Lutheran Surrealism

UNDERWORLD AWAKENING

2012-01-25T20:47:00.004-05:00

I went to see Underworld Awakening last night. It's a stylish horror film with vampires and werewolves fighting it out for survival as humans tried to obliterate them. The vampires were Republicans. They vanted to suck your blood and they had good postures. The werewolves were Democrats. They wanted to use muscle to get what they wanted and they had bad posture and were hidden among the working class. The vampires didn't work. They lived off of ancient trust funds in gloomy subterranean castles. I preferred the vampires. Some kid was the result of a Romeo and Juliet tryst between the werewolves and the vamps. The kid looked a bit like Newt Romney when she got mad.

THE INQUISITION

2012-01-24T13:36:00.002-05:00

It is difficult to maintain standards without an Inquisition. However, with an Inquisition, it is impossible to maintain standards. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Without someone setting standards, the members of churches are free to rewrite the canonical texts or blot out those they dislike (as Luther blotted out James).

By now, probably half of the denominations in America have sidelined Leviticus, or subjected it to such endless ridicule that it is no longer taken seriously.

When people say they are Christian now, I almost invariably think: just tell me the denomination.

The Catholic church held on for a long time to the notion of universal standards. Now, even within that denomination there are massive schisms.

What can hold the whole thing together? Some say it's reason, but Luther said that "reason is the devil's whore."

Some say it's faith: but faith in what: God, the Bible, in people, in evolution, or what?

WHAT DO THE PARTIES STAND FOR?

2012-01-23T12:11:00.005-05:00

It seems increasingly clear to me that the Democratic Party is a communist party and that its agenda is redistribution without regard to merit. Race, gender and class are their paradigm, with Marxist visions of class as underwriting their vision for the future. Redistribution from white Protestant males to all the others throughout the world is their rallying cry, whether they say so openly or not.

My problem with this is not that the others don't deserve it. Not that some should live in squalor while others live in comparative plenty, but simply that WASP work ethic worked, and without it, we will have no economy, and the whole thing will collapse.

What do the Republicans on the other hand stand for? We have had one surge after another from "conservative" rivals to Mitt Romney. Herman Cain fell apart because of his egregious attempts to force women to "date" him in exchange for a job. "Give me a blow job and I will give you a real job," seemed to be his MO. Santorum seems to want to go to war with Iran for a reason I can't understand. Plus he doesn't want three men to be able to get married. Ron Paul wants open borders. As an Austrian economist (have you read Von Mises?) that's exactly what he stands for. He avoids the issue, but that's where he's at. Huntsman and Perry are now out, as is Bachman. So let's not bother to discuss them. What's left is Newt, with his shameless attempts to force his second wife into an open marriage (he had the upper hand, and tried to force hers). To her credit, she didn't buckle. This strong arming of one's own spouse indicates to me a bully that would use bullying in many other arenas, and lead to massive resentment. Still, he's won South Carolina now and this may give him credible power that will translate into a win in Florida, and other states, and force Romney out.

But what does Newt stand for? He mentioned that he wanted inner city kids to take the jobs of union janitors so that they could then have those jobs and the work ethic that comes with it themselves. But wouldn't they in turn be replaced by other free labor from high schools rather than actually get union jobs themselves as janitors?

While I despise the Democrats and their race, gender, class mantra and the notion of multiculturalism (all cultures are equal, which they obviously are not, even if you think of the Islamic and communist countries around the globe, as well as the Catholic, it becomes immediately obvious that they are not equal and that some cultures simply don't work as well as the WASP one that has been elaborated upon over the last five centuries since Luther and which is now under attack by the redistributionists). The only candidate who might have understood this is Michelle Bachmann, but she did not understand the enormous difficulty of the fight with the communist media who have set so many traps for those outside their paradigm that it will be incredibly difficult for anyone who is not of their ilk to get through.

What we need is someone who is an apologist for capitalism (especially corporate capitalism), and who understands the role of banks, and Wall St., in a robust economy. Ron Paul may be what is needed for that, but he's also too old (he's 78 and his hands shake and his voice whines). We also need someone who can be an apologist for America itself: someone who can articulate the WASP mentality that built the country, and yet do it in such a way that it doesn't antagonize those who want in, and who do want to come with a work ethic & personal discipline.

Romney is almost completely inarticulate. I have no idea what he stands for or wants. His dad was equally vague, and lost out to Goldwater as a result. Goldwater was a maniac, but could come up with terrific phrases ("the defense of extremism in the pursuit of a virtue is no vice"). Unfortunately Goldwater also wanted to use atomic weapons against Vietnam, which is just plain extremism in the pursuit of viciousness.

It looks as if we're going to be stuck with Newt, who is a slimeball, if you ask me. He's a well-named little reptile.

Whether or not he can slither past the media and past the Goliath of the left with its endless gauntlet of crypto-Marxists is unlikely. He may at least slime as many as slime him. He's one fierce SOB. And he is completely unafraid of a fight. He is what he is, and isn't ashamed of it, or at least not too ashamed. Plus I think he will hold Obama down in a playground fight and beat him half to death intellectually. But standing around the fight will be the media who will get in many licks on Obama's side.

What Newt will do in the White House should he survive the shellacking is more of the same. He will pick fights and create resentments. Oy vey. I suppose this is just the situation we're in.

I had wanted a Protestant. I had wanted a Lutheran Surrealist.

But there's no way I could survive the left gauntlet, nor would I wish to even attempt such a run. If Newt does win the thing, at least we will have two different philosophies on offer. I still don't really know what Newt stands for, but it's not race, gender, class. That's enough to make me crank the lever for him. Nothing could be worse than rgc and redistribution toward equality without any reference to merit. Newt does at least believe in his own merit. So he might be able to articulate the rationale for a meritocracy for all. I hope to God he can, and I hope he can tone down his truculence. When the man gets mad he's out of his mind.

I HAVE A DREAM

2012-01-16T21:37:00.000-05:00

I have a dream that one day S&P will give America back its AAA credit rating.

Finnish Sauna Elves

2012-01-11T14:25:00.003-05:00

One of the things I miss about Finland on cold winter days is the sauna. Finland has six million people and about 2 million saunas. On Saturday nights Finnish electricity rates rise above that of the entire Soviet Union.

Associated with the sauna is the sauna elf. I never saw one. I wanted to meet one when I was there, but never did. They used to be more prevalent. Like American bees, sauna elves are dying off. No one knows why. Some say it's the use of electricity in the sauna. They preferred wood stove saunas. Whatever it is, I would really like to have met one to have as a friend.

Friends are hard to find, and real ones are quite rare. People are friendly in order to get something, or friendly as long as you have something to give. But a real friend is probably rarer than a sauna elf.

EQUALITY OR QUALITY IN THE CLASSROOM?

2012-01-07T16:21:00.004-05:00

Let's think about quality versus equality in terms of a classroom. Imagine for a moment a classroom in which the students received Cs no matter what they did. If they turned in brilliant essays they would get a C. If they turned in nothing they would get a C. This would create equality.

In a purely capitalist classroom there is no true fairness. Brilliant and talented writers can get As while barely doing any work while people who can't spell or who can't put ideas together easily (let's just say the student is not academically gifted rather than to use harsh words like to posit the notion of a dumbkopf or to use the now-banned word that begins with an r) might instead receive an F even if they work very hard. In addition, some students might come from homes in which ideas are discussed, and in which there are many books and there is more than enough food. One parent might be a writer and help their kids with beginnings and endings. Other students might come from homes in which the parent or parents are drug addicts and beat the children up for every nickle to go and buy more drugs while they lounge in front of the TV watching professional wrestling and getting each other in headlocks. They've sold the encyclopedia set for drugs and for more cheap grits. The kids don't have computers at home, and if they sit down to write, they are afraid their parents will beat them in an alcoholic rage while yelling something about how they are John Cena (professional wrestler), so the kids stay outside all night until the parent falls asleep in a drunken stupor and by the time they get home they are too tired to do their homework. Should the teacher yell at them for failure to do homework, and then hold them back a grade?

