The Lawyers' Potty

I wasn't planning on blogging this weekend, with a pile of other things very urgently clamoring for my attention... especially some much-overdue one-on-one time with soon-to-go-off-to-university daughter-two Portia tomorrow.

And we had a little health-worry over Mother yesterday, one that saw her in the hospital for a few hours while her vitals were brought back down to less sweat-inducing levels.

Ah, well — the best-laid plans, etc.

Earlier this week, old arch-conservative friend Anon E. Mouse (whom I haven't raked over the coals here lately, given that I've got a much more troublesome target I still haven't finished up with) sent me an email that I thought at first was a joke. No, it wasn't — except of the bitter-laugh sort.

I got just a handful of words into it, then deleted it in annoyance. But unrelated online research put it back in my mind today, and I retrieved her broadside from my Recycle Bin and had at it; following is the email she sent... after I straightened out some lousy built-in formatting: 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mouse, Anon E. [mailto:AEMouse@SOL.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:25 AM
Subject: FW: [Fwd: Fw: FW: The Lawyers Party]

Interesting perspective 

The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers Party. Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers.

Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife, Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and, Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon. Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?

Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work.

The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers.

Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.

The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers try to solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side. Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine.

But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become 'adverse parties' of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

We cannot expect the Lawyers Party to provide real change, real reform, or real hope in America.

Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse. 

Wait — Michelle Obama's running for office too? That's news to me, but she gets my vote. (And if she's not, why would her profession matter?).

Anyway, I sent the following email back to Ms. Mouse this evening — I'll let you know if she responds, and if so how: 

Oh, please! 

I'll always love and respect you as a special friend, Anon… and every so often I just have to roll my eyes. But keep the entertaining stuff coming anyway, okay? It's great blog-fodder, and sometimes this helps get my blood pressure and pulse elevated to more invigorating levels. 

First, the cheap shot: the author obviously doesn't know how to spell "Democratic", as in "Democratic Party", whose members are Democrats, but whose party isn't a Democrat. Brother. George "Duh!" Bush has this same problem. Maybe in the interest of similarly streamlining names we could sand a couple letters off the term "Repugnicant Party", too — oops; typo there, I'm sure; that should be "Republican Party". Let's be really nice and knock off the first two letters, moving the party up in the alphabet a couple notches in the process. 

So what is a "publican"? Hmm… Biblically they were the tax collectors who traitorously and greedily stole from fellow (Jewish, in this case) citizens on behalf of the power that had a stranglehold over the country. Yeah; that works for me.

(It's possible that some pro-business conservatives haven't heard about record billions in profits for tax-break-favored oil companies these last couple years… making earning an honest wage increasingly difficult for "real people doing real work", as that author refers to them: truck drivers, farmers (have you checked fertilizer prices lately, and do you know how dependent that industry is on petrochemicals?), and so on.)

And in England a "publican" is — I think — someone who owns a pub: "Come in, let me give you something addictive to make you even stupider while you try to forget all the problems that still exist in the outside world. Trust me." That'll work, too. 

Now, on the matter of lawyers: following the clear direction of that raving essay's shallow, partisan author, let's have a bit of a look at lawyers we should indeed be really disparaging and frightened of, and ought to disassociate utterly from, since lawyers obviously aren't "real people doing real work" (and I'll pass that term along to the attorney who won me custody of my daughter, and child support; might amuse him, too)

• Abraham Lincoln: sixteenth President, and member of the Publican party… uh-oh; throw away all your pennies and five-dollar bills;

• Hmm… so was our nineteenth President, Rutherford Hayes, who actually lost the popular vote and won by a single electoral in a heavily disputed election (sounds familiar);

• Our twentieth President, James Garfield —

• — and so was his successor by assassination, our twenty-first President, Chester Arthur;

• Our twenty-third, Benjamin Harrison;

• Our twenty-fifth President, William McKinley —

• — as well as his successor-by-assassination and our twenty-sixth, the vigorous and accomplished war-hero Theodore Roosevelt;

• Our thirtieth, silent Calvin Coolidge;  

Do you see a trend developing here? All these men were Repugnicants, and —excuse me; there I go again. I meant, all of these men were Publicans, and every one of them to a man was a lawyer.

