Turfway Park is requesting a reduced number of racing dates in 2010.
Wait a minute. Why is Turfway Park requesting any dates at all? We were told during the last state legislative session that Turfway Park was closing because only way--the sole, exclusive, single, only way--it could survive was if the General Assembly passed legislation allowing slots at horse tracks. Otherwise Turfway and Ellis Park would close.
We were assured of this.
But, guess what? They're still alive and kicking. They may euthanize their horses when they break a leg, but still haven't euthenized themselves.
Just one of the many untruths they told the public last year. I'm sure there are more coming.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
State Senate President comes out swinging on slots
State Senate President David Williams responds to Will Farish's disingenuous and misleading editorial on the issue slots at tracks:
I never cease to be amazed by the manner in which slot interests and their spokesmen, such as Bill Farish, continue to mislead Kentuckians. The proposed expansion of gambling in Kentucky is bad economic policy for the state and for the horse industry. Those tied to the slots may do their best to raise the specter of false divisions and false hope, but the reality of the situation is unchanged.Read the rest here.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
First Logic: The Presocratics
I will be blogging a book I am working on called "First Logic: Thirty Lessons on How to Think," which is, all at once, an introduction to logic, as well as a history of rational thought (at a very basic level). I am co-writing this book with my son Thomas, who is a law student and a formidable thinker in his own right (You can visit his philosophy blog, Tearing Down the Mask of Maya, here).
What will appear here are first drafts we have written, which will be in a continual process of revision, most of the early chapters of which are Thomas' work. This one is on the Presocratics:
The Presocratics
The Milesians and Pythagoras
Very few of the writings of those philosophers that came before Socrates still exist today. Most of what we know about the Presocratics comes from summaries from other writers in later times, or from small fragments that have survived. Nevertheless, the Presocratic philosophers (so called because they lived before Socrates) can be known fairly well through indirect sources. If nothing else, they influenced the more famous and better understood philosophers that we will spend the next few chapters with.
According to tradition, Western philosophy was born with Thales, an Ionian thinker. Thales won renown for both his great knowledge and his self-imposed poverty. By his poverty he showed that he prized wisdom over wealth. He was also perhaps the first to give philosophy a reputation for being blind to everyday things. Plato tells us that once Thales was walking while doing astronomy and fell into a well to the amusement of those around him, not seeing what was directly in front of him. Whatever Thales' personal quirks may have been, he seems to have been the first person to inquire into the nature of the world in a philosophic, scientific way.
At the time of Thales, and indeed until much later, philosophy was not something distinct from science. In fact, science can also be called "natural philosophy". Thales tried to explain the things around him by observing the things of nature and proposing a theory that made sense of things. He theorized that everything was in fact made up of one sort of substance that could take on any shape or attribute. By proposing a single kind of "stuff" that everything was made out of, Thales was trying to uncover the basic nature of the universe. Thales believed that the truth about the world would show up when one investigates it through reason and observation.
What sort of stuff could take on any shape or quality? Thales believed water was the likeliest possibility. After all, we know that water can be hard when made into ice, fluid when a liquid at room temperature, and almost like the air when it turns into steam. Water can be hot or cold; it can be hard or soft. Perhaps water can take on any attribute or appearance; perhaps people and trees, rocks and stars are made up of water.
Thales' students agreed that everything could be explained by discovering what sort of basic material things were made out of, but they disagreed about what that material might have been. Anaximander believed water to be too specific a thing to be able to be made into anything. Instead, he proposed that all things were made out of the "indeterminate". The "indeterminate" is simply a material that has no qualities in itself, but can take on any quality when is shaped into a particular thing. It cannot be pictured in the mind, because every picture already has a definite appearance (color, shape, etc.), and so we cannot really even imagine what it might be like.
Anaximander's student, Anaximines, thought that Anaxamender correctly criticized Thales, but went too far in the other direction. He proposed that everything is made of of air, which he thought of as something like mist. The air can become more dense and solid, or it can become less dense and more rarefied.need an easier synonym He thought of air as something less specific than water but more specific than the indeterminate. In this way, he believed that he had preserved the truth of both Anaximander and Thales.
