard will be fined $200. The soda police are on the way to your kiosk, your cinema, your restaurant, your grocery store.
“It is clearly outside the scope of the Department of Health's legal authority to pass something like this. And I have no doubt that it will be found in violation of the commerce clause of the United States Constitution,” said Robert Bookman, an attorney for New York City restaurants.
Bloomberg wants to fight obesity. He says that 60% of New Yorkers are obese. His new regulation is meant to combat this.
Can he also make us take a vitamin, and work out regularly? Can he increase the penalty, and put in jail time for soda abusers? Bloomberg is an independent who has frequently been mentioned as a possible third-party candidate for president.
Perhaps he was only trying to bag an important rival and earn him a misdemeanor so as to disqualify him for the presidency?
“It is clearly outside the scope of the Department of Health's legal authority to pass something like this. And I have no doubt that it will be found in violation of the commerce clause of the United States Constitution,” said Robert Bookman, an attorney for New York City restaurants.
Bloomberg wants to fight obesity. He says that 60% of New Yorkers are obese. His new regulation is meant to combat this.
Can he also make us take a vitamin, and work out regularly? Can he increase the penalty, and put in jail time for soda abusers? Bloomberg is an independent who has frequently been mentioned as a possible third-party candidate for president.
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