“This is it. There’s no working group coming to the rescue. There’s nobody else hidden away on some other floor. This is just us.”

Most days I don’t have much to say. The last time I wrote was when I experienced the Women’s March. The time before that was when I was in about my first or second week of law school. Now I’m writing when I’ve learned that Justice Kennedy will step down on July 31st of this year.

I am in precisely all of the states which would no doubt give a person who uses words like “snowflake” as a descriptor immense pleasure. However, I have no other way of being.

I am fearful today not because I believe that the majority of Americans are bad people, but instead that a minority of our country is attempting to break our political system and it is working incredibly well. One product of that destruction is that when Kennedy steps down he will inevitably be replaced with a partisan hack who is appointed with the purpose of furthering particular policy goals of a president who did not receive the vote of a majority of voting Americans, and was at minimum assisted into power by a hostile foreign government.

I feel deeply that somewhere, deep down in their guts, most reasonable Republicans must feel badly about what happened to Merrick Garland. They must, at a minimum, know that they did the wrong thing. Just as democrats, who now claim they want to put off the replacement of Kennedy until after the 2018 elections, or claim now that they want 11 justices, or claim now that they want to remove justices from the bench, all must feel that to do so would be wrong even if they want to give into this temptation desperately.

 

 

I am fearful because I am not sure if it is enough to be morally upright in a world full of cynics that want to take advantage of those who are not willing to do the evil that the cynics are willing to do. The cynics can steal a supreme court seat, and then use that seat to uphold partisan gerrymandering, and then use that partisan gerrymandering to elect people who will take the franchise away from minorities, etcetera and so the cynic’s grip on this country tightens and tightens.

My fear is that this does not need to get better. There is no guarantee that some great person will come to the rescue in 2018 or 2020. It is nearly a coin flips chance that Republicans will retain control of the house after 2018. It is very likely that they will keep the Senate. Meanwhile, every day, people lose the right to vote. Women lose the ability to control their bodies. Lands are polluted or sold off. Water goes untreated. Infants are torn from their parents arms, and lost. It does not need to get better. We are falling very quickly, and there is no necessary end to this pit.

With Kennedy gone the bottom that we thought we had hit has fallen out. Questions like a woman’s right to choose, a gay person’s right to be treated as equal, and innumerable others that we thought were settled may soon be reopened again.

I think it’s important to keep fighting. I wake up every day and go to a job where the only way to stay sane is to dramatically update one’s definition of “victory”. I will not stop trying to make the United States a better place for everyone. I want quite desperately for the greatest number of people in this country to live lives of comfort, love, and happiness. I know that quite soon the shock of the moment will pass, and I along with my friends will continue the work that started with the Women’s March and will end, whether in 2020 or beyond, with the ship being righted once again.

I’m letting life hit me until it gets tired. Then I’ll hit back.

I started this blog just before law school, and I feel compelled now to start it again. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew. There is so much to talk about, so many experiences and thoughts to share. I feel transformed.

The reason I feel compelled to speak again is because of the Women’s March that occurred several days ago. Since I last wrote on this blog, I campaigned for Bernie Sanders, and then advocated for Hillary Clinton. Over the past couple months, I began to feel like I was the victim of gaslighting. I felt as though all the world saw things one way, and I another. My thoughts went to Brexit, to the Golden Dawn, to Marine Le Pen. My thoughts went to McCarthy, to Nixon, to Kristallnacht, to Korematsu. I began to feel that the world was spinning out of control, that I could walk down the street, and not know if a person I passed wished I was dead for being Jewish, or Japanese, or a combination of the two.

But then this march happened, and I felt better than I did in perhaps a year. Many friends of mine marched. I regret to say I was on a trip that weekend, and I could not. I felt a lot of love, compassion, and courage. I loved seeing the words written on signs. I loved seeing woven hats, bellowed chants, and hands held.

This march reinvigorated me; awakened me from an exhaustion that began to seep into my bones beginning when Bernie began to lose ground and culminating when Hillary lost Pennsylvania. I began to feel deep in my heart once again, that perhaps this is just a passing shadow. Maybe, just maybe, if we work hard and learn from our mistakes, things will turn out differently in the future.