While the Milesians (the name for Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, and their followers) attempted to explain the world in terms of the material "stuff" that it was made out of, Pythagoras and his followers believed the world was best explained mathematically. Pythagoras realized that music could be broken down into mathematical ratios, and theorized that the cosmos itself could be understood mathematically. The surprising regularity of mathematical patterns in nature suggested that perhaps all of nature could be understood in terms of numbers. Pythagoras developed mathematics in order to expose the hidden structure of the world. For Pythagoras and his followers, mathematics was not a purely academic exercise, but a religious one as well. The relation of numbers to reality was at once surprising and mysterious. If space permits, I might explain the even and the odd; or else the religious/academic split -Thomas
Heraclitus and Parmenides
Heraclitus is perhaps the most interesting of the Presocratic philosophers. Unlike the Milesians and the Pythagoreans, he had little interest in establishing a "school", nor did he seem to believe much in precision in argument. His view of human beings as a whole was a dark one. Once he commented that the common people, rather than pursuing wisdom, "stuff themselves like cattle" (4). Even his views of fellow thinkers was rarely kind. For example, he insulted Pythagoras for having much learning, but no insight (14).
His most interesting views do not concern his distaste for other people, but his descriptions of change. While the Milesians looked for the one same substance that all things are made out of, and while the Pythagoreans set out the immortal laws of mathematics that the universe obeys, Heraclitus focused on how the world was never the same. He famously observed that a person never steps in the same river twice. This observation isn't obvious at first, and so we should think in detail about it.
Imagine Heraclitus standing on a bridge over a river, drawing water out of the river with a bucket. He dyes the water red, and pours it back into the river. After a moment, he draws up his bucket again. The water he draws up now, from the same spot, would not be colored by the dye, and so this bucket of water is different than the last bucket. The water in a river never stays in one place. Even the shape of a river constantly changes. Rivers overflow their banks, they dry out, they are altered by dams, they surge wildly then move along peacefully. Thus, as Heraclitus says, "Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow" (61).
Heraclitus believes that the whole universe constantly changes, not just rivers. Everything moves and flows and changes without rest. Some things change slowly, such as the erosion of rocks, some quickly, such as rivers or fires. Heraclitus likened the universe to a flame burning, always moving, dancing, and jumping in every part. However, at the same time, the flame is still in some sense the same. After all, we might look at the flame of a match until it burns out, and it seems as though the flame, though it moves, is still the same flame. Similarly, the Nile river, though it always moves, still is always the Nile. Things change and yet they remain the same.
Heraclitus pictures the universe in this contradictory way, as always the same and never the same, as constantly in motion and constantly still. In Heraclitus' words: "We step into and we do not step into the same river. We are and we are not" (63). The tension between opposites belongs to the nature of the universe itself. Heraclitus did not feel the need to find a way around these conflicts.
Parmenides, like Heraclitus, tried to understand the way in which the universe changes or remains the same. Unlike Heraclitus, he was not as comfortable with thinking of the universe as inherently contradictory. Parmenides declares that the cosmos is one and unchanging, and that the continuous change and the individual things Heraclitus spoke of is an illusion.
Why would he say this? If we look around it certainly seems as though different kinds of things exist, and it seems that these things move. Further, Parmenides' teaching runs contrary to philosophic tradition, for what the natural philosophers were trying to explain was why different things exist and what they are made out of. Parmenides seems to explain away what other philosophers tried to explain. In order to understand why, we must look at his argument.
Nothing comes from nothing, Parmenides argued. As soon as we speak of a cause of something, we speak of that cause as though it exists. A non-existent cause is simply not a cause. When something comes into being or when it changes, something that did not exist now exists. What is a person before they are conceived? Therefore, when change or coming into being happens, something comes from nothing. However, we know this to be false. Therefore, change does not happen. Things do not come into being. All that exists has always existed without any kind of change.
