Though Noman neglected to post on it, he. like millions of Catholics the world over, celebrated the feast of St. Joseph yesterday, March 19th. St. Joseph doesn't get a thousandth of the attention that his more venerated wife, our mother Mary, does. And, I suspect he prefers it that way. God needed him to play a stronger role at the beginning of Our Lord's earthly life than at the end of it. But, can you imagine what kind of guy he was for God to choose him to play the role he did in the salvation narrative. He drops out of mention in the Gospels fairly early. But, he was around long enough to teach Jesus what he would humanly need to know in order to get by in this world until he was ready to begin his public ministry, and even after. We know enough about Joseph to glean important lessons about sanctity. For those desirous of reflecting on this great Saint and intercessor, Noman appends the following meditation.
"Faith, hope, love: these are the supports of Joseph's life and of all christian lives. Joseph's self-giving is an interweaving of faithful love, loving faith and confident hope. His feast is thus a good opportunity for us to renew our commitment to the christian calling God has give each of us." There is a manly statue of Joseph and Jesus on one side of the transept at Christ the King church in Ann Arbor, which always reminds Noman to pray to be a good husband and father. Thank you Joseph, for helping.
It's a serious topic. Not that Noman intends to get serious about it, unless you're serious about good music. Noman, Nowife and a number of Nochildren attended a Scythian concert in Ann Arbor last night, a quartet going on quintet, which styles itself as an immigrant road show playing Celtic with an edge. The immigrant identification refers to parentage: in the case of brothers Alex (in the middle) and Danny (on the right), Ukranian; in the case of Joe (on the left), Austrian. But, it's their fathers' professions that Noman calls attention to. The three Dionysian revelers pictured above sprang forth from the loins of ... philosophers: in Alex and Danny's case, Dr. Damien Fedoryka, former President of Christendom College; in Joe's case, Dr. John Crosby of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. (Both are adherents to the Realist Phenomenology school of philosophy, and studied under Dietrich von Hildebrand, which must have something to do with it.) That is not to slight the indispensable contributions of Irene Fedoryka and Pia Crosby to the band. It's simply to honor that venerable, original science, and especially philosophers from whom Noman has learned. He and Nowife had the privilege of studying under Dr. Crosby when he taught at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein; he directed Nowife's master's thesis (On Time and Eternity in the Writings of Edith Stein). And, it has been Noman and Nowife's pleasure to know Damien and Irene (recently passed away) in Ann Arbor, as well as one of Alex and Danny's sisters, Kateryna, at the Academy. It's a small world, especially in Catholic circles.
Scythian is a dynamic, gifted and family friendly group, as evidenced by the three generations of attendee in the packed house. As you know from Noman's bio, he doesn't party much. But, Scythian's periodic visits to A2 are an exception to the rule. Noman hasn't enjoyed the fiddle so much since Papa John Creach was laying it down for Hot Tuna, The Jefferson Airplane and others. And, Alex is better than Papa John was; so is Joe. Compare for yourself.
Noman would love to hear Scythian adapt some of Papa John's music--he could rock the joint--and thinks they could do it, and him, more than justice. Regardless, Noman and his Nofamily will likely be in attendance the next time they come to town. An itinerary is appended in the event you like good music and are looking for some good, clean, healthy fun.
Here's something you don't see everyday. Noman thanks God that he sees it annually when he visits Spain, or when he receives a family picture from his good friends Chema and Rosa. A sight like this confirms that God hasn't given up on humanity's future.
Josemaria (Chema) Postigo of Segovia is one of twelve children. Rosa Pich of Barcelona is one of sixteen. They both grew up knowing the warmth of a big family and the security of knowing that they weren't alone in this big world. As you can see, their marriage has been fruitful.
Nofamily has enjoyed the Postigo-Pich's friendship for decades--something else Noman thanks God for--and has a number of Nochildren the same age as theirs. They befriended Nofamily when it lived in Barcelona between 1992 and 2002. Noman knows of no people more generous, self-giving, friendly, open and fun-loving than the Postigo-Pichs, which perhaps you can make out on the children's faces. Rosa is indefatigable, indomitable and fearless. Chema is the kind of guy who will offer you an arm or a leg and mean it. He is happy and big-hearted--even in the face of health problems and more than his fair share of troubles--the way that Noman thought all Spaniards were, before discovering that Spaniards, like Americans, came in all varieties.
