It has occurred to me over the last several years that we have come to measure our social interactions with strangers based on whether and how much they inconvenience us. We have come to think that being inconvenienced by another is among the worst of victimizations. One who inconveniences commits a grievous violation against his fellows. Such a one commits the Sin of Inconvenience.
Look at how we react to the guy who sits through half the duration of a green light because he is giving more attention to the conversation on his cell phone. He only drives after we honk long and vigorously at him.
What about the person in line at the cash register who pulls out a checkbook to pay for his groceries? Worse, he does not even start to fill it out until the total is rung up! A checkbook? Who uses one of those these days? Hey, buddy, haven’t you heard about this new contraption called a debit card?
How about the little old lady who wants to pay in cash and insists on giving exact change, and then rifles endlessly through a bottomless purse in search of those two pennies. Lady, just give them an extra dollar and put the change in that giant purse of yours. At the end of a year, you can empty it all out on the floor and find at least $50 in spare change.
By now, you are probably chuckling and thinking to yourself of any number of other examples. You are chuckling because you have been in that grocery store line and had those same thoughts. It is funny now because, in part, you are laughing at yourself for your own hypersensitivity and lack of patience. Yet, you were not laughing at the time these situations occurred. There was nothing funny about how you felt then.
Quick, which is worse?
• Someone who cuts in line at the movie theatre, or
• Someone who cheats on his sales taxes by not declaring his Internet purchases?
Before you answer this question, answer two more:
• Have you paid all of your owed sales taxes?
• Do you cut in line at the movie theatre?
I’ll bet the answer to both of the second set of questions is NO you didn’t declare your internet purchases and NO you don’t cut in line. Which means that your answer to the first set of questions is that the line jumper is worse than the tax cheat.
In your heart of hearts, I will bet you despise the line cutter with a deeper passion than anything you feel for the sales tax evader. After all, there are many forgivable reasons for not paying the State the tax you owe, right? The state will just waste the money anyway. Moreover, why don’t the rich pay more so you do not have to come up with the difference? Maybe you didn’t even know you were supposed to declare your mail order and Internet purchases. Sure, I might even believe that last one; however, I’m not in the market right now for buying any bridges.
Part of the reason the line jumper bothers us so much is the same reason we are bothered by all the other forms of inconvenience. What makes us angry is the line jumper appears to be thinking only of himself without regard to the inconvenience he is causing to the rest of us. The fellow at the stoplight and the lady looking for the pennies have slowed us down for their own personal and probably selfish reasons. With a little care or forethought, they could avoid taking more time for themselves than is needful and thus not take some of our time in the process.
Another reason we dislike “inconveniencers” is that often they seem to think they are more important or deserving than the rest of us. The line jumper is a particularly odious example. We despise him because the act is so personal. When he cuts in front of us, he is placing himself before us in importance. He is taking something he has not earned. He is taking something that belongs to us. He knows he is doing something wrong. He is being purposely rude, greedy, and self absorbed and does not care. It’s like armed robbery. The thief knows he is doing wrong and causing harm in the process, but does it anyway.
I have always loved irony, and there is irony in spades in this whole inconvenience thing. The very thing that makes us so incensed when others are inconsiderate of us is the same thing that makes us so inconsiderate of others ourselves. I think most of us secretly believe that our time is more important than anyone else’s time. So when we take a few extra moments for ourselves, we are not actually inconveniencing anyone, we are simply exercising out right to spend our time as we think fit.
Let me illustrate.
Want to experience road rage first hand, maybe be shot at? Just pick any major city in the US where many of the people get around by car on the freeways. Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Atlanta, most cities will do. Now, while on the freeway, drive the speed limit in the left lane, not a mile per hour faster or slower. You are guaranteed to make dozens if not hundreds of people thoroughly, and possibly in some cases, murderously angry with you. Go ahead. Do it. I dare you.
But what did you really do? Nothing but slow them down just a little. The difference in going 20 miles at 60 mph compared to going 20 miles at 75 mph is four minutes. Four! Yet, some people are literally willing to shoot you over those four minutes. Many of those same folks, who called you vile names while giving you a single fingered salute as they blew by on the right, will spend four minutes watching commercials in the first 15 minutes of their favorite inane reality TV show later that night.