These were the thoughts that compelled me to write again. I hope I will write more in the future, very soon.

I leave you now with the quote that I named this blog after those few years ago. ”

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” – George Orwell

Speak louder, Mr. Hart! Fill the room with your intelligence!

So here I am, end of week two of law school.  I was invited to two things tonight, a party and to watch the Michigan State v. Oregon game, but I am way too exhausted after last night’s bar outing to leave the house.  Is this how it begins?  Before I know it I’ll be a crotchety old man doing things like drinking iced tea and complaining about taxes.

Anyway, classes have started and it’s been interesting to say the least.  I feel like I’m finally studying what I was meant to study all along.  The classes I have are contracts, torts, civil procedure, legal writing, and legal research.  A quick rundown of my classes…

For contracts I have a pretty brilliant professor that used to work for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  He maintains a unique balance between being strict and easy-going in his teaching.  On the one hand, if you show up to his class even a few seconds after he’s begun the lesson you’re absent, or if you ask for him to repeat the question he disparages you, but on the other hand he gives everyone ample opportunity to speak and he helps coax them along to the correct answer in a very kind and helpful way.  Anyway, the guy kind of freaks me out, not only did he clerk for a future justice, but he graduated from Harvard undergrad, Yale law school, and Michigan for his doctorate.  One cannot help but feel as though it’s a bit of a David vs. Goliath situation every time he asks a question, though I suppose that’s equally true for all professors.  Contracts itself has been very interesting, and really the only class so far that I feel we’ve been making real progress in.  I’ve learned so many things, from what consideration is, to the fact that all those agreements you clicked yes to without reading when installing crap on your computer the past 10 years are generally enforceable and you may have already signed away your first born.  Joking.  Kind of.

Torts has been really interesting so far too.  My professor in this class has a really clear teaching style, though I don’t exactly love her reliance on powerpoints to illustrate various aspects of the law.  I much prefer the Socratic method, it seems so much more interactive.  She uses that too, but not nearly as much as my contracts prof.  Anyway, the focus so far has been on intentional torts.

(I left at this point to go to both the party and the game, so if my writing has deteriorated after this point, blame the deliciousness of Bell’s Oberon)

So, intentional torts.  So far the discussion has largely been about the element of intent and battery.  Battery seems straightforward, but the element of intent is rather complex and interesting.  We read a case where a child pulled a chair out from a woman and she broke her hip.  If the kid had the requisite intent, he would be found guilty of battery in that case.  Crazy stuff.

The last substantive class is Civil Procedure.  Frankly it’s dry as hell, despite the best efforts of the grandmotherly professor teaching it.  The class hasn’t seemed to really pick up yet, it all seems like a review of high school civics so far.  We learned the structure of the courts and statutes governing how they’re set up and their jurisdiction.  Riveting stuff.

Anyway, despite my intention to stay in and read or study, I went out to a bar to watch my Spartans get trounced by Oregon.  At least after that we went to a friend’s house to watch a movie which ended up being the classic Bond film, Dr. No.  Tomorrow I have a hundred or so pages of reading to prepare for classes next week, so I’ll be heading to the library all day.  I also have to prepare for a mock trial tryout that I have on Thursday, so I’ll make sure to thoroughly read the case tomorrow and start writing some parts.  Hopefully all of law school is as good as it’s been so far!

“You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount.”

Sorry about my recent absence.  I posted on this thing for like two weeks straight and then stopped for the rest of summer.  I pretty much decided that there were better ways to spend the days of summer than sitting in front of my computer writing about political issues.  There’s plenty of time for that while I’m actually in school, and they don’t give folks like me extra credit for being a nerd on my own time.

Anyway, tomorrow I start law school.  I’m going to be a 1L at the University of Illinois College of Law.  My thoughts going in to this whole endeavor are pretty varied.  On the one hand, I do feel pretty young to be taking such a huge step.  Starting law school at 22 means that I’ll graduate when I’m 24.  Frankly, if I was some Wall Streeter trying to close a deal or something, and I needed legal advice for some contract or another, and 24 year old me walked in there, I’d laugh the kid out of the office.  On the other hand, I feel like I have to trust the process.  Thousands of people throughout history have started legal careers no older, wiser, or quick witted than I am right now.  Most of those people turned out alright.  So long as I continue to put in an honest effort every day, there is no reason I shouldn’t come out of this process with the skills and knowledge necessary to be a fine lawyer.  If Ronan Farrow could graduate at 21, I can sure as hell do it at 24.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this thing more up to date.  I’m not sure which direction I’ll take this, if it’ll contain more blogging about law school or if it will remain mostly commentary on news and whatnot, but I guess time will tell.