Rosa's parents were treasures. Noman was only in their family home a few times while both were alive, once on vacation in the Pyrenees. Nevertheless, his overwhelming recollection of Carmina, Rosa's mother, was of a woman who always looked to serve others, to make them more comfortable, to see that they had what they needed. She was kind and alert, a real dynamo. Her husband said of her that "she was in every sense a unique woman, kind, happy, with an incredible and inexhaustible capacity to devote herself to everyone and everything." When people told her to slow down and relax, she replied that she would have plenty of time to rest in heaven. Her heart gave out while she sewed school robes (batas) for a girl's club. Noman visited her casket at the wake, intending to pray for her, and spontaneously began to pray to her for his Nofamily. He has never been more certain of a person's sanctity.
Rosa's father, Rafael, was a force of nature. He was an extraordinary man: intelligent, curious, far-sighted yet detail-oriented, industrious, thoughtful, dedicated, hard-driving, humorous, gracious, and wildly generous. He was not the type to sit around lamenting what wasn't; rather, he was a prime mover who made certain that what needed to be, became, and was. During the decades that Noman knew him, he was intensely interested in, and dedicated to, children's formation: personal, intellectual, humanistic, cultural and spiritual. Towards the end of his life, Rafael was very curious about home-schooling--a non-existent option in Spain. Rafael was a people-person extraordinaire, and a great man. Noman is blessed to have known him, thankful for the time they spent talking, and lucky to have learned from him.
The picture at top is testimony to Rafael and Carmina's love and dedication, and of Chema's parents, especially his mother's. And, each of those children has the same generosity beating in his or her heart. Under the tutelage of population controllers and eugenicists, people have come to think of families this size as weird, even unhealthy. They have been instructed to want only one or two children, if any; they have been told that children are a one-way ticket to poverty. Social-psychology has been marshaled to disparage openness to procreation as irresponsible, selfish and even threatening to the planet. Pity, and hogwash. Each of those children is going to fill the world with love, happiness and consideration for others, which they have learned from growing up with many sibling and generous parents. Incidentally, they are also going to buy houses, clothing, food, education and all sorts of goods and services that will provide jobs and income for providers, and make the economy hum with prosperity. People are the source of wealth, not poverty. Compare those benefits to alarums about carbon footprints.
Noman thinks the choice is clear, and encourages everyone to procreate early and often.
It gives Noman great joy to read James Taranto's Best of the Web Today. He always entertains, frequently illumines and occasionally pops your eyes out. Today's column is appended for your reading pleasure.
Amid all of the sorrow, and news attending the multivarious crises engulfing Japan, two stories welled Noman up with hope and respect. The first depicted the kind of phenomena that can only happen in the most extraordinary of circumstance. It seems that there has been an outpouring of sympathy and admiration for the Japanese from a most unlikely source, the Chinese.
This is somewhat like the McCoys finding sympathy and admiration for the Hatfields. Resentment in China understandably lingers over Japan's occupation before and during WWII. That notwithstanding, the calamity seems to have brought out the best in the Chinese as well as the Japanese. "As human beings, we should have empathy for each other," said Woody Wang, an online news portal editor. "[H]istory is history; the current reality is the current reality--we should separate the two." Marveling at the Japanese people's ability to maintain order in chaos, Linda LingFei, a Chinese microblogger asked "How is it the Japanese can do this?" Chinese premier Wen Jiabao offered "deep sympathy and solicitude to the Japanese government and the people." China has additionally provided monetary aid, and shipped tons of needed gasoline and diesel fuel to Japan. This is a far cry from the Chinese sentiments expressed towards the Japanese in the movie "Ip Man" (about Bruce Lee's teacher), for instance: a prosaic karate movie made compelling by the dynamic overlay of political and racial drama. It is largely set in occupied China.
Noman is once again moved by that human tendency to strip away all accidentals in a tragedy, and get to the essentials. People are people, and as human beings, we should have empathy for each other. That strikes Noman as beautiful, and reminds him of the response after 9/11. He was in flight to deliver a paper at the Vatican when the planes struck the towers, and wasn't informed of the tragedy until arriving at his hotel. Upon opening his internet, he found scores of messages from around the world in his inbox expressing sympathy, horror and even love for America. Noman cried at the spontaneous outpouring of solidarity with his country, the first (and only) time in his life he'd experienced it. He imagines that the Japanese might receive some small succor from the knowledge that, for the moment, after so many years of rancor, the Chinese are with them.