Parmenides' argument contradicts what we think we see. Should we regard things that change as an illusion? Some philosophers, such as Aristotle, commented that it is not worth talking to those who reject what is most obvious. Yet even Aristotle found it necessary to refute Parmenides' argument in detail in his Metaphysics.
What will appear here are first drafts we have written, which will be in a continual process of revision, most of the early chapters of which are Thomas' work. This one is on the Presocratics:
The Presocratics
The Milesians and Pythagoras
Very few of the writings of those philosophers that came before Socrates still exist today. Most of what we know about the Presocratics comes from summaries from other writers in later times, or from small fragments that have survived. Nevertheless, the Presocratic philosophers (so called because they lived before Socrates) can be known fairly well through indirect sources. If nothing else, they influenced the more famous and better understood philosophers that we will spend the next few chapters with.
According to tradition, Western philosophy was born with Thales, an Ionian thinker. Thales won renown for both his great knowledge and his self-imposed poverty. By his poverty he showed that he prized wisdom over wealth. He was also perhaps the first to give philosophy a reputation for being blind to everyday things. Plato tells us that once Thales was walking while doing astronomy and fell into a well to the amusement of those around him, not seeing what was directly in front of him. Whatever Thales' personal quirks may have been, he seems to have been the first person to inquire into the nature of the world in a philosophic, scientific way.
At the time of Thales, and indeed until much later, philosophy was not something distinct from science. In fact, science can also be called "natural philosophy". Thales tried to explain the things around him by observing the things of nature and proposing a theory that made sense of things. He theorized that everything was in fact made up of one sort of substance that could take on any shape or attribute. By proposing a single kind of "stuff" that everything was made out of, Thales was trying to uncover the basic nature of the universe. Thales believed that the truth about the world would show up when one investigates it through reason and observation.
What sort of stuff could take on any shape or quality? Thales believed water was the likeliest possibility. After all, we know that water can be hard when made into ice, fluid when a liquid at room temperature, and almost like the air when it turns into steam. Water can be hot or cold; it can be hard or soft. Perhaps water can take on any attribute or appearance; perhaps people and trees, rocks and stars are made up of water.
Thales' students agreed that everything could be explained by discovering what sort of basic material things were made out of, but they disagreed about what that material might have been. Anaximander believed water to be too specific a thing to be able to be made into anything. Instead, he proposed that all things were made out of the "indeterminate". The "indeterminate" is simply a material that has no qualities in itself, but can take on any quality when is shaped into a particular thing. It cannot be pictured in the mind, because every picture already has a definite appearance (color, shape, etc.), and so we cannot really even imagine what it might be like.
Anaximander's student, Anaximines, thought that Anaxamender correctly criticized Thales, but went too far in the other direction. He proposed that everything is made of of air, which he thought of as something like mist. The air can become more dense and solid, or it can become less dense and more rarefied.
While the Milesians (the name for Thales, Anaximander, Anaximines, and their followers) attempted to explain the world in terms of the material "stuff" that it was made out of, Pythagoras and his followers believed the world was best explained mathematically. Pythagoras realized that music could be broken down into mathematical ratios, and theorized that the cosmos itself could be understood mathematically. The surprising regularity of mathematical patterns in nature suggested that perhaps all of nature could be understood in terms of numbers. Pythagoras developed mathematics in order to expose the hidden structure of the world. For Pythagoras and his followers, mathematics was not a purely academic exercise, but a religious one as well. The relation of numbers to reality was at once surprising and mysterious. If space permits, I might explain the even and the odd; or else the religious/academic split -Thomas
Heraclitus and Parmenides
Heraclitus is perhaps the most interesting of the Presocratic philosophers. Unlike the Milesians and the Pythagoreans, he had little interest in establishing a "school", nor did he seem to believe much in precision in argument. His view of human beings as a whole was a dark one. Once he commented that the common people, rather than pursuing wisdom, "stuff themselves like cattle" (4). Even his views of fellow thinkers was rarely kind. For example, he insulted Pythagoras for having much learning, but no insight (14).