“Commander, from what I understand, if this thing goes to court, they won’t need a lawyer, they’ll need a priest.”

So I wrote up this brilliant analysis of the Hobby Lobby case.  It was beautiful.  But alas, several thousand words into it, I managed to somehow hit a combination of keys that obliterated the whole thing.  All of it, gone forever.  I’m now too frustrated to rewrite that whole thing.

Instead, I’m going to analyze a particular aspect of it.  Freedom of religion.

So let’s start with the 1st amendment, at the beginning.  The text of the amendment reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

This amendment has one clear goal between all it’s elements; it seeks to prevent the idea of “thought crime”.  You cannot be punished for your ideas by the government.  If I want to say something or protest, I have that right.  If I want to believe in a cause or a god, then that’s my right.  That cannot be a crime.  There can also be no official religion, and no prohibition of religion.

But obviously this has to have some restrictions on it.  What constitutes “free exercise”?  Polygamy?  Beating children?  Murdering black people?  Suicide bombing?  Obviously not.  Justice Scalia, oftentimes considered the most conservative Justice, or at least close to it, said in relation to an old case regarding Peyote, “We have never held that an individual’s beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the state is free to regulate.” He said it would be “courting anarchy” to create exceptions every time a religious group claims that a law infringes on its practices.  Even something like taking a drug for religious reasons is not protected by an otherwise fair law simply by virtue of it being part of your religion.

Now, the 1st amendment was bolstered by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which placed a heavier burden on the state before they could restrict a person’s actions in the name of religion, namely that it must be the least restrictive method available and that it must be part of a substantial governmental interest.  But the reality is that cases like Hobby Lobby are not covered by the 1st amendment, but by the RFRA.  Therefore to prevent things like the Hobby Lobby case happening again, you need only repeal the RFRA.  In other words, legislative action needs to be taken.

The RFRA was not a part of our founding documents, so never let anyone tell you, “that’s not what the founders would have wanted!”  We don’t know what the founders would have wanted in regards to contraception because I doubt Plan B was a huge part of colonial life.  Short of some great smelling salts and a necromancer, people who tell you what the founders do or do not think won’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.  The Supreme Court, back when Scalia wrote that opinion I referenced earlier, looked at all the laws up until that point and decided that none of that allowed breaking a fair law because your religion tells you to.  The genius idea that the laws are equal, but some laws are more equal than others, is totally new.

“See you Monday. We’ll be talking about Freud and why he did enough cocaine to kill a small horse.” – A defense of brick and mortar higher education

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make this post about, but it’s fast approaching 6:00 PM and I’m supposed to meet up with my parents for dinner at 6:30.  Though I only have 30 minutes to discuss it, I finally remembered a post that I read on Tumblr a few weeks back.  This post complained that a person could learn the same things a student would from college at the library, and if they could demonstrate the same level of knowledge as a college graduate, it was nonsensical to disallow them from receiving a similar certification or degree.  It was, in essence, a defense of the online education.

I am a huge fan of online education, or all forms of education for that matter.  I have taught myself calculus through Khan Academy, supplemented my Spanish through Duolingo, and learned plenty from John and Hank Green’s famous Crash Course series on Youtube.  With that in mind, I am going to attack the merits of this educational system, not because I think they’re useless, but because I think we need to be realistic about what the product is.

6:03

Let’s talk about the similarities between a brick and mortar institution and the online institution.  There are the facts.  These won’t change.  If I learn about Caesar, I’m going to know he was a famous emperor of Rome no matter if I hear it from a MacArthur genius, or Wikipedia on my Kindle.  If I learn that “hablar” means “to talk” in Spanish, it doesn’t matter where I learned that.  There are the materials.  Reading Shakespeare or Joyce for an English class is the same Shakespeare or Joyce I would read by myself at home with a cup of coffee.  My biology textbook is the same biology textbook I could walk to the library and check out for free right now.