Another student with a tremendously gifted mind might have tutors and wonderful trips with the parents to museums. Her parents might help their kid with her homework between spooning caviar into her little golden face.

Should a teacher attempt to take this discrepancy into account? Should a teacher allot good grades only on the basis of quality of outcome, or should they try to equalize and redistribute grades according to the background of a student, and take into account what kinds of disadvantages they might face?

Should only quality matter, or should only equality matter? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each system? Which one do you ultimately think is better for the society as a whole? Which one would you personally prefer as a teacher or as a student? Is there any way to blend the two? If so, which way would you lean, and to what precise percentage would you lean and why?

GM PALMER WINS LS REVELATION POETRY CONTEST

2012-01-02T13:57:00.002-05:00

Here is the winning poem:

Lost Revelation

Our tongues are swords
pointed inward
hilts left to those
whose snatching hands
scar our mouths split
between the ears
where no thoughts lie.

Revelation!
We are having
none of that stuff,
headpiece emptied
straw burnt, rocks strewn,
we have become
product zero.

Zeroed into
what we've become
we burn remains
of empty heads
and try to stuff
what we've got to
revelations

that will not lie.
Between our ears
our mouths are split
by jealous hands
who bear the hilts
of bladed words
forged by our tongues.

Toward a New Definition of Man

2012-01-02T11:29:00.001-05:00

Man isn't the only animal that wears clothes.

The Capitalist Value of Artists and Art

2011-12-23T20:41:00.009-05:00

One of the strangest and most persuasive groups in the left is the massive artist contingent. Almost all artists are failures. However, many among this vast 99% of failures believes with all of his or her heart that they are geniuses whose work should be supported by the rest of us. Very seldom do the rest of us feel that this is the case. I've never bought a piece of art, and probably never will. I would rather look at an ant walking through a macaroni noodle, or look at a tree. Most of us feel that with most artists, their work on canvas or paper is a defacement of the price of the paper which was worth more before it was tampered with (it's hard to write a poem on a piece of paper that's already got something on it). And yet the million marchers for art believe that it is almost a moral imperative that they be paid for their creations, and their often childlike belief that they are important (often in the face of all opposition) leaves me in a state. And yet these folks can be fairly persuasive. They have an education (usually) and they can push around most people, and get used to doing this. Many of them want socialism because they believe that in a socialist system their art will get the attention it deserves. In actual praxis, this has almost never been the case. I have come to hate the notion that artists should be supported by farmers, and taxi drivers, and police officers, or the business community, as if they have the right to demand money from taxes paid by people with actual professions. Artists are basically people that have not planned their future (if they did they would not be artists), and now want the rest of us to bail them out. But there is something wonderful about a failed artist. Their egos are so huge that many of them feel the world owes them a living, because everything they do is entitled to compensation out of the public purse. The 1% who can make a living from art, or sport, or anything like play, are to be heralded. The vast 99%?

In the 1890s there was a utopian colony based on Proudhonian time banks in Port Angeles, Washington. This colony had a strange capitalism. If you spent an hour growing potatoes you could go into the time bank and get a poem someone worked on for an hour. And if you wrote a poem, you could get a sack of potatoes. Obviously, everyone was dragging in poems and songs, and soon the place went belly up.

Should the artist automatically be paid the same as all other workers, and should their work be considered the same as the growing of potatoes?

In some cases (Camille Pissarro's Potato Harvest above) you get an amazing artist whose worth is almost limitless. More generally you get a painter whose worth most people think is quite limited: even laughable. My own poems are often laughable. I probably write a hundred for every one that has promise. Then occasionally one or two will stick. I realize they are done, and generally, they go right into print. Some artists are like that with almost everything they make. If it says Picasso on it, it's generally thought to be excellent, and in some sense it is (Picasso was morally deficient, and this is also evident in everything he did, but one has to look close to discern this).

Should society pay everyone equally without regard to what they are making? Many artists believe yes! But art is by nature a very competitive enterprise in which almost everyone will fail. In all fields of endeavor those who are the best at it get paid better than the failures. Can you even be a mess at working at McDonald's, or working at Burger King, or sweeping up a building? Less likely, but obviously some are better at sweeping up than others. Should the ones who make a big mess get paid the same sum as those who do a neat job? Should it be legal to fire the ones who simply can't do the job right?

John Stuart Mill comments on the vast 99% in competitive fields: "In other words, society admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have been employed which it is contrary to the general interest to permit -- namely, fraud or treachery, and force" (p. 101, On Liberty).

"Trade is a social act" (p. 101), Mill writes. But who should choose what gets made and who should buy it? The arts are strange because if you are in the right place at the right time (the right gallery in the right city with the right critical backing at a time of high economic activity) you might be able to make a killing. Generally, however, you are in the middle of nowhere, and can't get the work to market, and if you could, no one would be interested. It's maybe easier to make it in sports. There are more sports. But the shelf life of a sports star is usually ten years or less (one tear in the rotator cuff and you are toast and your market value is nil if you are a pitcher or a quarterback or a badminton player). A very famous artist can work in their nineties (Picasso) and still attract interest. Most however never generate any interest, or some generate it after their death (Van Gogh).

Wages for art are weird and susceptible to strange variation, but usually they amount to zero. I have poems coming out in Potomac Review, Passager, Poetry East, and Christianity and Literature, and the grand sum I'm getting for those poems is eight copies (altogether) of the journals. Almost no one reads poetry. Very few seek it out. Many write it. I don't know anyone who has made a living out of it aside from teaching it. Some few sell 60,000 copies. I think Ginsberg sold that number of his Collected. Billy Collins wrote a book or two that were bestsellers.

Most poets work hard at poetry. Should they get paid as if they are working in a McDonald's? Or as if they are working in a hot real estate market? Or even more?

If so, who is going to lay out the loot?

Some argue that the labor theory of value is the only good one, and that if you put in a certain amount of labor, you should get paid. Manual laborers often insist on that. Should bad workmen receive the same salary as the good (based on a sentence by Mill on p. 93)? Should a poet who works really hard at it get a salary?

If you are merely investing paper in Wall St., ought you to make any kind of living at all from the risk of investing? From the day laborer's vantage point, it doesn't seem to be real work, just as working on mathematics may not seem like real work to someone who digs ditches for a living. What kind of effort went into the creation of the wealth of a speculator? Should they be able to risk all without having a net beneath them? From the vantage point of the artist, this is as much of a ripoff as their paintings, so why shouldn't the government also pay for artists who've risk their entire life on the hope of becoming famous?

If a person spends their time immersed in brothels or in drug use, should they get the same salary as someone who spends their time working 9-5 in a gas station? To the questions of equity and fairness should be added the question of equality.

On what should the value of a thing be placed? Should it be based on the time it took to create? On the labor that went into it? On its perceived quality? Or on whatever you can get someone to pay for it? Or something else?

POETRY CONTEST BASED ON REVELATION!

2011-12-21T13:25:00.005-05:00

I'd like to do a new poetry contest. This one will be based on the Book of Revelation, and has to have imagery somehow derived from that book. Anything up to thirty lines will be ok. Contest will end on January 1, 2012 (if the universe doesn't disappear as per the Mayans) at 12:01 am. You can enter any number of times. The voting will be done on Jan. 1, and you only get one vote (all ordinary commenters here can vote as can participants).