What justifies it to them is their belief that they have the right to choose how to waste their four minutes today, and their further belief that you do not have the right to choose it for them. If they decide not to waste their four minutes by obeying the law, well, that’s their right. Really, the law can be so inconvenient sometimes.
In today’s rush-rush, time sparse world, we begin to think that these little inconveniences add up to significant chunks of our too short day. We do not like giving our time up to others. We especially do not like the thought that our wait was longer so that someone else’s wait could be shorter, or so they could indulge themselves in activities for which we see no benefit.
A friend of mine sums up the whole idea in an odd and somewhat radical way. He says that every person has so much finite time on this earth. If you die young, you have less time. If you live to be 100, you have more time. In the end, we all have a set amount of time that is just our own. So, says my friend, whenever someone wastes his time, he is being partially murdered. To him, that person on the freeway who wasted four minutes of his finite living time has murdered four minutes of his life.
As he told me this, I laughed. How extreme is that I asked myself.
Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he had a point. That is exactly how we see it, even if we don’t put it in such stark terms. I do have only so much time to live. Whenever someone else forces me to give up my time to something for which I did not want to give it, well, I have lost that time forever and cannot get it back. I might as well be dead for that amount of time.
Well, maybe not.
Let’s look at this inconvenience thing from another perspective for a moment.
I usually work at home. I generally do not answer the home telephone at all. In fact, in my home office the telephone has the ringer turned off. I only use it for outgoing calls that I make. To me, a ringing telephone is an annoying inconvenience.
Do you think me odd in my aversion to the telephone? Let me go out on a limb here and say that most of us secretly dislike the telephone so much that we consider it a major inconvenience in our lives. This seems a strange statement given our national addiction to cell phones.
Don’t believe me? Then tell me, why is Caller ID so popular? Why did we urge Congress to enact the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, signed into law in 1994 by President Clinton, which created the National Do Not Call Registry and made it a Federal Crime to telemarket to a phone number on that list? Millions have registered their telephone numbers.
The problem with telemarketers is that once they get you on the phone, you cannot get them off without being rude. I think it is hard for most of us knowingly to be rude. It is easy to be rude when you are not thinking about it, but most of us have to work hard at being rude on purpose. I think the reason we don’t like being telemarketed is that it costs us time and energy to deal with them, by either not being rude, and having to listen to the entire sales pitch, or being rude to cut the call short. We spend more energy than we plan on or want to when they call. Of course, there is also all that time they took from us.
My partially murdered friend might quibble that it is all about time, but I think energy and time amount to the same thing for most of us in the end.
Is that all inconvenience is? Is it just about stealing my time or forcing me to expend my energy without my consent? I’m not so sure I like this concept of my life being bits of time and energy that I control and bits that others take from me. Something is just not right with that model of the world.
Let’s go back to the guy on the cell phone that made us sit through most of a green light. That is bad, talking on your cell when you should be driving, right? Not only is he wasting our time, but also the first priority of any driver is to pay attention to the road. Driver inattention hurts and even kills others quite often, and cell phone use is a major cause of that inattention. Of course, we assume it was something unimportant like calling his girlfriend that he just left 5 minutes ago so he can tell her what a great night he had.
What if the call was to tell him that his mother had just died? Could we forgive him for not paying attention to the green light if that were the case? Is that an acceptable waste of our time?
What about the little old lady looking for the pennies? What if she does not have the extra dollar and really needed to find those two pennies because she does not have any more money for the rest of the month because her social security check will not stretch that far? Is our inconvenience more important that her needs?
We can see there are indeed circumstances when others needs outweigh our inconvenience.
There is a real danger in thinking our time as the only important time, and we should never have to give any of it up without our consent. I believe that sort of thinking ultimately leads to a complete breakdown in society. Life has to be about compromise: I will give a little of my time, if you will give a little of yours.
It also has to be about courtesy, which has to cut both ways. I will be courteous to you by trying not to inconvenience you, and you will be courteous to me by understanding that I am also entitled to my own convenience though it may be at the expense of yours.