You get the picture, there is no substantial difference in the things you will read or learn.

But then why is it different?  Why have people been studying subjects for hundreds of years that one could learn from a book.  This reminds me of that famous scene in Good Will Hunting, where Robin Williams’ character Sean is talking to Will about some cruel things Will said the day before.

Here’s the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws66aAdthE0

One of my favorite lines is, “You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally… I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some fuckin’ book.”

The reality is that you can’t learn a subject, just like you can’t understand a person, by knowing all the facts about them.  And that’s what online classes seek to do.  You learn all the facts, but you keep them at arms length.  You don’t talk about them.  You don’t question them.  I studied English in college, and to me the person who asks why I would pay that much money to study books that I could get from the library for a fraction of the cost misses the point.  As Will would say at the beginning of the film, “you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!”

The education that Will describes is essentially the same as an online education.  The thing is, you’re not paying the 150 grand, or whatever it may be, for the books.  You’re paying it for the class.  You’re paying it for the professor, and to surround yourself with a bunch of people who are hopefully as smart as you are.  Will Hunting had a million facts bouncing around his head, but he never did anything important until he met the MIT professor and Sean; he didn’t do anything important until he started talking about it.

I have a friend, let’s call him J, who was telling me about his strategy for taking classes in high school.  He told me that he didn’t get extremely good grades and never really wanted to work that hard, but he always took AP classes anyway.  When I asked him why, he told me because it was impossible to learn with a bunch of idiots in the regular classes – he needed smart people to bounce ideas off of.  The factor that improved his learning the most wasn’t access to books; he had that no matter what.  What improved his learning were the people he surrounded himself with.

And ultimately that’s something that an online education cannot replace, at least not yet.  You can’t have labs, you can’t sit in a planetarium, you can’t go to the river to collect specimens, you can’t use a cadaver… and most importantly, you can’t surround yourself with people who, like you, are there to learn.

6:32

That wasn’t half bad for a half an hour.

“Haven’t you noticed? We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.” – The importance of strong convictions

Last night I was out to dinner with a friend, and as we rounded the 2nd drink I mentioned the topic of yesterday’s post, Palestine and Israel.  My friend, before divulging his opinion, deployed a litany of “well, I don’t know enough” and “this is just an uneducated opinion” before giving a very thoughtful analysis of the situation.  As he gave his protests that his words meant nothing, I almost stopped listening before he truly began speaking.  His points were the following:

1. The choice of that particular land, one that has historically been hotly contested, for Israel, was a foolish one.
2. The only answer that won’t end with more violence is a de-escalation.  There is no aggression that will be met with anything other than counter-aggression.
3. The killing of children and innocents is an indefensible crime.

These were all valid and wise points.  They all, to me, were correct.

This reminded me of a film called Idiocracy, which really is a terrible and stupid film, but one with an interesting premise.  In this film, stupid people with their lack of birth control and insatiable appetites for the hedonistic out-bred the intelligent people of the planet with their family planning and whatnot.  The film makes one good point in this, the reckless nature of the stupid, the violent, and the uncaring, makes for a lopsided conversation.  The intelligent, the mild-mannered, the reasonable, are all people who are at a disadvantage of noise.  Whether it is the West-borough Baptist Church or PETA, the extremists are always the loudest.

Take the famous lawyer saying, “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”  It would be funny if it weren’t so true, and if it didn’t work.  It doesn’t matter if you’re right, if you talk like the Public Defender from My Cousin Vinny, you’ll never get your point across.  The issue here, is that when it comes to discourse regarding things like the Israel/Palestine conflict, we find loud terrorists, loud politicians, and loud extremists, who tend to end up on the two polarized ends of what requires a reasonable conversation.

The only answer to the tensions in the middle east is de-escalation.  There is no attack on Israel that the US won’t rush to stop.  There is no attack by Israel that won’t be met with aggression from Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Egypt, or countless other neighboring territories.  There was a famous quote by Carl Sagan that goes, “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”  The situation in the middle east is much the same.  These threats that they make are foolish, and any aggression will inevitably result in a loss for both parties.