His most interesting views do not concern his distaste for other people, but his descriptions of change. While the Milesians looked for the one same substance that all things are made out of, and while the Pythagoreans set out the immortal laws of mathematics that the universe obeys, Heraclitus focused on how the world was never the same. He famously observed that a person never steps in the same river twice. This observation isn't obvious at first, and so we should think in detail about it.
Imagine Heraclitus standing on a bridge over a river, drawing water out of the river with a bucket. He dyes the water red, and pours it back into the river. After a moment, he draws up his bucket again. The water he draws up now, from the same spot, would not be colored by the dye, and so this bucket of water is different than the last bucket. The water in a river never stays in one place. Even the shape of a river constantly changes. Rivers overflow their banks, they dry out, they are altered by dams, they surge wildly then move along peacefully. Thus, as Heraclitus says, "Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow" (61).
Heraclitus believes that the whole universe constantly changes, not just rivers. Everything moves and flows and changes without rest. Some things change slowly, such as the erosion of rocks, some quickly, such as rivers or fires. Heraclitus likened the universe to a flame burning, always moving, dancing, and jumping in every part. However, at the same time, the flame is still in some sense the same. After all, we might look at the flame of a match until it burns out, and it seems as though the flame, though it moves, is still the same flame. Similarly, the Nile river, though it always moves, still is always the Nile. Things change and yet they remain the same.
Heraclitus pictures the universe in this contradictory way, as always the same and never the same, as constantly in motion and constantly still. In Heraclitus' words: "We step into and we do not step into the same river. We are and we are not" (63). The tension between opposites belongs to the nature of the universe itself. Heraclitus did not feel the need to find a way around these conflicts.
Parmenides, like Heraclitus, tried to understand the way in which the universe changes or remains the same. Unlike Heraclitus, he was not as comfortable with thinking of the universe as inherently contradictory. Parmenides declares that the cosmos is one and unchanging, and that the continuous change and the individual things Heraclitus spoke of is an illusion.
Why would he say this? If we look around it certainly seems as though different kinds of things exist, and it seems that these things move. Further, Parmenides' teaching runs contrary to philosophic tradition, for what the natural philosophers were trying to explain was why different things exist and what they are made out of. Parmenides seems to explain away what other philosophers tried to explain. In order to understand why, we must look at his argument.
Nothing comes from nothing, Parmenides argued. As soon as we speak of a cause of something, we speak of that cause as though it exists. A non-existent cause is simply not a cause. When something comes into being or when it changes, something that did not exist now exists. What is a person before they are conceived? Therefore, when change or coming into being happens, something comes from nothing. However, we know this to be false. Therefore, change does not happen. Things do not come into being. All that exists has always existed without any kind of change.
Parmenides' argument contradicts what we think we see. Should we regard things that change as an illusion? Some philosophers, such as Aristotle, commented that it is not worth talking to those who reject what is most obvious. Yet even Aristotle found it necessary to refute Parmenides' argument in detail in his Metaphysics.
Monday, September 28, 2009
"A Speech to the Garden Club of America," by Wendell Berry
Another sighting of one of our Modern Wise Men. I'll have to find a way to put these nine last lines in Wendell Berry's new poem, "A Speech to the Garden Club," in the New Yorker, over my garden somewhere:
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,Read the rest here.
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Joseph Epstein on Irving Kristol
When a thinker as influential as Irving Kristol departs this life, it is remarkable. But when one of our Modern Wise Men writes about it, that is more remarkable still. Here is Joseph Epstein on Kristol:
Read the rest here.He wrote with clarity and force, subtlety and persuasiveness, but, unlike a true writer, didn't feel the need to do it all the time. He was a splendid speaker, non-oratorical, casual, off-the-cuff division: witty, smart, commonsensical, always with a point to make, one that one hadn't considered before. I recall once hearing Irving introduced by Christopher DeMuth in a room that had a large movie screen behind the speaker's desk. "I see," said Christopher, "that Irving has brought his usual full panoply of audio-visual aids." "Yes," replied Irving, "a cigarette," which he took out of his pocket and tapped on the desk before beginning to speak.