Compromise is so hard, especially if I am supposed to trust that whenever you inconvenience me it is for a better reason than my own. People are often so untrustworthy. The guy on the cell phone often is just talking to his girlfriend. The lady looking for pennies often is just indulging her own self-centered oddity of behavior.
In one of his Lazarus Long novels—I forget which one it’s been so many years ago that I read it—Robert Heinlein has one of Lazarus’ daughters show up an hour late for an important family meeting. Lazarus wants to know what her excuse is. She says that she was standing in line at the spaceship station to buy a ticket to catch the flight for the meeting, when a man tried to jump the line. What happened, Lazarus inquired. The crowd seized the man, she says, and a local official immediately ordered a trial and empanelled a jury; she was selected as juror. The trial was held right there in the station, the jury listened to the evidence and, after due deliberation, found the wrong doer guilty. Because of the trial, she was obliged to miss her schedule spaceship and take a later flight. What became of the guilty line jumper, Lazarus asked. She replied that the official immediately executed him by shoving him out an airlock into space (or some such fate, as I recall). Quite rightly, Lazarus agrees, as does the rest of the family.
I cannot think of a single excuse for cutting into a line, and neither could Heinlein. Can you?
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Cursing and Swearing
(Some bad words here, don’t read if you get easily offended)
I suspect when most folks read the title of this rant they will assume that I am referring to the use of bad words and profanity. You know what I mean: dirty bodily functions, sexual acts of one form or another, taking the deity’s name in vain, and that sort of thing. There is irony in this, of which it is sometimes difficult for me to get enough. We will have to forego the irony for just a while, however. Patience is thy own reward, as they say, so read on.
I have a difficult time being around people who are incapable of carrying on a conversation without saying fuck in nearly every sentence. They use it as an exclamation, a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, and, sometimes it seems, even as a conjunction.
Oh my, I just had this memory of Sesame Street’s cartoon skit of Conjunction Junction as a clever way to explain how conjunctions join things together. The possibilities for clever repartee nearly overcame me.
Let’s get back to our friends and their limited vocabulary. Have you noticed how they are able to couple various forms of the F-word with many other words—don’t you just love puns sometimes—such as mother, butt, pig and any number of others. In the end, such people seem only capable of conveying a non-pejorative message by context and body language, the stream of profanity being nearly incomprehensible in its dearth of actual meaningful words. For lack of a better term, let’s call these folks the “Effers.”
It is not that I don’t use profanity myself. When I’m out with the guys hunting or fishing, playing golf, drinking and that sort of thing, I like to sprinkle an occasional f-bomb into my language for the added effect it gives. If used sparingly, the f-word can grab the listener’s attention or stress a point, and even express a certain delight in the subject at hand. (Gee, I can’t stop myself). My father occasionally uses cocksucker to express his poor opinion of a person. When he calls someone that, you know that he is having trouble finding any other language to express so succinctly and completely his contempt for the person. He would never refer to a woman with this word, even if he knows for certain that she performs the act regularly and with enthusiasm. I find that I adopted this little language quirk from him—perhaps it is genetic.
However, I try very hard to avoid dropping any of these language bombs when I am in public, around people I don’t know, men that I suspect don’t like hearing these words, and women (even though some of them are the worst Effers). I slip occasionally and use such language around my wife, but rarely, because she always gives me that look when I do. I think it is rude to assume that people don’t mind hearing such language. I think it is beyond rude, bordering on assault, to continuing to talk this way when it is apparent the audience is offended or disturbed by such language.
I’m all for freedom of speech. You have the right to say things that express your views, thoughts and opinions. You can even say things that you know some people would find distasteful or painful to hear. But, if all you want to do is stand in the middle of the room and in a loud voice spew words from your mouth like a toilet backing up just because you can, then you deserve a punch in that mouth to remind you which way the sewer is supposed to flow. One assault begets another, and yes, makes the second wrong right.
