The Northern Review

Helen Thomas made some very candid and unwelcome remarks a few days ago.  But, she raises some fundamental questions.  See this article in MnnePost.

Becker and Posner write:

But if we continue running huge deficits, continue being unable politically either to cut spending significantly or raise taxes significantly, continue adding huge new spending progams, continue increasing the ratio of elderly to young, continue raising the minimum wage and promoting unionism, turn protectionist, resist immigration, and become even more deeply involved in military operations, we too may eventually go the way of Europe, even the way of Greece. Nowhere is it written that the United States can never decline.

Becker-Posner Blog

In the United States our governments exist as a result of the consent of the governed.  The consent is for the purpose of protection of the whole of the people and the individual rights of the people.  It seems our government may well be failing in this basic task of protection.  Look around.  What do you see?  You see cities which have become abandoned to such an extent thousands of houses have to be torn down because they are vacant and a danger to people.  You see a government which has taken on so many responsibilities and borrowed so much money that it is rapidly going broke. You see a government which has been taken over by those whose goals are to create and preserve a Government Party whose goals are to provide benefits that far exceed the ability to pay for the benefits to the workers who derive their incomes from government and those who have the power to join together to command private benefits as if they were rights.

While great disaster is taking place, all around us, –   one of today’s headline stories is about this “An Australian documentary maker has convinced several young people to appear in a reality television programme in which they auction their virginity to the highest bidder.” 

What is one to say?   What is humanity, humankind, becoming?  Is this fun?  Is it humorous?

Have daily events been worse, more banal, more evil, more vicious?  Yes, of course they have. 

Just think, in the summer of 1945, infantry from the West and the East were confronting an inhumanity which was worse, one would hope, than that  of the expressions of inhumanity of previous ages and generations — the engineered and societily accepted genocide of millions of civilized peoples who were friends and neighbors.  Germany became a machine of death.  It became an institution by which friends, neighbors, lovers, loved ones, the innocent, the important, the human were ruthlessly murdered.  It is hard to imagine this nation, which had become so idealistic and in many ways pure, had become a machine by which millions of innocents  were mercilessly murdered — young, old, children, infants, grandparents, mothers, righteous, innocents  – and driven to camps and gas chambers.  It is unimaginable.  Is it about to happen again?

Today, on the Northern Tier, news comes which is sobering at least, and alarming at most.  In fact, downright frightening.  In our Western Hemisphere British Petroleum has created an oil well which is spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  There is no good news about this.  The environmental damage already is beyond comprehension, and it is going to get worse, much, much worse.

In Europe some of the Economic Union nations have joined to shore up the finances of Greece.  Greece has been spending itself silly.  It has run out of money.  The EU countries want to prevent this because their economies (in fact the world economy too), are at risk.  The bailout might work but the problem is that the other countries are in disastrous debt circumstances.  Britain has debt equal to its annual Gross National Product.  The Government Party economists have been telling us, I think, thare there is no real problem of government debt.  That was what was pitched when Bush and Obama and companies came up with the bailouts of the New York financial wizards (gamblers?) and the car companies (private enterprises which because lack of capable management have become black holes of private debt).  The bailout debt was extraordinary.  No problem some economists said.  “You have to spend money to make money” a person I once knew  said (a person, by the way, who was living off the income of the shopping centers his father had built).

The next bit of news is that there is now talk of a debt time bomb.  We hear this from Moody’s, one of the economic rating agencies.  One of the group which helped to bring us the subprime mortgage, derivative, securitization meltdown. 

Regarding the derivative economy or lack there of read A. de Borchgrave, Stock market time bomb?

And there is also this:  Some news about how the state governments are dealing with the economic problems of the the states.  Check out this editorial in the Seattle Times — State budget is officially signed — and utterly unsustainable.  The point of news is that the states are trying to avoid making tough decisions.  The states do not want to offend the members of the Government Party, so they find ways to avoid having to make hard choices.  After all, the politicians, Democrat mostly, but also Republican, are protectors, benefactors and in many instances members of the Government Party.