The second article was about the indomitable Japanese spirit, which when confronted by the nightmare of the present reality, responds with the cry "never give up." Its conviction in a strong sense of shared purpose enables people to line up for food and needed supplies calmly and patiently, and not object when supplies run out.
By all accounts, they are an honorable people of duty, like the father who clutching his infant said "I have to protect my children." The Japanese are showing us something worth emulating, and that the world needs to see. Noman concurs with the author, Howard Stringer, CEO and president of Sony Corp., in hoping that when the next day of trial comes to America, we may respond like the Japanese "with a national spirit of grace, generosity, and common cause that just never, never gives up.
Noman has been on an Al Pacino thing lately, and recently saw "Scent of a Woman" (1992), the movie in which Pacino won his first "Best Actor" Oscar for his portrayal of blind, retired Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. It's a charming movie--despite Slade's potty mouth, and obsession with women's forms--that makes you say at the end, "Gee, I wish the world were really like that."
The story involves Slade's brief relationship with a financially-strapped student at a snooty prep school in New Hampshire. The plot ensnares our young protagonist (played by Chris O'Donnell) in a web of deceit with a pack of egregious, smug, self-absorved and filthy rich human spiders. This group is contemptuous of lesser mortals, and isn't shy about manifesting its presumed superiority through pranks, omertas, and having others hold the bag for their misdeeds. In a word, these four silver-spooners are the loathsome incarnation of "entitlement," indeed, one to which we are feted regularly by Hollywood.
It occurred to Noman as he watched, that the odious presumption of entitlement is precisely the problem with the country's politics, and what makes them so generally infuriating. In a movie, you can root for the pretentious to be put in their place, and cheer when they are, which usually happens within two hours. In real-life politics, the entitled can foist their presumptions onto others for decades, and accuse objectors of "hate" for rooting that their privileges come to an end. There is certainly no end to the extent that the entitled will push to satisfy their prerogatives, not public bankruptcy, frightening deficits or punitive taxes. And too many politicians make it their life's work to increase both the number and the very sense of prideful entitlement among the nation's populace.
Like Noman says, he wishes the world were really like a movie sometimes. He prays for a diminution in a noxious disease that afflicts rich and poor alike--the belief of some that the world owes them something, coupled with an insufferable attitude about claiming it as a right.
Though it didn't make quite the splash that union protests in Wisconsin have, voters in Miami-Dade County (FL) recalled Republican Mayor Carlos Alvarez--thereby proving that no one party's politicians have a monopoly on political tone-deafness. A whopping 88% of the 200,347 votes cast elected to oust him for agreeing "to a budget that raised the county's property taxes while increasing pay to unionized public employees." Hark, doth Noman detect a pattern here?
"I'm fed up with my taxes being raised--we're all suffering," said Miguel Sanchez, a 33-year-old computer programmer from Doral, Florida, whose property taxes will be rising 20% as a result of Mayor Alvarez's compassion for public employees' unions. "Last fall, Mr. Alvarez agreed to increase pay and unfreeze some benefits for unionized public employees," while raising taxes for 40% of the counties homeowners by an average of 13%. The jobless rate in the county is 12%, or 255,000 people out of work. Property values are down as much as half in the past couple of years.
The Mayor apparently didn't exempt himself from largesse to public employees. He drove a BMW 55 Gran Turismo at taxpayer expense. His salary and benefits of $300,000 presumably weren't sufficient to support his driving habits.
County commissioner Natacha Seijas was also shown the door by the voters. Since this story pretty much speaks for itself, Noman will reserve comment other than to say that taxpayers are tired of being pushed around.
Oops! Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has let the cat out of the bag by suggesting that the state might need a "federal guarantee" of its pension funds. The Illinois system is only 45% funded (actuaries recommend 80%), the most under-funded state plan in the entire United States. That's quite a distinction. Presently the shortfall is $82 billion. But, that is projected to rise to $139.8 billion by 2030. Illinois has for years failed to make actuarially recommended contributions to the fund. You can imagine where the money went instead. The state has borrowed several billion dollars over the past two years to make contributions to the fund. In sum, Illinois--one of the bluest, Democratic strongholds--has been criminally negligent in managing its fiscal affairs.