We could say that there are two kinds of Effers. The first are those who talk this way because they are simply ignorant and don’t know any better. They grew up in households or neighborhoods where most people around them spoke the same way. In addition, to be honest if less than kind or politically correct, these Effers are usually less intelligent and have difficulty imagining or contemplating that they could communicate in any other way. It simply never occurs to them, whereas a brighter more intelligent person recognizes there is a whole world of people out there who do talk without using these words. Just watch broadcast television for a couple of hours and you will not hear the f-bomb once, which ought to be a clue that it is possible to carry on complete conversations without using such language no matter how mindless the conversations are.
The second kind of Effer is more insidious and contemptible to my mind. These Effers know very well that there is another way to talk, but they don’t care. It is as though they are caught up in the “shock and awe” of their hard hitting, cutting edge, and colorful language. I think a lot of them are truly delighted knowing that they are making people wince, causing discomfort, or raising feelings of disgust in others. They are not so concerned with the message they are trying to convey as they are simply satisfying their own need to be the center of attention. There is a certain spoiled brat psychology at work. Go to a college campus and you will find these Effers everywhere, including some standing at the lectern. Certain movies in recent memory are so laden with Effer’s language it seems that was the whole point of the movie and the story be damned.
In the end, however, I think it is wrong to conclude that Effer’s fall into two kinds, those who don’t know any better and those who do. To my mind, and you can agree or not, they are both just stupid. The one thing that makes us unique, or at least the most advanced life form on Earth, is our ability to communicate detailed information, complex ideas and symbols to each other. Those who eschew meaningful dialog from most of their fellows by choosing to be an Effer are just obnoxious, lazy or ignorant, in a word, stupid.
The language used by the Effers, all those f-words, mf-words, c-words and the rest have lost their meaning. The words have been so over used that hardly anyone actually pictures the sex act when someone says fuck, for example. The only meaning that comes through is the intent to shock when spoken once and to create a sort of numbness when said too many times in succession, similar to a hand plunged into ice water and held there too long.
With that we come, finally, back to the irony.
The title of this rant is Cursing and Swearing. I spent a deal of time talking about the use of bad words in language, the act of people using profanity in their communication. The ironic part of all this is that the two words, forms of curse and swear, only have the meaning of pejorative language—pejorative literally means “to make worse words”—as a secondary, tertiary, or lower meaning.
In most dictionaries, the primary definition of curse is to wish ill on someone, to put a spell of magic on them, or to call God’s wrath to them. You have to get far down the list of meanings to find “execrate in fervent and often profane terms,” and that meaning has more of a religious context than one of simply using bad words.
To swear means even less the act of saying bad words than curse does. Swear primarily means to take or make an oath. We “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” thousands of times a day in courthouses all over the country. We also “swear to take this woman” (I can’t stop it) in thousands more weddings every day. In fact, in most dictionaries, swear meaning to use profane language is seventh or eighth down the list in importance.
Except for Effers, it seems to me that when the rest of us curse or swear often our intent is to insult. Yet, the Effers have made those insults mostly meaningless through over use of the words. So let me urge you to become more imaginative or descriptive in your intended insults.
Don’t say, “Fuck you” to the fellow you really want to wound. Instead, say something like “May you conjoin with a pederastic pediculous pustule of pusillanimous parsimony.”
Now that’s cursing.
I suspect when most folks read the title of this rant they will assume that I am referring to the use of bad words and profanity. You know what I mean: dirty bodily functions, sexual acts of one form or another, taking the deity’s name in vain, and that sort of thing. There is irony in this, of which it is sometimes difficult for me to get enough. We will have to forego the irony for just a while, however. Patience is thy own reward, as they say, so read on.
I have a difficult time being around people who are incapable of carrying on a conversation without saying fuck in nearly every sentence. They use it as an exclamation, a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, and, sometimes it seems, even as a conjunction.
Oh my, I just had this memory of Sesame Street’s cartoon skit of Conjunction Junction as a clever way to explain how conjunctions join things together. The possibilities for clever repartee nearly overcame me.
Let’s get back to our friends and their limited vocabulary. Have you noticed how they are able to couple various forms of the F-word with many other words—don’t you just love puns sometimes—such as mother, butt, pig and any number of others. In the end, such people seem only capable of conveying a non-pejorative message by context and body language, the stream of profanity being nearly incomprehensible in its dearth of actual meaningful words. For lack of a better term, let’s call these folks the “Effers.”