Maybe I should chart this, and see which party's actually put more lawyers into the White House. (We could also look at lawyers thrown out of the White House, like Scooter Libby and Harriet Myers. And how about a particularly famous and successful Publican lawyer who took on and beat a two-term Publican president in legal matters, and forced him out of office: John Sirica?)

And this isn't all of our Publican lawyer-Presidents, either. But then, some might argue that Teddy was too progressive and liberal, and that may well be… maybe that's why I like him? So who was it that inherited the conservative Publican mantle from Rough Rider T. R. when the Publican party spun apart during the 1912 election? Well, well…

• Our twenty-seventh President, the most-definitely conservative William Howard Taft — whose continuing skills as a lawyer after his presidency eventually propelled him into the Supreme Court as the tenth Chief Justice, one of those "nine unelected judges" the author rails about.

Ah, Publicans and conservatives — and typical of the modern conservative, the author of that silly, shallow, partisan, divisive piece relies on folks' knee-jerk reactions… and fails to research and do his homework. (I'm assuming the author's a he; most women aren't that stupid.) Plus he's counting on his jittery-lemming readers to do no differently. Forward to the cliffs!

Sometimes these conservatives are their own worst ambassadors. They make my own work so much easier. With obviously no essential research and scarcely any thought of note given to that conservative's rant on "The Lawyers' Party", his piece calls for a very simple, shallow, and cheap-shotted response. So I'll just have to repeat a classic bumper-sticker that I just may sport this year: "Vote Republican – It's Easier Than Thinking!"

Boy, does that guy evidence the axiom!

Keep 'em coming, Mouse; this can be real fun sometimes!

Regards,

A. Gene Childe

I never did read Mouse's email in full, and don't plan to. But I do believe her author made some kind of grandiose claim about Publicans caring about people, or taking care of people. With Al Gore being a recent recipient (and not forgetting Democratic former president Jimmy Carter), could he please point out to me who is the last prominent Repugnicant to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

I did forget to point out another prominent lawyer in American history (pre- Publican Party, so perhaps he doesn't count): Francis Scott Key, who penned our national anthem.

Hello? Anybody?

 

The Work of the Season

I know, I know – sometimes it looks like I've abandoned this blog. Far from it! In fact, I'll be adding a couple weekly features (at least, until I run out of material) beginning next month:

1) Would you like to build a lapsteel guitar? Regular fodder-provider Spartacus set down his crossbow and throwing-axe long enough to do just that; stand by. We'll be looking over his shoulder as he goes through the steps, visiting one of his two workshops once a week; please do not touch the equipment.

2) Semi-adopted sister Chuckles has agreed to let me post her scripts here. No, I don't mean fonts; I'm talking actual scripts for television shows which she's written and pitched – they range from "The Simpsons" to "Star Trek" to "House". None have hit the screen yet (and they're already copyrighted, so don't get any dollar-signs in your eyes, okay?), but any day now… once the strike's over, that is. Oh, and did I mention she's legally blind?

…plus there are seasonal things I want to squeeze in over the next couple weeks, and I’m still committed to scraping the muck off His Holiness Pius XII; I'll also be tackling a particularly tough issue next month: abortion – from a liberal (yet loyal) Catholic's viewpoint.

Back to the immediate present, though. Without any appreciable loss in weight, the month thus far has seen me spread thinner than I've been in some time. Thanks to a helpful (i.e., desperate) national staffing agency, today I finished out my second full week at the headquarters of a world-spanning firm sited just off the tarmac of a regional airport that's also close to my home.

Being the USAF veteran and wingnut/propellerhead he is, on my very first day I happened to be in a supply-room, and I called Spartacus and gloated at him, identifying the firm (he's quite familiar with it). There he was, in the mountainous wilds, busily preparing for the next snow-onslaught, and here I was, within not-too-many-dozen yards of lots of jet fuel and small planes.

