[Nigel Mace]

Interesting, and not a little sad, that today - Valentine's - and in relation to our politics here in Scotland and yours on the other side of the pond, I am confronted by posters whose reaction to an expression of idealism, not of their own kidney, is to vomit. I believe you can tell a lot from a man's vomit.

In Scotland, the public puking was 'provoked' by a rather splendidly Valentine-type, over-the-top love letter to the EU from Scotland in our one independence supporting newspaper, The National - and the offended wretchers were hard-line right-wing Unionists in uneasy alliance with some radical left, anti-capitalist Trots. Not a pretty sight. Your side, apparently, it is the god-driven Evangelicals who cannot stomach ideas which they apparently do not trouble to read, presumably because their God does not command that they do so.

Loving people for the sake that they are people seems so much to be preferred to all these ideological nostrums and, insofar as we must support systems, bearing witness for those forms of organisation which strive to respect people and maintain polities, national and international, that seem most likely so to do. It's Valentine's Day after all.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Ehhh. The poor lad's sick. Upchucked all over Met, too. That sort of stuff outs itself one way or another.

Thanks for the note and the bit about the article.

[William A. Baurle]

Just a thought, folks. Ralph (RCL) started a thread in Drills celebrating Black History Month. Thus far, looks like I'm the only one who noticed it.

Could be people are more interested in mockery and mud-slinging than in celebrating the achievements of an oppressed race of people. Or not. Could be hardly anyone saw it. Lord knows I miss a whole lot. I hadn't seen the other thread over there where a bunch of you have joined in until last night. Looks like a busy thread!

I'll be back later, Andrew, to go into things a bit more with you.

[Gregory Palmerino]

No one that I know of at the sphere has spoken about Langston Hughes. I can't say that I have much to say myself, but like the Wallace Stevens' thread, whenever I read Hughes, I always end up asking myself, why aren't I reading him more. As I said in the Stevens' thread, The problem with death is that it cuts off all that reading. Maybe this article will start an interesting conversation. I like essays like this. Reminds me that my profession is more relevant than ever. Happy reading.

Cheers,
Greg

Cross-posted with Bill. Maybe I posted this in the wrong thread.

PPS I copied and posted this one in the Black History month thread as well.

[Quincy Lehr]

It is amusing to see the Berkeley stuff come up here. It's really very simple--had Yiannopoulos simply been spewing his usual bigoted bullcrap, a response of vigorous protest and judicious heckling would have been appropriate (protesters have First Amendment rights, too). But on this speaking tour, he'd already outed at least one transgender student, and he'd intimated he'd do the same to undocumented immigrant students. People can get deported and killed over that stuff, which put his speech in "clear and present danger" territory.

[Roger Slater]

I agree. But I also think a university doesn't need a clear and present danger before it's entitled to decide who is invited to speak. No one has a first amendment right to demand to be given any particular podium in any particular auditorium at any particular time. The university was free to cancel him, and if students disagreed with that decision, they were free to protest. Yiannopoulos still has his right to free speech, but he doesn't have the right to be invited anywhere he chooses to exercise it.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

It is amusing to see the Berkeley stuff come up here. It's really very simple--had Yiannopoulos simply been spewing his usual bigoted bullcrap, a response of vigorous protest and judicious heckling would have been appropriate (protesters have First Amendment rights, too). But on this speaking tour, he'd already outed at least one transgender student, and he'd intimated he'd do the same to undocumented immigrant students. People can get deported and killed over that stuff, which put his speech in "clear and present danger" territory.

Quincy,

all American citizens have First Amendment rights. Of course you know that, but the way you inserted (protesters have First Amendment rights, too) makes me suspect that you may have thought I didn't know it also. Sorry to get defensive, but having political discussions is getting awfully difficult of late, which is why I usually stay the hell out of them!

It's like Andrew telling me that "Freedom of speech is not just about silence William." I spent several minutes trying to figure out what reason he could possibly have for saying that to me after all that I've written in defense of free speech, and after spending all this time exercising my right to free speech! I can only imagine that he was talking about my not wanting to share in public some things Charlie told me in private. I do intend to keep silent on that, as to do anything but that would be a breach of privacy and an insult to a friend.

I don't like hate speech any more than you do, but in this country we are forced to tolerate it. Not tolerate as in having some benign resignation to it, or to wallow in apathy, but as in allow it. Let the loudmouths hang themselves by being given enough rope to do it, and prosecute if they've broken a law. Has Milo broken a law that we know of, for certain? Educate me.