It is not that I don’t use profanity myself. When I’m out with the guys hunting or fishing, playing golf, drinking and that sort of thing, I like to sprinkle an occasional f-bomb into my language for the added effect it gives. If used sparingly, the f-word can grab the listener’s attention or stress a point, and even express a certain delight in the subject at hand. (Gee, I can’t stop myself). My father occasionally uses cocksucker to express his poor opinion of a person. When he calls someone that, you know that he is having trouble finding any other language to express so succinctly and completely his contempt for the person. He would never refer to a woman with this word, even if he knows for certain that she performs the act regularly and with enthusiasm. I find that I adopted this little language quirk from him—perhaps it is genetic.
However, I try very hard to avoid dropping any of these language bombs when I am in public, around people I don’t know, men that I suspect don’t like hearing these words, and women (even though some of them are the worst Effers). I slip occasionally and use such language around my wife, but rarely, because she always gives me that look when I do. I think it is rude to assume that people don’t mind hearing such language. I think it is beyond rude, bordering on assault, to continuing to talk this way when it is apparent the audience is offended or disturbed by such language.
I’m all for freedom of speech. You have the right to say things that express your views, thoughts and opinions. You can even say things that you know some people would find distasteful or painful to hear. But, if all you want to do is stand in the middle of the room and in a loud voice spew words from your mouth like a toilet backing up just because you can, then you deserve a punch in that mouth to remind you which way the sewer is supposed to flow. One assault begets another, and yes, makes the second wrong right.
We could say that there are two kinds of Effers. The first are those who talk this way because they are simply ignorant and don’t know any better. They grew up in households or neighborhoods where most people around them spoke the same way. In addition, to be honest if less than kind or politically correct, these Effers are usually less intelligent and have difficulty imagining or contemplating that they could communicate in any other way. It simply never occurs to them, whereas a brighter more intelligent person recognizes there is a whole world of people out there who do talk without using these words. Just watch broadcast television for a couple of hours and you will not hear the f-bomb once, which ought to be a clue that it is possible to carry on complete conversations without using such language no matter how mindless the conversations are.
The second kind of Effer is more insidious and contemptible to my mind. These Effers know very well that there is another way to talk, but they don’t care. It is as though they are caught up in the “shock and awe” of their hard hitting, cutting edge, and colorful language. I think a lot of them are truly delighted knowing that they are making people wince, causing discomfort, or raising feelings of disgust in others. They are not so concerned with the message they are trying to convey as they are simply satisfying their own need to be the center of attention. There is a certain spoiled brat psychology at work. Go to a college campus and you will find these Effers everywhere, including some standing at the lectern. Certain movies in recent memory are so laden with Effer’s language it seems that was the whole point of the movie and the story be damned.
In the end, however, I think it is wrong to conclude that Effer’s fall into two kinds, those who don’t know any better and those who do. To my mind, and you can agree or not, they are both just stupid. The one thing that makes us unique, or at least the most advanced life form on Earth, is our ability to communicate detailed information, complex ideas and symbols to each other. Those who eschew meaningful dialog from most of their fellows by choosing to be an Effer are just obnoxious, lazy or ignorant, in a word, stupid.
The language used by the Effers, all those f-words, mf-words, c-words and the rest have lost their meaning. The words have been so over used that hardly anyone actually pictures the sex act when someone says fuck, for example. The only meaning that comes through is the intent to shock when spoken once and to create a sort of numbness when said too many times in succession, similar to a hand plunged into ice water and held there too long.
With that we come, finally, back to the irony.
The title of this rant is Cursing and Swearing. I spent a deal of time talking about the use of bad words in language, the act of people using profanity in their communication. The ironic part of all this is that the two words, forms of curse and swear, only have the meaning of pejorative language—pejorative literally means “to make worse words”—as a secondary, tertiary, or lower meaning.