This time there is an actual prize. It's a white 100% cotton t-shirt with the words Lutheran Surrealism printed on it. It's a double-large XX so should fit anyone. Some company approached me and I bought two of them. I will keep one for myself. Here's an example of the kind of poem I mean which will hopefully inspire others. I can win the contest but if I do I will choose one of the other contestants to get the tshirt so the tshirt will definitely be awarded:

AUNT

Her demure eyelids a magenta
My aunt touches an ash to the ashtray
The end of her cigarette sparkles

Between her frail hands
A glass of plum coffee rests

She takes the cigarette between her pale lips
And squints as she inhales smoke
(Pauses to read Book of Revelation)

Exhaling, small errant clergymen
Tumble like scorpions with women’s faces
Hands outstretched
They research the air for dark epiphanies.

WHAT DID YOU SEEK OUT IN COLLEGE?

2011-12-18T19:38:00.003-05:00

When I went to college I sought out creative writers that would help me with writing.

Obama said on the other hand that he sought out "Marxist professors," on p. 101 of Dreams from my Father. I still find that that phrase defines the man. You are what you seek.

As a blogger I know I should try to find more contemporary business. I should go after issues that burn and blaze. Whenever I mention gay marriage, for instance, I get two hundred comments. Many tomahawks are thrown.

But I want to open debates, not wars.

My problem with Marxism and with Democrats remains that they are not enough about the country and too much about certain factions of the country. Marxism divides the population into good and bad. Good is defined by oppression. Bad is defined by success.

Then they set about redistributing from the successful to the losers. They want the votes of the losers to help them win.

They've been very successful with this strategy.

But I don't think the country itself can succeed if that's the national strategy. We are likely to become a failure as a country, since failure on an individual level is what's rewarded by those in power.

Imagine a classroom in which the F's got A's and the A's got F's. Everyone would try to get an F, so they could get an A.

What if you went to college to major in failure? What if whole countries were set up in order to inculcate failure, in order to attract aid from the IMF?

One wonders about the algorhythms of success and failure. One problem is that those who are smart and successful often keep doing better and better, while the losers get further and further behind.

Sports seems to accentuate that separation between the gifted and the crummy.

At any rate, I think what we sought out in college is what we tried to become, and by now, many of us have more or less become it. Has Obama succeeded?

His wife is proud of him. He's the king of the losers.

Jacob McHangama: The Sordid Origin of Hate-Speech Laws

2011-12-15T08:16:00.005-05:00

Jacob Mchangama is a Danish lawyer whose article "The sordid origin of hate-speech laws," appeared in the December-January 2011 issue of Policy Review (Hoover Institution). I picked it up, being fairly certain that he would trace the hate-speech laws that now dominate European law back to communist efforts to limit freedom of speech during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was published in 1948 under the aegis of Eleanor Roosevelt at the UN.

McHangama does exactly that, but is quite penetrating in his discussion of the history of the hate-speech coda that various communist countries such as Russia, Yugoslavia, and China attempted to add to the UDHR document, without success. McHangama writes, "led by the US and UK, the vast majority of western democracies, albeit with differences in emphasis, sought to guarantee a wide protection of freedom of expression and in particular to avoid any explicit obligation upon states to restrict this right" (49).

"Incitement to violence," was put forward by China as something worth banning, especially with the memory of racial violence and genocidal ideation that occurred in areas under Nazi administration. But it never quite cleared the committee, and the UDHR continued to protect freedom of expression. UDHR is not a legally binding contract but rather a kind of agreement on principles but there is no policing.

On the other hand, two new documents are policed by the EU. One is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the other is called The International Convention for the Elimination of all Racial Discrimination, which is legally binding and has been ratified by 167 states. "Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law."

This sentence (article 20) is a pickle. The US is not a signatory to this document as the US has backed our own first amendment, and has gotten increasingly on the side of freedom (outside of US campuses, which have illegally and unconstitutionally attempted to ban hate-speech). The problem with the ban on any form of discriminatory speech is that it can and has been used to close down freedom of discussion and the right to speak toward some elements of the population. So there is a lot of discussion. During the Cold War, Poland was afraid "that freedom of expression could be abused and 'contribute decisively to the elimination of all freedoms and rights'" (50). So instead they pounded their own population into silence, which proves only that any principle can be abused.

Against this, the United States, most Anglophone countries, and the five Nordic countries, backed freedom of speech.

The silencing of dissent, which was routinely practiced in communist countries, is now also routinely practiced in many Muslim countries. The attempted silencing of the Danish cartoonists was actually backed by European laws, and yet, there were other laws that seemed to allow them to publish. Europe hangs in the balance.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has attempted to use the UN to ram through speech codes that would be universal, and which state, that "everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari'ah" (cited on p. 55). In other words, the entire UN would be held accountable to Shar'iah law, and those who do not hold to this would be accountable for blasphemy.

With Christian and Jewish and Islamic and other groups unable to criticize one another (any statement that insults the religious feelings of others would be banned) one wonders what wouldn't count as a religious feeling, and how all of these various might counteract one another and instead of lead to a global discussion might lead instead to a global silence in which like-minded people were reduced to whispering in corridors. Communists and feminists and fornicaters and global-warming fanatics would and could use the hate-speech codes to block any criticism of their beliefs as insulting to their feelings.

McHangama rightly objects to the closing of free speech throughout Europe. He does this partially on the basis of where these ideas have been (communist dictatorships). He also objects to the way in which Islamics have jumped on these ideas in an attempt to silence the free world's sense of repugnance toward Muslim doctrines of intolerance toward women, and secularists. One need only think of the shooting of dissenters in Iran or the way in which women were not permitted to have an education under the Taliban to think of the ways in which silencing has been practiced within Islam.

Meanwhile, on a related note, I'm also reading JS Mill's On Liberty (originally published 1859; Barnes and Noble edition, 2004). Mill is no longer a well-known philosopher having been eclipsed by postmodernism, communist-Marxist thought, and Anglo-American thinkers such as Peter Singer and Martha Nussbaum (who both have their Marxist side). Still, Mill deserves to be revived, insofar as he is a very strong advocate of freedom of inquiry. Mill was a utilitarian who believed in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Mill writes,

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind" (17).

Mill writes, "All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility" (17).

GRAMMAR VIGNETTES

2011-12-13T11:55:00.006-05:00

I am studying grammar, and working on the problem now of complete and incomplete sentences. I went over this with my second grader and he pretty much had the hang of what is and what is not a complete sentence, but it was intuitive. I have never read a really good account of what makes a "complete thought," except the sense that the sentence is finished (no more information is needed). I decided to make a series of comic vignettes that would teach simple concepts, but do so in a memorable way. Here is my first effort. I wonder if the final word is too much, and should be changed to "Creep!" for the sake of smaller children? I was inspired by the notion of a local middle school teacher (my daughter's teacher) that what was needed was something vivid and interesting to teach grammar. Would a series of a hundred violent little comic vignettes such as this help the matter?

A LITTLE LEARNING IS A DANGEROUS THING, by Kirby Olson

The gorilla looked across at his captive: a hunter still in safari hat.

“Are you ready to die?” asked the ape.

“No.” The man managed to answer. He thought it was too funny that the ape could talk. The ape drank a glass of coconut juice then got up and placed his enormous leather hands on the hunter’s ears.

“What?” The hunter giggled.
“Want to play cards?” the gorilla asked.
“War!”

The gorilla said, “Ok, would you like some sherry?”

“Nope.”

They played War. The ape kept winning.

“Cheater!” screamed the man.

At this, the ape leaped up and tore the man to shreds. Asked by the judge, later, what had set him off, the ape replied, “My superior frontal lobe entitles me to treat the less-endowed with whim. As for this instance, the fact that the man continually spoke in one-word sentences, which I have been raised to believe were incomplete, is sufficient.”

"Hel-lo? Single words can function as complete sentences within quotations," the judge responded. "You seem to have had a very slight education."