Irving's reigning intellectual note was that of skepticism. As an intellectual, he lived by ideas, but at the same time he greatly distrusted them. All ideas for him, like saints for George Orwell, were guilty until proven innocent. "Create a concept and reality leaves the room," Ortega y Gasset wrote, and my guess is that Irving would have seconded the motion. In the realm of ideas, he preferred those that existed in the world as it is as against those that had to be imposed by elaborate argument or government fiat.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Aquinas, by Feser
Edward Feser, author of the outstanding The Last Superstition has a new book out on St. Thomas Aquinas, which offers an introduction to perhaps the greatest Christian thinker of all time.
Voices like Feser's--unapologetic in their defense of the basic insights of Aristotelianism--are, for some reason, either rare or drowned out in the modernist din. I suspect a little of both.
Feser reminds me in some respects of Henry Veach, who challenged the philosophical establishment to justify its rejection of traditional Aristotelian logic in favor of modern propositional and predicate logic. Veach took the field and dared the champions of symbolic logic to a contest of intellects, but, comfortably ensconced in their mostly publicly-funded offices, they to ignore him long enough so that he eventually went away.
I once went back and copied all the journal articles Veach used to pillory those who Jacques Maritain once called the "logisticians," looking for any responses in the process, but none could be found. Peter Kreeft once told me that they never did respond to Veach.
The professional consequences of what Feser is attempting are, I am sure, somewhat costly, although he seems to up the challenge. In any case, this is all the more reason to cheer him on.
Voices like Feser's--unapologetic in their defense of the basic insights of Aristotelianism--are, for some reason, either rare or drowned out in the modernist din. I suspect a little of both.
Feser reminds me in some respects of Henry Veach, who challenged the philosophical establishment to justify its rejection of traditional Aristotelian logic in favor of modern propositional and predicate logic. Veach took the field and dared the champions of symbolic logic to a contest of intellects, but, comfortably ensconced in their mostly publicly-funded offices, they to ignore him long enough so that he eventually went away.
I once went back and copied all the journal articles Veach used to pillory those who Jacques Maritain once called the "logisticians," looking for any responses in the process, but none could be found. Peter Kreeft once told me that they never did respond to Veach.
The professional consequences of what Feser is attempting are, I am sure, somewhat costly, although he seems to up the challenge. In any case, this is all the more reason to cheer him on.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Paul vs. Grayson: Where will Kentucky social conservatives go?
There is a palpable sense of interest in the candidacy of Rand Paul, but you also get the sense that neither candidate Jim Bunning's U. S. Senate seat--neither he nor Trey Grayson--has even remotely closed the deal with an important part of the Republican electorate in Kentucky: the social conservatives.
Both candidates seem to be solid on the pro-life position. Some pro-life leaders seem satisfied that Grayson has demonstrated his bona fides on the issue. Paul's statements tend to focus on his opposition to federal funding of abortion, and prefers a legislative solution to the issue rather than the Constitution amendment preferred by many pro-life activists. These statements have caused some concern over his position.
Still, he has stated his belief that life "begins at conception," and that abortion results in the deaths of unborn children. That certain puts him solidly in the pro-life camp.
Grayson too will have live down his past flirtation with casino gambling as a way to fund the government, making some work for him to convince the largely anti-casino church voters that he is one of them.
Part of the initial reticence on Paul (and to a certain extent Grayson, whose stated political positions--when you can determine them--tend toward the same fundamental assumptions) has to do with his libertarian political philosophy. On past occasions, I have referred to libertarianism as "conservatism without a soul." What I mean by that is that the libertarian philosophy is centered around an animosity toward government coercion. But that is a procedural position, and covers only procedural issues, like free market economics and school choice.
Libertarians tend to avoid issues that call on them to make any kind of value judgment, which makes them uncomfortable on questions like abortion and same sex marriage and casino gambling. These issues require value judgments that their libertarianism does not equip them to make.
Traditionalist conservatism, on the other hand, is more universal in its assumptions, and does not limit itself to the mechanics of governing. It acknowledges the classical idea that there is such a thing as the common good, and that our goal as citizens is not to stay out of each other's way, but to approximate the common good. That doesn't contradict the position of small government, it just puts it in its proper place: subordinate to the common good.