In most dictionaries, the primary definition of curse is to wish ill on someone, to put a spell of magic on them, or to call God’s wrath to them. You have to get far down the list of meanings to find “execrate in fervent and often profane terms,” and that meaning has more of a religious context than one of simply using bad words.
To swear means even less the act of saying bad words than curse does. Swear primarily means to take or make an oath. We “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” thousands of times a day in courthouses all over the country. We also “swear to take this woman” (I can’t stop it) in thousands more weddings every day. In fact, in most dictionaries, swear meaning to use profane language is seventh or eighth down the list in importance.
Except for Effers, it seems to me that when the rest of us curse or swear often our intent is to insult. Yet, the Effers have made those insults mostly meaningless through over use of the words. So let me urge you to become more imaginative or descriptive in your intended insults.
Don’t say, “Fuck you” to the fellow you really want to wound. Instead, say something like “May you conjoin with a pederastic pediculous pustule of pusillanimous parsimony.”
Now that’s cursing.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
How's Your Constitution?
I wanted my blog to be about slightly weightier issues, or rather about my thoughts involving life and the universe more generally, and less about current events. I wanted to avoid that sort of blog that offers entry after entry starting with: “OMG, can you believe what they just did…” or “So and so is an Idiot/Communist/Nazi/Republican/Mean Person…”
In other words, while current events are interesting, they are so, well, current. It is hard to be reasonable and thoughtful in the passions of the immediate when one comments too currently on current events. There is something powerful and persuasive from gaining perspective through time. Therefore, I don’t want to be too current. It's not that I’m powerful or persuasive, but I can hope, right?
However, this time I am going to break my own rule.
I think we reached a milestone this week. President Obama signed the Health Reform bill into law on Monday. I certainly have my thoughts about this farce of legislation and saying that ought to tell you all you need to know about my stance on the subject.
I saw at least two different editorials, by accomplished and sophisticated writers, that talked about the Health Reform Bill in terms of “Civil War.” They meant a civil war in the sense that half the country sees an issue one way, an issue that they think is fundamental to their creed, existence, and life itself, and the other half sees it another way in the same fervent, locked in their beliefs, fundamentalist way. The writers were specifically referring to the idea of a civil war by harkening back to the 1860s when half the nation was willing to maim, kill, butcher, and devour the other half to impose its view of governing America.
This is scary!
We like to think that we are above the issues of the original American Civil War. We all learned in school that it was a war against slavery. It was, they taught us, a battle of good against evil. The North was the champion of good and the South was evil for its desire to own Negro slaves upon which its economy relied. The North could propagate this simplistic and revisionist history because it won the war.
Much greater thinkers and historians than I have told the story. I don’t presume to try to reinterpret the Civil War. Yet, it seems to me that there are so many parallels of that era to events of today that they bear comment.
Put away your Northern propaganda for a moment and consider. The South, regardless of the slavery and other issues, was primarily upset that the Federal government was trying to impose itself on what the Southern states saw as their constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty rights. Essentially, the Constitution forbids the Federal government from doing anything not specifically granted to it, and says the states may do whatever it does not grant specifically to the Feds. In other words, if the Constitution does not specifically give the Federal government authority over something, then the States have that authority if they so wish it and the Federal government may not say otherwise. The essential argument of the South was the Federal government had no authority to tell them whether they could have legalized slavery or not, because the Constitution made no mention of the subject. The South certainly had a very good point, especially considering that many of the framers of the constitution were slave owners themselves.
Some 80 years prior to the Civil War, the original 13 colonies got together and agreed to form a “Union.” They did not agree to give overarching power to a central authority, the Federal government. Far from it. They agreed to bond together, under a limiting agreement (the Constitution), to adopt certain laws in common, some basic economic restraints and taxations, some guaranteed individual rights, and so on. Remember, the States at this time literally thought of themselves as individual STATES, much the same as France, England, and Sweden were states. For lack of a better way of putting it, each of the states considered themselves individual countries in their own right. They considered themselves sovereign, and subject to no other authority except according to the limited agreements they had made in the Constitution. Think of it as a NATO of its time.