The Idaho State Bar Association has polled its members.  Idaho Reporter. 

Apparently they like the incumbent over the challenger, John Bradbury of Lewiston and Grangeville. 

The system does not like Bradbury and it is using everything it has to be sure he is not elected.  The Bar Poll is usually part of the process by which challengers are not elected.  These polls are interesting in the fact of their utter boredom.  The people who “vote” supposedly have experience with the character and qualities of the people who are being subjected to the opinions of those being polled.  But most of those being polled have no knowledge of either of the people be compared, they have nothing but the good memories of cocktails with other lawyers at the country club or that last Bar Association Continuing Legal Education event. 

The polls are a sort of non-beauty pageant.  The lawyers always go for the one who is not going to challenge them of their brethern, the one who is tried and true.  The one who has the imprimatur of “the law.”  The one who has the approval of the members of the Bar Association. 

Yeech and good luck Idaho.

Your Bar Poll is irrelevant.  It is also amaturish. 

Here is what Schopenhauer said about compassion:

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Compassion means something like “spiritual consciousness of the personal tragedy of another or others and selfless tenderness directed toward it.”  Hegel does not express compassion unless, in his view, that which is living is willing.  That is a bankrupt evil idea.  It is the reasoning of a Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Stalin.  They, in their worship of the god of power would only grant a willing which was a willing which fit into their willing.

One hears about George Hegel, the philosopher.  He said this:

Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.

One must wonder about George Hegel. Does one only have a right to life it the life being lived is a life of willing life? What Hegel says not only is nonsense, and wrong, it is evil. 

The news on the Northern Tier today brings us the story of deaths of six people in a car collision near Cambridge, Minnesota.  Why God? in the Star and Tribune.  What is there to say?  We know that four were young people just starting their lives. News of the other two has yet to come out. 

We hurt for them, for the families left behind, for the loss, the tragic painful loss.  We feel the pain of the deaths these people suffered.  We are overwhelmed by the tragedy.  What can be said?  It seems all so senseless, so evil.  What is the antidote?  What is the consolation?  What is the answer?  What is it to those still living?  How is it that they go on?  And, they will, in their own ways.  But, still one wonders, “how do I face this evil, this death, this violence, what is my response, what response is possible?”

How does one respond?  What difference is there in the response whether you are white, Native American, black –, whether you are Muslim, Christian, Jew, agnostic, atheist –. whether you are rich or poor, whether you are young or old, whether you are depressed or happy, . . .

Maybe we can read the Book of Job.  That will give us some help, some understanding, but will it? 

A man from Thunder Bay, Ontario, has thought about the Book of Job.  His name is Robert Sutherland.  He practices law in Newfoundland.  Here is his website and an introduction to his book.  His book is Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job.

There is another from Newfoundland who gives us insight into the world of suffering and loss and who also gives a sense of consolation as only literature can give.  His name is Wayne Johnston and of the several books this talented man has written, two are my favorites — The Custodian of Paradise and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. 

There is also something else in these times of loss and heartache — the simple fact of the universe.  So there we have the most wonderful place of consolation and truth, nature, our back yard, the woods, the prairie, the mountains, the oceans and our inland seas, the wind blowing southeasterly from the High Canadian Plains, the universe.

Let us be honest.  Most of our leaders are people who have never had a real job or people who have never really excelled at a real job.  I recall a person who became a the United States Attorney in my town.  I knew him before he was selected.  He was never much of an attorney, hardly ever had tried a case, had no experience in the areas important to the work of the US Attorney.  But he did a passing job.  The people who did the daily work as lawyers, clerks, secretaries, paymasters, and so on, continued to do the daily work of the office.  Nothing changed,  Nothing new came about.  The people who did the work were not on the person who was the US Attorney. 

Come to think back on it, there were others who took the job over the years who were the same, whether Democrat or Republican, as the person I was thinking of when I started this bit.

I wonder what gives.  The job it seemed was a political prize.  It is a job which goes to one thought to be a Mr. Republican, or a Mr. Democrat.  (No women have been selected for the job in my town thus far.)