The gorilla fumed. He had been brought up in the jungle, and his only grammar study had been with a woman passing through by the name of Jane. The gorilla wondered if he could make a leap at the judge's throat, and make it. Unlikely, given the chains on both sides, as well as the bailiff. He decided to test the judge's hypothesis.

"Bastard!" He seethed, as he was led away in chains.

Gihugic/Ginormous

2011-12-10T23:24:00.000-05:00

Which is bigger: gihugic or ginormous?

Jerry Sandusky Arrested: Where are the Foucaudlians?

2011-12-07T20:20:00.003-05:00

Sandusky was hauled in today for failure to post bail. He's been charged with ten counts of child molesting. What's odd is the silence from the Foucauldians. Michel Foucault is the world's most famous theorist and his work bears heavily on rape and child abuse and sex sex sex. Many of our finest thinkers adore Foucault, and you'd think they'd be mounting an enormous defense of Jerry Sandusky using his work, or at least attempting to frame the controversy with Foucauldian thinking. But scanning the web, I can't find anything. Not even a surreptitious Foucauldian defense of Sandusky. Scott McGaha, in the Foucault theory project gives us some penetrating paragraphs to show us how much we're missing without Foucault's minions weighing in on this matter.

"Cahill, in Foucault, Rape and the Construction of the Feminine Body, attacks Foucault’s theory on rape. In a 1977 roundtable discussion of his theories from Discipline and Punish, Foucault proposed that rape was not any different than other form of physical assault. He claimed,

“…in any case, sexuality can in no circumstances be the object of punishment. And when one punishes rape one should be punishing physical violence and nothing but that. …[If rape is punished differently] what we are saying amounts to this: sexuality as such, in the body, has a preponderant place, the sexual organ isn’t like a hand, hair or a nose. It therefore has to be protected, surrounded, invested in any case with a legislation that isn’t that pertaining to the rest of the body. …It isn’t a matter of sexuality, it’s the physical violence that would be punished, without bringing in the fact that sexuality was involved” (Foucault quoted in Cahill, 2000: 43).

Cahill then argues,

“that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because it is instrumental in the construction or the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually specific meanings” (2000:43).

An article in the American Criminal Law Review uses Foucault’s ideas about punishment to call for legal guarantees of equal punishment for both stranger and nonstranger rape (Shanahan, 1999)

“Foucault asserts that the penalty for a crime should be calculated in terms of its possible repetition; the penalty should account for the future disorder, not the past offense. The penalty should ensure that the particular criminal has no desire to recommit the crime and that the crime does not spawn imitators. …More recent estimates suggest, however, that nonstranger rape may pose the greater risk to women because ‘in most rapes the victim and her assailant were familiar to each other.’ …Foucault’s measure of the injury a crime inflicts upon society supports imposing severe penalties on nonstranger rapists. The current system of punishing nonstranger rape less harshly (if at all) than stranger rape violates two of Foucault’s basic tenets: current rape law neither deters an individual rapist from repeating the crime nor discourages imitators” (Shanahan, 1999: 1375-1376).

Westlund uses Foucault’s definitions of power to examine domestic violence. She claims that women experience both pre-modern and modern forms of power (according to Foucault’s definitions of power), “the former in the primal acts of violence and the latter in contemporary interpretations of her mental health as pathological” (1999: 1045).

“Women discipline their bodies through an elaborate system of self-surveillance; rituals of cosmetics, fashion, hair and skin care, diet, and exercise furnish innumerable examples of how women internalize panoptic relations of power and regulate themselves before and anonymous male gazer….Battered women, I argue, experience pre-modern and modern forms of power side by side: not only do they have to deal with instigation of terror by an all-powerful ‘sovereign’ but they are also often compelled to turn for help to modern institutions of such as medicine and psychiatry, police, courts and so on. These institutions revictimize battered women by pathologizing their condition and treating them as mentally unhealthy individuals who are incapable of forming legitimate appraisals of their situations and exercising rational agency over their lives” (Westlund, 1999: 1045)."

Perhaps there is a deep underground discussion amongst Foucauldians going on. Maybe. You'd think that feminists would be using Foucauld to understand the outrage around Sandusky. But I just haven't seen it. What can account for this silence?

REVELATIONS

2011-12-05T13:02:00.004-05:00

I finished reading The Book of Revelations last evening. I like how much math is involved in it.

8:7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.

8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

With all the stars falling (an actual star falling I think would cause a bigger disaster than what is here described), and grasses getting burnt up (humanity is said to arrive along with the birth of grasslands, as our ability to stand up in the grass gave us an advantage over monkeys and other low creeping thangs).

There are also all these cool quotes. Manson used to run around citing this one:

9:21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

Rainbows abound, and seven of this and seven of that. Dragons pop up out of nowhere, and a woman has two wings like a great eagle. 666 appears as the sign of the Beast of the Apocalypse. It's a very cool book. Plus, Jesus speaks again, and he is quite specific about all those who are misleading others about his project:

2: 20: Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

This isn't exactly the Sermon on the Mount, in which love conquers all. Jesus says,

2:23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searches the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

That last word must have bothered Luther, because it continually appears as the final arbiter of good and bad, and Luther didn't want that to be the final arbiter. He wanted faith as the final rubric. So he denied this book in his youth, but later came to believe it was a truly Christian book. What changed his mind?

It's a lovely strange fiery book, with imagery that seems allegorical to a degree that nothing else in the Bible seems to portend. But finally it is works that matter in this book.

20:13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

What works, exactly? Not sleeping with Jezebel is seemingly a good thing. Not playing ball with 666. Fighting against Gog and Magog counts. Listening to the still small voice of faith rather than worldly inducements, in general. Not blaspheming God while He destroys the earth with hellfire seems to be a goodly thang.

A certain number from each of the 12 tribes are sealed, which I think means saved, but it doesn't seem to depend on anything they did. It was foretold. They are saved from hunger and thirst (7:16), and they will cry no more.

But Jesus says he wants us white hot with faith, not lukewarm 3:16.

But not hot in the body, hot only in the spirit. Anyone who teaches or learns fornication (sex outside of traditional marriage?) is going to get it.

Jesus is also quite elderly now, with a snowy white beard and hair (white like wool, as white as snow -- 1:14). But he's tough as heck: 1:16 "And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength."

This was supposedly written by John, who also wrote the fourth Gospel. He calls himself John four times. He is imprisoned on Patmos, an island. It takes place somewhere between 60-95 AD, and is thought to be an attempt to send comfort throughout the Christian west, which has been under siege by the Romans for decades now, and yet the light continues to spread. It's a beautiful book, and I think it's my favorite book. The only book that touches it in sheer beauty is John's own Gospel, and some passages from St. Paul when he's talking about love and angels. Is 666 meant to be Rome, or it some aspect of each of us?

ARAB SPRING: HINDSIGHT IS 50-50

2011-12-02T13:36:00.006-05:00

O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Those of you who make them his friends is one of them. God does not guide an unjust people. - 5:54

Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme - 8:39

It's not as if the Arab Spring was a protest movement along the lines of the WCTU with slogans such as "Long live Carrie Nations!" or "Stop Demon Rum!" Their message is far more simple, "Kill the infidel!"

The Iranian Revolution, not the American, is their model. Ahmadinejad is their notion of a cultural hero. We have paved the way for a Middle East replete with such figures -- screaming for the blood of internal (Christian) minorities and bringing their countries ever further back toward the 6th century, with any progressives lined up and shot.

I'm not saying that Mubarak wasn't barbaric. Qaddafi was daffy. Hussein was hardly sane. But they knew what they were dealing with, and knew how hard they had to hit to keep Iranian style revolutions from happening throughout the Middle East. I'm not saying that the Shah of Iran was the GB Shaw of his nation. But the Shah didn't have foremost in his mind the need to kill all the Jews, and then all the infidels. Ahmadinejad thinks of this. He wants to eradicate Judaism and America. He has said so. http://www.iranfocus.com/en/?option=com_content&task=view&id=4164

How can we not see that this is a prevailing sentiment through the Arab Spring?

