to think is to differ...

Unfortunately no great thinker quotes today...just a passing memory spurred by the first piece of legal research that I've taken up in quite some time.  I have always been a bit dumbfounded by the minutiae required by courts (especially as you go up the appellate ladder) when it comes to inane items like font, backing, and formatting.  I once had occasion to watch a law office turn upside down preparing an attorney for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court.  I remember even then being disappointed to learn that the highest court of the land--the lofty gods of Olympus who existed in a metaphysical nirvana made of pure logic--were mere mortals who obsess about font, backing, and formatting.

Later, when I worked as a judicial staff attorney, I wondered how much work the collective justices actually do--and how much is left to the troglodyte law clerk behind the curtain.  I wonder...

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma

Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera

Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo

Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera

Cultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Qultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca

Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera

Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera

Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mar

***

Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo
Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo

My verse is light green
And it is flaming red
My verse is a wounded stag
Who seeks refuge on the mountain

Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo
Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo

I grow a white rose
In June as well as January
I grow a white rose
In June as well as January
For my sincere friend
Who gives me his open hand

Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo
Girl from Guantanamo
Peasant girl from Guantanamo

With the poor people of the earth
I want to cast my lot
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea

Dear Senator Obama,

This letter represents a first for me--a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.

May I describe to you my thoughts?

I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or "new-centrist" ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me "proud."

In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

Good luck to you and to us.

Toni Morrison

According to the New York Times, in the five years since the invasion of Iraq, 4,000 American men and women have lost their lives. 

Although war deaths were higher in past military engagements--Vietnam, Korea, WWII--today in 2008, seeing that number in print is unsettling.  Perhaps it is because of the utter lack of clarity regarding the Bush administration's stated purpose for the occupation, perhaps it is the overwhelming sense that arrogance not intelligence led the charge to Bagdad, perhaps it is the continued display of U.S. ignorance regarding culture, language, and geopolitical context.  Whatever the ultimate reason, one can't help but think that the men and women on the ground are no more than a passing consideration for the current administration.

This parable, first observed in 1833 by economist William Forster Lloyd, illustrates the great misfortune of Western societies--which are, as a whole, incapable of maintaining and preserving community-owned property.  Lloyd observed that when pastureland is (the "commons") is available to all, cattle-owners have a short-term interest in increasing the size of their herds. But, unchecked, the size of the herds on the commons will soon exceed its carrying capacity. The commons will be doomed by overgrazing.

There is then a strange social dichotomy, morality and compassion balanced against self-interest and greed.  This conflict can of course be translated into religion, psychology, sociology--it is perhaps the overarching challenge faced by the human condition.

Labor unions illustrate a form of commons, though more abstract than concrete.  Unions seek to consolidate the power of many in order to bring pressure to bear upon bosses and owners, traditional owners of most if not all authority.  In the purest sense the unions are good--have been and continue to be one of the only tools available to workers to truly affect change.

In a real world sense, it seems that much of the power of unions has been squandered by old guard bureaucrats within the workers' ranks who ride the system into the ground without contributing their fair share.  Supervisors are rendered virtually powerless by the mountain of paperwork and red tape required, especially when attempting to cull sloth from the ranks.

Human nature then...perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

I read an alarming statistic in Newsweek yesterday--at this point in history, one in every one hundred Americans are incarcerated.  Jails are not the answer for everything--"lock 'em up and throw away the key" isn't doing much to insure that citizens operate within the bounds of the law.

In Crime:  Its Cause and Treatment, Darrow argued that:

The first thing to lessen crime and relieve victims from the cruelty of moral judgments is a change of public opinion as to human responsibility.  When scientific ideas on this important subject shall be accepted, all things that are possible will follow from it.  Some headway has already been made in the direction of considering heredity and the environment.  Theoretically, we no longer hold the insane responsible, and some allowance is made for children and the obviously defective.  The discouraging thing is that the public is fickle and changeable, and any temporary feeling overwhelms the patient effort of years...Individual men and collections of men are ruled not by judgment but by impulse; the voice of conscience and mercy is always very weak and drowned by the coarse cry for vengeance.

The question becomes:  Can we as a society adhere to the rule of law, or will knee jerk reactionism remove all validity from our system of government?

It's unbelievable that Ralph Nader is still buoyed along by his own ego after fragmenting the Democratic Party and essentially giving the country to George W. Bush. Ironic to think that one man's vanity may very well have been the force that seated the current administration. This supposed consumer advocate, supposed champion of the common man, is at best a charlatan with his own agenda and at worst a mere puppet whose strings are pulled by unseen hands.

War is the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it “the lust of the eye” and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in primal impulses we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power of the divine, the power to give or annihilate life. Armed units become crazed by the frenzy of destruction. All things, including human beings, become objects-objects to either gratify or destroy or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that.