William F. Buckley used to like to quote Richard Weaver's famous definition of conservatism: "The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing approximation." If you think about that long enough, you'll realize that what he means is that the conservative recognizes that there are transcendent standards which are applicable to our lives together as citizens and that facilitate our ability as a society to approximate justice. The traditionalist conservative will balance this with the Burkean idea of tradition.
What many libertarians fail to see is that freedom is itself a value like any other, and they need to ask themselves, "Why this value and no other?" They actually make value judgments all the time. It's just that they recognize only one value.
Social conservatives are more in line with traditional conservatism, and do not shy away from talking about the larger body of issues affecting the common good.
Both Paul and Grayson have work to do here to flesh out where they stand on issues that social conservatives find important. Right now, Paul has slight edge, since his positions on a number of issues (not all) are plainly stated and freely available. Grayson's are not.
Both candidates seem to be solid on the pro-life position. Some pro-life leaders seem satisfied that Grayson has demonstrated his bona fides on the issue. Paul's statements tend to focus on his opposition to federal funding of abortion, and prefers a legislative solution to the issue rather than the Constitution amendment preferred by many pro-life activists. These statements have caused some concern over his position.
Still, he has stated his belief that life "begins at conception," and that abortion results in the deaths of unborn children. That certain puts him solidly in the pro-life camp.
Grayson too will have live down his past flirtation with casino gambling as a way to fund the government, making some work for him to convince the largely anti-casino church voters that he is one of them.
Part of the initial reticence on Paul (and to a certain extent Grayson, whose stated political positions--when you can determine them--tend toward the same fundamental assumptions) has to do with his libertarian political philosophy. On past occasions, I have referred to libertarianism as "conservatism without a soul." What I mean by that is that the libertarian philosophy is centered around an animosity toward government coercion. But that is a procedural position, and covers only procedural issues, like free market economics and school choice.
Libertarians tend to avoid issues that call on them to make any kind of value judgment, which makes them uncomfortable on questions like abortion and same sex marriage and casino gambling. These issues require value judgments that their libertarianism does not equip them to make.
Traditionalist conservatism, on the other hand, is more universal in its assumptions, and does not limit itself to the mechanics of governing. It acknowledges the classical idea that there is such a thing as the common good, and that our goal as citizens is not to stay out of each other's way, but to approximate the common good. That doesn't contradict the position of small government, it just puts it in its proper place: subordinate to the common good.
William F. Buckley used to like to quote Richard Weaver's famous definition of conservatism: "The true conservative is one who sees the universe as a paradigm of essences, of which the phenomenology of the world is a sort of continuing approximation." If you think about that long enough, you'll realize that what he means is that the conservative recognizes that there are transcendent standards which are applicable to our lives together as citizens and that facilitate our ability as a society to approximate justice. The traditionalist conservative will balance this with the Burkean idea of tradition.
What many libertarians fail to see is that freedom is itself a value like any other, and they need to ask themselves, "Why this value and no other?" They actually make value judgments all the time. It's just that they recognize only one value.
Social conservatives are more in line with traditional conservatism, and do not shy away from talking about the larger body of issues affecting the common good.
Both Paul and Grayson have work to do here to flesh out where they stand on issues that social conservatives find important. Right now, Paul has slight edge, since his positions on a number of issues (not all) are plainly stated and freely available. Grayson's are not.
Top Ten Southern Books
I admit it. I'm a sucker for a good book list. Here is Southern Seminary's Russell Moore on the ten top Southern books.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Buy the Beach House Back: Antarctica may not be melting after all
There are many reasons to think that We're All Going to Die, but there could be one less reason to think so, now that Antarctic ice seems to be up over this time last year. Not only are media claims that Antarctica is melting based on upside-down thermometers, says Anthony Watts, but they are apparently also based on upside down ice sensors.
Here is The Snow and Ice Data Center chart on Antarctic ice extent:
But don't worry. Someone is bound to come up with at least two other reasons We're All Going to Die to replace this one.
Trust me.