I agree that deliberately trying to get someone killed crosses the line of free speech, and strong protest against that would certainly be in order. But breaking shit and setting fires also crosses the line, and should be protested as well. I'm waiting to see the precedent at Berkeley escalate into more violence, and I won't be surprised if innocent people get in the way, maybe even killed. History is full of this kind of thing happening, when the mob gets whipped into a collective frenzy. I will be celebrating with everyone else if Trump gets impeached (if and when it needs to happen). And I will be terribly happy if no innocents are hurt or killed in the meantime.

**

Andrew,

Back to what I was saying above: I do regret implying that you were telling falsehoods intentionally. I may have been a bit careless. (I'll go back and check my exact wording after I post this, and get back to you.) What I meant to say was that you may be misjudging Charlie, and personally, I think you are. To be wrong about something or someone isn't the same as lying. I can tell falsehoods all day, out of ignorance, and still not be lying. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, and I hereby retract any loose or careless writing that may have implied that you are a liar.

As for Camus, I have read the quotes. Inspiring stuff there, but I stand by my belief that human nature precludes anything like a Utopia. We may have a dystopian future on our hands, depending how the winds of fortune blow, and this dystopia can be brought into being by the loony right or the loony left. Militant police state, radical theocracy, or a land of Stepford Wives and/or brain-engineered sheeple. None of these scenarios are appealing to me, in case that hasn't come across yet. I'd be all for a real Utopia, but odds are my Utopia and your Utopia wouldn't be similar.

Ayn Rand had her Galt's Gulch, which to her was a vision of Utopia. An extremely unlikely and rather silly one, if you ask me. The libertarians love her, but she detested libertarians. The libertarians have their version of Utopia, the anarchists have theirs, the loony Christian Reconstructionists and Identity Christians have theirs, the Muslim theocrats have theirs, the Buddhists and Hindus have theirs, and the Zionists have theirs. And so on.

I think that what is trending now is a strong form of egalitarianism. I have kids and from what I saw of the modern school environment, it's getting tougher and tougher for kids who excel to do it with good conscience. The idea of "teamwork" is rampant. There is no 'I' in team! is the rally cry in school as well as the workplace.

I saw a class of kids giving readings of their Valentine's Day poems at my place of work today. It's an assisted living facility. After they were finished, the teacher gave a speech which was chock full of this modern team spirit. To my mind, teamwork is fine and dandy, but writing a poem is the work of an individual. Certainly, any person writing anything has been influenced by others, and there is almost literally nothing original. We "makers" (poets) only rearrange things. We don't create in any literal sense. Nonetheless, there are good poems and lousy ones. Why put a damper on the kids who wrote better poems than the others? Why coddle mediocrity? It may not happen as a general rule, but I've definitely seen it happening in my town. In some schools, trophies are no longer given out, because the kids who don't get trophies are shamed.

In the film, The Incredibles, the young Super-Hero son is constantly getting in trouble because he can run way faster than the others. In one scene he's talking with his mother and bemoans the fact that his powers have to be kept in check, for fear of making the other kids feel bad. I don't remember the exact dialogue, but it gets around to the boy admitting to feeling ashamed or frustrated because he's "special". His mom tells him, "Everybody's special". He frowns and says, "Which means no-one is."

I am rambling again, but since you brought up Camus and the possibility of Utopia (and what Christians like myself ought to be doing to bring it about), I felt the need to explain myself even further.

I'd like to have a peaceful dialogue, because all of this is fascinating to me, and I realize its importance. But I can't stand ad-homs. Sure, some people might really be idiots. But to call a person an idiot doesn't do much insofar as educating the idiot and carefully trying to help him understand things, so that he doesn't turn his kids into idiots.

***Edited in: I realize Charlie is throwing ad-homs around too, Andrew. I should have said that before.

A lot of what's wrong today comes down to parenting and schooling. If someone is taught bullshit, and has it drummed into them long and hard enough, they will grow up to speak bullshit with a clear conscience and with grave conviction. Who wants that? I'd rather try and get my views across gently, and with as much patience as I can muster, and I believe, like Bishop Spong, in "loving wastefully".