I may yet meet the business-end of one of his axes; he could've taken it as mean of me.

A portion of my assignment for this firm's Office Services department has seen me pitching in with the overworked folks in the corporate mailroom… thus netting me a harvest of many handfuls of world stamps come the end of each day. (These are not part of my wages… which aren't spectacular. But it's work.) Daughter One, Shellie, was a Psychology major, and thereby I've once again vindicated her academically-qualified assessment that I do, indeed, need a life. Woo-hoo!

Before taking on the privilege of ducking particularly low-flying aircraft, I was honored to spend three humble days at the beginning of this month helping out the commendable people of the Salvation Army – this was their near-downtown location at a county seat. They needed some folks to help on the admin end of getting needy families set up for assistance in simply being able to give their kids some toys and clothing for Christmas. I accepted the request without hesitation. I met and spoke with (in English and shaky Español) quite a few families.

Let me give the Salvation Army an unmitigated, enthusiastic plug here. According to their latest annual report (see page 17), a paltry 5% of their moneys coming in is earmarked to pay for fundraising; even their operating expenses – headered "Management & General" take up no more than 12% of their expenses. My understanding (I've not yet verified, but Forbes confirms) is that this is far better than any other community service charity out there – better by staggeringly far than United Way; better even than my own Knights of Columbus, for that matter.

You want your charitable contributions to go the furthest, then for your desperate brothers' and sisters' sake, people, don't skip the Kettle. Shoot; you can even donate online, and tell them how you want your donation allocated.

Other donations: household goods, clothing, etc. – of course! And if you have one of those Planet Aid clothing-donation boxes in your neighborhood… stay away from those scammers! (I want to take them on here sometime, too.) They are not a non-profit charitable organization. Give your giveaways to the bell-ringers, or to Goodwill. I do.

Let me repeat what our Pastor preached for Thanksgiving:

Everything we have that is in excess of what we must have to meet our needs… belongs to the poor.

 

Stuffed Full of It Already

You know, people, I'm really trying to get other stuff done here –

1. Job placement

2. College registration

3. Pluck a turkey

4. Finish constructing a multimedia CD-ROM (~360+ text pages, several dozen music tracks, dozens of images and MHT/HTML freestanders, etc.)

5. And plenty more

 – and you go and send me something that gets my soapbox-feet to itchin'; sigh

Fine.

Lovely former coworker (and wry Brit-wit) HeyJude passed me a making-the-rounds email (right on the heels of the same one, from fellow former coworker Electra… but HeyJude's got a cuter accent). The spelling is poor, punctuation ditto, the rhyme is lousy, meter shaky, and it's got unseemly neocon splotches all over it. Nonetheless, here it is, unretouched by your Aging Child:

T’was the month before Christmas
When all through our land
Not a Christian was praying
Nor taking a stand.
See the PC Police had taken away,
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing,
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.
It might hurt people's feelings the teachers would say
December 25th is just a 'Holiday'.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!
CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-pod
Some thing was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda
As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears
Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, NOT Happy Holiday!

I responded, copying Electra:

Brother; ain't that the truth! (And you've just sent me a blog-seed… thanks!)

I'm anything but conservative: left of center on a bunch of key issues (e.g., anti- death penalty, pro- increase of spending on health care, education, etc.), but I'm certainly solidly traditional (not "conservative"!) on some issues: family/moral values, no longer pro-abortion, etc.

So whenever a grumbling email comes my way with the names "Clinton" and "Boxer" in it, it sets my teeth on edge, because I can guess that the author is conservative (e.g., pro-gun, pro-Bush, etc.).

Nonetheless, sometimes I do find myself with "strange bedfellows", and at times will concur (not "agree", okay? shudder!) with their stances. This happens to be one.

Putting up a "Merry Christmas" sign is not the same thing as posting a picture of Torquemada under a banner of "Accept Jesus or die!" Puh-lease, people! It really is okay to say "Merry Christmas".