Any aggression will only be met with more aggression, but with the current players in the conversation, we find reason overshadowed by fear, compassion overshadowed by hate, and love of peace overshadowed by love of war.  The voices of reason find themselves drowned out, and like my friend, it’s partially their fault.

Have strength in your convictions and stand up for what you know to be true.  Killing children is not okay, this is not a controversial point.  Firing mortars and rockets at civilians is not okay, this is not a controversial point.  Have the decency to say so, and don’t let your voice be drowned out by those crying for blood.

“Now, a question of etiquette – as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?” – An analysis of the recent actions taken in the Israel-Palestine conflict

I was almost afraid that the only current event I would have to write about is the World Cup and the stellar elderly Brazilian fan whose sadness was only surpassed by his mustache.  But unfortunately, things never seem to settle down in the middle east, as one of the most hotly debated conflicts escalated further.  This is of course in reference to the ongoing violence between Israel and Palestine where Israel seems to be caught between a rock and a very hard place.  Said Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri, “The Khan Yunis massacre … of children is a horrendous war crime, and all Israelis have now become legitimate targets for the resistance.”  We’ll get to that in a moment.

Israel retaliated with striking some 50 sites in Gaza.  Is Israel’s response to this threat a reasonable one?  Here I won’t speculate as to what will happen to Israel or other states had other action been taken, but rather I’ll make an appeal to history.  Douglas Murray, quoting a holocaust survivor while talking about Israel’s relationship with Iran, “When someone says they want to annihilate you, believe them.  Don’t think they’re joking.  Don’t think they don’t mean it.”  For all the criticisms and apologies you make, you can never deny Israel this; they have reason to take threats seriously.  That being said, the murder of children is never excusable, and I don’t pretend to back Israel for these crimes, no matter what their state or how much they stare destruction in the face every day.

Despite that capitulation, it becomes clear that Israel is justified in this response.  Israel needs to take these threats seriously.  The rockets and mortars that are launched from Gaza every day are not a joke.  The Hamas threat that “all Israelis have now become legitimate targets” is something one cannot say without consequences.  You cannot purposely target innocent civilians, this is so far below the threshold for basic morality.  This is not North Korea beating it’s chest, these people can and have and do kill people, and try to dozens of times per day.  Israel has a right to defend their people.

Questions/Comments?  Feel free to weigh in.

Sources:

Hamas Declares All Israelis Targets – Deutsche Welle

Israel and Nuclear Iran – Douglas Murray

 

“One more and I get a set of steak knives”

I spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking about how I should kick this off, and I figured a movie quote was the way to do it.  For the uninitiated, that’s from A Few Good Men.  I’m not exactly sure why that quote appealed to me in particular, I think it has something to do with the lackadaisical mental gymnastics that have to go with writing a blog.  The insistence of both sides of the coin, that what you say is important, but it doesn’t matter if anyone ever reads it.  That being said, there are some actual reasons for me making this.

First, I wanted a mostly text-only blog and Tumblr, which was what I was using before, just isn’t very good for text posts more than a few sentences long.  The dashboard is more often than not cramped, and the blogs themselves are nearly impossible to navigate except for the past few posts.

Second, and I suppose this is related to the previous in some way, is that I wanted to talk a lot more about politics, philosophy, ethics, current events and things of that nature in a meaningful way, and I think that this WordPress blog will be more conducive to that sort of thing.

Third, I just think I needed to divide the two sides of what I use my other blog for.  Half of my Tumblr blog was posts about movies and comic books, and the other half was indictments of capitalism and the Tea Party.  These two things go together like oil and water.

Finally, I am starting law school soon and with what I hope is not a naive expectation that I’ll encounter some things that merit extracurricular writing, I figured that this was as good a time as any to begin a blog like this in earnest.  I started my previous blog when I began college, it only seems fitting to begin this one as I enter law school.

I’m not exactly sure what I’ll talk about here.  I’m not sure who I’ll share this with either; I’ll probably begin only by posting it to Tumblr and work on this for about a month or so until I hit my stride.  Then who knows.

Hope to see you around.  Cheers.