Here is The Snow and Ice Data Center chart on Antarctic ice extent:
But don't worry. Someone is bound to come up with at least two other reasons We're All Going to Die to replace this one.
Trust me.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Kentuckians should be having Nunn of this new idea
I should have seen this coming: the murder of Amanda Ross is sparking calls for "stronger domestic violence laws."
Every time a law is violated in a high-profile case, there are calls to strengthen the law. But the problem is usually not the law; the problem is that someone violated the law. And if the problem is a violation of a law, then how, exactly, is a tougher law supposed to solve the problem?
The fact that a law is broken is not an argument against the law that was broken. Laws against robbery and theft are violated all the time. But that doesn't mean they are bad laws. It means there are bad people who don't follow them. If someone knows how to write a law in a way in which it cannot be broken, then they need to explain exactly how this can be done.
Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo's response to Amanda Ross's murder is to put ankle bracelets on people who have been accused of domestic violence.
Since when do we punish people for being accused of a crime? If they have committed a crime, they need to be punished. But taking away the rights of people who have been accused of crimes has never been a part of the law.
Where's the ACLU when you need them?
Every time a law is violated in a high-profile case, there are calls to strengthen the law. But the problem is usually not the law; the problem is that someone violated the law. And if the problem is a violation of a law, then how, exactly, is a tougher law supposed to solve the problem?
The fact that a law is broken is not an argument against the law that was broken. Laws against robbery and theft are violated all the time. But that doesn't mean they are bad laws. It means there are bad people who don't follow them. If someone knows how to write a law in a way in which it cannot be broken, then they need to explain exactly how this can be done.
Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo's response to Amanda Ross's murder is to put ankle bracelets on people who have been accused of domestic violence.
“I don't think that it's unreasonable, when the circumstances warrant it, that judges be granted that power,” he said Wednesday. “There's a cost factor involved … but it's not cost-prohibitive.”Does it bother anyone that the Speaker of the State House doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept that people are innocent until proven guilty? How exactly does he propose to take away someone's freedom when they have not been found guilty of any crime?
Since when do we punish people for being accused of a crime? If they have committed a crime, they need to be punished. But taking away the rights of people who have been accused of crimes has never been a part of the law.
Where's the ACLU when you need them?
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The man without a place
The sad saga of Steve Nunn's last days has been has been worked over pretty well during the last week, but I think, for many of us, the full tragedy of this has yet to fully sink in.
Nunn was the son of a former governor, Louie Nunn, with political aspirations himself. In fact, the last time I talked with him was when he pulled me into his Capitol office a couple of years ago to ask me for my endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign--a campaign that never fully got off the ground. As a rule I don't do political endorsements, and I would have had trouble giving mine to him.
The relationship he had with Amanda Ross, the woman he apparently murdered last week, wasn't the only troubled relationship he had. He tried to conduct his political career in a party that had moved away from him. The Republican Party moved to the social right in the early 80's, but Nunn never followed most of the rest of the party into social conservatism, preferring instead to inhabit a no man's zone of moderation on the things too many of his fellow Republicans thought important.
In fact, he didn't seem to have any political center at all. Successful politicians seem to come in two kinds: those who have mastered the Machiavellian mechanism of getting elected, and those who have a clear philosophical purpose. Nunn never seemed to distinguish himself as a competent player in the political process, nor did he have any clear political philosophy. And political life can be cruel to those who fall somewhere in between.
Despite his natural personableness, Nunn was never chummy, and cast a sort of aristocratic air that should have befit the son of a former governor, but never really did. My chief memory of Nunn was seeing him walking into the Capitol Annex cafeteria with his former wife, an attractive woman, on his arm, waving to everyone he recognized, as if he wanted you to notice him. More importantly, it seemed like he wanted you to notice his wife. You got the strange sense that he married up--an impression you got more than anything else from Nunn himself, who seemed to know it.