E.g., I've been to two Jewish services (one a seder, the other a wedding), and out of courtesy wore a yarmulke (kept it, too – they're cool!) both times… and didn't walk away afterward with the impression that someone was about to force-convert me into abandoning ham sandwiches and going grocery-shopping on Saturdays.

Likewise, should I have the delight of joining some Buddhists in temple, Hindus in an ashram, Muslims in a mosque, and/or animists around a roaring fire, I'll follow conventions and take my shoes off, squat on the rug, burn incense, chant, rub blue mud on my belly, and so on. That is respect for their beliefs. I'll bone up on my Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Tibetan, Farsi, Japanese, Tlingit, and so on, to accommodate my ability to participate as a welcome guest.

"Equal rights for all" I embrace, and will fight and die for. All are free to worship in my neighborhood, so long as the other neighbors are not greatly inconvenienced or threatened. Please do not hurt anyone out of worship, do not tear up the streets or park on my lawn, and try to keep the noise down a bit between, oh, let's say 11 PM and 7 AM. Beyond that, have at it – and say a prayer for me, too, okay? I'm doing the same for you, folks.

What I will not do is bend over backwards (nowadays it's hard enough forwards) to avoid the remotest possibility of leaving my sister/brother non-Christian (or even non-Catholic) feeling less than respected and honored. This country was founded as a majority-Christian nation, and ought still to be so. Non-Christians are a minority here – though only in faith.

As fellow-citizens (or visitors… legally, too, please), they have all the rights and protections and duties that I benefit from as well. I am committed to seeing to that through all legal means, and do so heartily. That is equality. I will shed my O-neg blood to protect them and their children. To cite just one particular faith's writings: the Koran says, "If you mingle your affairs with them, they are your brothers" (and sisters, of course!); see Surat 2 (al-Baqarah) 220.

Now, get this: EQUALITY DOES NOT MEAN EQUAL BILLING.

"Equality" in this regard is equal protection under the law, equal rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness; voting, employment/pay, non-discrimination, and so on.) It is not "equal" in the sense of one-to-one equal, follow? Or I'd be obligated to build one – uh, let's say "temple to Ra, the sun-god" as a catch-all, okay? – build one Ra-temple for every church I build, one Ra-school for every Christian school, set aside one Ra-holiday in the governmental schedule for every Christian holiday set aside.

I will not post a billboard to the almighty Ra to offset the small pile of Christmas cards I plan to begin sending out after this weekend. Ra will understand, I'm sure. I want my knee-jerk, fellow-left brothers and sisters to understand that, too. I'm really with you guys.

Now, let's celebrate Thanksgiving… turkeys!

Hooraw for Michigan

And the email keeps coming in! While I'm out meeting HR folks, or at home rearranging stamps or just peering at my belly-button, I'm still in touch with the world, and vice-versa.

Old friend and foil Anon E. Mouse sent me an email yesterday; I read it this morning, and pounced on it immediately. It appears to have originated with a Tall-Corn fellow I'll call John Smith:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 2:09 PM

Subject: hooray for michigan

This was checked out on SNOPES and found to be exactly as is stated.

Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 11:43 AM

Professor Tells Muslims to Leave Country

Hooray for Michigan State University!

Well, what do we have here? Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top.

The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman. Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech."

Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:

Dear Moslem Association:

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris, France. This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel your dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests." If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. Now the chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

For its part, the university is standing its ground, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended for his e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong language if he'd known it was going to get out.

How's the left going to handle this one? If you're in favor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it.

Send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same. Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it. We are in a war. This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.

If you agree with this, please send it to all your friends, if not simply delete.

Keep the Faith!

John Smith

She must have heard my eyes rolling. I sent back to her:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 11:56 AM

Nope; I don't agree.

The university is quite right in standing by their man over issues of free speech and the privacy of his communication.

However – and I think most of the "Right" has lost sight of this – the students' protests, and Wichman's complaint, simply are not equivalent issues. The students were protesting the depiction of Muhammad in those Danish cartoons; they found it offensive. I don't, but I'm not as sensitive, nor as vociferous. Regardless; the students were well within their rights to protest an issue that, though overseas, they found personally insulting.