Our aid and comfort in the Arab Spring has enabled genocidal movements to get to power. Have we learned nothing in ten years of war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban? Now we are going to see the complete denial of women's rights, the erasure of homosexuals, the right to freedom of inquiry and speech squashed, but maybe you'll say well, how's that different from what went before? What, then, about beard length? At least beard length used to be a cultural option. How long will this last? The least we can say is how the Arab Spring is going to help American interests around the globe is not immediately apparent.

57 States

2011-11-30T09:14:00.005-05:00

"It is wonderful to be back in Oregon," Obama said. "Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

What were those extra states in BO's mind? It's fun to think what their names might have been. Billy Bob State? Christians with Guns state? Pork n Beans State? Outside of Arugulaville State, Not-Massachusetts and Not the University of Chicago (far from Bill Ayers State), and Sarah Palinville, what does Obama really think of the rest of America? It would be fun to have a New Yorker type take on Obama's take on America.

JUDGES: A Fatal Flaw in Democracy

2011-11-29T09:44:00.003-05:00

Judges judge. But can they do so fairly? We saw in the 2000 election that the resolution of the flawed Florida vote was given to George W. Bush on a strictly partisan basis, first by a Florida judge appointed by W.'s brother, Jeb, and later by the SCOTUS itself, and always on a strictly partisan basis. While some of us may have enjoyed and even celebrated that decision, probably no one saw it as "fair."

At least since then the idea has been to "pack the courts," since that's where the real action is. After California's Proposition 8 was nullified by an apparently gay judge the left had reason to exult. They saw that a single judge could nullify a proposition voted on by millions and millions of people. A narrow victory eked out over years and years of hard work could be undone by the flick of a pen.

Gordon Wood at Brown University's ISI seminar a few weeks back said that "Madison had wanted to 'elevate the level of decision making' by forcing decisions away from the local toward the federal and national, so as to guarantee the quality of those decisions." I'm paraphrasing Wood. He cited Brown vs. Board of Education as a positive example of this. I personally didn't like being bussed into a neighborhood in which I was a minority. Chris Rock, in his filmed series Everybody Hates Chris, is bussed into Corleone High School, and he didn't like it much either. But if you had some wit and charm, and watched your back, there was the possibility of survival. It wasn't Democratic, but the Federalists in general were against states' rights, and local school boards' decisions, and wanted a strong central government, backed by elite judges. Judges were the new aristocracy whose ideas were divine, and had the sanctity of God behind them.

Obviously, judges are just normal people. Some of them don't even seem particularly bright. Sotomayor's bizarre belief that she has superior wisdom on account of her race and gender is the usual "Feminazi" garbage that Rush Limbaugh has complained about for decades. You see that belief held quite commonly throughout academia so you'd think I'd have gotten used to it but I have always thought that people who think they are hot because they belong to some group or another is just nonsense. But of course it's easier to see this in groups to which I don't belong.

I never got used to the notion that our high school football coach was God on earth because he was physically stronger than everyone else around him. He had never read Shakespeare, and didn't know how to complete a crossword puzzle. I had no idea who he thought he was, but I steered clear of the vicious brute.

I have never respected power that comes through force. I do respect democracy, and do respect the notion of voting. But it all seems to be nullified by the judges.

We have two major groups in America: we have the Christian right, who look back to the ten commandments, to the covenants worked out with God in the OT, up through Christ's period, and beyond, through the Protestant Reformation, and Luther and Calvin's attempts to create a workably just system. This in turn led us to the Pilgrims, to the wars between the states over slaves, and then the Civil Rights battles.

The American left is primarily Marxist, and derives their mode of thinking from German totalitarian Karl Marx. Whereas Protestants and even Catholics grant that the world is not perfect, Marx wanted to force fairness on the peoples of the earth through redistribution, enacted by a totalitarian government that eradicated the free will and human rights of persons with private property, in order to guarantee a Cyclopsean fairness. We saw how that worked out in the Soviet Union or in Romania, but the left holds out the option of the US being more or less like Scandinavia. Scandinavia is of course a Lutheran area, and their peoples are Lutheran. But the birdbrains of the left don't know anything about Scandinavia. None of them have been there and few of them speak any of the local languages. They imagine that it's perfect there.

Trust me: I lived in Finland for five years, and it's not perfect there. It's not perfect anywhere on earth. You'd open the Finnish newspaper and fall back amazed at the crimes committed: girls abducted and tortured near a train track. A man taped his girlfriend's head with black duct tape while she was asleep and then broke her head open with a hammer. Some creep put sharp sticks in a local swimming hole so when the boys jumped in the first day of spring they were impaled. Rapes were common. Beatings. Knifings. Taxation burdens were enormous so there was a huge black market in goods. Alcoholism was a national problem. Entire days were given over to inebriation followed by fighting and beatings, and sugar poured into the gas tanks of cars owned by outsiders.

But the culture wars in America have turned us into two separate groups with two separate aspirations, two separate models of humanity, and political will, and people take their inspiration where they can. And let's face it: we hate each other's guts, even if on the local stage, we can be friends. Nationally, I hate the guts of your representatives, and you hate the guts of mine. And it's because we will do anything possible to use the courts to slam home our way of thinking, and force the other to dance to our tune.

I've been sick for almost a week and this is the first day in about five in which I am able to think clearly. It won't last, and I am about to be pulled back into a coma of unending sleep as I attempt to cure the flu (yes, I had the shot at Walgreens but it didn't work). Meanwhile, I managed to read this paragraph from Ludwig von Mises (first published in his book Liberalism in 1927), and was impressed at its prescience (I'm not sure you get enough workup to follow what he's saying as it took him ten pages to get to this bit):

"Where, however, differences of religion, nationality or the like have divided the population into groups separated by a gulf so deep as to exclude every impulse of fairness or humanity and to leave room for nothing but hate, the situation is quite different. Then the judge who acts consciously, or still more often unconsciously, in a biased manner thinks he is fulfilling a higher duty when he makes use of his prerogatives and powers of his office in the service of his own group" (116).

Duke Lacrosse versus Penn State's Sandusky

2011-11-24T10:51:00.002-05:00

Stu Kurtz weighs in late on the PSU scandal, and accuses me of taking a position similar to Duke 88, in terms of condemning Paterno before he's had a trial. Stu claims there is a strong parallel between the way I treated Paterno and the way in which the Duke 88 group treated the three lacrosse students. What in general could be said to be the difference? I think this provides a lovely case for us all to think about the differences between the two cases. I think of them as night and day. Stu writes:

Looking back at your first comment in the Duke Lacrosse Redux thread, you wrote, 'The crime that I argue that the Group of 88 committed falls under the category of "bearing false witness." But they immediately insisted that the three students who were charged be thrown off campus, and their careers at Duke terminated, without even the benefit of a trial.'

In the case of the Duke 88, they bought into a common narrative that rich white frat boys will take sexual advantage of vulnerable woman. Usually, that vulnerability comes from over-indulgence in alcohol that the frat boys provided, but in the Duke 88 case, the vulnerability was constructed out of race, class, and occupation.

This is exactly what you've done with Paterno and the Penn State football program. You have a general understanding of college athletics as being a distraction from the central mission of academics, and often enough a financial distortion of a University's budget. And so you want to use the Sandusky affair, and in particular the broadest form of the prosecution's case (involving both Paterno and Spanier) to argue for that entire team sport should be discontinued.