The proper way to deal with slavery was by constitutional amendment. That was never going to happen in the current situation in 1860 because it takes three fourths of the states approval, and the Southern bloc represented nearly half of the states and would not vote for such an amendment. What the North was doing, with its majorities in Congress, was requiring that new states could only join the union if they agreed to make slavery illegal in their state. If the union kept accepting only anti-slavery states it would be just a matter of time before the southern bloc represented less than a fourth of the states, and the three fourths needed to adopt the amendment would be reached. Recognizing the inevitability of that outcome, the South said, “We quit.” They wanted out of the union. It has always puzzled me why the North didn’t just say, “Fine, go.” I suppose, Lincoln and the North were not willing to let that happen, not because they wanted to save the slaves, but because they were in control of the economy and wanted to keep on with the good thing. I think just as importantly the nation was embarking on expansion across the whole of the continent and the North perceived that an independent South would be a competitor. It was all about turf. I certainly don’t buy the argument that the North was willing to kill millions in some sort of altruistic desire to preserve the nation.
I could go on for hours and hours, but the point is that when the North won the Civil War, they planted the seeds of our modern day overarching Federal government. We went from a States centric Union to a Federal centric one when Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox. Ever since then, the Federal government has hijacked one States’ right after another. In the twentieth century, the Feds used the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution as their principal pry bar to insinuate themselves more and more into the private lives and business of the citizens. It is also the chief justificaiton for Obamacare now. The chief architect of this movement was Franklin Roosevelt; more than any other President he turned us to the idea that the Federal government should be responsible for each individual’s welfare.
I can just hear my left wing friends (of whom I have not many) disagree and howl in righteous indignation (which is funny since they don’t believe in God or religion, but think and act so very religiously). However, I think Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would be horrified at what the nation has become. This was not their vision, nor that of any person who took part in creating this country.
Many have come to think that it is we versus them. By that, they mean the government does not represent them, their ideals, their desires, their philosophy or beliefs. They are beginning to think that the folks running the government think of the rest of us as subjects. We are here to serve their desires, not them to serve ours. Have you heard the titles “King Barak”, “Princess Nancy”, and “Prince Harry”?
More than half the citizens of this country are opposed to Obamacare. I suspect that as many are also opposed to idea of adopting the European nanny state, and with it the increasing intrusiveness into our lives and restrictions of our personal rights. I suspect more than half the people in the country don’t think the government should be taking over and running private companies. That’s what they do in places like Cuba and Venezuela.
I think at least half the country is starting to think very much like the South thought in 1860.
If you ever travelled in the South, and mention is made of the Civil War, you immediately heard a local correct the name and call it the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps the second civil war, if it comes to that, we will call the War of Left Wing Aggression. That will only happen if the left does not win.
In other words, while current events are interesting, they are so, well, current. It is hard to be reasonable and thoughtful in the passions of the immediate when one comments too currently on current events. There is something powerful and persuasive from gaining perspective through time. Therefore, I don’t want to be too current. It's not that I’m powerful or persuasive, but I can hope, right?
However, this time I am going to break my own rule.
I think we reached a milestone this week. President Obama signed the Health Reform bill into law on Monday. I certainly have my thoughts about this farce of legislation and saying that ought to tell you all you need to know about my stance on the subject.
I saw at least two different editorials, by accomplished and sophisticated writers, that talked about the Health Reform Bill in terms of “Civil War.” They meant a civil war in the sense that half the country sees an issue one way, an issue that they think is fundamental to their creed, existence, and life itself, and the other half sees it another way in the same fervent, locked in their beliefs, fundamentalist way. The writers were specifically referring to the idea of a civil war by harkening back to the 1860s when half the nation was willing to maim, kill, butcher, and devour the other half to impose its view of governing America.
This is scary!
We like to think that we are above the issues of the original American Civil War. We all learned in school that it was a war against slavery. It was, they taught us, a battle of good against evil. The North was the champion of good and the South was evil for its desire to own Negro slaves upon which its economy relied. The North could propagate this simplistic and revisionist history because it won the war.
Much greater thinkers and historians than I have told the story. I don’t presume to try to reinterpret the Civil War. Yet, it seems to me that there are so many parallels of that era to events of today that they bear comment.