Or should we Christians, in turn, not complain if someone, say, in Malaysia does a TV and internet commercial featuring (this is just a what-if, okay?) Jesus climbing down off the cross, soul-kissing a young lady in the crowd, and selling her father a car and bowl of noodles?

Wichman, again, was well within his own rights to notify that student group he'd felt they had gone over the line (they had not), and that by his own (spurious and specious) perceptions they were being hypocritical. And the group had indeed stepped over the line by making public a private communication without his consent. (See the Snopes article; he at least claims he'd thought he was emailing just one of the students, and not the full group.)

However – and this seems to me so typical of the knee-jerk, anti-Islam, huge-tarbrush-wielding bigmouths of the "Right" – by associating this group of peaceful students with the blood-drenched, atrocity-rich fanatic radical fundamentalist pseudo-Islamist terrorists currently plaguing much of the Middle East and beyond, Wichman fanned the flames of the hatred that often passes for dialog in both West and East; he brings that dialog to a common and embarrassing low; and he has personally, unfairly, and derogatorily insulted a group of people legitimately exercising Constitutional rights. And this John Smith fellow is simply adding more gasoline and throwing lit matches.

If the students had been speaking at Wichman's own level of reasoning and sensitivity, they would have been accusing him personally of torturing Jews, killing blacks, murdering babies, burning widows, and torching and plundering whole cities – things that have been done (and are still being done today) throughout history in the name of Jesus.

We Christians too easily forget that our faith-history is guilty of much innocent spilled blood, and anti-Christians could make a good and reasonable case against us, pivoting just on Matthew 7:16, "By their fruits you will know them", and James 2:18, "I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works". Indeed, I suspect that Judgment Day will see many, many cries for justice against us Bible-wielders, and justice will indeed be served us.

In a genuine debate, the points would unquestionably go to the students. They stayed with their topic on what they felt to be an insult, and did not stoop to pouting, juvenile argumentation. Wichman cannot claim the same, and the university would in turn be within its own institutional rights to reprimand the man for being unneedfully provocative. That they haven't, and may well not, is their business. Their own position (though I don't agree) may in fact be wise, in refusing to spotlight it beyond where it's already gone.

I will admit that I do largely concur with some of the us-or-them folks on the right who are all for showing the door to non-citizen cultural hypocrites who take advantage of this country's broad protections for all, and use their stance under that umbrella to incite violence and hatred; that's not what we're about.

But it's also not what the students were doing. Yet that's exactly what Wichman was doing, and what Smith is applauding. Jesus would be ashamed of them both.

Regards,

AgingChild

Ms. Mouse was not going to let this be; she respectfully dodged my counterpoints, and responded with a silly argument she's brought up before:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 1:00 PM

Okay, but why is it alright for minorities to voice their opinion and call it their civil rights but it's not right for the white's to voice their opinion?

Regards,
Anon E. Mouse

I decided not to point out that she'd switched topics on me, rather than address my points. I answered her:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 1:30 PM

Certainly a reasonable question! Yes, I'll take it.

In our free society, all individuals and legitimate associations are entitled to be able to present their views in the court of public opinion. I bristle where this constitutionally-protected freedom is commandeered to – as I said – push hatred and non-civility, whether by minority or by majority.

Yes; if it's an African-American advocating the firebombing of Lester Maddox's First National Bank, s/he's going too far. Likewise if a cowardly crowd of sheet-wearers stirs up a riot to go hang some darkies. Same also for a Muslim on Main Street USA advocating the violent overthrow of the oppressive American régime. Ditto a fellow with a white collar, ornate robe, and mighty cross demanding his followers drag all Muslims out of this country because some folks claiming to follow the same Koran are butchering children and horsewhipping women halfway around the world.

Free speech is, and must continue to be, protected. It is not, however, the be-all and end-all of citizenship. For a just society to flourish and remain healthy, there must also be a genuine, responsible civility, or there'd be no point in instituting protection (i.e., the police) of the citizens heeding, or disagreeing with, that same speech.