The Governor's office was quick to disavow the statement of incipient dependency made in a 472 page budget document, and says it was a mistake. A political mistake, they must mean. While Republican Governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere take heat for grappling with the problems of a spiraling debt burden and exploding deficits by trying to put their state's proverbial houses in order, Illinois' Democratic Governor revealed his party's plan for dealing with the same problems. Transfer them onto the back of the American taxpayer. Spreading the cost is the flip side of the spread-the-wealth coin. Heads Democrats win, tails responsible Americans lose.
Illinois may ask current state workers to pay more into the plan. But, it may not. It may try to apply "broader pension changes made this year for newly hired employees to current workers." But, It may not. (Unlike teachers in Wisconsin, in Illinois they already contribute as much as 9.4%.) Democratic Senate President John Cullerton released a legal memo this month arguing that the legislature--the people's representatives--cannot unilaterally alter state workers' pension benefits.
Who is working for whom, Noman wonders rhetorically? Surprisingly, the national electorate will need more media conditioning, Presidential speechmaking and political hectoring before it accepts the inevitability (and deeper compassion) of picking up the tab for Democratic profligacy in Illinois, California and everywhere that Democrats rule the roost. Noman doesn't doubt for a second that we'll be seeing Governor Quinn, and others, again.
The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is the closest thing Americans have seen to liberals' dream of government--accountable to no one, automatically funded, self-budgeted, unlimited in scope, and run by someone who faces no scrutiny--since the original New Deal.
Noman is certain that Elizabeth Warren doesn't see the danger of unlimited government power. She's a liberal, a Harvard Law Professor, and the mother of this monstrosity--Grendel's mother, so to speak. Thankfully, the (Republican) House subcommittee holding oversight hearings, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial writers are on the watch.
As the Journal says, "This is no way to run a government, especially not one that Madison envisioned" (not to mention, designed.) But, gosh, the compassionate view is that financiers are mean and greedy, and so we need another gigantic federal agency--one beyond anybodies ability to control--to crush them. Noman appends a short video of Milton Freedman, who, in the process of defending capitalism to Phil Donahue, demolishes in two minutes the notion that government regulators are perfect people, unvexed by the vices and weaknesses that afflict private sector actors.
There is a scene in the movie "Gladiator" where the dying (and soon to be dead) Emperor Marcus Aurelius asks (fictitious) General Maximus to be the Protector of Rome. "Do you accept this great honor that I have offered you?" asks the Emperor. "With all my heart, no" says the general. "Maximus, that is why it must be you," ends the colloquy. The complementary points are that people who don't seek power are ideally suited to it, while those who clutch for it (like the depraved Commodus) don't deserve it. The "emperor's" test seems a wise one to Noman, and one that Elizabeth Warren miserably fails. She has not only sought untrammeled power throughout her career. She has been custom designing the vehicle through which she wishes to exercise it. That, says Noman, is why is must not be her.
Attentive readers of this blog know that Noman began posting on Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals" last Sunday. Lo and behold, he must have been on the same wavelength as William McGurn, who on Tuesday applied those utile rules for the "practical revolutionary" to events in Wisconsin. (For background, see Noman's posts "Rules for Radicals" (3/13/11), "Rights Scam" (3/11/11), "Those Mean and Stupid Republicans" (3/10/11), "Civility Redux" (3/7/11), "Public Unions Under Water" (3/7/11), and "Democrats Cause Obesity" (2/28/11)."
Noting that protesters (paid for with your stimulus dollars) in Wisconsin need to reach beyond their own "echo chamber to the non-union middle class," McGurn reminds them of Alinsky's admonition not scare off the middle class with "rudeness, vulgarity and conflict." In order to "start them easy," McGurn recommends 10 rules. In the process he points out several truths: viz.,
when shakedown artist Jesse Jackson shows up, you know that agitators are arguing for agitation's sake;
ditto for media lefties like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon;
peace signs hearken back to the golden age of anti-middle class, anti-American protests;
protesters don't seem to be a naturally patriotic lot;
leftist protestors respect neither law nor private property;
striking teachers put themselves--not students--first (second, and third);
Hitler analogies to Republicans are banal and boring;
the professional protesters running the show lack credibility;
efforts to recall every Republican in sight looks like the flailing of a guy with a bloody nose;
and, protesters couldn't care less about the taxpayers who pay for their featherbeds.