Whatever you said about the Duke 88? You're just like them.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 12:10:00 PM EST"

I responded, initially, like this:

Kirby Olson said...
The Duke faculty tried their own students, abusing their authority in the name of race, gender, and class (all three came into play, and since the case seemed to reinforce their bias, they couldn't resist hoping that it made all their fantasies of how the world works into a truth that validated their mindless theories).

I am not a part of the Penn State community, and so have no authority to abuse in terms of my understanding of the Paterno case and have no special weight to offer, and thus have not been quoted in the national press, nor did I push anyone at PEnn State to think one way or another. By the time I weighed in, all the details were settled. Paterno was the resident authority in the matter, that is, since he had been at Penn State since 1950, he was the deepest and most important authority in the matter. By his own admission he should have reported the matter to the police, and "wish that I done more," as he put it.

I see him as part of a hierarchy (the topmost part) and he didn't protect those on the bottom (literally as well as figuratively), but merely reported the matter to his athletic director (who in effect reported to Paterno).

I couldn't follow Stu's ideas here. There's an athletic team, and there are accusations, but beyond that, I don't think he dealt with anything more than superficial similarities.

I am, first and most importantly, coming in after the indictment was sealed, and Sandusky had been arrested (many people in academia would not consider what Sandusky had done to be a crime unless race was involved because unless it was, race and gender were not involved -- if race and gender were not involved, many people in academia could not care less). Class was almost certainly involved, but that is no longer of any concern to most academics.

We will not hear anything from feminists since no girls were involved, and boys deserve whatever they have coming to them. Feminists don't care about boys. As far as they are concerned, boys can ge destroyed as a class, and why would they care, unless, of course, they also happen to be minorities.

If the boys turn out to be black, then we will get the race and gender pundits weighing in with every ounce of force they can muster, but if they are not, we will hear nothing from the Sharpton/McKinnon clique. If they are, we will hear about it for the next hundred years.

As for me, my problem with the Paterno situation is my problem with Catholic hierarchy (Paterno is Catholic) and the problem of not standing up and bearing witness (a problem we see not only in the Catholic abuse problem and its subsequent cover-up but also in Italy itself in which a mafia has extended its power throughout the peninsula bringing the Italian economy toward the brink of collapse). This is not necessarily a matter of Catholicism itself, or Catholics, but has to do with their top-down structure in which they think someone else is responsible for the problem. And one musn't block say anything that conflicts with the party line.

Lutherans have many problems, but reporting and being a witness is not one of them. We do not have a damaged sense of authority and so we generally trust authority (often too much, due to St. Paul's Romans, and the passage about trusting the authorities).

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 3:39:00 PM EST

stu said...
Kirby,

It seems to me that the case against Paterno is substantially more ambiguous than you're presenting it. He was presented with hear-say, and he kicked it up the administrative food-chain as such. There's an eminently ironic phrase for Paterno's (and the prosecutor's) argument that he should have done more, "Monday morning quarterbacking." Note that Paterno would have been held blameless, even admirable, if the AD or VP had simply passed the word along to the police. Any of them could have, and none of them did. If there was collusion, a joint decision to do nothing, that's one thing. But I don't have the sense that that's how it went down.

And here's another part of the puzzle that doesn't get much play. Sandusky was being groomed as Paterno's successor. In 1999, he was awarded Assistant Coach of the Year. Yet, he "retired" the same year, at 55 years old, and despite seeking a coaching job, he didn't get one. Funny thing that. Maybe someone around him was putting out the word that there were problems here. Maybe it's worth thinking about who was putting that word out, as you think about culpability.

Why do you consider these facts of the PSU case to be any more reliably established than the "facts" of the Duke Lacrosse "rape," which was tried in the media by the prosecuter?

It seems to me that the Penn State Board of Trustees should have suspended Paterno, Spanier, et. al., pending the result of a trial, but not fired them outright. It is one thing to act decisively in the event of credible information to protect others. It is another thing to prejudge the case -- and that's exactly what happened with the Duke 88 and with you. You're guilty of exactly the same error.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 4:06:00 PM EST

Kirby Olson said...
Stu, what the Duke 88 did to the students at Duke is what you're doing to me. First off, the students at Duke did nothing. They got the wrong three people, and framed them, and then railroaded them. The stripper pulled a Tawana Brawley. Remember that nothing happened at Duke. And yet everyone rushed to judgement with the exception of one or two administrative officials.

At Penn State, something really did happen. At least eight children were molested, and the perp was caught in the act, and Paterno not only didn't report according to Pennsylvania law, he participated in a cover up and allowed Sandusky to continue to have keys to athletic facilities that allowed kids to continue to be abused in those facilities. The grand jury indicted Sandusky on forty counts of child molesting. That's forty counts, and it includes at least 8 boys.

I'm not sure why I'm like the Duke 88. After all they railroaded the students when nothing at all had ever happened. Now if it turns out that no kids were harmed at all, and that the kids and their moms made all this stuff up, then we would have a situation parallel to Duke. Is Sandusky parallel to the three lacrosse students?

And at that point, I would apologize. But I would not have the responsibility that Duke 88 would have had. I have had no bearing on the case, being an outsider from a remote institution, writing on a blog that doesn't have national attention. Duke 88 were inside the institution and weighed in on their own students. Their names were widely known throughout the nation as wishing to forward the railroading. After the facts were known and it became clear the DA railroaded the kids (for which he lost his license) they still did not apologize, but went on bizarrely to continue to press the case even after the case had been dismissed by everyone else in the nation. They were still certain it had happened although all the facts were otherwise.

Your assertion that I am like Duke 88 is more like Duke 88 than I am, or so I think. Let's see what the others say, and see if Brett or others take your side. Helen Losse might, but she doesn't come here much any longer. In both cases I believed that there was a truth that was suppressed, and I thought it was a symptom of corruption and misplaced priorities.

Your values in this case are hard to fathom!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 10:52:00 PM EST

stu said...
Kirby,

You need to go back and re-read your summary condemnation of the Duke 88. It had everything to do with a rush to judgment before a trial.

Has there been a trial of Sandusky? Has there been a trial of Paterno, or Spanier? I must have missed it.

The Duke 88 erred because accepting the prosecution's version of facts fit their narrative. You're doing the same. There is nothing more to say.

You're not trying. I agree that children need to be protected, and that if the case proves to be as the prosecution alleges, then Paterno (and Spanier and others) should have done more. But I also think that the record will ultimately show that both did considerably more than is currently understood, and that this will moderate judgments that now seem all-but universal. I've already sketched out a reaction by the PSU trustees that I thought met their obligations to both the alleged victims, and the alleged perpetrators: suspension until trial, and final resolution thereafter.

I wonder about your values. You were big on "innocent until proven guilty" in the Duke case. You don't give a damn about it here. Hence, "innocent until proven guilty" is not one of your values, but instead is a tactic that you apply selectively to cases that meet other ideological tests.

Here's the thing that I don't get. Sandusky "retired" in '99. Yet the incident that is at the root of the current allegations occurred in the PSU football showers in '02. What, exactly, was an ex-employee doing there? Why did he still have access? I've not heard this addressed at all.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 11:08:00 PM EST

Kirby Olson said...
Stu, you are in a time warp because of other events that have kept you from getting the latest facts in the Sandusky case. Paterno allowed Sandusky to use the facilities after he was not renewed. This meant that he had keys, and continued to abuse at least eight more children in the PSU facilities, and was caught red-handed at least once more by McQueary -- now in charge of the PSU football team. Read Jerry Sandusky, the Wiki page, and get caught up with the facts of the case. There are many new bits of data, including a missing DA (they can't find the body), the number of victims (not alleged victims who stand to gain something by speaking out, but instead victims whose lives will be further ruined by these crimes), and there are statements by Sandusky himself that have come to light, such as his statement to one of the victims' mothers: ""I wish I were dead," as he put it.