Love is our greatest value. It's infinite, self-replenishing, and inexhaustible. Let's use it, and not violence. There is a time for violent retaliation against tyranny, but we are not at that time yet. Is Trump a budding Hitler? Who knows. But people aren't being corralled, stripped naked, lined up, shot in the back of the head, and kicked into mass graves. Ergo, comparisons to Hitler are, thus far, premature to say the least.

Just my thoughts.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

William,

The point on silence had nothing to do with your personal habits of sharing/silence. The point was that lies are not free speech. They are a silencing of the truth. They have no positive content of their own when it comes to the sort of appearance in the polis we ar talking about here. They don't need to be defended and forcefully shutting down a violent weasel isn't a loss of speech. It is, in my opinion, exactly the thing that must be done. You can say "Ahhh but we will all have our villians to shut down. What then? Who is to decide?" All I can say is, well we are of course and it really isn't that mystified. If you are willing to surrender all hope of distinction and discernment between human rights and their attackers then all hope really is lost and this conversation is meaningless. I am not willing to.

Everything you think of as just normal everyday America involves all sorts of utopian thinking. There is no world building that is not Utopian. I think if you read the whole essay by Camus (remembering it has some language of it moment) I think it will be easier to follow what I am saying.

It is at this link, broken down the six or seven short bits as it originally appeared in Combat. It also came around the time of Camus' public debate with Mauriac on the how to deal with the Vichy after the war. It marks a turn on that account.

Feel free to ask for clarification of anything hazy. I work full time demolition and then full time classes at night and family and poetry and all that jazz. I write this stuff quickly and off the hip. It deserves more but its all I got.

[William A. Baurle]

Andrew,

I promise I will read Camus. I'll see if I can get something on Kindle.

I shamefully admit I have neglected him in my literary travels. I have a slight resistance to translations, even though some of my favorite books are translated, like Fitzgerald's Homer & Virgil (or is it Vergil? I like the way Virgil looks much better), and William Weaver's tremendous translations of Umberto Eco. If you ever get time to read Foucault's Pendulum, please do so, if you haven't already (I have a feeling you have). It's a great foil for wooers, tinfoil hatters, and conspiracy theorists (in which set I am very prone to fall when I'm feeling on fire, like now).

I don't agree with you about lies. It's perfectly legal to tell lies, and lies are protected under freedom of speech. Slander, however, is a different story. It's all about degrees. Telling a white lie is very often the decent and/or only thing to do, as the Jim Carrey movie Liar, Liar skillfully and hilariously demonstrates. But with other kinds of lies, the liar just digs himself a hole he can't get out of. If you tell one lie, you need another to back it up; then you need another lie to cover those, and pretty soon all you can do is lie.

I wrote a romance novel (insert laughter, but dammit, yes, I did!) about a young lady who is a compulsive liar. All she does is lie, to her fiance, to her mother, to her boss at work. The novel takes N all the way from ridiculous liar to triumphant truth-teller. It happened by accident, as it started out as erotica, several years ago, when my marriage was falling apart. But that's a long story...

Then you go all the way up to slander. You know what that is. God Himself, and Christ, warn very adamantly about bearing false witness. I think greed and bearing false witness are two of the biggest sins going, along with pride, anger, fornication, adultery, and just about every behavior that is otherwise known as: Human.

I've always wrestled with the concept of sin. As I told Charlie in private, sin is nothing other than falling short of perfection. If imperfection is such an offense to God that He can't even LOOK at it, then I have to ask Him, why then, Lord, did you make us this way?

^ That's what I wrestle with every single moment of every single day. One (not necessarily you) might say, "Hey, ditch the sky-daddy altogether! Hitchens was right! Be free! Get rid of that bullshit! It's a bunch of mythology from bronze age sheepherders! Get over it already!"

But...nope.

I constantly remind myself that when I stopped kicking at the pricks and surrendered myself to Christ, I stopped having nightmares, hypnagogia, and sleep paralysis. And a great many other things happened, which it would take me a hundred pages to describe in any way that might be remotely persuasive to anyone who hasn't experienced the things I've experienced.

I know it may be something simply material, and brain-oriented. Maybe my faith has somehow done something to my dream patterns. I have read much on it. I'm no dummy. But I don't believe that's the case. My faith rests on strong and passionate belief, not on certain knowledge. If I have certain knowledge, I don't need faith.

I'll get to what you said about rights and the attackers of rights after a break.

[Gregory Palmerino]

Hello. Paul Ryan? This is History calling.