Regarding that Michigan issue, both sides made good use of their speech-freedoms, but only one was jeopardizing civil order in doing so. Smith and Witch-Hunt – excuse me; I mean "Wichman" – pose shallow, transparent, bigoted arguments, whereas the students (from what I've seen; I concede there may be more to it… but I'd think that would have made the news as well, at least on Fox) kept themselves reined in, and clamored only for intercultural sensitivity… a concept that may well be beyond Smith and Wichman.

In general, modern-day America has lost sight of the meaning of the concept of freedom, insisting that "freedom" means unrestricted liberty to do whatever one darned well pleases. It does not; our sloppy language leads its speakers into sloppy and fallacious assumptions and reasoning. Unrestricted personal indulgence is license; see Definition 3 in Webster's, and also check a related word, licentiousness.

"Freedom" in a civil society is the unimpeded doing of what one ought to do, not the self-indulgent pursuit of what one wants to do – or burning polling stations would be a legitimate means of voting for/against one's candidate of choice, for instance. Free speech embraced the burning of draft cards a generation ago; it cannot embrace the burning of bridges today.

Regards,

AC

I ran this e-dialog past Spartacus, who is extremely intolerant of BS from the left or from the right, though politically is farther to the left of me. Sparks answered simply, and – baffled – perhaps just a bit uncharitably:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:31 PM

and this is an educated woman?

Too many people seem to take the term "conservative" to mean not having to think.

I can hardly qualify as a gentleman – but I will at least defend my opponents (as would Spartacus, of course). I explained to him:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:54 PM
Subject: RE: Hooray for Sanity Clause!

Correct on both counts, sir!

Friend Mouse has also most eagerly agreed to provide a job reference for me (so I'm a little more soft-stepping around her) – she and I worked for [a particular conservative firm] around the same time, and I even sat in for her a couple times when she was on vacation, either snorkeling off the Caymans, or firing away at the NRA range.

She has very high, professional accreditation, is lovely on the eye, has a sweet voice, has weathered serious health problems (I was one of several friends helping her through after she lost a breast to cancer, which had left her feeling her life was over… then she married, and she's never been happier)… and politically I think she's an utter bonehead. Not stupid! But unaccountably lockstep with the you-know-whos. I may yet scratch a bald spot in my scalp over her, and her ilk.

I'm also pickled tink that she and I can circle a common issue and growl like the merciless dogs we are… and still be able to fetch and bark together, with nary a nip to the ear (Michael Vick would've given us up as hopeless, heh-heh). I can't hope for her to do anything but constantly make right turns (never noticing she and her rowing crew are getting nowhere), but I want to put a face on the left for her – be an advocate for the non-conservatives – and do what I can to both feed the dialog, and keep it civil.

Regards,

Acey

Likely Mouse finds me wishy-washy and pompous... and I may in fact be driving her to her own bald spot – for which I apologize in advance! But it's fun having friends who don't agree with you (along with those who do): like the occasional cold-water plunge, it's quite invigorating… although a good blast of nice hot steam can be quite the thing.

I think, uh, some of us geyser driving her crazy…

 

All in the Family: Zeroes, and Heroes

Well!

My sister Mew emailed me this morning – she'd read yesterday's blog! This is actually a bit embarrassing… I mean, I've mentioned to my family that I've been blogging (not as much lately, alas) since late January, and once or twice I've sent them links to an actual posting; yes. But I'd forgotten… and honestly don't write for the accolades, any more than a kid doing cartwheels out in a field is doing so for cheers. 

For me, and for that kid, it's just for fun and for practice (in my case, to improve my writing). So just as that kid would stop and gape and sputter if some people dropped out of the trees and started clapping, a kind word from family (not that anyone would mind!) grinds me to a halt for a moment, has me scratching my head and blushing. Oh, well – not trying to hide, either. 

With an especially complimentary subject-line of "Wonderful!", Mew wrote as much to clarify something I'd misstated:

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 10:24 AM

AC,

You had a great blog entry this weekend about your participation in the Susan B. Komen race for a cure! Way to go! that must have been tremendously uplifting (and yes, I'm a blog stalker...)