One way in which Paterno might not be as guilty as I have put it here is that he may be of an age in which it wasn't commonly realized that child perps will repeat their crimes if given the opportunity. He may have thought Sandusky was able to control himself having once been scolded. But perps in this category are repeat offenders at a 99% rate. What Sandusky apparently did is to use the facilities and tickets to treat children to presents that he would then get them excited with. Paterno let those gifts continue by not completely severing the relationship of Sandusky and the University facilities.

Paterno may not have realized that this would be the case, and the kind of crime may have been far from his ability to understand. He was, after all, 86. And maybe he had no awareness of anything outside of football. He may have been a kind of idiot savante. If that's the case, then it's possible to forgive his incredible dimwittedness on this matter.

There are new rumors that Sandusky groomed these kids as a child brothel for wealthy donors. A columnist named Michael Madsen made those allegations public. One wonders if the investigation will turn up an entire crime organization founded on the premises of PSU and in which money used to create a competitive team was gotten via this child brothel and translated into successful seasons. Time will tell.

As I see it, the number of personnel of very high standing involved, and the length of time this took to play out (at least a decade, and possibly more) make it quite unlike the Duke case in which a single night was involved, a false claim by a flighty person was believed by 88 faculty members, and in which the DA knowingly railroaded three young men who had nothing to do with the case for political reasons.

So far as PSU we have instead an insider very far up in the hierarchy who is accused of a far more dreadful crime -- raping children inside of campus facilities for a period exceeding ten years, and in which the top coach of the team was aware of the crimes, and barely did anything to stop it. Presidents of colleges can be released for any reason, and do not generally speaking have tenure, as faculty do. They can be released for any reason. It is not a crime to release them. Neither Paterno nor Spanier have been accused of criminal activity and neither one will be tried.

The lacrosse boys were tried in the public and on TV over a period of years, and false witness was knowingly borne against them, including by sports writers and major television figures. They were summarily removed as students from the student body. This was illegal given that they had not yet been found guilty (and ultimately the stripper herself said they had the wrong three men even though in fact noone had ever raped her).

The cases bear a tantalizing but superficial resemblance. The deep parallels aren't there.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:48:00 AM EST

Kirby Olson said...
Paterno was, by the way, a lifelong Republican, and a major donor to the Republican party. So I bear him no animus on a political basis.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:51:00 AM EST

Kirby Olson said... (Here is some of the data from Wikipedia):
On November 5, 2011, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was arrested on 40 counts relating to sexual abuse of eight young boys over a 15-year period, including alleged incidents that occurred at Penn State.[28] A 2011 grand jury investigation reported that then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary told Paterno in 2002 that he had seen Sandusky abusing a 10-year-old boy in Penn State football's shower facilities. The grand jury report would later detail that McQueary saw Sandusky sodomizing the boy. [29]According to the report, Paterno notified Athletic Director Tim Curley the next day about the incident, and later notified Gary Schultz, director of business and finance, who oversaw the University Police.[30]

That's from the Paterno page. 40 counts is fairly serious, and eight boys. We have far less in terms of the Herman Cain problem -- three reports of HARASSMENT, not rape (Clinton was accused of raping Juanita Broaddrick and paid her 850,000 hush money, but Democrats don't care, and would love to have him as president again), but with Cain it was only harassment, and we don't have faces, only allegations, and the crime is not nearly as serious as rape, much less of minors.

Where minors are concerned, the country is understandably alarmed because the very possibility of consent is not there.

Thursday, November 24, 2011 9:00:00 AM EST

Kirby Olson said...
The wiki page on Duke's lacrosse team cites the division of faculty members amongst the 88 Duke faculty who decided that the lacrosse players had been guilty of a hate crime:

"In three departments, more than half of faculty signed the statement. The department with the highest proportion of signatories was African and African-American Studies, with 80%. Just over 72% of the Women's Studies faculty signed the statement, Cultural Anthropology 60%, Romance studies 44.8%, Literature 41.7%, English 32.2%, Art & Art History 30.7%, and History 25%. No faculty members from the Pratt School of Engineering or full-time law professors signed the document. Departments that had no faculty members sign the document include Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Genetics, Germanic Languages/Literature, Psychology and Neuroscience, Religion, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies."

OWS HAS A WIKI PAGE

2011-11-19T13:07:00.006-05:00

There is now a Wikipedia page for OWS. It's interesting. Most Americans have had a rising income since 1979 but the top 1% has gained 275% while the middle class has only gained 40%. Many of the protesters want socialism and are prepared to use violence to get it (31% think violence is acceptable). 98% think that civil disobedience is acceptable.

"On Oct. 10 and 11, the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland interviewed nearly 200 protesters.[43] Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, 98% would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and 31% would support violence to advance their agenda. Most are employed; 15% are unemployed. Most had supported Obama; now they are evenly divided. 65% say government has a responsibility to guarantee access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement. They support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary.[43]

In the Wall Street Journal, Fox News political analyst and Clinton administration pollster Douglas Schoen wrote that the protesters reflect "values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people" and have "a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas," and that politicians who support them will be hurt in the 2012 elections.[43]"

It's hard to know what to do with all this information except to file it under part of the growing gap between opinions of America's future. I personally am for private enterprise and private property and don't think others should either be able to seize it or to occupy it. The whole movement was apparently started by a Canadian activist group.

I do think the richest people should help the poorest, but on the other hand they are already doing so. Only 53% of people pay taxes at all in this country. I think even the poorest person in America has access to food and shelter (there are people who don't get enough calories but that is a voluntary thing called anorexia). In general, we are eating too many calories. I know I am. I do look for artificial sweeteners such as Sucralose, aspartame, and Nutrasweet, and love them all, but some people claim they cause cancer.

As I see it, life is a gamble from beginning to end. You hope when you get out of bed to have a good day. You hope to eat something that's decent and won't make you sick. You hope when you open Facebook to be amused. You hope when you open any book to be entertained and hopefully enlightened. You hope when you start a business to have a profit. You hope when you invest in a company that there will be a return on the investment. It seems to me that OWS is about dissatisfied people who want government to take all the gambles/gambols out of life, and make government into a nanny that will never forget your meal or to wipe your butt and face (hopefully not with the same napkin).

There is a certain level of risk when you make a decision to get married or to take a job or to hire someone. You never know if your partner will cheat, or die, or get cancer, or turn mean and spend the whole day screaming at you in public. A boss might fire you or harass you or never give you any raise, and then suddenly you're old and stuck. In Lois Lowry's The Giver she posits a society in which all risk has been removed. People are basically zombies. Inconvenient children (children who cannot produce, or aren't smart) are killed off (released).

In a game such as basketball the top 1% produce all the baskets in the NBA. Very few of the country's basketball players ever make it to the NBA. Those few who can get in (probably less than 600 players at any one time) score almost all of the baskets. And they also make almost all of the money to be made. But if you say that everyone in America should split the baskets then it's hard to see how the competition would be improved, or the game itself would be improved. It's frustrating for some to think that they are not succeeding. Excellent businessmen like Donald Trump aren't made overnight. Most can't cut it. And yet people envy them, and think that it's easy. Writing is also a competitive enterprise. Many start blogs, and few are read. Few get comments. Most fold in a certain amount of time. Most writers will never have a book and if they do the book won't pay for itself, much less make a profit or a name for its author. Is this fair? It's a risk that almost everyone will fail at. Life itself is a risk from the inception (billions of sperm cells but only one arrives at the egg first). Life is risk.