Put away your Northern propaganda for a moment and consider. The South, regardless of the slavery and other issues, was primarily upset that the Federal government was trying to impose itself on what the Southern states saw as their constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty rights. Essentially, the Constitution forbids the Federal government from doing anything not specifically granted to it, and says the states may do whatever it does not grant specifically to the Feds. In other words, if the Constitution does not specifically give the Federal government authority over something, then the States have that authority if they so wish it and the Federal government may not say otherwise. The essential argument of the South was the Federal government had no authority to tell them whether they could have legalized slavery or not, because the Constitution made no mention of the subject. The South certainly had a very good point, especially considering that many of the framers of the constitution were slave owners themselves.
Some 80 years prior to the Civil War, the original 13 colonies got together and agreed to form a “Union.” They did not agree to give overarching power to a central authority, the Federal government. Far from it. They agreed to bond together, under a limiting agreement (the Constitution), to adopt certain laws in common, some basic economic restraints and taxations, some guaranteed individual rights, and so on. Remember, the States at this time literally thought of themselves as individual STATES, much the same as France, England, and Sweden were states. For lack of a better way of putting it, each of the states considered themselves individual countries in their own right. They considered themselves sovereign, and subject to no other authority except according to the limited agreements they had made in the Constitution. Think of it as a NATO of its time.
The proper way to deal with slavery was by constitutional amendment. That was never going to happen in the current situation in 1860 because it takes three fourths of the states approval, and the Southern bloc represented nearly half of the states and would not vote for such an amendment. What the North was doing, with its majorities in Congress, was requiring that new states could only join the union if they agreed to make slavery illegal in their state. If the union kept accepting only anti-slavery states it would be just a matter of time before the southern bloc represented less than a fourth of the states, and the three fourths needed to adopt the amendment would be reached. Recognizing the inevitability of that outcome, the South said, “We quit.” They wanted out of the union. It has always puzzled me why the North didn’t just say, “Fine, go.” I suppose, Lincoln and the North were not willing to let that happen, not because they wanted to save the slaves, but because they were in control of the economy and wanted to keep on with the good thing. I think just as importantly the nation was embarking on expansion across the whole of the continent and the North perceived that an independent South would be a competitor. It was all about turf. I certainly don’t buy the argument that the North was willing to kill millions in some sort of altruistic desire to preserve the nation.
I could go on for hours and hours, but the point is that when the North won the Civil War, they planted the seeds of our modern day overarching Federal government. We went from a States centric Union to a Federal centric one when Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox. Ever since then, the Federal government has hijacked one States’ right after another. In the twentieth century, the Feds used the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution as their principal pry bar to insinuate themselves more and more into the private lives and business of the citizens. It is also the chief justificaiton for Obamacare now. The chief architect of this movement was Franklin Roosevelt; more than any other President he turned us to the idea that the Federal government should be responsible for each individual’s welfare.
I can just hear my left wing friends (of whom I have not many) disagree and howl in righteous indignation (which is funny since they don’t believe in God or religion, but think and act so very religiously). However, I think Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would be horrified at what the nation has become. This was not their vision, nor that of any person who took part in creating this country.
Many have come to think that it is we versus them. By that, they mean the government does not represent them, their ideals, their desires, their philosophy or beliefs. They are beginning to think that the folks running the government think of the rest of us as subjects. We are here to serve their desires, not them to serve ours. Have you heard the titles “King Barak”, “Princess Nancy”, and “Prince Harry”?
More than half the citizens of this country are opposed to Obamacare. I suspect that as many are also opposed to idea of adopting the European nanny state, and with it the increasing intrusiveness into our lives and restrictions of our personal rights. I suspect more than half the people in the country don’t think the government should be taking over and running private companies. That’s what they do in places like Cuba and Venezuela.
I think at least half the country is starting to think very much like the South thought in 1860.
If you ever travelled in the South, and mention is made of the Civil War, you immediately heard a local correct the name and call it the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps the second civil war, if it comes to that, we will call the War of Left Wing Aggression. That will only happen if the left does not win.
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