I don't know what happened to his marriage, other than that it obviously broke up. In fact, I didn't even know anything had happened until the news came out about the protective order, and the resulting loss of his position as deputy secretary of the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Nunn seemed to have no place at all--politically or personally: the tie with his father seemed to have cast him adrift. When police found him, he was in the cemetery where his mother and father were buried, his wrists slashed from a failed attempt at suicide. He told police he had been visiting their grave.
That he would have tried to kill himself there should probably tell us something, but it's still hard to figure out exactly what. Maybe those who knew him well can make some sense of it.
Of course, Nunn's life is not over. It may, in fact, turn out to be unmercifully long, and one hopes before the end of it there will be some kind of redemption. Living in the shadow of a famous father can, apparently, be a very dark place, darker still when you have cast shadows of your own. But others have found light in places much darker.
Let's hope Steve Nunn finds it too.
Nunn was the son of a former governor, Louie Nunn, with political aspirations himself. In fact, the last time I talked with him was when he pulled me into his Capitol office a couple of years ago to ask me for my endorsement for his gubernatorial campaign--a campaign that never fully got off the ground. As a rule I don't do political endorsements, and I would have had trouble giving mine to him.
The relationship he had with Amanda Ross, the woman he apparently murdered last week, wasn't the only troubled relationship he had. He tried to conduct his political career in a party that had moved away from him. The Republican Party moved to the social right in the early 80's, but Nunn never followed most of the rest of the party into social conservatism, preferring instead to inhabit a no man's zone of moderation on the things too many of his fellow Republicans thought important.
In fact, he didn't seem to have any political center at all. Successful politicians seem to come in two kinds: those who have mastered the Machiavellian mechanism of getting elected, and those who have a clear philosophical purpose. Nunn never seemed to distinguish himself as a competent player in the political process, nor did he have any clear political philosophy. And political life can be cruel to those who fall somewhere in between.
Despite his natural personableness, Nunn was never chummy, and cast a sort of aristocratic air that should have befit the son of a former governor, but never really did. My chief memory of Nunn was seeing him walking into the Capitol Annex cafeteria with his former wife, an attractive woman, on his arm, waving to everyone he recognized, as if he wanted you to notice him. More importantly, it seemed like he wanted you to notice his wife. You got the strange sense that he married up--an impression you got more than anything else from Nunn himself, who seemed to know it.
I don't know what happened to his marriage, other than that it obviously broke up. In fact, I didn't even know anything had happened until the news came out about the protective order, and the resulting loss of his position as deputy secretary of the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Nunn seemed to have no place at all--politically or personally: the tie with his father seemed to have cast him adrift. When police found him, he was in the cemetery where his mother and father were buried, his wrists slashed from a failed attempt at suicide. He told police he had been visiting their grave.
That he would have tried to kill himself there should probably tell us something, but it's still hard to figure out exactly what. Maybe those who knew him well can make some sense of it.
Of course, Nunn's life is not over. It may, in fact, turn out to be unmercifully long, and one hopes before the end of it there will be some kind of redemption. Living in the shadow of a famous father can, apparently, be a very dark place, darker still when you have cast shadows of your own. But others have found light in places much darker.
Let's hope Steve Nunn finds it too.
Friday, September 11, 2009
We're all going to die. Just not yet.
Articles like this one would have you believe that Arctic sea ice is melting faster than ever. And it just makes sense, since, as we all know, the End Is Near.Unfortunately, however (I guess I mean "fortunately," since the End Not being Near is a good thing thing, at least for some of us), it looks like 2009 is not going to be the biggest Arctic ice melt, at least not unless there's a big huge melt over the next three days, at which point scientists expect it to bottom out. And by 'scientists' I mean all of them. Every single, solitary one of them.
After all, that's what we mean by 'scientists' when we say "scientists say," right? It's sort of like saying "Wall Street," which means every measly little broker on the floor.
Above is Anthony Watt's graph showing ice melt from 2002 to 2009:
And if that's to small for you to tell the difference, below that is Watts' close-up of where we are as of yesterday. It turns out that in 2008 there was less ice melt than 2007, and, barring the End coming in the next several days, 2009 will have less ice melt than 2008.I'm sure you'll read about it on all the Global Warming alarmist blogs (Not).
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