Personally, Noman hopes that protesters ignore McGurn's rules, and fail to establish common ground with the real people holding real jobs in the real world paying unreal taxes and assuming surreal levels of public debt for the sake of protesting public unions, and "community organizers," on the ground in Wisconsin.
Chris Daly of Yucaipa, CA rubs one of Noman's sore spots. Commenting on William McGurn's column, "Caterpillar's Problems With Peoria," he explains that before "'professional managers' [read MBA's] took over and, among their other changes, turned people into 'human resources,'" there was no need or desire for a union. Within a few years of their ascent at Caterpillar, not only was Peoria unionized, it was involved in a virulent strike. Daly blames it on MBA's "myopic management style."
Noman takes McGurn's point about unions. But, he also takes Daly's about management. It's a little personal because Noman has been laboring in the MBA education field for 20 years, teaching Business Ethics, and Organizational Behavior to intelligent, ambitious and often skeptical quant jocks. MBAs are people, too. And people can be worked with to see the human stakes involved in management decisions. It's simply that they have so much faith in numbers (as opposed to in things you cannot measure), so much exposure to tools and techniques (and so little to discernment and judgement), and the curriculum is so tilted towards accounting, finance, operations and other high-quant subjects (as opposed to conceptual, humanistic or, dare I say it, philosophical subjects) that their education actually handicaps them. What Daly writes is precisely what MBA students should strive not to achieve once they are given responsibility for managing people. It doesn't require more sophisticated techniques of manipulation, or persuasive communication. Rather it requires a greater preoccupation with being trustworthy, learning to curb opportunistic impulses, and coming to value excellence over victory--which all too often proves to be Pyrrhic. Take heed: numbers are always important; they are never definitive.
Wall Street Journal readers chime in on Michael Medved's reflections: "Obama a 'Radical'? Get Real." (See Noman's post on this for background, "Our Enigmatic President" from 3/13/11. In a section of Letters To The Editor entitled "President Obama Is More Radical Than FDR and LBJ," one reader underscores President Obama's pre-White-House radical associations, specifically with Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and long-time pastor Jeremiah Wright. Check. Another notes his cadre of whacky Czars, a "small army of secretive, extra-constitutional, ideologically [sic] radicals, lacking Senate examination and confirmation." Check. Another notes the President's fitting the profile of the progressive "anointed" in Thomas Sowell's 2002 book "A Conflict of Visions." Check. A final commentator notes that while President Obama's extensions of the welfare state parallel those of FDR and LBJ, neither of those two Presidents doubted America's exceptionalism, or that it was a force for good in the world. They did not see America as something that had to be apologized for, as our current President does. Check.
Radical is as radical does. And, by that standard, Noman says that President Obama is a radical's radical, despite that fact that he wears $5,000 suits, talks a smooth game, and looks good on TV.
The description is Juan Williams's, former NPR commentator. Williams, a trenchant lefty turned honest, was fired from NPR in October of 2010 for saying that "when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
Commenting on the recent resignations of CEO Vivian Schiller and NPR chief fund-raiser Ron Schiller (no relation), over bigoted comments made by the latter, which were captured on videotape, Williams writes: "They're willing to do anything in service to any liberal with money, and then they'll turn around and in self-righteous indignation claim that they have cleaner hands than anybody in the news business who accepts advertising or expresses a point of view."
It's not a flattering portrait of the organization. For those interested in knowing how it all came about, see Noman's posts "NPR, ACORN and the American Left" (3/11/01), and "Urban Liberal Radio" (3/12/11). Noman says defund NPR, and let them pay for their own whine.
Just two months ago, President Obama reportedly redefined his relationships with enterprise, business and markets by signing an executive order that requires federal agencies to "ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth. And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive."
They apparently only got the "safety, health and environment" part of memo at the Environmental Protection Agency, which it is busily addressing carbon emissions according to its own lights. The EPA regulates pursuant to Congressional legislation such as the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970, and Amendments of 1977 and 1990.