Excerpt from posting by Chris Hedges at "Psyche, Science, and Society," Blog of Stephen Soldz: Psychoanalyst, Psychologist, Researcher, and Activist, http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/category/mental-health/psychology/social-psychology/

See also William Broyles, Jr., "Why Men Love War," The Vietnam Reader, Walter H. Capps, ed. (Routledge: 1991).

Clarence Darrow

A Plea for Mercy

delivered September 1924

Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined in the general cry of madness and despair. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. I was like the rest. What did they do? Right or wrong, justifiable or unjustifiable -- which I need not discuss today -- it changed the world. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarian uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. The toddling children on the street. Do you suppose this world has ever been the same since? How long, your Honor, will it take for the world to get back the humane emotions that were slowly growing before the war? How long will it take the calloused hearts of men before the scars of hatred and cruelty shall be removed?

We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and we rejoiced in it-if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. Even down to the prattling babe. I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy-what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.

It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. I know this, that after the Civil War in 1865, crimes of this sort increased, marvelously. No one needs to tell me that crime has no cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease, and I know that out of the hatred and bitterness of the Civil War crime increased as America had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through the same experience to-day; I know it has followed every war; and I know it has influenced these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world had not made red with blood. I protest against the crimes and mistakes of society being visited upon them. All of us have a share in it. I have mine. I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.

Your Honor knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased growing out of the war. Not necessarily by those who fought but by those that learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly why not the boy? There are causes for this terrible crime. There are causes as I have said for everything that happens in the world. War is a part of it; education is a part of it; birth is a part of it; money is a part of it-all these conspired to compass the destruction of these two poor boys.

Has the court any right to consider anything but these two boys? The State says that your Honor has a right to consider the welfare of the community, as you have. If the welfare of the community would be benefited by taking these lives, well and good. I think it would work evil that no one could measure. Has your Honor a right to consider the families of these defendants? I have been sorry, and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. And Mrs. Frank, for those broken ties that cannot be healed. All I can hope and wish is that some good may come from it all. But as compared with the families of Leopold and Loeb, the Franks are to be envied-and everyone knows it.

I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what your Honor would be merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful if you tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful to those who would be left behind. To spend the balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it anything? They may have the hope that as the years roll around they might be released. I do not know. I do not know. I will be honest with this court as I have tried to be from the beginning. I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty. Whether they will then, I cannot tell. I am sure of this; that I will not be here to help them. So far as I am concerned, it is over.

I would not tell this court that I do not hope that some time, when life and age have changed their bodies, as they do, and have changed their emotions, as they do-that they may once more return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing. And I think here of the stanza of Housman: 

Now hollow fires burn out to black,

And lights are fluttering low:

Square your shoulders, lift your pack

And leave your friends and go.

O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,

Look not left nor right:

In all the endless road you tread

There’s nothing but the night. 

I care not, your Honor, whether the march begins at the gallows or when the gates of Joilet close upon them, there is nothing but the night, and that is little for any human being to expect.

But there are others to consider. Here are these two families, who have led honest lives, who will bear the name that they bear, and future generations must carry it on.

Here it Leopold’s father-and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, he cared for him, he worked for him; the boy was brilliant and accomplished, he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hopes crumble into dust.

Should he be considered? Should his brothers be considered? Will it do society any good or make your life safer, or any human being’s life safer, if it should be handled down from generation to generation, that this boy, their kin, died upon the scaffold?

And Loeb’s the same. Here are the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day, while Dickie’s father and his mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me. Shall these be taken into account in this general bereavement?

Have they any rights? Is there any reason, your Honor, why their proud names and all the future generations that bear them shall have this bar sinister written across them? How many boys and girls, how many unborn children will feel it? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. It is bad enough, however it is. But it’s not yet death on the scaffold. It’s not that. And I ask your Honor, in addition to all that I have said to save two honorable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to help any human being that lives.

Now, I must say a word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago. None of us are unmindful of the public; courts are not, and juries are not. We placed our fate in the hands of a trained court, thinking that he would be more mindful and considerate than a jury. I cannot say how people feel. I have stood here for three months as one might stand at the ocean trying to sweep back the tide. I hope the seas are subsiding and the wind is falling, and I believe they are, but I wish to make no false pretense to this court. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy to-day; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own—these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients.

These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped, and that the normal feelings of man resume their sway. And as the days and the months and the years go on, they will ask it more and more. But, your Honor, what they shall ask may not count. I know the easy way. I know the future is with me, and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all. I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. I know the future is on my side. Your Honor stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows. In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

I feel that I should apologize for the length of time I have taken. This case may not be as important as I think it is, and I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friends that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich. If I should succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that for the countless unfortunates who must tread the same road in blind childhood that these poor boys have trod—that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.

I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all.

So I be written in the Book of Love,

Erase my name or write it as you will,

So I be written in the Book of Love.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/cdarrowpleaformercy.htm

Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?