But I do have a correction for you - JT didn't have bone marrow cancer. Bone marrow cancer usually occurs in the shafts of the long bones - and is usually the result of a cancerous spread from another part of the body. JT's type of Leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, is a cancer of the white blood cells, with lymphoblastic leukemia being a cancer of the lymphoid portion of the white blood cells. JT was very lucky as his Leukemia was confined to his bone marrow and a few stray leukemic blasts in his blood.

Here's a writeup on bone marrow cancer: And also one on childhood acute lymphoblasticleukemia. 

I'm also attaching a picture taken at the Relay for Life last month -

- the lady walking beside him that has her arm entwined in JT's is a fellow survivor of cancer (not sure which type) as they walk the Survivor's Lap during the Relay. She's the principal for a local elementary school.

Mew

The Relay for Life that Mew mentions was a particularly touching event held last month in that pleasant little town in west-central Maryland, Frederick (I've mentioned it here now and then; even did a run there once). The Relay for Life is a celebration both of survivors of, and loved ones lost to, cancer; Mew had invited me and my daughters to join her and JT there… although it turned out I let other demands get in the way; wish I'd made it! 

So naturally I wrote right back to her this morning:

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 10:52 AM

Thanks for the correction, and I'll fix it!

Somehow I'd been thinking JT had had bone marrow cancer; sorry about that particular inaccuracy. Would you mind if I include your email (with the usual change of name for privacy), and the photo, in a followup? You've probably noticed that when time permits, I really try to include links and sources; I want anything I put out there to be as accurate as I can make it (also means a several-paragraph entry like last night's can sometimes take a couple hours to pull together). Not only would this be a lot more considerate of JT (and his mom!), but it would serve to further educate my two or three readers, plus (what I count on even more) strangers stumbling onto the entry. 

Now, blog stalking… what the Helvis (as Mother says)?! Busy as you are, you've got to have more important stuff to do online! Oh, well; I'm not trying to hide, either… just wish I could get stuff up there more often than the once or twice a week I've managed lately. (I've already got a backlog!)

But if you do run out of things to do every so often, and see something that's inaccurate, wrong, or in need of rewriting, let me know.

Thanks again!

Regards,

AgingChild 

I was still shaking my head. And I wanted to give her (and especially JT) credit for their own struggle over the years, and in particular for the type of cancer he battled successfully. Mew has a wonderful webpage up on the Net, detailing JT's long struggle during his youngest years. Touchingly, she calls him her hero. How many mothers say that, most especially from the heart?

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 10:57 AM

Sure you can include the email & photo - no problem. I'm not a major blog stalker, I just have a few I check from time to time including yours :) 

Mew

Gulp. How many dirty jokes have I posted? Uh, one, now that I think of it. No questionable photos? Nope. Links to trashy sites? Zilch. Rough language? Well, yes, in a few quotes from either irate jerks, or indignant friends. So I'm clear; nothing to be embarrassed about here. But still… 

So I sent back to her a photo of Edward Platt (of the classic sixties sitcom "Get Smart") rolling his eyes with barely restrained impatience; no words:

She answered:

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 11:56 AM

ha ha  

Okay, that kind of accolade works for me.

 

One in Forty-Five Thousand

Yesterday morning saw me and three immediate coworkers (among also three or four dozen (plus kids) out of our Headquarters staff) walking the 5K-span of the Susan G. Komen National Race for the Cure right in the center of Washington DC.

Coworker Woodie is especially big on this – he lost his wife to cancer two or three years ago; he'd brought his daughter along. Also present with daughter was Peruvian coworker Tica; she showed her little girl (at eleven, already taller than mom) the headquarters for the Organization of American States as we passed it; she'd once worked there. Cool! And rounding out our particular handful of participating employees was Turkish Gülden (not as round as she was several months ago) and her infant son (in stroller); his feet are made of the softest skin God's ever created.

Over the past few years, I've next-to-never associated with my fellow-workers outside of the office; I think I keep work and not-work very compartmentalized and separated from each other. But I did want to get with them for this event (Aurelio bowed out, due to the need to practice for a fifty-mile (?!) bike race he'll be in next weekend)… and just for the novelty of spending time in downtown Washington.