In 2009, the EPA determined that greenhouse gasses threatened the American People's health and welfare, and were a fit subject matter for regulation as air pollutants. Never mind that a drafter of the Act (and its amendments), liberal Rep. John Dingell (MI), disavows such an interpretation, and professes that the term "pollutant" was not meant to address climate. The EPA has thenceforth been busy imposing climate regulations on carbon emissions that President Obama couldn't push through a Democrat-dominated Congress. How's that for transparency? Noman notes that "Cap and Trade" was nearly the only item on the leftist wish list that the President wasn't able to shove down the country's throat while so deftly using the "opportunity" of the crisis.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, (now under the control of those mean and stupid Republicans) thinks it unconscionable that a politically driven agency of the federal government should think itself autonomous and beyond the reach of the people's representatives. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson invokes science rather than politics to justify the EPA's incursions into economy shackling. The Agency undoubtedly considers the revelations of climate fraud at East Anglia unworthy of notice.
President Obama noted in his January Op-Ed that "if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste." Perhaps he could instruct his people that the same sensible logic applies to exhaled air. If it comes out of people's lungs...
In a recurring phenomenon since Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal, today's paper features offsetting portraits of a fairly unambiguous lefty, in this instance Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, President Obama's unofficial Czarina at the newly created (by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Creation of such a bureau has been the leitmotif of her career's work in academe; it is her brainchild.
In a Page 1 puff piece co-authored by Victoria McGrane and Maya Jackson Randall, Professor Warren's migration from being the "scourge of Wall Street," to a pro-industry strait-shooter interested in learning from those she has campaigned to regulate throughout her career, is detailed down to the number and color of push pins on a wall map in the new bureau's offices used to keep track of her meetings with bankers. We are apparently dealing with another miraculous conversion from big government ideology to free market appreciation following the 2010 elections.
Suffice it to say that she's just a swell person who is earning respect, and clearly winning over at least smaller community banking institutions whose help will be needed to blunt those mean and stupid Republicans who are already trying to cut her budget. Technically, it's not her budget yet. In what is standard operating procedure for this Administration, President Obama appointed her as a special advisor in charge of setting up and staffing the agency, thereby enabling her to establish and operate her fiefdom while sidestepping Senate confirmation. The bureaucracy's official director will be proposed for confirmation in July. Noman suspects that articles like the aforementioned are intended to soften opposition to her nomination at that time. Noman also assumes that the Journal Staff's influx of panting feminists and assorted New-York-Times-types to write these sops is a gambit to win over that paper's readers as the mother ship descends into rank parochialism.
Meanwhile, back at the traditional, and serious part of the Journal, Review & Outlook observes that Ms. Warren is busy converting the consumer bureau into a political tool for allocating credit. She has sent (along with state Attorneys General) a proposed 27-page foreclosure settlement to banks "that would, among other things, force mortgage servicers to submit to the bureau's permanent regulatory oversight; impose vast new reporting and administrative burdens; mandate the reduction of borrowers' mortgage principal amounts in certain circumstances; and force servicers to perform 'duties to communities,' such as preventing urban blight." Not bad for a "special assistant" who unofficially runs a brand new agency that lacks statutory authority to deal with matters she's addressing. The hubristic, progressive spirit is apparently alive and well despite some writers' cheerleading assurances to the contrary. The principle so apt for following the Administration's forays into soft totalitarianism, is also a utile hermeneutic for following its escapades in the "news": watch what they do, not what they say.
Noman doesn't doubt Warren's good intentions. He is troubled, however, by her apparent inability to view providers of capital for consumer and investment purposes as anything but predators, and borrowers of other people's money as anything but victims. Her outlook bears all the markings of that black-and-white world that liberals live in, and that they ceaselessly seek to institutionalize in government entities. Noman is also appalled at her, and the President's, bull-in-the-china-shop efforts to reign in perceived abuses--all without a scintilla of doubt about their course, or suspicion that their ministrations might prove to be a cure worse than the illness.
Noman takes her point about financial documents being too complex to read. He also notes that it is her party, and profession, that fosters a business environment so litigious as to make it necessary to produce documents of such mind-numbing complexity.
Noman doesn't know KG & Meg. And he doubts that the nearly 200,000 viewers of their video do either. But, he loves what they did with one of his favorite songs. May their marriage last, be happy, and produce many children with lively senses of humor.
The European Court of Human Rights is being asked to decide whether the biological and social conditions necessary to safeguard human procreation trump the determination of social actors to prevent it. The case of V.C. v. Slovakia involves the alleged involuntary sterilization of a gypsy woman in a hospital. Slovakia, it appears, made the sterilization of gypsy undesirables a priority in 1999, after the fall of its communist regime.