Risk is the main problem perhaps. The protesters want to limit the profits of the upper classes in order to make their own lives risk-free by creating a better tax base. However, without companies that are producing profits, there are no taxes. So, it would seem that free enterprise would work better for everyone. But the enterprises would have to be free to fail, too. The Fannie and Freddie debacle in which loans were given out but in which there was no risk is what ruined the economy. The government bailout of Fannie and Freddie created an enormous tsunami of debt that wiped out many companies and threatened to take the US under. It damaged our credit rating. The government has to let businesses fail, and businesses have got to get back to taking risks. Insurance companies have to be free to set their own risk levels. If they screw up, they go under. Government should get out of business altogether and simply regulate and make sure that businesses are safe for the environment and that they are not unfairly creating monopolies, or cutting the actual throats of other businessmen and businesswomen.

It's not as if I myself love risk. I find it unnerving. When I eat I want maximum enjoyment with minimum calories. So I drink iced tea with aspartame. This means I get a sweet drink but also the risk of cancer. The risk I do without is the calories. The best bet is to stay within the recommended BMI. The iced tea companies are betting that I will bet in this way: drink sweet beverages without calories. I should resist, but I willingly for for this risk. I shouldn't, but I do.

If I started to bet another way, so would they. This proves that capitalism is a democracy, and I am in control. Under communism, there would only be one drink, and everyone would be forced to drink it, or die.

RAISING CAIN (ABOUT CLINTON)

2011-11-16T08:21:00.003-05:00

Herman Cain will have to bow out due to three alleged incidents in which he made passes at workers. Those workers don't have names and the settlements appear to be nominal (about 40 grand each). A new woman from Obama's Chicago has recently surfaced and made new allegations. I don't think Cain will be Able to survive the scandal. Newt Gingrich will have similar problems once voters are reminded that he has had three wives. But it's weird that Bill Clinton gets a pass. From Wikipedia:

"Throughout his career, Clinton has been subject to various allegations of sexual misconduct, though he has only ...admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers.[139] For alleged misconduct during his governorship, Paula Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton while he was president. The case was initially dismissed,[140] but Jones appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.[141] During the deposition for the Jones lawsuit, which was held at the White House,[142] Clinton denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky – a denial that became the basis for the impeachment charge of perjury.[143] On November 18, 1998, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, and agreed to pay Jones and her attorneys a sum of $850,000.00.[144] Clinton denies ever engaging in a sexual affair with her[144] and his attorney Bob Bennett stated that he only made the settlement so he could end the lawsuit for good and move on with his life.[145]

In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton sexually assaulted her four years previously. In 1998, Juanita Broaddrick alleged Clinton raped her some twenty years previously. The accusations by Willey and Broaddrick were never brought before a court. The independent counsel determined Willey gave "false information" to the FBI and inconsistent sworn testimony related to the Jones allegation.[146] Gennifer Flowers, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Sally Perdue, and Dolly Kyle Browning each have reported having adulterous sexual relations with Clinton during or before his service as governor. " But who cares he's a Democrat.

Now Clinton wants a third term. He's saying that given enough time a president should be able to serve an indefinite number of terms. Surely the allegations against him are far more serious than those against Cain, and yet, it's as if the allegations and memories only exist against Cain, and Clinton has been scrubbed clean by the media. (Pictured above: Juanita Broaddrick.)

PIZZA A VEGETABLE?

2011-11-16T00:00:00.004-05:00

Heard an amusing program on NPR this evening. I was driving so I'm not sure I got all the facts straight. But this is more or less what I got. Obama's czars or some Obama group have been trying to decide if pizza counts as a vegetable for school lunch. They said that if a single slice had a half a cup of tomato sauce, then it counted. Pizza factions fought back and said no kid would eat pizza with that much sauce. Obama's czars caved. Two teaspoons is sufficient. This recalled the argument during Reagan years about whether ketchup was a vegetable and could count as one in school lunches. Reagan said yes. The communists screamed no. I don't know who won. Is there a real difference between ketchup and pizza sauce? Isn't it the same thing? SCOTUS should settle these things. But do we even know what a vegetable is? We don't know when a person is a vegetable much less when we're eating one. They are hard to distinguish from fruits. French fry manufacturers are going to try to argue that it's still enough like a potato to qualify as a vegetable next, the announcer said.

I MISSED THE DEBATE

2011-11-13T16:37:00.002-05:00

I found the channel switcher but there were no batteries. It was 8:50 and the debate ended at 9. I scrounged up batteries from the kids' toys (a perpetual battle) and switched on the Republican debates. They were just ending with Ron Paul standing up against torture in any situation including if children are at stake (it's illegal, don't you know). My children torture me. I can never find the channel switcher. It's often days befo...re I can find it, and then it's been stripped of batteries. It's torture to not be able to watch a show I want to see. I think Ron Paul is the one Republican I would never vote for, even if Obama was the only other choice. Paul is a visionary. That's what we don't need, as the kids would say. I just want someone who's effective. Ron Paul wants to dump all the federal agencies in the Potomac, call home all our troops, get rid of foreign aid, and open the borders entirely and stop caring about the drug trade. He also wants to return to gold and silver (as if there's enough for 300 million people to really do this). There's a golden gleam in some of his ideas, especially the ones he's gleaned directly from austrian school economics: particularly Hayek and Von Mises. But otherwise, he's way too libertarian for me. It's torture to listen to Ron Paul. His voice grates up and down my spine. I hesitate to compare it to waterboarding. I just want someone competent who will get the business sector moving again. Ron Paul is always up on a high horse about something. It's just torture to listen to the man, even if he's against it.

I like Herman Cain but he's lost the women now. The Republican candidate is going to have to pull together the entire electorate to win. I love how he approaches problems. Got a Gordian knot? He approaches it with a chainsaw. Rip! It's over. Unfortunately he also approached dating in much the same way.

I think it will end up Romney as the nominee, with someone on the ticket who can hopefully apologize to the evangelicals for his being Mormon. Maybe Huckabee? We have to win all the debates, and can't have a single serious misstep or else the MSM will go wild. They want communism by any means necessary. We have got to get the economy back from the Democrats. They are waterboarding the entrepreneurs, and I think the impression of something dying may be for real.

PATERNO FIRED: CANCEL THE WHOLE SEASON OUT OF DECENCY AND RESPECT

2011-11-09T23:58:00.004-05:00

Sandusky apparently admitted what he'd done to one of the mothers and said that he wished he was dead. I wish he was dead, too.

But what's odd to me about Paterno's comments have been how this was such a tragedy for HIM. And for Penn State. Doesn't he have any loyalty to humanity itself? Why doesn't he have any solidarity with those little boys?

It's like football is everything. I think they ...should cancel their entire season and get a sense of perspective. The entire community should do penance for at least a year. Football has become a form of idolatry for them.

Football is stupid, and brings out the stupid beast in people. I've never liked it. Ok, I hate the sport. It should be banned. If this was one of the clean programs, then the whole sport should be outlawed. I can't believe they are going to play the game on Saturday, and that students are upset that Paterno is out. They showed students demonstrating at Penn State while in a drunken state, and smashing things. They want an accessory after the fact to continue in his position? They want a coach who looked the other way to keep his job?

There are more important things than winning a stupid game.

And it really is a stupid game. These people might as well all be zombies in a postapocalyptic rite.

Why don't the trustees go all the way and fire the entire team and ban football at the school for a year or two (or preferably, make a truly moral choice and ban it permanently at their school?).

Soccer is a superior game. (It is a superior game.) (Badminton is even better.) (Team sports invariably lead to communism.) But it's also disgust over all the allegations and cover-ups, and the whole way in which many people find it highly inconvenient that some children's lives were destroyed before Paterno could have his last season. Why did it have to come out now, is the message I'm getting.

You shall know them by their fruits, Christ said. We can see the fruits of the football program at Penn State. Monstrous idiots without a trace of wisdom or decency who pulled in millions of dollars for their school thanks to winning seasons. Football reminds me of ancient Rome at its worst. I don't think there should be any contact sports.