This was the first I'd been on the DC Metro on my own, though I did ride it a couple times with a girlfriend over fifteen years ago, and also one Friday last month to get to a "workers' night out" event at a DC improv club (a story in itself), but those previous times had been with someone who knew their way around.

There was nothing to it, of course; I'd been able to puzzle out the German Federal Rail system mostly on my own in 1993 and 1996, so this was a ride through the park… and I found myself feeling embarrassed once again for living within a few hours' drive of DC and never going in to the city to look around. Yesterday I almost whimpered as we walked past the National Air and Space Museum near the end of the course. No doubt friend Spartacus will wring my neck for not taking advantage of the opportunity; the world of aircraft has long been one of his greatest areas of interest. Well, I wasn't there as a tourist, Sparky. (Let's do it next time, all right?)

And I wanted to participate in particular for the sake of my older brother Sarge's late wife: Lee passed away from leptomeningeal cancer just over two years ago. Also, family-friend Chuckles' mother died when thirteen-years' -dormant breast cancer returned and took her about four years ago. Plus nephew JT – sister Mew's son – has been in remission from bone-marrow cancer most of ten years now.

The runners started out first, and there must have been several hundred at the least. Then the walkers started – we held back until Tica and Gülden could find us – and we joined with the other walkers like a puddle of rainwater emptying into a great river. We did, of course, stop here and there to take photos – in front of the Washington Monument, before a couple different random fountains (I was able to splash Woodie and his daughter), and various crowd shots. And I mean "crowd"! There were easily tens of thousands; I doubt I have ever seen with my own eyes that many people moving all at once; carrying signs and chanting at times, this cause-centric mass recalled to me the marches of the sixties.

A lot of the folks walking carried banners commemorating loved ones who'd been claimed by this merciless killer; others had these victims' names written on a placard pinned to (or written directly on) their shirts – e.g., "In memory of my wife [name]", etc. One woman's pinned-on sheet noted that she was living with stage-four cancer of her blood, bone marrow, and liver, if I remember correctly. God bless her and keep her.

You can see one of the walkers wearing such a sheet here, although the names don't show up. There also is the tip of the Washington Monument; the building to the left is – I think – the National Museum of American History. At different points we were also within easy sight of the White House (I firmly resisted the impulse to wave a merry half- peace-sign back at its most (in)famous current occupant), the Capitol Building, other Smithsonian buildings, and the long green expanse of the National Mall.

Some groups carried flags of particular countries; early on I saw the German Federal flag twice, the second time followed by the flag of Bavaria. I pointed another flag out to Tica, and she hurriedly got her daughter's attention and showed her as it went by: the Peruvian flag. There was one family (the Scotts?) with a high banner supported from two poles that a pair of the family-members were carrying; one walker under the banner was leading a loud military-style call-and-response with fellow family members, shouting out (and back) loud, proud statements of affirmation and survival. We passed a half-dozen folks playing steel drums loudly and with great talent; elsewhere, a man with a single loud drum; and in another place a group of twenty-something women enthusiastically cheering us all on.

There was a group, too, of Muslim women walking in front of us, carrying a banner much like the Scotts'; theirs read "Muslims care". Gülden got out her camera (pushing her baby's stroller with one hand) to get a shot of them. We also saw several men with long, Indian-/Pakistani-style "kurta" shirts (I really want one!), and, earlier, a woman in full sari. And there were a couple women whose hair was just starting to regrow. Good for them!

I felt both bigger – for having been a part of this veritable tide – and much, much smaller – for walking almost literally shoulder-to-shoulder with men and women wounded by the death of someone dear, or/and still fighting the terrible disease themselves. I, too, have seen two women close to me fight, fade, and die as the cancer claimed them… and here was a testimony – in far greater, visual, tangible numbers – of the innocents struck down and torn from our lives, despite how hard we and they clutch at each other, and how much progress our research and fighting have made thus far.