While there will be myriad factual issues to resolve--What the purpose of the sterilization was?; Whether or not the woman gave her informed consent?--it is the political ones that will take center stage. First, will the eugenic ideology that underlies and provides impetus to aggressive population control movements the world over be unequivocally condemned, or justified (as in the US case of Buck v. Bell)? Secondly, will the oft-recognized negative freedom of protection from state interference in a couple's decision to naturally procreate be upheld, or will the state be permitted to disregard that right in the absence of compelling, rational reasons? It seems to Noman that a Court predisposed to favor eugenics will be able to dispose of the case(s) on factual grounds, leaving forced sterilizations a viable public option in practice. On the other hand, a Court predisposed to favor bodily integrity and marital prerogatives over eugenic ideology has an opportunity to proclaim a resounding affirmation of life, even in dicta. Stay tuned to see whether the European Court of Human Rights is worthy of the name, and that fancy facility it sits in.
After giving it a good think, President Obama will resume military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees, after suspending them to great fanfare just two years ago. Does this mean he'll have to give back his Nobel Peace Prize? The following editorial and embedded video are worth a glance.
Sunday is a good day for reading. So, after reading from the Gospels, The anonymous account of "The Martyrdom of Polycarp" and going to mass, Noman settled down in front of the fire with the bible of the community organizing left, Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."
The fireplace is an appropriate place to read the book, since it is prefaced with "an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical... who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom--Lucifer." Noman would stick to Marx and St. Simon for this type of surreptitious thrill were it not for a curious fact noted by the Chicago Sun-Times on the back cover of the book. "Alinsky's techniques and teaching influenced generations of community and labor organizers, including the church-based group hiring a young [Barack] Obama to work on Chicago's South Side in the 1980s... Alinsky impressed a young [Hillary] Clinton, who was growing up in Park Ridge at the time Alinsky was the director of the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago." Since he is the political godfather of the the current Administration's leading lights, Noman thought it worth taking another, long look.
Addressing the revolutionary youth of 1971, Alinsky notes that in seeking to "do their own thing," the young merely seek "what man has always looked for from the beginning of time, a way of life that has some meaning or sense... a chance to strive for some sort of order." For the true radical, doing his own thing means "to do the social thing, for and with people." Hence, it is through social order that revolutionary youth will find its meaning. "When [the young] talk of values they're asking for a reason. Thay are searching for an answer...to man's greatest question, "Why am I here?" Alinsky will tell them why, and how to get there.
Alinsky offers his experience and counsel to "those young radicals who are committed to the fight, committed to life" It is important to focus on achievable goals, and to not seek too much from social action. "We are talking about revolution, not revelation: you can miss the target by shooting too high as well as too low. First, there are no rules for revolution... but there are rules for radicals who want to change their world." To know these central concepts of action in human politics is "basic to a pragmatic attack on the system."
Communication is crucial. "One communicates within the experience of his audience--and gives full respect to the other's values..." Also, "humor is essential, for through humor much is accepted that would have been rejected if presented seriously.
An organizer begins where the world is, not where he wants it to be, but with an eye to where he wants it to be. "That means working in the system." This is essential to preparing the ground for revolution, which can only be achieved after a preceding "reformation," after instilling "a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people." The goal is for people to feel so frustrated, defeated, lost and futureless "in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future." The organizer has to work within the system to bring about this reformation in hearts and minds, principles, opinions, sentiments and affections. He must communicate with the middle class and its lower, blue collar end, lest it move to the right. This all-important reformation is the bridge men need to cross from the security of familiar experience to a new way. "A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives--agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative non-challenging climate." Once disillusionment with past ways and values is achieved, "the time is then ripe for revolution."
Organize people around something commonly agreed to, such as pollution; then it's a "short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution." Keep the pressure on the candidates you elect. Make it hot, as "no politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough." Individuals must be regularly involved in the action of democratic governance, or they will lose it. A self governing people cannot be spared the burden of decisions. "To lose your 'identity' as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person. "Civic-sclerosis" sets in when citizens sink into apathy, anonymity, depersonalization and dependence. The "enemy within [is] the hidden and malignant inertia that foreshadows more certain destructions to our life and future than any nuclear warhead."
