Do we really have any doubt...
Where this is all going?
I definitely do. More often than I let on, honestly. More often than not, these days, really. I preach love and patience. And I practice, far too much, anger and despair. Lack of faith, I suppose. A lack I experience so often, I can't keep up with it. I don't know why, really. Other than everyone - family, friends, students, everyone I know and all the rest I do not know - trying to impress upon me that assholes finish first and that nice guys - my kind of people, meaning - finish last. Nice to know you're loved, huh?
It's a more than a little overwhelming for the heart, truth be told. No matter how strong we think we are.
But then I read exchanges like this. And I'm reminded why humanity just has a way of working these things out.
"JUSTICE GINSBURG: Is there — you’ve been asked questions about the vagueness of this and the problem for the seller to know what’s good and what’s bad. California — does California have any kind of an advisory opinion, an office that will view these videos and say, yes, this belongs in this, what did you call it, deviant violence, and this one is just violent but not deviant? Is there — is there any kind of opinion that the — that the seller can get to know which games can be sold to minors and which ones can’t?
MR. MORAZZINI: Not that I’m aware of, Justice Ginsburg.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You should consider creating such a one. You might call it the California office of censorship. It would judge each of these videos one by one. That would be very nice."
Honestly, do we really have any doubt where we are headed, long term?
More or less freedom? More or less love? Honest progress or not?
We shouldn't, I don't think. We doubt, I think, because doing the right thing does not always bring instant gratification. And doing the wrong thing often does.
But we also do really know how these things work out in the end. When we're not deceiving ourselves.
Doubt is among the choices while building faith, I suppose. And faith is a function of our efforts. Our successes and our failures.
I'm tired and feeling a bit cynical today. A function of bad choices, I assume. And a heavy and weary heart, these days.
Perhaps wiser heads should speak on this matter, today.
Perhaps one day I might be more like one of them.
4 comments:
I've turned much more libertarian since we last met, Ben.
The only solution is to return the federal government to its constitutional box and allow people to order their own lives.
Of course, that'll never happen, but I can dream...
Me, too, actually, Kurt. I've been rereading John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. One of the best read's on the subject I've ever read, I think, Kurt. And I voted for the libertarian candidates for governor and attorney general in our last election. They were generally more thoughtful and just had better platforms than their alternatives, I thought.
I think it does get better, Kurt, over time. John Stuart Mill had no reason to believe that the world would embrace liberty more, during this day, either. He was writing during the heyday of the British empire and in a period of substantial European imperial warfare. Just before Lord Acton was to argue, much more correctly than I ever assumed when I first read it, that power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. It would take till after WWI and the British public growing exhausted with imperial adventures and 1928 when Britain enfranchised all women and men with the vote for liberal democratic values and formal rights, like the right to vote, to more fully take hold in Britain. But people like Mill and Acton were responsible for the spread of those values in the meantime.
Progress on matters of liberty do take place, I think, Kurt. They're just excruciatingly slow, sometimes, I think. And they take place against a backdrop of illiberal forces desperately fighting to their last gasps. They're happening right now, I think. They're just really serepitious, right now, I think. It's in all the various ways, both in the open political discussions and in the choices people are making to run their own lives, with or without government sanction. But formal liberty does follow. It has to. Because everything else, as Benjamin Franklin argued at the Constitutional Convention, eventually devolves into despotism. Those are the fundmental choices, I think, Kurt. More liberty and more repression. And if you choose a direction of more repression, it's only downhill from there until you turn it around. As Germany found out all too tragically in the 1930's. So we will have to turn things around. The question is how much damage will be done until we do. Luckily for us, we don't live in Weimar Germany. But the responsibility that comes with that deal is maintaining the commitment to liberty and being 100% responsible for ourselves, amidst that, even things look bleak, I think. I say that as someone still and always looking at all the ways that I fall short of that.
The hard part of the whole thing, I think, Kurt, is responsible people still trying to do the responsible thing even when I, at least, often resent that the government has mandated it. I really do think that this recent direction has serious undermined peoples' - mine, included - trust in government. All in the name of demanding the same. It's sad, I think. But do I think responsible people maintaining that same commitment does eventually turn things around. It always has. I think it always will.
How's life in your neck of the woods? This whole experience has really kinda deepened my commitment to kids who have no clue how to sort out the dishonesty and irresponsibility of adults, nevertheless their own. And a sense of compassion, I suppose, that everyone struggles with this, no matter what age. Good daddy preparation, I hope.
Hope life is good. Tell your wife hi for me.
Things are going good here. The son and I are going bird hunting today.
Thoughtful words from you as usual.
Being of a conservative bent, here's how I would wave my magic wand:
1) Make the neocons disappear, much smaller footprint overseas, and a more robust intelligence network that gets in bed with all kinds of bad guys, since that is how you gather intel that protects the country.
2) Stop domestic spying on innocent citizens. Profiling works: do it.
3) Convince the religious right (with whom I generally agree) that they don't need the force of the federal government to push their agenda. It's not even constitutional in many cases. If God is so great (and I believe he is) he can survive in the marketplace of free ideas.
4) Dial back federal government involvement back to pre-Wilson days. Let the states and local communities take care of education, the poor and society in general. We are not a one-size-fits-all nation, but the federal government continues to peddle such solutions.
I agree with that, broadly, Kurt. Number 3 would make a world of difference for matters of morality and religious faith, I think. Ironic, but true, I think. if people to be good people, for real and more reliably, there is not one more important thing we can do, I'm convinced, than commit ourselves to more liberty and the freedom of conscience to direct our own lives, for good and for bad, I'm convinced. Mill made the argument almost 200 years ago, now. And he was right, I'm convinced.
I agree, broadly, with #1. I'm still fine with efforts to liberate peoples living in tyrranies as long as the people you're fighting for are roughly clearly on board and the people doing the fighting and the people living in the countries authorizing the fighting are on board. I just think that the insanity of politics as we know it is constantly creating static in the debates/discussions about how to do that effectively while killing/hurting the least people possible near impossible until we get over our the notion that someone or some group has finally got it all figured out. The partisanship of the last 10 years has been one of the most awe-spiringly selfish exercises I have ever seen in my lifetime, given the stakes for the peoples in both the wars we're fighting. I can hardly believe that grownups can behave that way and call it mature or responsible, frankly.
Agree on domestic spying. Domestic spying on real bad guys is not a problem. And it's the politics that screws things up, after that. If people don't hate George Bush or Barack Obama because they're not constantly stepping on their lives or arrogantly asserting power perogatives rather than leading more humbly, noone gets all bent out of shape about domestic spying on people who are genuinely dangerous. It's all the other kinds of spying that are a problem. If only we could learn the more fundamental lessons around liberty, important matters of security and governance would be so much easier to get resolved, I'm convinced. Very sad, I think.
I agree with the direction of #4 and what I think will work best for us, eventually, is moving effective or popular government efforts into trustworthy, private, non-profit, and, when appropriate, for-profit hands (it really depends on the people involved, not the form, I'm convinced). I think we're better off with everything that government is not uniquely suited to run - national security and law enforcement, namely - being left to the civil and private sector. Schools should be autonomous and independent. Good ones should succeed. Bad ones should fail. And let people sort through what that means for themselves and amongst their family, friends, and neighbors.
I think in the name of preventing bad guys from getting the better of us, we are constantly undermining good guys, Kurt. And that direction is the best way to prevent that, long term, I think.
I better go, here. My computer is going to run out of time at the library, here.
Talk soon.
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